But as happened in September — when a tentative deal fell apart after the president’s hard-line advisers and conservative supporters revolted — Friday’s meeting went nowhere. Whatever the decades-long relationship there was between the two men, fueled by a common upbringing in the boroughs of New York, political divisions once again made it impossible to reach an agreement.
In classic Trump style, the president on Friday made anxious conservatives hold their breath for almost 90 minutes as the possibility of a Trump-Schumer deal dangled in the Washington wind. In a later Twitter post, Mr. Trump declared it an “excellent preliminary meeting” and said he was making progress with Mr. Schumer and Republican leaders.
But after leaving the White House on Friday, Mr. Schumer displayed none of the bravado that he exhibited in September, when he gleefully announced that Mr. Trump had agreed in principle to a deal on Dreamers after their dinner.
“We made some progress, but we still have a number of disagreements,” a sober-looking Mr. Schumer told reporters at the Capitol after the meeting. “The discussions will continue.”
At the White House, some senior officials grew more pessimistic after the meeting, privately predicting that a shutdown was likely. One senior White House official gave an even less sunny summary of the meeting than Mr. Schumer did, suggesting that it was “cordial” but adding that a lengthy list of obstacles still remained. The official would not even echo Mr. Schumer’s assessment that progress had been made during the meeting.
The lack of any immediate success between the two men was a failure of what might have been.
Once, in the days after the 2016 election, Mr. Schumer saw a path toward working with Mr. Trump. Just as Mr. McConnell did at the time, Mr. Schumer believed he would be able to guide Mr. Trump — who has few fixed positions — toward his own initiatives.
Mr. Schumer is one of the few elected officials in Washington with whom Mr. Trump had something of a bond before he won the presidency. An adviser to Mr. Trump once pointed out that if the president had to choose between spending time with Mr. Schumer or Mr. McConnell, he would pick the Democratic leader almost every time.
Mr. Schumer appeared on a Season 5 episode of “The Apprentice,” the reality show that helped Mr. Trump create a brand in the eyes of millions of voters as a take-charge businessman. During the show, Mr. Schumer predicted that the future president was “going to go places.”
During the transition, Mr. Schumer appeared on a panel at an event held by the Partnership for New York City, a business group, where Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, also spoke. Mr. Schumer told attendees that the Democrats had stymied their chances with a message that failed to track more closely with Mr. Trump’s calls for fair trade.
On Friday, with the clock ticking toward a midnight deadline, leaders in the House canceled plans to send members home for the weekend, just in case. In the Senate, all but three Democrats continued to oppose a spending plan unless Republicans agreed to permanently protect the Dreamers.
Democrats predicted that the public would blame Mr. Trump and his Republican allies for a government shutdown, citing past examples of political stalemates in which voters punished Republican presidents and lawmakers.
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But at the White House throughout the day, Mr. Trump’s aides maneuvered to try to shield the president from the political damage that could follow. At the same time, they waged an intense public relations campaign to argue that Democrats should shoulder the responsibility for keeping the functions of government operating.
Mr. Trump delayed his afternoon departure for Mar-a-Lago, and aides said he had called members of both parties in hope of averting a shutdown that could have unpredictable repercussions in a midterm election year.
Mr. Mulvaney said the administration would instruct agencies to use reserve funds and to transfer money from other agencies to keep operations in place. He said the national parks would remain open and the military would continue to function, but he said employees performing those jobs would be doing so without pay until a spending agreement is reached.
In the morning, Mr. Mulvaney seemed resigned to failure, promising to “manage the shutdown differently” than President Barack Obama’s administration did a 2013 shutdown. He accused Mr. Obama of “weaponizing” that shutdown to maximize outrage against Republicans.
But by dinnertime, there were conflicting signals about what might happen. While Democrats said negotiations were continuing, administration officials began describing in detail how government agencies were planning to handle a shutdown. Still, Mr. Mulvaney seemed somewhat more optimistic.
“There’s a really good chance it gets fixed” before government offices open Monday, he said. Asked if Mr. Trump might still travel to Florida on Saturday, Mr. Mulvaney said, “He’s not leaving until this is finished.”
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