A day after a bitter back-and-forth of dialogue between Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump took place, Pelosi told reporters she has serious misgivings about the president’s behavior.
“He pulled a stunt. The president has a bag of tricks…for certain occasions. He’s a master of distraction,” Pelosi said Thursday morning, according to reporting from ABC News.
Pelosi, who stated Democrats are not ready to start impeachment proceedings at this time, alleged that Trump is hoping to move her party in that direction in order to capitalize politically.
“What really got to him was these court cases and the House Democratic Caucus has not passed impeachment, and that’s where he wants us to be,” Pelosi said.
Nancy Pelosi: "I pray for the President of the United States. I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country."
Via ABC pic.twitter.com/E1oKF7B8vW— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 23, 2019
Pelosi expressed her hopes that someone close to the president would talk some sense into him.
“I pray for the President of the United States,” she added. “I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.”
On Wednesday, Pelosi had described Trump’s behavior during their brief encounter as a “tantrum.” Before Pelosi’s remarks on Thursday, Trump tweeted out that he felt he had been “calm” during their brief meeting.
I was extremely calm yesterday with my meeting with Pelosi and Schumer, knowing that they would say I was raging, which they always do, along with their partner, the Fake News Media. Well, so many stories about the meeting use the Rage narrative anyway – Fake & Corrupt Press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2019
Trump, Pelosi, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were set to meet on Wednesday to discuss a $2 trillion infrastructure bill that the three had agreed on three weeks prior. But before the meeting could commence, Trump stormed out, the Democratic leaders said.
Trump held a supposedly impromptu speech at the White House moments later, where he vented his frustrations with Congressional Democrats for their continued inquiries into his administration in the wake of the redacted release of the Mueller report.
“I walked into the room and I told Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi that I want to do infrastructure…but I can’t do it under these circumstances,” Trump told reporters.
Schumer is skeptical of Trump’s rationale for ending the meeting, however, according to a previous report from HillReporter.com. The leader of the Democrats in the Senate pointed out that the same investigations Trump railed on about were going on three weeks ago, when the initial phase of the negotiations began.
“It’s clear that this was not a spontaneous move on the president’s part. It was planned,” Schumer said.