In the interval between their two shows on Tuesday night, CNN's Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo discussed the bizarre meeting involving Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, which had taken place in the Oval Office earlier that day.
Pelosi and Schumer were talking with the president about potential solutions to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of the month, with federal funding for some agencies set to expire on December 21.
However, the meeting took a strange turn when the top Democrats and Trump began quarreling in front of the cameras as Mike Pence watched on quietly.
Lemon and Cuomo began their chat talking about the portmanteaus that the they had come up with for Pelosi and Schumer in the wake of the Oval Office meeting.
"You were talking about the name that we came up [with], and it was NanChuck," Lemon said.
"You came up with it, in fairness, my name was not good," Cuomo responded. "I had 'Pelumer', and 'Schelosi.' NanChuck is great because it's like what Bruce Lee would do with those things, what happened in that room."
Lemon then said he was impressed with how Pelosi conducted herself during the heated debate.
"Just objectively speaking, I was like, 'oh, my gosh, Nancy Pelosi is a boss.' I mean she handled herself amazingly," the CNN host said. "A lot of people don't like Nancy Pelosi. I'm sure Democrats are going all across the country tonight, 'Thank God for Nancy Pelosi.'"
"Well, it's amazing what a few weeks' difference can make," Cuomo added. "You know what I mean? She had all those people bringing the hate parade on her about whether or not she should be Speaker. When I interviewed her the day after the election, she was like, 'I'm going to be Speaker. You'll see.' And sure enough."
"She really held her own in that room today, without it being too nasty," he said. "I actually think the president was right to say—you know, while I do believe he got 'NanChucked' by the two of them, he didn't see that coming—but they weren't there to be mean and bitter, and I think that's important too."
The two CNN hosts then went on to joke about how Pence didn't speak during the entire exchange.
"Was that a wax figure or what? He just sat there," Lemon said.
"He didn't say a thing in there," Cuomo joked. "I was waiting for the president to look over [to Pence] and be like, 'hey, help me out.'"
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Aristos is a Newsweek science reporter with the London, U.K., bureau. He reports on science and health topics, including; animal, ... Read more
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