Vulgar meeting featured a conservative posse
WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Sen. Dick Durbin around 10:15 a.m. last Thursday, he expressed pleasure with Durbin’s outline of a bipartisan immigration pact and praised the high-ranking Illinois Democrat’s efforts, according to White House officials and congressional aides.
The president then asked if Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., his onetime foe turned ally, was on board, which Durbin affirmed. Trump invited the lawmakers to visit with him at noon, the people familiar with the call said.
But when they arrived at the Oval Office, the two senators were surprised to find that Trump was far from ready to finalize the agreement. He was “fired up” and surrounded by hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who seemed confident that the president was now aligned with them, according to one person with knowledge of the meeting.
Trump told the group he wasn’t interested in the terms of the bipartisan deal that Durbin and Graham had been putting together. And as he shrugged off suggestions from Durbin and others, the president called nations from Africa “shithole countries,” denigrated Haiti and grew angry. The meeting was short, tense and often dominated by loud cross-talk and swearing, according to Republicans and Democrats familiar with the meeting.
Trump’s ping-ponging from deal making to feuding, from elation to fury, has come to define the contentious immigration talks between the White House and Congress, perplexing members of both parties. The blowup has increased the possibility of a government shutdown over the fate of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.
This account of the events surrounding Thursday’s explosive meeting is based on interviews with more than a dozen White House officials, Capitol Hill aides and lawmakers.
The fight has left congressional leaders unsure of whether they will eventually come to an agreement. Some remain optimistic that Trump will cut a deal that expands border security while protecting those under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Trump has ordered ended.
Last Thursday was a critical moment in the stalled negotiations, revealing the president’s priorities even as the discussion fell apart.
Trump complained that there wasn’t enough money included in the deal for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He also objected that Democratic proposals to adjust the visa lottery and federal policy for immigrants with temporary protected status were going to drive more people from countries he deemed undesirable into the United States instead of attracting immigrants from places like Norway and Asia, people familiar with the meeting said.
Attendees who were alarmed by the racial undertones of Trump’s remarks were further disturbed when the topic of the Congressional Black Caucus came up, these people said.
At one point, Durbin told the president that members of that caucus — an influential House group — would be more likely to agree to a deal if certain countries were included in the proposed protections, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Trump was curt and dismissive, saying he was not making immigration policy to cater to the CBC, according to people briefed.
At one point, Graham told Trump he should use different language to discuss immigration, people briefed on the meeting said.
As Trump batted back the Democrats, he was urged on by Republican lawmakers. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Graham and Durbin their proposal would not fly, and he told the group they should instead embrace his more conservative bill. Durbin was not interested, White House officials said.
After Graham left, he told associates that he was disturbed by what he heard in the Oval Office, according to people who spoke with him, and that it was evident the deal’s antagonists had gotten to Trump. Graham and Durbin also told allies that they were stunned that the other lawmakers were present and that Trump’s tone seemed so different than it had been hours before, according to people close to them.
Trump had told lawmakers during a partially televised session two days earlier that he was flexible. “I’ll sign it,” he said Tuesday of whatever bill was brought to him.
Trump went on to say at the earlier meeting that he wanted a deal and that even those in the conservative House Freedom Caucus should work with Durbin. In the hours and days afterward, a bipartisan group of senators — Graham, Durbin, Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo. — began meeting and broadly agreed to a proposal.
But some White House officials, including adviser Stephen Miller, feared that Graham and Durbin would try to trick Trump into signing a bill that was damaging to him and would hurt him with his political base. As word trickled out Thursday morning on Capitol Hill that Durbin and Graham were heading over to the White House, legislative affairs director Marc Short began to make calls to lawmakers and shared many of Miller’s concerns.
Soon, Goodlatte, one of the more conservative House members on immigration, was headed to the White House. Trump also called House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, RCalif., and asked him to come, McCarthy said. Sens. David Perdue, R-Ga., and Cotton were also invited.
In the late morning, before Durbin and Graham arrived, chief of staff John Kelly talked to Trump to tell him that the proposal would probably not be good for his agenda, White House officials said.
After the Thursday meeting, Trump began telling allies that the proposal was a “terrible deal for me,” according to a friend he spoke with.