NEW YORK, Jun 07 (APP): US President Donald Trump has called House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “nasty, vindictive, horrible person” after reports leaked that she told her fellow Democrats that she didn’t want to impeach the president, but rather “see him in prison.”
In an interview with Fox News in Normandy, France, on Thursday night amid D-Day commemorations, Trump responded to her remark, which was reported by POLITICO, a U.S. media group.
“I think she’s a disgrace. I actually don’t think she’s a talented person,” the president said. “I’ve tried to be nice to her because I would have liked to have gotten some deals done. She’s incapable of doing deals. She’s a nasty, vindictive, horrible person.”
According to POLITICO, Pelosi said Wednesday she wanted Trump to go to prison while pushing back on Democratic efforts to impeach the president, saying that she wants him defeated in 2020 and later charged for crimes.
Pelosi has apparently frustrated some in her party for rebuffing calls for the president’s impeachment following the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Pelosi’s allies have said impeachment would go nowhere with a Republican-controlled Senate.
“I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,” Pelosi said, while Trump was in Europe.
Pelosi’s comments were made behind closed doors, and POLITICO said those remarks were revealed by people familiar with the meeting.
Ashley Etienne, a Pelosi spokesperson, would not confirm or deny the remarks but said in a statement that “Speaker Pelosi and the Chairs had a productive meeting about the state of play with the Mueller report. They agreed to keep all options on the table and continue to move forward with an aggressive hearing and legislative strategy, as early as next week, to address the president’s corruption and abuses of power uncovered in the report.”
Trump also repeated a recently minted nickname for Pelosi — Nervous Nancy — and said she should divert her attention away from the president’s alleged misdeeds to her home district in San Francisco, which he said has “drugs and needles all over the place.”
“It’s the most disgusting thing what she’s allowed to happen to her district,” he said.
Trump also went after Joe Biden, who is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, saying he “just doesn’t get it” on economic relations with China. During a Tuesday town hall, Biden characterized the economic threat posed by China as less severe than Trump’s trade war would suggest. Trump in turn said Chinese President Xi Jinping would love to have Biden as the Democratic nominee.