Pelosi, AOC meet in an attempt to unite factions in the Democratic Party

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) met Friday in an attempt to hash out their differences and unite the party.

What's the background?

Since her election in November, Ocasio-Cortez has butted heads with the more establishment career politician Pelosi.

One of the main contentions between the two has come from the question of whether or not to pursue impeachment against President Donald Trump. Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken supporter of impeachment, while Pelosi has cautioned against it — not out of support for Trump, but because she believes it would be politically harmful and likely fail.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) filed articles of impeachment against Trump on July 16, only to have it fail in the Democrat-controlled House by a vote of 332 to 95. This has not stopped more progressive members of the party from promising to continue their attempts to impeach the president.

On July 10, after Pelosi downplayed the influence of Ocasio-Cortez and her freshman allies — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — Ocasio-Cortez accused her of "explicit singling out of newly elected women of color."

Ocasio-Cortez has also accused House leadership of assigning her to "some of the busiest committees" in order "to keep me busy."

What happened?

Pelosi tweeted a picture with Ocasio-Cortez on Friday morning, saying that the two "sat down to discuss working together to meet the needs of our districts and our country, fairness in our economy and diversity in our country."

She denied, however, that any tension existed between the two.

"There was no hatchet. We are in the political arena," Pelosi scoffed, according to Fox News, saying that the meeting had gone "very well."

"We are the Democratic Party. ... In our caucus, we have our differences. Respect that instead of making a big issue of it," she said. "We sat down today; we had a good meeting. The congresswoman is a very gracious member of Congress, so we had a very positive conversation."

Ocasio-Cortez has not tweeted about the meeting so far.