Democrats call on ‘disengaged’ Trump to get involved to end shutdown

WASHINGTON — As the government shutdown passes the three-week mark, Democrats are increasingly calling on President Donald Trump to become more involved in finding a solution.

And some Republicans acknowledge that Trump has disengaged and say it wouldn’t hurt if he got more involved.

“Hakeem and I reached out to the president today and urged him to sit down and negotiate with us to resolve the health care crisis, fix it and end the Trump shutdown,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday, referring to his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “We urged him to meet us and told him we would make an appointment with him anytime and anywhere before he left.”

And as Republican senators ate cheeseburgers at a private lunch with Trump on Tuesday, there was little discussion about the shutdown, several of them said afterward.

“He mentioned it briefly, but I have a feeling nothing has changed,” said Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “We will talk about whatever issues Democrats want to talk about once the government reopens.”

This has always been the Republican Party’s strategy: hold firm on its short-term funding bill and expect Democrats to drop their demands to expand the Affordable Care Act subsidies. It didn’t work, with the Senate voting 11 times to reject the bill that passed the Republican-led House version and seeing no vote change, even from a single senator.

Trump only met with Schumer and Jeffries once, on September 29 – two days before the shutdown began – and it did not go well. He responded hours later by taunting the two Democrats with an artificial intelligence-generated message that put words in Schumer’s mouth and a sombrero on Jeffries’ head.

Sen. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, said Trump’s involvement is “critical” to ending the shutdown because GOP leaders on Capitol Hill won’t make a deal without his blessing.

“Republicans here won’t move unless Trump says he’s ready to end this,” Schiff said. “He doesn’t seem particularly interested or cares. And until that changes, I think we’re going to be at a stalemate.”

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, said Trump disengaged only because he “had his hands full with Israel and international issues.”

“So he had every reason to disengage and let lawmakers handle this themselves,” she said, adding that Democrats should deal with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., instead of Trump.

But Thune — along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. — both made it clear that they would not negotiate directly with Democrats and that those discussions could only take place at the Appropriations Committee level.

Thune told NBC News that Trump would get involved in how to handle the Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of this year, which would increase premiums for millions of enrollees.

“I think the president is ready to get involved in the discussion about improving premium tax credits. But I don’t think they’re ready to do that until they open up the government,” he said before the meeting.

The White House has said its position on the shutdown negotiations has not changed since the funding initially expired on October 1. And as for possible negotiations, Trump said Tuesday that he would only meet with Democrats “under one major condition,” which is “first open up the country.”

A White House official told NBC News: “We’re happy to have a political conversation, but not while the American people are being held hostage.” »

The White House urged Democrats to join Republicans in passing a stopgap measure and said it would then be open to discussion on health care issues and beyond.

“Our position has remained consistent,” the official said. “The Democrats are imagining a scenario where the president comes in and gets involved” because they have no other solution at the moment.

As the shutdown continues, the White House has continued business as usual. Trump has traveled domestically and abroad, attending more than a dozen events. At the end of this week, he will leave for a multi-day trip to Asia, where he is expected to participate in several world summits.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said Trump’s “refusal to commit” prolongs the shutdown, “because Republicans are in no position to want to agree to anything without his green light.”

“The question is, when will President Trump commit? What he does, we’ll fix this. If he chooses not to commit, we won’t. Because the only way to avoid shutdowns – or the only way to get out of them – is when the president commits. So far, he has chosen to focus on everything else but keeping the American government open.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said he was “somewhat surprised” that the so-called “ultimate negotiator” refused to negotiate on the issue.

“It’s very easy to solve. There is a clear path,” he said. “Get into a room. Agree to extend health care tax credits.”

In Trump’s absence, Johnson stepped in to fill the void. Throughout the three-week shutdown, Johnson has held daily news conferences at the Capitol with members of his leadership team and a rotating group of key Republicans, lambasting Democrats for blocking the House-passed funding bill and supporting what he calls the “Schumer shutdown.”

On top of that, he launched an aggressive media campaign regarding the shutdown, conducting nearly 50 interviews since Oct. 1 with television networks, radio shows, streaming shows, and print and digital media, Johnson’s office said. They include appearances on Fox News, Newsmax, NBC News, NewsNation, MSNBC, a Wall Street Journal podcast and “The Sean Spicer Show.”

In each appearance, the message is the same: Johnson says he won’t sit down and negotiate with Democrats on their demands because they simply need to pass the House continuing resolution, or CR. He recently had a phone call with Jeffries, but neither revealed what they discussed.

“I have nothing to offer,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “I have no partisan priority that I can take away from the CR to make it more acceptable to them. There is nothing to negotiate.”

Asked Tuesday whether Trump’s commitment was the key to breaking the impasse, Jeffries said: “Of course, Donald Trump should come to the negotiating table.”

Asked whether Trump should get more involved, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said: “I don’t think it would do any harm, but I don’t see any indication that the president wants to do that.” »

“This shutdown will end when everyone puts their egos aside and shoots them. And that hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “Everyone is still on their high horse. And I thought they would have fallen by now. But that’s not the case. So the soap opera continues.”