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Instead of trying to hammer out a deal (or even bother to show up to work at all in the case of the House of Representatives), congressional Democrats and Republicans have spent the past month trying to blame each other for the government shutdown in order to score political points.

Seeing how voters don’t like either party all that much, loathe Congress in particular, and don’t understand how the government works, this has been quite tricky. This is especially true because both sides have acknowledged that easing the pain of Americans affected by the shutdown would hurt their “leverage” in the non-existent negotiations.

Things are a bit tougher for Republicans, though, which is reflected in the polls.

They have to make the case that, even though they control Congress and the White House, it is the Democrats who are to blame for the spending impasse.

This doesn’t make sense to many Americans. After all, the GOP has been touting its “landslide” election victory all year long, and they were able to pass their highly unpopular “big, beautiful bill” without Democratic help.

Making things even more complicated for them is that Republicans have spent years maligning the federal government, trying to dismantle it, and taking away the services it provides.

Now, however, they have to convince voters that those bureaucracy-loving Democrats want to shut down the government while Republicans want to open it.

As for Donald Trump, he has largely sat out the negotiations while using the shutdown to (illegally) shift money around and punish people in blue states for not voting for him.

After all, nobody is going to award him a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a domestic deal, so why bother?

Technically, Republicans aren’t wrong.

Under the current rules, they will need some support from Senate Democrats to end the shutdown. Of course, they changed those rules already this year to confirm Trump’s nominees, but they would rather not do so again because it will open up a can of worms that they would rather keep closed because, if and when Democrats take control of Congress and the White House again, the GOP will need the filibuster to protect all of the advantages that they gave themselves over the past 15 years or so.

Therefore, Republican leaders probably weren’t too happy when Trump inserted himself into the debate on Thursday night.

“BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE GONE STONE COLD ‘CRAZY,’ THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the president said in social media post.

In other words, Trump confirmed what Democrats have been saying all along: If Republicans wanted to reopen the government, then they could do so at any point (like we said, it is a bit of a disingenuous argument because doing so would require a very drastic step).

Ultimately, will it matter that Trump torpedoed the GOP’s central argument as to why Democrats should be blamed?

Probably not.

In the end, the most likely scenario is that Democrats will be the ones to vote to reopen the government once millions of Americans realize that their health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket.

After all, it’s not as though Trump isn’t already (illegally) spending money on his own priorities.

At that point, Democrats can legitimately say that they tried… and blame what comes next on the GOP.

We are not sure that we’d call this a win. But we do know who the loser is when the shutdown ends: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who will have to swear in Representive-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who will then promptly sign the discharge petition forcing him to hold a vote on the disclosure of the Epstein files.