WASHINGTON (AP) – At the dawn of divided U.S. government, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the government over a border wall is really about his “manhood.”
“It’s like a manhood thing for him. As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing,” Pelosi privately told House Democrats after a combative, on-camera Oval Office meeting with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
Pelosi hardly saved her disdain for Trump for the private audience, letting it rip in slightly more respectful tones a few hours earlier when the president invited journalists into the Oval Office for what were billed as talks over the national budget. What ensued was like a political cage match, with everyone except Pence jumping in with ripostes, setups, lectures and insults. The conflict between Trump and Pelosi dominated the scene, which was replete with gender politics.
The spectacle suggested a fierce, two-year struggle in which Democrats control one chamber of Congress for the first time in Trump’s presidency. The new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3, and Pelosi is nominated for her second stint as speaker of the House and second in the line of presidential succession. That carries significant stakes for Trump, who faces oversight investigations into his presidential campaign and administration. Additionally, the House will include a record number of women elected in the #MeToo era – most of them Democrats – injecting gender into the discussion like never before.
The developments offered a fresh glimpse into Pelosi’s practice of staying “dignified,” as she said Tuesday, certainly in public. It’s advice she’s doled out before. Just before the State of the Union in January, she cautioned Democrats to not get in the way of Trump being what she described as his “slobbering” self.