Nancy Pelosi deflects when asked to condemn a Democratic representative's crude joke about Kellyanne Conway
Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond (La.) has been widely criticized for crudely joking that White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway "really looked kind of familiar there in that position there" in a controversial photo that showed her kneeling on an Oval Office couch to snap a picture.
Asked about Richmond's apparent sexual innuendo in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declined to condemn the remark, instead deflecting attention to President Trump's history of inappropriate comments about women.
Richmond "maybe should be criticized" for his remark, Pelosi said, but protested she "just [doesn't] know the particulars" of what he said. That argument would hold more water if Tapper hadn't just played a clip of the entire joke while showing the photo of Conway.
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"I guess the question is if one criticizes only Republicans when they make crude comments, does that not undermine the moral authority if they don't criticize when Democrats make crude comments?" Tapper asked. Once again, Pelosi didn't answer. Watch their exchange below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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