How Trump and Schumer Came Close to a Deal Over Cheeseburgers

“In my heart, I thought we might have a deal tonight,” Mr. Schumer recalled later on the Senate floor, shortly after the government officially shut down at midnight. At 11:55 p.m., he had been greeted with a blistering White House statement that “Senate Democrats own the Schumer Shutdown.”

Mr. Trump, a onetime real estate mogul whose book “The Art of the Deal” proclaimed his mastery of negotiation, has struggled at times to seal deals as president. He inserted himself into health care negotiations last March, only to see talks in the House collapse. In September, a deal-making dinner with “Chuck and Nancy” — Mr. Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader — later devolved into angry recriminations. And he has so far failed to bring his promised trade talks to a close.

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On Friday afternoon, when Mr. Schumer was back on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump called Mr. Schumer, a person familiar with the call said, and told him that he understood they had agreed on a three-week spending deal, not three or four days. Mr. Schumer told the president, the person said, that Democrats would oppose a three-week measure because they saw it as a delaying tactic.

A White House official said that Mr. Schumer raised the possibility of a one- or two-day extension, but Mr. Trump told Mr. Schumer to work out the details of a short-term measure with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.

A short time later, Mr. Schumer called the president, the person said, but the conversation drove the pair even further apart. The immigration concessions from Democrats were not conservative enough, Mr. Trump told Mr. Schumer. The president said he needed more border security measures as well as more enforcement of illegal immigration in parts of the country far from the border.

As the evening wore on, Mr. Schumer got a call from Mr. Kelly that dashed all hopes for a Trump-Schumer deal before the shutdown deadline of midnight. Mr. Kelly, a hard-liner on immigration, the person familiar with the call said, outlined a long list of White House objections to the deal.

A White House official familiar with the call said Mr. Kelly urged Mr. Schumer to work out the details of an agreement with Mr. McConnell.

In a Twitter post at 9:28 p.m., Mr. Trump vented his pessimism on Twitter, returning to his administration’s efforts to try to make sure that Democrats receive the blame from voters angry about a government shutdown exactly one year from his inauguration.

“Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy.”

With talks between Mr. Trump and Mr. Schumer over, Republicans in the Senate scheduled a vote on a House-passed measure that leaders in both parties expected to fail. After the shutdown began, Mr. Schumer lamented the failure to reach a deal with the president, and blamed Mr. Trump for abandoning an agreement that was within reach.

“What happened to the President Trump who asked us to come up with a deal and promised to take the heat for it?” Mr. Schumer asked on the Senate floor. “What happened to that President Trump?”

The invitation for Mr. Schumer to come to the White House for a face-to-face with the president had been a heart-stopping moment for conservatives that conjured up their worst fears: a closed-door deal between Mr. Trump and the wily Democrat.

With Mr. Trump impatient to begin a golf-and-fund-raising 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 refused to fund the government unless Congress passed legislation to protect the “Dreamers.”

Privately, Mr. Trump’s impulses had led him to ignore political protocols and his own Republican allies, like Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Mr. McConnell, who had groused about the president in recent days that the Senate would consider an immigration bill “as soon as we figure out what he is for.”

The lack of any success between Mr. Schumer and Mr. Trump was a failure of what might have been.

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

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

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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, returned to the Capitol on Friday after meeting with President Trump.

Credit
Erin Schaff for The New York Times

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

During the transition, Mr. 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. Mr. Schumer told attendees that the Democrats had stymied their chances with a message that failed to track more closely with Mr. Trump’s calls for fair trade.

After the failed negotiations on Capitol Hill and at the White House, Democrats predicted that the public would blame Mr. Trump and his Republican allies for a government shutdown, citing past examples of political stalemates in which voters punished Republican presidents and lawmakers.

Throughout the day, Mr. Trump told aides that he knows he is going to get blamed for the shutdown, regardless of what happens and how it goes down.

But at the White House, Mr. 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.

Mr. 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.

Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump’s top budget official, 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, Mr. Mulvaney seemed resigned to failure, promising to “manage the shutdown differently” than President Barack Obama’s administration did a 2013 shutdown. He accused Mr. Obama of “weaponizing” that shutdown to maximize outrage against Republicans.

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