House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was visibly irritated when a reporter brought up former President George W. Bush and asked whether she thinks Obama is following his lead.
“He’s not relevant right now,” she said at her weekly press briefing Thursday, after a reporter brought up a statement from former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo reported by BuzzFeed Wednesday: “President Obama has adopted the same view of war powers as the Bush administration.”
“Do you agree with that?” the reporter asked.
“No,” she responded, and said Democrats in congress and Obama have taken a narrower view of the scope of the president’s ability to engage in conflict without explicit congressional approval. “How [the Bush administration] interpreted [the Act] and for how long is another issue,” she continued. “But he’s not relevant right now.”
“What we’re talking about right now is ISIS is a threat. We have to work together to destroy them, and that is the subject at hand. I didn’t approve of anything [Bush] said or did when he was in office, much less care about his opinion right now,” she said.
Pelosi tried to move on to another question, but the reporter pressed her: “But you don’t think that President Obama is following his opinion right now?”
“I think the president is following the law,” she stated without looking back at the reporter.