A San Francisco salon owner says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) violated the city’s coronavirus lockdown order to get her hair done.
Security footage taken from the small business and provided to Fox News appears to confirm the salon owner’s allegation, showing the leading House Democrat with wet hair and no mask walking through the shop on Monday. Hair salons across the city were allowed to open for outdoor services only on Monday for the first time since March.
“It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” Erica Kious, owner of eSalon, told Fox News. “We’re supposed to look up to this woman, right? … It is just disturbing.”
LEAKED VIDEO: Nancy Pelosi forces salon to open so she can get her hair done, despite ordinance ordering salons remain closedpic.twitter.com/jN7wtbdWwx
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) September 1, 2020
While salons have been allowed to open in limited capacity, stylists still are “not supposed to blow dry hair” according to coronavirus safety guidelines, Kious said. The government also mandates that masks be worn at all times inside the salon itself.
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill denied the allegations made by the salon owner, telling Fox News that “the speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements.”
Kious’ small business does not employ any workers directly, but rents out chairs to independent stylists. One of the stylists she works with texted her on Sunday that the speaker had requested a hair appointment. Kious’ business was not equipped to perform any appointments outside as mandated by coronavirus regulations, however.
“I was like, are you kidding me right now? Do I let this happen?” Kious thought after receiving the message but noting that she has limited control over the stylists who rent chairs from her.
“We have been shut down for so long, not just me, but most of the small businesses and I just can’t – it’s a feeling – a feeling of being deflated, helpless and honestly beaten down,” Kious said. “I have been fighting for six months for a business that took me 12 years to build to reopen.”
“I am a single mom, I have two small children, and I have no income,” she continued. “The fact that they did this, and she came in, it’s like a slap in the face.”
State-mandated lockdowns have hit small businesses and workers extremely hard since the outbreak of the pandemic in mid-March. Tens of thousands of small businesses have gone under and the unemployment rate nationally measured at just over 10% for the month of July.
Pelosi’s excursion to eSalon appears to be the second miscalculation she has made in as many weeks. On Thursday, she said the Democratic nominee Joe Biden should skip debating President Donald Trump after many pundits and media personalities attempted to cast such concerns as right-wing conspiracies. Pelosi is the most senior Democratic leader to suggest that Biden skip the debates.
“I myself — don’t tell anybody I told you this, especially don’t tell Joe Biden — I don’t think that there should be any debates. I do not think that the President of the United States has comported himself in a way that anybody that has any association with truth, evidence, data, and facts,” Pelosi said during a press conference. “I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States.”
This article has been expanded after publication to include additional information.