President Donald Trump is ruling out another Oval Office meeting with Democrats — for now.
One month into the shutdown, White House officials view a bipartisan meeting with the president as a rescue mission they’re unwilling to take on until after Democrats vote to fund the government, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking.
“This continues to be a Democratic fantasy, that the president is going to swoop in and rescue them from the consequences of their own actions,” said the senior official. “As the president said directly, I believe, on multiple occasions, at this point, ‘We’re happy to have negotiation, just open the government first.’”
An Oval Office meeting between the president and congressional leaders of both parties has typically preceded the end of recent shutdowns. Whether a face-saving measure or an actual negotiation, the high-profile action often indicated a resolution could be within reach — and Trump’s indifference to such a meeting suggests little interest in that traditional off-ramp.
As he departed for Asia last weekend, Trump said he’d be willing to meet with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries after they vote for a funding bill: “Then we go into negotiations,” the president said.
While administration officials maintain they have the upper hand in the political messaging battle, they acknowledge that next week — after SNAP funding halts on Saturday for 42 million people — will be a critical moment in shutdown talks.
“I think there’s a fair degree of movement on the Democratic side, and I think next week is going to be pivotal in terms of resolving the shutdown or not,” the senior official said.
The cautious optimism from the White House echoes that of Hill Republicans, who are increasingly convinced that centrist Democrats may fold — potentially by early next week — as shutdown pressures pile up, from Saturday’s cut-off of food benefits, to air traffic delays (including at Reagan National Airport), and mounting frustration from federal workers who have urged Congress to find a resolution.
“This administration, we’re like guys running around with a leak in a dam wall trying to plug it with bubble gum,” Vice President JD Vance said at the White House Thursday. “The unfortunate reality, and we’re starting to see this with our aviation industry, we’re going to find out the hard way with SNAP benefits. The American people are already suffering, and the suffering is going to get a lot worse.”
The shutdown is one of several domestic headaches greeting Trump as he returned to Washington on Thursday after a nearly weeklong swing through Asia. He landed back on U.S. soil just two days before the SNAP funding cliff. While he was overseas, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he may not cut rates in December; Americanshave largely disapproved of the president’s East Wing demolition; Senate Republicans effectively ended two of the president’s nominations and dealt the president a rare rebuke on trade with symbolic votes against his tariff policy.
Still, the White House’s confidence is grounded in signs they say point to Democrats feeling the heat. The senior official pointed to a number of examples, including Democratic leaders’ temperature check of rank-and-file members on advancing full-year spending bills. Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) endorsement of a health care working group and a vote to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to end the shutdown, as well as Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s (D-N.J.) call for a vote to end the shutdown prior to health care negotiations, is also viewed as a shift.
“The macro political indicators are moving in our direction, and the Democratic coalition has gradually started to collapse under the pressure that they themselves have put on it by demanding unrelated spending for a clean continuing resolution,” said the official, pointing to CNN’s analysis of polling that shows congressional Republicans’ support increasing among Republican and Independent voters.
A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Thursday, however, showed that more Americans — more than 4 in 10 U.S. adults — blame the president and Republicans for the shutdown over Democrats. Democrats, for their part, say the pain of the shutdown will be even more obvious this weekend as consumers start to shop for Obamacare plans without the subsidies that make them more affordable.
“Republicans have brought Americans to the brink of financial disaster,” Schumer said Thursday in remarks on the Senate floor. “We have demanded they act, and they have refused. And the shutdown is on them. This health care crisis is on them. And the American people will see so this weekend.”
The White House views a short-term funding bill as the likeliest end game, even as brewing bipartisan talks on the Hill have focused on moving fiscal 2026 bills as a show of good faith before the Senate passes a stopgap. Trump officials, while aware of the talks, indicated little preference for the length of such a stopgap bill.
Thune on Thursday was cautious about bipartisan talks, and said any deal to advance full-year spending bills could only move forward after Democrats agreed to reopen federal agencies.
“Even if you’ve got consent it’s still going to take a while to move those bills across the floor so we’ve got to reopen the government and then we’ll have a normal appropriations process,” he said.
Speaker Mike Johnson, also on Thursday, rejected the idea of pursuing full-year bills before the government is reopened, and said the efforts are “political games.”
And none of this addresses Democrats’ primary concern: an extension of the expiring Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies. Thune has already offered Democrats a vote on the subsidies, as well as a sitdown with Trump, but some Democratic senators have said the proposal is insufficient as Americans begin to learn just how much their health insurance costs will increase into next year.
“There are occasional talks between Democrats and Republicans on this issue, but our Republican colleagues don’t seem to be offering anything different than what their leadership has had so far,” Schumer said when asked about Thune suggesting there’s been an uptick in negotiations.
The White House continues to argue that the president is open to discussing health care once the government is reopened, but Republicans have offered little details about any plans to address the sticker shock facing millions of Americans. The senior White House official said the administration expects “robust conversations” around health care and pointed to the president’s efforts to reduce prescription drug prices, as well as the cost-sharing reduction reimbursements to private health plans that were removed from the final version of the GOP tax and domestic policy legislation, as two points of discussion.
“There’s certainly some policies that if you look at the support in the past and that the president is working on in the future that potentially could come together as part of any conversation after the shutdown if Democrats reopen the government,” the official said.
Alex Gangitano, Jordain Carney and Diana Nerozzi contributed to this report.
