Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it was “sick” for former President Trump to crack jokes about the violent attack in 2022 on her husband, Paul Pelosi, following Trump’s comments on the campaign trail last week.
While campaigning in North Carolina on Friday, Trump said liberals “force anarchy” on Americans while living behind the safety of walls around their own homes.
“Nancy Pelosi has a big wall wrapped around her house. Of course, it didn’t help too much with the problem she had, did it?” Trump quipped, in apparent reference to the attack on Paul Pelosi.
“We don’t have a wall around our house,” Pelosi said in an interview on ABC’s “The View” on Monday. “He’s always projecting. He probably has a wall around his house. We don’t have one around our house.”
“To make a joke of that, and then they laughed at that, so that the trauma of it all is not just the physical, but the impact of the rest of it,” Pelosi said.
In October 2022, an intruder named David DePape entered the Pelosis’ San Francisco home looking for the former Speaker, who was on the East Coast at the time. When police arrived, the DePape hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer at least three times, causing a skull fracture and other serious injuries.
The longtime House Democrat said her husband is now “doing okay” and is “coming along, a little more time.” She added, however, that the lasting trauma extends beyond the physical injuries.
“Getting hit on the head, three times, is a horrible thing, and that was physical,” Pelosi said. “But the traumatic effect for him, for us, for the family, but also for other political families as well, to just families in America – violence has no place in any resolution of any discussion you may have.”
She also noted how Trump and his allies quickly started mocking the attack after it happened. Figures from Donald Trump Jr. to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) joked about the attack, though Youngkin later sent Pelosi a hand-written apology.
“It was horrible when it happened, horrible. We didn’t even know if he was alive when we first heard about the attack, but before you could even say anything, your friend who shall remain nameless,” Pelosi said, referring to Trump, “he was on there, making a joke of it.”
“And people were laughing, and his family was making a joke, a Republican governor making jokes and that, that’s just horrible. It’s sick. It’s really sick,” she continued.
DePape was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempted murder over the attack. During the trial, the defense argued that while DePape attacked Pelosi, he believed “with every ounce of his being” that his actions would stop government corruption.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung dismissed Pelosi’s criticism in an email to The Hill.
“Nancy Pelosi has no idea what she is talking about and has been proven to be a liar and fraud,” they said, mocking her “Speaker Emerita” title. “If she isn’t busy giving herself fake titles to make herself feel better, she’s peddling fake news because it’s the only thing she’s ever done.”