During Friday’s meeting at the White House over the ongoing shutdown standoff, President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made little substantive progress as Pelosi and Schumer urged Trump to reopen the government by Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
ONE SOURCE
One of these knowledgeable sources told The Daily Beast President Trump kicked off the meeting with a rant lasting roughly 15 minutes that included his $5.6 billion demand for a border wall, and threatened that he was willing to keep the government closed for “years” if that’s what it took to get his wall. He also, unprompted, brought up the Democrats who want him impeached, and even blamed Pelosi for new Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib saying at a party earlier this week that Democrats would impeach the “motherfucker” Trump. (It is unclear why Trump would think Pelosi was responsible for this.)
TOO POPULAR TO IMPEACH
Trump proceeded to tell the room he was too popular to impeach. Along with saying the word “fuck” at least three times throughout the meeting, the president bizarrely stated that he did not want to call the partial government shutdown a “shutdown,” according to the source. Instead, he referred to it as a “strike.” (Many of the federal employees affected by the weeks-long shutdown have been working without pay. That is essentially the opposite of a strike.)
VISIBLY SHAKING HEADS
During the course of this meeting, the Democrats in the room were visibly shaking their heads in exasperation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was one of the Republicans in the room. An aide to McConnell did not provide a readout of the meeting—citing office policy—but noted that the senator rarely talks in such sessions.
ANOTHER SOURCE
Another person familiar with the meeting disputed that Trump said “fuck” three times, though conceded he said it once.
THIRD SOURCE
This third source contended that the president “didn’t bring up impeachment unprompted,” but did so in the “context of how he wants to work together” with Democratic lawmakers and how impeachment efforts would be counterproductive to that. The source added that the little that McConnell did contribute included calling on Democrats to work this weekend on a solution to the shutdown impasse.
NO RESPOND
The White House did not respond to a request for comment as of press time. But according to one source familiar with the meeting, Schumer did press the president to reopen the government before continuing negotiations on a border wall. Otherwise, the Senator suggested, the president was effectively using government employees and shuttered government agencies as leverage.
TRUMP TO SCHUMER
“I’m not going to say it’s for leverage, but I’m not going to get a deal unless I do this,” the president replied, according to the source.
The Democrats in the room shook their heads, the source said, as if to say “so, you’re doing it for leverage…”
SATURDAY MEETING
Senior Trump administration officials and Democratic congressional staffers failed on Saturday to break a deadlock over a proposed border wall and end a two-week-old partial government shutdown, but will meet again on Sunday.
STILL $5.6
President Donald Trump is demanding $5.6 billion to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico but Democrats in control of the House of Representatives this week passed a bill to reopen the government without providing additional funding for the wall.
Trump says he will not sign the bill until he gets the money for the wall.
VP PENCE
Vice President Mike Pence led the administration’s team in a meeting with Democratic negotiators on Saturday. An aide to Pence said the meeting was “productive” but that there was “no in-depth conversation about [a] dollar figure
ACTING WH CHIEF OF STAFF
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told CNN, “We didn’t make much progress at the meeting, which was surprising to me.”
The two sides agreed to meet again on Sunday.
As My World Turns 
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