Since well before Democratic President Joe Biden was sworn into office, there have been significant rumors that he has early-onset dementia or something similar. He’s constantly forgetting people’s names, where he is, or royally messing up his wording.
But it would seem that he’s not the only aging Democrat in office we should be worried about.
Enter Democratic House Speaker and Californian Representative Nancy Pelosi.
While the 81-year-old legislator has been increasingly slower and less competent over the years, she really showed her age on Thursday when she took the stage for her weekly news conference. Up for discussion was a recent bill introduced by Florida Republican Marco Rubio and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, that pushes to hold China accountable for its numerous human rights abuses.
Unsurprisingly, Pelosi isn’t all that fond of the measure and instead prefers one sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat and Representative Jim McGovern. And so she said as much, or at least, that’s what we think she meant.
When asked by a reporter about the bills, she responded that she took “second place to no one in the Congress in my criticism of Chin’s human rights record.” But when she tried to explain herself further, things got a bit messy, to say the least…
“We have a bill in the House. It’s the McGovern bill. It’s a stronger bill, uh, than the, uh, the — it is, it’s, a bill that we could have freestanding or a bill that is in the EAGLE Act, that is part of the, um, the, um, Mr. — Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Kendrick Meeks — no, Gregory Meeks’ bill. Kendrick — we’re all very sad about losing Carrie Meek this week, so I referenced her son.”
Um, sorry. What was that?
Far as we can tell, Pelosi got a bit mixed up with her “Meeks.” If you aren’t aware, former Representative and longtime Florida Democrat Carrie Meek died this past Sunday. Meek’s son, Kendrick Meek, was also in politics and even took her House seat for a number of years. However, his last year in the House was 2010.
Since then, another representative with a similar name, Gregory Meeks (not to be confused with Meek), was added to the House. Meeks currently serves as the chairman for the House’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, which obviously would have some say in any bill that would seek to hold China accountable, such as the EAGLE act Pelosi mentioned.
Now, I can see that someone might get confused with the names a bit here for a second. They are rather similar, after all. However, Pelosi is supposed to be the highest-ranking legislature in the entire country. And she’s personally worked with each person she mentioned here. So getting one confused with the other is simply disturbing, especially considering one of them is dead, and another hasn’t been in Congress for over a decade.
To say that the whole thing was a bit troubling is a rather large understatement.
But that wasn’t the end of her dementia-induced rant.
She went on to say, “But chairman Meeks’ bill in the, um, in the House — so we will have that, but you see, in a defense — in a bill, whether it’s in the — whatever that thing’s called that they have in the Senate — or in a DOD bill, the Senate does not have the right to have a revenue or an appropriations matter.”
“Whatever that thing is called?”
Understandably, social media users everywhere had their concerns and voiced them.
I mean, this is the person who’s third in the line of succession for the presidency, behind only Vice President Kamala Harris. And yet, she’s stumbling over her words, getting people, documents, and bills confused with each other, and completely forgetting the names of others.
Sure, it’s not quite what we have gotten used to seeing from Biden as of late, but I’m pretty sure at this point, it’s a very close second.
And some people wonder why our economy and government are falling apart in record fashion…