The Beckett-esque tragicomedy of Infrastructure Week—a bipartisan policy deal that keeps promising to arrive, but never does—took a turn toward “high drama,” as Senator Dick Durbin put it, when Donald Trump blew up a fantastical $2 trillion infrastructure deal with Democrats after a three-minute White House meeting.

“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 is what I do,” the president told reporters shortly after the meeting, addressing his Democratic antagonists. “But you know what? You can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with.” (Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding in fine form, said she would “pray” for him.)

Though both sides had previously given lip service to the laudable goal of repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, the political game was Trump’s to lose. Pelosi was prepared from the beginning to make this a maximally embarrassing spectacle for Trump. What’s notable is the degree to which the House Speaker appears to have goaded Trump into yet another tantrum, beginning with her insistence that the White House find the necessary $2 trillion—a difficult task that ended with the administration falling $1 trillion short and shifting responsibility to Dems. Nor did Democrats seem motivated to appease the president as the deal came under strain on Tuesday, when Trump sent a letter suggesting he wouldn’t move forward with negotiations unless Democrats passed his new trade deal (a non-starter).

Not only did Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brush Trump off in a terse statement (“We look forward to hearing the president’s plan for how to pay for this package”), but Pelosi essentially guaranteed Trump would arrive in a foul mood when she told reporters Wednesday morning that she believed the president was “engaged in a cover-up” over the Mueller report. Hours later, she and Schumer met with Trump at the White House, where things went about as well as expected: According to Politico’s Burgess Everett, Trump arrived 15 minutes late, berated the Democrats for three minutes, let Pelosi talk for two, and abruptly walked out.

Trump attempted to take back control with a Rose Garden presser in which he stood at a lectern bedecked in “NO Collusion” and “NO Obstruction” signs and declared he would not work with the Democrats unless they left him alone. “I think most of you would agree to this: I’m the most transparent president probably in the history of this country,” he said. “Instead of walking in happily to a meeting, I walk in to look at people that had just said that I was doing a cover-up.”

The whole affair recalls a similar incident in January, when Trump dramatically walked out of a meeting (“bye-bye”) after Democrats refused to give him more than $5 billion for a border wall. (The partial shutdown lasted a record five weeks, with Trump caving after Pelosi refused to yield and suspended the State of the Union.) Like in January, Pelosi and Schumer coordinated a response as soon as Trump’s meandering presser had wrapped, knowing exactly how to frame it. “It wasn’t really respectful of the Congress and the White House working together. He just took a pass,” Pelosi told reporters. “I pray for the president of the United States, and I pray for the United States of America.” She and Schumer further accused Trump of bad faith, with Pelosi saying she “knew [Trump] was never serious about infrastructure,” and Schumer calling his tantrum a “planned” stunt allowing him to vent his frustrations. “There were investigations going on three weeks ago when we [first] met,” Schumer pointed out, adding for good measure, “To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop.” Game, set, match.

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