Nancy Pelosi Says Republicans Are Trump's Henchmen and Gayle King Suggests the Characterization Is 'Egregious'—Is It Really Though?

Gayle King interviewed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for CBS’s This Morning on Friday, just a day before Trump announced his nominee for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recently vacated seat on the Supreme Court with the full confidence that he would be supported by Republicans—though Ginsburg hasn’t even been laid to rest yet.

In response to a question from the veteran journalist, Pelosi told King that she doesn’t think Joe Biden should participate in presidential debates with Trump—the first of which is set to take place this Tuesday with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

“I just think that the president has no fidelity to fact or truth,” said Pelosi, pointing to Trump’s recent and troubling equivocation regarding a peaceful transfer of power after the election. “He and his henchmen—with their comments—are a danger to our democracy.”

For some reason, King then felt it necessary to frame Pelosi’s use of the word ‘henchmen’ (pretty accurate, in my opinion) as somehow equivalent to the very real ransacking of the country’s democracy that Trump and his Republican co-conspirators are brazenly carrying out.

“Your language, to some, is just as egregious as what they’re saying,” King argued:

“I’m speaking truth—our constitution is at the mercy of people who have no allegiance to the constitution of the United States,” answered Pelosi. “They have repeatedly demonstrated that.”

While I might not agree fully with Pelosi’s grandstanding about minutiae like whether presidential candidates should debate their positions for the benefit of potential voters, it seems a little more egregious for King to understate the very real threat posed by Trump and his cronies to fair elections in 2020.

At this point, it is imperative that everyone speak plainly about the path to authoritarian governance that the Republican party is clearly intent on setting us all on, with a mad man at the helm.

Let’s recap:

Trump has refused to say he will peacefully concede the election if he loses.

The President and his cronies have spent most of the year signaling their intentions to question the validity of any mail-in ballots which aren’t a vote for him.

Trump has suggested over and over again that he’s interested in being president for anything from four to twelve more years.

Despite King’s assertion to Pelosi that “Republicans are coming out and saying they’re will be a transition to power,” GOP Senators are now planning to confirm a conservative justice to the Supreme Court less than 50 days out from the election, despite previously coming out and saying that election year nominations are unacceptable when put forward by a Democrat president.

And this doesn’t even capture all the other thuggery carried out by Trump and his party this year—like deploying state police and federal officers to brutally quell citizen protests, or passing laws in the South that turn protesting an unjust government into a felony crime punishable by the loss of voting rights.

It’s time all of us, especially those with platforms to inform the American public, start speaking urgently and honestly to the danger of what Republicans are doing, period.

The future of the country depends on it.