Pelosi says she felt "sorry" for Trump and "prayed for him"
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that she felt “sorry” for President Donald Trump on Wednesday over his unproven belief that three-to-five million people voted illegally in the 2016 Presidential election.
“I frankly feel very sad about the president making this claim. I felt sorry for him. I even prayed for him,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference before adding, “but then I prayed for the United States of America.”
The California Democrat attended a Monday meeting with Mr. Trump and the Republican and Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate where Trump reiterated his beliefs about illegal voting. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump called for a “major investigation” into illegal voting.
“There is no evidence to support what the president has said I think we made that really clear in our conversations with him,” Pelosi told reporters calling Trump’s belief “really strange.”
Pelosi revealed that House Democrats Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), James Clyburn (D-SC), and Robert Brady (D-PA) sent a letter on Wednesday to state attorneys general and election officials asking for the names of people suspected of committing voter fraud. That request came in response to President Trump’s tweet calling for an investigation into voter fraud.
During the news conference, she also needled the new President about crowd sizes, a famously sensitive subject for Trump, saying that last Saturday’s protests across the country “dwarfed” the inaugural crowds.
“The invitation for the leadership to come to the White House and bond was welcome,” Pelosi stated but suggested that Congressional Democrats would have a hard time working with Trump on issues like rebuilding infrastructure and expanding access to childcare if Republicans were in a different “version of reality.”
“We opposed President Bush but then when we won and he was still president we worked together on the biggest energy bill in the history of the country,” Pelosi noted. She then raised her arms and added, “he wanted nuclear, I wanted renewables, we had a big celebration at the signing of the bill.”
In the age of Trump, the former Speaker of the House sounded positively nostalgic about working with President George W. Bush, who she once called a “total failure” in 2008. “What else did we work with him on?” Pelosi asked out loud before listing the TARP Wall Street bailouts and legislation to combat AIDS, among other things.
“What could be worse than the Iraq war? I mean you can disagree strongly on one subject…but have agreement on other subjects and that’s what we hope to do with this President.”