Former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to hit back against recent comments from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which he called "mean" and "really quite vicious."
On Thursday, Trump was arraigned in a Washington, D.C., court on criminal charges stemming from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Jack Smith's investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The former president pleaded not guilty to four charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights, and obstruction of an official proceeding. Trump and his supporters have long attested to his innocence, claiming that all the current criminal investigations against him are efforts to hurt him politically as he runs for president in 2024.
Speaking about the arraignment hearing during a Friday appearance on MSNBC, Pelosi, a Democratic representative for California, said that Trump appeared "very, very, very concerned" in court, likening him to "a scared puppy." A longtime political opponent of Trump's, Pelosi also notably spearheaded the creation of the House select committee to investigate the January 6, 2021, Capital riot, a group whose findings are credited with kickstarting the DOJ's own investigation into the matter.
"I wasn't in the courtroom, of course, but when I saw [Trump] coming out of his car...I saw a scared puppy," Pelosi said. "He looked very, very, very concerned about [his] fate. I didn't see any bravado, or confidence, or anything like that. He knows. He knows the truth: That he lost the election, and now he's got to face the music."
On Sunday, Trump took to his official account on Truth Social, the social media platform he launched after being banned from Twitter at the time, to hit back against Pelosi's MSNBC comments.
"I purposely didn't comment on Nancy Pelosi's very weird story concerning her husband, but now I can because she said something about me, with glee, that was really quite vicious," the former president's post read. "'I saw a scared puppy,' she said, as she watched me on television, like millions of others, that didn't see that. I wasn't 'scared.' Nevertheless, how mean a thing to say! She is a Wicked Witch whose husbands journey from hell starts and finishes with her. She is a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!"
Newsweek reached out to Pelosi's office via email for comment.
In a previous statement provided to Newsweek, a spokesman for Trump provided a dismissive reaction to Pelosi's "scared puppy" comments.
"Is Nancy Pelosi still in congress?" the spokesman wrote. "Nobody's heard from her much these days. I thought she retired."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
