In March 2020, Pelosi wanted to shake hands with Trump but was rejected. He tore off the presidential speech on the spot without expression and Pelosi was dismissed, and Trump took the blame! How did the two of them "harm each other" over the years?
text/Feng Xu
Former US President Trump recently officially delivered a speech on "Election 2024", the focus of public opinion was on three women .
First of all, Trump's eldest daughter Ivanka . She had shown her political ambitions before and even made a sound of participating in political elections. This time, she "retreats" and missed the "gala" of Trump's opening of the 2024 road in an vague manner.
Against this background, the second lady of that public opinion pays attention to is the former "first lady" Melania . There were rumors that she was not satisfied with Trump's defeat in 2020 and still insisted on returning to White House . But in the context of Ivanka's absence, Melania chose to hold hands with Trump and appeared together at the speech at Mar-a-Lago Manor on November 15.
As for , the third lady is Trump's old rival and House Democratic leader Pelosi . With Republican regaining control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, Pelosi cannot become the next Speaker. Therefore, Trump chanted "We fired Pelosi" in his speech to cover up the Republican failure to regain the Senate.
82-year-old Pelosi did not respond to Trump's latest ridicule for her as soon as possible. Earlier a few days ago, she said Trump was “not a good force” and hoped that the Republican Party would stop Trump’s plans to run for president again. Trump stepped up his "personal attack" on Pelosi on the eve of midterm elections. "I think she is an animal - if you want to know."
In the United States, where the political system is relatively mature, it is rare to attack and not be etiquette among national politicians. After the midterm elections, most of the candidates of the Trump faction did not question the election results, but called to bless the other party. The only exception is that several defeated Trump senators and gubernatorial candidates choose to meet supporters before calling Democratic opponents. They interpret this "order inversion" as an extra emphasis on voters.
In fact, . What goes beyond the unwritten US political bottom line is far more than verbal mutual attacks. From the end of 2019 to the end of 2020, Trump, then President of the United States, and Pelosi, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, refused bilateral meetings for a year, and completely "zero exchanges" except for formal occasions. It can be said that the extreme confrontation between the "No. 1" and "No. 3" in the United States at that time had seriously affected the normal political operation of the United States and naturally hurt the international community.
However, before Trump became the president of the United States, he and Pelosi had no personal grudges. Why did the relationship between the two have reached this point step by step? Now, in the context of the Republicans regaining control of the House and Biden and the need to cooperate with House Republicans, will the confrontation between the new leaders of the two parties maintain the Trump-Pelosi model?
On November 15th local time, Trump announced at Mar-a-Lago Manor that he would continue to participate in the 2024 presidential election
How to "turn jade into swords"?
After so many "stories" happened between Pelosi and Trump, if we reiterate today that "Pelosi had long opposed the impeachment of Trump", the people on both sides of the left and right may feel unbelievable. But according to a 2020 long character report by Time magazine, when calls for "impeachment of Trump" within the Democratic Party became increasingly high throughout the first half of 2019, then House Speaker Pelosi was a staunch opponent.
is different from the image we see in people today. In the past 20 years, Pelosi has not been a radical or emotional politician, and therefore is not liked by the radical left within the Democratic Party. In 2003, Pelosi became the leader of the House Democratic Party for the first time, and since then it has begun to rule the House Democratic Party caucus for 19 years.After every two years of House elections, her position as leader within the party is challenged, but she can always defeat her opponents by because it is precisely " The Doctrine of the Mean ".
The most typical example is from 2006 to 2008, when Pelosi served as the Speaker as the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, and the then president was the Republican Party's Bush Jr. . Some senior Democratic Party officials believe that Bush Jr. misleads American citizens and involves the United States in an unjust war to invade Iraq on the issue of so-called "weapons of mass destruction". Pelosi believes that impeachment may inspire the fighting spirit of Republican voters, and it is better to just focus on this issue in the campaign. The 2008 Democratic victory in the midterm election proved that Pelosi's choice of the line was correct, and she also gained the support of a majority of elected members, defeating the challenge of the progressive party in the party to her leadership.
After Trump took office as president in 2017, Pelosi, then the leader of the House Minority Party and once again became House Speaker two years later due to his midterm election victory, chose the same way: to engage in limited cooperation with Trump . Of course, Trump is not a traditional Republican president, and Pelosi’s cooperation with him is not very smooth, but from January 2017 to October 2019, the two sides maintained the etiquette of shaking hands and greetings when they met in public, and often held bilateral meetings on important matters in private.
Of course, after the two officially "started war", officials on both sides revealed to the media that there were already many contradictions and conflicts in these meetings during the "peaceful" period. Trump once left the conference room angrily when he could not reach a consensus, and also suspended Pelosi's visit due to Pelosi's opposition to his internal policy. Pelosi also "for tooth" to prevent Trump from giving a speech on time. But in general, although the two sides are playing games, at least there is room for dialogue. One detail is that in September 2019, when Trump learned that the Democratic Party’s impeachment against him was “arrow on the string”, the president’s first reaction was to make an emergency call to Pelosi before delivering a speech on UN General Assembly , constantly explaining that his behavior was “not illegal”.
This call ended with Pelosi refusing to give in and Trump hung up in anger. The presidential impeachment case that began at the end of September 2019 thus became a "watershed" in the relationship between Pelosi and Trump. The problem is: Previously, Pelosi had been opposing the party's impeachment process in the name of Trump's "interference in the election". "It seems suddenly" that Pelosi agreed to impeachment, said Clark, vice chairman of the House Democratic caucus.
On January 6, 2022, Pelosi attended an event commemorating the first anniversary of the Capitol Hill riots
What exactly happened?
is the first step toward the party. Pelosi opposes the impeachment of Trump, just like her reason for opposing Bush Jr.: to avoid tearing the country apart and stimulating the other party’s voters. She turned out to be right, just after the impeachment case started, Trump received $46 million in fundraising in the last three months of 2019, setting a record for fundraising speed for American politicians that year. Among them, the small donations of ordinary voters who earned within 72 hours after the Democratic Party announced the impeachment reached $15 million.
However, unlike the Bush Jr. period, there are no senior executives in the Democratic Party who support Pelosi. Pelosi started his career as a member of Capitol Hill in 1988, and today's Democratic senior officials are mostly the product of American political polarization in the mid-1990s. After Trump came to power, the polarization of the two parties further intensified, making most Democratic lawmakers believe that impeachment of Trump can allow them to obtain "vote benefits." At the end of 2018, a "rebellion" even occurred within Pelosi's House Democratic caucus, and some young congressmen who had been following Pelosi for a long time tried to find a "new generation of characters" to replace the "old lady".
Pelosi gradually realized that the trend of polarization was unstoppable. The most critical moment of was in August 2019. When Pelosi attended a Democratic party dinner, a group of young activists disrupted Pelosi's speech, shouting slogans to impeach Trump immediately, and hotel security guards had to drive out the group of protesters shouting "We are your voters."
American media later pointed out that Pelosi realized that as an old-school politician over 80 years old, if she wanted to maintain her "peak of power" position, she had to act like a political star like Trump, that is, "use power in an aggressive, even risky way", because this is the result that voters in the new era want to see.
After Pelosi visited Taiwan in August this year, some American media mentioned that Pelosi was known as "bold". But when she decided to "start a war" with Trump to maintain party unity and maintain personal political future, Pelosi was not "bold", but was more in line with Trump's ridicule of her: "The nervous Nancy ". American media once disclosed that Pelosi couldn't sleep at night during the days when he decided to impeach Trump and took the initiative to demand strengthen the guards at home.
A "famous scene" of a press conference at the end of 2019 was Pelosi's only time to show the entanglement during the transformation period. At that time, a reporter asked her if she hated Trump personally. Pelosi answered with anger: "I grew up in a Catholic family. I don't hate anyone. Don't blame me like this. ." When the reporter said that this was not accusation, it was just a question, Pelosi added, "Don't mess with me." The plot after
is well known: starting from October 2019, Pelosi and Trump have not met privately for a year, and have refused to communicate in public. Trump did not shake hands with Pelosi before his State of the Union speech, and Pelosi tore off Trump's speech. The "communication" between the two is only left to scold each other from a distance. Trump said the speaker was a "third-rate politician", while Pelosi called Trump a "coward".
It is said that what makes Trump most worried is that after Trump was infected with the new coronavirus in October 2020, Pelosi quickly organized a group in the House of Representatives to study "the president's inability to perform his duties" and declared that the presidency is "in a state of possible change." At the same time, Democratic lawmakers have hinted that Trump may have "alergic disease" due to new crown . Since then, Trump has significantly escalated his personal attack on Pelosi, and "insanity" has become his new description of the Speaker .
In March 2020, Pelosi was rejected to shake hands with Trump, and he tore off the presidential speech on the spot without expression
will continue "mutual hurt"
Pelosi attacked Trump sharply out of political future and the need to unite the Democratic Party. What considerations did Trump attack Pelosi? Many analysts believe that even if Pelosi does not take the step to impeach Trump, she will inevitably become the target of collective humiliation by the top Republicans. The reason is simple: from 2016 to 2020, Republicans served as president and vice president, and House Speaker Pelosi, who is the "number three", is the Democrat closest to the center of power in the country.
"Politician" magazine pointed out that because Pelosi has served as the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives from 2003 to 2022, and the House election is closest to grassroots voters and the most frequently (once every two years), Republican politicians regard Pelosi as "an enemy that is more likely to be 'seen' by voters than Obama and Biden." . A very successful political movement from Senate Republican leader McConnell was to develop a political game against Obamacare into an election campaign with the slogan of "fire Pelosi", thus winning the historic victory for the Republican Party in 2014.
Affected by this victory, according to statistics from the survey agency Kantar Media, from 2014 to 2016, Pelosi became the Democratic politician with the highest "usage" rate in all levels of campaign activities. She appeared in 13% of Republican campaign advertisements and thus became the "public enemy" of Republican voters, and has long been ranked "the female congressman who Americans dislike" in the NRCC poll.
Almost the first time after becoming president, Trump, the "political amateur" learned this trick of "everything is blamed by Pelosi". Since 2017, "The problem you encounter comes from Pelosi" has become his catchphrase to explain that his political program cannot be implemented. Before Trump, the Republican Party had portrayed Pelosi as a "crazy, angry, and hysterical woman who could not control his temper" . Trump's "contribution" was to further label Pelosi in his unique urban spoken language, giving words such as "crazy Nancy", "tensive Nancy" or "Nancy Antoinette".
The so-called "Nancy Antoinette" points to the wife of the King of France during the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, who was accused of being knowledgeable about foreign countries and betraying the interests of the French people. But what is more noteworthy is that the fate of this queen is the guillotine. In , Washington , the political nickname involves "death intimidation" has far exceeded the bottom line of American political tradition. It can be said that during the Trump administration, the Republican attack on Pelosi made right-wing voters hate Pelosi more, and this hatred in turn prompted Trump and Republicans to take more aggressive rhetoric against Pelosi. The ultimate result of the deterioration of the cycle of
appeared in October this year. Deppep, a middle-aged American who was obviously bewitched by the right-wing thoughts, broke into Pelosi's home with tape, rope, hammer, gloves, etc., and seriously injured Pelosi's husband. Deppep later told police that he intended to confront Pelosi on some "political issues" and that if Pelosi cannot give him a satisfactory answer, he would "break Pelosi's kneecap ".
Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi
What shocked mainstream American public opinion was that after the incident, except for a few Republican establishment leaders expressed condolences to Pelosi, Trump hinted in his public speech that this was a conspiracy directed and acted by Pelosi for the vote. "What happened to that family over the past few weeks is strange," Trump said. "Glass seems to be broken from the inside out. It's not breaking in, it's breaking out."
Some media comments were surprised that Trump ignored the findings released by the police, but more analysis pointed out that Trump must say that to fit the needs of his supporters. The confrontation between Trump and Pelosi has taken such a ruthless step, not because of personal grudges, but because of the common struggle and polarization of American politics has reached this point.
Now, Pelosi is no longer the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Trump’s 2024 journey is difficult to go smoothly. But as long as the social division and political polarization in the United States do not change, "mutual harm" like Trump and Pelosi may continue between the next generation of leaders of the two parties. One detail is that at the end of October this year, after Pelosi's husband was injured by an attacker who broke into the house with a hammer, Trump's son Trump Jr. posted a social media message: a photo of the hammer with the caption: "It's time to prepare my Halloween props."
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