Nancy Pelosi made history on Wednesday. She and other leading congressional Democrats had been invited to the White House to hear the Donald Trump’s letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, warning him against his planned invasion of Syria. But according to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Pelosi came to the meeting planning to fight. Maybe pout would be a more accurate verb.
McCarthy reports that everyone received a copy of the letter and that Pelosi, upon receiving hers, immediately turned it face down, presumably an act of defiance. If there had been a chalkboard eraser full of chalk dust, she would have probably hurled it at Trump.
Before long, tensions escalated. The president became impatient with Pelosi’s antics and she continued to bait him over his “inevitable” impeachment. Words were exchanged. Finally Pelosi showed she was someone to be reckoned with. She rose to her feet and rudely jutted a finger at the commander-in-chief as she got in her last licks.
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The she, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stormed out of the room.
Outside the White House, Schumer accused the president of having been rude to the speaker, while she stood silently by beaming like a child who had just pooped in the toilet for the first time.
Schumer on President Trump: He was insulting, particularly to the Speaker. He called her a third-rate politician pic.twitter.com/VEjE3hwZpZ
— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) October 16, 2019
According to the media, Pelosi scored a knockout, not only for Democrats but for the fairer sex by standing up to a bully like Donald Trump. The finger point was merely the icing on the cake. If Democrats win back the White House in 2020, no doubt a commemorative coin depicting the “finger point” will be struck.
Meanwhile, across the country in Arizona, former Gov. Jan Brewer. reminded the Democrats that waggling a finger at a president was not always a point of pride for them:
The news media hails @SpeakerPelosi as a hero for pointing her finger at @POTUS @realDonaldTrump but when I stood up to @BarackObama I was vilified as rude and racist. Such Hypocrites! pic.twitter.com/banxxQp7F1
— Jan Brewer (@GovBrewer) October 17, 2019
The Washington Examiner reminds us:
Brewer was photographed poking her finger in President Barack Obama’s face when he visited Arizona in January 2012. She claimed that after giving him a written invitation to inspect the crisis on the Arizona border, the two engaged in a heated discussion about a passage in her book, Scorpions for Breakfast, which depicted Obama as condescending and dismissive.
Brewer took flak for her finger-pointing from both the media and the public, who accused her of disrespecting the presidency. More than 12,000 letters flooded her office in the ensuing days, most of which condemned her, calling her “trashy” and “tasteless.” Likening the act to belching at the president, a writer for the Washington Post scolded her, “If a thing is frowned upon in general, it’s even worse to do it to the president in particular.”
