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Home » Pelosi lets ‘er rip

Pelosi lets ‘er rip

The New Neo Posted on by

I wrote about Pelosi’s paper-ripping stunt already, here. And I hate giving it any more attention, since attention was her goal. But I want to add a few things, including this NY Post cover (which I can’t seem to size properly, so I’ll leave it this way because you can get the basic idea):

Firstly: I don’t for a minute think this was a spontaneous tantrum on the part of Pelosi. I’m not a mindreader, but that’s my strong hunch. It was something she saw as a surefire attention-getter that would be almost the only thing people would talk about afterward, and in that she was close to correct. She also correctly believed it would deeply satisfy her disheartened supporters, the sort of protest gesture that is even less than they believe he so richly deserves.

And it was all the better because Pelosi also knew it would be taking place in full closeup view of cameras, and with Trump’s back turned to it so he couldn’t see it in real time and respond. I believe she saw it as the ultimate gesture of contempt, the wordless equivalent of “He’ll be impeached forever!” Nah na na na nah.

Hillary had accused Trump of being a thug stalking her and physically threatening her by his close presence during a debate, but Pelosi saw herself as turning the tables on that power differential. Note also that she’s not only unseen by him, but she’s above him when she does it. She sees it as an expression of both contempt and power, and she expects her supporters to see it that way, too.

Especially, I believe, her women supporters, many of whom define petulant anger as strength.

But not all attention is good attention, as we say to kids. Tearing up the papers made her look childish and small to those who don’t already love and admire her.

But not to her base, and pleasing that particular audience was the aim of her theater – as well as getting press attention, which she certainly has gotten, and distracting somewhat from Trump’s statement of his accomplishments. If her base was feeling downhearted – which they must be feeling lately – it gave them something to crow about, a kind of grandstanding that appeals to the juvenile nature of the Twitter crowd these days.

I also wonder whether Pelosi gets a copy of the speech in advance. If not, I would guess that she assumed Trump’s speech would be more combative and angry than it was. If that is correct, I think the gesture was planned for the speech she expected, not the speech she got. But even though the fit was poor, she went along with her original plan, and now risks the tsunami of possible campaign ads that go something like this: first, a close-up shot of Trump saying a line or two from the speech. Then, a shot of Pelosi (maybe slo-mo, and a close-up as well) as she tears it up. Then another shot of Trump with another line. Next, Pelosi ripping it up. All the Trump lines are positive, glowing. And she tears each one up.

The finished product would be far smoother than this, and use more close-ups:

You could actually choose almost any line from Trump’s speech. But you get the idea.

[ADDENDUM: I already wrote I thought Pelosi planned her gesture with malice aforethought. I just saw some evidence to back that up:

The tweet says it happened before the speech even started, but later in the thread that’s corrected and it is stated that the preliminary tearing apparently happened about 50 minutes into the speech. So it’s evidence the gesture was premeditated, but it’s not clear that it was planned even before the speech began.

But as I wrote earlier, I feel very strongly that it was.]

Comments

Pelosi lets ‘er rip — 33 Comments

  1. Well it’s too late now but there is Nancy-proof SOTU paper available

    TerraSlate Copy Paper Waterproof Laser Printer, Rain Weatherproof, 4 MIL, 8.5×11-inch, 25 Sheets Amazon.com has it of course.

    It’s pretty hard to tear, from my experience doing field work, waterproof (rain, snow etc.). Probably vomit-proof too,Nancy would need that.

  4. Next year Trump should laminate the thing. Then she can gum it all through the speech.

    I was shocked when I saw this last night in real time. I thought at first it was some sort of procedural requirement (only one copy, etc.) that she was engaging in with dramatic gusto. But then the commentators saw it and were aghast as well.

    Big mistake. Yooooooge. Not a good look at all. Trump ad in the making.

    And for those playing mediator and trying to show somehow Trump deserved this for not shaking her hand, NO. NONONONONONO. That’s not what happened and even if it did, she got him by not announcing him properly. NO!

  5. Off the subject but..

    The news is out and Romney is going to vote to convict. I hope Trump plays the high road and says that “I think he’s wrong but I respect his decision. “

  6. You know, if someone wants to have a knock-down-drag-out brawl, “go to the mattresses,” or scorch the earth…I can kind of respect that. But that’s not what Pelosi or the Dems really want. Why did she try to shake Trump’s hand to start the speech? Why didn’t she tear up the speech in front of him?

    People fall on their fainting couches because Trump is loud and insulting and never takes the high road but the passive-aggressive “Mean Girls” garbage like we’ve now seen from Pelosi in two SOTUs is far more damaging to our public discourse.

    Mike

  7. texexec:

    I wonder if there’s a single person (except the left, of course) who will see Romney’s vote as anything other than pure revenge.

    Obviously Romney doesn’t care about being re-elected. My guess is that this was the reason he decided to become a senator – to hurt Trump. Senators serve for 6 years, so the state of Utah is stuck with him for a while, and so are we. He’s going to be there till 2024. I don’t think there’s any way to recall a senator.

    Very very sad, I think.

  8. Trump and high road in the same sentence . . . yer killin’ me here texexec. Besides, Romney’s an idiot in the classic sense, so why not simply say so? It’s salutary to tell the truth.

  9. “Obviously Romney doesn’t care about being re-elected.”

    He also obviously doesn’t care about doing his job as a Senator for the next four years or any possible political future for his kids.

    Mike

  10. I definitely disagree with Romney’s decision, and it may have come from the wrong motivations. But I just think that it would be the smart thing for Trump to do politically. Wouldn’t hurt him with his base and might get some independents to vote for him in the general election.

  11. Trump won his presidency on the backs of a segment of normally-Democrat voters: white, suburban, middle class, middle age, blue collar. People who feel that the Democratic Party ca. 2016 had left them behind, no longer cared about them, or was actively hostile to their interests.
    So what, since 2016, has the Democratic Party done to make them change their minds about that 2016 vote in 2020?
    Nancy’s little temper tantrum is of a piece with Schiff and all the rest. It plays well to the base in San Fran but isn’t doing a thing to bring back the 2016 Democrats for Trump.

  12. To do that, immediately after the soaring positive rhetoric of Trump’s closing lines, was spiteful and immature.

  15. My first thought was that the act made no sense (just as bringing the impeachment made no sense) given her long-honed political skills. She had to know that it was going to turn off moderates and independents, and wasn’t going to save her from the axe once the radicals complete their takeover of the party. Then I saw a theory posed that what she was shuffling and eventually ripped was not the SOTU speech, but a notice (legal?) that she found disturbing. That would explain her strange demeanor (stranger than usual) throughout the speech, including the paper shuffling. If you go back to the HW Bush funeral there were similar reactions by the likes of Hillary, Jeb and Laura Bush when they found cards inserted in their programs.

  17. I had only read about this, not seen it, till a few minutes ago. I’m in a doctor’s office waiting room and there’s a tv here showing Fox News with the sound off. I wasn’t really paying attention, eyes on the screen and mind elsewhere, but when they showed the clip I actually laughed out loud. It’s Drama Queen stuff, which to me puts anyone who thinks it was bold and strong and all in the same category.

  18. Mpphhht. I remember being 13 or 14 and full-of-myself.

    Watching Pelosi appear to bite her tongue SO HARD as Trump was speaking, then this gesture of contempt… “spiteful teenager” is not really the look she was going for, is it?

    (And PS, the couple of times I mouthed off to my Mom when
    Dad was there to witness it, I got a healthy swat to the nether regions and an order to APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW.
    Madame Speaker was not brought up correctly.)

  19. Dan Henninger at the WSJ has dubbed her “Nance the Ripper.”

    But Nance the Ripper showed us more than that. All the separate policies and issues identified in the president’s speech—jobs, the economy, energy, health care, trade, Iran, the aspirations of minorities—are generally regarded as the normal business of politics. But normal politics has become irrelevant to the party’s strategy.

  20. Especially, I believe, her women supporters, many of whom define petulant anger as strength.

    Agree 100%. From the deliberately late attempt at a handshake, the making faces when Trump speaks, and the tearing of the speech. It was all very passive aggressive.

  22. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224905853133783042.html
    Doc Zero aka John Hayward

    The “moderate” course in 2020 for Dems involves assuring voters they won’t screw up the good things Trump has done, while pitching their candidate as an improvement over his temperament and style. They damaged that strategy by acting mindlessly hostile to all the good news.
    …
    These Dem antics at SOTU might even push an already dismaying primary even further into the left-wing pit by energizing the loonies and making average Dem voters wonder why they should support candidates who promise to maintain policies the Party just treated like garbage.

    If Dem voters take a hint from the Party’s SOTU antics and want a 2020 candidate who would refuse to applaud rising wages, record-high employment, energy independence, renewed American strength, the rule of law, and war heroes, why wouldn’t they just vote for the commie? /end

  23. Doc Zero again, and you should read the whole thing.
    A good companion piece to the GOP ad that PowerLine put up earlier.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1225043993714679808.html

    A lot of moderate, blue-collar Democrat voters are feeling really queasy about their party after last night’s embarrassing spectacle. It might help to think about a famous man who was once in the same position as you: Ronald Reagan.

    Reagan beautifully articulated what it was like to see his longtime political party moving away from him and turning into something he could no longer support. “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The party left me,” he memorably explained.
    …
    What you know in your heart, but maybe can’t quite bring yourself to say yet, is that the vicious power-mad Democrat Party you saw last night will sacrifice YOU in a heartbeat to achieve its political goals. They’ll gleefully strangle the blue collar boom to get more power.
    …
    Trump was talking about things that matter to ordinary people, making a human connection with voters. Democrats are utterly lost in power politics, seeing only the lunatic funhouse mirror of social media and hardcore political activism, not America as it really is.

    This is the essence of the Reagan moment facing hard-working Democrat voters: you CAN’T change the degenerate party you saw dressed in bizarre white costumes and sitting on its hands at SOTU. You have no influence in the party. It moved away from you, and you can’t bring it back.

    The only thing you can do is walk away.

  24. https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/02/05/the-state-of-the-union-is-great-again/
    J. E. Dyer

    This is what Trump’s SOTU address was about. Getting government off of a bureaucratic top dead center that has been a parasite on the people for too long. That top dead center isn’t the Constitution, and it’s a lie to say it is. The top dead center the old-consensus establishment refuses to get off of isn’t “constitutionalism” or the rule of law or due process or the American spirit. It has no claim to those honored principles. It’s merely what Washington has gotten used to, in the service of a progressive agenda, over the last 100 years.

    That pattern of officious, managerial overreach into the people’s lives isn’t what America was founded or built to preserve. Trump’s SOTU address outlined in example after example on Tuesday night what America is meant to preserve. Trump got us to a record of renewed accomplishment in that regard in the short span of three years.

    And that, my friends – as Rush Limbaugh would say – is what Nancy Pelosi ripped in pieces as Trump bid the nation goodnight with “God bless America!”
    …
    There is no more effective metaphor for what any of the 2020 Democratic candidates would do, if he or she were elected to the Oval Office in November.

  25. https://videos.whatfinger.com/2020/02/05/compilation-of-media-meltdowns-over-trump-sotu-speech-set-to-music-you-cant-make-this-up/

    It wasn’t only Nancy Pelosi who suffered an extreme meltdown over President Trump’s State of the Union Speech on Tuesday. Many TDS members of the mainstream media also suffered meltdowns as you can see in this video in which they are especially irked by the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh.

    Context.
    https://pjmedia.com/trending/barack-obama-awarded-the-medal-of-freedom-to-a-sex-predator-but-liberals-are-triggered-about-rush-limbaughs/

  26. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/disgusting-jim-acosta-slammed-for-accusing-rush-limbaugh-of-racism-after-medal-of-freedom-award

    Conservatives slammed CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta for his reaction to President Trump awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh.

    “He was trying to make appeals to the African American community,” Acosta, 48, observed about Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. “It can’t be forgotten that he was awarding the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, who has a history of making derogatory comments about African Americans. So I think, you know, overall, it’s a wash.”
    …
    Limbaugh’s producer, James Golden, who is often referred to by his pseudonym “Bo Snerdley,” issued a challenge to Acosta after seeing his comments.

    “I just saw the footage from CNN’s Jim Acosta saying Rush has a ‘history’ of saying disparaging things about African Americans. I have been in the studio with Rush for 30 years. I would like to formally challenge CNN and @Acosta to provide the list,” Golden, who is black, wrote in a tweet.

  27. “What you know in your heart, but maybe can’t quite bring yourself to say yet, is that the vicious power-mad Democrat Party you saw last night will sacrifice YOU in a heartbeat to achieve its political goals. They’ll gleefully strangle the blue collar boom to get more power.” – Doc Zero

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/house-democrats-to-vote-to-take-controversial-california-gig-economy-regulations-national

    I’m sure most of you know what happened in Cali to the independents – not just Uber & Lyft drivers, but artists & musicians & actors & writers & …..

  28. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/matt-gaetz-claims-there-will-be-an-ethics-investigation-into-pelosi-for-tearing-trump-speech

    Rep. Matt Gaetz said he will be working to get an investigation going into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because she tore up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address.

    “I will be filing charges against Nancy Pelosi in the House Ethics Committee,” the Florida Republican told Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “She disgraced the House of Representatives, she embarrassed our country, and she destroyed official records.”

    “The law does not allow the speaker of the House to destroy the records of the House, and the rules of the House do not permit some little temper tantrum just because you don’t like what the president of the United States says,” he added, noting that he would be working with Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York to penalize the speaker.

    Gaetz said Republicans are “sick of the double standard” and pointed out Democratic anger when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted, “You lie!” to President Barack Obama during a speech to a joint session of Congress.

    “We ought to apply the same standards to the Democrats that they want to apply to us, and there will be an ethics investigation of Nancy Pelosi, and we will start the ball rolling to have her censured, and the first act begins tomorrow,” he said.

  29. Well, she finally lost Turley completely.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/481598-nancy-pelosi-should-resign
    BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 02/05/20 11:00 AM EST

    The House has its share of infamies, great and small, real and symbolic, and has been the scene of personal infamies from brawls to canings. But the conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the State of the Union address this week will go down as a day of infamy for the chamber as an institution. It has long been a tradition for House Speakers to remain stoic and neutral in listening to the address. However, Pelosi seemed to be intent on mocking President Trump from behind his back with sophomoric facial grimaces and head shaking, culminating in her ripping up a copy of his address.

    Her drop the mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House. While many will celebrate her trolling of the president, she tore up something far more important than a speech. Pelosi has shredded decades of tradition, decorum and civility that the nation could use now more than ever. The House Speaker is more than a political partisan, particularly when carrying out functions such as the State of the Union address. A president appears in the House as a guest of both chambers of Congress. The House Speaker represents not her party or herself but the entirety of the chamber. At that moment, she must transcend her own political ambitions and loyalties.
    …
    First, Pelosi dropped the traditional greeting before the start of the address, “Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States.” Instead, she simply announced, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.” It was extremely petty and profoundly inappropriate. Putting aside the fact that this is not her tradition, but that of the House, it is no excuse to note that the president was impeached.

    Such an indignity was not imposed on President Clinton during his own impeachment proceeding, and anyone respecting due process would note that Trump has been accused, not convicted, at this point in the constitutional process.
    …
    Pelosi has demolished decades of tradition with this poorly considered moment. Of course, many will celebrate her conduct and be thrilled by the insult to Trump. However, even those of us who disagree with his policies should consider what Pelosi destroyed in her moment of rage. She shredded the pretense of governing with civility and dignity in the House. Notably, she did not wait to rip up her copy of the speech until after she left the House floor. Pelosi wanted to do it at the end of the speech, in front of the camera, with the president still in the chamber.

    That act was more important to Pelosi than preserving the tradition of her office. In doing so, she forfeited the right to occupy that office. If Pelosi cannot maintain the dignity and neutrality of her office at the State of the Union, she should resign as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

  30. Remember this from “The Manchurian Candidate” :

    “Look at what the papers are saying. Are they saying “Are there Communists in the State Department ?” No, they’re saying “How many Communists are there in the State Department”.”

    And now, are the media talking about the SOTU speech ? No, they’re talking about Nancy’s reaction to the SOTU.

    That may be what Nancy wanted; because she doesn’t want people paying attention to the speech, she wants people paying attention to her.

  31. “…in her moment of rage…”

    Gentlemanly of you to give that thug the benefit of the doubt, but actually, Mr. Turley, Speaker Pelosi planned the act in advance:
    https://nypost.com/2020/02/05/nancy-pelosi-pre-ripped-pages-of-trumps-sotu-speech-video-shows/

    Malice aforethought. (Just another drama queen—in oh-so-pure white).

    As for “maintain[ing] the dignity and neutrality of her office at the State of the Union”, how is that even conceivably possible at this stage of the game?…Especially since “It’s all about ME!”, always was and always will be….

  33. DEVO Parody my brother wrote…

    RIP IT GOOD

    Sound that rip
    Give the glass a sip
    Pelosi’s on crack
    Bring obama back

    When a speech comes along
    You must rip it
    Before Donald’s here too long
    You must rip it
    When POTUS going strong
    You must rip it
    Now rip it
    Into shreds
    Shred it up
    Clap straight
    Go forward
    Make a face
    Try to impeach him

    It’s not too late
    To rip it
    Rip it good

    When Donald Trump comes to town
    You must rip it
    We’ll try to take him down
    Unless you rip it
    No one gets away
    Until I rip it
    I say rip it
    Rip it good
    I say rip it
    Rip it good
    Sound that rip
    Give the glass a sip
    Nancy’s on a crack
    Bring obama back
    When a speech comes along
    You must rip it

    Before the Dems sit out too long
    You must rip it
    When our party’s full of dung
    You must rip it

    When a speech comes along
    You must rip it
    Before Donald’s here too long
    You must rip it
    When POTUS going strong
    You must rip it
    Now rip it
    Into shreds
    Shred it up
    Clap straight
    Go forward
    Make a face
    Try to impeach him
    It’s not too late
    To rip it
    Into shreds
    Shred it up
    Clap straight
    Go forward
    Make a face
    Try to impeach him
    It’s not too late
    To rip it
    Rip it good

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