Schumer: ‘We haven’t heard from’ Trump since he stormed out of White House meeting

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Tuesday that he hasn’t spoken to President Trump in roughly a week as the partial government shutdown drags on with no end in sight. 

“I’ll meet with him anytime he wants. As you know, the last I spoke with him was when he walked out, threw a temper tantrum and walked out, so we haven’t heard from him since then,” Schumer told reporters on Tuesday, asked when he last spoke with the president.

{mosads}Schumer and other members of congressional leadership went to the White House on Wednesday to meet with Trump and other Republican leaders. But Trump stormed out of the meeting after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she would not negotiate border wall funding even if he agreed to fully reopen the government.

Roughly a quarter of the government has been closed since Dec. 22, forcing approximately 800,000 federal employees to be furloughed or work with pay.

But the stalemate in talks between Schumer and Trump comes as GOP leadership say it’s up to congressional Democrats and the president to negotiate an agreement.

“There’s no way around it. Having show votes in the Senate doesn’t solve the problem,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters on Tuesday. 

Trump is demanding more than $5 billion for the border wall, while Democrats say $1.3 billion is their cap in negotiations and that it would need to go toward fencing instead of a concrete physical barrier. 

The House passed a package earlier this month that would fully reopen the government. One bill would fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, while the other would fund the rest of the impacted departments and agencies through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

But McConnell has said for weeks that he will not bring up a bill that lacks Trump’s support. He blocked the House package earlier Tuesday. 

“The solution to this is a negotiation between the one person in the country who can sign something into law, the president of the United States, and our Democratic colleagues,” McConnell said.