Then there is the international travel: Trump went to Israel and Egypt to help shore up a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, and is scheduled to fly to Asia this weekend, with stops in Malaysia for the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit and Japan for a series of meetings.
And the halls of the White House feel like little has changed because of the shutdown, with employees still filling the offices and keeping the White House working.
“We haven’t heard anything from Donald Trump or the Republicans over the last few weeks,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “They have gone radio silent.”
Trump’s schedule stands in stark contrast to the effect the shutdown has had on many Americans, for whom the past few weeks have not been business as usual, including from federal workers who have been furloughed to the millions of Americans whose federal benefits are at risk.
It’s also a shift from how Trump handled the nation’s longest government shutdown ever, which occurred from December 2018 to January 2019 during his first term. Trump largely brought his events to a halt in 2018 and canceled his multiweek planned vacation to Mar-a-Lago for the Christmas holiday.
“I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security,” Trump wrote in December, lamenting that his schedule had changed.
Trump also canceled his administration’s trip to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum during the shutdown, saying he made the decision “out of consideration for the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay.”
Trump’s schedule during this shutdown is also dramatically different from his predecessors.
In 2013, President Barack Obama canceled the bulk of his four-country swing through Asia because of a shutdown, scrapping plans to visit Malaysia and the Philippines. White House press secretary Jay Carney said the decision was made “based on the difficulty in moving forward with foreign travel in the face of a shutdown.”
In 1995, so many more senior White House employees had been furloughed during a weeks-long shutdown that interns were called upon to work in the West Wing, leading to the first sexual interaction between Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton that eventually became the centerpiece of his 1998 impeachment.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have welcomed Trump’s remove from shutdown negotiations. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has expressed a desire to handle the shutdown without Trump’s involvement for now, according to The Washington Post’s Liz Goodwin, as both he and House Speaker Mike Johnson want to maintain their posture of granting zero concessions to Democrats on their shutdown demands. That’s easier without the White House offering lawmakers other options.
But the looming question is whether Trump will feel pressure to strike a deal if the shutdown isn’t affecting his routine.
Former congressman Fred Upton, a longtime Republican who represented much of Southwestern Michigan from 1987 to 2023, said the answer is no.
Trump “seems pretty indifferent,” according to Upton. “Bottom line is that without his wink and a nod, the GOP fears they will get undercut by the base, so until [Trump] really wants a deal, the crickets will sing.”
Upton added that he thinks Trump “is not going to change his tune” because there is nothing stopping the president from doing the same things he did while the government was open.
Doug Heye, a longtime Republican operative who was working in the House during the 2013 shutdown, said Trump’s ability to keep working as usual, alongwith the Democratic base cheering their party’s demands, explains why “neither side is in any hurry to budge.”
“They both feel like they’re winning,” Heye said. “And that’s why this looks like it will go on with no end in sight.”
