‘I don’t think it helps either side’: Quiet concerns emerge in Trump’s orbit over shutdown

President Donald Trump believed the government shutdown would deliver Republicans a swift and decisive political victory. But with the stalemate now likely to spill into a second week, that calculation is looking increasingly shaky.

The opening stage of the high-profile funding fight has emboldened Democratic lawmakers and left voters split over who to blame for the impasse, raising quiet concerns within Trump’s orbit that the politics of the shutdown may prove more complicated than they initially hoped.

Democrats are still largely unified behind their demands, defying some Republicans’ predictions they would quickly fold under pressure. In early polling, Americans are just as likely to fault Trump as they are congressional Democrats.

And as the White House prepares a wave of retaliatory mass layoffs, there’s little certainty over how Trump’s efforts to ramp up the pressure will play with the broader public.

“I’m supposed to say this is killing the Democrats,” one Trump adviser said of the shutdown. “But I don’t think it helps either side, to be honest with you.”

The political complexity has surprised operatives on both sides of a fight where the widely accepted conventional wisdom is that the party that triggers the shutdown takes the overwhelming amount of the blame. Instead, the stalemate has so far generated little in the way of high-volume outrage, with voters seemingly willing to wait out the drama and financial markets already numb to the day-to-day chaos in Washington.

White House officials trumpeted early polling showing Democrats would mainly be held responsible for triggering the first extended shutdown since 2018. Yet a Washington Post poll on Thursday blunted some of that momentum, finding that 47% of respondents were blaming Trump and the GOP compared with just 30% blaming Democrats.

“This is basically a congressional problem,” Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, said of voters’ lower-key approach to the shutdown. “We’ve had these shutdowns so often that this looks like par for the course.”

GOP leaders remain confident

The mixed reaction has appeared to alleviate political pressure felt by Democrats to quickly seek an off-ramp, with some lawmakers instead beginning to broaden their messaging beyond the party’s initial set of health care demands. And while White House officials remain confident they will ultimately prevail, officials are now girding for a prolonged messaging war that could reverberate into the fall. Some Democrats are privately planning for a shutdown that could last through mid October or later.

Trump aides and GOP lawmakers are doubling down on accusations that Democrats shut down the government over health care funding for undocumented immigrants — a claim that officials believe can effectively chip away at their public support. They’ve marshaled support for a funding extension from a range of outside groups in hopes of turning the tide against Democrats.

The White House has also sought to advance a double-barreled message urging Democrats to agree to a straightforward funding extension — or watch as their voters suffer the fallout.

“If this shutdown continues, as we’ve said, layoffs are an unfortunate consequence,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Friday. “It’s the Democrats who have forced the White House and the president into this position by voting to shut the government down.”

The Trump administration has yet to follow through on its threat of widespread cuts to the federal workforce, even as it threatened firings in the thousands. The prospect has alarmed some Republican lawmakers and operatives, who contend that it would immediately give away the high ground that the party enjoys in its ask for a no-strings-attached funding measure.

Yet within Trump’s orbit and among congressional GOP leaders, there’s no appetite to back down from its vows, and little belief that the standoff can end without Democrats being convinced to give in. In a sign of their confidence, House GOP leaders have even decided not to bring the chamber back to DC until the Senate Democrats cave.

Some top advisers, including budget chief Russ Vought, have pushed Trump to take full advantage of the shutdown to advance a range of priorities that includes downsizing agencies and cutting off funds to projects underway in blue states — arguing that it’s simultaneously an opportunity to push blame for those moves onto Democrats.

And while the prospect of such unprecedented action has unnerved some Republicans who worry it will further shift public opinion against them, others contend that the potential for short-term political blowback is worth making good on Trump’s longer-term campaign promises.

“When there’s significant upside, he doesn’t care about downside,” one Trump ally said of the president. “And he doesn’t really give a damn about criticism.”

Expiration of enhanced Obamacare subsidies looms

The unpredictable political repercussions have nevertheless injected fresh urgency into GOP efforts to avert the looming expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies — an issue that Republicans increasingly worry could do lasting damage to the party if it’s not defused.

Democratic lawmakers have made the subsidies a central element of their shutdown demands, issuing warnings of double digit-percentage premium increases that have bolstered support for their decision to shutter the government.

White House officials and Republican leaders have decided to take a hard line against any negotiations until the funding standoff is over, in an effort to speed Democrats’ decision to fold. But administration officials have privately debated options for extending the subsidies since well before the shutdown, the Trump adviser and another person familiar with the matter said.

On Capitol Hill, aides to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson have also signaled awareness that they need to resolve the issue or risk steep cost increases for millions of people — many of whom are their own voters.

That’s likely to set up a brutal intraparty fight, with House Republicans in particular being asked to vote for the first time ever to uphold a piece of Obamacare. Some conservative lawmakers have already signaled opposition to supporting an extension, while others are expected to demand sharply divisive provisions like prohibitions on federal funds going toward gender-affirming care.

Yet a contingent of Senate Republicans have already held private discussions with Democrats in the chamber in search of a solution, with some early talks centering on a possible two-year extension of the subsidies that includes significant reforms aimed at limiting its eligibility and total price tag, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.

“We have to do something on it,” GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said, noting that many in his state will see their premiums nearly doubled. “That’s a lot of Missourians who will not be able to afford health care.”

In a sign of the subsidies’ growing political salience, White House officials have sought to make clear in recent days that the administration is willing to start bipartisan negotiations on a health care deal once the shutdown ends.

But with no clear political impetus for the stalemate to end, few could say with confidence anymore when that might be.

“I think they were under the assumption the Democrats were going to cave quicker,” the Trump adviser said. “But people have gotten used to these things. They’re like, oh, that’s a Washington thing. They’ll solve it, they’ll figure it out.”