President Donald Trump was scheduled to depart for Mar-a-Lago late on Friday afternoon. | Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images White House moves to distance Trump from shutdown

White House aides scrambled on Friday to ensure President Donald Trump wasn’t blamed for the government shutdown as they rearranged the president’s schedule amid concerns about the optics of traveling to his lavish private club in Florida while federal agencies prepared to close their doors.

As the prospects of a shutdown increased by the hour, Trump sent two senior aides — Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short — to the White House briefing room to make the case that the crisis was created by Democrats.


“There’s no way you can lay this at the feet of the president of the United States,” Mulvaney told reporters, calling the situation the “Schumer Shutdown” after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who he said is “in a position to force this on the American people.”

Mulvaney and Short faced questions from reporters about why the president hadn’t yet summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Friday in a last-ditch bid to strike a deal and how Republicans can blame Democrats when they have majorities in both the House and Senate.

They countered that Democrats were making unreasonable demands, adding that there was no reason to include a deal to protect undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally as minors as part of the deal to fund the government. And they noted it’s impossible to pass a funding bill through the Senate without support from at least some Democrats.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

”The reality is that this is not about policy, this is about politics,” Short said, adding that Democrats don’t oppose the proposals included in the measure to fund the government passed by the House on Thursday.

Short said the president made a round of calls to House lawmakers Thursday and is continuing calls to a bipartisan group senators on Friday. But he did not specify which lawmakers.

White House aides have reason to worry. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Friday found that 48 percent of the public believes Trump and congressional Republicans are mostly responsible for the potential shutdown.

Meanwhile, Trump’s planned a White House official said Trump will likely not go to Mar-a-Lago if the government shuts down, and he will remain in Washington to sign any funding measure approved by Congress.

Trump is scheduled to attend a celebration at Mar-a-Lago later Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.

Around 100 people are expected to go to the event, which will include a reception and dinner. It is being hosted by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and billionaire Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn.

White House officials said on Thursday that they remained cautiously optimistic that Congress will avert a shutdown, despite major hurdles in the Senate and mounting concerns in the Capitol that a shutdown is likely.

One White House official told POLITICO Thursday night that he thinks the Senate will eventually come to a deal on Friday, arguing that Democrats will face severe political blowback if the government shuts down.

But by Friday morning, White House aides acknowledged that a shutdown was looking more and more inevitable.

Mulvaney told reporters at the White House he thought the chances of the government shutting down were "50-50."

Trump bashed Democrats on Twitter on Friday morning and raised the prospect of a shutdown.

“Government Funding Bill past [sic] last night in the House of Representatives. Now Democrats are needed if it is to pass in the Senate — but they want illegal immigration and weak borders. Shutdown coming? We need more Republican victories in 2018!” he wrote.

