House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) daughter, Christine Pelosi, is defending her mother’s decision to rip up President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address amid an ongoing, public feud between the two leaders.
In an interview on Fox News on Thursday, Pelosi’s daughter Christine Pelosi called the gesture of ripping up Trump’s State of the Union address “an Italian grandma move.”
“I think Nancy Pelosi is a wonderful person, I know she prays daily, including for the president, including for the country as we talked before. And in watching her reaction to that speech, I thought to myself, ‘That’s an Italian grandma move.'”
Watch the interview below:
Christine Pelosi continued to defend her mother’s decision to rip up the speech, claiming that there were multiple lies in it, and suggested that she could have made a more dramatic protest.
“Plenty of things would have been worse than that. For example, she could have put his outstretched hand toward her, and she could have refused to shake it. Which surprised when I first watched the speech, I thought, ‘Wait, her hand’s out there, why isn’t he shaking her hand?'”
Christine Pelosi’s comment was a reference to Trump’s apparent snub of the speaker when he appeared to refused to shake her hand at the beginning of the address.
Additionally, she noted even though the two leaders have been engaged in a feud, Trump will “eventually” have to work with Pelosi to get legislation passed through the House.
“He will eventually have to go back to the House of Representatives to make something happen, so we will wait to see what those dynamics are then.”
Her comments come amid an ongoing feud between the two leaders that appears to have begun in October of last year — in the early stages of the impeachment inquiry.
CNN recently reported that Trump has not spoken to Pelosi since a contentious October 16 meeting where the president called her a “third-grade politician.”
That feud was on full display when Trump appeared to refuse to shake Pelosi’s at the beginning of his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
After the speech, Pelosi dramatically ripped up a transcript to signal her disapproval of what was said and “get the attention of the American people to say, this is not true.”
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Trump appeared to take a shot at Pelosi, “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so.”
The two leaders continued to criticize each other during public events throughout the day Thursday, signaling that the feud could drag on for quite some time.