House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday visited a San Francisco hair salon that has been shuttered for months by coronavirus lockdown orders.
The video: Security footage published by Fox News on Tuesday shows Pelosi walking through eSalon on Monday afternoon with wet hair.
- The California Democrat appears to be wearing a salon robe and no face mask, though something hangs around her neck.
The story: Salon owner Erica Kious told Fox News Pelosi’s visit was a “slap in the face.”
- “It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” she said.
- “We’re supposed to look up to this woman, right? It’s disturbing,” added Kious, a single mom who said her business was closing permanently after months of hardship due to the lockdown.
- Kious said an independent stylist who rents a chair in the salon had allowed Pelosi to come in for a wash and a blow-dry.
Pelosi’s office told Fox News she had “complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment.”
- “The Speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements,” her spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement. “This business offered for the Speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business.”
California allowed salons and barbershops to reopen with restrictions starting on Monday as part of a tiered plan to lift the first U.S. statewide COVID-19 lockdown, enacted on March 19.
- But San Francisco, which on March 17 became the first American city to mandate “sheltering in place,” has opted to limit hairdressers to operating outdoors, spurring a demonstration outside City Hall on Tuesday.
- Hairdressers — who have been national icons of opposition to lockdowns — already started opening their doors across California last month as part of a protest movement.
The reaction: Conservatives on Twitter, recalling Pelosi’s vocal advocacy of coronavirus restrictions, portrayed her salon visit as hypocritical.
President Donald Trump said “Crazy Nancy Pelosi is being decimated” after “constantly lecturing everyone else.”
Senate Republicans’ account said, “Speaker Pelosi has pushed policies that would keep our economy closed and our small businesses shut down. But for herself? A salon visit whenever she pleases.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said, “Nancy Pelosi doesn’t think the rules apply to her. She thinks she deserves special treatment.”
Melissa Mackenzie, the publisher of the American Spectator, suggested, “Pelosi should have the electricity cut to her house.”
Others, including left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, predicted the elite press would be silent on the potential scandal, which did make some headlines.
A lover of lockdowns?: Pelosi has pushed to extend lockdowns and advocated a nationwide face mask mandate while imposing one in Congress.
- She has also accused Trump of costing American lives by not acting more aggressively against the pandemic.
- In April, Pelosi told Fox News host Chris Wallace she could not understand Americans who were protesting lockdowns, calling their actions a “distraction” and “really unfortunate.”
