President Donald Trump was in deal-maker mode Thursday, declaring that an agreement on government funding was “close” and setting the terms of employment for his coming Federal Reserve chair nominee. Amid the ongoing fallout from federal immigration agents shooting dead a protester Saturday in Minneapolis, Trump huddled with members of his Cabinet, and, in a likely preview of his midterm messaging, focused several times on his administration’s immigration enforcement actions. “We’ve taken a lot of bad people and gotten them out of our country,” he said. “In some cases, they're so bad that we put them in prison because we don't want them to even take a chance of coming back in, even though our border is very secure — record-setting secure." As Trump took his usual seat in the Cabinet Room, White House officials were in ongoing talks with senators about a revised funding package in the wake of Democratic demands for federal immigration enforcement changes. Trump reportedly was upset with how some of his top aides responded in the hours after 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti was gunned down seconds after being disarmed by federal agents. (Minnesota is a concealed carry state.) The president this week has signaled he's looking for a way to, in his own words, “deescalate” tensions in Minneapolis. Notably, amid the Capitol Hill talks and Minneapolis fallout, Trump did not take questions from reporters Thursday — nor did he mention the situation in Minnesota after his border czar, who is now overseeing efforts there, told reporters the administration intends to, eventually, pare down the federal footprint in the state. Here are three other takeaways from Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. Shutdown: Deal ‘close’ Shortly before Trump appeared before cameras, the White House formally embraced the bipartisan efforts to pass a revised multiagency funding measure. A White House official stressed that Trump was strongly opposed to a second shutdown in just a few months. "President Trump has been consistent – he wants the government to remain open, and the administration has been working with both parties to ensure the American people don’t have to endure another shutdown," the White House official said in an email. "A shutdown would risk disaster response funding and more vital resources for the American people." A short time later, Trump said officials and lawmakers involved in the talks were "close" to a deal. "Hopefully, we won't have a shutdown. We're working on that right now. I think we're getting close," he said at the start of the Cabinet meeting. "The Democrats, I don't believe, want to see it, either. So, we'll work in a very bipartisan way, I believe, not to have a shutdown." Yet Trump couldn't resist taking a few swipes at the opposition, some of whose votes would be needed to pass any compromise legislative package. “Thanks to our tax cuts, millions of Americans will soon receive record-setting tax refunds. You're going to get a lot of tax refunds, with the average refund expected to be over $1,000 higher than it has been at any time,” he said. “If congressional Democrats had their way, Americans would, right now, be facing the largest tax hike ever,” he added. “Their proposal was to raise taxes very substantially.” Fed: ‘Work with us’ Trump said he could announce a Federal Reserve chair nominee as soon as next week, with outgoing Chair Jerome Powell's term ending in May. "We're going to be announcing the head of the Fed, who that will be, and it will be a person that will, I think, do a good job," he said. Unlike past presidents, Trump has continued to try influencing the central bank's policy actions. "We're paying far too much interest in the Fed," he said Thursday. "Rates [are] too high, unacceptably high. … We should have the lowest interest rate anywhere in the world." Interest rates, he said, should be “2 points and even 3 points lower.” He again blamed Powell, one of seven members on the central bank’s rate-setting board. “You can do it with a pencil. It's not cutting. It's not saying we have to get rid of jobs. … It's just like, literally, so easy to do,” Trump said, not masking his frustration with Powell, whom he nominated as Fed chair in 2017. “But we have a guy that doesn't want to do it because he's, I think, he's politically biased. I really do." Powell has sharply rejected such criticism, stating publicly that he and the board make data-based decisions aimed at boosting the U.S. economy. The Senate would be required to confirm Powell's successor, and senators will likely press Trump's nominee on whether the president should have a role in Fed decisions. "With a proper intelligent person at the Fed, that person will be able to work with us to get interest rates down," Trump said. "That covers all of the sins." Housing: ‘Drive … prices up’ The president, as he did at a campaign rally Tuesday in Iowa, touted during the Cabinet meeting what he views as his second-term economic accomplishments. He also doubled down on his approach to try making home-buying more affordable. “There's so much talk about, ‘Oh, we're going to drive housing prices down.’ I don't want to drive housing prices down,” he said. “I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes — and they can be assured that's what's going to happen." Trump proposed paring down interest rates as a way to benefit both home buyers and sellers, a prescription similar to the one he offered during remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. “We have millions of people that own houses, and for the first time in their life, they're wealthy because the house is worth $500,000 or $600,000 or more or less, but more money than it's ever been worth before,” he said. “I don't want to do anything to knock that down, and so I want to be very careful with this. … The best thing that can happen for both groups of people is lower interest rates.”
