It was the clap that reverberated around the (online) world.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) applauded President Donald Trump during his State of the Union address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday and inspired memes and “Photoshop Battles” galore. On Wednesday, she revealed the thought process behind her expression, which many commentators suggested was a sarcastic dig toward the president.
“It wasn’t sarcastic,” Pelosi insisted to reporters, per People magazine. “Look at what I was applauding. I wanted him to know that it was very welcomed.”
Pelosi’s applause of Trump came after he called for the rejection of “the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution. He also asked lawmakers to “embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good.”
But Pelosi’s own daughter, Christine Pelosi, appeared to spin a different narrative for her mother’s clapping: