NRO Backs Pelosi, Carlson Ignores Victory | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

The writers and editors of National Review are not often vocal supporters of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), but have still lauded her plans to visit Taiwan in multiple posts over the past few days.

The outlet praised Pelosi for taking a strong stance against “bully” China through her visit to Taiwan.

“Pelosi Must Go to Taiwan” declared the headline of a commentary from the conservative website’s editorial board, describing the planned trip as “a critical symbol of support as Beijing ratchets up its pressure on Taipei.”

“Much as we disagree with the speaker on most issues, on this question she has been stalwart,” the editors concluded, faulting the Biden administration’s disapproval of the visit.

Jim Geraghty echoed the editors’ views with a Monday morning column headlined “Pelosi Stands Up to the Bully in Beijing.”

“A lot of people in this world like to think that they’re brave, tough, and willing to act against injustice but start looking for excuses once the consequences of taking a stand get high enough,” he wrote.

Geraghty penned a detailed explanation of Pelosi’s long term opposition of the Chinese government, giving readers needed context regarding her expected trip to Taiwan.

The speaker’s stance on China — assuming she does in fact follow through on her plans to visit Taiwan — cut through partisan issues and earned her respect on this issue, wrote Geraghty.

“Conservatives rarely applaud Pelosi,” Geraghty wrote, “but her willingness to visit Taiwan — and to tell the Chinese government in Beijing to go pound sand if it doesn’t like her making the trip — is one of those rare times when they do.”

Tucker Carlson dismissed news that the U.S. had killed the leader of Al Qaeda and instead spent Monday’s show arguing that President Joe Biden wants to “weaken and destroy the United States.”

“If you’re Joe Biden, if you think about it, it takes a lot of brass to brag about Afghanistan,” began Carlson.

He went on to call Biden’s withdrawal from the country the “single most humiliating moment in American foreign policy since the fall of Saigon in April of 1975,” adding that he chose “a path that seemed designed to inflict maximum damage to the interests of the United States.”

“Tonight, Biden gave a speech boasting that he’s killed an Al Qaeda figure in Afghanistan. Great. Feel safer? Of course you don’t,” he continiued.

“Nobody does. And the reason nobody feels safer is Biden’s response to the disaster in Afghanistan.”

Carlson conveniently ignored that Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri, killed by a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan over the weekend, was one of the masterminds behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Instead of celebrating the nation’s counterterrorism victory, Carlson went on to accuse Biden of “provoking yet another conflict,” claiming the president was the catalyst behind Vladimir Putin’s deadly invasion of Ukraine.

“They wanted a war with Russia, and now we have one. We’re not winning that war. By the way, the main American casualty so far has been our economy, which is dying,” he said.

Later in the show, Carlson spun a similarly unsound yarn, declaring that Biden is trying to provoke a war in China in an effort to “destroy” the U.S.