House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Hillary Clinton’s “You and Me Both” podcast that it gave her “great grief” that both Evangelical and Catholic supporters of President Donald Trump were willing to “sell the whole democracy down the river” over the single issue of abortion.
Partial transcript as follows:
CLINTON: I thought so, too. I was horrified by everything that I saw happening on television, but I was heartened by the return to the Capitol and to the business at hand. It was an absolutely essential message to send not only to our country, but to the world, and in particular, to those who thought that they could disrupt our democracy. I know that in the vandalization of your office, in addition to taking things like your lectern and other objects from your office, they left you a message that said, “We will not back down.” Well, you did not back down, and the leadership and the members did not back down. When you look forward, Nancy, what do you see as a path that you and members of Congress, and obviously the incoming Biden-Harris administration, but really Americans across our country, can follow to try to overcome the damage that has been done?
PELOSI: Well, we have that responsibility, that’s for sure. But I do believe that Joe Biden is a unifier, that he will be as respectful as he is firm as we go forward. I do think we need a strong economic package that lifts people up. You said so beautifully in your campaign that people need to see a place for themselves in the future. Many of these people don’t see that place. He should show them that there is a place for them – that it’s not a zero-sum game. Women and minorities and LGBTQ people can thrive, not at their expense. When we’re addressing the climate crisis, it isn’t at the expense of their job.
Now, there’s one other element that I have been talking about for a long time that gives me great grief as a Catholic. I think that Donald Trump is president because of the issue of a woman’s right to choose. When he signed that paper saying, “These are the judges that I will appoint,” that was the dog whistle to the Evangelicals, to the Catholics, and all the rest. A woman will not have the right to choose. And when you see the polls about impeachment now, 80 percent think what happened was wrong; 70-some percent said he’s responsible, but 40-some percent don’t think he should be impeached. Well, why? One issue: abortion.
CLINTON: Right.
PELOSI: And that is enough. When you take the greed of those who want their tax cut, that’s probably a small number, but nonetheless a number, and then you take the abortion issue – and many of these people are very good people; that’s just their point of view. But they were willing to sell the whole democracy down the river for that one issue.
CLINTON: And, you know, one of the terrible ironies of their position is that starting in the 90s under Democratic presidents, the abortion rate went way down. And with proper contraception and education and a stigma-free conversation, the numbers can continue to go way down. So, what’s really incredibly sad is how those who, in my opinion and experience, do not view this issue as a priority, have used the legitimate questions, concerns and, yes, understanding of faith, to obtain and use power.
PELOSI: What we said then was if you reject terminating a pregnancy, you should love contraception. Again, there’s a great deal of hypocrisy here, because many of these people, of course, are not having 13 children. And as somebody who had five children almost exactly to the day in six years, I said to my colleagues, when you have five children in six years, you come around and talk to me as a Catholic.
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