House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday hit back at President Donald Trump for mocking her quarantine stash of ice cream, saying that her vice is less harmful than some of his musings on coronavirus treatments.
“He makes a big fuss about my having ice cream in my freezer — that’s his latest today, his most current today,” she told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. “I have ice cream in my freezer. I guess that’s better than having Lysol in somebody’s lungs, as he was suggesting.”
Pelosi drew the ire of Republicans earlier this month when, during a “show and tell” segment on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” the speaker happily opened her freezer to reveal more than a dozen pints of ice cream.
Pelosi was blasted by Republicans, and subsequently starred in an attack ad by the Trump campaign, which branded her as an elitist politician insensitive to the plights of those suffering economic devastation because of the virus. Critics pointed out that the segment aired as Democrats were blocking another round of relief funding for small businesses, holding out for Republicans to agree to include money for hospitals.
In an interview on MSNBC, Pelosi addressed the controversy but maintained that her gaffe was far less serious than Trump’s floating dangerous ideas about potential coronavirus treatments during a task force briefing last week. That included musing about whether it would be possible to inject disinfectants or light into the body to kill off the virus.
The president’s comments were roundly rebuked, causing Trump to later backtrack and claim that he was being sarcastic.
Trump and Pelosi haven’t spoken to each other in months, but the speaker said on Tuesday she felt that speaking to the president through the media was a more effective strategy than speaking to him personally.
The latest spat began when Trump, hosting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at the White House on Tuesday, battered House Democrats for reversing course on their plan to reconvene the chamber next week, asserting that the caucus didn’t want to come back to Washington to legislate.
“I think they should be back here, but they don’t. They’re enjoying their vacation,” he said, doubling down when a reporter sought to clarify his comments. “You look at Nancy Pelosi eating ice cream on late-night television.”
“Enough of him,” Pelosi later said on MSNBC, though she leveled fierce criticism at the president throughout the interview. “It’s not worth it to just dwell on him.”