Imagine what would have happened in the old Soviet Union if the state-run newspaper Pravda had challenged a powerful Communist.
Before ordering the secret police to round up the offending journalists and send them off to the gulags, the Communist would have flown into a fit of apoplexy, stammering and hurling epithets designed to conceal his astonishment at the fact that a hitherto reliable propagandist had deviated from party orthodoxy.
In like manner, Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker of the House, lost control of her faculties on Tuesday when hitherto reliable propagandist Jake Tapper of CNN dared to show a clip of former President Donald Trump saying something that Pelosi did not like.
“Why would you even cover that?” Pelosi said in an interview on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”
Who can mistake the totalitarian impulse behind that question? Why would you even cover that?
Can anyone imagine Trump chastising a friendly interviewer for playing a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris? Of course not. Unlike his political opponents, the former president has no totalitarian impulses. Moreover, he would relish the chance to refute whatever Harris said.
Speaking of the vice president, Tapper’s clip featured Trump describing Harris as more mentally challenged than President Joe Biden.
“You talk about cognitive problems. She’s got bigger cognitive problems than he has, in my opinion,” Trump said while delivering a speech.
True to form, CNN’s accompanying chyron read as follows: “Trump Baselessly Claims Harris Has ‘Cognitive Problems.’”
In other words, since CNN rarely tells the truth, the establishment network effectively confirmed the former president’s claim.
Nonetheless, the Trump clip had the same effect on Pelosi that Tolkien’s ring of power had on Gollum. It unhinged her from whatever remains of her senses.
“Why would you even cover that? This is a person who’s not on the level,” Pelosi replied, failing to see the irony.
“He is their nominee for president. He is incompetent. Let’s not even talk about the silliness of it all, and the weirdness of it all, and the assault on women that it is,” the former speaker added, though of course she did not explain any of those assertions.
Fumbling around in search of a substantive response, Pelosi finally settled on a tried-and-true Democratic Party lie. She insisted that as president Trump did nothing besides give tax breaks to the super-wealthy.
Then, she tried to saddle Trump with “the worst job-creation record of anybody — president since Herbert Hoover.”
Not even Tapper would let that one slide.
“Because of COVID, yes” the CNN host said.
Tapper’s correction left the former speaker flummoxed and spewing gibberish.
Should Nancy Pelosi retire?
“Well it’s not because of COVID. We put three trillion dollars into the economy when he was president working with — in the Congress — uh, working together — we put three trillion dollars into the economy. So, don’t blame it on C — and what did he do with COVID?” Pelosi replied, her feeble and hate-addled mind searching in vain for something — anything — that would conceal the truth in Tapper’s COVID-related observation about job creation.
Pelosi then tried to blame Trump for COVID deaths.
Her real purpose, though, was to chastise Tapper for straying from the party narrative.
“So if you’re gonna forgive his job record because of COVID, make sure you attribute many of those deaths to him, as well,” she said in what sounded more like an instruction from a boss than a product of conversation.
Tapper replied, albeit with a smile, that he did not forgive anything but merely pointed out “context.”
He then insisted the he had good reason for showing the Trump clip.
“Let me just say, why do I run that clip? I run that clip because that’s the Republican presidential nominee, and I thought you might have a reaction to it,” the CNN host said.
Readers may view the entire exchange in the YouTube video below. The relevant segment began at the 4:00 mark.
Of course, one could spend all day refuting Pelosi and other establishment grifters on substance.
For instance, as National Review noted in December 2021, COVID deaths in Biden’s first year as president exceeded those suffered under Trump.
Note, too, that the former speaker said nothing about Harris’s cognitive abilities. Pelosi knows, as anyone who has paid attention to public affairs for the last four years also knows, that the vice president cannot speak extemporaneously without serving up one embarrassing word salad after another.
Then we have the fact that Trump’s mere appearance on screen caused Pelosi such distress that in her talking points she reverted back to the Trump presidency. Do Democrats really want to remind voters of those better times? Alas, in her fit of rage at Tapper she could not help herself.
The real story here, however, is that Tapper’s decision to air the Trump clip filled Pelosi with totalitarian rage. She resented having to respond to the former president’s comments. Instead, she wanted him censored.
In his own tepid way, Tapper at least stood his ground. But establishment politicians’ relationship with their own media operatives, much like the American legal system under Biden-Harris, has degenerated into a Soviet-style tragicomedy.
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