NY grand jury indicts former President Trump
(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused President Donald Trump on Monday of having racist intentions by pushing for the inclusion of the citizenship question on the U.S. Census.
“The Supreme Court did not rule in their favor, because they said the administration did not give sufficient evidence as to why the citizenship question should be there, so they kicked the can, and then the administration said, okay, we won’t put it on there,” Pelosi said a Monday press conference.
“Then the president injected himself into this, but this is about keeping—you know Make America—you know this hat? Make America white again. They want to make sure that people – certain people are counted. It’s really disgraceful, and it’s not what our founders had in mind, and it’s not what--- we can decide who we are as a people,” she said.
Pelosi accused the president of putting “a chilling effect so certain populations will not answer the form … they won’t respond, and we say don’t give them that victory. You must respond, because otherwise they win.”
As CNSNews.com previously reported, acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that people who fill out the U.S. Census, including the citizenship question can rest assured that no other government agencies will see their name, address, and how they answered the question.
Meanwhile, White House Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, speaking on “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday, reacted to Pelosi’s comment, calling it “incoherent.”
“I don’t even understand what she’s saying. That was so incoherent, says the white woman, standing next to the white woman, which of course, I have no problem with. She is the speaker, but it really just makes no sense. It tells you what a very thin specious argument they have,” Conway said.
She pointed out that Pelosi’s hometown is a sanctuary city and noted that it’s also where 32-year-old Kate Steinle was gunned down by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times before Steinle’s murder.
“By the way, Nancy Pelosi, of course she’s going to feel a certain way, because she represents San Francisco, and that’s a sanctuary city where we know a young woman was murdered in front of her father years ago by an illegal alien who had been deported numerous times and was back in San Francisco,” Conway said.
“Also, we all see what’s happening in San Francisco under Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders’ ‘watch’ – an increase in homelessness. You see the syringes all over, a lot of the filth on the streets. I think San Francisco’s a beautiful city and should be restored to its greatness by getting a lot of these nonsense politicians out of the way who look the other way and pretend what they don’t see,” she said.
Conway clarified that the U.S. Supreme Court “did not issue a legal impediment decision” on the citizenship question.
“They basically said come back and give us a different rationale. Why can’t we just ask the question the way it was asked for 50 years before the Obama administration yanked it out of there? We’ve been asking questions like this,” she said.
“The American Community Survey every 5th year asks a similar question, and think of all the questions that nobody complains are included in our U.S. Census every 10 years that include a far, far, far smaller number of Americans or – I would argue – are much more intrusive, invasive and expansive. We’re asking people how many toilets in your house, and you don’t want to know who’s using them?” said Conway.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous, and this is why the president is fighting for its inclusion. Look, this country has said the Census is important. As President Trump has mentioned, we spend about $20 billion and counting on it. We have said it’s an important exercise, so why not get it right. The Census in the past has been increasingly responsive to changes in American demography, and this is an example of that,” she said.
“I would ask the Democrats – I hear they’re screaming rhetoric - but truly, what are you afraid of? Why wouldn’t you want to know who’s a citizen and who’s not a citizen?” Conway asked.
When asked what Conway thought the reason was that Democrats didn’t want the citizenship question included, Conway said, “I don’t think they have a good answer for that.
“Like most things these days, they don’t have a good answer. Look, they’re the same people who said ‘manufactured crisis’ through the ‘manufactured outrage.’ This president stood in front of the whole country and the world in his only Oval Office primetime address to date to take it to the American people and say, we have a humanitarian national security crisis at the border,” she said.
“We need Congress to do a fix on asylum TVPRA Flores, and to give us money for humanitarian aid. They blocked that over a dozen times. They still don’t have an immigration hearing scheduled, which tells you how unserious they are about this big issue,” Conway said.
“It’s risen to the top of the polls as the number 1 issue, and it took them blocking aid so many times to turn around last week, in the last two weeks, and give $4.6 billion in aid. That’s really the president’s request so they capitulated to that, but you know who suffered? The people suffered. Our brave men and women at the Border Protection, this kids who these Democrats pretend they care so much about,” she said.
In what Conway described as a “major meow moment,” she pointed out that Pelosi has criticized four freshmen congresswomen – including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) - who voted against the Democrats’ version of supplemental funding for CBP to house, feed, and care for migrants in detention.
“They block the aid – those four female Democrats that Nancy Pelosi is brushing back - I think they’re all freshman members – a major meow moment – brushing back in a huge catfight, really ridiculing them, and they voted against the Democratic aid package. They preen around, going to these detention centers, going to these places, and saying, oh my God, look what’s happening, and then they vote against $4.6 billion worth of aid, including the Democratic package,” Conway said.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib on why she and other freshmen female members voted against the bill
As CNSNews.com previously reported, one of the freshman female House members who voted against the aid package – Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) – defended her decision, saying, she’s “proud” that she voted against the bill.
“So when I voted against it, when many of us voted against it – several – three I think, four or five of us voted against it, it was because we knew this was not the choice that we needed our country to move forward on. There is a better choice and we’ve seen it in the ‘80s, we need to do better than what we’re doing now at the border.
“I want to bring up that aid package again. In a column in the New York Times this morning the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that you and the three other progressives made yourself irrelevant to the process by voting against the bill. ‘All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,’ she said. ‘But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got,’ ABC’s Martha Raddatz said.
“You know people like us, people like me and [Reps.] Ayanna [Pressley], Ilhan [Omar] and Alexandria [Ocasio-Cortez], we’re reflective of our nation in many ways, but many of us didn’t run to be first of anything, but more people like us have been missing in the halls of Congress,” Tlaib replied.
“More people like us, people of color have been missing in the chamber because most of us – and Ayanna Pressley says it more beautifully, people that are closest to the pain needs to be at the table making these decisions,” she said.
“Guess what? We know what it feels like to be dehumanized. We know what it feels like to be brown and black in this country, and I'll tell you right now, we're not going to stand by and sit idly by and allow brown and dark-skinned children to be ripped away from their parents to be dehumanized,” Tlaib added.