Brian Bennett/ Yahoo News
President Donald Trump began a meeting with the top Democrats in Congress Friday with a 15-minute rant. Shortly after Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took their seats, the president told them he would not budge below the $5.7 billion he’s demanded for a border wall and that he was happy keeping the government partially closed for months or even years. Trump was “like a bull in a china shop,” according to a Democratic source familiar with the exchanges.Then Trump took the conversation in a surprising direction. “Why don’t you use this for impeachment?” Trump asked Pelosi, according to his own account of the conversation. Pelosi told him House Democrats weren’t looking to impeach him.
It was something of a tell. A sitting president bringing up the specter of impeachment on an unrelated conversation seemed to acknowledge that more is hangs in the balance in the negotiations over ending the shutdown than funding the “big, beautiful wall” Trump promised on the campaign trail. At stake is the balance of power between Trump and newly emboldened Democrats over the next two years.As Trump prepares to make his first prime-time address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, he faces divided government for the first time in his political career, bringing with it the threat of investigations into his campaign, his business and his Administration. For a man whose career was spent at the top of a family-run business, it also means he may have to compromise or accept defeat on certain goals.
The border wall has become not just a symbol of Trump’s restrictive approach to immigration, but a potent metaphor of his political power. For the White House, any concession on this signature campaign promise risks teaching Democrats that they can bully him with their newfound legislative power for the remainder of his first term.If Trump ends up weakened from the fight, the White House fears that Democrats may be emboldened to demand more for initiatives Trump has endorsed, such as reducing drug prices and spending on transportation and infrastructure needs. On the flip side, if Trump wins the shutdown fight, the White House sees a chance to divide his critics on the Left ahead of a fractious presidential primary.In Trump’s view, politics is a zero-sum game, and the winner of this standoff will have more political leverage in the next two years of investigations, policy-making and even possibly impeachment proceedings.There’s plenty at stake in the short term, too. Trump will use the airtime Tuesday, as well has his trip to McAllen, Texas, on Thursday, to lay out his case for why a border wall is necessary and why Democrats should give him more funding to stop the increasing numbers of families and children arriving at the Southern Border from Central America and deter more from attempting the dangerous overland trek.
West Wing aides have been scrambling for days to keep up with the president’s moves. On Jan. 3, Trump surprised a group of immigration officers and Border Patrol agents meeting with him in the Oval Office when he said he wanted the agents to describe the need for a border wall directly to the White House press corps and walked with them into the briefing room for his first ever visit. The episode broke into the day’s news cycle that had been dominated by footage of newly elected Democrats taking the oath of office. The next day, following his contentious Oval Office meeting with Pelosi, Schumer and Republican Congressional leaders, Trump abruptly decided to hold an hour-long news conference on a chilly afternoon outside in the Rose Garden, during which he said he would consider the extraordinary step of using emergency powers to build a border wall if Democrats refused to fund one.