House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Democrat voters on Saturday that if they support the far-left wing of the party in the primaries, they are setting themselves up to lose to President Donald Trump in the general election.
“I just say to all of our friends, you know, you want to go to the left? You want to win the election? Let’s make a decision to win the election. And when you make a decision to win the election, you have to make every decision in favor of winning,” Pelosi told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “We all understand what is at stake.”
Pelosi called government-run health care “lovely in concept,” but “not a winning message,” and said “this is not going to happen.”
Pelosi has repeatedly tried to push back on the far-left candidates running in the Democrat primary, the two most notable of which are Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi told Bloomberg News in November. “As a left-wing San Francisco liberal I can say to these people: What are you thinking?”
The Daily Wire reported at the time:
Pelosi specifically raised the alarm over socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) proposed $93 trillion “Green New Deal,” which Ocasio-Cortez’s former Cheif-of-Staff Saikat Chakrabarti admitted was about implementing socialism.
“There’s very strong opposition on the labor side to the Green New Deal because it’s like 10 years, no more fossil fuel,” Pelosi continued. “Really?”
Numerous critics have suggested that Pelosi withheld House Democrats’ partisan articles of impeachment from the Senate in an effort to keep Sanders and Warren in Washington, D.C., which keeps them off the campaign trail in Iowa.
Political analyst Ari Fleicher was the first to state that was what Pelosi was doing, writing on Twitter, “Don’t rule out that the reason Pelosi hasn’t sent impeachment to the Senate is to hurt Warren and Sanders, and to help Biden. She knows she has no leverage over Sen. McConnell, but by timing the trial so it takes place during the Iowa lead-up, she has leverage over the liberals.”
President Trump also agreed, writing on Twitter: “They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously. They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial. Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that’s the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to watch!”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo: “This is the dirty little secret nobody is talking about: why the Speaker held these papers. This benefits Joe Biden. This harms Senator Sanders, who is in first place and could become their nominee.”
Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that he also believed that was what Pelosi doing, saying, “I love that they collude against themselves in this way, because the last time they colluded to rig the Democrat primary, it worked out perfectly for us because we got Hillary, and that was a godsend.”