Former Speaker and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took down Jake Tapper when he asked her about Trump’s false claims about Kamala Harris’s cognitive abilities.
Video of the full Pelosi interview on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper:
Tapper played this clip of Trump in Savannah today, and said, “Donald Trump saying that Kamala Harris has bigger cognitive problems than Joe Biden:
Trump claims Kamala Harris has bigger cognitive problems than Biden, but since Harris destroyed Trump at the debate, what does this say about Trump? pic.twitter.com/j2ZmB5SVkx
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) September 24, 2024
Pelosi went off:
Why would you even cover that? This is a person who’s not on the level. He is their nominee for president. He is incompetent. Let’s not even talk about the silliness of it all and the weirdness of it all and the assault on women that it is. We’re not going to talk issues. Incompetent. The only thing he did as president.
The only thing he did as president when he had the majority was to pass a bill that gave 83, a tax cut that gave 83 of the benefits to the top 1%, adding 2 trillion to the national debt. The worst job creation record of anybody president since Herbert Hoover.
Well, it’s not because of COVID.
We put three trillion dollars into the, into the economy when he was president working with, uh, uh, and the Congress, uh, working together. We put three trillion dollars into the economy. So, don’t blame it on, and what did he do with COVID? Denial and delay. responsible for thousands and thousands of people dying.
So if you’re going to forgive his job record because of COVID, make sure you attribute many of those deaths to him as well.
Tapper replied, “Not forgiving anything, just noting, just noting the content.”
Pelosi continued, “Incompetent. You know, forget silly and crazy and crooked and all the rest. Incompetent.”
Tapper tried to justify the clip, “Let me just say, why do I run that clip? I run that clip because that’s the Republican presidential nominee and I thought you might have a reaction to it.”
Pelosi calling him out made Tapper admit that he only asked her that question to get a reaction from her, which is lazy journalism.
Former Speaker Pelosi was correct to call him out, because what Tapper was helping to spread whether he realized it or not was a racist claim made by Donald Trump. Trump has been attacking Harris’s cognitive abilities in part for play into the racist stereotype that black people are stupid or less intelligent.
I chose to embed the clip and not quote from it so that readers can choose if they want to hear those sorts of attacks, but I will not advance them by putting them in print.
There are important issues to discuss, but big media is still playing the Trump game.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association