The greatest negotiator the world has ever known

In a series of tweets Monday morning, President Donald Trump demanded that Democratic leaders return to Washington, D.C. to reach a border security deal, just days after GOP leadership sent Congress home without finalizing the bipartisan bill to avert a partial government shutdown of the president’s own making.

“I campaigned on Border Security,” Trump tweeted, “which you cannot have without a strong and powerful Wall … Dems should get back here an (sic) fix now!”

Prior to the shutdown, Trump boasted that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security,” telling Democratic leaders, “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down — I’m not going to blame you for it.”

Although they controlled both chambers of Congress for nearly two years, Republican lawmakers have been unable to deliver on Trump’s demands of $5 billion in funding for a border war along the U.S.-Mexico border, one that the president vowed Mexico would fund. GOP leaders in the House and Senate, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), have been largely absent over the past week and, according to the Washington Post, Republicans haven’t organized meetings to develop a strategy to defend the president.

GOP lawmakers have attempted over the past year to rebrand the wall as a “security fence,” in an apparent effort to make the the structure more palatable to Democrats. On Sunday, after a meeting with the president, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters that the “wall has become a metaphor for border security” and that Republican lawmakers are merely pushing for a “physical barrier” that “makes sense.”

Democratic leaders have said they support more than $1 billion in border security funding, but that they do not want any of the money to go toward building a wall.