Aside from more shutdown threats, what can Trump offer Democrats?

Here we go again

A bipartisan group of 17 members of Congress chosen by party leaders convenes Wednesday with a mission of finding a compromise on border security before a Feb. 15 deadline. It's not just a question of what Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill can agree upon. The X factor is what President Donald Trump will accept.

Trump has made clear what he wants: $5.7 billion for barriers on the southern border, so he can tell his supporters he got them the promised. Far from clear is what, if anything, he is willing to give.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, speaking at her first White House briefing in 41 days, hinted Trump could be flexible on broader issues, such as extending DACA protections for young immigrants without documentation, an offer he dangled during the 35-day shutdown.

"The table has been perfectly set by the President in order for a good deal to come together where everybody gets a little bit of something they’re looking for," Sanders said, but "if they don’t come back with a deal, that means Democrats get virtually nothing."

But Trump, in his Wall Street Journal interview Sunday, said “I doubt it,” when asked if he would agree to a more lasting resolution of the Dreamers' future as part of a package. “That’s a separate subject to be taken up at a separate time,” he said. He gave the same "I doubt it" answer about accepting less than $5.7 billion.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged Trump to hang back and let the congressional negotiators do their work. "When the president injects maximalist partisan demands into the process, negotiations tend to fall apart," Schumer said Monday. But asking for Trump restraint is asking for a lot. His 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is egging Trump on to hold firm, contending that even as Trump has been battered in national polls for the shutdown, voters in key swing districts want a fortified border.

The cost of the 35-day shutdown has been calculated, and the numbers aren't pretty. The Congressional Budget Office found that the U.S. economy lost $11 billion, of which $3 billion likely will never be recovered. For more, see Newsday's story by Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

Is Mueller time at hand?

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation "is, I think, close to being completed, and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible.”

Speaking at an unrelated news conference in Washington, Whitaker said he had been “fully briefed" on the investigation. He also said, "I am comfortable that the decisions that were made are going to be reviewed . . . through the various means we have."

That last part raised alarms among Democrats who don't trust Whitaker, a past critic of Mueller who was put in charge of the Justice Department after Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They want to get Mueller's findings unfiltered and made public.

“I’m not thrilled he’s been fully briefed because I don’t think he’s independent or reliable," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told CNN. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asserted, “The special counsel should speak for the special counsel’s investigation," and Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.) said, “I don’t have full confidence that the acting Attorney General Whitaker intends to respect the independence of the special counsel."

Janison: Conflicts old and new

With Trump anxious to get out of Afghanistan, new hope of a peace deal has sprang up as American officials publicly discussed a "framework" for a pact with the Taliban. The bottom line is that the Taliban agreed to keep the country from becoming a base for terrorists, as it was for al-Qaida leading up to 9/11, which prompted the 2001 U.S. invasion.

At the same time, White House rhetoric on Venezuela moved further in a different direction — toward diplomatic and economic intervention on behalf of opposition leader Juan Guaido, and against President Nicolas Maduro. The Trump administration announced sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil firm, which could disrupt supplies to U.S. refineries, though Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he didn’t expect U.S. gas prices to rise.

When National Security Adviser John Bolton appeared at a White House briefing, there was a puzzling scribble visible on a notepad he held: "5,000 troops to Colombia." That's a U.S.-allied neighbor of Venezuela. Defense officials told NBC News there are no troops headed to either country, but the White House said "all options are on the table.” See Dan Janison's column for Newsday.

Trump vs. Coffee Boy

If you take Trump's tweet at face value, he's steamed that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is mulling a third-party challenge in 2020. "Howard Schultz doesn’t have the 'guts' to run for President!" said Trump.

A widely held contrary view is that Trump is looking to goad Schultz into making the leap, figuring it would help him.

Don't do it, Schultz was warned by fellow billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who flirted with an independent run in the past and is now considering a bid as a Democrat. "The great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President," Bloomberg said. "That's a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can't afford to run it now."

But Schultz will be getting a lot of other advice. He has hired Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, a veteran of presidential campaigns, and Democratic consultant Bill Burton, who was a top press operative for Barack Obama's campaign and presidency.

There's another noteworthy detail that goes back to Schultz's early days in Canarsie, Brooklyn: In the 2013 biography of mob boss "Little Al" D'Arco by Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins, the subject recalled Schultz as a businessman from the neighborhood who mixed with wiseguys at card games at a certain social club. 

2011's birther is 2019's hooper

Trump enjoys playing White House tour guide for visitors, regaling them with a Trumpian version of history, according to a new book, "Team of Vipers," by Cliff Sims, a communications aide for the first 16 months of the administration.

Sims writes: Trump showed guests a private dining room off the Oval Office and told them Obama "just sat in here and watched basketball all day.” Not true, an Obama White House official told The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the book in advance.

Trump also pointed out to a visitor: “I’m told this is where Bill and Monica . . .” Trump stopped there, letting his guest fill in the blanks about the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex sessions.

What else is happening:

• The postponed State of the Union speech is on again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Trump to address a joint session of Congress on Feb. 5, and the president accepted.
• Trump's ex-fixer Michael Cohen has a new date to appear before the House Intelligence Committee — Feb. 8 — and a new legal team. The hearing will be closed. He begged off a previous plan to testify openly, saying comments from Trump and lawyer Rudy Giuliani threatened the safety of him and his family.
• Roger Stone's complaints about how the FBI arrested him on Mueller's indictment get more ludicrously lurid with each telling. He said Monday his house was stormed "with greater force than was used to take down bin Laden" and two notorious drug lords. Osama bin Laden was shot in the head by Navy SEALs and dumped in the ocean.
• A Trump tweet after watching a "Fox & Friends" segment cheered on a movement in some states to introduce Bible literacy classes to public schools. Trump's own Bible literacy came into question when he told a Christian college audience in 2016 that a favorite verse comes from "Two Corinthians."
• The Trump administration's $1.5 trillion tax cut package did not have the promised impact on businesses' capital investment or hiring plans, according to a survey by the National Association of Business Economics, NBC News reported.
• Businesses owned by Trump or bearing his name have sought to hire more than 600 foreign guest workers since he announced his presidential campaign -- the latest, for Eric Trump's winery.
• Anti-Trump Republicans looking for a 2020 challenger in GOP primaries are talking up Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate who enjoys high popularity in a blue state, CNN reports.