Schumer: Trump's 'temper tantrum' was concocted to escape infrastructure meeting - POLITICO

Schumer: Trump's 'temper tantrum' was concocted to escape infrastructure meeting - POLITICO

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that President Donald Trump was spurning Democrats at his own risk when we stormed out of an infrastructure meeting Wednesday. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that President Donald Trump's eruption one day earlier at a White House meeting on infrastructure was little more than a pre-planned effort to escape a sit-down that he was "ill-prepared" for.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the New York Democrat argued that there were signs the president was not serious about Wednesday’s meeting, which Trump abruptly ended after complaining that he could not work with Democrats while they were investigating him. Trump blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who moments before the meeting had accused Trump of engaging in a cover-up.

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“What happened yesterday, in my judgment, is that they were so ill-prepared and afraid to actually say how they pay for infrastructure — they were unable — that they looked for a way to back out,” Schumer said. He pointed to a Tuesday night letter from the White House urging lawmakers to focus on passing Trump’s renegotiated free trade agreement before turning to infrastructure.

“So that was their first gambit,” Schumer said of the letter. “Then they realized they had nothing to say on NAFTA, so I think probably early that morning they concocted this, you know, temper tantrum and he walked out.”

After ditching lawmakers Wednesday, Trump held a contentious news conference in the Rose Garden in which he railed against the slew of investigations into his administration, complete with glossy signage and handouts for reporters. That the White House had printed materials at the ready seemed an indication to some that the president's frustration had been pre-planned, but White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN on Thursday the placard affixed next to the president's podium had been printed weeks earlier.

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“I walked into the room and I told Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, 'I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I'd be really good at that. That is what I do,'” Trump said of canceling the meeting. “But you know what, you can't do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with.”

Schumer on Thursday warned that Trump was spurning Democrats at his own risk, proclaiming Trump’s tenure had been a “do-nothing, helter-skelter, radical presidency.”

“It doesn't look good for him to anyone but his hardcore base, and even some of them are gonna start saying, ‘he’s not getting anything done,’” Schumer said. “It’s just a show.”

“A lot of people now see — more and more people — see that he's not getting anything done. And he doesn't realize what a liability that is. The presidency is not just a reality show. And if you don't get real things done for the American people they're going to want change again and they will want change away from Donald Trump,” he added later.

Schumer speculated that Trump’s inability to work with Democrats in Congress could ultimately result in Senate Republicans, worried about their electoral prospects, working around him altogether to craft an infrastructure deal, although there are few, if any, outwards signs of lawmakers moving in that direction.

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2019-05-23 12:57:00Z

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