This is curious. Two press accounts this morning say that Nancy Pelosi has confided to colleagues that President Bush told her privately that didn't criticize her trip to Syria. As you all know, of course, the White House and its GOP allies blasted her for days on end over the trip.

Yet there's this in today's Washington Post:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told colleagues yesterday that she was incredulous after President Bush pulled her aside at the end of a meeting Wednesday and told her he did not criticize her recent trip to Syria.

...in a private meeting with Democratic lawmakers yesterday, Pelosi said Bush told her in an unsolicited comment that it was actually the State Department that criticized her.

And The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire adds this:

“I would rather not go into the details of the conversation,” the speaker said in an interview. But she confirmed that the president apparently drew a distinction between his criticizing her and rebukes delivered by his press office and others in the administration.

“He just said, ‘I didn’t criticize your trip to Syria,’” Pelosi said. “In the course of the conversation, he said, ‘I didn’t criticize your trip.’”

Asked if she was surprised, Pelosi laughed. “Surprised? I’m beyond surprise.”

In the Post version, the White House denies it ever happened; in the Journal one, the White House declines comment. As Kevin Drum notes, of course, the White House, Dick Cheney and even Bush himself did in fact hammer her over the trip. Stranger and stranger.