Newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi set off a Twitter storm on Friday when she said at a televised town hall meeting that “all lives matter” in response to a question from the audience about her thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement.
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“I support the recognition that black lives matter, for sure, and I have incorporated that in many of my statements. All lives matter… we really have to redress past grievances in terms of how we addressed the African-American community,” Pelosi said.
Her comments came during an MSNBC town hall, hosted by Joy Reid, at Trinity University in Washington.
Pelosi appeared on the show one day after she was elected to serve for a second time as speaker and swore-in dozens of newly elected House of Representatives members.
Many of the questions she faced at the town hall involved whether she would take steps to impeach President Donald Trump.
She “shied away” from talking about impeachment at this time, NBC News reported.
During the town hall, Pelosi also defended Michigan’s newly elected Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib who told a progressive audience on Thursday night that Democrats planned to “impeach the motherf***er.”
Pelosi said that Tlaib’s language was no “worse” than the expletives that Trump has also used during his 2016 presidential campaign and while in office.
Shying away from impeaching Trump was bad enough for many progressives. Things got worse when an African-American woman in the audience asked Pelosi whether she supports the BLM movement.
Take a look at the video:
“In our lexicon, ‘all lives matter’ is nothing more than a delegitimizing retort to those who say that black lives matter. The way Pelosi speaks here implies that she doesn’t fully grasp that. Still. Also discouraging is her garbled language about “past” black grievances,” tweeted Jamil Smith, a senior writer for Rolling Stone.
Pelosi continued her comments by talking about “the privilege” she had of swearing in eight new members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday. She called it “a breakthrough” that some of them were elected from non-Black majority congressional districts. She added that the new Democratic majority in the House—the most gender and racially diverse in history—would work together to protect “every part of our community.”
Twitter users registered their disapproval of Pelosi’s response to the BLM question. Some folks expressed mild disappointment while others were downright angry.
