1/10/2019 Trump Storms Out of White House Meeting With Democrats on Shutdown - The New York Times

Trump Storms Out of White House Meeting

With Democrats on Shutdown
By Nicholas Fandos, Michael Tackett and Julie Hirschfeld Davis

Jan. 9, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional
leaders on Wednesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not fund a border wall even if
he agreed to reopen the government, escalating a confrontation that has shuttered large portions
of the government for 19 days and counting.

Stunned Democrats emerged from the meeting in the White House Situation Room declaring that
the president had thrown a “temper tantrum” and slammed his hands on the table before leaving
with an abrupt “bye-bye.” Republicans disputed the hand slam and blamed Democratic
intransigence for prolonging the standoff.

When the meeting was over, talks to reopen the government appeared to be in disarray. The
contentious, brief and futile session underscored an impasse that is looking each day like an
insurmountable gulf between the two sides. Mr. Trump will visit the border on Thursday in
McAllen, Tex., leaving little hope of a resolution for a shutdown that will tie the longest in the
nation’s history on Friday.

“It wasn’t even a high-stakes negotiation; it was a petulant president of the United States,” Ms.
Pelosi said as she returned to the Capitol. “A person who would say, ʻI’ll keep government shut
down for weeks, months or years unless I get my way.’”

Mr. Trump called the exercise “a total waste of time.”

“I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve
Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye,” he
posted on Twitter.

Day 19 had begun with what looked like signs of splintering support within the president’s own
party. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, pledged to confront Mr. Trump in a closed-
door lunch at the Capitol, while more mainline conservatives like Senator Pat Roberts,
Republican of Kansas, expressed misgivings about the president’s strategy.

Though Senate Republicans had not yet reached a breaking point, Mr. Roberts said, “We’re
getting pretty close.”

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1/10/2019 Trump Storms Out of White House Meeting With Democrats on Shutdown - The New York Times

But those differences largely had been papered over by day’s end. The House voted 240 to 188 to
fund the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange
Commission and other agencies, including White House operations. The eight Republican
defections exceeded last week’s vote to fund the government by only a single vote.

Mr. Trump, for his part, held out the possibility that he might declare a national emergency to
build his promised border wall and circumvent Congress altogether — a deeply divisive option
even within his own party that could allow him to use money allocated for the military and one
that would almost certainly be challenged in court.

“There was no discussion about anything other than solidarity,” Mr. Trump said after his lunch
with Senate Republicans and before the White House negotiating session.

As the sides feuded, 800,000 federal workers were going without pay, and government agencies
continued to reduce services, part of the cascading effect of a partial shutdown now possibly
headed for a fourth week.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, spoke about the government shutdown
during a press conference with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and federal workers.
Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times

So frayed were feelings after a frantic 24-hour period of accusations and recriminations, including
dueling nationally televised addresses, that Republicans and Democrats emerged from the White
House meeting unable to agree on what had happened in the room.
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On this they did: Mr. Trump insisted again on $5.7 billion in border wall funding, and asked
Democrats, who he pointed out have supported money for physical barriers in the past, if they
would capitulate if he agreed to reopen the government. Democrats told him again that they
support increased funding for border security, but refused to commit additional money for a
physical barrier that they believe is a waste of money. They laid out what they said was
unnecessary damage being done to federal workers.

“You are using people as leverage; why won’t you open the government and stop hurting
people?” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, asked Mr. Trump at one
point during the meeting, according to Democratic congressional officials and a White House
official familiar with the exchange.

“Then you won’t give me what I want,” Mr. Trump replied, the congressional officials said. The
White House official said that Mr. Trump added, “I am trying to do the right thing for the country.
This isn’t about politics.”

But there are signs of strain. After his lunch with Senate Republicans, Mr. Trump declared that
the party was “totally unified,” even if he faced some questions about “strategy.”

Leading up to it, though, the number of Republicans uneasy about the president’s tactics
appeared to be growing. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia and the
chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, had warned on Tuesday
that she could potentially support reopening the government as talks continued on border
security — the Democratic position.

“I mean, I think I could live with that,” Ms. Capito said. She said she expected pressure from
federal employees and voters in her state would only mount the longer the impasse drags on.
“I’ve expressed more than a few times the frustrations with a government shutdown and how
useless it is, so that pressure’s going to build,” she said.

Ms. Murkowski had vowed to confront the president on the shutdown’s effect on her state. She
and other moderate Republicans entered the lunch confident that senators were coalescing
around the idea that the government should be reopened, but they left disappointed, convinced
that for now, the party would follow Mr. Trump perilously further into a shutdown with an
uncertain end.

A handful of them, including Ms. Murkowski and Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado, Susan
Collins of Maine and James Lankford of Oklahoma, pressed Mr. Trump on the mounting burden
on federal workers and related industries in their states. His response was consistent.

“I was able to raise the issues that I have with using a shutdown,” Ms. Murkowski said. “He
listened and urged that we all stick together.”

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1/10/2019 Trump Storms Out of White House Meeting With Democrats on Shutdown - The New York Times

Several senators, including Ms. Collins, sought to find a way out of the impasse through a broader
deal. In the meeting, she urged the president to reconsider an earlier deal that would have given
him $25 billion for a wall in exchange for permanent protections for young undocumented
immigrants brought into the country as children, according to Republicans familiar with the
exchange.

The president dismissed the idea. A handful of senators huddled Wednesday evening with the
president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, to hash over possible ways out of the
impasse. But no apparent progress was made.

For now, at least, the president seems to have maintained support for his uncompromising
position.

“He’s like the Missouri mule who sits down in the mud and says, ʻI’m not moving,’” said Senator
John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said Mr. Trump had made the case that Republicans
had a much better chance of prevailing if they remained united in opposition to spending bills to
get the government funded again.

“What did Benjamin Franklin say at the constitutional convention?” Mr. Cornyn told reporters.
“We need to hang together or we’ll hang separately. That’s what it reminded me of.”

Democrats, who are confident Mr. Trump is taking the brunt of the blame for the impasse, showed
little sign of capitulation. The House vote to fund financial agencies and the White House was the
first of several this week on individual spending bills that are intended to pick off uneasy
Republicans. But in the end, it drew only one more Republican than a vote last week to reopen the
government. A White House official said Wednesday that Mr. Trump would veto any such bill.

In the Senate, Democrats had managed to grind to a stop unrelated foreign policy legislation to
increase pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader,
to relent on his insistence that he will not put any bill to reopen the government up for a vote
there without Mr. Trump’s support.

Democrats offered other warnings to the White House. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the
No. 2 Senate Democrat, said he had warned Patrick Shanahan, the acting defense secretary, in a
private meeting that a national emergency declaration by Mr. Trump would constitute a “major
breach” of relations between the Pentagon and Congress.

Mr. McConnell continued publicly to insist that the dispute was for Democrats and the president
to solve. He has largely absented himself from negotiations, and did not speak during
Wednesday’s White House session, a position that appeared to be validated on Tuesday by a

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Politico and Morning Consult poll that found only 5 percent of respondents blamed congressional
Republicans for the impasse, compared with 47 percent who blamed Mr. Trump and 33 percent
who blamed congressional Democrats.

“I cannot urge my Democratic colleagues more strongly to get past this purely partisan spite,
rediscover their own past positions on border security and negotiate a fair solution with our
president to secure our nation and reopen all of the federal government,” Mr. McConnell said in
remarks on the Senate floor.

Emily Cochrane, Catie Edmondson and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 10, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Walks Out When Pelosi
Says No to Wall Funds

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