Donald Trump press conference: president offers olive branch to Nancy Pelosi, but talks of war with Democrats
- Trump says Republicans ‘defied history’ to expand their majority in the Senate, even as he attacked some in his party who rejected ‘what we stand for’
- He said he would adopt a ‘warlike posture’ if majority House Democrats tried to investigate him
US President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to work with the new Democratic House majority in a bipartisan manner on infrastructure, trade and health care, but warned that he would go to war if Democrats use their subpoena power to investigate corruption in the administration as well as the president’s personal finances and conduct in office.
Addressing reporters at a freewheeling, sometimes fiery, 90-minute White House news conference, Trump repeatedly praised House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is poised to reclaim the speaker’s gavel she lost eight years ago, and said he looked forward to working with her on “a beautiful bipartisan-type situation”.
Trump said he saw opportunities to work with Democrats to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, lower the costs of prescription drugs and refashion trade policy.
“Now we have a much easier path because the Democrats will come to us with a plan for infrastructure, a plan for health care, a plan for whatever they’re looking at, and we’ll negotiate,” Trump said.
But the president said he would react aggressively to any attempt to probe his administration, predicting a “warlike posture” if they investigate him.
“They can play that game, but we can play it better, because we have a thing called the United States Senate,” Trump said, referring to the enlarged GOP Senate majority following Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“I could see it being extremely good for me politically because I think I’m better at that game than they are, actually, but we’ll find out.”