Jonathan Turley Notices Some Curious Contradictions in Comments Nancy Pelosi Made to Chris Wallace

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. speaks outside her office on Capitol Hill, Monday, March 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat down for an interview Sunday with Chris Wallace to discuss the stalemate over the Paycheck Protection Program and the Trump administration’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

Fortunately, Pelosi wised up and decided not to be filmed in her posh home standing in front of expensive refrigerators that contained freezers full of ice cream. But unfortunately for her, she made some glaring contradictory statements that were not in line with things she’s advised people to do in the past.

One such comment came after Wallace mentioned the marches that were happening around the country where people were protesting restrictive stay at home orders that were preventing them from being able to work and provide for their families. Pelosi claimed she could not understand them:

CHRIS WALLACE: As you know, protests against the stay-at-home orders are growing across the country. People are taking to the streets, pushing back against some of the more stringent restrictions in some states. Can you understand why they’re doing that?

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: No, not really. Because what we have to do is — is — is shelter-in- place. That is really the answer. Testing, tracing, treatment, shelter-in-place. And I do think that it’s unfortunate — but you know, people will do what they do.

Later in the interview, Wallace pointed out how Pelosi had attacked Trump’s leadership during the crisis, calling him a poor leader in the middle of a pandemic. Are those partisan attacks necessary?, he asked:

WALLACE: But do you think those kinds of partisan attacks by, in this case, you, are constructive in the middle of a national crisis?

PELOSI: Well, I’ll tell you why it came to that. I was very prayerful on Easter. It was one of the first days I didn’t have to be working every minute. And I could reflect and be prayerful. And what I decided was that the president’s made many mistakes.

OK, let’s have an after-action review of that. But if he continues to put forth proposals that were not science-based, continuing his, you know, what’d he say, it’s a hoax. It’s magically going to go away. OK, put that aside but to — to proceed with policies which were not science-based, which are not evidence-based and to blame others — blame anybody. Blame the governors, blame me, blame the World Health Organization.

Leaders — leaders take responsibility. So I said he’s a weak leader. He doesn’t take responsibility. He places blames — blame on others. And that might have been OK before but we cannot continue down a path that is, again I’ll come back to science, science, science, evidence, data on how we should go forward.

George Washington University law school professor Jonathan Turley, an equal opportunity critic of both Republicans and Democrats, pointed out the contradictions in both her statement on not understanding the marchers’ motivations and her remarks about Trump and leadership:

Nancy Pelosi just said to Chris Wallace on Fox that she does not understand people publicly protesting civil liberties on lock down orders. However, this followed her defense of her calling people to join her in Chinatown in late February as a protest against discrimination…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 19, 2020

Pelosi said that "leaders take responsibility" and do not blame others. However, when asked about her calling people out in mass to Chinatown in late February, she said it was because of what Trump "said about Asian Americans." Trump did refer to "the Chinese virus," not citizens

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 19, 2020