US President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have not spoken in nearly 10 months since Trump railed at Pelosi at a meeting in October and insulted her as a "third-grade politician", CNN reported.
The report says that Trump did not talk to Pelosi even when they were in her office on 6 August to discuss the coronavirus pandemic. The US president only spoke with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to CNN, citing Meadows.
In the meantime, Congress has passed four phases of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), approving roughly $3 trillion in grants and loans to businesses, paycheck protection for workers, and personal aid to qualifying US citizens.
On 8 August, Trump signed four actions on COVID-19 relief to provide a payroll tax holiday to Americans earning less than $100,000 per year, grant $400 per week in expanded benefits to those who are unemployed, protect people from eviction, and extend relief to student loan borrowers. His move came as rescue package talks in Congress stalled and the $600 weekly unemployment benefit expired last week.
The last time Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi talked was on 16 October, when the House speaker pointed her finger at the seated president during a heated exchange in a White House meeting that was captured in a widely shared photograph.
Democratic leaders walked out in the middle of a White House meeting on Syria, which came shortly after the House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan vote on a resolution opposing the Trump administration's troop withdrawal. At the meeting, Trump railed at Pelosi and called her a "third-grade politician". Pelosi briefly fired back, saying that "all roads with [Trump] lead to Putin".
Nervous Nancy's unhinged meltdown! pic.twitter.com/RDeUI7sfe7
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019
In September, House Democrats started an impeachment inquiry after a whistleblower complaint alleged that Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to probe his political rival in the 2020 presidential campaign Joe Biden for corruption. Trump has repeatedly said the impeachment inquiry was a sham and a political witch hunt by Democrats to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election.