Trump to the government and those who rely on it: Fuck you. I want my way.

Mulvaney: standoff ‘very likely’ to extend into 2019

The longer he keeps it up the longer Trump has to keep it up, to please the 30 odd percent of voters who support him even at his wackiest.

Backing down will be harder, the longer it goes on.

America woke to day two of its third government shutdown in a year with hundreds of thousands of federal employees no closer to being paid over Christmas, national parks closed and Donald Trump stubbornly refusing to accept the blame for an event he previously declared he would be “proud” to cause.

Incoming White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the administration was waiting to hear from congressional leaders on an offer of a deal. 

But he also said the shutdown could “very likely” extend into 2019. 

A senior Republican senator, meanwhile, said the president’s behaviour in provoking and prolonging the shutdown was “useless” and “puerile”.

The Senate adjourned on Saturday, majority leader Mitch McConnell citing a Republican House bill that included $5bn for Trump’s border wall as he passed the ball to Democrats and the president. 

That meant the shutdown will continue until at least Thursday, after the Christmas holiday. 

Congress gathers again on 3 January. 

Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday it was “very possible” the shutdown could stretch into the New Year.

. . . .

Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee and will retire at the end of the year, did not express such optimism. 

He said Trump had contrived the shutdown as a campaign issue.

“This is a made-up fight so the president can look like he’s fighting,” Corker told CNN’s State of the Union, adding that precedent showed Democrats would back much larger spending for border security in return for reform, such as to the status of Dreamers, young undocumented migrants brought to the US as children – just not a wall.

“This is something that is useless, it’s spectacle, it’s puerile,” Corker said.

At the White House on Saturday, Trump ate lunch with rightwingers [sic] including House Freedom Caucus chiefs Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio. 

No Republican leaders or Democrats, needed for any deal, attended the meal.

Hell, this could go to March, and be resolved only when enough Republicans get sick of the madness to join Democrats in passing a budget over the president's veto.