Nancy 'we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it' Pelosi goes after Iran deal critics by asking whether they've read it

Nancy Pelosi
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) attacked opponents of President Obama's Iran deal on Thursday by expressing confusion over whether they'd still oppose the plan if they truly understood it. "You wonder why," she mused. "Have they even read it? [This opposition] looks political to me."

Whether Pelosi is right or not, it's a line of critique that she is uniquely not positioned to make: Perhaps the most infamous line to come out of the 2010 ObamaCare debate was Pelosi's claim that "we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what's in it."

Pelosi's quote was, of course, taken out of its context by a sound bite-driven news cycle, but she has since stood by the substance of the argument.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.