President Trump said Wednesday he will meet with Democrats next week for lunch, though it was not immediately clear who would be invited.
“They’re the party of some really bad things,” Trump said at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute gathering in Miami. “And I think they’ll change. I think they have to change.”
“I’m going to be having lunch with some of the Democrats next week, and it would be wonderful if we could work together,” he added. “I think working together would be great. But they have to change. You can’t get elected on the programs that they want.”
Asked later who will be in attendance, Trump told reporters, “You’ll see when I do it. Some good ones. Some biggies.”
The meeting would mark a rare instance of bipartisan outreach, and of Democrats being willing to speak directly with Trump, whom they have harshly criticized as having autocratic tendencies.
One of the few Democrats who has shown a willingness to speak with Trump is Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who met with the president at Mar-a-Lago prior to Inauguration Day.
“Overall, it was a positive experience. I mean, he was kind, he was cordial. It wasn’t in any kind of theater. It wasn’t trying to get your picture taken to kind of put something out on social media. It was just, really, a conversation. We actually spoke for over an hour,” Fetterman told “The View.”
Updated at 9:54 p.m.
