The Democratic representatives were in the Oval house to negotiate over keeping the government open with President Donald Trump.
Following Trump’s promise of putting up a wall on the border of Mexico and the U.S, promising intensely that Mexico will sign positively on the idea of the wall not so long after the elections that brought him in as president, something that Mexicans have never agreed on. Trump has since sought to collect billions to put up the wall. He called it “funding the government”.
In the Oval meeting, Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer strongly hit at President Trump, speaking against his threat to shut down government to enable the wall to be put up. This meeting was Trump’s first with the newly empowered democratic leaders, and it was a televised argument, despite Nancy and Schumer’s requests on making it a private discussion. On that matter, Trump said transparency is good and the meeting should therefore be left public.
President Trump insisted that if the democrats were not going to support the wall, it would be built by the military. Pelosi noted that the wall, by Democrats, is considered, “immoral, inefficient and offensive”.
Looking beyond the arguments in the Oval House, it is important that we understand where President Trump is coming from. He only seeks to protect his people, and stated that there are 10 terrorists that the wall will shut out of the U.S once it is put up. We should also look at the transparency that Trump so much desired in the meeting; good leadership is transparent and it is a powerful gesture that Trump preferred for the meeting to be public despite the strength of the arguments he was having with the democrats.
Even after the meeting, Trump’s comment was that it was a friendly meeting and he has always liked the democrats that were in the meeting and respected them. He further acknowledged that together, they made a lot of progress.
Trump also had the courtesy to call up Pelosi later and told her that the White house was looking at options that she and Schumer laid out during the meeting. That’s kind consideration, and although Trump has always been bad mouthed for how he thinks, he has the spirit of a democrat.