On ABC’s This Week, host Christiane Amanpour asked House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) whether she supported Occupy Wall Street. “I support the message to the establishment — whether it’s Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest — that change has to happen,” Pelosi replied. “We cannot continue in a way that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”
Amanpour then played footage of House majority leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) calling the protesters “mobs.” Pelosi shook her head. “I didn’t hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating — actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol,” she said.
Pelosi also rejected the suggestion that Democrats were engaging in class warfare. Instead, she blamed the dispute on Republicans: “That notion, which I don’t like, is one that came from the other side.” Democrats, she argued, were upholding “the most endearing American value: fairness. It’s about everyone paying their fair share.”
To bolster her case, she invoked the 40th president: “Listen to Ronald Reagan when he talked about how unfair it was for a bus driver to be paying at the same rate as a millionaire. . . . He speaks beautifully to the unfairness of that scenario.”
Watch the interview below.
