Pelosi Catches Fire for New Low in Pandering: Kneels Before Introducing 'Justice in Policing' Act
Nancy Pelosi has been lowering herself — and American politics — for decades now.
But on Monday, she did it literally.
As the country heads into President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, the crassly opportunistic (and maliciously anti-Trump) House speaker clearly hopes to capitalize on a wave of anti-police sentiment, stemming from the May 25 death of George Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for roughly nine minutes during an arrest, to defeat Trump’s campaign.
Claiming that police are the real problem, Democrats at the local level are working to “defund police” forces in their communities — and leave the minorities they claim to care about even more vulnerable to crime.
The mainstream media is doing its ever-predictable part by portraying an astonishing orgy of riot and looting as some kind of heir to the dignified, morally driven protests of the civil rights movement.
And now comes House Speaker Pelosi herself, ostentatiously taking a knee in the ornate surroundings of Emancipation Hall (formerly the Great Hall) in the nation’s Capitol before introducing a bill to put a new set of federal regulations onto the nation’s locally controlled police forces.
Congressional Democrats take a knee as they observe a nearly nine minute moment of silence for George Floyd at Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/JnqDlzMFDq pic.twitter.com/8CBdgtLUjz
— ABC News (@ABC) June 8, 2020
The bill, officially known as the “Justice in Policing Act,” is ostensibly intended to “hold law enforcement accountable in court, improve transparency through data collection, and reform police training and policies.”
What it’s more likely intended to do is whip up Democratic voters heading into the November election, and provide a patina of legislative covering to continuing unrest in overwhelmingly Democratic-controlled cities.
“The martyrdom of George Floyd gave American experience a moment of national anguish as we grieve for the black Americans killed by police brutality,” a somewhat garbled Pelosi said at a news conference after the kneeling ceremony.
“Today, this movement of national anguish is being transformed into a movement of national action as Americans from across the country peacefully protest to demand an end to injustice.”
For Democrats, it probably looked like a moment of perfect political theater.
But some of the online reviews were appropriately damning:
Let’s call this for what it is: A photo-op. Embarrassing event cloaked in politics.
— Marty Davis (@MartyDavis) June 8, 2020
the queen of hypocrites
— Nader Haidar (@nader_haidar) June 8, 2020
Is this cultural appropriation or pandering?
Answer: Both pic.twitter.com/oiiIoemOT1
— Uri Blago (@UriBlago) June 8, 2020
???What a joke! I guess this is what they were wanting to do for Jussie Smollett.
— Jason A. Foust (@JasonAFoust1) June 8, 2020
It’s interesting that this is a Democratic proposal, given that the highest-profile incidents of “police brutality” that Democrats seem to think is suddenly on an epidemic scale in the nation seem to crop up mainly in cities where Democrats have been in control for decades.
Minneapolis, for instance, where Floyd died and where the city council now wants to disband the police force, is made up entirely of Democrats but for one Green Party member.
New York City, where a black vendor of illegal cigarettes named Eric Garner died after being arrested by police back in 2014, is staunchly Democratic.
Baltimore, where the death of a drug dealer named Freddie Gray in 2015 set off days of rioting, hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1967, as Breitbart has noted.
Its elected officials at the local and federal level (including the late Elijah Cummings) have done nothing to prevent Charm City from a descent into slums.
These are just a few examples, and every American, Democrat and Republican, knows the truth.
Yet Democrats see themselves as the force to reform American police agencies?
The reality is that the party is throwing anything it can at Trump and the possibility he will serve another term in the White House.
The three-year national nightmare known as the “Russia collusion” probe came up deservedly empty. The impeachment affair from the first month of the year was so ludicrous it’s almost hard to remember — at a remove of six months — the exact lies Rep. Adam Schiff and Co. were peddling.
When the coronavirus hit, Democrats thought they had their issue, but Trump’s handling of it compared far too favorably with other world leaders — and especially favorably to the obvious ineptitude of Democratic governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo and rumored Democratic vice presidential possibility Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
So now Pelosi’s Democrats have turned to the death of George Floyd and a national outbreak of looting and violence to try to convince American voters that the real problem the country has is racist police officers.
It’s a desperate attempt to rally a dispirited Democratic base in time to win a 2020 election in which Democrats have pinned their hopes on a 77-year-old Joe Biden whose chief strength in the Democratic primaries was that he wasn’t Bernie Sanders.
He’s a man with a lifetime’s worth of political baggage, including the 1994 crime bill that Democrats despise today and a questionable past with China, not to mention endless accusations of improper behavior with women, as well as one serious claim of sexual assault.
Pelosi’s career has made clear for years that there’s really no depth she will not lower herself for the sake of political power — for herself and her party.
On Monday, in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, she did it literally, for the whole world to see.
And every voter needs to remember it in November.
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