Politics - News Analysis

Trump Just Slammed Nancy Pelosi for Wanting to Take an ‘Excursion’ While Government is Shutdown

Donald Trump slammed Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday for planning to leave the country on a congressional delegation during the government shutdown.

He also needled the Speaker for taking donations from California’s wine country, writing that workers would still have access to come work there even after a wall is built on the border.

“Why would Nancy Pelosi leave the Country with other Democrats on a seven day excursion when 800,000 great people are not getting paid,” Trump tweeted.

In retaliation for asking him to delay his State of the Union address until the government shutdown is over, Trump “postponed” the trip Pelosi was supposed to take yesterday. While the president said the House Speaker still had the option of flying commercially, he cut off her delegation from the military plane they were expected to take for security reasons.

Trump’s move has drawn criticism on several fronts, one reason being his attempt to portray Pelosi’s plan to visit NATO and troops in Afghanistan as a “seven day excursion” for pleasure. Pelosi’s team has also responded to the cancellation by recalling how Trump made a similar trip a few weeks ago when he went to see troops in Iraq during the shutdown.

Pelosi ended up cancelling her trip, and her spokesman issued a statement.

“After President Trump revoked the use of military aircraft to travel to Afghanistan, the delegation was prepared to fly commercially to proceed with this vital trip to meet with our commanders and troops on the front lines,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.

“In the middle of the night, the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service provided an updated threat assessment detailing that the President announcing this sensitive travel had significantly increased the danger to the delegation and to the troops, security, and other officials supporting the trip. This morning, we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well.”

The second half of Trump’s tweet begs the question of whether he’s accusing Pelosi of profiting from undocumented laborers working in the vineyards of California. Based on Trump’s statement, its really not clear if he’s threatening a wave of immigrants, a promise for visas, or something else entirely when he says “people working on farms (grapes) will have easy access in!”

Twitter had some thoughts:

Comments

Comments are currently closed.