WASHINGTON _ Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump continued their high-stakes game of tit-for-tat on Friday, even as the 28-day partial government shutdown plodded on with no signs of any restart of negotiations.
White House aides scurried about Friday declining to directly address a bombshell report that Trump directed former personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.
They lobbed charges of false statements about her trip to Afghanistan he nixed and her attempts to fly commercial at Pelosi and her staff _ but refused to attach their names.
Then, suddenly, the shutdown and BuzzFeed report were pushed to the staff's backburner as Trump summoned a North Korean envoy in town for talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the Oval Office.
"We're waiting for negotiations for Democrats," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Friday.
Here are five takeaways from the remarkable fight between the president of the United States and the speaker of the House.
