On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi withdraw her invitation to President Donald Trump to deliver the State of the Union in the House next week - denying him a national platform for the annual speech in an extraordinary standoff between the two most powerful figures in the nation.

The cancellation - part of an increasing and at times personal argument between the newly elected Democratic speaker and the Republican president - illustrates the extent of the dysfunction that has gripped Washington and America's body politic amid the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.

In a conservative leaders meets at the White House  Trump said that "They're supposed to be doing it, and now Nancy Pelosi - or 'Nancy,' as he calls her - she doesn't want to hear the truth. And she doesn't want, more importantly, the American people to hear the truth,"

Earlier Wednesday, Trump tried to call Pelosi's bluff, saying he planned to honour the speaker's invitation she extended earlier this month when the partial government shutdown was still in its relative infancy. Not delivering it in the House chamber, Trump wrote to her, would be "very sad."

While, later Wednesday, Pelosi, D-Calif., officially called off the address in the House chamber, asking instead for a new, "mutually agreeable" date once the government has reopened. Trump, faced with that reality, said he would be doing "something in the alternative."

However,  The sparring has now led to the effective cancellation of a decades-old tradition in which presidents aimed to unify the nation, even in times of divided government. An annual show of unity has devolved into disunity. The internal strife extended a fight that exploded last week when Pelosi suggested to the president that they postpone the address, citing security concerns caused by the shutdown that was later dismissed by administration officials.

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