House Democrats' refusal to meet with President Donald Trump was the latest setback for a president who is running out of options to reopen the government and realize his long-standing pledge to build the border wall. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Government Shutdown Dems spurn Trump on shutdown talks Moderate House Democrats feared the White House was simply trying to divide the party while scoring a valuable photo-op.

House Democrats refused to participate in a Tuesday afternoon meeting with President Donald Trump, dashing the White House’s long-shot hopes of convincing moderates to circumvent their leaders and reach a grand bargain to reopen the government.

With the shutdown stretching into its 25th day, negotiations between Trump and top congressional Democrats have screeched to a halt. Both sides are refusing to shift their positions and communication between the two camps has been at a standstill since the president stormed out of a meeting last week.


"I'll meet with him anytime he wants. But the last time I spoke to him was when he threw a temper tantrum and walked out, and we haven't heard from him since then," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday afternoon.

The failed effort to court Democrats Tuesday is the latest setback for a president who is running out of options to reopen the government and realize his long-standing pledge to build the border wall.

White House aides had reached out to several centrist Democratic lawmakers in hopes of dividing the caucus and going around Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who have strongly objected to Trump’s demand for more than $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Democrats flatly rejected the entreaty, wary of looking like props for a White House photo op that would do little to actually advance negotiations. And Trump has changed his mind so many times since the shutdown started four weeks ago, even if they did meet with the president they wouldn't know where to begin negotiations, Democrats said.

"The question everybody can reasonably ask: Is he inviting people to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to really try to resolve this problem?” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), House Democratic Caucus chairman. “Or to create a photo-op to project a false sense of bipartisanship.”

The meeting Tuesday instead included eight Republicans and no Democrats. And rather than making progress to end the longest shutdown in history, the GOP attendees emerged from the huddle pointing fingers at their colleagues in the other party.

"If you don’t show up at the table, how in the world are you ever going to come up with a solution?" asked one of the participants, Illinois GOP Rep. Rodney Davis.

About a dozen freshmen Democrats sought to create their own moment for the media Tuesday afternoon, holding a press conference in frigid temperatures before marching to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office within the Capitol to demand he bring up House-passed bills to fund the government.

The Democrats emerged from McConnell's office saying they were turned away since the Kentucky Republican was speaking on the Senate floor. Informed by a reporter that they too could walk into the Senate chamber, they instead decided to go back to the House side but not before getting mixed up and accidentally walking the wrong way first.

The White House is expected to send out a second round of invites to members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus for a meeting Wednesday, according to one official. It's unclear which, if any Democrats, will attend. But a senior Democratic aide was already trying to downplay the invite, saying that meeting had already been in the works before this latest White House gambit.

“You’re not going to have people cracking or splitting up like you’re seeing on the Republican [side],” said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.). “Trump said it was his shutdown, he’s hurting everyday families that are in all of our districts. People see the hostage taking and we’re not going to give in.”

Still, even those in the White House who were skeptical that Democrats would show up saw a strategic advantage to inviting them: their lack of participation could give Trump ammunition to make the case that he's trying to solve the crisis, while Democrats are refusing to sit down at the negotiating table.

Separately, a bipartisan group of senators is also now talking about a way out of the shutdown, but hopes are slim in the Senate that they can reach a solution that the president will endorse.

“In the end they’ve got to get the White House involved in that. And I think right now this is just kind of touching the gloves and figuring out where everybody is and if there’s enough support and enough Democrats willing to come to the table,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. But Democrats in the group and out of it said they weren’t ready to negotiate on anything until the government opens back up.

Both chambers are now planning to stay in session over the planned Martin Luther King Day recess next week, given the terrible optics of skipping town amid the shutdown.

At least four moderate House Democrats — Reps. Stephanie Murphy and Charlie Crist from Florida and Lou Correa and Scott Peters from California — turned down the offer to have lunch with Trump.

Reps. David Scott (D-Ga.) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) also received invitations, according to a senior White House official. But Scott’s spokesman, Gary Woodward, disputed that account, saying his office received no such invitation. A spokesman for Spanberger did not return multiple requests for comment.

“I don’t know what their strategy is,” Crist said in an interview, adding that there’s concern among some on the invite list about being used as pawns by Trump.

Both Murphy and Crist cited already scheduled events as a reason why they couldn’t go but other lawmakers and aides said there’s an effort behind the scenes by Democratic leaders to project unity within the caucus, and having a handful of rank-and-file members go to the White House would not be good optics for the party.

At a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday, Pelosi rallied Democrats to stand united in the shutdown and pointed to polling showing Republicans are taking the blame.

Pelosi encouraged Democrats to talk about families hurt by the shutdown to try to pressure Republicans to re-open the government. “It is,” she said, according to a source in the room, “essential that their stories be told… Every chance you get: on the floor, in the media, in the social media — the stories of the families.”

Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer privately counseled lawmakers who received the White House invitations to do what they have to for their districts — but don’t be used as a prop.

“Is anybody surprised that the president is trying to get votes wherever he can get votes?” Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday. “We are totally united, totally.”

Even as Democratic leaders kept their caucus united on Tuesday, the issue of who was even on the invitation list remained a sensitive topic among members and aides.

Spanberger, one of nearly two dozen freshmen Democrats in Trump-won districts, wouldn’t answer reporters’ questions about whether she had received an invite from Trump. She repeatedly told reporters to follow up with her staff even though two reporters said they reached out to her office on the issue Monday and never heard back.

The Virginia Democrat who knocked off GOP hard-liner Dave Brat in November stood up in a caucus meeting last week to complain about how Democrats were losing the messaging war on the shutdown. She was much more tight-lipped Tuesday.

“I’m not giving an interview. You’re welcome to reach out to my office for quotes,” Spanberger said.

Burgess Everett, Gabby Orr, Laura Barrón-López and Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.