On Tuesday, Treasury secretary and foreclosure millionaire Steve Mnuchin got into a heated exchange with California Representative Maxine Waters. Mnuchin appeared before the House Financial Services Committee, which Waters now chairs, to answer questions about the possible release of Donald Trump's tax returns. But when the meeting reached the three-hour mark, Mnuchin asked to leave so he could attend a meeting with a foreign dignitary. Waters told him that it was a bizarre request that the committee hadn't had before: a secretary asking to leave in the middle of questioning.

Mnuchin argued that no other secretary had ever testified as long as he had, and that the Republican-controlled House had been much more respectful. "This is a new way and it’s a new day," Waters told him. "And it’s a new chair and I have the gavel at this point."

From there, Mnuchin tried a different approach, saying, "If you’d wish to keep me here so I don’t have my important meeting, and continue to grill me, then we can do that. I will cancel my meeting and I will not be back here. I will be very clear, if that’s the way you’d like to have this relationship.”

"Thank you," Waters replied. "The secretary has agreed to stay to hear all the rest of the members. Please cancel your meeting and respect our time."

Apparently, that wasn't what Mnuchin expected to hear. He gave Waters an ultimatum, and he probably expected her to take the path of least resistance. But Waters has shown repeatedly that she has no time for fools and that she's hard to intimidate. She is, after all, the woman who responded to death threats by saying, "If you shoot me, you better shoot straight because there's nothing like a wounded animal."

Mnuchin quickly tried to walk back what he said—well, less of a walk back than just insisting that that's not what he said at all. Instead, he asked Waters if she was ordering him to cancel his meeting and stay, claiming that he never offered to stick around and that she was using her authority to coerce him. When she reminded him that she was accepting an offer that he had made, he quickly flustered, saying "I did not make you an offer. Let’s be clear, you’re instructing me, you’re ordering me to stay here."

It's not the first time Waters and Mnuchin have squared off in Congress. The last time was in July 2017, when Waters went viral for "reclaiming her time" whenever Mnuchin refused to answer a question directly.

In the end, Steve Mnuchin got to leave. After Waters reminded him that he was free to leave at any time, he told her, "Please dismiss everybody. I believe you’re supposed to take the gavel and bang it."

But getting the last word with Waters is impossible. In the iciest voice imaginable, she replied, "Please do not instruct me as to how I am to conduct this committee."