{"id":198291,"date":"2019-01-18T23:23:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T04:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=198291"},"modified":"2019-01-18T23:23:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T04:23:44","slug":"pelosi-cancels-afghanistan-trip-citing-trump-leak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/01\/18\/pelosi-cancels-afghanistan-trip-citing-trump-leak\/","title":{"rendered":"Pelosi cancels Afghanistan trip, citing Trump ‘leak’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday cancelled her plans to travel by commercial plane to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, saying President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0had caused a security risk by talking about the trip. The White House said there was no such leak. (File Photo By Lorie Shaull from Washington, United States [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)]<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>WASHINGTON \u2014 The allegation, if true, was extraordinary: The White House, in leaking the travel plans of members of Congress, put the safety of the speaker of the House in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday cancelled her plans to travel by commercial plane to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, saying President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0had caused a security risk by talking about the trip. The White House said there was no such leak.<\/p>\n

But it was the latest turn \u2014 and potentially the most dangerous \u2014 in the high-stakes brinkmanship between\u00a0Trump\u00a0and Pelosi, playing out against the stalled negotiations over how to end the partial government shutdown.<\/p>\n

And it showed once again the willingness of the former hard-charging businessman to hit hard when challenged, as he was earlier this week when Pelosi suggested postponing his State of the Union address during the shutdown.<\/p>\n

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said it \u201cgives new meaning\u201d to tensions between the executive and legislative branches.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are public back and forths,\u201d he said, citing relations between past presidents and House speakers. \u201cBut this kind of tensions, preventing the speaker from visiting the troops and the speaker suggesting the White House leaked information about a crucial flight, this is one more example of where Trumpism brings us into new territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The political stakes are high as the shutdown moves into a fifth week, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers going without pay and no outward signs of resolution.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0is demanding money from Congress to build his long-promised border wall with Mexico. But Congress has not approved the funds.<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders stressed the importance of a looming Tuesday deadline to process paychecks, when the government will need to decide if workers get another round of zeroes on Friday’s payday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the key reasons that the president did not want Speaker Pelosi to leave the country is because, if she did, it would all but guarantee the fact that the negotiations couldn’t take place over the weekend,\u201d Sanders told reporters.<\/p>\n

No talks, though, are scheduled.<\/p>\n

It was an unusually combative week between the executive and legislative branches.<\/p>\n

Tensions flared when Pelosi suggested\u00a0Trump\u00a0postpone the annual State of the Union address, a grand Washington tradition \u2014 and a platform for his border wall fight with Democrats \u2014 that was tentatively scheduled for Jan. 29.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0never responded directly. Instead, he abruptly cancelled Pelosi’s military flight on Thursday, hours before she and a congressional delegation were to depart for Afghanistan on the previously undisclosed visit to U.S. troops.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0belittled the trip as a \u201cpublic relations event\u201d \u2014 even though he had just made a similar stop in a conflict zone during the shutdown \u2014 and said it would be best if Pelosi remained in Washington to negotiate to reopen the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative,\u201d wrote\u00a0Trump.<\/p>\n

Pelosi, undeterred, quietly began making her own preparations for the overseas trip.<\/p>\n

But on Friday, Pelosi said her plan to travel by commercial plane had been \u201cleaked\u201d by the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration leaked that we were travelling commercially,\u201d Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol. She said it was \u201cvery irresponsible on the part of the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the State Department told her \u201cthe president outing\u201d the original trip made the scene on the ground in Afghanistan \u201cmore dangerous because it’s a signal to the bad actors that we’re coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House said it had leaked nothing that would cause a security risk.<\/p>\n

Denying military aircraft to a senior lawmaker \u2014 let alone the speaker, who is second in line to the presidency after the vice-president, travelling to a combat region \u2014 is very rare.<\/p>\n

Trump’s trip to Iraq after Christmas was not disclosed in advance for security reasons.<\/p>\n

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California slammed\u00a0Trump\u00a0for revealing the closely held travel plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the president’s decision to disclose a trip the speaker’s making to a war zone was completely and utterly irresponsible in every way,\u201d Schiff said.<\/p>\n

Some Republicans expressed frustration. Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, \u201cOne sophomoric response does not deserve another.\u201d He called Pelosi’s State of the Union move \u201cvery irresponsible and blatantly political\u201d but said\u00a0Trump’s reaction was \u201calso inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House also cancelled plans for a presidential delegation to travel to an economic forum in Switzerland next week, citing the shutdown. And it said future congressional trips would be postponed until the shutdown is resolved, though it was not immediately clear if any such travel \u2014 which often is not disclosed in advance \u2014 was coming up.<\/p>\n

The new White House travel ban does not extend to the first family.<\/p>\n

Next week, House Democrats will pass bills to try to fund the government, including one adding $1 billion to border security \u2014 to hire 75 immigration judges and improve infrastructure. The Senate, controlled by Republicans, has declined to consider any bills unless\u00a0Trump\u00a0is prepared to sign them into law.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Jon Lemire, Matthew Daly, Andy Taylor, Mary Clare Jalonick, Matt Lee and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 The allegation, if true, was extraordinary: The White House, in leaking the travel plans of members of Congress, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":87890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-lisa-mascaro","mauthors-zeke-miller","mauthors-jill-colvin","mauthors-catherine-lucey","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}