Pelosi Explains Her Shutdown Strategy: From Feather to Sledgehammer

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) celebrated the end of the partial government shutdown on Friday by sitting down with leftist media commentators and bragging about manipulating President Donald Trump into agreeing on a temporary reopening to allow negotiations over a border wall to take place.

The Daily Beast praised Pelosi — including referring to a CNN story that referred to her as “Queen Pelosi” — in its reporting for refusing to allow him to deliver the State of the Union speech on the House floor and saying, “no” repeatedly to his request for $5.7 billion in funding for the wall, saying:

Not many politicians have gone up against Trump and emerged victorious, with their dignity intact. How did she do it? “First you start with a feather,” she said, “then you move to a sledgehammer.” In her telling, when she first told the president he couldn’t give his SOTU while the government was closed, he said he was coming. She rebuffed him a second time, and he said he was coming anyway. Then she said, “please don’t,” telling him the House that she controls would not vote on a “concurrent resolution” to formally invite him.

Bingo! “One step at a time and he understood, and when he understood, he understood, and sometimes it’s about timing,” she said. Asked if she thought Trump and his people realized her power over something as traditional as the SOTU, she said, rather dismissively, “I don’t spend a lot of time sussing out what they know.”

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