President Trump’s chief of staff says the president may be willing to shut the federal government down again if he doesn’t get the funding he wants for a border wall — a move political operatives say could be politically catastrophic.

Asked Sunday whether Trump would be willing to shut the government down again — two days after giving in and ending the longest shutdown in the country’s history —acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said, “Yeah, I think he actually is.”

“He doesn’t want to shut the government down, let’s make that very clear. He doesn’t want to declare a national emergency,” Mulvaney added, but then said that at “the end of the day, the president’s commitment is to defend the nation and he will do it with or without Congress.”

“Politically, it would be a horrible idea if Trump shut the government down again,” said Brad Marston, a Boston-based GOP strategist who said he doesn’t think Trump actually will.

Marston told the Herald Trump could “kiss reelection goodbye” if he either shuts the government down again or declares a national emergency and unilaterally orders the wall built, as the president has threatened.

On the other hand, Marston said, “It would be inspiring to his base for him to say to them, “This is a two-year fight — this is why you need to get active.”

Trump refused to sign a bill in December that would have fully funded the federal government without providing the money he sought to pay for his long-promised wall along the southern border. After more than a month in which some government services were shuttered and hundreds of thousands of workers furloughed, Trump signed a bill Friday to reopen the government for three weeks, saying he would continue to negotiate with congressional Democrats over funding for the wall during that time.

Massachusetts Democratic strategist Scott Ferson said the big question is if Trump learned anything from the “absolute smackdown” he received from Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

“He obviously played it wrong and he got nothing,” Ferson said, adding that Trump squandered the political capital he once had on border issues. “When Democrats were perceived to have been dismissive of it, he had the upper hand. He’s losing it because he’s so fixated on it and gets so obsessive.”

— Herald wire services contributed to this report