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      Nancy Pelosi says US Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within – video

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      Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker of the US Congress, has likened the 6 January attack to 9/11, saying one had been an assault on US democracy from within and the other from the outside. Speaking at a Chatham House seminar in London on Friday, she also claimed the Republicans had been hijacked by a cult that believed neither in science nor government, making it hard for the US to be governed

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      US Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within, says Pelosi

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      Nancy PelosiUS Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within, says PelosiHouse speaker makes remarks at Chatham House seminar in London a day after meeting Boris Johnson02:52Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editorFri 17 Sep 2021 09.11 EDTLast modified on Fri 17 Sep 2021 11.02 EDTNancy Pelosi, the House speaker of the US Congress, has likened the 6 January insurrection fomented by Donald Trump to 9/11, saying one had been an assault on US democracy from within and the other from the outside.She also claimed the Republicans had been hijacked by a cult that believed neither in science or government, making it hard for the US to be governed.Her remarks, made at a Chatham House seminar in London on Friday, arguably breach the semi-honoured rule for domestic political disputes to end at America’s water’s edge.Pelosi a strong defender of the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement, repeated her warning of two years ago that anything that imperilled the agreement could mean the US Congress would not ratify a free trade deal with the UK.She was speaking at Chatham House the day after meeting Boris Johnson in Downing Street.She said the prime minister had given her some reading material and that she would cross-examine him on the details when they met again in Washington next week.Johnson is due to travel to the US with Liz Truss, the new UK foreign secretary, prior to the UN general assembly.“This is not said as any threat,” Pelosi insisted. “It is a prediction. If there is destruction of the Good Friday accords we’re very unlikely to have a UK-US bilateral [trade deal].”The bulk of her remarks were concerned with the collapse of bipartisanship within the US, and the implications for its relationships as an ally with other countries.The 6 January demonstration, she said, was an insurrection incited by Trump, and added that it “was an assault on Congress, constitution and our democracy. How we deal with it is really the measure of the strength of our democracy.”She also challenged Republican senators for rejecting the congressional commission into the Capitol attack, asking: “Why do they reject finding the truth of what happened in January? Is it because they had some sympathy for the cause?”She compared the 6 January protest with 9/11, saying while the attack in 2001 had been an “assault from outside”, the Capitol attack was an “assault from within”.“Horrible in both cases. What had happened to our democracy on 6 January was horrible,” she said.Although Trump did not create the problems on 6 January, she continued, “he galvanised them” with the help of social media, especially Facebook. She ironically thanked Facebook for hosting 2 million followers of the conspiracy theory QAnon on its site and said social media was a blessing, but a double-edged sword.The roots of American populism lay in fears of globalisation, automation and immigration, and was expressed through Islamophobia, antisemitism and ideas of white supremacy, she said.She added: “I would say to my Republican friends – and I do have some – take back your party, the Republican party. The Grand Old Party has made tremendous contributions to our country founded by Lincoln. Don’t let your party be hijacked by a cult – essentially, that is what is happening.“This is not conservative. This is radical rightwing, off the spectrum, anti-governance and if you are anti-governance it is very difficult to govern.“If you are in denial about climate change, if you don’t believe the science and data and won’t respond to the data, that is a problem.”She admitted the Democrats “have a big fight on our hands whether it is in the states or nationally”. She also admitted some of the alienation was caused by inequality.“In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic system, but it has not served our economy as well as it should. So what we want to do is not depart from that, but to improve it.“You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that.”TopicsNancy PelosiUS Capitol attackSeptember 11 2001US politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Top Republicans move to protect Trump from Capitol attack fallout

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      US Capitol attackTop Republicans move to protect Trump from Capitol attack falloutSome party leaders blamed the former president in the charged moments after the insurrection – but are now embarking on a campaign of revisionism Hugo Lowell in WashingtonThu 5 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 5 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTTop Republicans in Congress are embarking on a new campaign of revisionism seven months after the attack on the Capitol, absolving Donald Trump of responsibility and blaming the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for the 6 January insurrection perpetrated by a mob of Trump supporters.A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week. And it should shock us all | Robert ReichRead moreSome House and Senate Republican leaders stated in the charged moments immediately following the attack that Trump was squarely to blame, and amid blood and shattered glass at the US Capitol, some even considered his removal.“The president bears responsibility,” the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said of Trump at the time, demanding that he “accept his share of responsibility”.But after nearly 200 House Republicans voted to clear Trump in his unprecedented second impeachment and Senate Republicans scuttled a 9/11-style commission to investigate the events of 6 January, the Republican party made a call to shift all blame away from Trump.The move to protect Trump from the fallout of the Capitol attack, at any cost, reflects the party leaders loyalty to a defeated former president, as well as the political self-interest of Republicans desperate to distance themselves from an insurrection they helped stoke with lies of a stolen election.The Republicans’ journey into a universe of alternate facts became virtually complete last week after House Republican leadership, days after the harrowing testimony of police officers deployed to tackle the rioters shocked Congress once more, spun a new lie about the deadly attack.No longer satisfied to simply pardon Trump for inciting his supporters to unlawfully stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, the No 3 House Republican, Elise Stefanik, blamed Pelosi – a target of the mob – for the violence on 6 January.“The American people deserve to know the truth: that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility, as speaker of the House, for the tragedy that occurred on January 6,” Stefanik said falsely from the steps of the Capitol.Pelosi is not responsible for security – a duty that lies with US Capitol police – but the baseless claim promulgated by Stefanik amounted to the party leadership’s latest disinformation campaign they hope will give them political cover as the 2022 midterm elections near.There remains a deep fear among Republicans that any scrutiny into 6 January could expose their role in amplifying Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election – the root cause of the insurrection – which could be used as a cudgel by Democrats at the ballot box.Some congressional Republicans privately acknowledge the fallacious logic of blaming Pelosi for the Capitol attack, but not the Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell, her then opposite number in the Senate.But in a sign of the ambition and self-preservation guiding Republican revisionism over the Capitol attack, they also suggest that they are willing for McCarthy to indulge Trump’s claims should it help Republicans capture the House. And with Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, vowing to subpoena anyone who spoke with Trump on 6 January, they note a counter-narrative takes on the added effect of undercutting the politically bruising inquiry.The revisionism over the Capitol attack heralds what some experts see as a dangerous new era in American politics: even with Trump out of the White House, Republicans advancing demonstrably false narratives to safeguard their political survival.“The GOP is thinking enough time has passed to somehow rewrite the history of events,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former top White House Russia expert who testified at Trump’s first impeachment inquiry.“They’re hoping that it gets into the record, even if it’s pointed out that it doesn’t correlate with the facts, because once their version is out there in the media, then that’s sufficient for it to become the raw material for shaping how history recounts things later on,” Hill said.In the days after the attack, McCarthy, joined Democrats in condemning Trump and urging Congress to establish a fact-finding commission, having already called the former president and demanded he call off his rioters.McCarthy at one stage even fact-checked the former president. “Some say the riots were caused by Antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that,” he said on the House floor. “Conservatives should be the first to say so.”But that initial resolve was quickly replaced with a renewed fealty to Trump, who demanded that Pelosi “investigate herself”, as he again falsely suggested that it was Antifa, rather than his own supporters, who perpetrated the Capitol attack.Republicans have seized on that messaging, but none more so than McCarthy, who has repeated Trump’s debunked claims and taken trips to Mar-a-Lago to ingratiate himself with Trump, whose support he considers essential for his ambitions to become Speaker in 2022.Such endeavors to placate Trump took on heightened significance last week for McCarthy, after he pulled all five of his picks for the House select committee in a moment of frustration and inadvertently left Trump without defenders on the panel.And as two US Capitol police and two DC Metropolitan police officers for hours testified to the select committee how Trump, described as a “hit man”, sent his supporters to attack the Capitol, an alarmed McCarthy moved to shift the pressure from Trump to Pelosi.“If there is a responsibility for this Capitol, on this side, it rests with the Speaker,” McCarthy said.Stefanik, who replaced Liz Cheney as Republican conference chair after her ouster in May for taking aim at Trump’s conduct and rhetoric once too often, went further, and proclaimed that the House speaker was in fact to blame for the insurrection.The political calculus of the House Republican leadership extended for the first time last week to McConnell – once fiercely critical of Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection, but now content to avoid the topic he considers a political loser.Hill told the Guardian that Republican revisionism revisionism mirrors the playbook adopted by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and an array of other autocratic leaders needing to sanitize their roles in politically embarrassing events.“You can see this over and over again in pretty much every authoritarian setting,” Hill said. “It’s fundamentally not about politics. It’s nothing more than a massive con job, a scam, concocted to keep their own personal and collective power. There’s no end other than that.It is a disinformation effort also co-opted by rank and file Republicans, who have increasingly tried to rewrite the reality of what transpired on 6 January, from claiming no rioter was armed (at least one was), to comparing the attack to a “normal tourist visit”.Standing outside the justice department last week, a group of Trump’s most vociferous defenders on Capitol Hill denounced the indictments brought against nearly 600 Capitol rioters and accused prosecutors of holding them as political prisoners.Urged on by Trump, the lawmakers falsely characterized Ashli Babbitt, an insurrectionist who was shot and killed as she tried to breach a secure area of the Capitol adjacent to the House chamber, as a patriotic martyr whose death was planned by Democrats.The fiction pushed by Stefanik drew a rebuke from at least one Republican. “All Donald Trump needs to see is that you’re making a defense, no matter how nonsensical that defense is,” Congressman Adam Kinzinger said on ABC, but not before members of his own party called for his expulsion.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansDonald TrumpUS CongressUS politicsNancy PelosifeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘Such a moron’: Pelosi heaps disdain on McCarthy for criticizing mask guidance

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      Nancy Pelosi‘Such a moron’: Pelosi heaps disdain on McCarthy for criticizing mask guidanceKevin McCarthy: mask policy a political decision by DemocratsCapitol physician reimposes mask requirement for the House Hugo LowellWed 28 Jul 2021 14.53 EDTLast modified on Wed 28 Jul 2021 14.59 EDTThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Wednesday heaped disdain on the Republican minority leader’s criticism of Congress’s new mask requirement – a reversal of policy that reflected growing number of cases and fears about the highly-transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant at the Capitol.Bipartisan group reaches agreement on ‘major issues’ of infrastructure bill, Republican says – liveRead more“He’s such a moron,” Pelosi said of the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, after he tweeted that the mandatory mask policy was not based on science but a political decision by Democrats. (Consensus among public health officials and scientists is that masks significantly lower transmission of Covid-19, especially in indoor settings.)The unusually abrupt remark from Pelosi came as the attending physician of the Capitol reimposed the mask requirement for the House of Representatives. At least two House lawmakers and a fully-vaccinated aide to Pelosi have tested positive for the coronavirus, while the Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee postponed a hearing after some of its members were partially exposed. The House had dropped its months-long mask policy six weeks ago in a demonstration of its optimism that the US had largely defeated the pandemic, shortly before Joe Biden declared America’s so-called independence from Covid-19.The number of Covid-19 cases has also skyrocketed across the country, and the seven-day rolling average of new infections reached 40,246 on Wednesday – around four times the level just three weeks ago – fuelled largely by vaccine holdouts and the Delta variant.Capitol physician Dr Brian Monahan said in a memo to House lawmakers and congressional aides that he was reimposing the mask policy based on new CDC guidance and the unique nature of the Capitol, where thousands of people from across the country congregate each week.“All individuals should wear a well-fitted, medical-grade filtration mask (for example an ear loop surgical mask or a KN95 mask) when they are in an interior space,” Monahan said. “For meetings in an enclosed US House of Representatives controlled space, masks are REQUIRED.”The top doctor in Congress separately dispensed the same advice for the Senate but stopped short of pushing for a mask mandate. The Senate is far smaller than the House of Representatives, and most senators voluntarily adopted masks during the pandemic.But like the measures being considered by Joe Biden to increase vaccination rates in the US, the reintroduction of the mask requirement in the House has inflamed Republicans, who have seized on such policies as a supposed egregious overreach of government power by Democrats.The House minority leader McCarthy reacted testily to Pelosi’s remark on Tuesday, again questioning the basis of the mask mandate: “If she’s so brilliant, can she explain to me where the science in the building changes between the House and the Senate,” he said.House rules say that any member who refuses to wear masks on the floor of the House chamber and in specified areas of the Capitol can be fined $500 for a first offence and $2,500 for a second, with the penalties paid out directly from their salaries.Monahan’s memo says members will not be required to wear masks when they are alone in the Capitol complex, or when they are recognised to speak on the House floor. .Still, several Republicans have already vowed to defy the mask requirement, and firebrand congresswoman Lauren Boebert caused consternation when she walked onto the House floor without a mask and threw one back at a staffer when offered her a spare, CNN reported.TopicsNancy PelosiCoronavirusHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      House begins Capitol attack inquiry as Republicans set to boycott proceedings

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      US Capitol attackHouse begins Capitol attack inquiry as Republicans set to boycott proceedingsCommittee established by Pelosi features two Republicans, Cheney and Kinzinger, after McCarthy withdrew his nominees Tue 27 Jul 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 27 Jul 2021 03.02 EDTThe much-anticipated House investigation into the January attack on the US Capitol begins on Tuesday, with Republicans set to boycott proceedings in an attempt to undermine any findings.A special committee established by the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, will convene to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deadly insurrection in Washington DC, when hundreds of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden as president.Capitol attack committee chair vows to investigate Trump: ‘Nothing is off limits’Read moreThe committee, which will feature just two Republicans after the GOP leadership refused to participate, will hear this week from police officers who battled rioters during the attack.The investigation into the 6 January attack has become a fiercely partisan issue in Washington. The House voted in May for an independent investigation that would have been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, but the Senate blocked the move.That left Pelosi to create a select committee to conduct the investigation. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, picked five Republicans to sit on the committee, but Pelosi rejected Jim Jordan and Jim Banks’ nominations, prompting McCarthy to withdraw all five nominees. Both Jordan and Banks are staunch Trump allies who deny his role in the attack and objected to the certification of Biden’s win.Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, had already been named to the panel by Pelosi, and on Sunday Pelosi went around McCarthy again to appoint Representative Adam Kinzinger, who like Cheney is a critic of Trump, to the committee.Pelosi said Kinzinger “and other Republicans have expressed an interest to serve on the select committee. And I wanted to appoint three of them that Leader McCarthy suggested. But he withdrew their names. The two that I would not appoint are people who would jeopardise the integrity of the investigation, and there’s no way I would tolerate their antics as we seek the truth.”Kinzinger and Cheney were among the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s second impeachment, and the pair were the only Republicans who voted to form the special committee. Both have cited Trump’s false claims of election fraud as a factor in the insurrection.“For months, lies and conspiracy theories have been spread, threatening our self-governance,” Kinzinger said on Sunday.“For months, I have said that the American people deserve transparency and truth on how and why thousands showed up to attack our democracy. I will work diligently to ensure we get to the truth and hold those responsible for the attack fully accountable.”Democrat Bennie Thompson will chair the committee, which on Tuesday will hear from four police officers who were on duty on 6 January. They are expected to testify about their experiences that day, including the physical and verbal abuse they were subjected to as hundreds of people swarmed the Capitol.“We have to get it right,” Thompson said on Monday. He said if the committee could find ways to prevent anything like it from happening again, “then I would have made what I think is the most valuable contribution to this great democracy”.Last week a Florida man became the first person to be sentenced to prison for his role in the January attack. More than 570 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, during and after which seven people died.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesNancy PelosiUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Nancy Pelosi primes Capitol attack panel to take hard line on Trump

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      US Capitol attackNancy Pelosi primes Capitol attack panel to take hard line on TrumpThe Republican leadership’s decision to boycott the inquiry leaves the ex-president without defenders on the committee Hugo Lowell in WashingtonMon 26 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 26 Jul 2021 02.01 EDTThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is readying the committee that will on Tuesday begin its investigation into the attack on the Capitol to press ahead with an aggressive inquiry into Donald Trump, as she seeks to exploit Republicans’ refusal to participate that could leave the former US president unguarded.Can Pelosi’s power play on Capitol attack panel thwart wrecking tactics? Read moreThe move by the top Democrat in the House last week to block Jim Banks and Jim Jordan – vociferous allies of the former president – from serving on the House select committee, prompted the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to boycott the inquiry, pulling his three other Republican picks from the panel.But Pelosi won strong support from Democrats for her vetoes and told her lieutenants that she may have emerged with the upper hand ahead of the select committee’s first hearing.“We have the duty, to the constitution and the country, to find the truth of the 6 January insurrection and to ensure that such an assault on our Democracy cannot again happen,” Pelosi said of the investigation in a letter to Democrats.The speaker has suggested to top Democrats in recent days that McCarthy’s reflexive move to boycott the panel leaves Trump without any defenders in the high-profile investigation into the 6 January insurrection, according to a source familiar with the matter.Pelosi chose some of the former president’s most critical opponents when she made her appointments to the select committee, installing both lead House impeachment managers from Trump’s two impeachments as well as the Republican dissident Liz Cheney, who was ousted from party leadership in May for repudiating Trump.But the absence of any Republican picks on the select committee means that when the investigation pivots from examining security failures to the role Trump played on 6 January, the inquiry will be conducted solely by his political foes, emboldening Pelosi to seek an aggressive inquiry, the source said.It was not immediately clear how Pelosi might proceed with the select committee. But Democrats have agitated for weeks for her to take a hard line against Republicans after they doomed a 9/11-style bipartisan commission into the Capitol attack.Democrats close to Pelosi say she remains furious at how Republicans have sought to downplay the brutal violence of the insurrection, which informed her decision to not give Banks and Jordan a platform from which to twist or minimize the select committee’s findings.But the speaker’s relationship with Republicans deteriorated to a new low, after McCarthy shouted down the phone at her when she informed him of her decision to veto Banks and Jordan, the source said.Republicans have seized on Pelosi’s intervention against Banks and Jordan, as well as her close involvement with the panel, to portray the inquiry as a partisan exercise to gain political advantage ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.McCarthy lashed out anew a day after he was denied his two top picks for the select committee, and pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation that would focus on how Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol.But Democrats said Pelosi was more than justified in upending congressional norms in refusing to appoint Banks and Jordan, both of whom amplified Trump’s lies about a stolen election and objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election win.“We want people who are going to have allegiance to the oath of office that they took, not an allegiance to one person. And they’ve clearly pledged their allegiance to the former president,” said Democrat Pete Aguilar, a member of the select committee.Several Democrats said they were particularly disturbed by a CNN report that an alleged Capitol rioter, Anthony Aguero, accompanied Banks on a trip sponsored by the Republican Study Committee to the southern border and, at times, served as an interpreter.They also said that Pelosi came to the conclusion that Banks could not be trusted to serve as the top Republican appointee on the panel after he issued a statement that he wanted to investigate the role of the Biden administration in the insurrection.Democrats expressed deep reservations as well about Jordan, the top Republican on the House judiciary committee, after he disparaged the select committee and accused Pelosi of being responsible for a diminished security presence at the Capitol.The speaker does not herself oversee security at the Capitol, which is the responsibility of the US Capitol police board and the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms. Both sergeants-at-arms at the time of the attack were hired by Republican congressional leaders.A bipartisan Senate report released last month detailed multiple security failings on the parts of the US Capitol police and the sergeants-at-arms. It did not blame Pelosi or her then opposite number in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesNancy PelosiUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More