It could have been a Mount Rushmore moment.
Instead, it was just another Donald Trump meltdown.
The stage was set for a meeting Wednesday on infrastructure spending at the White House. Democrats carried a 35-page plan for that spending – a plan that Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said had broad, bipartisan support. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’d hoped to sell the president on a Trump infrastructure opportunity that she likened to the “greatness” of Thomas Jefferson’s “national road” or Teddy Roosevelt’s establishment of the our national parks system.
But Trump strode into the room, lashed out at the Democrats and said no deal. In a bully demand, Trump said he will work on no legislation, no infrastructure, no trade deals, nothing – until all of the investigations of him are over. In three or four minutes, the meeting was done. Trump left as quickly as he came and headed straight out to a bevy of reporters and microphones.
In Trump’s own words in a made-for-TV Rose Garden moment, he told reporters he gave the Democrats an ultimatum: “I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I’d be really good at that, that’s what I do, but you know what, you can’t do it under these circumstances, so get these phony investigations over with. You can go do the investigation track, or you can go down the investment track.”