President Donald Trump decided not to leave town as the federal government entered a shutdown thanks to an impasse over his demands for border wall funding. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo White House Trump says he was lonely over the holidays

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was lonely spending the holidays in Washington during the partial government shutdown, but seemed to take comfort in his claims of historic popularity.

"I was in the White House all by myself for six or seven days," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting, which stretched for nearly 90 minutes as cameras rolled. "It was very lonely. My family was down in Florida. I said stay there and enjoy yourself. I felt I should be here just in case people wanted to come and negotiate the border security."


Trump decided not to leave town as the federal government entered a shutdown thanks to an impasse over his demands for border wall funding. Vice President Mike Pence also noted at the meeting that he had stayed in Washington.

First lady Melania Trump spent much of the holiday break at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s South Florida resort, where he originally planned to go as well. But she returned to the White House to spend Christmas with her husband, and the two took a surprise trip to visit U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany.

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Trump’s insistence on $5 billion for a border wall, and Democrats’ refusal to grant it, plunged the government into shutdown mode. Now in its 12th day, the shutdown shows no signs yet of ending.

And Trump didn’t move any closer to compromise at the Cabinet meeting Wednesday. He said once again that “the United States needs a physical barrier,” specifying a wall, and that “we are in a shutdown because Democrats refuse to fund border security.” Trump initially said he would proudly claim responsibility for a border wall-fueled shutdown, but has since sought to shift blame to Democrats.

He predicted in the meeting that the shutdown “could be a long time or it could [end] quickly,” again complaining that he spent his holidays holed up in the White House but portraying his canceled vacation as a principled stand to ensure border security.

“It's too important a subject to walk away from. I was here on Christmas evening. I was all by myself in the White House. It's a big, big house — except for the guys on the lawn with machine guns,” he said, veering into a tangent about the guns his Secret Service protection carries.

“Nicest machine guns I’ve ever seen. I was waving to them. I never saw so many guys with machine guns in my life. Secret Service and military. These are great people. They don't play games, they don’t, like, wave. But I was all alone with the machine gunners. I felt very safe, I have to tell you. There's a lot of them. I was hoping somebody would come back and negotiate. They didn't do that.”

Trump added that he thought his job would be “a lot easier if I just relaxed and enjoyed the presidency like a lot of other people have done.”

In recent months, Trump’s rounds of golf have dropped off sharply — down to the levels of former President Barack Obama.

Though he bemoaned the difficulty of his job, Trump also predicted that voters would ultimately absolve him of blame for the shutdown because of his popularity in spite of what he said was a spate of bad press.

“They say I'm the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party,” he proclaimed. “You see the same polls as I do. A number that is hard to believe considering I never get fair press or good press.”

Despite Trump's insistence about his popularity, mainstream polling does not back up his claims. The latest data from FiveThirtyEight pegs Trump’s approval rating in the U.S. at 41.5 percent, a mark that only Ronald Reagan fell below at this point in his term over the last 13 administrations.

In Europe, where Trump's populist policies have rubbed some the wrong way, Trump argued that meant his "America First" agenda was working, though he asserted that he could be the "most popular person in Europe" if he wished.

"When they say I'm not popular in Europe. I shouldn't be popular in Europe. If I was popular in Europe, I wouldn't be doing my job," he said.

At the meeting, an Iran sanctions/”Game of Thrones” mash-up poster reading “SANCTIONS ARE COMING” sat in the middle of the table, providing an unusual prop for the media availability.

The president also boasted that his meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had likely prevented a “big fat war in Asia.”

And he dismissed the recent downturn in the stock market — which had its worst December since the Great Depression — as a “glitch” that would soon right itself.