Congressional flamethrower and avowed socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Thursday abruptly backed away from her insinuation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a racist.
But it remains to be seen whether that will calm down the civil war in the Democratic Party between the old guard and Ocasio-Cortez and her three far-left freshman colleagues.
The Washington Examiner reported Ocasio-Cortez had charged that Pelosi was "outright disrespectful" to women "of color."
CNN dispatched a tweet Thursday with the congresswoman's response to whether or not she thinks Pelosi "has racial animus or is racist."
Ocasio-Cortez replied, "No, no, absolutely not, absolutely not."
The previous day, however she said, "The persistent singling out ... it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful ... the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color."
Pelosi provoked the ongoing feud in a New York Times interview published Sunday in which she said Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts don't have power.
"All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn't have any following. They're four people and that's how many votes they got," she said.
A short time later, Pelosi marched her caucus members into a closed room to chide them for "tweeting about other members," the report said.
On Thursday, Pelosi "stood her ground," FoxNews.com reported.
The House speaker declined to elaborate but confirmed she recently talked about an "offensive tweet" at the request of her caucus members.
The tweet compared centrist Democrats to segregationists, the report said, and was authored and then deleted by Ocasio-Cortez' chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti.
Pelosi appeared to be trying to put the dispute behind her.
"I've said what I'm going to say. ... What I said in the caucus yesterday had an overwhelming response from my members. Because they know what the facts are and what we are responding to. We respect the value of every member of our caucus. The diversity of it all is a wonderful thing. Diversity is our strength. Unity is our power."
Ocasio-Cortez and her three colleagues drew Pelosi's ire for not supporting a recent border-funding bill.
USA Today said Pelosi "caved" to Republicans on the border bill.
Ocasio-Cortez earlier claimed that there are only 12 years left to fix climate change. And she accused corporate executives during a congressional hearing of caging children.