WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) answers questions during her weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol on June 27, 2019 in Washington, DC. Pelosi answered a range of questions focusing primarily on immigration issues and pending legislation before the U.S. Congress. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi answers questions during her weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol on June 27, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
 
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
THEY CALL THEMSELVES the “Squad.” From climate changeto student debt to migrants in detention, progressive House Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley have been energetic and outspoken since getting elected last November — and, as a result, have become inured to constant attacks from congressional Republicans and, of course, Fox News.
But how about from their own boss?
In an interview with the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the Squad as “four people” who have their “public whatever and their Twitter world” but don’t “have any following.”
Ouch. This isn’t the first time Pelosi has trolled the left-wing quartet. In April, when she was asked by Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” to comment on the newly emboldened progressive wing of her party, Pelosi responded: “That’s like five people.”
In the wake of November’s midterms, Pelosi mocked calls from AOC and her allies for a Green New Deal: “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?”
To be clear: None of these freshmen Democrats have personally attacked Pelosi, and all four of them backed her bid for the speakership. As CNN’s Nathan McDermott tweeted, “It is pretty notable that the most vocally anti-Pelosi Democrats (ala the moderates in swing districts who opposed her leadership) don’t get as much criticism from her as the left-wing of the party.”
How about Donald Trump? Pelosi is willing to criticize Trump — “I’ve never encountered, thought about, seen within the realm of my experiences as a child or an adult, anybody like this” — but only criticize. Nothing more. Not impeachment, that’s for sure. The top Democrat in the House told Dowd that the president has engaged in criminal behavior but — wait for it — “you can’t impeach everybody.”
The New York Times interview is yet another reminder for liberals and leftists that if they want to oppose Trump, they have to oppose Pelosi too.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider three recent — and shameful — episodes.
First, the rape allegations against the president. On June 21, New York magazine published a cover story from the famed advice columnist and writer E. Jean Carroll, in which she documented in excruciating detail how Trump, back in the mid-1990s, forced “his penis halfway” inside of her in the midst of a “colossal struggle” in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.
Pelosi’s response to a reporter who asked her for comment a whole six days later? “I don’t know the person making the accusation … I haven’t paid that much attention to it.”