Nancy Pelosi tells Republicans they look miserable

Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi told Republicans on the House floor on Wednesday that they looked “miserable” and said they had turned the room into a “puppet show” at the behest of former President Donald Trump.

Pelosi was the last Democrat to speak during the afternoon’s debate on whether California Democratic Representative Adam Schiff should be convicted for his role in the House Russia investigation into Trump.

A similar move against Schiff, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who was pushed from the panel earlier this year by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, failed in the House last week.

“Today we’re on the floor of the house where the other side turned this room — where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and Social Security and everything were instituted — they turned it into a puppet show,” Pelosi said. “A puppet show.”

‘And you know what?’ continued the 83-year-old legislator. “The puppeteer, Donald Trump, shines a light on the strings.”

“You look miserable. You look miserable,” she addressed her colleagues across the aisle.

Pelosi then joked that she was glad House Republicans were paying attention to the matter.

“The only benefit of all this is that instead of reverting what we have on the [Inflation Reduction Act] to save the planet, or to reverse what we’ve done to lower the cost of prescription drugs, you’re wasting your time,” she told her GOP colleagues.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, an acolyte of Trump, has spearheaded the effort to censor Schiff, who is running for the U.S. Senate in California.

While the attempt failed last week, several Republicans indicated they would vote in favor of the resolution after removing a provision that would fine Schiff $16 million if the House Ethics Committee finds he lied.

Luna then spoke on the floor of the house, pooh-poohing what Pelosi had just said.

“Again, I’d like to say this isn’t about Donald Trump,” Luna protested.

“This is about holding accountable for someone who abused his official position, had access to information that most members of Congress don’t have access to. And returning the responsibility to the American people — so no matter what the lady from California says, or whoever, you are not being honest about the focus of this resolution and this censure,” the 34-year-old lawmaker added.

The resolution says Schiff held positions of power during the Trump administration and “abused this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.”

“By repeatedly telling these untruths, Representative Schiff has deliberately misled his committee, Congress and the American people,” the statement said.

House Republicans, led by Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, initially launched an investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia in 2017 with the Justice Department.

The DOJ investigation was turned over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, as Trump’s first Attorney General Jeff Sessions had withdrawn from the case due to his work on the then-President’s 2016 campaign.

The Mueller report found “numerous ties between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” but failed to legally prove that there was a “conspiracy” between the two entities.

In addition, the DOJ has not recommended criminal charges.

Schiff’s involvement put him on Trump’s radar and earned him the nicknames “little pencil neck” and “smart Schiff.”

Later in the Trump administration, Schiff was the lead prosecutor during the first impeachment of the Republican president.

On Wednesday, Schiff was defiant.

“To my Republican colleagues who introduced this resolution, thank you. You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this untruth,” Schiff said on the House floor Wednesday. “You, who are the authors of a big lie about the last election, must condemn the truth-tellers, and I stand before you with pride.”

Schiff shamed McCarthy for spending the past two weeks on the resolution instead of dealing with homelessness or opioid addiction, calling it a “hollow suds for the MAGA mob” and “little political payback”.

‘I won’t budge. Not an inch,” Schiff said.