On Friday, congressional leaders met with President Trump in the White House for another conversation to nowhere. Afterward, the Democratic leaders came out and spoke to the press for four minutes. “Services are being withheld from the American people, paychecks are being withheld from people who serve the needs of the American people,” Nancy Pelosi said, a day into her second tenure as Speaker of the House and fourteen days into a government shutdown that Trump initiated in an attempt to extract billions of dollars in border-wall funding from Congress. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said that in response to the Democrats’ position—that the government should be reopened before any discussion of border-security funding takes place—Trump had threatened to keep the government shut down for “months or even years.”

After the Democrats spoke, Trump emerged for his own press conference, flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and the congressmen Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise. Their event lasted an hour. Trump revealed that he had instructed Pence, Nielsen, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to meet with congressional staff members over the weekend to continue the discussions. He said that he had thought about circumventing Congress to get his wall money by declaring a “national emergency.” He confirmed that he’d told Democrats that he was willing to keep the government closed for a long time, but also said that he believed the impasse could be resolved “very quickly.” In response to questions about whether protections for Dreamers could be part of a potential deal, he said that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program for Dreamers that Trump tried to cancel, “is going to be a great subject.” He complained about court rulings that haven’t gone his way in the Ninth Circuit, and discussed why using eminent domain to acquire land was necessary for his wall plans. He hemmed, hawed, bragged, made arguments out of thin air, and seemed to be enjoying himself. When he was asked about the government workers who don’t know when their next paycheck will arrive, he had no difficulty imagining that they loved him and what he was doing. “This really does have a higher purpose than next week’s pay,” Trump said. Putting himself in their shoes for a moment, he said, “I think they’d say, ‘Mr. President, keep going. This is far more important.’ ”

So now the weekend begins, and Trump, who started this whole thing, has stepped back from the talks. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has already recused himself from the matter, saying it is up to Trump and the Democrats in the House to sort out—a position that a few members of his caucus have started to bristle at. Who is in charge here? Who wants to be? “You can call it whatever you want,” Trump said on Friday. “You can call it the Schumer, Pelosi, or Trump shutdown. Doesn’t matter to me. Just words.” On Friday afternoon, CNN reported a spike in the number of Transportation Security Administration officers calling in sick at four major airports this week. “This problem of callouts is really going to explode over the next week or two when employees miss their first paycheck,” a union official at Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport said. “T.S.A. officers are telling the union they will find another way to make money. That means calling out to work other jobs.” Just words, indeed.