Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, appearing on Pod Save America, claimed that when he and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi met with President Trump in mid-September, Trump agreed not to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, falling back on saying he’d agree to “some other kind of border security.”
Speaking with Pod Save America host Jon Favreau, Schumer said he informed Trump that to encourage trust with Democrats, he would have to make concessions. Schumer continued:
On Dreamers, he said, you know, that he understood that they didn’t come in through any fault of their own, that they’re good Americans, good kids. And then he said he wants the wall in return. And we said “No. No wall, Mr. President.’ And he tried that for about 15 minutes, but he’s not going to push me around verbally or any other way. And he finally said, “OK, we won’t do the wall. We’ll do some other kind of border security.”
Schumer’s version of events is the newest twist in the serpentine path accounts the meeting have taken; after the meeting, Schumer and Pelosi issued a statement in which they wrote, “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.”
That version was given short shrift by the White House:
Schumer’s communications director answered:
Schumer said glibly about his negotiating with Trump: “What I find is I go right back at him as a New Yorker, and he sort of seems to enjoy that.”