US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump have started a new phase of post impeachment drama after Trump this week survived the Democrats attempt to impeach him.
Trump, at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, which both Trump and Pelosi attended, thanked “courageous Republican politicians who had the wisdom, fortitude and strength to do what everyone knows was right.”
He then made implicit references to Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney (the only Republican Senator who voted against Trump) as people who use their faith as an excuse to do wrong’
“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that’s not so. So many people have been hurt and we can’t let that go on,” Trump said.
“We have allies, we have enemies, sometimes the allies are enemies but we just don’t know it. But we’re changing all that,” Trump later remarked.
Later in the White House on Thursday, while celebrating his acquittal from impeachment allegations by the US Senate, Trump slammed the impeachment process as something that should never happen to another president, saying Nancy Pelosi ‘never prayed for him’, contrary to her suggestions that she did. He suggested Pelosi had no dignity for tearing up his speech at the State of the Union address while apologizing to his family for letting them pass through the impeachment process.
Pelosi in response, said she didn’t need a lesson on dignity from Trump, adding that she tore Trump’s speech because it was filled with lies, and that she still prayed for the president.
Later Thursday after the breakfast, Pelosi adressed Trump’s remark about faith as justification for doing something wrong “completely inappropriate” and “particularly without class.”, saying the president’s remarks at a faith gathering was completely unwarranted.
“This morning the President said when people use faith as an excuse to do … bad things … was just so completely inappropriate, especially at a prayer breakfast,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.
“I don’t know what the President understands about prayer or people who do pray, but we do pray for the United States of America,” she said. “I pray hard for him because he’s so off the track of the Constitution, our values, our country.”
“He really needs our prayers, so he can say whatever he wants … but I do pray for him and I do so sincerely and without anguish,” Pelosi added.
“To go into the stock market and raising up (the newspaper) and mischaracterizing other peoples’ motivation, he’s talking about things he knows little about — faith and prayer,” she said.
The back and forth between the number one and number three person in the US, brings to the forefront the great polarisation and partisanship that the impeachment drama has brought to the American people as they head to the polls in November.
