Does video show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "blowed out of her mind" at a news conference? No, that's not true: The short video clip from a May 20, 2020, Capitol Hill news conference was digitally slowed down to make it appear as if Pelosi was intoxicated. The original video revealed she was speaking and acting normally.
The claim originated in a post published on August 1, 2020 by a Facebook user named "Will Allen (archived here) with following text introduction:
This is unbelievable, she is blowed out of her mind, I bet this gets took down!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
In case this video is taken down (which we expect will happen quickly,) we've saved this screenshot:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sun Aug 2 19:11:55 2020 UTC)
We compared the short clip with a full video of Pelosi's May 20, 2020, news conference. Click below to watch the unaltered version, starting at 19:47 into the video:
This a transcript of what of what was said at the news conference, starting with the reporter's question to Pelosi. The words that were edited out in the altered version are in parenthesis:
Reporter: Is it appropriate for the president to accuse a TV host of murder on Twitter?
Pelosi: I'm sorry, to do what?
Reporter: To accuse a tv host of murder on Twitter?
Pelosi: I'm sorry, I mean, I don't understand. What did he do?
Reporter: This is the Joe Scarborough issue. He tweeted last Tuesday that he wondered if he got away with murder. He retweeted this morning about, psycho, as he calls him, Psycho Joe
Pelosi: Oh, you're talking about Joe Scarborough?
Reporter: Yes, is it appropriate for the president to do that?
Pelosi: You're asking me about the appropriateness of the actions of this President of the United States, (Edited out: so completely inappropriate in so many ways that it's almost a given. It's) like a child who comes in with mud on their pants or something. (Edited out: That's the way it is, they're outside playing, that's where they he comes in with doggy doo on his shoes and everybody who works with him has that on their shoes, too, for a very long time to come. So, I don't know, I hear doctors talk to meabout saying you know what's matter with him? The things he says are so inappropriate for a President of the United States, the comments he makes about women, comments he makes about women, so inappropriate. So no, I don't think it's appropriate, but again there's a market for it, obviously and that's what he plays to.) What is, there's a word somebody used to me, they said you would understand it better if you knew what a conflabator is.
Off camera voice: Confabulator
Pelosi: Confabulator is. Look up the word confabulator. Someone who just really doesn't even know what the truth is and just says anything. And because he says it, then he believes it.
This is not the first time someone has digitally slowed down a Pelosi video to make it appear the speaker was drunk. Lead Stories debunked a similar effort on May 23, 2019, with our article titled Fake News: Video Does NOT Show House Speaker Pelosi Drunk As A Skunk.
Lead Stories was effective is slowing the spread of that that Pelosi video, as explained in our analysis titled That Fake 'Drunk Pelosi' Video Was A Dud: How Lead Stories And Facebook Defused A Viral Bomb.
