President Trump’s latest campaign ad took aim at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for showcasing her freezer packed with ice cream during the coronavirus pandemic while people suffer financially from stay-at-home orders.
“Americans are losing their jobs since the virus rocked the economy. Nancy Pelosi blocks funding for people to keep getting paychecks. But she’s got a $24K fridge full of ice cream, so she’s cool,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted Monday alongside the ad.
Parscale compared Pelosi with Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution.
“Let them eat ice cream,” he wrote in reference to the famous line “let them eat cake,” which has been commonly attributed to the former queen, and signed the message as coming from “Nancy Antoinette.”
Americans are losing their jobs since the virus rocked the economy.
Nancy Pelosi blocks funding for people to keep getting paychecks.
But she’s got a $24K fridge full of ice cream, so she’s cool.
“??? ???? ??? ??? ?????.”
– ????? ?????????? pic.twitter.com/6KDurMFJDD— Brad Parscale – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@parscale) April 20, 2020
Pelosi has taken a lot of heat for her interview with late-night host James Corden last week, during which she gave viewers a look inside her freezer stocked with gourmet ice creams.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done if ice cream were not invented,” she said via video conference from her home.
After the interview, she followed up in a tweet, writing: “We all have found our ways to keep our spirits up during these trying times. Mine just happens to fill up my freezer.”
Many reacted negatively to the interview, suggesting it was tone-deaf in light of many people struggling during quarantine measures.
“While Nancy Pelosi sits in her ivory tower in San Francisco, eating $13 dollar a pint ice cream out of her $24,000 fridge, she is cheering on Democrats for blocking coronavirus relief aid that has so far been distributed to 1.3 million small businesses that is about to run out,” the Republican National Committee’s rapid response director, Steve Guest, tweeted.
More than 21 million people have filed for unemployment since nearly every state across the country implemented stay-at-home orders and closed nonessential businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats in the Senate earlier in April blocked legislation asking for an additional $250 billion for a loan program for small businesses. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the holdup was partly due to provisions added to the Paycheck Protection Program to get funding to minority and rural communities.
“So we Democrats said, ‘Yes, we want to put more money in [for small business financial relief], but let’s set aside some money to make sure it goes to the rural areas, to the minority areas, to the unbanked.’ And the $60 billion for the disaster loan was our proposal, and now, the [Trump] administration is going along with that,” he said Sunday.
