Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesBy MARIAM KHAN, ABC NEWS
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she was giving President Donald Trump a “dose of his own medicine” when she referred to him as “morbidly obese” during a television interview earlier this week.
“I didn’t say anything about the president. I gave him a dose of his own medicine,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday during a news conference on Capitol Hill.
“I was only quoting what doctors had said about him, so I was being factual in a very sympathetic way,” she said.
Pelosi made the original comments on Monday on CNN after Trump admitting to taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, as a preventative measure. The drug has not been proven effective on stemming the spread of the virus or as a treatment.
Trump lashed out at Pelosi on Tuesday over the weight comment, and called her a “sick woman” with “a lot of mental problems.”
Trump and Pelosi have been engaged in a war of words for months now, as the two haven’t spoken to one another since October of last year.
Pelosi, on Wednesday, defended her comments and said Trump has made similar disparaging remarks about women in the past.
“He’s called women one thing or another over time and I thought he thinks that passes off as humor in certain cultures,” Pelosi said.
She went on to blast Trump for being inappropriate.
“You’re asking me about the appropriateness of the actions of this president of the United States? So completely inappropriate in so many ways, that it’s almost a given,” Pelosi said.
“It’s like a child who comes in with mud on their pants … he comes in with doggy-doo on his shoes and everybody who works with him has it on their shoes, too for a very long time to come,” she said.
Pelosi said doctors have previously asked her “what’s the matter with him?”
“Look up the word ‘confabulator,'” Pelosi said. “He just really doesn’t even know what the truth is. And just says anything. And because he says it, then he believes it. But you know what? Forget about him. This is about how we go forward to help save lives.”
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