Trump accuses Pelosi of 'stammering' her way through press conference in new ...

The war of words between President Trump and the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi escalated again on Thursday after Trump tweeted a compilation video of the congresswoman 'stammering' during a press briefing. 

'"PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE,"' he wrote alongside the video, taken from a Fox Business News segment, at around 9pm last night.

The Speaker's camp responded via the @teampelosi Twitter account, accusing Trump of throwing insults to 'distract' people.

'He's distracting from House Democrats' great accomplishments #ForThePeople, from his cover-ups, and unpopularity,' they wrote.   

'We repeat, we wish that his family or his Administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.'   

It comes as a number of separate videos of Pelosi, deceptively edited to make her appear intoxicated, circulated online this week. 

Trump's personal lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani shared a faked video of the Speaker in which the audio had been slowed down to make her words sound sluggish and slurred. 

The original video was from Pelosi's remarks on Wednesday at the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference, where she spoke about President Donald Trump walking out of an infrastructure meeting with Democrats earlier that day.

But an altered version was posted by the conservative Politics WatchDog - a conservative group on Facebook, where it has been viewed more than 1.8 million times, shared more than 39,000 times, and amassed more than 20,000 comments. 

Giuliani later shared the altered clip on Twitter, writing: 'What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre'.

But he deleted the tweet after 15 minutes as users pointed out that it had been doctored. 

Pelosi's daughter Christine tweeted her outrage at the hoax videos on Thursday, writing: 'Republicans and their conservative allies have been pumping this despicable fake meme for years! Now they are caught.

'#FactCheck: Madam Speaker doesn’t even drink alcohol!' 

She also accused Trump of tweeting a doctored video, saying: 'Fake video altered for speed- just like you did to Acosta.

'Dig deeper - you can give the presidency more respect than this,' she added.

Trump's latest attack on Pelosi came after a White House meeting between the two and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) on infrastructure broke down on Wednesday.

The president has been in spin mode since he walked out of the meeting, causing Pelosi to comment that he acted like a 'baby' and Schumer to say he had a 'temper tantrum.'

In response, Trump slammed them as 'Crazy Nancy' and 'Crying Chuck' and repeatedly argued he was calm. 

'I would say calm as I was at the news conference,' Trump said of his behavior.   

'You had the group - Crying Chuck and Crazy Nancy... 

'I'll tell you what, I've been watching her, and I have been watching her for a long period of time, she's not the same person. She's lost it,' Trump said at an event with farmers and the ranchers at the White House. 

'I think she's got a lot of problems.' 

He repeatedly insulted the speaker, adding: 'She was all crazy yesterday. She is a mess. Let's face it she doesn't understand. 

'They sort of feel like she's disintegrating before their eyes.'

But Trump also argued he hasn't changed since becoming president and repeated a description of himself he has used previously - 'stable genius.'

'I haven't changed very much. Been very consistent. I am an extremely stable genius,' he said.  

The remarkable dialogue was yet another step in the deteriorating relations between the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The past 48 hours have been filled with sniping, insults and name calling by both sides of the aisle, with the war of words getting increasingly personal and underneath the other's skin. 

The President also charged Democrats with playing politics and attacking him to harm his chances for re-election.

'Their whole focus is on 2020 and trying to demean the Republican Party and demean the president of the United States as much as possible so either that we get his poll numbers down to the point he can't win,' Trump said, 'or they want to try to get him out of office anyway we can.'

He complained: 'The whole Democrat Party is very messed up. They have never recovered from the great election of 2016.'  

He even compared Pelosi to presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke.

'I don't want to say, "crazy Nancy" because if I say that you're going to say it's a copy of "crazy Bernie" and that's no good. Because Bernie is definitely crazy,' he said.  

'I watched Nancy and she was all crazy yesterday with the hands and everything. She actually reminded me of Beto. She actually reminded me of Beto but maybe a little bit worse,' Trump noted. 

In a remarkable move, he also asked some of the White House staff - including Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, economic adviser Larry Kudlow, press secretary Sarah Sanders, and deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley - to vouch for his temperament on Wednesday in event featuring farmers and ranchers, who stood silently and looked on.

'Very calm, no temper tantrum,' Conway said. 

'Very calm - I've seen both and this was definitely not angry or ranting,' Sanders said. 

'Calmer than some of our trade meetings,' Kudlow joked.  

Pelosi responded to the president's tirade against her via Trump's favorite medium - Twitter.

'When the 'extremely stable genius' starts acting more presidential, I'll be happy to work with him on infrastructure, trade and other issues,' she wrote. 

Trump also pushed back against Pelosi's charge that he wants Democrats to impeach him and then flipped out when she held the party back from starting the proceedings.

'I don't know if anyone wants to be impeached,' the president said.

Pelosi made a different argument at the Capitol on Thursday as the war of words between both sides entered day two. 

'The White House is just crying out for impeachment. That's why he flipped yesterday,' she told reporters.

'Maybe he wants to take a leave of absence. I don't know. But on the other hand, we understand what our responsibilities are,' she charged. 

'I pray for the president of the United States. I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country,' she said.

Pelosi argued Trump was upset Democrats did come out of a Wednesday morning meeting prepared to start impeachment proceedings, which resulted in him storming out of a White House infrastructure meeting with her and Schumer.

'That was what disappointed him, because he didn't see this rush to impeachment coming out of our caucus in our 9 o'clock meeting, which he thought was called specifically for him,' Pelosi said. 

At Wednesday's meeting of House Democrats, the speaker told colleagues Trump wanted to be impeached by House Democrats so he could be vindicated by the Senate, NBC News reported. 

Pelosi also called Trump's actions 'villainous' in her conversation with members of her party.

In the impeachment process, the House brings charges of impeachment while the Senate holds the formal trial - with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding.  

When former President Bill Clinton was impeached, it was the Republican-controlled House that brought charges and the Senate who cleared him. Republicans controlled the upper chamber by five seats but it requires a two-thirds vote (67 senators) to remove a president from office.  

Pelosi on Thursday accused President Trump of being a 'master of distraction' and using the Democrats' meeting for his own purposes. 

'I truly believe that the president has a bag of tricks and the White House has a bag of tricks that they save for certain occasions. They don't necessarily apply to the occasion, but they're a distraction, which is his master of distraction,' she said. 'We will all agree on that. That's something he does well, to distract from problems that he has. He changes, tries to change the subject.'

Pelosi argued the Wednesday morning meeting of House Democrats - which was solely on the subject on impeachment proceedings and called specifically for that purpose - was a regularly scheduled party meeting.

'And while he tried to say it's because I said cover-up, we have been saying cover-up for a while. And our 9 o'clock meeting was a meeting we have anyway. So it had nothing to do with him,' she said.

'But I think what really got to him was that these court cases and the fact that the House Democratic Caucus is not on a path to impeachment. That's where he wants us to be,' Pelosi added.

The speaker also said Trump was 'afraid' after court decisions on congressional subpoenas came down in favor of Democrats - meaning Trump will have to comply with them. 

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday refused to block subpoenas from House Democrats for Trump's financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. Earlier this week a judge in Washington D.C. ruled Trump's former accounting firm Mazars would have to comply with a subpoena from Democrats. 

'I think what happened, he said it's because of cover-up, and that strikes a chord with him, and he's afraid of cover-up, but afraid of being accused of cover-up,' she said.

Pelosi was a leader in the House in the 1990s when Republicans initiated impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton. The move ultimately backfired on them when Democrats won control of the House in the next election.

Trump would likely use impeachment proceedings as a rallying cry for the GOP base on the campaign trail next year when he runs for re-election. 

Trump, meanwhile, blasted reports Thursday he stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional Democrats enraged, arguing he was 'extremely calm' despite several witnesses stating otherwise.

'I was extremely calm yesterday with my meeting with Pelosi and Schumer, knowing that they would say I was raging, which they always do, along with their partner, the Fake News Media. Well, so many stories about the meeting use the Rage narrative anyway - Fake & Corrupt Press!,' Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Trump also doubled down on his accusation that Democrats are too busy investigating him to do any policy work on Capitol Hill.

'When the Democrats in Congress refinish, for the 5th time, their Fake work on their very disappointing Mueller Report finding, they will have the time to get the REAL work of the people done. Move quickly!,' he wrote. 

Pelosi accused Trump of acting like a 'baby' in their Wednesday meeting and Schumer said the president threw a 'temper tantrum' during Wednesday's sit down on infrastructure.

White House officials also described Trump as furious - but they blamed his anger on Pelosi for holding a meeting on impeachment with House Democrats - where she accused Trump of a cover-up - before coming to the White House.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders even made a rare appearance on CNN to defend the president's demeanor.  

'He came in calmly, in command of the room, and said, 'I want to do infrastructure, I want to get these things done, but you guys have to make a decision on whether or not you want to work with us or whether you want to spend all of your time attacking me,' she said. 

And White House counselor Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News to claim stories the president lost his temper were 'ridiculous.'

'All these ridiculous stories: The president was in a rage, he's fuming, he stormed out, temper tantrum. There was none of that,' she said. 'He actually never raised his voice.' 

Conway blamed Pelosi for holding a meeting on impeachment before their infrastructure session.

'All she had to do was either move her meeting to later in the afternoon with her caucus, where she's under enormous pressure to get on with impeaching the president which she doesn't want to do right now, or she could have said, 'I won't talk to you right now, we're on our way to the White House to work on infrastructure, let's meet at 2:00 or 3:00 and I'll give you the rundown of the whole day.' But no, they can't resist going out and giving a live running commentary of what her more outrageous, liberal, hell-bent on getting this president out of the White House members are pressuring her to do,' Conway said.

'So the president said let's work on infrastructure. And then he left, very calmly. And I want to emphasize that because he never raised his voice a single time. He was very polite, and said, 'You can't have two tracks. You can't say that I'm engaged in a cover-up, you can't want to impeach and investigate and then pretend you want to legislate. So get back to me when you're done playing these games and I'll be ready,'' Conway added.

She then attacked Pelosi for her treatment of her at the end of session.  

'I said, respectfully, 'Madam Speaker, would you like to address some of the specifics the president talked about?' And she said, 'I talk to the president! I don't talk to staff!' Because let's face it, she is the sixth-most rich member of Congress. She treats everybody like they're her staff. She treats me like I'm either her maid or her driver or her pilot or her makeup artist. And I'm not. And I said to her, 'How very pro-woman of you!' per usual, because she's not very pro-woman. She's pro-some-women. A few women,' Conway said.

Pelosi snapped back when asked about Conway's accusation: 'I'm not going to talk about her. I respond as speaker of the house to president of the united states. Other conversations are up to them.' 

Sanders also blasted Democrats for holding the impeachment meeting before the White House infrastructure sit down.

'You can't literally have a meeting like Nancy Pelosi did yesterday just an hour before she got to the White House where she accused the president of a crime, said he had engaged in a cover-up, and show up and pretend like nothing has happened and let's just sit down and talk about roads and bridges,' Sanders said.

'It just doesn't work that way. She knows that. Nancy Pelosi's problem is she's totally lost control of her party. She's got the far-left wing telling her what to do, maybe some of the moderates that actually want to get something done, and she's lost control and at some point she has to make a decision of which direction she's going to take,' she added.

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer defended Pelosi's slow approach on impeachment proceedings against President 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 on CNN Wednesday night. 

'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 so far. But Schumer didn't hold back his frustration with the president. 

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

But, he added, Democrats will continue their Trump investigations despite the president's threat not to work with them until they stand down.

'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.    

Sanders argued the only item on Democrats' agenda in Congress is to investigate the president. 

'They are incapable of doing anything other than investigating this president. They spend all of their time attacking him, and the fact that they would have a meeting an hour before they are set to arrive at the White House where Nancy Pelosi literally accuses the president of a crime and then wants to walk into his office and sit down as if nothing happened? That's just - that's lunacy. That's not even in the realm of possibilities,' she said. 

Democratic congressional leaders argue they are capable of both investigating the president and working on policy legislation. 

Trump tried Thursday to frame Democrats as a 'do-nothing party' fixated on impeaching him, as the implications of the previous day's bipartisan blowup settled over Washington.

'The Democrats are getting nothing done in Congress. All of their effort is about a Re-Do of the Mueller Report, which didn't turn out the way they wanted. It is not possible for them to investigate and legislate at the same time,' Trump wrote in a morning tweet.

'Their heart is not into Infrastructure, lower drug prices, pre-existing conditions and our great Vets. All they are geared up to do, six committees, is squander time, day after day, trying to find anything which will be bad for me. A pure fishing expedition like this never happened before, & it should never happen again!'

'The Democrats have become known as THE DO NOTHING PARTY!' he jabbed minutes later.

Trump is locked in a war of words that Pelosi started by claiming he's engaged in a 'cover-up' of 'impeachable offenses.'

He short-circuited a planned meeting on infrastructure legislation hours later at the White House, saying he wouldn't work with Pelosi or Schumer until they shelf their investigations – which he says are designed to publicly retread the same ground covered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.  

Pelosi described the event as a 'poor baby' moment and 'very strange.' 

Schumer complained Thursday morning that there are no calm voices 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.' And he claimed Democrats look better after the fracas than 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 defended his actions Wednesday night.

'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 tweeted. 

Sanders said Democrats need to get over the fact the special counsel found no evidence of collusion and move on.

'The fact is we considered that case closed, I think most of America did, it's time for Democrats to get on board. They don't get to do a do-over because they didn't like the outcome. That's like me telling my kid, 'I'm sorry you didn't win your soccer game, but that's okay, we

read more from dailymail.....