https://thehill.com/homenews/house/499258-pelosi-makes-fans-as-democrat-who-gets-under-trumps-skin
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has assumed many roles for Democrats in the Trump era, from top campaign strategist and party spokesperson, to impeachment chief and emblem of women’s power.
To that list, add another: leading agitator of the commander-in-chief.
Pelosi last week assailed President Trump with a series of biting take downs, characterizing her White House rival as a thin-skinned political neophyte with an obesity problem. Trump responded in kind, suggesting Pelosi suffers from an unspecified mental illness.
The attacks were notably personal, even by the standards of the ongoing feud between a president and Speaker who haven’t spoken to each other in months. And Democrats on Capitol Hill are cheering the exchange as evidence that party leaders are ready to go toe-to-toe with the pugnacious president, both to advance their policy agenda amid the devastating coronavirus crisis and to invigorate their base heading into November’s high-stakes elections.
“People generally speaking know that Nancy Pelosi knows how to fight. And she knows how to win those fights,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said Friday by phone. “And I think the message clearly is: she’s going to use the tools she has to take this guy on, even if it means hitting him back, giving him a taste of his own medicine.”
Few figures seem capable of getting under Trump’s skin in quite the way that Pelosi, the first female Speaker in the nation’s history, has done over his years in the Oval Office. That facility was on clear display last Monday during an interview with CNN, where she cautioned that Trump could be at a higher risk of the adverse effects of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial that has not been approved for COVID-19, because of his age and “weight group.”
“Morbidly obese, they say,” Pelosi told Anderson Cooper.
The taunt did not go unnoticed in the White House, and Trump fired back the next day during a visit to the Capitol, telling reporters that Pelosi is “a sick woman.”
“She’s got a lot of problems, a lot of mental problems,” Trump said.
That prompted yet another volley from Pelosi, who for months has been blanketing the cable news shows to tout the Democrats’ legislative response to the coronavirus. In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, she said Trump is simply a political tenderfoot — able to dish out the insults, but not take them in return.
“I didn’t know that he would be so sensitive,” she said. “He’s always talking about other people’s … weight, their pounds.”
The Speaker lamented that the flare-up had become a “distraction,” but in doing so couldn’t resist dropping another reference to heaviness.
“So much of the time has been spent on what he said, rather than that I think he should recognize that his words weigh a ton,” she said.