white house Trump blows up White House meeting over nasty feud with Pelosi The president called off bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure after the speaker accused him of a 'cover-up.'

President Donald Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi engaged in a public and bitter feud on Wednesday, with the president detonating bipartisan negotiations over the speaker’s accusations of a "cover-up" and Pelosi bluntly responding: “I pray for the president of the United States.”

The breakdown resulted in Trump declaring that he will not work with congressional Democrats as long as they pursue oversight investigations into him and his administration.


"Let them play their games," Trump said in a heated 12-minute news conference in the Rose Garden after he abruptly called off the meeting about infrastructure. "We're going to go down one track at a time. Let them finish up and we'll be all set.”

The explosive encounter at the White House shattered the good bipartisan vibes emanating from positive budget talks on Tuesday, and startled attendees. The Democratic lawmakers said Trump made them wait, complained about their probes, canceled the meeting and left in a span of just a few minutes.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said it was “high drama in the Cabinet Room.”

“I don’t know where this leaves us as a nation,” Durbin said. “If the president walks out of the meeting, it’s a setback for the country’s priorities.”

Congress' various probes have emerged as the chief source of the president's irritation since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report last month. And the White House's blanket refusal to comply with the inquiries has provoked more and more Democrats in recent days to call for the president's impeachment.

Earlier Wednesday, Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged her 235-member caucus in a closed-door conference to back down from calls to oust Trump from office, though she told reporters after the meeting: "We believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up."

“This is very sad because this meeting was set up a number of days ago,” Trump said of the scuttled infrastructure session.

“All of a sudden I hear last night they’re going to have a meeting right before this meeting to talk about the ‘I’ word," the president said. "The ‘I’ word. Can you imagine?”

Trump decided to hold the impromptu Rose Garden gathering later in the morning after he learned of Pelosi’s comments, according to two senior administration officials. Both acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders flagged Pelosi’s comments for him, one official said.

"Instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that have just said that I was doing a cover-up," Trump told reporters. "I don't do cover-ups. You people know that probably better than anybody."

Speaking from behind a sign attached to his lectern emblazoned with the words "No Collusion" and "No Obstruction," the president praised his administration's cooperation with Mueller's investigation while admonishing the 22-month probe as "a witch hunt," "a hoax," and "a total, horrible thing" for the country that "hurt us in so many ways."

The oversight inquires by Congress, Trump argued, were similarly illegitimate.

"We've had a House investigation. We have Senate investigations. We have investigations like nobody has ever had before, and we did nothing wrong," Trump said.

"They would have loved to have said we colluded. They would have loved it," he continued. "These people were out to get us. The Republican Party and President Trump. They were out to get us."

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also had their say, holding their own news conference in the Capitol shortly after Trump wrapped up.

“It wasn’t really respectful of the Congress and the White House working together. He just took a pass,” Pelosi said. “I pray for the president of the United States, and I pray for the United States of America.”

Somewhat surprisingly, the president seemed to agree with Democrats on how the meeting went -- a near replay of when Trump angrily left a meeting with Democrats during the 35-day shutdown and refused to negotiate.

“I walked into the room and I told Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I'd be really good at that. That is what I do,” Trump said. “But you know what, you can't do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with.”

Three sources familiar with the meeting said the president arrived late on Wednesday morning and vented about Pelosi’s criticisms of him. Trump was "clearly furious" when he came in the room, according to Democratic sources, and ranted at them for several minutes. He complained that Pelosi had accused him of all these "horrible, horrible things,” and he said Democrats were "disrespectful."

Then Trump stormed out of the room without Democrats even getting a chance to speak. Pelosi was also angry and said she “knew he was never serious about infrastructure" as administration staff were in the room.

Schumer later called it a “planned” stunt.

“He is looking for every excuse,” Schumer said at the news conference in the Capitol. “The investigation was going on three weeks ago when we [first] met” on infrastructure.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump told Pelosi and Schumer he would not seriously consider an infrastructure bill until the Democrats passed his new North American trade deal. That suggested that Wednesday’s meeting would be fruitless anyway.

“I’m not sure I would use the same tactics,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) of Trump’s hardball approach on trade.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said the White House meeting felt like a set-up when the Democrats realized no Republican lawmakers were invited.

"Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail. Maybe we'll have a miracle and the administration will actually come up with a plan," Carper said.

But few could have foreseen it would have played out in such acrimonious and public fashion, with dueling press conferences and no actual negotiation or dialogue between the president and the opposition party.

"To watch what happened at the White House would make your jaw drop," Schumer concluded.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Wednesday’s blowup puts to rest any hopes that the parties will unite on a massive, multitrillion-dollar infrastructure vision anytime soon — and certainly before the 2020 election.

The idea already faced daunting odds, even though Trump first proposed a $500 billion-plus cash infusion during his campaign, highlighted his infrastructure pledge during his victory speech in November 2016,and put out his own $1.5 trillion blueprint in early 2018.

One key problem is that nobody — not the president, not Congress — has put forward any realistic way to pay for all the desired spending, leaving any package little more than a political messaging tool.

"We want to work with the president on anything we can, provided he's willing to work with us. And so far, it doesn't look like it," Schumer said about the long lineup of must-pass bills in the next few months.

White House officials, however, were largely unfazed by the president’s seemingly abrupt Rose Garden appearance, with one official calling it “business as usual” inside the West Wing.

But both Trump and Pelosi stoked the feud throughout the day.

In a preplanned appearance at the Center for American Progress, Pelosi called the whole encounter “very, very, very strange.”

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

Trump, meanwhile, sent out a burst of tweets on Wednesday afternoon and insisted that Congress “can’t investigate and legislate simultaneously.”

“So sad that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will never be able to see or understand the great promise of our Country. They can continue the Witch Hunt which has already cost $40M and been a tremendous waste of time and energy for everyone in America, or get back to work....” Trump wrote in one tweet.

He went on to mock Pelosi’s statement that she would pray for him.

“Democrat leadership is tearing the United States apart,” Trump wrote, “but I will continue to set records for the American People – and Nancy, thank you so much for your prayers, I know you truly mean it!”

Sarah Ferris and Kathryn A. Wolfe contributed to this report.