Tag: Nancy Pelosi

Democratic senator gives blow-by-blow account of Trump’s meltdown on Pelosi: ‘Belligerent from the get-go’

AlterNet logoSen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) gave a detailed account of the emotional meltdown that President Donald Trump had with congressional Democrats at the White House on Wednesday.

Appearing on CNN Thursday morning, Menendez broke down how Trump started raging at Democrats from the second he entered the room.

“The meeting started off with the president walking in and slamming down his files on the table,” Menendez said. “It was belligerent from the get-go… you have the president of the United States, who is supposed to bring our country together, particularly in times of challenges, [calling] the Speaker a third-rate politician.”

View the complete October 17 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump tried to insult ‘unhinged’ Pelosi with an image. She made it her Twitter cover photo.

Washington Post logoThe image was meant to be an insult — “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Trump wrote as a caption. But instead, it ended up as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter cover photo.

The photo is striking: Pelosi (D-Calif.), in electric blue, the only woman visible at the table, standing across from a homogeneous row of men and pointing her finger at the president.

To Democrats, what the photo conveyed was clear: the speaker “literally standing up to the president” after the House overwhelmingly voted to condemn his decision to pull out of northern Syria. The stunning moment marked the latest episode in the long-running theatrical feud between Pelosi and the president, ending, like others, with the Democratic leader reclaiming Trump’s insult as a badge of pride.

View the complete October 17 article by Meagan Flynn on The Washington Post website here.

Trump called Pelosi a ‘third-rate politician’ during Syria meeting, top Democrats say

The Hill logoPresident Trump had a “meltdown” and called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a “third-rate politician” during a meeting Wednesday with congressional leaders on the situation in Syria, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters after they left the meeting early.

The White House had invited leadership and top committee members of both parties and chambers of Congress to discuss Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria.

That withdrawal paved the way for Turkey to initiate an onslaught against Syrian Kurdish forces that were instrumental in the U.S.-led fight against ISIS, and it has been widely criticized by lawmakers across the political spectrum.

View the complete October 16 article by Rebecca Kheel on The Hill website here.

Pelosi: No House vote on impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday she will not stage a vote on the House floor to officially launch an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

The decision came after Democratic leaders, returning to Washington following a two-week recess, had reached out to members of their diverse caucus to gauge the party’s support for such a vote.

After back-to-back meetings with party leaders and then the full caucus, Pelosi announced that no such vote would take place. Democratic aides emphasized, however, that the process remains fluid and that Pelosi may reverse course and stage such a vote at any point in the future.

View the complete October 15 article by Scott Wong and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Nancy Pelosi Calls Trump’s Bluff: ‘You Are Not Above The Law’

The White House refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, calling it an “unconstitutional” effort to overturn the 2016 election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) castigated President Donald Trump’s refusal to cooperate with Congress’ impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, saying the White House was trying to make “lawlessness a virtue” and pledging to hold the administration accountable.

“The American people have already heard the President’s own words ― ‘do us a favor, though,’” Pelosi said in a statement, referencing the whistleblower complaint that led her to formally open the impeachment inquiry last month. “The President’s actions threaten our national security, violate our Constitution and undermine the integrity of our elections. The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the President is above the law.”

Her response came just hours after White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent Pelosi and other top Democrats an eight-page letter accusing them of waging a “partisan and unconstitutional” effort to overturn the 2016 election.

View the complete October 8 article by Nick Visser on the Huffington Post website here.

Scoop: Trump letter dares Pelosi to hold vote on impeachment inquiry

Axios logoThe White House is planning to send Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter as soon as Friday arguing that President Trump and his team can ignore lawmakers’ demands until she holds a full House vote formally approving an impeachment inquiry, 2 sources familiar with the letter tell Axios.

Why it matters: By putting in writing the case that Trump and his supporters have been making verbally for days, the White House is preparing for a court fight and arguing to the public that its resistance to Congress’ requests is justified.

  • Trump wants to force House Democrats in vulnerable races to be on the record if they favor pursuing impeachment, these sources tell us.
  • Republicans also say the minority party can exert more influence over hearings and other aspects of an inquiry once it is formalized with a vote.
  • By calling this an inquiry without holding a vote, Pelosi and the Democratic committee chairmen are having it both ways, one official said. “They want to be a little bit pregnant.”

View the complete October 3 article by Alayna Treene and Margaret Talev on the Axios website here.

Nancy Pelosi: An Extremely Stable Genius

When asked if it was possible that impeachment might backfire, the Speaker of the House insisted that politics has nothing to do with it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He has given us no choice.”

Before we begin to grapple with the gravity of the impeachment inquiry that is now upon us, can we acknowledge yet again the extreme weirdness of our times? If, through the distorting mists of time, the heroes and antiheroes of the Watergate saga seem positively Shakespearean in their stature—Nixon raging on the heath, his cunning satraps devising their poisoned betrayals—what to make of today’s dramatis personae of Kiev and Washington, Presidents Zelensky and Trump, one a comic actor turned fledgling statesman, the other a real-estate grifter turned . . . political grifter? Scholars of the Volodymyr Zelensky filmography will recall his appearances in “Love in the Big City 2” and “Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon.” And they will credit his work in the television show “Servant of the People,” in which he played the President of Ukraine, a role that set him on the path to being the actual President of Ukraine. Zelensky is an expressive comic artist. And so it is not hard to imagine his mask of terrorized bewilderment as he held a telephone to his ear in July and listened to the ex-star of “The Apprentice” deliver an implicit threat to deprive his country of military aid and diplomatic standing if he failed to interfere in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election on Trump’s behalf. This is our reality.

Into this reality has stepped, if belatedly, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, Speaker of the House. Continue reading “Nancy Pelosi: An Extremely Stable Genius”

Pelosi announces formal impeachment inquiry

Move comes as Senate passes resolution calling for whistleblower report to be turned over

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday that the House will move to open a formal impeachment inquiry, overriding the claims of Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and other panel Democrats they’ve been engaged in one for months.

“I’m announcing that the House of Representatives will move forward with an official impeachment inquiry,” she said in televised remarks Tuesday after a meeting of House Democrats.

Pelosi briefed the Democratic Caucus on her plans for advancing the House’s investigations into President Donald Trump following allegations that the president pressured Ukraine to open an investigation into his potential 2020 rival, Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.

View the complete September 24 article by Lindsey McPherson on The Roll Call website here.

Democrats call for Pelosi to cut recess short to address white nationalism

The Hill logoDozens of House Democrats are pressing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to cut short the long summer break and bring House committees back to Washington to address the violent rise of white nationalism.

Behind two freshman lawmakers — Reps. Veronica Escobar (Texas) and Tom Malinowski (N.J.) — the Democrats maintain that “urgent attention” is needed to tackle “the threats posed by white supremacist terrorism” after Saturday’s deadly mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where the suspect appeared to be driven by anti-immigrant sentiment.

The pair is circulating a letter among House Democrats urging Pelosi to call back the relevant panels to take up related legislation.

View the complete August 6 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Pelosi: Census citizenship question is effort to ‘make America white again’

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argued Monday that President Trump‘s push to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census is an effort to “make America white again” in an adaptation of his campaign slogan.

“This is about keeping — you know his hat — make America white again,” Pelosi said at an event in San Francisco about election security legislation, referring to the red “Make America Great Again” hats that are popular among Trump supporters. 

Pelosi, like other critics of adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census, argued that it could result in racial minorities being undercounted so that legislative maps can be drawn more favorably for Republicans.

View the complete July 8 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.