“[H]e’s just a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth.”
—-Former Speaker of the House, current House member and Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi, describing Donald Trump and doing her part to amplify hateful partisan rhetoric and point the public toward from political violence.
Pelosi was even challenged on the assertion that the President of the United States is “the worst thing on earth”during her interview with CNN’s Elex Michaelson last night. “You think he’s the worst thing on the face of the Earth?” Michaelson asked incredulously. Worse than war, cancer, child rape, ebola, cannibalism, terrorism, “Fear Factor,” pineapple on pizza and Sydney Sweeney?
“I do, yeah, I do,” Pelosi, who is a disgrace, responded, doubling down. “Because he’s the President of the United States, and he does not honor the Constitution of the United States. In fact, he’s turned the Supreme Court into a rogue court. He’s abolished the House of Representatives. He’s chilled the press.”
Why, says Nancy, the President has chilled the press so much that CNN broadcasts disgusting and denigrating hyperbole by his political foes! (Did you know that Donald Trump lies all the time?)
Does Pelosi’s epic disrespect and irresponsible invective even need to be criticized here? Isn’t it a case of res ipsa loquitur? Trump has been excoriated in the past by Pelosi’s party. in which she is still, embarrassingly for them, considered a leader, for calling murderous illegal immigrants “animals.” After all, the term “dehumanizes” them. Now Pelosi goes on TV and dehumanizes the President of the United States, describing him as a “creature” and a “thing” without any hesitation.
Jonathan Turley has been obsessed with the expressions of hate and rage coming from the Left lately. True, he has a book to plug, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” but he is still reacting to a real phenomenon that Democrats like Pelosi are deliberately cultivating.
Today Virginians might elect a Democratic Attorney General who repeatedly wished for the deaths of not only a Republican adversary, but his two young children as well. It’s going to be close. Turley writes in his latest update on violent and hateful rhetoric,
We have seen a rise in both rage rhetoric and political violence. New polling shows a shocking level of support for political violence, even after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. A new poll shows roughly a quarter of voters believe political violence is justified with the highest percentage among younger voters. The poll shows that 55 percent of Americans expect political violence to increase with the highest percentage among Harris voters at 61 percent. Younger Americans are the most supportive of political violence. The poll shows that one in three Americans under 45 years old believes that political violence is justified.The rise in support for political violence comes at a time when politicians are increasingly engaging in violent or rage rhetoric. DNC Chair Ken Martin just told MSNBC’s “The Beat” that “we may be nearing” the moment when “elections don’t matter and then the resistance looks completely different.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on people to “forcefully rise up.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who pictures himself brandishing a baseball bat has previously called upon people to “fight in the streets.” California Governor Gavin Newsom previously declared, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.” Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger called upon her supporters to “Let your rage fuel you.” She then refused to withdraw her support for the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Jay Jones, who once expressed his desire to kill his political opponents and his children. In his podcast with co-host Al Hunt, James Carville was again spewing unhinged hate. He returned to treating Trump and others as Nazis and their supporters as “collaborators.”
Note that all of the hate-spewing figures Turley quotes are all Democrats, the same party that ran its 2024 campaign on the assertion that Donald Trump was the equivalent of Hitler, that Republicans were fascists, and that together they would “end democracy.” Coincidentally Trump was spared assassination only by moral luck, and prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking on a college campus.
I am not seeing any consequences for progressives and Democrats for the dark and murderous culture they are promoting—deliberately promoting. The politicizing of partisan hate will not stop until the public rejects the hatemongers and teaches them that their words and conduct are not acceptable in civic discourse.
Ethics Alarms 
We will see late this night or else tomorrow if Virginia rejects the hatemongers and teaches the Democrats that violent rhetoric about killing children is not acceptable in public discourse. If not, how close is the United States to civil war?
Where is StevevinNJ?
I had dinner with him just a few weeks ago.
Steve-O is still very much alive, although I have been pretty quiet lately for various reasons including frankly drained energy, but I’m aware of all of this. This isn’t really anything new, I remember us talking about all of this at some length in 2017 in a very similar setting. It was that year that statue toppling first to came a thing, briefly. It was also that year that a crazed Bernie’s supporter attempted to assassinate multiple Republican congressman at a baseball practice, severely injuring Steven Scalise, who is lucky he is not dead today.
In fact there were those in the wake of his shooting who said it was a great thing, although even the Democratic party had enough sense to reject that. I also remind everyone here that the 2018 kavanaugh hearings were not exactly peaceful, with a lot of disruptive behavior and even some attempts to storm the supreme Court building although good luck getting through those bronze doors. Let’s also not forget Trump’s inauguration and the occasional uptick of violence from that group that supposedly doesn’t exist. Then comes 20/20 and the mostly peaceful summer during which black lives matter and a few other groups became a de facto militia for the left. After that comes last summer and not one but two attempts to assassinate then candidate Trump. It was not for nothing that someone, probably not biden, ordered full presidential security for Trump as soon as it looked like he was going to win. Oh yes, let’s not also forget the threats of violence that came after the Dobbs decision. Although most of that failed to materialize, there was at least one man arrested who actually was armed and in the area intending to kill one of the justices. I also don’t think it was cold or cowardice that made them move the inauguration indoors this past January.
Here’s the thing, even when all of this is part of the public record for anyone who cares to look, the Democratic party wants us to forget all of this and think that the only act of political violence that is of any consequence is January 6th. That is the one and only act of political violence that was unjustified. Everything else was fully justified because Donald Trump is Hitler or something like that.
You are absolutely right about this, Steve. I was just thinking about this last night. January 6, 2021 is their answer to every accusation.
I will never forget what Jack wrote about this.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2021/01/06/ethics-observations-on-the-pro-trump-rioting-at-the-capitol/
I wonder if it is “ok” for her to demean him because of sexist double standards which attribute weakness and thus lack of significance to women’s perspectives.
It has been said when someone insults you, receive it as a confession.
No one who has paid any attention to politics over the past several decades, and especially the past decade, should be surprised at the spewing of hatred from the left and the right. A large portion of the electorate has supported a person (I can’t call him a man) who is grievously deficient in intellect and character.
In physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In politics, the reaction all too often is far beyond equal. Thus, a president who has spewed hatred from well before his first election, and one who has continued that with abandon, has of course engendered more and more of the same.
A person on this site, knowledgeable of presidents, has displayed what F. Scott Fitzgerald described as a first rate intelligence – “… the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”. How else to explain what one day is Trump as dunce and the next day refuting an attack on that dunceness as TDS?
I don’t think I need to review all of Trump’s statements about immigrants for readers here, but, one is telling: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.” And now, when Pelosi accurately describes the character deficiencies of Trump, she’s a dunce? Why? Because she failed to note that Trump has done some good things?
Spare me the agony. He has shown time and again he is not fit to be president. But, we elected him and we must tolerate him for now. But, that does not mean we need to disavow his faults nor lose sleep over anti-Trump hyperbole.
““They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
Oh, but Johnny, to single out that line as a typical example of Trump’s Awfulness is disingenuous. That line has been used as a Democratic Party Talking Point for years. In context, Trump was talking about illegal immigrants, not all immigrants. But, since the Left has redefined the word “immigrant” to mean all immigrants whether in the country legally or not in order to confuse discourse, his statement is seen as prima facie proof that he is a bigot.
Trump is a sloppy speaker, no question about it. I have lamented his stream-of-consciousness method of communication many times and will continue to do so.
But that statement is not evidence that he is bigoted against immigrants. This is his full statement: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
In context, this can be translated to read “People who come through our border with Mexico in violation of our immigration laws are not always moral, upstanding, hardworking people like some of you here are. Some of them have serious problems that they bring into the country with them. Some of them traffic in drugs. Some of them commit violent crimes, such as rape. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Since I know you cannot be seriously arguing that not a single person who has come across our border in the last ten years has smuggled drugs or committed a serious crime (such as rape or murder) after arriving here, how can Trump’s statement above be considered proof of his attitude about immigrants as a whole?
Yeah, I’m surprised at HJ, and thanks for the comment, because I’m been writing about that as an example of how Trump has been deliberately misquoted by the Axis, and how the public (Et tu, HJ?) swallowed the lies.
The only thing wrong with that line by Trump was that he should said, ‘they bring disease.’
My reply disappeared instantly when I tried to post. I will not bother re-writing it.
That happens to me, too. Sometimes, I refresh and the comment appears. Other times, it goes to spam.
That’s mighty convenient. There is no possible response that qualifies as a defense. The statement you quoted is ten years old, has been dishonestly cited as Trump’s denigration of “immigrants” by unethical critics of Trump, and has been thoroughly debunked. Talk about “signature significance.” Similarly, although EA has explained many, many times that the Dunce and Hero Designations are specific to particular statements and events rather than general verdicts, you deliberately misrepresented them in your subsequent comment. Bite me. That’s bad faith commenting.
Ethics Villain, on the other hand, like Ethics Hero Emeritus, is a general designation.
Try to keep up.
We all know the track record of illegal aliens.
https://x.com/BillMelugin_/status/1984375689836101752
And of Trump (for those not blinkered), but, apparently I have not divined the difference between cherry-picking and signature significance. I do know that evil-speak can be interpreted as sloppy-talk, inasmuch as both beauty and ugliness are in the mind of the beholder.
The difference is one one hand, a statement or conduct that is literally something an individual who isn’t conclusively possessed of a particular undesirable (or desirable) characteristic would never do, and a statement or instance of conduct that is not so damning, but is highlighted without context so an unreliable analysts can pretend it is so. And for the most part, they are usually not so hard to distinguish “by the unblinkered.”
It is handy to have someone to translate Trump’s statements for us. I am reminded of my predecessor in a public affairs job in Germany — he had the ‘honor’ of interpreting a statement by a 3-star general who said those who become pregnant in the military “should abort or get out”. He began that interpretation of an entirely clear statement by saying, “What the general meant to say … .”
Likewise, Trump’s statements need no interpretation; his meaning is clear.
And, a ‘debunked’ statement from well in the past? Cherry-picked? Or, part of a pattern of an on-going denigration of fellow human beings. “Some, I believe, are good people.” Yeah, right. Let me just pick a few more cherries out of that rotten orchard.
Under Border Czar Harris, our communities are being ravaged by migrant crime.
[South American countries are] emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America.
[Democrats] want sanctuary cities, which means crime and drugs and death.
Do you want to hear ‘The Snake?’…This was an old song that I revised… Think of it as the people that we’re letting in.
They’ve taken the jobs of African Americans and Hispanics, and that was obvious to me.
The people that came in, they’re eating the cats… They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.
On top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they’re coming in and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions.
They allowed criminals. Many, many, millions of criminals. They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country, and they’re now in the United States.
See EC’s recent comment about what “the answer is clear” means as often as not.
The statement you unethically featured to mean what it did not was not “denigrating” human beings, but pointing out what is dangerous and unacceptable about policies that let people from other countries decide whether they should be allowed to come here rather than this country’s government. I think Trump was being generous and irrelevant with his “some of them are good people” coda. From national policy perspective, anyone who comes here in knowing violation of U.S. laws is a law-breaker, and as a nation and a culture we cannot accept law breaking as “good.” It’s irrelevant whether a law breaker is a “good person.” That’s how people rationalize all sorts of bad conduct. And that’s what progressive ethics rot has inflicted on the law, juries and the judiciary.
Our government, and therefore we the people, accept a lot of unlawful behavior when it suits our political purposes, whether it be the so-called sanctuary cities or the mass pardon of J6 rioters (some of whom I assume were good people just peacefully protesting). The ethical rot is on both sides.
The best thing Trump could do, now that he has secured the border and we do not have millions of criminals coming in, would be to establish both a generous immigration policy and an amnesty program for those who were enticed into the country by our government, who have been the country for at least a couple of years, and who have shown themselves to be law-abiding and productive. If Carter could issue a blanket pardon for draft-dodgers to come back across the border, then Trump can do it for border-dodgers. It would drive both the right and left crazy, not a bad thing — the right because it would fly in the face of their demand for American cultural purity (whatever in the hell that is) and the left because Trump would build upon his growing appeal among Hispanics and other minorities.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): It’ll sound like I’m awful about Trump because he’s just a vile creature. The worst thing on the face of the earth, but anyway.
CNN HOST: You think he’s the worst thing on the face of the earth?
PELOSI: I do, yeah. I do. Because he’s the President of the United States and he does not honor the Constitution of the United States.
BAIER: A vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the earth. Do you stand by what your mentor, Congresswoman Pelosi, said about the President?
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita Pelosi, is a legendary figure, a hero. She’s done so much for so many, over so many years. She speaks powerfully. She speaks authentically. She speaks eloquently on issues of importance to the American people.
BAIER: Even in that moment?
JEFFRIES: As I indicated, Nancy Pelosi is a legend. She has done more for people here in this country than almost every single American who has served in the House of Representatives. She’s a force of nature. She’s made a difference in the lives of millions of people. And it’s been an honor and a privilege to serve with her over these years that I’ve spent in Congress.
Wow.