Social media users share a video of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, talking about a “wrap-up smear” tactic and claiming that it is proof that she or other Democrats used this tactic. The video was misleadingly cut to exclude Pelosi, saying she blames the Republicans for using this tactic.
Examples can be seen here, here and here.
One description of this video (here) reads: “The Speaker of the House tells how she and fellow Democrats use a technique called ‘Wrap Up Smear’ to demonize competitors. ‘
The video comes from a weekly briefing Pelosi held on June 22, 2017 while she was a minority leader. The full video can be seen here on C-SPAN.
While discussing negative television commercials against her, Pelosi is asked by a reporter to see at 25:55 whether it is “worth trying to rehabilitate your image in some of these Republican districts” as an attempt to get people ‘s image of her.
Pelosi responds that she has been told that she should spend money to show her achievements, but she wants other representatives to introduce themselves. She says that “at the end of the day, it’s what people are interested in, their representative and what their representative is going to do for their district.”
Pelosi continues: ‘Republicans are afraid of the contrast in a race. Because they go there to get involved in the fraudulent economy, the closure of hospitals and the rest of it. So they do not want them [constituents] to see that contrast so that they focus on something else. ”
At time stamp 26:51 she continues: “And this is a diversionary tactic. This is a self-fulfilling prof (ecy). You demonize – we call it the wrap-up smear. If you want to talk politics. We call it the wrap-up smear. You smear someone with lies and all the others, then you sell it and then you write it and they will say, it’s reported in the press that it, this, this and that, so they have the validity that the press reported the smear and then it is called a wrap-up smear. Now I’m going to sell the press report on the grease we made. This is a tactic. ”
Pelosi talks about a diversionary tactic she attributes to Republicans. She does not say that this democratic tactic is used and also does not acknowledge betrayal, as social media claims.
The out-of-context video was also unveiled in 2018 by FactCheck.org and Snopes when it was circulated around the time of Brett Kavanaugh’s trial on Supreme Court nomination (here, here).
VERDICT
Untrue. House President Nancy Pelosi did not say that she or the Democrats used the “wrap-up smear” tactics in a press briefing.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.