Trump sees leverage dwindle as shutdown pushes toward 3rd week

PRESIDENT Donald J. Trump has gained little leverage with Democrats two weeks into the partial government shutdown of his own making, with fewer possible escape routes and a more treacherous path ahead as the GOP relinquishes control of the House.

The President made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room with border patrol agents on Thursday, hours after Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, to make his case. But he took no questions from reporters who assembled expecting a news conference by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Without a wall you cannot have border security,” Trump told reporters. “It won’t work.”

He invited leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union that represents 18,000 border patrol agents and other federal workers, to speak briefly in support of building a wall on the border with Mexico.

Earlier, Trump invited Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to resume talks at an 11:30 a.m. Friday meeting at the White House, according to White House Spokesman Hogan Gidley.

Trump turned to the bully pulpit this week with a stream of tweets and an extended televised Cabinet meeting on Wednesday to press his case for funding further construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. Later, he and top congressional leaders met for what was billed as a briefing on border security issues in the Situation Room at the White House.

The White House meeting quickly devolved into political posturing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said the chamber will vote on two measures to reopen government that mirror legislation that the Senate had already passed with Republican support only to be rejected by Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the shutdown could last weeks.

Trump accused Democrats of political gamesmanship, saying in a tweet on Thursday that the shutdown “is only because of the 2020 Presidential Election” and “strictly politics.”

“I have never had so much support as I have had in the past week over my stance for border security, for border control,” he said in the briefing room. His approval rating was 39 percent in the week that ended December 22, the most recent for which polling results are available, according to Gallup.

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have signaled they see an opportunity to gain further leverage against the White House. The legislation Pelosi intends for the House to pass would reopen the affected government departments, provide $1.3 billion for border security on a pro-rated basis and give time for further negotiations on the issue. The measure would only fund the Department of Homeland Security until February 8, and wouldn’t include money for the construction of the border wall.

That’s not enough for Trump, and Democrats will cast the president as holding federal workers hostage for the wall. The White House threatened that the president would veto the bills ahead of the House votes.

The Democrats’ approach—and their underlying intransigence— has been made easier by a president who has repeatedly misplayed his hand during negotiations.

Trump’s most severe misstep was self-inflicted. In a meeting with Pelosi and Schumer last month, the president defiantly boasted that he would be “proud” to “take the mantle” of shutting the government down if he didn’t get the more than $5 billion he was seeking for building the wall.

That would cause political trouble for even the most popular of politicians—and poses a particular hazard for one whose approval rating regularly hit historic lows even before the latest personnel turnovers at the White House, and market swings fueled by ongoing trade disputes.

“The president said, ‘I am going to shut the government down,’” Schumer said. “They are now feeling the heat. It is not helping the president, it is not helping the Republicans, to be the owners of this shutdown.”

Trump also hasn’t cultivated an image as a person ready to seek common ground. On Wednesday, he said he wasn’t willing to budge on his wall funding demand. He also appeared to rule out a broader compromise that could offer protected status for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.

“As long as it takes,” Trump said when asked how long he would hold out. “Look, I’m prepared—I think the people of the country think I’m right.”

Fifty-seven percent of Americans wanted Trump to compromise on the wall before the shutdown, and nearly seven in 10 said the wall wasn’t an immediate priority, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published last December 11.