Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s incoherent rambling were so bad during a Wednesday interview, even CNN’s liberal host Dana Bash couldn’t stomach it.
Pelosi was fact checked multiple times during her defense of the government shutdown and President Donald Trump. The 84-year-old Democratic leader simply couldn’t defend her party’s positions… and the video was ugly.
We watched CNN so you don’t have to.
Pelosi appeared on “Inside Politics with Dana Bash” to discuss the ongoing government shutdown but bumbled through answers about the continuing resolution Republicans have repeatedly passed to reopen the government.
When Bash pointed out that Republicans were voting to open the government while Democrats were voting no, Pelosi claimed the GOP continuing resolution was not “clean.”
“First of all, it isn’t a clean CR,” Pelosi said.
“What’s not clean?” Bash asked.
“It’s not a clean CR, there’s no reason to go into that,” Pelosi responded. “The point is Democrats who created Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, all of that are now being asked ‘reject that so we can give a tax cut to the rich.’ We’re not doing it.”
CNN: Republicans are voting YES to open the government. Democrats are voting NO. So how are they shutting down the government?
PELOSI: It's not a clean CR!
BASH: What's not clean?
PELOSI: "The point is…uh uh uh" pic.twitter.com/E2M6oxRttL
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 8, 2025
The Republican continuing resolution is, by definition, clean. It contains no poison pills or excess provisions. The bill funds the government at Biden-era spending levels for seven weeks to give Congress time to finalize 12 appropriations bills. The Committee for a Responsible Budget, a non-partisan organization, called it “as clean of a C.R. as you could get,” according to The New York Times.
What the CR does not do is extend Democrat priorities that were always supposed to be temporary, including Obamacare subsidies enacted during COVID-19 and funding for programs like NPR. Democrats have also demanded $1.5 trillion for health care spending on illegal immigrants.
Pelosi also stumbled when discussing embattled Virginia Democrat attorney general nominee Jay Jones, who faces calls to drop out after text messages from 2022 showed him suggesting a Republican colleague should be shot.
“What I understand is they say, on balance, he is a better person to be Attorney General,” Pelosi told Bash when asked if Jones should exit the race.
Jones, whose campaign is teetering after the violent texts were exposed, has wished death upon a Republican colleague and later hoped the colleague’s children would be murdered so he would change his stance on gun control. He also expressed support for cops being murdered over the issue of qualified immunity.
“We have to get rid of that kind of language,” Pelosi told Bash. “I wish there would be enough fuss of all the times that people have said they were going to put a bullet in my head right in public.”
Moments later, Pelosi called President Trump “deranged” for suggesting that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker should be imprisoned over their refusal to cooperate with federal law on immigration.
“Saying that the governor and the mayor should be imprisoned? Come on, be presidential. Mr. President, honor the office you serve in. Don’t be so deranged and political as to how you make decisions,” Pelosi said.
The contradiction was glaring—Trump suggesting the rule of law be applied evenly, even to powerful officials, was “deranged,” but Jones wishing death on children did not rise to a level requiring him to drop out, according to Pelosi.
The Senate has now voted six times to pass a continuing resolution to reopen the government, with Democrats blocking it each time. The government shutdown began October 1 after Democrats filibustered the GOP continuing resolution in a 55-45 vote, with only Sen. Rand Paul voting with Democrats.