Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on Democrats’ approach to negotiations with Trump

Amna Nawaz:

For more on the looming government shutdown and President Trump's expanding use of executive power, I'm joined now by our Politics Monday duo. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Great to see you both.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Hello.

Amna Nawaz:

Let's pick up where some of the reporting and conversations left off there.

Amy, you know we have covered near-shutdown battles before.

Amy Walter:

Right.

Amna Nawaz:

We saw back earlier this spring, though, Chuck Schumer decided to vote with Republicans to keep the government open, caught a lot of flak for that. What is different for Democrats this time around? Are they approaching this differently?

Amy Walter:

They're absolutely approaching this differently. And they are looking back to that moment especially, the base of the Democratic Party so fired up, so insistent on party leaders going and facing off against Donald Trump.

They feel like the party itself, as you see those low approval ratings for the Democrats, a lot of that comes from Democratic members of the party who say, our leaders are feckless, they're not fighting hard enough. So that's a big piece of this.

The second piece is, they found an issue on which to center this argument. And that's an issue that Democrats have been successful in fighting on, the issue of health care, and so that, as I was talking to a Democrat today, the point that they were making to me is, even if this — whatever the outcome of this shutdown is, the issue of health care is going to be an important one in 2026, so sort of setting a marker today for a fight that Democrats would like to have going into the midterms.

Amna Nawaz:

Tam, what about from the White House perspective on this and Republicans? As Lisa was reporting earlier, they seem to think Democrats will get blamed for a shutdown. But the last shutdown was on Trump's watch in his first administration. How are they looking at it?

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Yes, the White House is approaching this with a high level of confidence that they're going to be able to blame Democrats, for the very reasons that that Amy talked about, because their message is going to be very simply, Democratic members of Congress are bowing to their base, who just wants fight, fight, fight, and that is going to be the White House message.

It already is. It's going to continue to be. And this is a different shutdown than in 2018 and 2019. Back then, it was President Trump who wanted something. He wanted money for his wall. And he was trying to leverage a potential government shutdown and ultimately the longest one in U.S. history to try to get that policy gain.

With this shutdown, Democrats are the ones trying to leverage their votes to get a policy change. And so that is a big difference. Some of the words that we're hearing Republicans say, this is a hostage-taking, this is a hijacking, these are words that have come out of Democrats' mouths again and again and again over many years of government shutdowns that we have covered in the past.

Amna Nawaz:

And I guess fair to say, barring anything major happening over the next 24 hours, chance of a shutdown you would say fairly high?

Amy Walter:

It sure feels very, very high.

(Crosstalk)

Tamara Keith:

Yes, I mean, the vice president was predicting a shutdown. Democrats…

Amy Walter:

Are acting — yes.

Tamara Keith:

… are acting like there's a shutdown coming. And, yes, it doesn't — it just doesn't seem like there's a way for these cars to swerve.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

All right, well, let me ask you about what we have seen over the last few days, because we have seen some really extraordinary actions by the president I want to get some perspective on, publicly pressured his Department of Justice to prosecute his enemies and then his handpicked U.S. attorney secured indictment against James Comey.

He announced he was sending troops to Portland, Oregon, and to Memphis, Tennessee. The secretary of defense federalizes National Guard troops to do that. As you have both seen, constitutional law experts, historians, a lot of folks are saying this is very dangerous precedent that's being set here.

Amy, is any of that resonating with the American public?

Amy Walter:

Well I went back and I looked at Donald Trump's approval rating on average over the course of his first term, which was 43 percent approved, 53 percent disapprove. Today, he's at 43 percent approved, 54 percent disapprove.

In other words, opinions about Donald Trump have been pretty settled for a long time. You could argue they were settled way before his first term ended and they haven't really budged that much. He's consolidated support among Republicans, which means he has a little bit of a higher floor than he used to, because Republicans are completely united around him. There's not much he can do to lose them, if anything.

But his ceiling is also low because there is still an ingrained significant percent of the public, whether we want to say it's 54 percent or 51 percent, that say they don't like and they don't approve of how he handles his job as president. And that — over the course of his entire presidency, a lot happened. We had COVID, we had the protests, we had all these different things. It kind of still stays there.

So to say, is it breaking through or not, it is, but is it changing people's minds about him? No.

Amna Nawaz:

Tam, what's your take?

Tamara Keith:

The president has right now control over Congress. And he has a very compliant Congress. Republicans in Congress barely even at this point, like, say they disapprove of anything that he's doing. And if they happen to stick their head up like Rand Paul has on occasion, the president just smacks them right back down.

So that's what he has right now. And at the same time, he has this relatively low approval rating that he's had forever. He's behaving like he rules all and that he is extremely popular. And he can do that because he has that compliant Congress.

But as an indication of the president and the White House is concerned about this, you can look at the efforts in Texas and other states, Missouri just over the weekend, to gerrymander to try to get more Republicans in Congress or at least to not have Republicans lose the House and the Senate, because, if they do, then there could be consequences for the president.

Amna Nawaz:

Before we go, can I get you both to weigh in very quickly on what we saw with Eric Adams in the New York mayoral race ending his reelection bid?

Does Adams leaving, Amy, help the independent here, Andrew Cuomo, to beat the Democrat, Zohran Mamdani, which the White House hopes it does? What's your take?

(Crosstalk)

Amy Walter:

Yes, Adams wasn't taking that much of the vote in the first place, but it certainly consolidates the non-Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party.

At this point, though, while the gap could be closing, Mamdani, I think, has a benefit of enthusiasm on his side, even though many of his voters are not traditionally the kinds of voters that turn out election after election.

Tamara Keith:

And President Trump, I think this is one of those heads up, I win, tails, you lose. It's one of those situations because, if Mamdani wins, then President Trump has the foil he's been after. And if he loses, then he can say he somehow got what he wanted.

Amna Nawaz:

Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, always great to start the week with you. Thank you.

Amy Walter:

You're welcome.

Tamara Keith:

You're welcome.