Trump Makes Deal to Protect “Dreamers,” Then Says He Didn’t

Ah, making deals. It’s an art, we’ve heard.

On Wednesday night, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer made a unilateral declaration that they had met with the Trump administration and worked out a deal to extend protections for young undocumented immigrants. They said the deal included some measures on border security, but excluded any talk of a wall along the border with Mexico.

These young immigrants, commonly referred to as Dreamers, were under the protection of DACA, an Obama-era measure. Trump recently announced he would end that measure, but asked Congress to legislate a replacement in the next six months.

This deal would seem to be a win for Dreamers, but then on Thursday morning, Trump took to Twitter to deny that any such deal was struck:

No deal was made last night on DACA. Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent. Would be subject to vote.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017

This would seem to contradict the White House’s own statement, saying that several issues were discussed by the two teams, including DACA.

According to The NYT, the two camps then tweeted at each other, each trying to correct the other. Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that excluding the wall was not agreed to, while Schumer’s communications director said that the president made it clear the wall would come up later, just not in this meeting.

What we can say is this: members of the Trump administration met with the democrats Wednesday night. They came to some kind of agreement involving border security and protections for Dreamers, and then Trump woke up today and decided to tweet that no deal was made, for some godforsaken reason. The NYT reports that Trump does, in fact, support protections for Dreamers, but still wants to end DACA for some reason. Maybe that’s why his statements on the subject are so contradictory.