House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made headlines in a curiously negative way earlier this week when security footage showed her visiting a salon that, under rules, she advocated for, should still have been closed.
The California salon was closed and had been for the better part of the year, due to the COVID-19 closure orders. However, one of the independent stylists opened at her request to give her a camera-ready blowout.
Pelosi claimed, despite video evidence to the contrary, that she had done nothing wrong, and released a statement through her deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill, according to FOX KTVU:
“The Speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements,” said the 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,” Hammill added. “The Speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment.”
However, there seem to be some issues with the house speaker’s statement, most of which was corroborated by security footage.
“Security footage taken from the small business and provided to Fox News appears to confirm the salon owner’s allegation, showing the leading House Democrat with wet hair and no mask walking through the shop on Monday,” The Daily Wire reported on Tuesday. The publication went on to say that the salon was allowed to open for outdoor services only on Monday, which is not where the politician was filmed.
“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,” eSalon owner Erica Kious told Fox News. “We’re supposed to look up to this woman, right? … It is just disturbing.”
According to the Daily Wire, salons in the area have been allowed to open at a lower capacity, but that it was specifically noted that stylists are still “not supposed to blow dry hair” which is the service Pelosi went to the salon for. Safety guidelines also mandate that masks must be worn at all times, something Pelosi is seen violating.
“Kious’ small business does not employ any workers directly, but rents out chairs to independent stylists. One of the stylists she works with texted her on Sunday that the speaker had requested a hair appointment,” The Daily Wire reported. “Kious’ business was not equipped to perform any appointments outside as mandated by coronavirus regulations, however.”
“I was like, are you kidding me right now? Do I let this happen?” Kious said of Pelosi’s visit to her salon.
“We have been shut down for so long, not just me, but most of the small businesses and I just can’t – it’s a feeling – a feeling of being deflated, helpless, and honestly beaten down,” she said. “I have been fighting for six months for a business that took me 12 years to build to reopen.”
“I am a single mom, I have two small children, and I have no income,” added Kious. “The fact that they did this, and she came in, it’s like a slap in the face.”
For her part, Pelosi opted to accuse the owner of a “setup” instead of apologizing for her actions:
“I take responsibility for trusting the word of a neighborhood salon that I’ve been to over the years many times,” Pelosi said. “And that when they said, ‘Well, we’re able to accommodate people, one person, at a time, and that we can set up that time,’ I trusted that.”
“As it turns out, it was a setup. So I take responsibility for falling for a setup.”
