House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, defended the resolution condemning comments President Trump made that many considered racist during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
The resolution, which was passed mostly by party lines on Tuesday, came after the president repeatedly attacked four progressive freshmen congresswomen, arguing that if they’re unhappy with the status of the United States they could “go back” to their native countries.
“Well, the fact is, is that was a resolution of the House and not some legislation that should go to the Senate or be signed by the president,” Pelosi stated. “By the way, in the most gentle way. You have no idea the provisions that some people wanted to have in that resolution. This is as benign. It condemned the words of the president. Not the president but the words of the president.”
“We were offended that he spoke in such a way about members of Congress, but we were offended that he says that about people across the country all the time. Go back to where you came from. And that, by itself definition, those words are racism. Go look in the AP and other places where they define certain words,” she concluded.
The vote on the resolution was temporarily derailed when Republican Rep. Doug Collins called for the speaker’s words to be stricken from the record because she engaged in a “personality-based” attack against the president. Pelosi was reprimanded by House chairman Emanuel Cleaver.
Things then got uglier when he walked off the House floor after abandoning the chair.
