On Thursday afternoon’s airing of CNN Newsroom, host Brooke Baldwin had on CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University. The liberal media have been obsessively covering the recent jabs between President Donald Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Brinkley, rather than remaining an objective historian, couldn’t help but drool over Pelosi as a partisan mouthpiece and naturally Baldwin had no problem with it.
Brinkley stated that the President “overreacted” to Pelosi’s claims that the President is involved in a “cover-up.” This “overreaction” is due to the impromptu conference that Trump held in the White House Rose Garden after walking out on the infrastructure week meeting with congressional Democratic leadership.
He went on to say that Pelosi was “a master at reading people” and a “historic Speaker.” Here is the rest of the exchange:
She knew he would because she's a master at reading people. You don't become the Speaker of the House if you’re not able to understand human nature of all of the people on Capitol Hill and she's been here for a long time. She's now a historic Speaker. And this may be seen as the Pelosi age in the Democratic Party. She's filled the leadership void. Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden kind of disappeared for a while and she's kind of stepped to the forefront. But the one thing that Nancy Pelosi has to be careful of is impeachment. Because that word divides the Democrats like the Iraq war did. Are you for the Iraq war or against the Iraq war? What does Joe Biden do with that? Is he for impeachment or against impeachment? And if it gets simplified too much you could have a civil war within the Democratic Party.
For someone who’s illustrated a visceral disdain for Trump and an affection for Barack Obama, this was par for the course.
(h/t: Grabien)
Here is the relevant transcript:
CNN Newsroom
05/23/19
2:07 PMBROOKE BALDWIN: But she also, Doug, we were chatting a second ago, I mean of all times to say the word "cover-up" it was one hour before she is set to go to the White House to meet with the President of the United States. You know, she and some of these and -- you know phrases she's been using, she's getting into the mud a little bit. It is not sticking to her.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Absolutely. But President Trump has the bully pulpit and he could have pivoted to the rose garden and then said I'm not going to talk about this, I'm going to talk about infrastructure and even if the Democrats don't want to, and start talking about our collapsing bridges, and highways, and are our nuclear power plants safe. All things people want to hear about, but instead he overreacted to her and it’s --
BALDWIN: But do you think she knew he would?
BRINKLEY: She knew he would because she's a master at reading people. You don't become the Speaker of the House if you’re not able to understand human nature of all of the people on Capitol Hill and she's been here for a long time. She's now a historic Speaker. And this may be seen as the Pelosi age in the Democratic Party. She's filled the leadership void. Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden kind of disappeared for a while and she's kind of stepped to the forefront. But the one thing that Nancy Pelosi has to be careful of is impeachment. Because that word divides the Democrats like the Iraq war did. Are you for the Iraq war or against the Iraq war? What does Joe Biden do with that? Is he for impeachment or against impeachment? And if it gets simplified too much you could have a civil war within the Democratic Party.
BALDWIN: Which is the last thing they want.
BRINKLEY: Last thing they want. So, she is the glue keeping the whole Washington scene together.
BALDWIN: That’s a great point. Doug Brinkley, thank you very much.
