How Trump and Schumer came close to a budget deal over cheeseburgers

WASHINGTON — In the White House briefing room Friday, Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump's top budget official, predicted a government shutdown and mockingly named it "the Schumer Shutdown," after the Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York.

But hours before the briefing, in another part of the West Wing, Trump placed a call to the senator he once called "Cryin' Chuck." Without giving his staff almost any heads-up, the president spontaneously invited Schumer to a last-ditch, one-on-one negotiating session in the Oval Office.

The invitation was a heart-stopping moment for conservatives that conjured up their worst fears: a closed-door deal between Trump and the wily Democratic master of legislative strategy.

The same thing nearly happened in September, when Trump almost reached an agreement on the fate of 800,000 young immigrants who stand to be displaced by the elimination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, over a dinner of Chinese food in the White House Blue Room with Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the top Democrat in the House.

Now, with Trump eager to begin his golf-and-fundraising weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, there was once again the prospect that the president would publicly side with his Democratic adversaries, who are refusing to fund the government unless Congress passes legislation to protect the young immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as children.

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Once again, Trump's impulses led him to ignore political protocols and his own Republican allies, like Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who had groused in recent days that the Senate would consider an immigration bill "as soon as we figure out what he is for."

But as happened in September — when a tentative deal fell apart after the president's hard-line advisers and conservative supporters revolted — Friday's meeting went nowhere. Whatever the decadeslong relationship there was between the two men, fueled by a common upbringing in the boroughs of New York, political divisions once again made it impossible to reach an agreement.

In classic Trump style, the president made anxious conservatives hold their breath for almost 90 minutes as the possibility of a Trump-Schumer deal dangled in the Washington wind. In a later Twitter post, Trump declared it an "excellent preliminary meeting" and said he was making progress with Schumer and Republican leaders.

But after leaving the White House on Friday, Schumer displayed none of the bravado he exhibited in September, when he gleefully announced that Trump had agreed in principle to a deal on Dreamers after their dinner.

"We made some progress, but we still have a number of disagreements," a sober-looking Schumer told reporters at the Capitol after the meeting. "The discussions will continue."

At the White House, some senior officials grew more pessimistic after the meeting, privately predicting that a shutdown was likely. One senior White House official gave an even less sunny summary of the meeting than Schumer did, suggesting that it was "cordial" but adding that a lengthy list of obstacles still remained. The official would not even echo Schumer's assessment that progress had been made during the meeting.

The lack of any immediate success between the two men was a failure of what might have been.

Once, in the days after the 2016 election, Schumer saw a path toward working with Trump. Just as McConnell did at the time, Schumer believed he would be able to guide Trump — who has few fixed positions — toward his own initiatives.

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Schumer is one of the few elected officials in Washington with whom Trump had something of a bond before he won the presidency. An adviser to Trump once pointed out that if the president had to choose between spending time with Schumer or McConnell, he would pick the Democratic leader almost every time.

Schumer appeared on a Season 5 episode of "The Apprentice," the reality show that helped Trump create a brand in the eyes of millions of voters as a take-charge businessman. During the show, Schumer predicted that the future president was "going to go places."

During the transition, Schumer appeared on a panel at an event held by the Partnership for New York City, a business group, where Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, also spoke. Schumer told attendees that the Democrats had stymied their chances with a message that failed to track more closely with Trump's calls for fair trade.

On Friday, with the clock ticking toward a midnight deadline, leaders in the House canceled plans to send members home for the weekend, just in case. In the Senate, all but three Democrats continued to oppose a spending plan unless Republicans agreed to permanently protect the Dreamers.

Democrats predicted that the public would blame Trump and his Republican allies for a government shutdown, citing past examples of political stalemates in which voters punished Republican presidents and lawmakers.

But at the White House throughout the day, Trump's aides maneuvered to try to shield the president from the political damage that could follow. At the same time, they waged an intense public relations campaign to argue that Democrats should shoulder the responsibility for keeping the functions of government operating.

Trump delayed his afternoon departure for Mar-a-Lago, and aides said he had called members of both parties in hope of averting a shutdown that could have unpredictable repercussions in a midterm election year.

Mulvaney said the administration would instruct agencies to use reserve funds and to transfer money from other agencies to keep operations in place. He said the national parks would remain open and the military would continue to function, but he said employees performing those jobs would be doing so without pay until a spending agreement is reached.

In the morning, Mulvaney seemed resigned to failure, promising to "manage the shutdown differently" than President Barack Obama's administration did a 2013 shutdown. He accused Obama of "weaponizing" that shutdown to maximize outrage against Republicans.

But by dinnertime, there were conflicting signals about what might happen. While Democrats said negotiations were continuing, administration officials began describing in detail how government agencies were planning to handle a shutdown. Still, Mulvaney seemed somewhat more optimistic.

"There's a really good chance it gets fixed" before government offices open Monday, he said. Asked if Trump might still travel to Florida on Saturday, Mulvaney said, "He's not leaving until this is finished."

Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.