The room chuckled in response.
“It was the randomest thing in the world, because we’re sitting there, we’re having a serious conversation, and all of a sudden these two red hats appear,” Jeffries recalled later at the Capitol.
“It was all so unserious,” Jeffries said, describing a roving cameraman capturing the moment. “We were there for serious reasons that it wasn’t really a big part of, you know, the discussion. It was theatrics.”
What was once was considered a historic occasion –- the president of the United States convening his first “big four” meeting of congressional leaders from the House and Senate –- was reduced to another viral souvenir of Trump trolling his opponent.
“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House the next day, hours before the midnight deadline.
This wasn’t just a routine meeting of the president and congressional leadership. It was the first time Trump had gathered the leaders of Congress, more than eight months into his presidency — and the first time he and Jeffries had officially met.
But more surprising was how little came from it.
Trump said very little, doing more listening than talking, the leaders said.
“He didn’t seem to know about the health care premiums going up so much,” Schumer said.
“Lively,” as Thune said later.
Johnson said Trump showed “strong, solid leadership. He listened to the arguments.”
This is the best the Democrats could have hoped for — to have an airing before the president that began to turn the dial toward their demands. And it is what the GOP leaders had tried to avoid as each party tries to blame the shutdown on the other.
Those bargains by Trump frustrated his own Republican Party.
Republicans, aware of that history, are trying to steer the conversation in a different direction, leaving the door open to discuss the health care issue with Democrats later — once the government has reopened. They also took issue with the characterization of Trump as unaware of the depth or magnitude of the health care situation.
“I’m highly skeptical the president was hearing about it for the first time,” Vance said afterward.
One Republican unauthorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and granted anonymity to do so said Schumer’s suggestion that Trump didn’t know about the subsidy problem was overblown.
But Washington doesn’t run on the White House alone, and Congress is not a majority-takes-all institution. Turning most bills into laws requires the give-and-take of bipartisan compromise, particularly in the Senate, and particularly when it comes to the annual appropriations needed to keep government running.
Hours after the lawmakers left the meeting, Trump’s team posted a fake video that showed Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a faux mustache standing beside Schumer outside the White House. It was widely seen as racist.
“When I was practicing law, there was a Latin phrase that was always one of my favorites,” Jeffries said back at his office at the Capitol. “Res ipsa loquitur. It means: The thing speaks for itself.”
“We had a full airing of our positions on Monday, which should have set the baseline for a follow-up conversation from the administration to try to reignite a meaningful bipartisan path toward funding the government,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the president’s behavior subsequent to the White House meeting deteriorated into unhinged and unserious action.”
