While a national television audience played witness to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s temper tantrum on Tuesday, one man had a better vantage point than anyone else. Standing beside her on the dais, Vice President Mike Pence was applauding President Donald Trump when Pelosi picked up her copy of the president’s speech and ripped it in half. On Wednesday, Pence told the hosts of Fox & Friends that he saw it as a “new low” in Pelosi’s speakership.
“I wasn’t sure if she was ripping up the speech or ripping up the Constitution,” Pence said. “The contrast here was a president who spent an hour-and-a-half making the speech about America and Nancy Pelosi in the final moments tried to make it about her. I think the American people see through it. They see through the pettiness, they see through the politics of all of it.
“I think what they got last night,” he continued, “was a speech that lifted up the country, that celebrated the incredible progress we’ve made in our economy, rebuilding our military, strengthening our court, but the stories that the president told were American stories and I just know it was a great blessing to people all across America and it’s one of the reasons why you see the momentum growing behind this president.
“I just have a strong feeling that she’s going to be the last Democrat Speaker of the House to sit in that chair for a long time,” he concluded.
According to The Hill, Pelosi explained her stunt to her House Democratic caucus the next day, telling them that because Trump “shredded the truth, I shredded his speech.”
“I didn’t go in there to tear up the speech, and I didn’t even care that he didn’t shake my hand. In fact, who cares?” Pelosi said, according to The Hill’s sources. “But I’m a speed reader, so I went like this through the speech. So I knew that it was a pack of lies. I knew it was a pack of lies, but I thought, ‘Well, let’s see how it goes.’ About a quarter through it I thought, ‘You know – he’s selling a bill of goods like a snake oil salesman. We cannot let this stand.’ So, somewhere along the way realizing what was coming, I started to stack my papers in a way that were tear-able.”
Well, we don’t believe any of that for a second. Pelosi absolutely planned this stunt beforehand; she wanted an encore of all the adoring publicity she got for last year’s clapback. The truth is, she’s piping mad that she couldn’t throw the president out of office, and she’s worried sick about the lame slate of candidates the Democrats are putting up against him in the election. Trump’s approval numbers are at an all-time high, impeachment was a bust, and Democrats have nothing to show for their first year in the majority.
She decided to rip up that speech because, at this point, that’s about all she can do.
