GOP Senator Suggests Trump Might Flip-Flop 24 Hours After Defiantly Rejecting GOP Compromise to End Shutdown

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said on Tuesday he believed President Donald Trump “may be on board” for a deal that would end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, accepting a deal he had rejected the day before.

Kennedy appeared on Tuesday’s episode of America’s Newsroom to discuss the latest developments with the standoff between Democrats and Republicans in Congress over funding for DHS, which has meant that TSA agents are working at the nation’s airports without being paid. Numerous agents who cannot afford to forgo their paychecks have been calling out, leaving travelers mired in hours-long security lines — including an NTSB investigator who was trying to get to the scene of a deadly runway crash at LaGuardia Airport.

On Monday, Kennedy confirmed reports that there had been a deal on the table from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) where the Democrats would agree to fund everything but ICE, so the TSA agents could get paid, but Trump killed that deal.

By Tuesday, however, Kennedy was saying that Trump might actually have changed his mind again, and was possibly now willing to support the deal and bring the shutdown to an end.

Anchor Dana Perino introduced Kennedy by mentioning the high call-out rate for TSA agents and then playing a video clip in which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blamed Trump, saying it was “very clear” the president “is the one standing in the way of paychecks for TSA workers” because of his “ridiculous attempt to pass the SAVE Act.”

Kennedy bashed Schumer, saying he was “lying like fish swim,” and offered his take on “what’s going on”:

We’ve had DHS shut down for 38 days, I think. The Democrats at one point voted to fund DHS and then they backtracked. We have been debating the SAVE Act for, I don’t know, ten days, I guess.

We’re stuck. I’m a big believer that when you’re stuck, you ought to try to plow around the stump, not through it. So Senator Cruz and I, a few days ago, came up with a two-step process to solve both problems.

Step one, we would open up everything at DHS except ICE — including TSA, which the Democrats have already agreed to — and then we would fund ICE through reconciliation, which we could do only with Republican votes. We wouldn’t need any Democratic votes.

I don’t speak for Senator Cruz on this part of it, but I also suggested that we use the reconciliation process with only Republican votes to pass the SAVE Act.

Now, we pitched this to Senator Thune a couple of days ago. He pitched it to President Trump. President Trump, as you know from his tweets, said no. But I talked to Senator Thune last night and he says the president has reconsidered and may be on board. I don’t know for certain.

Bill Hemmer asked Kennedy if he really thought there had been a “breakthrough” in the negotiations and if he believed the reconciliation vote would work to pass funding for ICE and the SAVE Act with “a simple 51 votes.”

Kennedy replied he thought the Senate “can clearly do it for ICE,” but “doing it for the SAVE Act is a closer question.”

This was “our only shot,” Kennedy added. “And I think it’s worth taking it. The American people are tired of us speechifying and yelling at each other. I’m tired of it. It lowers my I.Q.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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