DON & NAN – A LOVE LO STORY
He’s my ‘boom, boom, boom’ DACA guy
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Republicans love to hate, revealed on Thursday that she urged President Trump to tell Dreamers that he would not deport them after killing the program that protects them — and he quickly obliged with a reassuring tweet.
“I asked him to do it. Then boom, boom, boom, the tweet appeared and that was good,” Pelosi said at a press briefing.
Trump called Pelosi to chat Thursday morning, and the liberal California Democrat told the Republican president that she wanted assurances that the Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t begin to round up those protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program during the six months he gave Congress to come up with a legislative solution to the thorny immigration problem.
“For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about – No action!” Trump tweeted after chatting with Pelosi.
Pelosi’s revelation came a day after Trump stunned members of the Republican Party when he sided with her and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on a deal for a Hurricane Harvey relief package, raising the debt ceiling and keeping the federal government funded through Dec. 15.
The legislation passed the Senate 80-17, with many leading Republicans voting against it, including Sens. Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and John McCain, who wanted the debt ceiling vote extended by far longer than the three months the bill called for.
Trump is developing a bromance with Schumer as well. The two also agreed to seek a deal that would permanently remove the requirement that Congress repeatedly raise the debt ceiling.
The two New Yorkers first discussed the proposal Wednesday at the White House.
GOP critics slammed Trump’s deal with the Democrats.
“Yesterday, we saw Washington’s swamp continue to rise: Chuck Schumer wrote the art of the steal by taking hurricane relief hostage to guarantee a December showdown that favors Democratic spending priorities,” fumed Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.).
But House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had blasted the Democrats’ three-month extension plan before Trump agreed to it, did an about-face and backed the idea on Thurs-
day, telling reporters that the president didn’t want to have “some partisan fight in the middle of the [hurricane] response.”
That was a far cry from 24 hours earlier, when Ryan steamed, “We’ve got all this devastation in Texas, we’ve got another unprecedented hurricane about to hit Florida, and they want to play politics with the debt ceiling?
“I think that’s ridiculous and disgraceful . . . that they want to play politics with the debt ceiling at this moment.”
Trump, referring to “Chuck and Nancy,” signaled that there could be more bipartisanship in the works on tax reform, and on immigration, too.
Pelosi said that Trump indicated his willingness to sign into law the Dream Act, legislation, which would give a path to legalization to the immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
“We made it very clear in the course of the conversation that the priority was to pass the Dream Act . . . Obviously it has to be bipartisan,” she said.