Pelosi slaps Trump with a backhanded compliment: 'He’s a great distractor -- that's what this is about'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Wednesday accused President Donald Trump of making a racist attack on four U.S. congresswomen to distract from failures in his administration.

At a press conference, Pelosi told the reporters that lawmakers were "gentle" in condemning only Trump's tweets as "racist" in a recent vote.

"We weren't saying he is racist," she explained. "We were saying that the words that he used were racist."

"We all know the argument that could be made against us in terms of our philosophy, in terms of our priorities and the rest," Pelosi said. "And the president knows there are arguments that could be made against him and, therefore, he wants to distract from them."

"You have to give him credit," she continued. "He’s a great distractor. That’s what this is about."

Pelosi encouraged Democrats to take the discussion "to a better place."

"The president wants to make America great again. We all do. What does that mean? What is America?" she asked before launching into speech about American ideals.

"We the people, they said in the preamble to the Constitution," Pelosi remarked. "They also said imagine how different we would be, but they knew we had to be one. And that beautiful guidance, it’s something we must constantly keep in mind as we engage in our differences. At the end of the day, we want to be unifying and not dividing. I wish the president would read that."

Watch the video below from CNN.