Video shows “Pelosi CRIES LIKE KID after McCarthy kicked her out as speaker.”
Nancy Pelosi ‘cries like kid’? No. Viral video’s caption is clickbait
If your time is short
- This viral video doesn’t show former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crying.
A Facebook post’s claim that a video shows former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crying like a “kid” went viral, but was just clickbait.
“Pelosi CRIES LIKE KID after McCarthy kicked her out as speaker,” reads the caption on the May 16 video. By late afternoon May 18, the 16-minute video had at least 21,000 views and more than 1,600 reactions.
However, that’s not what the video shows.
The video was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The video is from November 2022, when the GOP won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Pelosi, D-Calif.,stepped down as speaker and the House voted for new leadership.
But Pelosi was not shown in the video at all, much less crying.
The video showed a Nov. 15 House Republicans press conference after the party nominated then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to become the next House speaker.
In the video, House GOP members introduced themselves and their new roles, including chair of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., conference secretary. McCarthy then took reporters’ questions.
McCarthy referred to Pelosi only twice in the excerpted footage. When answering a reporter’s question about receiving enough votes to become speaker, McCarthy cited as precedent the number of votes Pelosi and former Speaker Paul Ryan got during their tenures. He mentioned Pelosi again when stating, “The House is going to change.”
“No longer is all the power going to rest the way Nancy had it. No more proxy voting. Bills will actually go through committees. They will be debated before they come to the floor and people will actually have a say. Why? Because you, the American public, have lent your voice to every single member, and you have a right for your voice to be heard and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” he said.
Although Pelosi lost her role as speaker, she won reelection to Congress.
As for the Facebook video itself, the claim that it shows Pelosi crying like a kid is Pants on Fire!
Our Sources
Facebook video, May 16, 2023
C-SPAN, House Republicans on Leadership Elections, Nov. 15, 2022
CBS News, Kevin McCarthy wins speaker race after a grueling 4 days and 15 rounds of voting, Jan. 7, 2023
C-SPAN Twitter post, Jan. 6, 2023
