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In December 2020, Snopes readers asked us to look into remarks made by former Congressman Trey Gowdy during a Fox News discussion about U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and COVID-19 relief. On Dec. 8, the right-wing website Western Journal published an article with the headline Trey Gowdy 'Madder Than Hell' After Pelosi Lets Her True COVID Relief Strategy Slip. The article presented a short excerpt of remarks made by Pelosi during a Dec. 4 news conference and attributed the following response to Gowdy: Those comments, including What she just said makes me madder than hell, were correctly attributed to Gowdy. They can be viewed in full, below: By contrast, Western Journal's presentation of what Pelosi said was lacking, as was that of Fox News. Pelosi was speaking about ongoing Congressional negotiations over both an omnibus spending bill for 2021, and renewed COVID-19 relief, at a Dec. 4 news conference. The remarks quoted in the Fox News segment were as follows: Fox News, Gowdy and Western Journal all misrepresented that brief excerpt — taken from much longer remarks — as an illustration of crass and cynical partisanship on the part of Pelosi that, as Gowdy put it, Because her team won in November, she's going to do something. However, in her full remarks, Pelosi explained that her and other Democrats' renewed optimism about striking deals with their Republican counterparts before the holidays came in part from the impending distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, a development that would in time ease the economic and public health burden on the American people, as well as the incoming presidency of Biden — not merely because of their shared party, but specifically because she saw the president-elect's likely approach to pandemic-related problems as markedly superior to that of outgoing President Donald Trump. During her news conference, Pelosi spoke of a new dynamic surrounding the negotiations, and decried what she characterized as the approach of the outgoing Trump administration to the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic: Specifically, Pelosi also cited her concern about November employment figures, released earlier on Dec. 4, as further indicative of the need for us to crush the virus so the economy can get going. Later, Pelosi was asked by a reporter to clarify what had changed that made her more optimistic about cutting deals with Congressional Republicans. This is the portion of the news conference during which she made the remarks cherry-picked by Fox News and Western Journal. Her full answer provides important context and a proper understanding of her position — which Fox News, Gowdy, and Western Journal denied their viewers and readers by presenting only a few seconds of:
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