Both Rep. Pelosi and Senator Schumer and, separately, the White House have released statements on this evening’s dinner at the White House. Note the references to DACA and the non-references to the wall.
From Pelosi and Schumer …
Pelosi and Schumer Joint Statement on Dinner with President Trump
Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer issued the following joint statement following a dinner with President Trump in the White House:
“We had a very productive meeting at the White House with the President. The discussion focused on DACA. We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.
“We also urged the President to make permanent the cost-sharing reduction payments, and those discussions will continue.”
A statement on background from a “White House official” via the pool …
President Donald Trump had a constructive working dinner with Senate and House Minority Leaders, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as well as Administration officials to discuss policy and legislative priorities.These topics included tax reform, border security, DACA, infrastructure and trade.This is a positive step toward the President’s strong commitment to bipartisan solutions for the issues most important to all Americans. The Administration looks forward to continuing these conversations with leadership on both sides of the aisle.
We’ll see whether they really “agreed” or whether President Trump will stay agreeing if that’s actually what happened. But on its face, Pelosi and Schumer seem to be saying that they agreed in principle that DACA should become law. That will come with a border security package. But not the wall. Democrats have been open to this kind of package for some time, though obviously the devil might be in the details on what’s included in a border security package. Note that the White House statement references DACA and ‘border security’ but conspicuously does not mention the wall. So the two statements seem to align on this front. The White House had seemed to back off connecting the two things yesterday. This seems to confirm it, though Sarah Sanders went up on Twitter to dispute what was agreed to.
While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to.
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) September 14, 2017
It’s worth remembering here that Trump often seems to say things or agree to things he was not supposed to say or agree to or that his staff had not expected him to. The most telling detail here, in my mind, is the background response from the White House that does not mention the wall.
