The evidence is building that President Joe Biden isn’t the only Democrat Americans should be worried about when it comes to how things are working upstairs.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the podium on Thursday for her weekly news conference, she launched into a stream of incoherence that would have rivaled Biden on his worst day.
And it couldn’t have built much confidence in the nation’s top leadership.
According to a C-SPAN archive of the news conference, Pelosi was asked about a bill backed by Sens. Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, that punishes China for its manifold human rights abuses.
(The kind of human rights abuses that posers like the NBA’s LeBron James and other outstanding examples of humanity have no interest in.)
Pelosi’s answer, if you can call it that, left even the most devoted partisans scratching their heads.
Absolutely pic.twitter.com/d3abTXg8Yk
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 2, 2021
What she seemed to be trying to say was that a bill in the House from Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, was better — but seriously, that’s a guess.
According to the C-SPAN archive, Pelosi first criticized former President Donald Trump (of course) as an “autocrat” with no concern for human rights.
[firefly_poll]
“I take second place to no one in the Congress in my criticism of China’s human rights record,” she said before taking her jab at Trump and his interactions with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
So far, so normal.
Then she went off the rails, apparently mixing in references to the EAGLE Act, a bill passed in the House aimed at China, with the names of current and former members of Congress (including one who is now deceased) and various stages of brain freeze.
“We have a bill in the House. It’s the McGovern bill. It’s a stronger bill, uh, than the, uh, the — it is, it’s, a bill that we could have freestanding or a bill that is in the EAGLE Act, that is part of the, um, the, um, Mr. — Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Kendrick Meeks — no, Gregory Meeks’ bill. Kendrick — we’re all very sad about losing Carrie Meek this week, so I referenced her son.”
Elderly aunts putting down too many glasses of wine at dinner are more coherent than 81-year-old Pelosi.
For those keeping score at home, Pelosi was referring to former Rep. Carrie Meek, a Florida Democrat who died Sunday. As her Associated Press obituary noted, Meek’s son Kendrick followed his mother into politics and into her seat in the House, leaving in 2010.
So while it might be understandable that Pelosi had the loss of a former colleague on her mind, Kendrick Meek left the House more than a decade ago. For his name to come to her octogenarian lips instead of Rep. Gregory Meeks, who’s actually in the House now, is more than a little disturbing.
The fact that Meeks is chairman of a committee as important as Foreign Affairs just makes it worse.
And Pelosi was far from finished.
“But chairman Meeks’ bill in the, um, in the House — so we will have that, but you see, in a defense — in a bill, whether it’s in the — whatever that thing’s called that they have in the Senate — or in a DOD bill, the Senate does not have the right to have a revenue or an appropriations matter.”
The performance was not well received.
time to mandate an experimental vaccine for dementia?
— Jeb Emerson (LocJEB) (@Locjeb) December 2, 2021
I don’t understand why we allow people who can’t even speak to speak on our behalf and make decisions for us. What a busted system…
— Brook Crawford MSN, APRN-CNP (@8Crawdaddy3) December 2, 2021
Good grief . What is she on?!!
— Maria (@March1092) December 2, 2021
I would LOVE to hear some of the conversations she & Biden have…
— JustMe (@DownStrong) December 2, 2021
To be fair, there does seem to be a glimmer of sense in that concatenation of words, “bill,” “McGovern,” “Meek” (deceased), “Meek” (living and out of office), “Meeks” (living and in office), and “whatever that thing’s called that they have in the Senate.”
But it has a free association quality more like the dreams of an early morning sleeper than the rigorously thought-out presentation Americans should expect from their highest-ranking lawmaker — the woman who is behind only Vice President Kamala Harris in the line of succession to the presidency should Biden vacate the office for some reason.
Granted, Pelosi wasn’t quite in the territory of forgetting the Declaration of Independence (“the thing,” as Biden might say) or stumbling over the concept of “citizen” while welcoming new citizens into the country, but there’s a pretty strong argument to be made that she was damn close.
And the sad reality is that this isn’t the first time she’s shown signs of slipping.
Spouting vaguely connected words related to legislation being debated in the national legislature of the world’s most powerful country is not a hallmark of political leadership.
It’s actually a pretty good sign that the person doing the spouting should maybe think about retiring to that nice, plush San Francisco mansion where she can eat ice cream to her heart’s content — and stop inflicting incalculable damage on the nation unfortunate enough to be saddled with her.
Biden might be the most visible Democrat who seems to be losing it, but he isn’t the only one — not by a long shot.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
