Nancy Pelosi’s dumb salon visit during coronavirus pandemic deals blow to credibility
Shame on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for forcing us to agree with Fox News on something.
On Tuesday, Fox released exclusive video of Pelosi visiting a San Francisco salon even though salons in the city were officially closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited a San Francisco hair salon on Monday afternoon for a wash and blow-out, despite local ordinances keeping salons closed amid the coronavirus pandemic,” wrote Brooke Singman of Fox News in a story highlighting Pelosi’s hypocrisy.
It gets worse.
“In security footage obtained by Fox News, and timestamped Monday at 3:08 p.m. Pacific Time, the California powerhouse is seen walking through eSalon in San Francisco with wet hair, and without a mask over her mouth or nose,” wrote Singman.
Pelosi’s apparent violation was caught on camera. Yet her office claims that she thought her indoor shampoo treatment and blow-dry was allowed under local rules.
“The speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements,” a Pelosi spokesman said in a statement, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “This business offered for the speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business. The speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment.”
The Chronicle reported that a spokesman for the San Francisco city attorney’s office “had no immediate comment” on Pelosi’s claim.
Does Pelosi, one of the nation’s most experienced and powerful lawmakers, really expect people to believe she didn’t know she was violating public health rules? Is she so out of touch that she didn’t realize that California salon owners have been protesting against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s necessary shutdown of their industry for months?
San Francisco allowed salons to resume outdoor business on Tuesday, but Pelosi visited the eSalon for an indoor service on Monday.
Erica Kious, who owns the salon, certainly seemed to know the rules. Kious, who apparently leaked the security camera footage, said Pelosi’s blow-dry treatment was a clear violation.
“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,” Kious told Fox.
“We’re supposed to look up to this woman, right? It is just disturbing,” added Kious, who rents a chair out to the stylist who did Pelosi’s hair.
Pelosi’s decision to defy the rules and stroll around a salon sans mask sets a terrible example. Just days ago, Pelosi blasted Trump’s “contempt for science” and criticized him for flagrantly violating public health guidelines during his Republican National Convention speech. Yet science and rules went out the door when she needed her hair done.
Pelosi has handed Trump and Fox terrific ammunition in their quest to depict the COVID-19 pandemic as an overblown hoax perpetuated by Democrats seeking political gain. The idea that this powerful Democratic leader would sneak into a salon for a wash and a blow-dry against public health rules — and during a month when COVID-19 killed 3,745 people in California — is so ridiculous that it seems like some fictional right-wing conspiracy theory spread by Russian misinformation operatives on Facebook.
But it happened.
This seems like a particularly bad time for dumb mistakes. Was Speaker Pelosi’s blow-out worth the blow that the Democratic Party’s credibility just took in the middle of both a deadly pandemic and a high-stakes presidential election?
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Nancy Pelosi’s dumb salon visit during coronavirus pandemic deals blow to credibility."