Democratic congressional leaders walked out of a White House meeting with Donald Trump today after they claimed he had a ‘meltdown’ and insulted Speaker Nancy Pelosi – prompting him to angrily throw the insult back in their faces.
Pelosi urged prayers for the president’s mental health and questioned his grip on reality.
‘We have to pray for his health – because this was a very serious meltdown,’ she told reporters in the Capitol building after her return from the White House.
The speaker told reporters at the White House she thought the president was shaken by a vote in the House of Representatives shortly before their meeting, where 129 Republicans joined Democrats to condemn Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria in a 354 to 60 vote.
Among them were the top three House Republicans, who also attended the meeting.
In response about two hours later Trump tweeted official White House photographs from inside the meeting captioning one: ‘Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!’
Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown! pic.twitter.com/RDeUI7sfe7
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019
It showed his aides and the country’s most senior military leader staring at the table as Pelosi, standing, pointed a finger towards him.
Pelosi embraced the picture, with her chief of staff saying mockingly ‘Thank you for the cover photo, @realdonaldtrump.’
The meeting was the denouement in a day of White House drama which saw Trump roiled by a mounting Syrian crisis.
The incendiary meeting apparently began with Trump claiming to Pelosi: ‘I hate ISIS more than you,’ according to a Democratic source. She responded: ‘You don’t know that.’
And the source said that in the course of the meeting, Pelosi told Trump: ‘All roads with you lead to Putin.’
The Washington Post reported that Trump said he wasn’t concerned about terrorists 7,000 miles away.
When Pelosi led a Democratic walkout, Liz Cheney, the third most senior House Republican and daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney told Trump the terrorists responsible for 9/11 came from ‘7,000 miles away.’
After top Democrats walked out of the Cabinet Room, they spoke to reporters at the front door of the White House.
‘The president was very shaken up by the fact that 354 – I had to make sure I had the number correct – and that means the majority, a big majority of the Republicans,’ Pelosi said.
‘We couldn’t continue in the meeting because he was just not relating to the reality of it,’ she said.
But the White House claimed the Democrats ‘stormed out of the meeting’ to ‘whine’ while President Trump was ‘measured, factual and decisive’ during the sit down.
The White House also released an extraordinary letter Trump wrote to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan last Wednesday urging him not to invade northern Syria and saying: ‘Don’t be a tough guy! Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.’
A Democratic source said he had called the letter ‘nasty’ during the meeting; he had earlier claimed it would be ‘powerful’ and vindicate his claim not to have green-lighted Edrogan’s ground invasion of norther Syria.
Pelosi’s fellow Democratic Congressional leaders fumed about the president’s treatment of the Speaker after walking out.
‘He was insulting. Particularly to the Speaker,’ said Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer.
‘She kept her cool completely. But he called her a third rate politician. He said that there are Communists involved and you guys might like that. This was not a dialogue. It was sort of a diatribe, a nasty diatribe not focused on the facts.’
Pelosi later clarified that Trump said ‘third grade.’
Pelosi said she responded to Trump: ‘I wish you were a politician, Mr. President, then you would know the art of the possible.’
Pelosi said the White House scrapped a briefing for the full House scheduled for Thursday and the Democrats said they were concerned Trump did not have a strategy in the region.
“I asked the president what his plan was to contain ISIS. He didn’t really have one,” Schumer said.
A Democratic source told the Washington Post that Schumer asked Trump: ‘Is your plan to rely on the Syrians and the Turks?’
Trump replied ‘our plan is to keep the American people safe,’ prompting Pelosi to tell him ‘That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.’
But, by the Democrats’ account, it quickly digressed.
‘You’re going to hear the president say we walked out,’ Hoyer said. ‘We were offended deeply by his treatment of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
‘The president, in my view, has created a crisis in the Middle East. A crisis that undermines the world’s competence in America.
‘This crisis required a rational, reasonable discussion between those of us elected by the American people to set policy.’
He added: ‘Unfortunately the meeting deteriorated into a diatribe, as the Leader Schumer has said, and a very offensive accusations being made by the president of the United States.
‘I have served with six presidents. I have been in many, many, many meetings like this. Never have I seen a president treat so disrespectfully a co-equal branch of the government of the United States.’
One Democratic source told McClatchy that when Pelosi, Hoyer and Schumer walked out, Trump taunted: ‘Goodbye, we’ll see you at the polls.’
He also denigrated his predecessor Barack Obama, Reuters reported.
Sources inside the party leveled more claims against Trump – including calling former Defense Secretary James Mattis ‘the world’s most overrated general.’
Trump, according to the person, was presented at one point with a quote from Mattis warning of an Islamic State group resurgence if the U.S. does not continue to apply pressure.
But Trump responded with the insult, criticizing Mattis for not being ‘tough enough.’
Trump also said during the meeting that 100 Islamic State prisoners had escaped following the U.S. withdrawal from the region, but insisted they were the ‘least dangerous’ ones.