Grandma Nancy is apparently willing to sacrifice another two years of her life on this planet to the House of Representatives so that the children will live better lives.
That’s the takeaway from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre announcement Tuesday that she was running for re-election.
There’s no drama as to whether or not she’ll win her San Francisco-based sinecure, but the proclamation came as a surprise; in January, The Washington Post reported that the 81-year-old was “expected to step down at the close of this Congress, ending a historic career that included trying to end George W. Bush’s Iraq War, implementing President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law, impeaching President Donald Trump twice and squeezing President Biden’s sweeping agenda through a narrowly controlled House.”
In fact, in 2018, BuzzFeed News reported Pelosi had agreed to step aside as the House’s top Democrat in 2022 in order to secure the speakership again, given that younger, more progressive Democrats were threatening to throw the process into chaos if she didn’t give a definite timeline for moving out of the way.
(If she breaks this promise, it won’t be the first time we’ve seen her dissemble — and it certainly won’t be the last. At The Western Journal, we keep busy cataloging Pelosi’s various perfidies and bringing readers the truth. You can help us keep doing that by subscribing.)
The fact she’s sticking around wasn’t the only thing about her announcement that raised a few eyebrows on Tuesday. As Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld noted on his late-night show, she had a strange obsession with “the children” during her re-election announcement.
Here was the creepy moment, just for context:
“When people ask me, ‘What are the three most important issues facing the Congress?’ I always say the same thing: our children, our children, our children,” Pelosi said.
“Their health, their education, the housing and economic security of their families, a clean, safe environment in which they can thrive, and a world at peace and where they are all welcome and in which they can reach their fulfillment,” she continued.
“That is my why — why I am in Congress. For the children. This is my story and this is my song, as you hear me say, when you’re in the arena, you have to be able to take a punch, or throw a punch, for the children.”
If you felt a bit like you were being given a pitch by Sally Struthers to sponsor a starving youngster in Malawi, you weren’t alone. Whatever the case, Gutfeld and crew weren’t impressed by her claim that the youth were the 81-year-old’s raison d’être.
“She first went to Congress in 1987 — the year I was born — and has been the top Dem in the House since 2003,” Gutfeld said.
“Nancy made the announcement on Twitter with technical help from someone one-eighth her age and asked herself, ‘What are the three most important issues facing Congress?’”
“‘Our children our children, our children,’” he continued, mockingly, before ripping into a certain network’s recent issues with sexual abuse allegations: “The last time I heard that it was from a parent filing the police report outside CNN.”
As for her ability to take and throw punches in the arena: “No wonder she always sounds like she has a concussion,” Gutfeld said.
He then pivoted to how Pelosi believes this election is “crucial” for us.
“Nothing less is at stake than our democracy,” the speaker said. “But as we say, we don’t agonize, we organize, and that is why I am running for re-election to Congress.”
“But what is this obsession with children? And why won’t she just call it quits?” Gutfeld asked.
The answer came in skit form from panelist Kat Timpf, dressed as Pelosi.
“When I first announced I would be running for Congress, I raised a lot of eyebrows. Specifically my own. Four inches above my face,” the faux Pelosi began.
“What keeps me coming back like a looter to his favorite Walgreens?” she continued. “The children. The children. The children. The children … the children … I am going to keep serving the children even as their parents pack up a U-Haul and move out of the state.”
Comedy has to be based in a kernel of truth, and Gutfeld and Timpf had a rather large one: Pelosi’s re-election announcement, particularly the focus on “the children,” was fully outré.
Beyond reinforcing that the 81-year-old House speaker is clearly in the diminishing returns phase of her political and physical life — a reason Democrats probably aren’t thrilled Pelosi is sticking around, considering it’s another reminder of a 79-year-old Democrat in the White House experiencing worse returns — what are we to take from this?
Is this the messaging from the Democratic Party this fall? All the profligate spending, all the masking, all the virtual learning — it’s been for the children? That’s an interesting strategy for a party prepared to go nuclear if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Or is this Pelosi’s attempt to reframe her political career as she moves toward the door marked “Exit?” It hasn’t been about the power struggles or the curious stock trades. No, Nancy Pelosi is all about the kids.
And why shouldn’t she be? To quote Herbert Hoover, “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” She and her fellow Democrats have bequeathed them quite a bit of it.
Whatever the case, if this is Nancy’s last ride, she’s left us all — especially “the children” — with one last bad laugh.