The Daily - Monday, Jan. 22, 2018

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

Democrats forced the federal government to shut down by saying there could be no budget deal without a deal on the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Republicans have refused to end the shutdown by saying there can be no DACA deal without a budget deal. There’s been a lot of finger-pointing between the two parties, and the future of young undocumented immigrants hangs in the balance. Guest: Thomas Kaplan, a New York Times reporter who covers Congress. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Show. Today, Democrats forced a shutdown by saying no budget deal without a DACA deal. Republicans have refused to end the shutdown by saying no DACA deal without a budget deal. The U.S. government is in a stalemate. It's Monday, January 22nd. We begin with those high stakes negotiations underway at this hour. Will there be a government shutdown or an 11th hour deal here? So the big question as Friday began was, would there be some negotiation, some progress that would lead Senate Democrats to decide, okay, fine,

we will go along with voting for something that'll keep the government open. Thomas Kaplan has been covering the negotiations. The possibility of a breakthrough there seemed to come when President Trump invited the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Sch Schumer to the White House to meet. President Trump stepping in today with an unexpected invitation to the Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, to come to the White House. Over cheeseburgers, they talked about the issues that were outstanding.

This afternoon, in my heart, I thought we might have a deal tonight. That was how far we'd come. That's how positive our discussion felt. We had a good meeting. There's been plenty of arguing back and forth over what exactly played out in that meeting. The way Senator Schumer recalls it, he agreed to fund the border wall that President Trump wants to build along the southern border with Mexico. I essentially agreed to give the president something he has said he wants in exchange for something we both want. In exchange for the president agreeing to

an immigration measure that would protect the young undocumented immigrants known as dreamers. It is true that Chuck Schumer made what I consider to be a bold and important concession and said, yes, we'll go forward with the wall as long as we do this in a responsible fashion. We had a substantial $20 million. Well, I'm not going to quote numbers because I don't think that's my place to do it, but I can tell you it was a substantial commitment to the president. If this is going to have to be a compromise where Democrats give something and Republicans give something at the end of the day, spending some money on a wall that granted Democrats say is unnecessary and is a waste of money and isn't the best way to address securing the border. Maybe that was something that they could swallow for being able to address the fate of, we're talking hundreds of thousands of people. All right, you want to build this monument to stupidity? You want

to waste and you insist upon wasting $20 billion? Then I say free the dreamers. So is the border wall just kind of one aspect of an immigration plan that isn't really about how we approach immigration in this country in the way that doing away with visa lottery or what the president calls chain migration is? It seems like something they don't mind giving away since it's not an essential question of American immigration and how we approach it. I think that's right. of American immigration and how we approach it. I think that's right. And being a waste of money is sort of a different question from making significant changes to the immigration system broadly. Yes, Democrats think the wall is not the way to go,

but perhaps spending some money on something they think is unwise would be something they could swallow to get what they really want. And as despicable as it is, as hurtful as it is to people like me and others in this country, we are ready to sacrifice that so that DREAMers can have freedom in this country. So things are looking pretty good coming out of this meeting between Schumer and Trump in the White House on Friday. The Democrats, under this plan that the two are talking through, would get a deal on DACA, and the president would get funding for his wall, which he has promised since he started running for president back in 2016.

So then what happens? Well, the way Schumer describes it, the president backed away from this tentative agreement. The president suggested, let's do it by Tuesday night. We said, great. Several hours later, he called back. He said, so I hear we have a three-week deal. I said, no, Mr. President, no one's even talked to me about a three-week deal. I heard that's the deal.

I said, no one's talked to me. I called Leader Pelosi. No one had talked to her. Then a few hours later, they called back again. Well, we're going to need this, this, this, this. In addition, things, it was General Kelly, that they knew were far, far right. After the president and Schumer seemed to have the basics of a deal, the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who is seen as a hardliner on immigration, called Schumer and outlined a whole list of objections to what had been sketched out earlier in the day. And as the night went on, it was clear this had unraveled. Whatever tentative deal had

been sketched out wasn't tatters. Here we go. There are 10 seconds left officially until the top of the hour until there is an official government shutdown. Your lawmakers now are still working to try to come up with something, but obviously that will be too late. So here's the breaking news. It is midnight. No deal. As a result, at midnight on Friday night, the government shut down. The shutdown of the federal government is now beginning. The Democrats had to really unify to make this happen, right? They almost unanimously

had to agree to hold out and let the government shut down if they didn't get what they wanted, primarily some sort of deal on immigration. And they embraced all the political risks that come with being that unified and triggering a shutdown. Yeah. And this was something that I think a lot of people, myself included, were really skeptical about. There are a bunch of Senate Democrats who are up for reelection this year in states that President Trump won in 2016. There's a big political risk to be seen as voting to shut the government down. And it was a big question mark whether a lot of these Democratic senators would be willing to go along with that. Certainly, there were a number of Senate Democrats, particularly some of the most liberal members, who really wanted to push this issue and demand

a solution on DACA. But the vast majority of Democratic senators stuck together with this position that this stopgap bill that did not address immigration was unacceptable. Sarah Huckabee Sanders overnight writing this in a statement. Senate Democrats own the Schumer shutdown. We will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while Democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage over their reckless demands. This is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators. At midnight, the government shut down, the blame game started. And since then,

it's been a lot of finger pointing between the two parties. And so the Republicans almost immediately are pointing at the Democrats as having shut the government down over, in their words, an unrelated issue not tied to funding the government, which is DACA. Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer, they're the ones to blame tonight. They are the ones who really, in reality, are putting illegal immigrants before you, the American people. DACA is in place until March. It is not that urgent. How are Democrats pointing the finger in the other direction at Republicans? So Democrats are very quick to point out that the Republican Party controls the White House, the House, and the Senate.

The Republicans are in control of every branch of government, the presidency, of course, the House, the Senate, through their nominees, the Supreme Court. And the Republicans are in control of every branch of government, the presidency, of course, the House, the Senate, through their nominees, the Supreme Court. And the Republicans are in complete control of the business that comes before the House and the Senate. Another piece of the argument has been focused on President Trump, and this is where Schumer and others have said... The president must take yes for an answer. Until he does, it's the Trump shutdown. Happy anniversary, Mr. President. Your wish came true. You wanted a shutdown. The Trump shutdown is all yours. It's become this big battle of is this the Schumer shutdown or the Trump shutdown? OMB is preparing for what we're calling the Schumer shutdown. The Schumer shutdown is

completely unnecessary. It should be unavoidable. Both sides had something they could point to in arguing that the other side was to blame. And that's continued ever since the moment the government shut down. It's been public blame shooting in both directions. So what you're describing is pretty much the impasse for the rest of the weekend, right? Do both sides remain locked in the position of, on the left, Democrats saying, we won't negotiate spending until you solve DACA. And on the right, Republicans saying, we won't negotiate DACA until you give us a budget. That is the outline, although there has been a bit of a thaw. And this is why there is some reason to be cautiously optimistic that there could be an exit to this crisis.

It is back to work at the Capitol and a return to the scene of the shutdown, the political battle for a deal. But will it involve dreamers for the world? In Washington, lawmakers appear to be moving toward a deal to end the government shutdown. A live look for you at Capitol Hill, where lawmakers continue to negotiate an end to the stalemate. A group of moderate senators from both parties met over the weekend to try to chart a path forward, some kind of compromise that would put an end to this. Neither side would really get what they want in the sense that some kind of compromise would perhaps involve some kind of commitment that DACA will be addressed in the Senate in the weeks to come. So it would not be an actual deal on immigration. And as part of that, perhaps Democrats would then

be willing to vote for a spending bill that would reopen the government for a short period of time, perhaps a couple weeks, and end this crisis. So Democrats would get no guarantee of what would happen in those negotiations if a short-term budget deal is passed, just an agreement to keep discussing the future of issues like DACA. So that's the big question now is what exactly will this commitment, promise, pledge, whatever you want to call it, on immigration be? One obvious issue that comes up here is, so Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, agrees to have a vote on a DACA bill in a few weeks. It doesn't do a heck of a lot of good from a Democratic point of view if that bill passes the Senate, but then is dead on arrival in the House and never goes anywhere. So just a promise to have a vote in the Senate

might not be enough in the eyes of some. So that's really now the sort of biggest lingering question is what promises or concessions could be made on how immigration could be handled in the weeks to come. And will those promises, concessions be concrete enough to be meaningful to Democrats? Democrats. I'm struck by the fact that all of this uncertainty in Congress seems to come back to these meetings at the White House and what happens when members of Congress go there to try to work out a deal on immigration that Trump will support. This all started last week when Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham thought they had a deal with the president. And then it seems Trump's aide, Stephen Miller, stepped in and the deal was off. Now we have reports that the president's chief of staff, John Kelly, played a similar role in stepping in and calling off the deal with Chuck Schumer on Friday. And I think it's a real point of frustration on Capitol Hill

in dealing with the White House and the president, which is certainly something that Schumer and Democrats have said. How do you negotiate with someone who agrees to something, commits to something, and then that agreement, that commitment suddenly is wiped away? away. What's even more frustrating than President Trump's intransigence is the way he seems amenable to these compromises before completely switching positions and backing off. Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O. Even today, a Republican, Lindsey Graham, complained about Stephen Miller. I've talked with the president. His heart is right on this issue. I think he's got a good understanding of what will sell. And every time we have a proposal, it is only yanked back by staff members. As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere. He's been an outlier for

years. Help us make sense of something. President Trump started all this by rescinding DACA and sending it to Congress and telling Congress, this is yours to solve, and indicating very clearly that he wanted to protect the Dreamers. But at every step along the way, it's felt like the president himself has blocked Congress's effort to do just that. How do you make sense of that? Well, I think that's why there's so much frustration in Congress, certainly among Democrats.

They say the president created this crisis. He set in motion this entire saga. He created this uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of people. And ever since then, it's been hard to pin down what exactly he wants. I think a big reason that we are in this position now is that lack of trust and the fact that lawmakers struggled to figure out what the president wanted them to do. The president sent different signals at different times. And Democrats really questioned whether something would actually get done on this issue. And I think that motivated a

lot of people to really force the issue and say, we need to take a firm stand. And if it means shutting down the government, then that's something that they felt comfortable doing. Tom, thank you very much. Thank you. On Sunday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he was delaying a late-night vote on a temporary spending bill until today at noon, night vote on a temporary spending bill until today at noon, a signal that the plan being worked out by moderate senators was progressing. It would be my intention to proceed the legislation that would address DACA, border security, and related issues. In a gesture to lawmakers who are demanding that the Senate address the fate of the Dreamers.

McConnell said he planned to move ahead with immigration legislation next month if the issue had not already been resolved. So let's step back from the brink. Let's stop victimizing the American people and get back to work on their behalf. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Over the weekend, Taliban militants attacked a luxury hotel in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, leaving at least 18 dead, nearly all of them foreigners. The 14-hour siege began on Saturday night

when gunmen entered the intercontinental hotel through a kitchen and roamed the halls targeting foreigners and Afghan officials. It ended on Sunday when Afghan soldiers stormed the building. The siege capped a violent 24 hours across Afghanistan as the 16-year war there continues to spiral more violently. And... It is our duty to fight for our freedom! It is our duty to fight for our freedom! It is our duty to win! It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.

We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our day. One year after the Women's March to protest President Trump's inauguration, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities across the world this weekend with a broader message. I am speaking today, not just for the Me Too's, because I was a Me Too. But when I raise my hand,

I am aware of all the women who are still in silence. The reckoning of the past year, the relentless accounts of assault and abuse, inspired calls for deeper social and political change. Let's make sure all young girls everywhere know that they have a voice. They can use it. One woman's voice is powerful,

but all of our voices are completely unstoppable. On Saturday afternoon, President Trump tweeted about the marches, writing, quote, beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all women to march. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years. Rise up! Rise up! Rise up! Rise up! Rise up! Rise up! That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.