Inside the "complicated" Trump-Schumer relationship
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President Trump and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at the White House in 2018. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is one of the only Democrats in Washington who can work with President Trump, leaning on their common New York ties, mutual allies and the residuals of their long-ago alliance.
Why it matters: There's deep mistrust between the two and their aides. But Schumer and Trump have each other's numbers literally and figuratively, and have been known to talk on the phone like the longtime acquaintances they are.
- As a New York Democrat decades ago, Trump financially supported Schumer's political campaigns. Trump and his family accounted for nearly $20,000 in contributions to Schumer, according to Open Secrets.
- Schumer in 2006 made a cameo on Trump's show, The Apprentice, where he praised the then-developer's drive and reminisced about how Trump's "father, and my grandfather, were builders together in Brooklyn."
Zoom in: The familiarity extends to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the president's top foreign-policy negotiator Steve Witkoff. Schumer has relationships with both of the New Yorkers.
- Schumer and Lutnick appeared together last month at a groundbreaking for a chips plant in New York, and Schumer defended Lutnick from a reporter's question about Trump's opposition to a bill that helped fund the plant.
The big picture: The relationship between Trump and Schumer helps dictate federal funding. It will be a critical factor in whether they can end the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown that begins at midnight.
- Schumer is walking a bigger political tightrope: Any deal with Trump risks blowback from a Democratic base that wants confrontation, not compromise — even as legislative wins may depend on exactly that.
- A Schumer ally boasted to Axios: "Every time they've negotiated —including in the first term — Trump moved Schumer's way."
Inside the room: Advisers for both men freely acknowledge they're more likely to appear like political rivals in public than behind closed doors.
- The two "don't always get along but they have camaraderie behind the scenes," said one senior adviser to the president who drew a parallel to the president's chummy relationship with New York's socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
- "Trump can get along with anyone, but he'll also rip your head off at the same time," the adviser said.
- Schumer told Axios in a statement about the pair's relationship: "We're both from New York and Trump knows I'm gonna put up a fight."
Between the lines: "It's complicated. There are periods of frostiness, and there are periods of working together well," a second Trump adviser told Axios.
- Schumer believes Trump changed into a hardcore nativist right winger when he first ran for president in 2016. Trump believes Schumer has "become a radical leftist beholden to the leftists," a Trump adviser told Axios.
- The two men are "diametrically opposed to each other on substance, policy and politics," a Democratic senator told Axios.
Zoom out: The Trump-Schumer familiarity hasn't prevented a handful of blowups over the last decade.
- Back in 2018, the two had an infamous Oval Office confrontation with each other over government funding.
- Last summer, as the two men negotiated a deal to end Democratic delays of administration nominees, Trump lost patience with Schumer and called for Republicans to nuke the filibuster instead.
- They're now locked in contentious negotiations over reforms to ICE.
The bottom line: Just this month, the White House blamed Schumer's team for leaking a story to Punchbowl News that Trump wanted to rename Penn Station after himself.
- Trump initially said it was Schumer's idea. Schumer said that was a lie.
- Then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted Tuesday the president "floated" the idea.
