The federal government partially shut down after midnight on Wednesday, following the failure of Democrats and Republicans to reach an agreement on a funding bill, the UK Daily Mail reported. President Donald Trump shared a photo taken during negotiations showing him pointing and smiling as a "Trump 2028" hat was positioned just so for the camera.
The president's meeting took place late into the night, with Vice President J.D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in attendance. The main sticking point for closing the deal was over cuts to healthcare subsidies.
Ultimately, an agreement couldn't be reached, and the deadline passed, meaning parts of the government were shut down beginning early Wednesday, with another vote planned for later in the day. However, Trump has not lost his sense of humor during it all and poked fun at Democrats with the photo, which he shared on his Truth Social and X, formerly Twitter, without a caption.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2025
Trump knew he had the upper hand on the Democrats and took the opportunity of negotiations to troll them. Since the 2016 election, Trump's "Make America Great Again" signature red hats have thrown leftists into fits of rage. Now the president is sending them into orbit again with the "Trump 2028" hats, which some reports said were handed out during the meeting.
Jeffries claimed that they were not handed out, but "randomly appeared in the middle" of negotiations, which made for a great photo op for Trump. "He did not try to hand us the Trump 2028 hat. They just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting on the desk. It was the strangest thing ever," Jeffries said.
The New York Democrat then asked Vance for his thoughts on whether Trump would really run again in 2028, which would be unconstitutional since Trump is already serving his second term and would knock Vance out of the logical next step, even if it were allowed. "No comment," was all the vice president had to say, which made everyone in the room laugh.
Hats that make Democrats go insane seemed to be the theme of the week for Trump. The president shared a video digitally altered for comic effect to make Schumer appear to give a speech about Democrats' failure to get support from minorities. In the background, a mariachi band plays while Jeffries, wearing a photoshopped hat and mustache, looks on beside him.
"There's no way to sugarcoat it, nobody likes Democrats anymore," the fake Schumer voice said, blaming the "woke" policies of the left. "Not even Black people wanna vote for us anymore, even Latinos hate us. So we need new votes. And if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can't even speak English, so they won't realize we're just a bunch of woke pieces of sh--." it said.
Republicans tried to pass a continuing resolution earlier this year to keep the government operational through November, but Democrats have failed to sign on. The left predicted several apocalyptic consequences for the shutdown, including a million military members going unpaid, many federal government workers being furloughed, and public services such as passport issuance, food inspection, and federal loan assistance being interrupted.
However, this move actually presents a new opportunity to streamline the government, which Democrats have now handed Trump and the GOP on a silver platter. "We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible--that are bad for them and irreversible by them--by cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like," Trump said Tuesday ahead of the shutdown.
"A lot of good can come from shutdowns," he reiterated later that same day. According to Fox News, Schumer used Trump's assessment about the benefits of a shutdown to slam the president.
"Well, there it is. Trump admitted himself that he is using Americans as political pawns. He is admitting that he is doing the firing of people. If God forbid it happens, he's using Americans as pawns," Schumer claimed. "As I said, Democrats did not want a shutdown. We stand ready to work with Republicans to find a bipartisan compromise, and the ball is in their court," Schumer said before negotiations.
The perennial threat of government shutdowns is growing increasingly tiresome with each attempt. Each side blames the other for it, and each time, nobody wins except the politicians, who ultimately get what they want anyway, in the form of increased spending. At least Trump appears to be on the side of the American people this time, and at the very least, he's providing comic relief.
