Trump Said He Was Quoting Nancy Pelosi on Impeachment. He Was Actually Quoting Fox News.
November 19th 2019
"It's like a manhood thing for him." (Thomas Cizauskas)
By Laura Clawson
Donald Trump quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying something outrageous—or something that would be outrageous if Pelosi had actually said it. But it turns out that Trump was quoting a Fox News reporter who was definitely mischaracterizing what Pelosi said.
What Pelosi actually said: “The weak response to these hearings has been, ‘Let the election decide.’ That dangerous position only adds to the urgency of our action, because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.”
What Trump falsely claimed she said: “it is dangerous to let the voters decide Trump’s fate.”
Gee, what’s the difference between “It’s dangerous not to look into Trump’s efforts to solicit foreign interference and rig the 2020 elections” and “It’s dangerous to let the voters decide”?
About an hour before Trump’s tweet, Fox News chief congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel claimed, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi circulated a memo to Democrats tonight telling them it would be dangerous to let voters decide President Trump’s fate when it comes to the Ukraine investigation.” Trump likes to posture as his own personal messaging genius, but an awful lot of the time it turns out that he’s just using the pros at Fox News as a stand-in for the White House communications shop.
This is nothing to be surprised at, coming from Trump, but we have to be 100% clear on what Pelosi actually said: Donald Trump is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections, and if Congress doesn’t act, he could succeed.
Posted with permission