Trump Calls on 4 Witnesses Who Dispute Pelosi’s Account of White House Meeting

“Very calm. No temper tantrum,” one said.
Trump Calls on 4 Witnesses Who Dispute Pelosi’s Account of White House Meeting
(L) House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and (R) President Donald Trump. (Chip Somodevilla and Alex Wong via Getty Images)
Zachary Stieber
5/24/2019
Updated:
5/24/2019

President Donald Trump called on four witnesses from his administration, who all disputed an account by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) about a White House meeting.

Trump and Democratic leaders were slated to meet on May 22 and try to reach a deal on infrastructure but Trump walked into the meeting and cut it short, telling Pelosi that he won’t work with the opposition party until they stop the investigations into him and his past.

“I walked into the room and I told Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi I want to do infrastructure,” Trump said at a press conference later that day. “But you know what we can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over.”

Pelosi then claimed that the president was enraged when he spoke to her and her colleagues.

“Sadly, the only job the president seems to be concerned with is his own,” Pelosi wrote in a letter that was sent to reporters, according to The Hill. “He threatened to stop working with Democrats on all legislation unless we end oversight of his administration and he had a temper tantrum for us all to see.”
Trump took to Twitter to say Pelosi’s characterization “is not true.”

“I was purposely very polite and calm, much as I was minutes later with the press in the Rose Garden,” Trump wrote. “Can be easily proven. It is all such a lie!”

At a press conference the next day, Trump solicited accounts from four people who were at the meeting, all of whom said Pelosi was wrong.

“Kellyanne, what was my temperament yesterday?” Trump asked White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, reported the left-leaning Politico website.

“Very calm. No temper tantrum,” she said.

“The whole Democrat Party is very messed up. They have never recovered from the great election of 2016—an election that I think you folks liked very much, right?” Trump said. “Well, Nancy Pelosi was not happy about it, and she is a mess.”

“You were very calm and you were very direct,” added White House strategic communications director Mercedes Schlapp.

“You were very calm and you laid out your case,” Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to Trump, said, adding that Trump’s discussion at the brief meeting was “much calmer than some of our trade meetings.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders then said that Trump was “very calm and straightforward and clear.”

“I’m an extremely stable genius. OK?” Trump concluded.

Pelosi took to Twitter herself to respond to Trump, writing: “When the ‘extremely stable genius’ starts acting more presidential, I’ll be happy to work with him on infrastructure, trade and other issues.”

Prior to the canceled meeting on Wednesday, Pelosi met with House Democrats who have been pushing for impeachment of Trump and accused him, without evidence, of engaging in “a cover-up” of unspecified crimes.

Democrats have struggled to combat the president since the submission of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mueller’s team said it could not establish conspiracy or cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia, which debunked two years of accusations by leading Democrats that Trump colluded with Russia to beat Hillary Clinton.