Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she was giving President Donald Trump “a dose of his own medicine” when she described him as “morbidly obese” in a television interview earlier this week.
“I didn’t say anything about the president. I gave him a dose of his own medicine,” Pelosi told reporters in her weekly press conference when asked about her dig at Trump’s weight. “I was only quoting what doctors had said about him and I was being factual in a very sympathetic way.”
Pelosi made the comments in a Monday interview with CNN as she blasted Trump’s decision to take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, in an attempt to ward off coronavirus. The drug, which the president has relentlessly promoted as a coronavirus remedy, has not been proven to have any effect on stemming the spread of the virus.
Pelosi said Monday that it was “not a good idea” to take the controversial drug because it can pose a risk for people with heart conditions and he is “morbidly obese.”
Trump reacted angrily to Pelosi’s swipe at this weight, calling her a “sick woman” with “a lot of mental problems” — the latest chapter in their years-long feud, which has, at times, devolved into trading personal barbs.
Pelosi on Wednesday defended her choice of words, noting that Trump himself has made similar comments — which he “passes off as humor” — about women’s weight throughout his career.
“I said, he’s our president, we don’t want our president taking something that could be dangerous, as the scientists have said,” Pelosi said. “If he takes offense at that, well, I could take offense at a lot of things, but they don’t mean that much to me.”