‘I Take Responsibility For Falling For A Setup’: Pelosi Addresses Hair Salon Visit

TOPLINE

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she was “set up” by a San Francisco hair salon when she unknowingly got her hair done in violation of local health orders, a move that has sparked widespread criticism from Republicans and some in the beauty industry this week.

KEY FACTS

Pelosi on Monday was seen inside a San Francisco hair salon without a mask around her neck according to a short clip from security camera footage obtained by Fox News, which goes against local health orders prohibiting salons from operating indoors.

The Fox News story was widely shared in conservative media circles, was used by Republicans to call Pelosi a hypocrite and garnered backlash from some in the personal care industry.

Pelosi’s office said in a statement Tuesday she didn’t think she was doing anything wrong because the salon told her “they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business.”

Addressing the controversy at a press conference Wednesday, Pelosi said she takes “responsibility for trusting the word of a neighborhood salon that I’ve been to over the years many times” and that “this salon owes me an apology.”

Pelosi defended her lack of mask, saying she was only without it for a short period of time “when I was coming out of the bowl getting my hair washed.”

The owner of eSalon, Erica Kious, told Fox News she disapproves of the visit, and that an independent stylist who rents a chair in her salon scheduled the appointment with Pelosi’s assistant—but it’s unclear why Kious didn’t stop it from happening in the first place.

eSalon has not returned multiple phone messages from Forbes asking for comment.

Crucial quote

“I take responsibility for trusting the word of a neighborhood salon that I’ve been to over the years many times. And that when they said they could accommodate people one person at a time and that we could set up that time, I trusted that. As it turns out, it was a setup. So I take responsibility for falling for a setup,” Pelosi said.

Chief critic

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Editorial Board called Pelosi’s response to the controversy “not a good look.”

“An apology and an acknowledgment that few if any of her constituents not named Nancy Pelosi would have been invited into the salon in violation of city rules — setup or not — might have helped calm the kerfuffle. Instead, she kept it alive for another news cycle,” they wrote.

Key background

Though state guidelines allow hair salons to operate indoors, county leaders can opt for stricter rules, which San Francisco has done. Personal care services in the city have been shuttered since March, and were only allowed to open for outdoor service this week. The industry has pushed back hard against the closures for endangering the livelihoods of workers and salon-owners. Pelosi said she has been “inundated by people who are in the hair service industry saying thank you for calling attention to this, we need to get back to work, and many of them annoyed with the setup that was there for a purpose that has nothing to do with ending the crisis.”

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