“Trump 2028,” they said, situated across from the seated lawmakers, Vice President JD Vance and several untouched Diet Cokes.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries leaned over to Vance, himself a potential 2028 contender, and quipped, “Hey, bro, you got a problem with this?”

The room chuckled in response.

“It was the randomest thing in the world, because we’re sitting there, we’re having a serious conversation, and all of a sudden these two red hats appear,” Jeffries recalled later at the Capitol.

“It was all so unserious,” Jeffries said, describing a roving cameraman capturing the moment. “We were there for serious reasons that it wasn’t really a big part of, you know, the discussion. It was theatrics.”

The moment was vintage Trump –- grabbing the attention and seeking to throw negotiators off their game — but it also underscored the president’s regard for Congress, a coequal branch of the government, and in particular his opponents across the political aisle.

From historic first meeting to viral trolling

What was once was considered a historic occasion –- the president of the United States convening his first “big four” meeting of congressional leaders from the House and Senate –- was reduced to another viral souvenir of Trump trolling his opponent.

And after the more than hourlong session, Trump failed to strike a deal with the leaders to prevent a federal government closure.

“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House the next day, hours before the midnight deadline.

This wasn’t just a routine meeting of the president and congressional leadership. It was the first time Trump had gathered the leaders of Congress, more than eight months into his presidency — and the first time he and Jeffries had officially met.

But more surprising was how little came from it.

Health care funds up for debate as president listens

During the White House meeting, Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer laid out their arguments for saving health care funding as part of the shutdown talks.

Trump said very little, doing more listening than talking, the leaders said.

“He didn’t seem to know about the health care premiums going up so much,” Schumer said.

With the Republican leadership, House Speaker Mike Johnsonand Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the conversation ranged across their views of the health care situation.

“Lively,” as Thune said later.

The discussion included the Democrats’ demands to ensure subsidies to help people buy private insurance on the exchanges run by the Affordable Care Act are made permanent. The subsidies were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and are set to expire at year’s end, spiking premiums as much as double, in some estimates.

The conversation also touched on the new rural hospital fund that is important to Republicans, set up under Trump’s big bill as a way to compensate for its cuts to Medicaid health care providers.

Johnson said Trump showed “strong, solid leadership. He listened to the arguments.”

Trying to catch the president’s attention

This is the best the Democrats could have hoped for — to have an airing before the president that began to turn the dial toward their demands. And it is what the GOP leaders had tried to avoid as each party tries to blame the shutdown on the other.

Johnson had suggested Trump back out of an initial meetingwith the Democrats — after the president had agreed to one — arguing it would be a “waste of time.”

But Trump relented, and granted them Monday’s closed-door Oval Office session.

The Democrats have been here before. During Trump’s first term, the president repeatedly negotiated deals with the Democrats — “Chuck and Nancy,” as he called Schumer and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi — to fund the government, raise the debt limit and achieve other goals.

Those bargains by Trump frustrated his own Republican Party.

Republicans, aware of that history, are trying to steer the conversation in a different direction, leaving the door open to discuss the health care issue with Democrats later — once the government has reopened. They also took issue with the characterization of Trump as unaware of the depth or magnitude of the health care situation.

“I’m highly skeptical the president was hearing about it for the first time,” Vance said afterward.

One Republican unauthorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and granted anonymity to do so said Schumer’s suggestion that Trump didn’t know about the subsidy problem was overblown.

So far in his second term, the president has been able to accomplish his priorities either on his own, with executive actions and the Elon Musk-led cuts that tore through federal offices, or with a compliant Congress passing his signature tax breaks and spending cuts bill, commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that is also fueling his mass deportation agenda.

But Washington doesn’t run on the White House alone, and Congress is not a majority-takes-all institution. Turning most bills into laws requires the give-and-take of bipartisan compromise, particularly in the Senate, and particularly when it comes to the annual appropriations needed to keep government running.

Then came the sombrero taunts

Hours after the lawmakers left the meeting, Trump’s team posted a fake video that showed Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a faux mustache standing beside Schumer outside the White House. It was widely seen as racist.

“When I was practicing law, there was a Latin phrase that was always one of my favorites,” Jeffries said back at his office at the Capitol. “Res ipsa loquitur. It means: The thing speaks for itself.”

“We had a full airing of our positions on Monday, which should have set the baseline for a follow-up conversation from the administration to try to reignite a meaningful bipartisan path toward funding the government,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the president’s behavior subsequent to the White House meeting deteriorated into unhinged and unserious action.”

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In the second quarter, there were 93 filings, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, up from 88 in the first quarter and nearly double the 47 at the end of 2024.

That’s still well below the recent high of 169 in early 2020, and filings nosedived in the two years that followed. But since 2022, farm bankruptcies have been trending higher.

That coincides with higher production costs and plunging crop prices. For instance, corn prices have crashed about 50% since 2022, while soybean prices are down about 40%.

More recently, President Donald Trump’s trade war this year has kept China, traditionally a top buyer of U.S. soybeans, from placing any orders with American farmers, who are facing an uncertain harvest season.

But crop prices have been weak for most of the past decade except for brief a spike during the pandemic, according to the Minneapolis Fed.

And while the Agriculture Department has forecast that farm incomes will increase this year, about three-quarters of that growth will come from an expected boost in government payments, it added.

The Federal Reserve’s recent survey of farm financial conditions found that weaker income has reduced liquidity for farmers, boosting demand for financing.

At the same time, credit conditions deteriorated with roughly 30% of respondents in the Chicago Fed and Kansas City Fed districts reporting lower repayment rates versus a year ago, while the Minneapolis Fed region’s share was around 40% and the St. Louis Fed’s was 50%.

To be sure, the recent spike in bankruptcies doesn’t mean farmers are going out of business, the Minneapolis Fed pointed out. A Chapter 12 filing can help them avoid total liquidation and allow them to continue operating, perhaps on a smaller scale after some restructuring.

Still, agriculture trade groups have been calling on the Trump administration for help in boosting demand for U.S. crops as they sound the alarm on a crisis in the farm economy.

That includes reaching a trade deal with China to start buying U.S. soybeans again and requiring fuel with higher blends of ethanol, which can be made from corn.

“Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress,” the American Soybean Association said in a letter to Trump in August. “Prices continue to drop and at the same time our farmers are paying significantly more for inputs and equipment. U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was signed in July included about $66 billion in agriculture-focused spending. The vast majority, about $59 billion, is earmarked for farm safety-net enhancements.

But Trump has also suggested tariff revenue could be used to help farmers, and sources told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that the administration is considering a bailout of $10 billion-$14 billion with distributions potentially starting in the coming months. During Trump’s first term, farmers got $23 billion amid an earlier trade war with China.

But American Soybean Association CEO Stephen Censky told Farm Journal’s AgWeb last month that government assistance gets “capitalized” over the longer term, meaning payments offer limited overall relief for farmers who subsequently see rents and other costs go up too.

“It’s tough, and I can hear it in the stress in our members’ voices. Our members and our board of directors are really concerned right now,” Censky, who served as deputy agriculture secretary in Trump’s first term, said. “Some say if things don’t turn around, if we don’t get markets back or if we get economic assistance — which is not our first choice — this could be their last year in farming. That’s pretty scary.”