Not surprised at this at all: Trump finds an unlikely partner: Chuck Schumer
The two New Yorkers have spoken at length about legislation and appointments in a series of phone calls.
Hours after Sen. Chuck Schumer delivered a hopeful speech to anxious Democrats gathered at the Javits Center on Election Night, the dealmaker was already recalibrating to his new, less powerful reality.
Schumer was not displaying any signs of shock, like many of the Democrats around him, who looked like they had been shot in the shoulder when it became clear Hillary Clinton was going to lose the race of her life. The man who long dreamed of ascending to Senate majority leader — and presiding over bill signings with the former junior senator from New York installed as a partner in the Oval Office — was already thinking about how he could shoehorn his grandiose plans into a world where Donald Trump would be president.
Democrats who spoke with Schumer that night and in the following days described him as making an immediate shift to strategizing about how to work with Trump while also identifying where he would oppose him — and trying to talk himself into the idea that the president-elect isn’t really a Republican, but a pragmatist with no apparent ideological mooring.
Privately, the soon-to-be Senate minority leader has opened up a back channel of communication with Trump and, according to Democrats who have spoken with Schumer since the election, he views Trump as someone he can try to maneuver.
Multiple sources said the two have spoken at length about legislation and appointments, in a series of phone calls that began with Trump phoning Schumer the morning after Election Day, to express hope that the two could work together.
Since then, according to a source in Trump Tower, they have spoken directly a “handful” of times, discussing policy, appointments, logistics and sometimes even just bantering about New York.
Now, as the debate within the Democratic Party rages about whether to seek common ground with Trump, or to steal a page from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s playbook and act as an obstructionist, Schumer seems to be leaning toward the former.
Entire Article: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-chuck-schumer-232738
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