Representative Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California) let her fingers do the talking on Wednesday as she described what’s happening to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican, California).
Pelosi put McCarthy on blast for opening an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, which she said was part of a deal he made with his party’s extremists that forces him to cave to their demands or risk losing the gavel.
“You have to impeach the president or else we’re going to vacate the chair of speaker. You have to shut down government or else we’re going to vacate the chair of speaker,” she said to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “This is not responsible governance, but it’s the chaos on the Republican side.”
Cooper asked if that put McCarthy in an “impossible situation.”
“Yeah,” Pelosi agreed, calling it “the incredibly shrinking speakership.”
As she spoke, she made a gesture of something shrivelling up, or perhaps being crushed:
Pelosi has something of a history of actions speaking louder than words, such as the time she tore up the paper copy of then-President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, and a photo from the Trump White House that shows her literally standing up to him.
See her full interview with Cooper below: