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President Trump hands out candy at tense meeting with lawmakers

Posted at 8:03 PM, Jan 09, 2019
and last updated 2019-01-09 23:03:12-05

If Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were looking for a "sweetener" in exchange for supporting funding for President Donald Trump's border wall proposal, what they got might have been too literal.

At Wednesday's meeting hosted by Trump that included Congressional leaders from both parties, Trump reportedly handed out candy to the lawmakers.

The assortment of candy included Butterfingers, M&Ms and Baby Ruths, the Washington Post reported. No word on whether the candies were regular-sized, or if Trump sprung for the king-sized bars.

In response to Schumer's claim that Trump threw a "temper tantrum" during Wednesday's meeting, Vice President Mike Pence responded, "The president walked into the room and passed out candy."

The shutdown is affecting 800,000 federal employees, and preventing them from collecting federal paychecks. Some of whom remain at work - including airport security screeners, meteorologists at the National Weather Service and tax professionals at the IRS - despite not collecting a paycheck.

But in order to return the government to normal operations, Trump has said he will not agree to any bill ending the shutdown unless it includes more than $5 billion of funding for a wall along America's southern border.

Despite the treats, Democrats at the meeting did not come away satisfied by the President's response.

"It was a petulant President of the United States. A person who would say ‘I will keep government shutdown for a month or years unless I get my way.’ That’s just not the way democracy works," Pelosi said.