Nancy Pelosi Just Mocked the President* to His Face in the Oval Office

From Esquire

On Tuesday, right about at lunchtime, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer dropped down the street to the White House to have a chat with the president*. What followed was a piece of video that will live forever as a window into this sludgepot of a political moment. It is not that remarkable if you've ever watched Question Time from any of the various parliaments around the world. (I mean, holy Oliver Cromwell, somebody presented the mace in the House of Commons on Monday.) But, because the American government is greased by tawdry piety and transparently artificial civility, the meeting might as well have taken place in the Octogon.

The single most lasting impression of this altogether remarkable bit of reality-show theater was the look we got into what happens when people tell this particular president* that he can't have what he wants.

Watch as Pelosi tries, not altogether angrily, to explain to him that he doesn't have the votes for the big, beautiful, stupid wall for which, of course, Mexico is going to pay. She says the votes aren't there. He keeps saying he can get them instantly, but that the problem is that he can't get the votes in the Senate. They're both right. He doesn't have the votes in either place. But he runs down all the applause lines that get the rubes all ginned up at his rallies, and Pelosi keeps calmly telling him that, while he's as full of shit as the Christmas goose, nevertheless he and his big, beautiful, stupid wall should get further stuffed anyway.

(You should also notice that, off to one side, Mike Pence clearly has been shot with the trank gun by the Secret Service.)

Even Schumer suddenly discovers a thin vein of iron in his spine and maneuvers El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago into bragging about shutting down the government unless he gets his way, thereby undercutting any political strategy the Republicans in Congress might have been developing to blame a prospective shutdown on the Democrats. That sound you hear is the Republican congressional leadership taking delivery of a barge-load of bourbon.

Welcome to the next two years, and thank nature's god for them.

Pelosi has the president in her pocket and she knows it. (It will dawn on him eventually, too. Maybe.) The House controls the budget and, in January, the Democratic Party will hold the House. Since any argument about Pelosi's being an Accommodating Liberal Sellout should die with the release of this video, she will be the Speaker-and, as such, she can shred his administration*. This is the most essential part.

You can even do it now, in the last few weeks of the Republican majority, and it still might not pass. (Outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan is too exhausted from burnishing his own faded legend to whip votes for a measure that is DOA on the other side of the Capitol.) She knows he's a loser here, and she will patiently explain how he's a loser as many times as he wants to say he's not. Later:

Loser.

As I said, this was a notable exchange only in that it happened among American politicians. There are exchanges overseas that make this sound like a Sunday school chorale. But that's what makes it all the more compelling. It happened here, and in the White House, and in the president*'s face. Fundamentally, this was mockery, and eminently well-deserved. And, in case anyone, including the president*, missed the point, Pelosi was more than happy to sharpen it for him. From Politico:

Deadpanned. Emphasis on "dead."

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