Pelosi's Consummate Skill at Goading Trump

Donald Trump's relationship with women is not pretty.  The man is a sexist pig even when not boasting about being a sexual predator.  He's the embodiment of the type of man that decent parents would never want their daughters - or sons for that matter - ever involved with.  His narcissism and mistreatment of women is stunning. Yet there is one woman who seemingly can not only stand up to him but can leave him totally unsettled and somehow emasculated - something that tears his fragile ego apart.  That woman?  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who seems to be able to play on Trump's insecurities and fragile ego.  Perhaps her skill is enhanced by the fact that Trump likes to surround himself with women willing to grovel to his ego and who justify their relationship with a serial adulterer by closing their eyes and counting the money (let's get real, it cannot be because Trump is physically attractive - the thought of him naked is beyond revolting). Whatever the basis, as a column in the Washington Post notes, Pelosi gets under Trump's skin like few others and can get him to rashly act against even his own long term interest. With luck, her skill at the game will continue to Trump's disadvantage and political damage.   Here are column highlights:

There is something about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that allows her to unnerve President Trump as seemingly no one else can.

“I pray for the president of the United States,” she said on Thursday. “I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country. Maybe he wants to take a leave of absence.”

The proof that she had hit the giant bull’s eye of Trump’s insecurities was his response: “I am an extremely stable genius.”

Exchanging insults with Trump is not an endeavor that is normally productive, as many others who tried it have found. But Pelosi is a dangerous foil for a president who operates on impulse and outburst. While Trump succeeds in making everyone else around him dizzy, Pelosi’s unique talent is an ability to keep her focus on the endgame.

Her current goal is to assure that the president vacates the Oval Office, as swiftly and as surely as possible.  That means Pelosi must do two things at once: Keep Trump off balance, and restrain those within her Democratic caucus who are urging a precipitous drive toward impeachment.

Pelosi knows that unless and until there is overwhelming, bipartisan support for such an effort, it will end with Trump’s acquittal in the Senate. And that would only help him win another four years in office. “He wants to be impeached so he can be exonerated by the Senate,” she told top Democrats in a private meeting. “His actions are villainous to the Constitution of the United States.”

The speaker argues for another course: Continuing congressional oversight and relying on the courts to provide air cover as six different House committees seek documents and testimony from a stonewalling administration. While not as gratifying to those who are eager to begin impeachment proceedings, and who argue that anything less is a dereliction of Congress’s duty to hold Trump accountable, it is the more likely path to defeating him in 2020.

The Democratic caucus would be wise to trust her instincts and experience. Pelosi is patient, disciplined and resilient because she has had to be. No woman in U.S. history has ever risen to a more powerful office in government than the one in which Pelosi now sits for a second time.

All of this has not come without a price. Pelosi’s adversaries have caricatured and demonized her, and even some of her allies have dismissed her.
 Pelosi reclaimed the speaker’s gavel by doing what it took to win in congressional districts where she — and her liberal party — are not particularly popular. Those are the seats she knows she must protect in 2020.

So far, her strategy of keeping one foot on the congressional oversight accelerator while tapping the brakes on impeachment is winning. The prospect of unending scrutiny is getting to Trump. . . . [Trump] bristled at Pelosi’s characterization of that aborted infrastructure meeting as a “temper tantrum,” and pressed five different White House aides to attest he had been “calm” in his three-minute session with the lawmakers.

By Thursday night, Trump and his allies were reduced to the shameless gambit of circulating doctored and heavily edited videos suggesting it was the speaker’s mental stability that should be questioned. . . . Pelosi is exactly who she has always been. What’s changed is that Trump is beginning to understand what that means.

Trump's real problem with Pelosi?  He cannot handle strong women who see through his lies and bullshit and see him for the mentally disturbed and needy narcissist that he is in fact.