Aide: "Mr President..."
Trump: "
STAR WARS!"
Aide: "...Mr President, people are noticing the shutdown. At first they were joking about how little seemed to change, supporting our small-government platform, but now things are changing rapidly. Your polls are plummeting."
Trump: "I know exactly how to deal with this. I'm the best at this. You just bring the workers in anyway, say you'll pay them later. Always works!"
Aide (considering resume): "Ah, right. So I presume we'll bring in specifically the people who directly impact their lives in the short term, to maintain the status quo as long as possible."
Trump: "Yeah, yeah, and the Interior Department"
Aide: "Interior Department?"
Trump: "My friends say there are oil rights to sell in the Gulf. Have you seen the Gulf? It's huge!"
Trump: "No wildfire prevention though, pff"
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/trump-recalls-50-000-employees-who-now-will-work-without-pay.htmlCombined with everything else... yeah, things seem particularly crazy this month.
Trump's base *is* actually hurting a lot in the polls, recently. I don't know how /pol/ is feeling, probably still laughing maniacally at the idea they had anything to do with this. Meanwhile his actual base, Republican voters, were annoyed that their tax returns could be late. Not to mention all the farmers who are having trouble getting their loans and grants.
It's kinda amazing. The entrenched red-state rural voters who always demand less government, finally got an object lesson in what the federal government does for them. If anything is going to change their minds, I think this was an important step. If the Republicans had actual control of the presidency, there's no way they would have let it happen, heh.
Edit: Oh and reminder that no money whatsoever is being saved by all this, all employees are (well, by all precedent) going to be payed when it's over. There's even precedent for them getting payed double. In some cases, states are hiring furloughed government employees to do the work anyway: AKA possibly getting payed three times. Captain Tagon would be proud
Edit2: Also less important than tax returns and oil drilling? School lunch programs. Which isn't *directly* racist, but... nah I'm kidding, he just doesn't care.