Nancy Pelosi Doesn't Drink

What struck me about her husband Paul's DUI arrest over the weekend was the episode in the 2020 election campaign where pro-Trump pranksters put up a slowed version of one of her appearances that made her sound drunk. The response of the fact checkers was to say the speaker doesn't drink:

We requested an interview with Pelosi for this story. Her office declined, but spokesman Drew Hammill told us in an email that the speaker doesn’t drink. (Pelosi’s office told us she doesn’t drink for a similar fact-check in 2010.)

That lines up with what others have said about Pelosi over the years. After a manipulated video of the speaker slurring her words went viral on social media in May 2019, her daughter, Christine Pelosi, tweeted a rebuttal.

“Republicans and their conservative allies have been pumping this despicable fake meme for years! Now they are caught,” she said. “#FactCheck: Madam Speaker doesn’t even drink alcohol!”

At the time, my reaction was, "The Pelosis own a winery, and she doesn't drink?" But I set that aside. In preparing this post, I did a web search for images of the speaker drinking wine, or at least what appeared to be wine, and they weren't hard to find. In the photo at left, the others are holding smallish champagne flutes for a toast, but the speaker is holding a big wine glass, and it's pretty darn full, just like the one at the top of the post. A couple of full glasses that size, and my wife and I would be on the floor.

As I say, it sure looks like wine to me, although it could certainly be non-alcoholic, but I don't see that as part of the speaker's style.

The UK Daily Mail reported,

One vineyard owner who lives nearby told DailyMail.com the couple often block the road with their convoy of blacked-out SUVs when they come to town, but that they didn't seen [sic] anything this weekend.

. . . 'I wouldn't be going to the kinds of fundraisers and parties they go to.

'I don't like them very much or find them very interesting,' the vineyard owner said.

Big parties and fundraisers at their vineyard, and maybe she drinks non-alcoholic wine. That's hard for me to believe. Another interesting question is the timeline of the arrest:

For some reason that hasn’t been fully explained yet, it took law enforcement officers more than four hours to book him after he was arrested. He wasn’t booked until 4:13 a.m. Was he resisting a breathalyzer? Causing a problem? Were they debating whether or not to charge him? It’s not clear. And if he was still blowing more than 0.08 after that time, what was he like at the time of the crash? He was released about three hours after he was booked on $5000 bail.

For those who used to watch Live PD, DUI arrests were a common subject, and they were pretty straightforward: the subject is asked to take a field sobriety test, which he either fails or he refuses to take. He is then arrested, placed in the back seat of a police unit, and taken to the station, where he's booked within a fairly short time. (DUI attorneys advise people in that situation to demand a blood test at the station rather than a breath test in the field, simply because this will take more time and allow the body to lower the BAC, but of course, there are limits to how much help this can provide.)

I assume there is both body and dash cam footage of this incident. I would also guess that the officers immediately were asked, "Do you know who I am?" and much of the four-hour interval between the arrest and booking was taken up with calls among Pelosi fixers and authorities at the county, state, and federal level, but I would also guess that whatever Mr Pelosi blew, it was so outrageously high that there was no covering it up.

As at least one commentator suggested, for the guy to be doing this at age 82 suggests he'd been drinking at this level all his life. As Glenn Reynolds put it, "In Paul’s defense, if I were married to Nancy I’d drink heavily too."

I'm inclined to say stay tuned. It shouldn't be that hard to get the body and dash cam footage.

Meanwhile, remember that the speaker does not drink alcohol.