Democrats say they left White House meeting on Syria after Trump ‘meltdown’

Democratic congressional leaders said they walked out of a White House meeting Wednesday on Syria after what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a “meltdown.”

After top Democrats left the bipartisan meeting with Trump, Pelosi told reporters that the president appeared “shaken up” by a House vote condemning his decision to remove U.S. forces from northern Syria. The House approved the resolution in an overwhelming 354-60 vote, as even a majority of Trump’s Republican Party supported it.

“That’s why we couldn’t continue in the meeting because he was just not relating to the reality of it,” Pelosi said outside the White House, in only the latest instance of a gathering between the president and Democrats blowing up.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., described the meeting as more of a “nasty diatribe” than a “dialogue.” He said Trump called Pelosi a “third-rate politician” — though Pelosi later clarified the president used the term “third grade politician.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., added that he had “never” seen a president “treat so disrespectfully a coequal branch” of government.