WASHINGTON—The unpredictable presidency of Donald Trump has settled, for now, into a shutdown routine.Trump demands on Twitter that Democrats fund his border wall. Then he gives public remarks in which he talks about crimes committed by illegal immigrants and drugs smuggled over the border, accuses Democrats of not caring about either of these things, and demands the wall again. It’s his perpetual playbook: pick a fight, rile up the base, exaggerate, cast blame, dig in. But it’s not working at all this time.Republican congressional leaders told Trump that it would be a bad idea to shut down part of the U.S. government over the wall. A spate of polls over the last week suggests they were right.Trump’s approval-rating average, as measured by the website FiveThirtyEight, has fallen to its lowest level in four months: 41 per cent approval to 55 per cent disapproval. He is at 37 per cent approval in Gallup polling, lowest since February 2018. Even his favourite pollster, Republican-leaning Rasmussen, has him at a mere 43 per cent, down six points in a month and his lowest since January 2018.Polls also suggest that Americans blame Trump for the shutdown much more than they blame Democrats: 53 per cent said Trump was to blame and 29 per cent said Democrats were to blame in a Washington Post-ABC poll released Sunday; 55 per cent said Trump and 32 per cent said Democrats in a CNN poll released Monday.Read more: Trump lies his way through a visit to the border with Mexico as he escalates his ‘emergency’ threatTrump backs himself into a corner on wall shutdown after TV addressOpinion | Heather Mallick: Trumpty Dumpty sat on a wallTrump’s prime-time Oval Office speech last week didn’t appear to help. In a Quinnipiac University poll, a puny 2 per cent said the speech changed their mind about the issue of building a wall. Eighty-nine per cent it did not.The public mood has liberated Democrats from pressure to make the multi-bill ...
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