House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office is working to schedule a meeting between her and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a potential opportunity for the two Democratic Party luminaries to settle differences after weeks of tension.
Pelosi’s office received a request on Tuesday from Ocasio-Cortez’s office for the two lawmakers to meet one-on-one, a spokesman for the speaker confirmed to CNN on Wednesday. In an appearance on “CBS This Morning” that aired on Wednesday, the New York Democrat told co-host Gayle King that she is “absolutely” interested in the meeting and that her office has “reached out to that end.”
The effort to schedule a meeting comes several days after racist tweets by President Donald Trump caused House Democrats to close ranks and support Ocasio-Cortez and three other minority members of Congress who were the subject of the President’s attacks. The speaker’s chief of staff has already met with the four chiefs of these offices, the spokesman said.
The efforts could be an indication of reconciliation between Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Ocasio-Cortez. In her CBS interview, the freshman Democrat walked back her suggestion that Pelosi’s recent criticisms of the four congresswomen known as “the Squad” were racially motivated.
“I’ll clarify: I did not say that she was disrespectful of women of color. I found some of the comments disrespectful and that was my personal opinion. And I did feel that singling out on the basis of one vote was creating an opening,” she said, referring to comments she made last week to The Washington Post that there has been an “explicit singling out of newly elected women of color” by Pelosi after the four women opposed a House border aid bill.
On Tuesday, in a show of support for the four progressive congresswomen, the House voted to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets over the weekend, which implied that the women were not natural-born US citizens and should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Pelosi told reporters Tuesday night that she was “proud of the attention has been called to (the attacks) because what the President said was completely inappropriate against our colleagues,” adding that it was also offensive to “so many people in our country.”
