Congress Pelosi: There was never ‘any hatchet’ to bury with Ocasio-Cortez

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there was never “any hatchet” to bury with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, praising the high-profile freshman after the two met privately Friday to move past their feud that erupted earlier this month.

Pelosi went on to describe Ocasio-Cortez as “gracious” and downplayed the fight between the two as a family disagreement.


“I don’t think there ever was any hatchet. We’re in a political arena,” Pelosi told reporters in a press conference Friday. “In a family you have your differences but you’re still a family.”

Ocasio-Cortez was silent as she walked into the speaker’s office shortly before 8:30 a.m., and she quietly slipped out 30 minutes later, eluding reporters. But later, Ocasio-Cortez said she's "looking forward to us continuing our work."

"I think the speaker respects the fact that we’re coming together as a party and a community," Ocasio-Cortez told reporters as she left a House Oversight Committee hearing.

The New York Democrat didn't respond to a question about whether she brought up her comments from earlier this month suggesting the speaker was singling out congresswomen of color. Pelosi said “no” earlier in the day when asked if the two discussed Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.

“I don’t think we have that many differences,” Pelosi said after the meeting as she rushed to the House floor to open the chamber for the day.

“I have meetings with members all the time...we covered a range of issues in our conversation particular to the congresswoman’s committees,” she said.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who held a hearing on drug pricing on Friday, said Ocasio-Cortez told him she had "a good feeling" after the sit-down with Pelosi.

"She said it was a great meeting," Cummings told reporters. "And she’s moving forward. I know the speaker is too.”

Allies for both Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez had sought to downplay expectations ahead of the meeting, which comes just as the House departs for a six-week recess. But the summit between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez has been the subject of much palace intrigue in the House over the last week.

The behind-closed-doors conversation came after a days-long spat between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez earlier this month that ignited when the speaker dismissed the influence the New York Democrat and her high-profile progressive freshman friends — known collectively as “the squad” — have in the House.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told the New York Times after a dispute over a contentious border aide bill publicly pitted members of the squad against their Democratic colleagues in late June.

“But they didn’t have any following,” Pelosi continued. “They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

Tensions between progressive and moderate House Democrats were still inflamed after an internal debate over the border bill spilled out publicly, resulting in nasty name calling on Twitter and a dramatic confrontation on the House floor.

Pelosi’s comments about the squad bluntly exposed ideological divisions that had been quietly simmering for months before the border debate.

The remarks infuriated Ocasio-Cortez and other squad members — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). The quartet vented on Twitter, with Ocasio-Cortez noting the latest comment was one in a series of seemingly dismissive remarks Pelosi had made related to her.

“Those aren’t quotes from me; they‘re from the Speaker. Having respect for ourselves doesn’t mean we lack respect for her,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “It means we won’t let everyday people be dismissed.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff took it a step further, ripping into Pelosi and questioning her leadership skills in a series of tweets.

Today, Congresswoman @RepAOC and I sat down to discuss working together to meet the needs of our districts and our country, fairness in our economy and diversity in our country. pic.twitter.com/eVp1LS0Gpw — Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 26, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez escalated the feud later that week when she made comments to the Washington Post suggesting Pelosi was purposefully singling out congresswomen of color to criticize.

Her remarks enraged senior members of the caucus, who were already angry about a series of tweets from Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff weeks earlier that accused moderates of “criminalizing brown people” for political gain.

The feud looked like it was going to drag into another week until President Donald Trump unified Democrats after tweeting a racist series of statements on July 14 telling the members of the squad — all women of color — to “go back” to another country.

All four of the congresswomen are American citizens. Trump continued his drumbeat of attacks — including repeating a series of falsehoods about the progressives and declining to stop chants of “send her back” at a political rally later that week, remarks aimed squarely at Omar.

“I give the credit to Donald Trump,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Thursday. “No one was capable of unifying our party more than the president.”

Democrats moved quickly to condemn Trump’s comments, with Pelosi causing a last-minute flurry of controversy after calling the president’s comments “racist” on the House floor.

Now, as the House departs for its longest break away from Washington this year, Democrats say they’re all looking to move on.