During a white house meeting, Hakeem Jeffries spotted a “ Trump 2028 ” hat and asked JD Vance ‘Hey, my brother, do you have a problem with that?’ ‘

“Trump 2028,” they said, located opposite the seated legislators, vice-president JD Vance and several intact regime cokes.

The Democratic Democrat of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber looked at Vance, himself a potential candidate in 2028, and joked: “Hey, my brother, do you have a problem with that?”

The room gleaned in response.

“It was the most random thing in the world, because we are sitting there, we have a serious conversation, and suddenly, these two red hats appear,” recalls Jeffries later in Capitol.

“It was so little put into service,” said Jeffries, describing a traveling cameraman capturing the moment. “We were there for serious reasons of which it was not really a large part, you know, the discussion. It was theater. ”

The moment was vintage Trump – attracting attention and seeking to reject the negotiators of their game – but that also underlined the respect of the president for the congress, a coequal branch of the government, and in particular his opponents through the political aisle.

From the first historic meeting to fishing viral fishing

What was in the past was considered a historic opportunity – the President of the United States, convening his first “Big Four” from the leaders of the Congress of the Chamber and the Senate – was reduced to another viral memory of Trump Trolling his opponent.

And after the session of more than an hour, Trump failed to conclude an agreement with the leaders to prevent a closure of the federal government.

“We don’t want him to stop,” Trump told the White House the next day, a few hours before the midnight deadline.

It was not only a routine meeting of the president and the leadership of the congress. It was the first time that Trump had gathered the leaders of the Congress, more than eight months after his presidency – and the first time that he and Jeffries had officially met.

But more surprising was how much it came.

Health care funds for a debate while the president listens

During the meeting of the White House, Jeffries and the Democrat chief of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, presented their arguments to save the financing of health care as part of the closing talks.

Trump said very little, listening to more than speaking, the leaders said.

“He did not seem to know that health care premiums are increasing so much,” said Schumer.

With Republican leaders, the president of the Mike Johnson room and the head of the majority of the Senate John Thune, the conversation went in their opinions on the health care situation.

“Delivered”, as Thune said later.

The discussion included the requests of the Democrats to guarantee subsidies to help people buy private insurance on the scholarships managed by the affordable care law are made permanent. The subsidies were put in place during the COVVI-19 pandemic and should expire at the end of the year, by swiveling bonuses as much as double, in certain estimates.

The conversation also addressed the new rural hospital fund which is important for the Republicans, set up under the great bill of Trump as a means of compensating for its cups for the health care providers of Medicaid.

Johnson said Trump showed “solid and solid leadership. He listened to the arguments.”

Try to attract the president’s attention

It is the best that the Democrats could have hoped for – having a broadcast in front of the president who began to turn the dial to their requests. And this is what the leaders of the GOP had tried to avoid while each party tries to blame the closure of the other.

Johnson had suggested that Trump be given to a first meeting with the Democrats – after the president had accepted one – arguing that it would be a “loss of time”.

But Trump gave in and granted them the oval office session to camera on Monday.

Democrats have already been here. During Trump’s first term, the president has repeatedly negotiated the agreements with the Democrats – “Chuck and Nancy”, while he called Schumer and President Emerita Nancy Pelosi – to finance the government, increase the limit of debt and achieve other objectives.

These good deals of Trump frustrated his own republican party.

The Republicans, aware of this story, try to direct the conversation in a different direction, leaving the door open to discuss the question of health care with the Democrats later – once the government has reopened. They also challenged the characterization of Trump as ignoring the depth or extent of the health care situation.

“I am very skeptical that the president hears for the first time,” said Vance later.

A Republican did not authorize to discuss publicly of the private meeting publicly and granted anonymity to do so, said that Schumer’s suggestion that Trump did not know about the problem of subsidies was exaggerated.

Until now, in his second mandate, the president has been able to accomplish his priorities alone, with executive actions and the cuts led by Elon Musk who have torn the federal offices, or with a compliant congress which adopted its signature tax alternatives and its expense reductions, commonly called the Big Beau Bill Act, which also feeds its mass depression agenda.

But Washington does not appear at the White House only, and Congress is not an institution mainly to all. Transforming most bills into laws require the delivery of bipartite compromises, in particular in the Senate, and in particular with regard to the annual credits necessary to maintain the government on the move.

Then came the dark taunts

A few hours after the legislators left the meeting, Trump’s team published a false video which showed that Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a false mustache standing next to Schumer in front of the White House. He was widely considered racist.

“When I practiced the law, there was a Latin sentence that has always been one of my favorites,” Jeffries told his office in the Capitol. “Res ipsa loquatur. It means: the thing speaks of itself.”

“We had a complete broadcast of our positions on Monday, which should have defined the reference line for a conversation of monitoring the administration to try to rekindle a significant bipartite path to finance the government,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the president’s behavior after the White House meeting has deteriorated in dislocated and non -unbalanced action.”