FACT CHECK: Viral Video Claims To Show Nancy Pelosi Slurring Her Speech

Elias Atienza | Senior Reporter

A video shared on Facebook claims to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words during a May press conference.

Verdict: False

The manipulated video has been slowed down to make it seem like Pelosi slurred her words. Unaltered video shows she did not.

Fact Check:

The video, shared over 93,000 times, shows Pelosi sipping water and then answering a question at a May 20 press conference, appearing to slur her words. A graphic at the end of the video suggests it originated on video-sharing app TikTok.

“This is unbelievable,” reads the text accompanying the Facebook video. “She is blowed out of her mind, I bet this gets taken down!” (RELATED: No, Nancy Pelosi Was Not Removed From The House Floor For Drunkenly Cursing At Republican Colleagues)

The Daily Caller reviewed C-SPAN and PBS NewsHour footage of the press conference and found that the viral video has been significantly slowed down to make Pelosi sound like her speech is slurred. In the unaltered footage, Pelosi does not slur her words when answering a question about President Donald Trump suggesting without evidence on Twitter that MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough was linked to the 2001 death of one of his aides.

It also appears to splice together portions of her answer. A TikTok spokesperson said the platform removed the video, which garnered 37,000 views, for violating its “synthetic media policy,” CNN reported.

Similarly manipulated videos of Pelosi previously circulated on social media platforms in 2019. In response to those videos, her daughter, Christine, tweeted in May 2019 that the House Speaker “doesn’t even drink alcohol!”

Pelosi’s office has told other fact-checkers since at least 2010 that she doesn’t drink.

Elias Atienza

Senior Reporter
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