House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who appeared on the Late, Late Show last week and showed Americans a refrigerator full of high-end ice cream, thinks President Trump deserves an “F” for his handling of the Chinese Virus pandemic.
But after she graded the president yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace confronted her with footage of her now-famous invitation, as the pandemic spread, for tourists to pack Chinatown in San Francisco.
One problem? Pelosi did exactly what she has accused Trump of doing: underestimating the virus threat. Another problem: She lied and said she did no such thing after Wallace played the video.
Trump’s a Failure
After Pelosi explained, or didn’t explain, why the Democrats have balked at a $350 billion relief package for small businesses the economic shutdown has crushed, Wallace asked why she criticized the president’s plan to reopen the country, particularly given that Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top White House advisor on the crisis, endorsed it.
“If these things are done correctly,” Fauci said, “what I believe they can we will have and there will be enough tests to allow us to take this country safely through phase one.”
But the career politician called Trump’s plan a “vague and inconsistent document [that] does nothing to make up for the president’s failure to listen to the scientists and produce and distribute — distribute national rapid testing.”
“Don’t you believe Dr. Fauci?” Wallace asked.
“Yes, well, he said if this were done properly,” Pelsoi replied. “Well, it hasn’t been done. … [W]e’re way late on it and that is a failure. The president gets an F, a failure on the testing.”
That’s when Wallace confronted Pelosi with her own words.
Noting that Pelosi has repeatedly said Trump downplayed and responded too slowly to the virus in January and February, Wallace reminded her “that on February 24th, you went on a walking tour of Chinatown to try to promote tourism there.”
Then he played video of Pelosi’s invitation for people to pack Chinatown to the rafters.
Come to Chinatown, It’s All Good!
Barraged with angry ridicule last week after she stood in front of her $24,000 refrigerator-freezer combo and showed off her gourmet, $12-a-pint ice cream hoard, the hate-Trump millionairess opened her remarks this way:
We should come to Chinatown. Precautions have been taken by our city. We know that there is concern surrounding tourism, traveling all throughout the world, but we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come.
It’s lovely here. The food is delicious, the shops are prospering, the parade was great. Walking tours continue. Please come and visit and enjoy Chinatown.
Despite the spreading pandemic, which has infected more than 1,000 people in San Francisco County and killed 20, Pelosi repeatedly implied mingling was not a health risk.
“How irrational is it that people are staying away from Asian-owned businesses — not only here, but all over the U.S.?” a reporter asked.
After bloviating about immigrants and “community,” Pelosi again urged listeners to ignore the virus threat and head for Chinatown:
The immigrant community is about family. It is about small business and big business…. So, that’s why we want people to come to Chinatown. Don’t be afraid. Enjoy it all. It’s beautiful and there are some good bargains here now, so it’s a good time to come.
“All I can say is that I’m here,” Pelosi continued after a reporter asked whether avoiding Chinatown was racist. “We feel safe and sound.”
The upshot of her message as the insidious Asian pathogen began its deadly march across the country? “Don’t be afraid” because “it’s a good time to come.”
Don’t Discriminate
Wallace asked the obvious: “If the president underplayed the threat in the early days, Speaker Pelosi, didn’t you as well?”
Pelosi: No. What we’re trying to do is to end the discrimination, the stigma, that was going out against the Asian-American community…. Chinatown has been a model of containing and — and preventing the virus.
Wallace: Don’t you think … when you’re about walking without any mask … weren’t you also adding to this perception that there wasn’t such a threat generally?
Pelosi: No. I was saying that you should not discriminate against — discriminate against Chinese-Americans as some in our administration were doing by the way they were labeling the flu.
H/T: Powerline
Image:screenshot from YouTube video
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
