During an interview on Sunday with Fox News personality Chris Wallace, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked about the inability of Congress to reach agreement on another coronavirus relief bill.
However, the longtime San Francisco Democrat didn’t seem to appreciate Wallace’s line of questioning and boldly accused the Fox News host of not knowing the facts about recent executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, as the Washington Examinerreported.
“Didn’t you mess this one up?”
Wallace began his conversation with Pelosi by noting the series of orders that President Trump signed this weekend after it became clear that no stimulus legislation would be reaching his desk. The orders address issues as student loans, evictions, and payroll taxes.
“Speaker, I understand that the president’s executive action doesn’t do all the things you want, but having no bill at all, not coming to any agreement wasn’t going to provide any of the things you want either,” the Examiner quoted him as saying.
Wallace did not let up on the speaker, adding, “You’re known as a master negotiator, but didn’t you mess this one up? Because there’s no deal at all, cities and states won’t get any money.”
“There’s no money for the post office,” the Fox News anchor continued. “There’s no money for hospitals. There’s no money for state boards of election. You knew that the president was threatening to take this executive action.”
Forcing the issue even further, Wallace asked rhetorically, “I understand that you weren’t going to get everything you wanted and didn’t get everything you wanted, but should you have cut a deal and are you ready to go back into talks to try and come up with a fuller package?”
Pelosi fires back
The speaker responded by saying to Wallace, “Well, clearly, you don’t have an understanding of what is happening here, both in the weakness of the president’s executive orders, which don’t give the money and enhanced benefit, but puts a complicated formula there, which will take a while, if at all, to accomplish, to put money in the pockets of the American people.”
“What we have said is we’re going to honor our heroes, state and local health care workers, first responders, teachers and the rest,” she contniued. “And that’s part of our argument as to how much are they willing to do.”
Pelosi attempted to articulate her vision for the next phase of coronavirus relief by attacking the president every step of the way, saying, “Second, lets open our economy by addressing the virus, which the president has ignored for months now, to do the right thing, scientifically based.”
Suggesting that she and her colleagues on the left were now willing to come back to the table and talk, Pelosi added, “And third, lets put money in the pockets of the American people. So what the president did doesn’t even accomplish what he sets out to do in the categories that he did. But we said we’ll come down a trillion, you go up a trillion. Meet us half way, and we’ll have an agreement that meets the needs of the American people.”
Try as she might to deny it, the fact is that Pelosi and the Democrats were simply outmanuevered by the president on this one, and no amount of face-saving negotiations in the coming days will change that.
No comments: