The big news out of Washington, D.C. Tuesday is that a meeting did not take place.
The meeting that was supposed to occur would have been between Donald Trump and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who were scheduled to discuss the hypothetical bill which needs to be passed to continue funding the government past Dec. 8. (Democratic votes will be required to pass such a bill through the Senate; to be clear, the funding deadline is not related to the Republican tax reform bill currently being pushed through Congress.) Trump got started on negotiations several hours early by announcing that negotiations would fail:
Pelosi and Schumer took the attack as an opportunity to signal to their supporters that they are not going to be jerked around on such funding-related issues as the (hypothetical) border wall, DACA immigrants’ legal status, and children’s health insurance. They bailed on POTUS big time:
McConnell and Ryan declined the offer and attended Trump’s afternoon press conference, at which he sat between two empty chairs with Pelosi and Schumer’s names in front of them, as you can see above. POTUS then noted to reporters that reaching an agreement with Democrats would be difficult because “nothing to them is important except raising taxes” and that Pelosi and Schumer enjoy seeing “crime pouring into the country” via our defenseless, wall-lacking southern border.
What the posturing means for the Dec. 8 deadline is not yet clear. Here’s one sharp Capitol Hill reporter’s take:
On the other hand, Trump and the Republicans still eventually need Schumer and Pelosi’s help before Dec. 8 because a shutdown would probably redound more negatively to the party that controls the White House and Congress than it would to the Dems. Today’s cancellation, you could argue, just disincentivizes Trump from whipping up further resentment against Democrats without sacrificing any negotiating leverage. But hey, who knows?
