House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday weighed in on a male GOP member of her House and his reportedly aggressive confrontation of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): “women will be treated with respect.”
“There’s no limit to the disrespect or the lack of acknowledgement of the strength of women,” Pelosi said during a press briefing Thursday when a reporter asked her about the altercation between Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL). “Nothing is more wholesome for our government, for our politics, for our country, than the increased participation of women. And women will be treated with respect.”
Pelosi, drawing from experiences from her own nearly two-decade tenure in Democratic leadership — which she says has been riddled with instances of harmful name-calling — said that Yoho’s words were “condescending” and “disrespectful.”
A reporter from The Hill overheard the Florida lawmaker on Monday calling Ocasio-Cortez “disgusting” and “out of your freaking mind” for comments she made about an uptick in petty crime being related to intensified economic desperation among the country’s poor, as the coronavirus pandemic takes a toll on jobs and the economy. After parting ways with the congresswoman, Yoho was heard a few steps down, accompanied by Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), saying the words “fucking bitch.”
Yoho appeared on the House floor Wednesday to offer a diluted semblance of an apology — saying that he regretted any “misunderstanding” if his words had been misconstrued. The Florida lawmaker meanwhile denied that he had used the language the press attributed to him, and said that he would not apologize for his “passion, or for loving my God, my family, and my country.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper weighing in on the controversy Thursday also condemned the actions of Yoho calling them a far cry from “passion” and tweeting Thursday that the remarks were acts of “misogyny” and “bigotry.”
