Nancy Pelosi: Trump, Allies ‘Don’t Believe in Governance’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared to conclude that President Trump and his allies “don’t believe in governance” — her explanation as to why they reject sweeping mask mandates — during a guest appearance on a bonus episode of Hillary Clinton’s podcast You and Me Both released Monday.

The two Democrat leaders discussed a range of topics, primarily the Capitol protest that took place on January 6. However, they also briefly discussed the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, with Clinton telling the 80-year-old lawmaker that it is “just heartbreaking that while this attack on our democracy proceeds, the numbers of Americans dying from COVID keep going up.”

“Small businesses keep closing; unemployment requests keep rising. The vaccine rollout is too slow,” Clinton said, explaining that lawmakers are trying to balance addressing the riot — which Pelosi said Congress “can’t move on” from — as well as the “very urgent needs” of the American people. 

“It makes a big difference,” Pelosi said in response to Democrats having control of the White House and Senate moving forward.

“The day of the insurrection, 3,686 people died of coronavirus. The next day, 4,000 people died. The record keeps being broken. It’s so sad,” Pelosi said before accusing Trump of not taking the virus seriously and concluding that “they don’t believe in governance”:

And when you think – it’s January – go back a year when the president was first apprised of this, and then the subsequent actions he took: “It’s a hoax,” denial, delay, rejection of science, rejection of governance. See, they don’t believe in governance, so if the government says, “Wear a mask,” they have to reject governance and they reject the science that says wear the mask. 

As Breitbart News reported, it was actually Pelosi and other Democrats, including Joe Biden, who criticized Trump for banning travel from China in the early days of the pandemic while congressional Democrats vehemently pursued impeachment. What is more, Pelosi visited Chinatown in San Francisco and promoted tourism to the area in February, praising the area as “very safe.”

“We should come to Chinatown. Precautions have been taken by our city. We know that there is concern surrounding tourism, traveling all throughout the world, but we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come,” Pelosi said in February 2020.

“It’s lovely here. The food is delicious, the shops are prospering, the parade was great. Walking tours continue. Please come and visit and enjoy Chinatown,” she added.

However, Pelosi continued, telling Clinton that “many” of the coronavirus deaths “are at the president’s doorstep”:

So, a lot of these deaths – not all – many of these deaths are at the president’s doorstep. We’re recognizing there has to be a change in the attitude of the American people and the availability of the vaccine now in a fair and equitable way. I’m very pleased at the agenda of the rescue and recovery package that Joe Biden has put forth; his agenda is very close to what we had in our legislation already. As you said, the infrastructure piece includes creating good paying jobs in our country with workforce development so that many more people can participate. Many more small businesses, women, minorities, people of color, Native Americans, veterans, rural businesses, can participate in how we build back better. So, we’re very excited about it. And I would hope that we could do so in a bipartisan way. Infrastructure has usually not been a partisan issue. 

Pelosi added that “having that bully pulpit is going to … make a very big difference.”