Nancy Pelosi: drag is ‘what America is all about’

Cockburn could not be more unnerved. He just happened to catch a clip of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race. Not to be confused with actual drag racing, with cars that blur by quickly, the 100-second-clip, like Pelosi herself, dragged on slowly and painfully. But for once — or twice, this is her second time on the show — Nancy wasn’t the most artificially made-up person in the room.

What Pelosi told the “queens” was also um, something:

My honor to be here, to say to all of you how we proud we are of you. Thank you for the joy and beauty you bring to the world. Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about. I say that all the time to my friends in drag.

In typical Pelosi style, the Speaker looked like she was gritting her teeth through the whole thing. It was clear she was almost (almost) as uncomfortable in the moment as Cockburn was watching the spectacle, a puzzling circumstance for someone who claims to have so many “friends in drag.”

The queens complimented Pelosi on what Entertainment Weekly called her “infamous, condescending round of applause she gave Trump at the end of his 2019 speech.” Someone name Raja said, “We throw the word masterclass around here all the time, but that sarcastic, shady clap you do was f—ing epic.” Pelosi demurred and said her natural sarcastic, shady reaction was natural and “completely unintentional.”

Pelosi then offered this pearl of original wisdom to the drag queens: “The single most important thing I can say is to vote.”

Thanks, Nancy. Cockburn is inspired by your ability to lollygag with men in dresses while Americans struggle to afford gasoline and other basic necessities. But then again, if voting is “the most important thing” Pelosi can say, and so many of her constituents are evidently big fans of drag, maybe it was a smart campaign move for Pelosi to make an appearance on the drag show. The eighty-two-year old shows no signs of slowing down, and she needs to start appealing to her eight-year-old voting base now for the 2032 election cycle.