On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi signaled that the House is unlikely to return to session later this month, her clearest indication yet that Congress — like the rest of the country — could remain shuttered for weeks or even longer as the coronavirus crisis continues.
Pelosi appeared in an interview and issued a warning to President Trump, urging him not to prematurely reopen major segments of the country before the coronavirus is under control, which she said could further send the U.S. economy into a tailspin.
“Nobody can really tell you that and I would never venture a guess. I certainly don’t think we should do it sooner than we should,” she said when asked whether she still planned to bring the House back on April 20, which is the current target date.
“This has taken an acceleration from when we started this. … Little did we know then that at this point, we’d be further confined…”
…“I would hope that the scientific community would weigh in and say, ‘You can’t do this, it is only going to make matters worse if you go out too soon,’” Pelosi said when asked whether she was worried Trump, with an eye on a second term in the White House, would try to reopen the country too soon.
Politico also reported that Pelosi suggested there are numerous factors that would need to be assessed in making such decisions, including the possibility of secondary infections.
“What is it? Is it testing so that we know what we’re dealing with? Is it some standard as to how someone else would be received into a workplace?” Pelosi said.
“We have to know. It’s data. And that’s something that I haven’t seen as the basis for any decision-making. In fact, I’ve seen the opposite.”
Pelosi also said that she hasn’t watched President Trump’s daily briefings.
“I don’t watch them. I sometimes see inadvertently or just by accident some of the news reporting on it,” Nancy Pelosi said of the briefings.
“But I just don’t have time for that. I am a busy person. I have a day job, and it’s not to watch the president contradict himself on TV.”
