Trump advisers dismiss sister’s comments as Pelosi slams stalled coronavirus talks

White House and Trump campaign officials on Sunday dismissed audio of President Trump’s sister disparaging him, while Democrats and Republicans sparred on coronavirus relief and a measure that would provide $25 billion in funding for the postal service.

In the audio,surreptitiously recorded by the president’s niece Mary, his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge, laments “[h]is goddamned tweets and lying.”

“I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s—. It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” she adds.

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller dismissed the comments as “sibling rivalry,” comparing them to criticism of former President Barack Obama by his half-brother Malik.

“Sibling rivalries are nothing new in the world. It’s been going on since the beginning of time, in fact, we heard some pretty pointed commentary from Malik Obama about former President Barack Obama,” Miller said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And so, this is something unfortunately when you get to the White House you have family members who sometimes decide to voice their sibling rivalries or frustrations … [In] my conversations with the president over the years, I’ve only heard him say positive things about his sister, as someone who’s a very accomplished judge,” Miller added.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was similarly dismissive, telling ABC’s “This Week” that the leaked audio represented “just another day and another attack.”

Asked specifically about the claim that Trump had someone else take college exams, such as the SATs, for him, Meadows responded, “Listen, this is politics as usual by a niece that was written out of a will that would apparently just has an axe to grind because she wants Joe Biden to be president.”

“I can tell you this that this president, each and every day, is not only well prepped but does more than any president than I’ve ever been able to have the privilege of researching and reading about in terms of wanting to make sure that we advance critical, critical agendas for the hardworking American people,” he added.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the fault lay at the president’s feet for stalled negotiations on the next round of coronavirus relief. The House passed a $3 trillion package in mid-May that has been characterized as an opening offer by Pelosi.

“More than 4 million have been added to the infection list because we paused [testing and tracing efforts],” Pelosi told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“Over 80,000 more people have died, because they paused,” she continued. “Could we have saved all of those lives? Not all, but many.”

Pelosi also addressed the recording of Barry, saying “It’s heartbreaking to think that a family member of the president of the United States would have that view of him.”

“You know, the president has called everything a hoax for a while. He’s called the virus a hoax, he’s called the Russian interference in our election a hoax. He calls everything a hoax, which is just a projection of what he is: a hoax. This is just further evidence of his inauthenticity and his lack of integrity,” she added.

Meadows, meanwhile, disparaged a House-passed postal service funding measure, calling it a “political statement” on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I offered $10 billion plus reforms for the Postal Service that they’ve been asking for for a long time to Speaker Pelosi [D-Calif.] and [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.], and when we offered that there was another thing that came along with that, the postmaster general said he was willing to pay whatever overtime is needed to make sure we deliver the mail on time,” Meadows said.