Responding to Republican criticism that has labeled Saturday's government shutdown the Schumer Shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., claims President Donald Trump welched on a deal Friday and told the Senate floor "negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O."
"President Trump just can't take yes for an answer," Sen. Schumer told the Senate on Saturday afternoon. "He's rejected not one but two viable bipartisan deals, including one in which I put his most prominent campaign pledge on the table. What's even more frustrating than President Trump's intransigence is he seems amenable to these compromises before switching positions and backing off.
"Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O. That's why this compromise will be called a Trump Shutdown. The president's behavior is unamenable to compromise. It's impossible to negotiate with a constant moving target."
Following his Senate speech, Schumer repeated his "Jell-O" swipe at President Trump and called this week's Continuing Resolution negotiations an "Abbott and Costello" act, which is reference to the famed "Who's on First" comedic sketch.
"Democrats have bent over backward to negotiate with the White House," Schumer told a press briefing. "Unfortunately, the president and Republican leaders in Congress are like Abbott and Costello. The congressional leaders tell me to negotiate with President Trump. President Trump tell me to figure it out with Republican leaders."
Schumer also ripped President Trump's past call for a shutdown and a Saturday tweet from President Trump about a one-year inaugural anniversary "present" from Democrats.
"So on the one-year anniversary of President Trump's inauguration [Saturday], his government has closed its door to the American people and he hardly seems to care," Schumer told the media. "Early on, he said our country could, quote 'use a good shutdown.' [Saturday] he tweeted, this is the one-year anniversary of my presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present.
"He called the shutdown an anniversary present. It shows just how out of touch and how callous he can be. A government shutdown is no present for the country, for his party, and for him. It's entirely the president's doing."