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Here are FIVE Times Nancy Pelosi Kicked Trump’s Butt and Showed Him Who’s Boss

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President Donald Trump’s relationship with former House Speaker Paul Ryan was fraught, to say the least, but his relationship with current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been downright hostile.

Trump has shared fake videos of Pelosi on social media, falsely accused her of committing crimes, and blocked her overseas trips to visit American troops even as he desperately tried to get on her good side after Democrats won back the House of Representatives. He even offered to whip up votes for her to win the Speaker’s job before she did so all on her own.

“Oh please, no. Never. Never. Never,” she said of Trump’s offer to help. And she has gotten the best of him ever since.

1. Pelosi shreds Trump’s “manifesto of mistruths”

Trump opened his third State of the Union by snubbing Pelosi’s offer at a handshake.

As Republicans broke with standard etiquette and chanted “four more years” for Trump, Democrats fought back with an “HR 3” chant when Trump called for Congress to pass a prescription drugs bill. HR 3 is the prescription drugs bill already passed by the House that goes much further than the Republican Senate bill backed by Trump.

At the end of the night, Pelosi took her copy of Trump’s speech and literally tore it up.

“It was the courteous thing to do, considering the alternative,” Pelosi later told reporters. “It was such a dirty speech.”

“What happened instead was the president using the Congress of the United States as a backdrop of a reality show, presenting a state of mind that had no contact with reality whatsoever,” she said the next day. “I tore up a manifesto of mistruths. It was necessary to get the attention of the American people to say this is not true. And this is how it affects you.”

2. The Syria walkout

In October 2019, Trump shocked the world when he abandoned Kurdish allies who helped the US battle ISIS to be slaughtered by Turkish troops in northern Syria. Democrats held an emergency meeting with Trump over the issue and ended up walking out after Trump called Pelosi a “third-rate politician.”

Trump tweeted a photo of Pelosi standing over the table and pointing her finger at Trump before walking out. “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” he wrote, thinking it would reflect badly on the speaker.

But the tweet quickly backfired as Pelosi made the image her new Twitter background image and the hashtag #PelosiOwnsTrump trended on Twitter.

Pelosi explained at a subsequent news conference what she said that caused Trump to “meltdown” himself.

“At that moment, I was probably saying, ‘All roads lead to Putin,’” Pelosi said.

Pelosi then led the House to overwhelmingly pass a bipartisan repudiation of Trump’s Syria pullout, which was approved 354 to 60.

3. The iconic red coat

During December 2018, Trump tried to leverage a government shutdown to get Democrats to agree to fund his border wall. Instead, Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer ripped Trump a new one in the meeting, blaming him for the shutdown and calling out his false claims.

Pelosi exited the White House in a now-iconic red coat and sunglasses before taking another swipe at Trump.

“It’s like a manhood thing with him,” she told Democratic colleagues. “As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing.”

“I can’t explain it to you. It was so wild. It goes to show you: You get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you,” she added. “The fact is, we did get him to say, to fully own, that the shutdown was his. That was an accomplishment.”

Trump ultimately caved and signed a bill reopening the government without any funding for his border wall.

4. The clap heard round the world

A year before tearing Trump’s State of the Union speech to shreds, Pelosi trolled the president with an iconic clap that quickly became a meme that set the internet aflame.

The ironic applause came after the divisive president declared that “we must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good.”

“It wasn’t sarcastic,” Pelosi later told reporters. “Look at what I was applauding. I wanted him to know that it was very welcomed.”

But Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, said the clap reminded her of her teen years.

“She knows. And she knows that you know. And frankly she’s disappointed that you thought this would work. But here’s a clap. #youtriedit,” she tweeted.

5. Winning the midterms

Trump’s first electoral test as president was the 2018 midterm. Trump repeatedly vowed that “we’re gonna win all over” and that “Republicans will do well in 2018, very well!”

What followed was a bloodbath.

Democrats won the House with the largest midterms margin in American history, surpassing the previous record of 8.7 million votes. Democrats led Republicans 53% to 45% in the raw vote and flipped 41 seats. The swing allowed Democrats to renew oversight of the Trump administration, approve some of the most progressive legislation in history, and impeach the president.

Pelosi got the better of Trump so bad that an internal Republican National Committee poll found that Pelosi would defeat Trump in a head-to-head matchup.

Nicole Hickman
meet the author

Nicole Hickman James is a lifelong Democrat and political activist who first cut her teeth as a teenager volunteering for Mike Dukakis’ presidential campaign. She has worked and volunteered for John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, HFA (Hillary For America), and Organizing For Action. She’s passionate about liberal and progressive causes and considers President Obama her favorite president ever. She holds her Bachelor’s from Boston College in Economics and her Master's from Columbia, also in Economics. When not working as a writer, she enjoys traveling and spending time with her three college-aged children.

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