House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave away the game after a new leak caught her trashing President Trump and instructing her team how to spin the pandemic for their gain.
Politico reported that Pelosi sharply criticized President Trump’s handling of the outbreak, telling the Dems it was “almost sinful” how Trump’s administration had failed to live up to promises to make testing available to all Americans and quickly address the mask, gown and glove supply shortage in hospitals across the country.
“The more misrepresentations he puts out there, the more it obscures the truth,” Pelosi told the Dems, according to multiple sources on the call. “We have to insist upon the truth — what they’re saying is not knowledge, is not facts, is not real.”
Pelosi returned to her criticism of President Trump multiple times during the two-hour call, saying without a plan for adequate testing and contact tracing, it would be impossible for Trump to guarantee Americans a safe reentry into their normal life.
She also said that it was up to the Dems to speak out about the administration’s missteps, calling the lack of national testing and protective equipment for medical providers months after the first U.S. coronavirus case “a complete failure.”
“And we cannot let them lie about it,” Pelosi added, according to Democrats on the call.
Pelosi’s criticism of the President comes as White House officials have signaled they are hoping to reopen the economy as early as May 1 — a timeline that has alarmed the Dems and public health experts alike.
With the U.S. caseload still growing in mid April, several senior House Democrats called for Congress to come up with its own plan to reopen the nation, rather than relying on the White House.
“Basically we’ve been operating without a national plan and the administration just veers from one set of talking points to another without giving us a plan,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the co-sponsors, said in an interview Monday.
