In testy exchange, Rep. Maxine Waters tells Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, "no other secretary has ever told us the day before that they were going to limit their time."



"You're ordering me to stay here .... that's not what I want to do," Mnuchin says https://t.co/tFCpfQzXeL pic.twitter.com/H7je3oxk6G — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 9, 2019

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-California, sparred in a testy exchange Tuesday afternoon ostensibly over scheduling. The subtext of the back-and-forth pointed to a larger—and growing—divide between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats. Mnuchin was on his second session of testimony where he was grilled by Democrats on a number of issues when he informed the committee they needed to wrap things up because he had a meeting with an important foreign official at 5:30 p.m. The scheduled meeting, Mnuchin later said, was with a government official from Bahrain that he didn’t want to be late for.

“We’re all late all the time unfortunately,” Waters responded. “We’re all pressed for time, and I do get it.” Mnuchin said he’d notified the committee the day before that he had a commitment and would need to wrap up his testimony by 5 p.m. and would come back for further testimony next month. Walters tried to get Mnuchin to commit to two sessions in May before leaving. “This is a new way, and it’s a new day,” she said. “And it’s a new chair, and I have the gavel.” “If this is the way you will treat me, I will rethink” returning, Mnuchin replied. And it only devolved from there.

In testy exchange, Rep. Maxine Waters tells Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, "no other secretary has ever told us the day before that they were going to limit their time."



"You're ordering me to stay here .... that's not what I want to do," Mnuchin says https://t.co/tFCpfQzXeL pic.twitter.com/H7je3oxk6G — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 9, 2019

“You’re ordering me to stay here,” Mnuchin said at one point.

“You are free to leave anytime you want,” Waters said.

“OK, well then, please dismiss everybody,” Mnuchin told Waters. “I believe you are supposed to take the gravel [sic] and bang it.”

“Please do not instruct me as to how I am to conduct this committee,” Waters shot back.

Imagine if we tried to Brexit.