White House counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday morning, claiming Pelosi treats her like she might treat the help.
“I believe she’s the sixth, or so, richest member of Congress, and she behaves that way,” Conway told reporters gathered on the White House driveway. “She treats me as she might treat her maid or her pilots or her makeup artists or her wardrobe consultants.”
Conway’s comments came after Pelosi, during an ill-fated infrastructure meeting on Wednesday in which President Trump abruptly walked out, reportedly told Conway she spoke to the president and not his staff.
“I told her, ‘Gee, that’s so pro-woman of you,'” Conway said.
Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden Wednesday that he had left the meeting because Pelosi had accused him of engaging in a cover-up. The California Democrat made the remark less than two hours before the infrastructure meeting was scheduled to begin.
Conway claimed she treated Pelosi respectfully during the meeting.
“I started out saying, respectfully, ‘Madame Speaker, would you like to address the specific points the president had to say?'” Conway said. “And she did what she does all the time, which is she said, ‘I talk to the president, not his staff.’ Because after all, she thinks we’re all staff.”
According to Conway, Trump left the meeting “very calmly.” By contrast, Pelosi “stormed out” and did not address the president’s “very specific” reasons for leaving the meeting.
“She didn’t address any of that,” Conway said. “She did what she often does, which was get off topic, way off message, and she started talking about Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt — we may be here a while — and what they had done on infrastructure. So, everybody let her finish.”
