When asked about her reaction to newly sworn-in Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-Mich.) vow to take on President Trump by impeaching “the motherf—er,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she is not in the business of censoring lawmakers.
“I probably have a generational reaction to it, but in any event, I’m not in the censorship business,” Pelosi said in an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Friday.
“I don’t like that language. I wouldn’t use that language,” Pelosi added, but insisted that she doesn’t “establish any language standards for my colleagues.”
{mosads}“But I don’t think it’s anything worse than what the president has said,” she said
Reid pressed Pelosi over whether she is concerned about the perception of an incoming Democrat coming into office with talk of impeaching Trump and how his base may react to it.
“Well, you have to weight the equities,” Pelosi responded. “That is not the position of the House Democratic Caucus.”
“The equity to be weighed is that’s freedom of speech of an individual member,” she continued. “As I said, generationally, that would not be language I would use. But, nonetheless, I don’t think we should make a big deal of it, I really don’t.”
On the first day of the new Democratic-controlled Congress, Tlaib called for Trump to be impeached and was captured in a now-viral video telling a crowd of supporters, “We’re going to go in and impeach the motherf—er.”
Earlier on Thursday, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) introduced articles of impeachment against Trump.
Pelosi has since repeatedly sought to dismiss talk of impeachment among other members of her party and said in an interview on Thursday that she has no intention to seek grounds for impeaching Trump unless the effort is “clearly bipartisan.”