CHUCK SCHUMER/NANCY PELOSI/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “How real are Donald Trump’s temper tantrums? Not very, says professional Trump observer Nancy Pelosi. On Thursday [5-23-19], the House speaker called Trump’s latest tantrum—staged during a Wednesday [5-22-19] White House session on infrastructure spending with the president and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—a ‘stunt’ and one of his ‘bag of tricks’ he uses to ‘change the subject.’ Schumer called the outburst ‘concocted.’ Trump tweeted back a complete denial, asserting that he had been ‘extremely calm’ during the meeting, and that the bogus charges were a product of Pelosi and Schumer’s scheming ‘with their partner, the Fake News Media.’ Trump’s fit or nonfit, depending on whose side you take, was allegedly triggered by Pelosi’s Wednesday morning comments about him engaging in a ‘cover-up.’ I’d dig deeper on the origins of the Trump-Pelosi-Schumer dust-up except that it’s already starting to remind me too much of one of those interfamily disputes you enter and immediately wish you could find the exit. But let’s agree for the moment that it doesn’t matter whether Trump’s umbrage was real, ersatz, or nonexistent, only that he has acted similarly in the past. The genuine issue is why Trump thinks blowing his top will get him what he wants in Washington when the record indicates otherwise.”
–Jack Shafer, “Trump’s Walkout Hits a Wall,” Politico, May 23, 2019