House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is every bit the demagogue that President Trump is. But don’t hold your breath waiting for members of the press to challenge her on it. They most likely agree with her.
On Monday, during an appearance on MSNBC, Pelosi called Republicans “enemies of the state” and “domestic enemies.” That is not an uncharitable paraphrasing of her remarks. Those are her exact words.
“What happened in 2016 was discouraging,” Pelosi said. “The Russians were there. And they are there now 24/7 trying to interfere in our election. But they’re not the only ones.”
She added, “We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And, sadly, the domestic enemies to our voting system and our honoring our Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in the Congress of the United States.”
Republicans, Pelosi continued, “are doing everything they can [to] suppress the vote with their actions, scare people, intimidate by saying law enforcement will be there, diminish the role of the postal system in all of this. It’s really actually shameful. Enemies of the state.”
Naturally, there was not even a pretense of pushback from the MSNBC host. There was not even a casual mention of the fact that 2016 was not the first time that Moscow has interfered in a U.S. presidential election. Pelosi’s comments denigrating members of the Republican Party as “domestic enemies” went totally unchecked, as the interviewer moved on to tee up the next softball question.
Aside from Republicans and center-right media, there has been no outcry over Pelosi’s remarks. The aggrieved journalists, who have fainted when Trump has said such things, were apparently too busy Monday prewriting their fact checks of the Republican National Convention. The Jim Acostas and April Ryans of the world, usually quick to signal their opposition to demagogic rhetoric, are weirdly disinterested in condemning Pelosi’s comments.
It is no surprise that Democrats and their allies in the press refuse to hold Pelosi accountable even for her “domestic enemies” remarks. She is their golden child. Instead of anything resembling pushback, we will likely get another round of glowing profiles with titles such as “The persistence of Nancy Pelosi,” “Nancy Pelosi emerges victorious,” and “Women shaping the future: Nancy Pelosi and the new voices of the House.” These are real headlines, by the way.
The wildest thing about the quiet reception to Pelosi’s deranged commentary is that she is not even particularly good at her job. Republicans continue to put up legislative wins, all while Pelosi’s hare-brained schemes tend to end in abysmal failure (see, for example, her efforts in April to torpedo Congress’s COVID-19 relief bill).
So if she is not an especially effective champion for the liberal agenda, then why do Democrats and the press continue to give Pelosi a pass for acting just like Trump? The likeliest explanation, it seems, is also the most unflattering. Pelosi gets a pass from her party and the press because they apparently agree with her.
You will not read criticism for Pelosi’s “domestic enemies” crack in a New York Times editorial. You will not see a deeply concerned CNN anchor spend an entire segment condemning what Pelosi said. The national media largely agree that Republicans are the enemies, and this persistently taints their coverage.
It seems, then, that much of the talk these last couple of years about defending decency and norms was just that: talk. Many of the same people who have banged on about these things incessantly since Trump took office don’t actually seem to care about goodness, honor, and the like, as their chronic disinterest in Democratic leadership’s worst behavior makes clear. The only thing that some of these decency-obsessed Trump critics really seem to care about is that “R” next to the president’s name on the ballot.
