Nancy Pelosi rebukes reporter for asking her about January 6 Capitol riots, ‘Shut up!’ | Video
Rep. Nancy Pelosi snapped at a reporter who asked her about the January 6 Capitol riots in a caught-on-camera incident.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) snapped at a reporter who asked her about the January 6 Capitol riots on Wednesday, October 15. A video that has surfaced on social media shows a reporter asking why the former House speaker “refused the National Guard” on January 6. Pelosi was being assisted out of the Capitol Building at the time.
Pelosi was clutching the hand of an aide while navigating the steps of the Capitol. On being asked the question, she spun around and pointed her finger at the LindellTV reporter’s face, visibly furious at the suggestion that a new Republican-led committee investigating the riot might find her “liable.”
“Shut up!” Pelosi, 85, said. “I did not refuse the National Guard. The president didn’t send it. Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you are a serious journalist?”
The reporter, Alison Steinberg, later wrote in an X post, “Nancy Pelosi just told me to “SHUT UP”! Comment below how you think this transpired. Footage coming soon, stay tuned”.
When Nancy Pelosi blamed herself
Last year, footage released by House Republicans showed Pelosi blaming herself for the lack of National Guard troops at the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. The former House Speaker was heard in the video talking about her lack of “accountability,” and accepting “responsibility” for a lack of security ahead of Donald Trump’s ‘Stop The Steal’ rally.
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The New York Post reported that the video in question was shot by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, for an HBO documentary.
“We have responsibility, Terri,” Pelosi told her chief of staff Terri McCullough as they drove away in a car from the Capitol. ”We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous.”
Pelosi then seemed to rebuke McCullough for asking her if the National Guard should be called. “You’re gonna ask me in the middle of the thing, when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff, ‘should we call the Capitol Police?’ I mean the National Guard. Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi said.
McCullough explained that “they thought that they had sufficient resources.” “It’s not a question of how they had … they don’t know! They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,” Pelosi replied.
The conversation was part of a 45-minute long footage submitted to the GOP-controlled House Administration oversight subcommittee, Politico reported. A previous report on the riot, which was authored by House Republicans in 2022, revealed that the Democratic leadership had concerns over the “optics” of having National Guard troops stationed at the Capitol Building following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Days after the riot, the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms, and the chief of Capitol Police, resigned.
