Nancy Pelosi cracks impeachment joke during Knesset visit
The Senate began its second day of the impeachment trial while Pelosi and a bipartisan delegation of six members of the house were in Israel to attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum.
By LAHAV HARKOVSpeaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein share a joke over lunch, January 22, 2020(photo credit: KNESSET PRESS SERVICE/ADINA VALMAN)
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi made a quip about US President Donald Trump’s impeachment in her remarks at a working lunch hosted by Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Wednesday."The Senate is a little bit busy right now,” she quipped, “or else we would have had some of them in our delegation."The Senate began its second day of the impeachment trial while Pelosi and a bipartisan delegation of six members of the house were in Israel to attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum.Edelstein thanked the US for its friendship with Israel in his remarks.“I’m not sure Israel would be what it is if not for our close ties with the US,” the Knesset Speaker said. “Unfortunately, terrible antisemitism still exists and is rearing its head, but our friends in Congress do not only make declarations, they are taking steps to eradicate it.”Edelstein, a former refusenik, recounted that Pelosi took part in protests for his release from the gulag.Pelosi said it is an "unimaginable thrill" for her to meet with Edelstein, "Speaker to Speaker" after having participated in the demonstrations for his freedom.The Speaker of the House touted shared values between the US and Israel and said that supporting Israel is in America's national security interests: "We're not doing you a favor; we are doing each other a collaboration.""So, anyway, whether it’s political, whether it’s economic, whether it’s security-wise, whether it’s friendships and the rest…it’s hard to even imagine two countries that have stronger ties together,” she stated.The other members of Congress in the delegation were Eliot Engel (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-FL), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Joe Wilson (R-SC).
The delegation visited Auschwitz on the way to Israel, which Pelosi said had them "fully, fully immersed in the depth of the seriousness of the occasion."
