Nancy Pelosi Blasts Uses Of Tear Gas To Disperse White House Protesters For Trump Photo-Op
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi criticized President Donald Trump on Wednesday after tear gas was used to disperse a largely-peaceful protest in front of the White House, MSNBC News reported.
On Monday, as previously reported by The Inquisitr, police purportedly used tear gas and flash-bang grenades to disperse the crowd that was protesting in front of the White House. Shortly thereafter, Trump and his team walked down the street to the nearby St. John’s Church, where he posed holding a Bible.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Pelosi noted that her daughter, Alexandra, who is a filmmaker and journalist, was at the White House protest on Monday and saw what happened firsthand.
“She said: ‘Mom, you wouldn’t even believe it. These people were demonstrating peacefully. And all of a sudden, this barrage of security came through using clubs to beat people and these explosive scat little bullets that explode into stuff that burns your eyes,'” Pelosi said of her daughter.
She then likened the situation to a third-world dictatorship.
“For peaceful demonstrators to make way — make way for the president to walk through … what is this, a banana republic?” she asked, using a term coined by American satirist O. Henry to describe a country where an elite ruling class exploits the people and the military is used as its (the ruling class) private army.
The U.S. Park Police has claimed that protesters were throwing “projectiles” at police and has denied using tear gas on the protesters, according to The Washington Times, a dispute that Pelosi appeared to acknowledge.
“Maybe they didn’t have tear gas — I don’t know. But they had elements of it,” she said.
In fact, according to a WUSA-TV report, Park Police used a chemical agent known as Oleoresins Capiscum, which uses a similar chemical to tear gas and produces the same symptoms.
She also condemned Trump’s use of the Bible during the photo op that followed the clearing of protesters.
“If you’re going to hold up a Bible and stand in front of a church, then your message should be consistent with that Bible and those values. And of course, it was not,” she said.
She also referenced religious leaders who have spoken out in support of the protesters, such as Pope Francis I and the archbishop of Washington, D.C.
It was the second time in as many days that Pelosi has criticized Trump for the photo op in front of the church. On Monday, Pelosi took a page out of Trump’s book and used the Bible as well, only instead of holding it, she read from it. Specifically, she read from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, and cited a verse that speaks of “a time to heal.”
