Government shutdown - LIVE: Trump walks out of meeting with Democrats 'in temper tantrum' when Pelosi 'said no to wall funding'
President trying to 'stoke fear and divert attention' from administration's woes, say opponents
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has walked out of a White House meeting with Congressional leadership over the government shutdown after Democrats indicated they would offer no funding for his promised wall on the US-Mexico border.
“He asked [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi, 'Will you agree to my wall?' She said no. And he just got up and said, 'Then we have nothing to discuss,' and he just walked out. Again, we saw a temper tantrum because he couldn't get his way,” Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the Senate said.
Mr Trump tweeted the meeting was "total waste of time" and said he offered to open up the government for 30 days if Democrats supported the building of the wall.
Mr Trump is dealing in mixed messages today. Earlier he said of the shutdown: “This is not a fight I wanted. I didn’t want this fight.”
That is quite the message change from last month, when he said that he was “proud to shut down the government for border security.”
Reuters has been speaking to some of those affected by the shutdown. Alphonzo Breland, an Internal Revenue Service employee in Oakley, California, said he has been losing sleep and trying to get a night job at a warehouse to cover his family's expenses.
"My heart is always fluttering, my head is racing," Mr Breland, 41, said. "My mortgage is due now, I have until the 15th and then I get a late fee. I had to cancel the tuition deduction for my daughter's school.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls the president 'racist' and accuses him of human rights violations
Ms Ocasio-Cortez has been snatching up headlines since her surprise victory in her New York Democratic primary last year, and she is certainly taking advantage of the press time she has been given to make a name for herself in her first week as a member of the US Congress.
Less than a week into the job, the freshman representative has called the president "racist" during a nationally televised interview, and accused him of human rights abuses at the border in another.
Trump threatens FEMA support for California wildfires
The president on Wednesday morning threatened federal funding to fight and recover from wildfires in California, just months after the deadliest fire in the state's history burned through.
While the threat may not seem, on its face, to be related to the budget showdown, there is at least one connection — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Ms Pelosi, who represents a California district, denounced the president's threat.
Short meeting at the White House after Trump's primetime address: Democrats say the president had a 'temper tantrum' before walking out
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have left their meeting with Donald Trump in the White House shortly after it stopped.
Ms Pelosi noted outside of the White House after the meeting that Democrats are pro-border security but that Mr Trump's border wall would not change the circumstances at the border. Mr Schumer said that the president walked out of the meeting after Ms Pelosi told him they would not budge on the border wall.
"The president just got up and walked out," Mr Schumer said after the meeting. "He just got out, said 'we have nothing to discuss, and just walked out'. Again, he had a temper tantrum".
Mexico is staying out of the US shutdown
Mr Trump loves to say that Mexico is going to pay for the wall he is now asking Congress to fund. Mexican officials, meanwhile, have shown an eagerness to call the US president's bluff.
That appears to have changed 19 days into the partial US government shutdown.
The Associated Press reports that on Wednesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he won’t be drawn into what he calls a US internal dispute, in apparent reference to the shutdown.
Mr Lopez Obrador said: “We are not going to respond to situations arising from internal affairs in the United States”.
Mr Lopez Obrador dodged conflict instead, and said: “Of course, there are those ... who want us to get into a confrontation. We always want a friendly relationship with the United States, a cooperative relationship".
Mr Trump has more recently said that Mexico will be paying for the wall "indirectly" through reforms to trade deals between the two countries.
Republicans blame Democrats, saying they will not negotiate to reopen the border
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking just outside of the White House after a meeting between the president and congressional leadership, suggested that the president asked if Democrats would be open to a deal to build the wall if he opened the government, but was told no.
Mr Pence said that democrats were unwilling to negotiate with the president to open the border.
"Today, in this brief meeting, we heard once again that Democratic leaders are unwilling to even negotiate to resolve this partial government shutdown or address the crisis at our southern border," Mr Pence said.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, after the vice president's remarks, detailed a meeting in which the president asked for ideas and then asked democrats if they would be open to working on the border wall and security. Ms Pelosi said no, he said.
"When she said no, the president said goodbye," Mr Pence said.
As Republicans defend the president just outside his home, Trump tweets
Republicans leaving the meeting between Mr Trump and congressional leadership repeatedly called the president's demeanor during the meeting "calm", and portrayed Democrats as obstructionists in the negotiations over the government shutdown.
Speaking just outside of the White House, Republicans said that Mr Trump asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if she would support funding for the border wall in 30 days if he reopens the government. She said, accord to them, no.
Mr Trump, just inside, tweeted the following, confirming that he walked out of the meeting after Ms Pelosi said no to funding.
Who is to blame for the government shutdown? Trump, according to Americans
An analysis of polling by FiveThirtyEight notes that the American public is increasingly finding the president to blame for the shutdown.
At least three polls show that more Americans think the president is to blame for shut down now than they did when the shutdown started nearly three weeks ago. In the YouGov, Reuters, and Morning Consult polls — which all have conducted surveys during that time — 4 per cent more Americans now blame the president for the shutdown than they did around Christmastime.
That runs at 50 per cent blame, 51 per cent blame, and 47 per cent blame, respectively.
Meanwhile, far fewer Americans blame Democrats — with blame hovering in the low to mid 30 per cent range.
Somewhat reserved in her on-air remarks, Speaker Pelosi dished a bit harder after the fact
When asked about the meeting by CNN's Phil Mattingly, Ms Pelosi said that the meeting was nothing like the "high stakes negotiations" she had taken part in previously.
They weren't even "stakes negotiations", she said:
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