DEM DEAL-MAKERS TRUMPED

Schumer, Pelosi still have wall to climb

Watch and learn. The supposed master dealmakers of the United States Congress are being played. By a president most of them despise and consider, in every way, their inferior.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi came out gleefully Wednesday night to announce that — after a private dinner with the president at the White House — they had a deal to spare the so-called Dreamers, illegal immigrants whose parents brought them here as kids, from being deported. Border security measures, but no wall.

Schumer and Pelosi were no doubt delighted to have pulled a fast one on Republicans, driving another wedge between them and their president, while getting Trump to go back on one of his signature campaign promises ... the one that really drove the left and the media crazy. Talk about a twofer. What an accomplishment to take back to the voters, for a party that manages to keep losing fights it thinks it should be winning, from the presidency to congressional races.

Then, Trump comes out yesterday. Guess what? No deal! Instead, the president said, he was “fairly close” to a deal with the Democrats, with “an understanding” with leaders of both parties, and a wall is most definitely part of it.

“We’re not looking at citizenship, we’re not looking at amnesty. We’re looking at allowing people to stay here,” Trump told reporters as he traveled to view hurricane damage in Florida. “But very importantly, what we want: We have to have a wall. If we don’t have a wall, we’re doing nothing.”

So Schumer and Pelosi, it turns out were A) wrong, and B) in the process of helping Trump make his most controversial, hated campaign promise a reality.

So much for master dealmakers, more clever than all the rest. Hey, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, got it. There was “a deal to make a deal,” is how Cornyn put it.

Trump, author of “The Art of the Deal,” is schooling them. The Democrats for a long time have been too smart for their own good, declaring things to be true that ultimately are not, starting with the notion that Trump couldn’t win in 2016.

Now, it’s starting to look like Trump will get his hated wall. With help from Democrats!

Pity Schumer and Pelosi. Here’s what the Democrats’ problem has been all along.

Trump is playing threedimensional mahjongg. The Democrats are playing checkers. Badly.

AP PHOTO NOT YET: Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi jumped the gun when they said they had a deal with President Trump over keeping so-called ‘Dreamers’ from being deported.