Nancy Pelosi didn’t take kindly to Chris Wallace’s questioning on his Sunday Fox show.
In a shameful meltdown, the House speaker snapped at Wallace after he suggested that Democrats may have derailed negotiations on the next coronavirus relief package with Republicans, the Washington Examiner reported.
Pelosi snaps at Wallace
President Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Saturday to deliver assistance to Americans in need and accused the Democrats of holding funding “hostage,” according to the Daily Mail, after Congress reached an impasse on the latest relief bill.
In a contentious interview with Pelosi on Fox News Sunday, Wallace sympathized with Trump, pressing the House speaker on whether she had failed to live up to her reputation as a “master negotiator” by insisting too hard on her party’s demands, causing a deal to implode and leaving Trump with an opportunity to take credit.
“You’re known as a master negotiator, but didn’t you mess this one up?” Wallace charged, according to a transcript provided by RealClearPolitics. “Because you talk about all the things that the president — let me just finish, if I may, Speaker. Now, because there’s no deal at all, cities and states won’t get any money, there’s no money for the Post Office, there’s no money for hospitals, there’s no money for state boards of election.”
Pelosi pushed back, insisting that Wallace doesn’t “understand” what he’s talking about and that Trump’s orders don’t actually provide any help to the American people.
“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,” Pelosi said, according to the Examiner.
Pelosi slams Trump’s “illusion”
Republicans have routinely accused Pelosi of sabotaging coronavirus stimulus talks by pushing for agenda items unrelated to the virus, while Democrats have fired back that their colleagues are not willing to spend enough to meet the needs of Americans struggling through economic turmoil and facing evictions.
Democrats initially sought a $3 trillion package that Republicans rejected, before the GOP proposed their own $1 trillion plan, which Democrats dismissed in turn. As The Hill notes, the groups have continued to disagree about funding for unemployment insurance, state and local governments, and other issues.
But now that Democrats are walking away empty-handed, they’re left accusing the president of trampling on the Constitution by taking action to deliver for the American people. Echoing points made by her party earlier this weekend, Pelosi insisted Sunday that Trump’s executive orders are “constitutional slop” and an “illusion” of false advertising, Fox noted.
On Monday morning, President Trump tweeted that Pelosi and Schumer “want to meet to make a deal,” only for them to later deny it, as The Hill reported.
It seems the only “illusion” here is the perception that Dems care about the American people.
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