People recorded Nancy Pelosi and Samuel Alito. The circumstances behind the recordings of the two most prominent Italian-Americans in U.S. public life diverge from that point.
“We have responsibility, Terri,” then-Speaker Pelosi told her chief of staff on Jan. 6, 2021. “We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous. You’re gonna ask me in the middle of the thing, when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff that, ‘Should we call the Capitol Police?’ I mean, ‘the National Guard.’ Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”
🚨 Since January 6, 2021, Nancy Pelosi spent 3+ years and nearly $20 million creating a narrative to blame Donald Trump.
NEW FOOTAGE shows on January 6, Pelosi ADMITTED:
“I take responsibility.”
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/95a0totTWB
— Oversight Subcommittee (@OversightAdmn) June 10, 2024
She privately admits here what her whole party publicly denied in their histrionics surrounding the Capitol Hill riot. She knew enough to bring her documentarian daughter on Jan. 6 — but not to invite the National Guard. She also knew enough not to publicize this video while in House leadership. (READ MORE: ‘No, I Don’t Believe You, and It Isn’t My Fault — It’s Yours’)
As Alexandra Pelosi filmed, she admitted: “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”
More recently, a left-wing activist named Lauren Windsor surreptitiously recorded U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and subsequently shared snippets with the world. Windsor, posing as a conservative Christian, pushed the conversation in her desired direction in expressing doubt about right and left compromising, and instead advocated victory for conservatives.
“I think you’re probably right,” Alito responded. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So, it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
It seems more observation than declaration. The activist making a fuss about Alito’s mundane comments, presumably, does not think progressives should compromise. Her decision to secretly record political enemies for a gotcha moment indicates as much. Alito authoring the Dobbs decision that did not outlaw abortion anywhere (Roe legalized it everywhere) but instead allowed states to choose indicates that he does not believe in riding roughshod over the Constitution to defeat the left. On that abortion question, where does Windsor want to “split the difference” for tranquility’s sake? (READ MORE: Democrats Overreach on the Alito Flag Kerfuffle)
If that does not spotlight her as a hypocrite, then her past outrage over Project Veritas utilizing the same undercover methods she now deploys does.
“James O’Keefe and his minions at Project Veritas infiltrated my office, Democracy Partners, in 2016. We filed a lawsuit in 2017,” Windsor wrote in 2023 before calling him a “scumbag.” Last week, she posed as a member of the religious right at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner in surreptitiously recording various attendees.
The situational ethics on display in the juxtaposition, and in Windsor projecting her own no-quarter mindset on Alito and then feigning indignation, gets to the heart of what animates the left: the ends justify the means. Situational ethics govern. Political difference, not ethical difference, amounts to the scandal for Windsor.
The tale of two recordings tells separate stories. In 2021, Nancy Pelosi allowed her daughter to video her. Last week, Lauren Windsor, a critic of such stings when perpetrated by conservative types, recorded a Supreme Court justice without his knowledge while portraying a false persona. The latter recording received sensationalistic coverage upon its almost immediate release; the former sat suppressed for years and ignored by large swaths of the media upon its delayed release. (READ MORE: November Is Coming and Biden Has Another Border Plan)
In the old country, Alito and Pelosi’s ancestors called this avere due pesi e due misure or a doppio standard. In whatever tongue, it means a rigged game.
