Nancy Pelosi Calls Out ‘Grim Reaper’ Mitch McConnell for Blocking House Police Reform Bill: ‘How Many More People Have to Die?’
Speaker Nancy Pelosi called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his blanket refusal to consider the House police reform bill and dismissed President Donald Trump’s executive order on police reform as a mere “photo op” since Republicans in Washington have signaled that they’re in no rush to pass legislation on the nationwide crisis.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Pelosi noted the contradictions in the White House pageantry on Tuesday, at once acknowledging the need to act but without putting an pressure on McConnell who has already said the Senate won’t consider any police reform bills until after the July 4th holiday break.
“I hope there’s a compromise to be reached in the Congress,” Pelosi said of Trump’s public comments. “I’m more concerned about what Mitch McConnell said about our bill, the George P. Floyd Justice in Policing act. He said it’s not going anywhere in the Senate. We won’t have any of that. We won’t have any of, what, ending racial profiling? We won’t have any of ending chokeholds? We won’t have any of no-knock warrants? The list goes on and on. That is serious. How many more hundreds of thousands of people have to demonstrate in the streets, protest peacefully for justice in policing. How many more people have to die from police brutality? And so for the leader of the Senate to say it’s ‘going nowhere,’ we won’t even — we don’t want any of that, is really disgraceful.”
Wallace then pointed out that, per a new Monmouth poll, 76 percent of Americans think racial discrimination is a “big problem,” even as Trump and other White House officials deny systemic racism exists in the country. She then asked if that disconnect could undermine efforts to enact meaningful changes to the nation’s law enforcement system.
“I think what the president had today was a photo op, and he did say Congress should act. The leader of the Senate who was there, the Republican leader of the Senate, said the House bill is ‘going nowhere.’ We’ll have none of that,” Pelosi noted. “What we are proposing is something that is proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus, in the hopper for a number of years, worked on for a long time. Understanding the nature of the problem. And you know what? The American people understand it, too. And so here we have a place where we can work together.”
“So this isn’t about drawing red lines in the sand. It’s about making a big difference, taking a giant step forward,” Pelosi added, before directly calling out McConnell. “You call yourself the ‘grim reaper,’ how aptly named you are when you see how many people have died. How many people have died. How much lack of confidence there is and whether there is racial — systemic racism in our country, and clearly, there is. But this — we have an opportunity for America. This is a time of reckoning to say we’re going to make a change that is real. Not cosmetic. Not perfunctory, not a photo op, but legislation that is real.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
