Pelosi responds to question about timing of legislation using the 25th Amendment, given her recent comments about Trump

At a press conference on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced legislation that uses the 25th Amendment to form a commission that could evaluate a president’s ability to serve in office. Pelosi answered a question regarding the timing of the legislation, given her recent comments that suggested the drugs President Trump is taking to fight COVID-19 could affect his judgement.

Video Transcript

- To my colleague's question this is a president who has been impeached. You've made comments in recent days suggesting that you think his mental state might be affected by the drugs that he's on. What do you say to those who see what you're doing now and say, aha, this is just another attempt to go around the public and try to get rid of this president, you know, through a way that's not an election?

NANCY PELOSI: Well, let me first say, what I said about the president and the drugs was there are those who believe that taking certain medications can affect your judgment. I don't know. OK, let's, let's say what I actually said. I don't know. That's what I said on a call with my members, so you may have gotten it through several times removed.

There are those medical professionals who say that certain medications can impair judgment. I don't know. And this is not, I appreciate your question, because this is really important. It's not about any of us making a judgment about the president's well-being. It's about this respected, bipartisan, both aspects of it. The medical side of it and the dignitary, statesman side of it, are selected equally by the speaker, the leader, the speaker-- the leader, the leader, in a bipartisan way, and the vice president is crucial to that.

When we do legislation, it's important to socialize it, so that people understand why. So that we would like to have it in place, and it could be said for future presidencies, if the president wins this election, yes, it would apply to him. If he doesn't, it'll apply to the next president of the United States, but this isn't about anything to say we've got to do something like this about the election. It's not about the election at all, and I thank the distinguished gentleman from Maryland for this.

This has been-- we could have done this a while back, but the timing is for now, because people want to know. We have to give some comfort to people that there is a way to do this, very respectful, not making a judgment on the basis of a comment or behavior that we don't like, but based on a medical decision, again, with the full involvement of the vice president of the United States, whoever he or she may be at the time.