House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has gone off the deep end — and her latest nasty claim is so off-base, even The Washington Post is calling her a liar.
Pelosi went on MSNBC on Monday to accuse Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of being a racist. What she said had even The Post’s notoriously leftist-friendly fact checkers shaking their heads in disgust.
“Let me remind you that, when the Republicans took power — when President Obama was president of the United States — what Mitch McConnell said is, ‘The most important thing we can do is to make sure he does not succeed.’” Pelosi said on MSNBC’s AM Joy. “If that wasn’t a racist statement! That is unthinkable.”
“Well, a zombie claim emerges from the dead again. But it’s even uglier than usual,” The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote in a piece refuting the claim.
The piece, titled, “Nancy Pelosi twists an old McConnell quote into a “racist statement’” blasts Pelosi and MSNBC’s nasty spin.
She made her comments in response to this question: “You’ve worked with Speaker Ryan, you know Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, why do you think they haven’t spoken up as leaders in the United States against something as pernicious as white supremacy and racism?”
(Note: McConnell on Aug. 16, 2017, issued this statement when white supremacists were reported to be planning a rally in Kentucky: “We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred. There are no good neo-nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head.”)
Pelosi did not directly answer but instead harked back to this 2010 interview. But nowhere in McConnell’s comments can we find a line like: “The most important thing we can do is to make sure he does not succeed.” Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, said it was a paraphrase of this line: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Hmmm. That ignores the rest of the conversation: “If he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him. … I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.”
You can watch the segment below.
Warning — this will make you angry —