Two of the most powerful people in Washington have not spoken in five months at a time when the nation is battling its worst health crisis in a century, one that has already killed more than 5,000 Americans and put 10 million others out of work.
President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last talked on Oct. 16, when Pelosi pointed her finger at the seated president during a heated exchange in a White House meeting that was captured in a widely shared photograph.
Pelosi stormed out, and the two leaders' frayed relationship was soon severed by the House's impeachment of Trump months later.
Now, there are worries the broken relationship could hinder the federal government's ability to respond to the growing coronavirus crisis, the extent of the damage reflected in Thursday's report that a record 6.6 million people filed for unemployment, adding to more than 3 million from two weeks earlier.
Relationships are the beginning of everything. Trust in one another is key to cooperation, said John M. Bridgeland, who held government posts under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
The relationship between Trump and Pelosi, never warm, appears beyond repair after the president's impeachment, according to allies of both leaders.
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Even the COVID-19 pandemic, which has rewritten the rules of daily American life and threatens people's health and employment, has done nothing to thaw the ice between the two.
Last month, as Washington crafted the most expensive stimulus package in U.S. history, Trump and Pelosi eyed each other warily from opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the president leaving it to others to negotiate a $2.2 trillion economic relief package.
Trump and Pelosi communicated with or at each other via Twitter and television or through intermediaries the other side could tolerate. Chief among them has been Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who personally negotiated the three rescue bills passed so far. When Trump signed the package at the White House, he did not invite Pelosi or any Democrats to join him.
The record-breaking jobless claims reported Thursday add new urgency to the matter of next steps for Congress, which had been moving, slowly, toward crafting another recovery bill that could equal or surpass the first stimulus' price tag.
Pelosi and Mnuchin worked out the stimulus by speaking dozens of times by phone and in the speaker's Capitol office overlooking the Mall. Going forward, new White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who has a relationship with Pelosi, is expected to be another leading conduit.
Pelosi said Thursday that she and Mnuchin had spoken the previous night about the next part of the package. She played down her lack of communication with Trump.
"Whatever communications we need to move forward, that will be happening whether I talk to the president or not, Pelosi said. It's not casual.
It isn't, 'Let's just chat.' It's about what is the purpose, what is the urgency, does it require the time of the speaker and the president, both of whom are very busy people."
Instead, Pelosi became his most visible antagonist, creating viral images when she mockingly clapped for him during his 2019 State of the Union address and when she strode out of the West Wing after another tense meeting clad in a designer coat and sunglasses. Their dispute over funding for