Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the White House and told them that he is taking his offer of border wall money off the table as part of any deal on immigration.
The Senate minority leader, through an aide, informed the White House on Monday that he was retracting the offer he made last week to give Trump well north of the $1.6 billion in wall funding Trump had asked for this year, according to two Democrats. And now they say Trump will simply not get a better deal than that on his signature campaign promise.
Schumer “took it off,†said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “He called the White House yesterday and said it’s over.â€
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Democrats don’t need to give Trump any wall money
Schumer and the Democrats don’t need to include any wall money in an immigration deal because they have the upper hand. There are already 60 votes in the Senate for a bill that would protect the Dreamers from deportation. Schumer doesn’t need Trump. The deal he cut with Mitch McConnell sets in place an automatic process for a DACA vote if no agreement is reached in the Senate before February 8.
Trump has proven himself to be the worst negotiator in White House history. The president could have made a deal that would have avoided the government shutdown, got him some wall funding, and protected the Dreamers, but he walked away from it after being pressured by the immigration hardliners in his administration, and now he has nothing.
Donald Trump bungled this entire shutdown. He is the reason why Republicans in the Senate are going to spend weeks having an immigration fight that they don’t want to have. Trump can’t stop losing, and in the case of the government shutdown he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
