Trump slams CNBC's Jim Cramer for apologizing after calling Speaker Pelosi 'crazy Nancy' to her face and says: 'It's true, no pandering Jim!'
Donald Trump on Wednesday chastised CNBC host Jim Cramer for apologizing for calling Speaker Nancy Pelosi 'crazy' - a moniker the president has given her.
'Jim, you didn't make a mistake. It's true, and that's why you said it. No pandering!,' Trump wrote on Twitter.
Cramer, in an interview with the speaker on his CNBC's 'Squawk On The Street' show on Tuesday morning, called Pelosi 'crazy' to her face.
He apologized right afterward to Pelosi, saying he was channeling the president. Additionally, he took to Twitter to apologize some more and then offered a longer apology on air later in the day as outrage against him blew up on social media.
Donald Trump on Wednesday chastised CNBC host Jim Cramer for apologizing for calling Speaker Nancy Pelosi 'crazy' - a moniker the president has given her
'I made a very stupid comment,' Cramer said. 'It was tongue-in-cheek attempt to make a point about the harsh tone of the negotiations in Washington but it fell completely flat and I apologize for that. As I said immediately after the comment I want to make it clear that I have an incredible amount of respect for both the speaker and the office she holds.'
Trump and Pelosi have an acrimonious relationship. He often refers to her as 'crazy' both in his tweets and at campaign rallies, a remark that gets his supporters cheering. She has called him 'morbidly obese.'
Their first Oval Office meeting - which took place shortly after Democrats retook control of the House in the 2018 election - resulted in the two leaders engaging in a bickering back-and-forth - all in front of the cameras. From there, things got worse. Pelosi eventually called a formal impeachment inquiry against him - Trump was acquitted by the Senate - and he refused to shake her hand at his State of the Union address while she ripped up the text of his remarks when he was done speaking.
Trump has never apologized for his words on the speaker, the most powerful woman in government and second in line to the presidency.
Cramer did so after, in an interview on Tuesday, when he was asking Pelosi about the prospects for a deal between Democrats and Republicans on a new coronavirus economic aid bill when he said to her: 'What deal can we have, Crazy Nancy?'
'Sorry, that was the president,' Cramer immediately said after the comment. 'I have such reverence for the office, I would never use that term.'
Pelosi laughed and said, 'but you just did, but you just did,' and then called Trump the 'master of projection.'
CNBC's Jim Cramer (left) called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (right) 'crazy Nancy,' the nickname given to her by President Donald Trump. Cramer immediately walked back the comment
Jim Cramer tried to walk back using the term 'crazy Nancy' to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's face in an interview Tuesday, saying that he found the Trump nickname 'horrifying'
'Let me just say this, anything the president says is a projection of his own insecurities. He calls other people crazy because he knows he is,' she said.
'So anytime he says something you say, 'Uh-oh, that's what he's thinking of himself,' she continued.
Cramer tried to walk back his comments several times throughout the 'Squawk on the Street' interview.
'You know, I was being facetious when I used the term involving you,' he said. 'I respect you. Anyone who gives their life to public service and is speaker of the House should not be called that name.'
'I don't even want to use it again,' he continued.
Later he tweeted, 'It disgusts me that she is called 'crazy Nancy.' She has spent her whole life in public services. My critics didn't listen to why i mentioned it-because it is horrifying.'
During the interview, Pelosi waved it off, saying she had 'great respect' for the 'Mad Money' host.
'Don't worry about that, she offered. 'Let that be your biggest problem today.'
Some of Pelosi's allies weren't so keen on letting Cramer off the hook.
'This is the end of Jim Cramer as a serious finance commentator. He might as well hang it up and go to work for Fox,' tweeted former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, sharing the video clip.
Criticism: A series of Democratic commentators and Trump critics slammed Jim Cramer
Backing from Trump world: The president's supporters - including Ryan Fournier, of Students for Trump - reveled in the use of the nickname
Journalist Joan Walsh called it 'appalling,' as Trump's 'Art of the Deal' ghost writer Tony Schwartz lambasted the president, saying he 'decimated civility and dragged all of us down with him.'
'Example: CNBC's awful Jim Cramer calls Speaker Pelosi 'crazy Nancy' to her face, as if that's OK to say to the speaker of the House,' Schwartz tweeted.
During the interview, Pelosi also said she saw no point in calling up Trump in order to get another coronavirus relief bill deal.
'What is the point?' she asked Cramer. 'The president has sent his representatives and if he has confidence in them, than I do too.'
She called out Trump for his deceptions and proclivity for lying.
'So if you're talking to him you're almost wasting your time,' she said.
Pelosi also pointed out that it had been under a year since she'd talked with Trump, having spoken to him last October and interacted with him at the early February State of the Union.
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