Political watchers could see it coming from the moment the US election returns were final last November.

There was sure to be a high-stakes jousting match between President Donald Trump and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, set to retake her position as Speaker of the House.

In Mr Trump's first two years as president, Democrats were unable to do much more than complain about his verbose, bullying tactics. But in Ms Pelosi, and the Democratic majority in the House, they had someone who could stare him down, eyeball to eyeball.

And stare each other down, they have. Neither has budged since the US government was partially shutdown on December 22, over Mr Trump's insistence on obtaining federal funding to build a border wall with Mexico.

This week, however, the stare down has turned into something of a dance off. First, Ms Pelosi wrote to Mr Trump, suggesting that he delay delivering his State of the Union address, the speech that American presidents give annually to both houses of Congress.

Ms Pelosi blamed security concerns amid the government shutdown and said that if Mr Trump did not wish to delay the speech, he could present it to Congress in writing.

Mr Trump did not immediately respond to the suggestion. But when he did answer Ms Pelosi on Thursday, his response was both petty and potentially dangerous.

On Thursday, Mr Trump sent Ms Pelosi a letter that revealed a heavily secret trip that he said Ms Pelosi and other Democrats were supposed to take to Brussels, Egypt and Kabul.

Mr Trump's letter, posted in a tweet by his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told Ms Pelosi that her trip was cancelled in light of the shutdown.

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"We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the shutdown is over," he wrote. If she wanted to proceed, she could fly commercial, he suggested, although there are no commercial flights directly from the US to Afghanistan.

It was a stunning insult to the politician who stands third in line in the American power structure, behind the president and vice president.

Trip not a junket, Pelosi aide says

Swiftly, Ms Pelosi's chief of staff, Drew Hammill, replied with his own series of tweets that corrected the president.

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Rather than being a junket, the stop in Brussels was designed so that Ms Pelosi and Democratic colleagues could meet with NATO commanders, US military officials and others to "reaffirm the United States' ironclad commitment to the NATO alliance" — of which Mr Trump has repeatedly been disdainful.

Further, Mr Hammill said, the visit to Afghanistan was only for this weekend, and did not include a stop in Egypt.

They were already on a bus bound for a military jet when the letter arrived, and they subsequently returned to the Capitol.

The exchanges came as everyone is watching to see whether the President or the speaker blinks first over the shutdown.

To the surprise of many, neither has, and it has revealed plenty about both of them.

Democrats' public face

Nancy Pelosi wore a bright fuchsia dress when Congress returned January 3. ( Reuters: Kevin Lamarque )

For many years, Washington knew Ms Pelosi was tough.

She served as Speaker from 2007 to 2011, but since she has been in the opposition the past eight years, she seemed more of a figurehead than a player.

During the fall campaign, Republican candidates repeatedly made Ms Pelosi the target of negative ads, and linked female Democratic candidates to her, only to see the strategy backfire in the loss of the House.

Although some rebellious Democrats spoke of dumping her as Speaker, Ms Pelosi easily won re-election to the leadership position, and has become the party's public face.

She also has become something of a fashion icon, appearing in a burnt orange winter coat on the day of a contentious White House meeting with Mr Trump, and a bright fuchsia dress when Congress returned January 3.

"For Nancy Pelosi and the new women in Congress, fashion was a defiant statement of purpose — and resistance," Robin Givhan wrote in the Washington Post.

Letter drew gasps in security circles

Likewise, Mr Trump's petulance has only been magnified by not getting his way. In fact, his letter drew gasps in security circles.

Trips like the one Ms Pelosi and the Democrats were scheduled to take, called a CODEL, for Congressional delegation, are usually shrouded in secrecy, especially to places as sensitive as Brussels and Kabul.

Politicians use military planes, and the security is mapped out weeks in advance by the State Department's security service.

It's likely that dozens of Congressional staff, embassy personnel and military officers were involved in arranging the trip at a time when hundreds of thousands of government employees are not being paid, due to the shutdown.

With a stroke of his pen, and a tweet by his press secretary, Mr Trump smashed that careful planning.

Never mind that he had taken his own trip to visit soldiers in Iraq at the start of the shutdown, or that a Republican delegation took its own government-paid trip despite the furloughs.

Mr Trump, it seems, is keeping score and is willing to break with security protocol to do so.

The new Congress is only two weeks old, and yet the exchanges between President and Speaker are setting a high bar for the next two years.

But as the acclaimed chef and cookbook author Julia Child once said, "Drama is very important in life. You have to come in with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper."

Micheline Maynard is an American author and journalist.