“If there is a shutdown I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one that has to get people together,” Donald Trump said in 2011, when the Republicans were poised to shutter the government on Barack Obama’s watch. As they often do, Trump’s words have come back to haunt him—the government closed its doors on Friday, when Senate Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement to fund it. White House staffers and Trump allies alike have reportedly advised the president, who’s “itching” to play dealmaker, that lying low is the best strategy: “The more he appears in public, the more this becomes a Trump problem,” Republican strategist John Feehery told The Washington Post. But Trump’s ostensible lack of involvement cannot disguise the fact that his erraticism and failure to delineate the White House’s goals are largely to blame for lawmakers’ ongoing stalemate.

At its root is whether the spending bill will address the 690,000 young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, whose fate Trump thrust into uncertainty last year. Democrats and Republicans who support legislation to protect the Dreamers argue that Trump is sympathetic toward the young immigrants, but is swayed by immigration hawks in his administration such as Chief of Staff John Kelly and senior policy aide Stephen Miller. “His heart is right on this issue; I think he’s got a good understanding of what will sell, and every time we have a proposal, it is only yanked back by staff members,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters Sunday, according to the The New York Times. “As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we are going nowhere. He’s been an outlier for years.”

But the White House and some Trump allies have dismissed the narrative that Kelly and Miller are immigration puppeteers, arguing that the two are merely articulating policies Trump pitched on the campaign trail. “The truth is the president is committed to this general perspective on immigration, and Miller and Kelly are there to help him implement what he always wanted to do,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions.

The president’s actions are equally contradictory. Over cheeseburgers with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday, the president reportedly signaled he was open to a deal with Democrats that would extend protections to Dreamers in exchange for a hike in military spending and border-wall funding, among other items. But over the weekend, Kelly, budget director Mick Mulvaney, and director of legislative affairs Marc Short warned the president against negotiating with the New York senator; the [White House now says it will not address immigration as long as the government remains closed. The next day, a frustrated Schumer vented on the Senate floor that “negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O . . . it’s next to impossible.”

Such episodes are likely to become a hallmark of Trump’s attempts to conclude the shutdown. “He seems to make commitments that he is not going to keep,” Krikorian said of the president. “His inclinations are hawkish on immigration, but he seems to like to be agreeable to people and nod his head when he’s at a meeting and people are saying things, and try to make a deal.” As G.O.P. strategist Alex Conant told Times, “This is what happens when you have a president who is not clear and consistent on what he will accept: It emboldens all parties to take positions that they won’t compromise.”