But after being gigged by Mr. Schumer about having repeatedly threatened a shutdown, Mr. Trump couldn’t resist going all Tough Guy for the cameras. He sat up extra straight, gave his suit jacket that who’s-your-daddy? snap he so loves, and thrust his chin at the Senate leader:

“You know what? You want to put that on my — I’ll take it!” he challenged. “If we don’t get what we want — one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through a military, through anything you want to call — I will shut down the government, absolutely... And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck.”

And with that, the president moved to wrap up the discussion, leaving Chuck, Nancy and everyone else to marvel at the weirdness of what had just transpired — and, just as important, what it all means .

Short answer: Whatever happens with the funding standoff, the next two years of divided government promise to be a freak show of finger-pointing and point-scoring and people talking over and past one another with no hope of, or even much interest in, engaging the other side. While entertaining, this also risks taking the level of dysfunction to new depths likely to further erode public faith in government — no small feat considering that the public already holds the government in lower esteem than your average war criminal.

Indeed, i f Tuesday’s preview was any indication, Mr. Trump will spend the rest of his term talking smack , patronizing and tweaking congressional Democrats, and playing ever more wildly to his base, even as Democrats express growing frustration about their inability to have a rational conversation with a president who lives — with apologies to Mr. Rogers — in his own Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

Both Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer looked alternately bemused and exasperated by their visit, and both pleaded that the negotiations were best conducted in private. At one point, Mr. Trump scolded Ms. Pelosi: “But it’s not bad, Nancy. It’s called transparency.” This sent the House leader into a flustered effort to insist that you cannot have “transparency” when the parties involved aren’t operating with the same set of facts. “Let us have a conversation where we don’t have to contradict in public the statistics that you put forth,” she urged later in the conversation. The data Mr. Trump turned to “are not factual” she said. “We have to have an evidence-based conversation.”