With the government shutdown heading into its second month, President Donald Trump isn’t at the negotiating table. In fact, he’s thousands of miles away.
Since budget negotiations stalled in Congress at the beginning of October, the president has gone overseas twice, including the current diplomatic trip through Asia.
While presidents often have to juggle foreign and domestic priorities, in the past they’ve tended to avoid international travel during shutdowns to show they’re focused on negotiations.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton canceled a trip to Japan during a shutdown. In 2013, President Barack Obama canceled a planned trip to Indonesia and Brunei due to a government shutdown. And during a shutdown in his first term, Trump canceled a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Since the beginning, this shutdown fight has been defined by a lack of engagement between the president and Democrats in Congress. That dynamic is even more notable coming from a man who touts himself as one of the best dealmakers of all time.
Democrats cited a video of Trump dancing upon his arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to argue that the president is not addressing their demands for the spending bills to extend subsidies that would keep premiums for health insurance plans offered under the Affordable Care Act from skyrocketing next year.
“Open enrollment is five days away,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Monday. “Tens of millions of Americans face the specter of financial crisis all while Donald Trump is dancing on the tarmac in Malaysia.”
The president has said he is open to negotiating with Democrats on subsidies once they vote to reopen the government, but not before. Republican leaders in Congress are happy to keep the president on the sidelines, arguing that this is entirely a legislative dispute.
When MSNBC asked Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday if it would be helpful if Trump were in D.C. right now playing a more active role in shutdown talks, the speaker said the president had “entrusted us to fix this, because this is an Article 1 branch problem.”
“The president tried his best. He brought him in before all this madness started, and Chuck Schumer and (House Democratic Leader) Hakeem Jeffries effectively told him to jump in the Potomac,” Johnson said. “It’s up to the Democrats. Everybody knows that.”
But with Republicans in the majority in the House and Senate, Democrats see the spending fight as their only leverage to force Republicans to extend the health care subsidies, arguing that families need to know those costs as they sign up for insurance next month.
That has left Democrats in a bit of a holding pattern, too, hoping that as families begin looking at the higher rates in the coming days — with premiums more than doubling for the average enrollee — it will spark a backlash that will force Republicans to the negotiating table.
Even as the shutdown stretches past the four-week mark, urgency from both parties is lacking, with each side figuring the pain of the shutdown will eventually make the other side cave. But thus far, it’s only made each party dig in more.
Asked Sunday if the president should meet again with Democrats, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told ABC News, “What good does it do …? They’ve dug in.”
The president’s approach to this shutdown — at least publicly — is markedly different from the 2018-19 standoff.
The president’s approach to this shutdown — at least publicly — is markedly different from the record-shattering 2018-19 standoff during his first term, which lasted more than a month, becoming the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
During that impasse, Trump hosted top congressional leaders for a handful of White House discussions — most famously the on-camera Oval Office meeting in the weeks preceding the shutdown, at which he told Democrats, “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down.” In late September, with just two days to go before the shutdown began, Jeffries and Schumer sat down with Trump and top Republicans in the Oval Office for a closed-door meeting. No major deal was reached, though several memes, promoted by the White House, were made — including the one portraying Jeffries with a cartoon sombrero and fake mustache. Trump has since sat on the sidelines, convinced that Republicans have the upper hand in the shutdown standoff. Some Democrats have cast him as not yet fully aware of the magnitude of the pending Obamacare price increases. When Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., talked to Trump recently about the expiring subsidies, the president reportedly asked Van Drew, “Can’t we do something better?” Van Drew, a moderate Republican who came to Congress as a Democrat and switched parties at the end of 2019, told Trump, “Mr. President, we don’t have time.” But as the pain of the shutdown mounts, the question is whether Trump can really stay out of the fray. When Obama was president, Trump famously said that blame for a shutdown rests with the president. At what point will Americans start blaming Trump for not solving this current standoff? Republicans are betting that moment never comes; Democrats are betting it’s right around the corner. All the while, the shutdown stretches on. Subscribe to the Project 47 newsletter to receive weekly updates on and expert insight into the key issues and figures defining Trump’s second term.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
