Skip to main content

Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace

June 16, 2020
Contact: Speaker's Press Office,
202-226-7616
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC's Deadline: White House to discuss the Congressional response to the killing of George Floyd, including Democrats' transformational legislation, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020, and other news of the day. Below are the Speaker's remarks:
Nicolle Wallace. The President's Executive Order on policing was not the sweeping change many have been calling for, including our next guest who said in response to the President, ‘During this moment of national anguish, we must insist on bold change, not meekly surrender to the bare minimum.'
Joining us now, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Madam Speaker, is that what this EO was today, the bare minimum?
Speaker Pelosi. Yes, it fell sadly and seriously short.
One thing I did agree with the President is: Congress should act. He said that – he alluded to that a number of times. Congress should do more. Yes, it would be easy to do more because he fell so short, meekly surrendering.
Nicolle Wallace. Did you view it as – I mean, it's hard to project onto Donald Trump any strategery, as my old boss might have said, but did you view it as an open conversation or did the optics speak for themselves that he was flanked by a largely white, male law enforcement crowd? I mean, is his position clear to you or is there a compromise to be reached with him?
Speaker Pelosi. I hope there's a compromise to be reached in the Congress of the United States. I'm more concerned about what Mitch McConnell said about our bill, the George P. Floyd Justice in Policing Act. He said, ‘It's not going anywhere in the Senate. We won't have any of that.'
We won't have any of what, ending racial profiling? We won't have any of ending chokeholds? We won't have any of [ending] no-knock warrants? The list goes on and on. That is serious. How many more hundreds of thousands of people have to demonstrate in the streets, protest peacefully for justice in policing? How many more people have to die from police brutality?
And so, for the Leader of the Senate to say, ‘It's going nowhere, we won't even – we don't want any of that,' is really disgraceful, and really ignores the concerns of the American people. We all know that we need to have guidelines. We need to have training. We need to have a database. We need all of those things, but we also need to have some serious legislation to make sure it happens nationally, nationally.
I feel very very disappointed by the dangerous statement made by the Republican Leader of the Senate.
Nicolle Wallace. Madam Speaker, you have, as of today, public opinion behind you and what you're talking about. You have 76 percent of Americans who see systemic racism as the problem. The President and, at least, Larry Kudlow and William Barr and other people around him don't agree on what the problem is.
So, so I guess I'm asking where you take this majority of public support that is behind your views on this issue, and those being articulated by Democrats and maybe a couple of Republicans, mostly privately at this point, and how you push forward with the change that the demonstrators are asking for with the President and his Administration dug in around incrementalism?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, first of all, I think what the President had today was a photo-op. And he did say Congress should act. The Leader of the Senate who was there, the Republican Leader of the Senate, said, ‘The House bill is going nowhere. We'll have none of that.' You heard Senator Booker's response to all of that.
What we are proposing is something that is proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus, in the hopper for a number of years, worked on for a long time, understanding the nature of the problem. And you know what? The American people understand it, too. And so, here we have a place where we can work together.
We've had our Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Karen Bass – we're so proud of her – having conversation and communication with the Fraternal Order of Police, respecting any suggestions that they may have.
So, this isn't about drawing red lines in the sand. It's about making a big difference, taking a giant step forward and saying to the Leader in the Senate, you call yourself the ‘Grim Reaper.' How aptly named you are when you see how many people have died, how many people have died, how much lack of confidence there is and whether there is racial – systemic racism in our country. And clearly, there is.
But this is – we have an opportunity for America. This is a time of reckoning to say we're going to make a change that is real, not cosmetic, not perfunctory, not a photo op, but legislation that is real. And it – and the people understand, the people understand.
So, they have to know, as you've heard me say many times, Nicolle, that President Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything. With it you can accomplish almost anything. Without it, practically nothing.' Well, public sentiment is there, and if the Republicans in the Senate want to choose to ignore the public sentiment about justice in policing, they do so at their peril. I hope they don't. We'd rather have legislation than an issue with the Republican Senators.
I think one of the reasons the President –
Nicolle Wallace. There aren't many people –
[Crosstalk]
Speaker Pelosi. I'm sorry
Nicolle Wallace. Oh, go ahead.
Speaker Pelosi. I was going to say, one of the reasons the President probably put that out there today at the same time as he was photo op-ing, the Chairman of the Fed was testifying before Congress, and he was talking about the facts of what's happening, that in this last quarter was the biggest dip in the GDP in history.
Nicolle Wallace. Right.
Speaker Pelosi. The biggest dip in the GDP. He talked about how unemployment was increasing for people of color, we – how the reason that there was some apparent improvement in the numbers in the May report was because of unemployment insurance and direct payments, which were injecting demand into the economy.
We need more of that, and the Grim Reaper is saying he's not doing that either. Well, what is he doing? Ignoring justice in terms of economic justice, in terms of the coronavirus, which we need to address, which we do in the Heroes bill, but he won't hear of that either. What is this?
We are about governance.
Nicolle Wallace. Madam Speaker, it sounds like you are out branding the party that tries to brand people. Do you think the Senate Republican majority is in trouble?
Speaker Pelosi. My focus is on the House of Representatives where we won the majority, and I'm very proud of that. And we'll increase our majority. I do think that in doing so, we will help to win the Senate and also to win the White House with Joe Biden proudly carrying our banner. I do know that the Senate is hard at work in winning the Senate for the Democrats and, frankly, for the American people and for people who care about justice of all kinds in our country.
But I think the more the public knows about the Grim Reaper and how things are not going any place there – it seems the only thing he wants to do is to approve judges that don't support — what people are basically in the streets fighting against.
Nicolle Wallace. I want to ask you two more questions. I share a hometown of San Francisco and the decision yesterday in the Supreme Court was truly historic. Your thoughts, and your thoughts on Neil Gorsuch writing the opinion for the majority?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, it was exciting. It would have been a horrible thing if the Court had gone the other way. What would they have said? That the LGBTQ – that you could be discriminated against in the workplace? But this is not the whole job.
We still need to pass the Equality Act. We passed it in the House. The Grim Reaper says it's going nowhere in the Senate, but nonetheless, we want the American people to know there is an opportunity to do more.
This court decision was about discrimination in the workplace. But there's discrimination in many other areas of our economic and social life in our country that the Equality [Act] – whether it's credit, whether, the list is a long one. And we were very proud to introduce it and pass it in the House, with the leadership of John Lewis and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who had fought for the original Civil Rights Act. This expands it to include LGBTQ. I was particularly happy about the transgender piece of it, because that – they are so discriminated against and so needed that decision, but we need more.
But it was exciting, I have to admit.
Nicole Wallace. My last question – it was exciting. The sort of rare glimmer of positive news on this sort of bleak moment that we're in. And on the topic of the bleak moment we're in, what do you fear about where we're heading on coronavirus? And what concerns do you have about the President convening rallies with 20,000 people in indoor spaces; about states having what Laurie Garrett, who writes on this for a living, calls a patchwork of policies and a President who doesn't model some basic protective behaviors like mask wearing and social distance?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, I have three words to say to the President on that: science, science and science. Science did not gather people in large numbers in close proximity without masks. It's a dangerous thing at the time of a pandemic.
Science to say we need testing, testing, testing. We all know that. And yet this President has miserably failed. Yesterday, the 15th of June, let's go back three months to March. The 15th of March, there were 60 known deaths in the United States from the coronavirus. Yesterday, three months later, the 15th of June, there were 115,000 deaths from the coronavirus. A dismal failure on the part of the President of the United States. Calling it a hoax, ‘It's going to disappear magically,' ‘A miracle is going to happen.' What? We lost time and we lost lives.
So, I would say the science to test, trace, treat and isolate. The science to wear masks and keep your distance and don't gather in large numbers like that. And the science to recognize this is not ‘magically' or a hoax. And I don't know what his scientific advisers are telling him that he is ignoring, but the fact is, scientists all over the country are saying we must test.
Now, we don't have a vaccine and we don't have a cure yet. We pray for that. Science will be the answer to our prayers. We don't have that yet. But we do know what does work: testing, tracing, treating, isolating. And we should have been doing that for a long time. Sixty – 115,000, maybe 116,000 in three months. And not a good projection, sadly, going forward.
We all have all of this in our Heroes Act. In The Heroes Act we have testing, tracing, treating. In our Heroes Act we have Unemployment Insurance and direct payments. In our Heroes Act we have support for state and local government, which the Chairman of the Fed said today, were big employers and meet the needs of the American people.
So, I wish the Grim Reaper would take up The Heroes Act because it's an answer in so many ways to the coronavirus, which has had an undue impact on people of color in our country. Another injustice that we can correct. Testing, tracing, treating, isolation.
Nicole Wallace. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thank you so much for spending some time with us. We're grateful.
Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure. Thank you.
# # #