WASHINGTON _ Congressional Democratic leaders emerged from a lengthy White House meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday and said no deal was struck.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said staffs of congressional leaders and the president will negotiate over the weekend in hopes of ending the partial government shutdown.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said they made a "plea" to Trump to re-open shuttered agencies.
"He rejected it," Schumer said, contending the president threatened to keep a quarter of the government closed for "months or even years."
Trump called the meeting "productive" and said, "We're all on the same path toward getting the government open." He also said the two sides plan to meet over the weekend.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump and Democratic leaders understand one another better after the two-hour meeting over border security and a partial government shutdown.
But Pelosi and Schumer described the meeting as contentious, a signal the sides remain far apart on the 14th day of the shutdown.
McConnell said congressional leaders and Trump agreed that the discussion would continue over the weekend.
"Well, we had a spirited discussion, as you can imagine, about the situation we find ourselves in," McConnell said. "I would say the news is the president agreed to designate his top people to sit down with all the leaders' staffs this weekend to see if we could come up with an agreement to recommend back to us and to him and to the various leaders."
