Trump, in a reversal, tells allies he is interested in a broad stimulus

But for Trump, who faced dropping markets and criticism from within his own party for his decision to abruptly end talks earlier this week, it marks another turn in the long-shot negotiations.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in a call with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, said Trump was now interested in coming back to the table on a comprehensive agreement, according to Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff. But even that was called into question by Pelosi on the call, who noted that another White House official had just earlier Thursday afternoon “contradicted that assertion.” But Mnuchin assured the California Democrat the President was interested in a comprehensive deal and Pelosi, on a call with her leadership team later in the afternoon, said she believed the talks were back on, according to a source familiar with the call.

The stakes are, as they have been for months, enormous. The pandemic, which is still surging in parts of the country, has left unemployment significantly elevated, cratered small businesses through the US and presented significant budget short falls for states and localities. There have also been significant requests for resources by schools and public health officials to confront the fallout from the virus.

The development marks the completion of a head-spinning 48 hours. Trump, on Tuesday, took to Twitter to call off the stimulus talks entirely, sending markets into a dive. Eight hours later he called for piecemeal legislation to address the economic hardship created by the coronavirus pandemic — something Democrats have repeatedly rejected. By Wednesday night, Mnuchin called Pelosi and said the President was interested in coming back to the table, according to a person familiar with their conversation.

Throughout the last few days, White House officials have said repeatedly that negotiations on a comprehensive deal were over and the preferred pathway was a series of smaller-scale bills.

Now, the President is once again open to a bigger deal.

“Let’s take a serious, not a skinny, not an emaciated but a serious appropriate approach, to crushing the virus,” Pelosi told reporters.

“The discussion from day to day can be confusing for all of us to follow,” McConnell said of the roller-coaster that has been stimulus talks over the last several weeks. The Kentucky Republican has long said he’s in favor of another rescue package, but has also made clear the differences between the two sides remain significant.

“We do agree that another rescue package is needed,” McConnell said Thursday. “We have vast differences about how much we should spend.”

Pelosi, for months, has made clear that the scale of the crisis — both on the economic and public health side of things — requires significant investment and the House passed a $2.2 trillion measure last week. Senate Republicans proposed a roughly $500 billion bill last month, which was blocked by Senate Democrats.

Mnuchin had put roughly $1.6 trillion on the table in the negotiations Trump short-circuited this week, but multiple people involved said Pelosi had made clear she was not going below $2 trillion given her view of the scale of the problems that needed to be addressed.

But beyond the need to reach an agreement on the topline number, the actual details and legislative language of a comprehensive agreement also remain far from completion, and would likely represent the most complex part of any negotiation.