Donald Trump made it clear during his Rose Garden news conference that he still expects a border wall to be funded and built. Photo / AP
Donald Trump made it clear during his Rose Garden news conference that he still expects a border wall to be funded and built. Photo / AP
His poll numbers were plummeting. His FBI director was decrying the dysfunction. The nation's air travel was in chaos. Federal workers were lining up at food banks. Economic growth was at risk of flatlining, and even some Republican senators were in open revolt.
So on Saturday, the 35th day of a government shutdown that he said he was proud to instigate, United States President Donald Trump finally folded. After vowing for weeks that he would keep the government closed unless he secured billions in funding for his promised border wall, Trump agreed to reopen it.
He got instead.
Trump's capitulation to Democrats marked a humiliating low point in a polarising presidency and sparked an immediate backlash among some conservative allies, who cast him as a wimp.
Elected as a self-proclaimed master dealmaker and business wizard who would bend Washington to his will and stand firm on his campaign promises - chief among them the wall - Trump risks being exposed as ineffective.
"He was the prisoner of his own impulse and it turned into a catastrophe for him," said David Axelrod, a former White House adviser to President Barack Obama. "The House of Representatives has power and authority - and now a speaker who knows how to use it - so that has to become part of his calculation or he'll get embarrassed again."
Trump's quest for at least some portion of a wall along the US-Mexico border is not over, however. Saturday's agreement only temporarily reopens the government, providing a three-week period for Congress to negotiate a longer-term spending agreement. The President said he would continue advocating for his signature campaign promise and threatened to again shut down the government or declare a national emergency to use his unilateral powers to build the wall if Congress does not appropriate wall funding by February 16.
"Let me be very clear: We really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier," Trump said on Saturday. He also tweeted that his decision "was in no way a concession". But when Trump stood alone in a bitter-cold White House Rose Garden later on Saturday to announce the government was reopening with no money for the wall, he punctuated five weeks of miscalculation and mismanagement by him and his Administration.
This account of Trump's stymied pursuit of border wall funding is based on interviews with more than a dozen senior Administration officials, Trump confidants and others briefed on internal discussions, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly.
For weeks, Trump has sought an exit ramp from the shutdown that would still secure wall funding, and for weeks his advisers failed to identify a viable one.
Trump repeatedly predicted to advisers that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would cave and surmised that she had a problem with the more liberal members of her caucus. But she held firm, and her members stayed united.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House. Photo / AP
"Why are they always so loyal?" Trump asked in one staff meeting, complaining that Democrats so often stick together while Republicans sometimes break apart, according to attendees.
As for their negotiations, Trump and Pelosi had not spoken since their January 10 session in which the President stormed out of the White House Situation Room.
Trump and his advisers misunderstood the will of Democrats to oppose wall funding. Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, emerged as the most powerful White House adviser during the shutdown and told colleagues that Trump's plan for US$5.7 billion ($8.3b) in wall funding would get Democratic votes in the Senate on Friday, astonishing Capitol Hill leaders and other White House aides.
Trump, who fretted about the shutdown's impact on the economy and his personal popularity, cast about for blame and pointed fingers at his staff - including Kushner - for failing to resolve the impasse, according to aides.
At a meeting on Thursday with conservative groups, the President accused former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan of having "screwed him" by not securing border wall money when Republicans had the majority, according to one attendee, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Centre for Immigration Studies. He said Ryan should have gotten him money before he left but he had no juice and had "gone fishing", according to two attendees.
Ryan had warned the President against a shutdown and told him it would be politically disastrous, according to a person familiar with their conversations.
All the while, Trump vowed he would never capitulate to Democrats. At the Thursday meeting, "He said there would be no caving," Krikorian said. "Everybody who spoke up applauded him for not caving, but warned him that any further movement toward the Democrats' direction would be a problem."
White House aides had been monitoring Transportation Security Administration data on airport security delays and staffing levels several times a day. Officials said on Friday that the situation was worsening and would probably force the end of the shutdown.
But events at the Capitol on Friday are largely what triggered Trump to conclude that he had run out of time and that he had to reopen the government, his aides said.
Trump lost control of his party as fissures emerged among exasperated Republican senators. Six of them voted on Friday for a Democratic spending bill, and others privately voiced frustration with Vice-President Mike Pence and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during a closed-door, contentious luncheon.
"Everyone who saw the floor action realised we were basically at the same place where we began and we needed a different solution," a White House official said of Friday's votes.
McConnell called Trump on Friday to say that the shutdown could not hold because some of his members were in revolt. The President did not commit to ending it in that call, but he phoned McConnell back that evening to say he had concluded the shutdown had to end, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations. Under attack from some Republican colleagues, McConnell told senators on Saturday that Trump had come up with the idea for a three-week deal - and that the President would announce it.
President Donald Trump walks back into the Oval Office. Photo / AP
When Republican Representative Peter King visited the White House on Friday, he said Trump was in a "pragmatic" mood, mentioning the failed Senate votes and saying he wanted to make a deal.
Pence and Kushner presented the President with several options that would reopen the government, according to a White House official. They included using his executive authority to declare a national emergency and redirect other public funds for the wall, an option Trump said on Saturday he was holding in reserve. Trump also briefly considered a commission that would study a wall, according to a senior administration official.
On Friday night, the President grew annoyed at acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney when he talked to Trump about policy prescriptions for the next three weeks and what an eventual deal might look like, according to one person familiar with the conversation.
Administration officials began immediately on this next phase; Mulvaney and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen met privately with a handful of Republican senators at Camp David on Saturday to start discussing what a border security agreement might look like, according to multiple people familiar with the gathering.
Ultimately, aides said, Trump was willing to table debate over wall funding because he is convinced he can win over support from some Democratic lawmakers over the next three weeks.
Saturday's agreement allows for a conference committee made up of rank-and-file members from each party to negotiate border security funding, which White House aides said they believe will enable more flexibility than existed during Trump's stalemate with Pelosi.
Trump's approval ratings have fallen in most public polls, including a Washington Post-ABC News survey released on Saturday that found 37 per cent approve of his presidency and 58 per cent disapprove.
Trump risks further angering independent voters who do not agree with the prolonged shutdown and conservatives who disapprove of him caving after 35 days with no win.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, whose criticism of Trump in mid-December helped inspire the President to shut the government in protest over wall funding, registered her disapproval of his Saturday decision.
"Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States," Coulter tweeted.
For months, Republican senators had been trying to warn Trump against a shutdown. Last June, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby and Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the chamber's point person on Homeland Security funding, met privately with Trump not only to tout their bipartisan border security spending package but also to nudge him away from a confrontation over the wall.
"I just said, 'shutdowns are miserable'," Capito said Saturday, recounting that Oval Office conversation.
"The last one was miserable. And this one was double miserable, and so, you know, maybe you have to live through it to really get the sense of it."
King faulted the conservative Freedom Caucus, led by Representatives Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, both Trump confidants, for steering the President in the wrong direction.
"I hope he ignores them for the next three weeks," King said. "It's the charge of the light brigade. It's the valley of death."
Points win for Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi after signs a deal to reopen the government on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photo / AP
Nancy Pelosi's first showdown with President Donald Trump began with him publicly questioning her political viability. It ended with the House speaker winning an unmitigated victory and reviving her reputation as a legislative savant.
Trump's capitulation - agreeing to reopen the government after a 35-day standoff without funding for a US-Mexico border wall - generated rave reviews for Pelosi from Democrats and grudging respect from Republicans.
Pelosi emerges from the shutdown as a stronger leader of her party.
Trump is "used to hand-to-hand combat", said former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. "With Nancy, it's hand-to-hand combat with a velvet glove, and he's not used to it."
Throughout the past seven weeks, according to interviews with lawmakers and congressional aides from both parties, Trump and White House officials appear to have misjudged Pelosi's support among Democrats and her resolve to hold firm against border wall funding.
"I think he's finally met his match," said Democratic Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Lujan. "The speaker always presents herself in public and in private with the utmost respect. But she's firm, and she's strong, and she understands how to wield that power."
Throughout the standoff, Pelosi followed her own advice: Don't get in the gutter with Trump - or, as she put it colourfully last month, don't engage in a "tinkle contest with a skunk".
One tweet underscored Pelosi's ability to unify her diverse caucus, from moderates in Trump districts to the party's far left. "I will tell you something most of the country probably already knows: @SpeakerPelosi does not mess around," wrote freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a dominant voice in the party's liberal wing.
