Schumer says Pelosi is right to slow down impeachment push against Trump

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer defended Speaker Nancy Pelosi's approach on impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, saying Democrats need to uncover as much information as possible before moving forward.

'Speaker Pelosi is doing it the right way. Let's try to unearth as much information as we can to show the American people as well as we can that how poorly this president is performing,' Schumer said Wednesday evening on CNN. 

'Once the facts come out the American people and the House and who knows maybe the Senate will make decisions,' he added.

Pelosi has held back Democrats calls to start proceedings against the president, arguing instead to let the six House committees investigating Trump's businesses, taxes, and administration to do their work first. 

Her approach has worked with her party - thus far. 

But Schumer didn't hold back his frustration with the president, who stormed out of an infrastructure meeting with Democrats at the White House on Wednesday. 

'We have never had a president like this,' he said.

But, he added, Democrats will continue their investigations against Trump despite the president's threat not to work with them if they do so. 

'We have to keep doing our job which we are trying to do and holding the president accountable. And I think we’re doing a good job of each and that’s why he threw his temper tantrum because he’s so frustrated by what happened,' Schumer said.

The Democrat from New York made the television rounds to discuss an extraordinary day in the battle between Trump and congressional Democrats. 

Schumer complained there are no adults in the White House to hold Trump back. 

'There is no one home. The only people able to say Mr. President, you have to do this better, they are gone,' he said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' Thursday.

And he said Democrats came out of the fracas much better off that the president.

'I say yesterday we came out a lot better than he did,' Schumer said. 'I think the show wears thin. I think the lack of accomplishment, the do-nothing presidency sinks in.'

President Trump, meanwhile, defended his actions on Twitter.

'In a letter to her House colleagues, Nancy Pelosi said: “President Trump had a temper tantrum for us all to see.” This is not true. I was purposely very polite and calm, much as I was minutes later with the press in the Rose Garden. Can be easily proven. It is all such a lie!,' he wrote Wednesday night.  

Wednesday's planned infrastructure meeting - a rare subject on which Democrats and Republicans mostly agree - quickly devolved into yet another battle between the legislative and executive branches after Trump stormed out of the sit down and straight into the White House Rose Garden to rail against the investigations against him.

The situation escalated from there. 

Nancy accused him of committing 'impeachable offenses' and dismissed his storming out of a morning White House infrastructure summit three minutes into it as a 'poor baby' moment.

The House Speaker mocked his conduct on a day of drama as 'very strange,' shortly after the president blew up a meeting with Democratic leadership scheduled to discuss how to fund $2 trillion of infrastructure investment by berating her and Schumer then holding a press conference to attack them more.

The showdown in the Cabinet Room came at what had been supposed to be a summit with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats to hammer out how to pay for a $2 trillion infrastructure package.

But Pelosi had accused him just over an hour earlier of presiding over a 'cover-up' after holding a meeting with her caucus, some of whom are pushing aggressively to impeach the president - leaving him fuming, according to a White House official.

Instead of talking about spending, Trump walked into the room, berated the Democrats and walked out to the Rose Garden to address reporters who had been moved in front of it even before Schumer and Pelosi sat down in the Cabinet room.

'I don't do cover-ups,' Trump told the reporters, speaking in front of a podium emblazoned 'No collusion, no obstruction.'

'You people probably know that better than anybody,' he added. He said wouldn't work with Pelosi or Schumer, the Senate Minority leader, until they stood down the investigations.

'When they get everything done, I'm all set to – let's get infrastructure, let's get drug prices down. In the meantime we're doing excellent work without them,' Trump said. 

Pelosi and Schumer rushed back to Capitol Hill and held their own joint press conference, with Pelosi saying: 'I pray for for the president of the United States.'

An hour later she upped the ante, accusing him of committing 'impeachable offenses.'  

Pelosi described the meeting as 'very, very, very strange.'

'He walked away. Whether he intended to act on what he said before remains to be seen,' she said at the CAPS Ideas conference. 'It was very, very, very strange.'

She also said it was a 'poor baby' moment for Trump.

'Instead in an orchestrated - almost poor baby point of view - he came in the room and said that I said he was engaged in a cover up and couldn't possibly, couldn't possibly engage in a conversation on infrastructure as long as we were investigating him,' Pelosi said. 

'Now we were investigating him since we took over the majority so there's nothing new in that. And then he had a press conference in the Rose Garden with all these sort visuals that were obviously planned before I said most currently he was engaged in a cover up. So it's really sad,' she added.  

The confrontation and effective declaration by Trump of all-out war came on a morning which had opened with liberal Democrats piling pressure on Pelosi to consider opening formal impeachment proceedings. 

That, some progressives believe, is the only mechanism capable of short-circuiting the White House's refusal to obey House subpoenas for documents and testimony. 

Progressive lawmakers used an early-morning meeting of the Democratic caucus to deliver their message to the Speaker - who faced them down and declined to proceed with impeachment.

Then, in a press conference after the caucus meeting, Pelosi fired the day's first salvo by accusing Trump of engaging in a 'cover-up' fueled by his refusal to let former White House lawyer Don McGahn and current Attorney General Bob Barr testify in Democrat-led hearings.  

'We do believe that it’s important to follow the facts. We believe that no one is above the law, including the President of the United States. And we believe that the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up,' she told reporters at the Capitol. 

A senior White House aide said that Trump was fuming at the cover-up allegation as soon as he saw it.

He may have been set off by a House committee's subpoena for testimony and documents from his former communications director. 

Trump has yet to comment on the attempt by the House Judiciary Committee to compel testimony from Hope Hicks, but former aide, who is now the executive vice president and chief communications officer for Fox, is very close to him. 

Hicks has not addressed the subpoena and isn't expected to testify again. The White House claimed this week that Trump has the power to shield current and former senior officials from compelled testimony to Congress, and he argued Wednesday that the hours of questions his aides endured from lawmakers and Mueller in previous sessions were more than enough.

But instead of canceling the meeting, he let the two top Democrats and other leaders come to the Cabinet Room and asked officials to organize a podium and for White House reporters to be in the Rose Garden. 

When the Democrats arrived to the White House, the president walked in and berated them.

Then he walked out three minutes later and said nearly the same thing to reporters that he had said to the Democratic leaders and senior aides.

Trump told the press that he had entered his meeting with Pelosi and Schumer saying he wanted a deal to fund refurbishment and replacement of infrastructure like roads, tunnels, bridges and airports. 

'But you know what?' he said he told them. 'You can't do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with.'

He says he told them, 'It's sad. This meeting was set up a number of days ago at 11 o'clock. All of a sudden I hear last night they'll have a meeting, right before this meeting, to talk about "The I-word," he said, referring to impeachment over claims that he obstructed justice. ' 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller dismissed Democrats' claims that his campaign colluded with Russians in 2016, but left it to Trump's own Justice Department to determine whether to charge him with obstruction for allegedly trying to impede the Russia probe.

'The I-word! Can you imagine? I don't speak to Russians about campaigns,' Trump said. 'When I went to Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, I don't say, "Let's call Russia." ... It's a hoax. The greatest hoax in history.' 

Moments after Trump concluded speaking, Pelosi and Schumer rebutted him on Capitol Hill. 

'He wasn't really respectful. He took a

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