Speaking to MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Sunday evening at New York City’s 92 Street Y, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described her first meeting with President Trump.
“Don’t tell anybody I told you this,” she joked when Reid asked her about that first get-together.
“So we go to the first meeting with the president. This is historic. House and Senate Democratic and Republican leadership,” Pelosi said, noting that the meeting took place in the East Wing because “he wanted to have a little hospitality, pigs in blankets, kosher meatballs. Bless him for his hospitality.”
{mosads}And then the first thing he told the gathered leaders, she said, was that he had won the popular vote.
“You know I won the popular vote,” Pelosi said Trump told her. “First words out of his mouth: ‘You know I won the popular vote.’ Now, I’m a very courteous person … but I thought, well he seems a little casual about this, so I’ll be a little casual, too.
“So I said, ‘Mr. President, that isn’t true and there’s no evidence, facts or data to support what you’re saying.’ ”
But according to Pelosi, he continued his train of thought, saying, “Oh yeah, 3 to 5 million people voted illegally and I’m not even counting California.”
The California Democrat laughed as she recounted the tale and put one question to the crowd about Trump: “Why so insecure?”
“I prayed for him,” she added. “But more importantly, I prayed for the United States of America.”
Trump has often boasted about the size of his Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, although Clinton ultimately won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.