President Trump has insisted he was “extremely calm” during his meeting yesterday with top Democrats House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“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,” he said via Twitter. “Well, so many stories about the meeting use the Rage narrative anyway – Fake & Corrupt Press!”
Earlier, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders had pushed back against the notion that Trump’s feelings were hurt by Pelosi, D-Calif., who accused the president of engaging in a cover-up. Following Pelosi’s remarks, Trump abruptly walked out of a scheduled meeting Wednesday with top Democrats.
“The president’s feelings weren’t hurt. She accused him of a crime,” Sanders told reporters on the White House driveway Thursday morning. “Let that sink in. She didn’t say, ‘I don’t like you,’ she accused him of committing a crime after we spent two years going through this exhaustive investigative process with Bob Mueller and his team.”
[Related: Pelosi: Trump infrastructure meeting was ‘very, very, very strange’]
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 was scheduled to meet with Pelosi and Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday morning to discuss prospects for an infrastructure deal.
“Instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that have just said that I was doing a cover-up. I don’t do cover-ups,” Trump told reporters in a seemingly impromptu Rose Garden press conference, complete with a new sign on the podium that read, “No collusion, no obstruction.”
The president said he would not work with Democrats on infrastructure unless they dropped their various investigations.
Sanders blamed Democrats for being laser-focused on the investigations and “unwilling and unable” to work on issues such as infrastructure or border security.
“It’s very hard to have a meeting where you accuse the president of the United States of a crime and then, an hour later, show up and act as if nothing’s happened,” Sanders told members of the media Thursday. “The idea of that is insane. I don’t think if one of your colleagues accused you of a crime, then you’d sit down and work on a story two minutes later with them and pretend as if that hadn’t happened.”
