If Donald Trump thought that this time, finally, he was going to be able to embarrass and bully House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even he has probably figured out by now that it didn’t happen. After Pelosi and other Democratic leaders left a meeting with Trump on Wednesday and told reporters that he’d had “a meltdown” and flung childish insults at Pelosi, Trump fired back by posting a picture of Pelosi literally standing up to face off against him, the only woman visible at a table of men. “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown,” Trump captioned it. Pelosi promptly made it her cover photo on Twitter. That should probably be Trump’s first clue that he was not winning the evening.
Another clue, if he was willing to take it, that Trump had not showed the world how Pelosi had lost it came from a former Republican Senate aide who tweeted, “That would happen to be a woman standing up and asserting herself at a table full of men. I understand such a scene may cause a meltdown but I assure you it's not on Speaker Pelosi's behalf” and “HOW CAN A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT be so bad at this I have to speak up for Nancy Pelosi? I mean, really.”
It’s starting to look like this is a lesson Trump cannot learn: When a meeting between him and Pelosi falls apart, she always comes out looking better than he does. Often in meme form. Conflict with Trump is doing more than anything else in Pelosi’s three decades in the House has done to make her look like a supercool badass.