Nancy Pelosi calls George Floyd's death a 'public assassination'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called George Floyd’s death a ‘public assassination,’ speaking about officer Derek Chauvin’s trial from Capitol Hill Tuesday. 

Pelosi told USA Today she hasn’t watched the full trial, but has kept up with developments via news accounts. 

‘I feel sad about the spectators, and that that young woman who said she’s up all night because she wonders what she could have done differently,’ Pelosi said. ‘I think if any of us was there, we would have gone up and just pulled him off,’ she said of Chauvin, who is facing both murder and manslaughter charges.  

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called George Floyd’s death a ‘public assassination’ in an interview conducted Tuesday by USA Today 

‘I think if any of us was there, we would have gone up and just pulled him off,’ Pelosi said of Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes 

She added, ‘But we might have gotten shot, and that’s probably why somebody didn’t pull him off.’ 

Throughout the sit-down with USA Today’s Susan Page – who has written a biography about Pelosi that comes out later this month – and Ledyard King, the House speaker talked about how she has deep respect for law enforcement. 

She added, however, ‘that isn’t a license to kill. And that’s what happened.’ 

‘That was a public assassination of George Floyd,’ she said. 

Pelosi, like President Joe Biden, has backed the House-passed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which implements some federal policing reforms.  

‘I was raised in a family where, be true to the men in blue – police and fire. They save our lives. They risk their lives. They leave home. They don’t know if they’re coming home. Their families make sacrifices for our safety,’ she said. ‘So I have a respect for that as I do for our people here.’ 

Pelosi argued that officers could benefit from better training, something the George Floyd act would provide. 

She pointed to the Sunday police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright outside of Minneapolis. 

‘How could it be that violence of that kind is such an early resort for some of these police officers?’ she said. ‘There just has to be some better training.’  

Pelosi’s interview with USA Today came the same day that she attended a memorial service for Capitol Police officer Billy Evans, who was killed on April 2 when a man rammed him before slamming a car into a Capitol barricade. 

Pelosi said Evans was a ‘martyr for our democracy.’ 

She doesn’t back the progressive wing of her party’s cry to ‘defund the police.’ 

‘Forget that. That has no place,’ the speaker said. 

‘Safety is essential to everyone’s life. But I find the [Chauvin] trial so disappointing,’ she continued. ‘And maybe my disappointment springs from my expectation that these are our protectors.’  

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is currently sitting in the Senate without enough votes to pass. 

Negotiations are ongoing, as White House press secretary Jen Psaski said Tuesday, between lawmakers like Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who introduced his own police reform bill after Floyd’s Memorial Day death.