Trump Says Nancy Pelosi Had a 'Total Meltdown' and 'Needs Help Fast' After Meeting Goes Awry
President Donald Trump ripped Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi this week after communications broke down during a White House meeting on the Syria withdrawal.
The Wednesday meeting of Trump administration officials and key figures in Congress got off to a shaky start, devolving into a partisan dust-up that saw Democratic leaders making an exit, Fox News reported.
The president quickly followed up on Twitter, accusing Pelosi of ending the meeting with an “unhinged meltdown” and saying the California Democrat “needs help fast!”
“Nancy Pelosi needs help fast!” Trump wrote. “There is either something wrong with her ‘upstairs,’ or she just plain doesn’t like our great Country.
“She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person.”
Nancy Pelosi needs help fast! There is either something wrong with her “upstairs,” or she just plain doesn’t like our great Country. She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2019
Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown! pic.twitter.com/RDeUI7sfe7
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019
According to Fox News, the White House called the meeting to discuss the bipartisan congressional backlash over the administration’s decision to withdraw all U.S. military forces from northern Syria last week in light of the Islamic State’s defeat.
The move marked the end of nearly five years of U.S. involvement in the region — a region that was supposed to receive no more than a month’s worth of Special Forces support back in 2015.
The president has marked the decision as a victory for his administration, making good on a campaign promise to keep American troops out of harm’s way and withdraw the U.S. from lengthy military quagmires in the Middle East.
But politicians on both sides of the aisle have criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw, arguing that leaving the ethnic-minority Kurds — a key U.S. asset in dispatching the Islamic State — without an American tripwire force would make them vulnerable to attack from neighboring Turkey.
This forecasting has, in large part, come true, with Turkey launching a full-scale military operation into the region within 48 hours of U.S. withdrawal, killing more than 150 Kurdish fighters and civilians in just one week, BBC News reported.
According to Fox News, Trump began Wednesday’s meeting with a cutting overview of the situation, deriding former President Barack Obama’s abandoned “red line” in Syria and telling Pelosi “I hate ISIS more than you.”
As the meeting spiraled further out of control, anonymous senior sources told the outlet, the president closed by saying, “I’ll see you at the polls,” as Pelosi and her fellow Democrats departed.
In a news conference following the exchange, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Pelosi blamed Trump for the breakdown in communications.
“What we witnessed on the part of the president was a meltdown, sad to say,” Pelosi told reporters.
Schumer would go on to call the events of the meeting “appalling,” claiming that Trump had set the tone negatively early on by calling the House speaker either a “third-rate” or “third-grade” politician.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, however, indicated the Democratic news conference had introduced a very different narrative to the exchange than the one she had seen take place inside the Cabinet Room.
.@realDonaldTrump was measured & decisive today. @SpeakerPelosi walking out was baffling but not surprising w NO intention of participating in a mtg on nat’l security. Dem “leadership” chose to storm out & whine to cameras, everyone else stayed to work on behalf of our country.
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) October 16, 2019
“.@realDonaldTrump was measured & decisive today,” Grisham wrote on Twitter. “@SpeakerPelosi walking out was baffling but not surprising w NO intention of participating in a mtg on nat’l security.”
“Dem ‘leadership’ chose to storm out & whine to cameras, everyone else stayed to work on behalf of our country.”
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