The shutdown meeting when he walked out. Exactly, thats according to two democratic sources with knowledge of that meeting. Well hear from Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi any moment now. But thats it for me. Andrea mitchell picking things up right now. Ill see you tomorrow morning. What a day. Craig melvin, thank you. Good day. Im Andrea Mitchell in washington. We are awaiting comments at any moment from House Speaker nancy pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. Moments after President Trump suddenly appeared in The Rose Garden to lash out at them, pouncing on Comments Pelosi had made this morning, that the president had engaged in a coverup, comments she made in part to slow her own caucus march to impeachment. The president walking out of that prearranged meeting over infrastructure and trade with pelosi and schumer, and leading democrats on capitol hill. Heres part of it. Instead of walking in happily into a meefg, i walk into look at people that had just said
that i
Distinguished democratic leader of the senate, mr. schumer. well, thank you, speaker pelosi. and to watch what happened in the white house would make your jaw drop. we democrats believe in infrastructure. we believe our roads and bridges need repair. we believe that rural america, as well as inner city america needs broadband. we believe that bring clean, new energy around the country we need a power grid modernized and updated. we believe in modernizing our transportation fleet with electric cars. we believe in all of these things. and so despite signals in the previous few weeks, that he might not be serious, we went forward. we came here very seriously. the president asked in his letter last night, where would democrats spend the money on infrastructure? i was prepared to give him a 35-page plan detailing this in
What he would do if democrats pursued investigations. he said, in effect, if they do that, for us, it would be a war-like posture, this is, from president trump, a war-like posture. but it s also a bookend, in many ways. because you ll remember late last year, where there was that contentious visit with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer in the oval office, with the president, where he said, basically, he would take the blame. he would be the one responsible for a shutdown on the issue of border security. well, today, basically, he said, i m willing to say, we re not going franywhere on infrastructure, as long as the democrats won t move forward and get over it in terms of their investigations. the democrats tried to make hay with that, trying to capitalize on that today, and the sound bite that everyone s going to be talking about as it relates to the democrats is nancy pelosi saying at the end of her remarks, i pray for the president of the united states, i pray for the country. inde
Us why he wouldn t do infrastructure. and of course, then he went to the rose garden with prepared signs that had been printed up long before our meeting. we want the president to do infrastructure. we want our congress to perform its constitutional responsibilities and create jobs, create income, create wealth for the average american. we can do both. it s clear the president doesn t want to do any of that. i just would add this one thing that we had a very distinguished delegation to the congress, very powerful house and senate, as you can see, distinguished leader on the appropriations committee, senator patty murray, mr. carper, the ranking member on the committee of jurisdiction that oversees some of what we re talking about here, richey neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee in the house. our distinguished democratic leader in the house, steny
All the areas i mentioned and more, that have the broad support of senate and house democrats. we were interested. we are interested in doing infrastructure. it s clear the president isn t. he is looking for every excuse, whether it was let s do trade first, or whether it was, he s not going to pay for any funding, or whether today, that there are investigations going on. hello, there were investigations going on three weeks ago when we met. and he still met with us. but now that he was forced to actually say how he d pay for it, he had to run away. and he came up with this pre-planned excuse. and one final point, it s clear that this was not a spontaneous move on the president s part. it was planned. when we got in the room, the curtains were closed, the president there was a place for him at the front, so he could stand and attempt to tell