From the New York Times…

President Trump said Tuesday that the United States needed “a good ‘shutdown’” this fall to force a partisan confrontation over federal spending and suggested that he might move to reverse longstanding Senate rules that effectively require a supermajority to approve most major pieces of legislation.

The declarations, in two posts on Twitter, appeared aimed at defending a compromise spending package that Congress is likely to clear this week, but that fails to accomplish many of Mr. Trump’s stated goals — including allocating any money to build a wall on the southern border, a project that was his most talked-about campaign promise. Conservative activists have criticized the agreement as one that does not address their priorities and swells the deficit, but the White House has signaled that the president would accept it rather than set off a government shutdown.

Am I the only one who remembers how bad government shutdowns can be?

The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2017

either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good "shutdown" in September to fix mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2017

The Twitter posts set off a scramble at the White House, upending a frenetic effort by Mr. Trump’s advisers to portray the spending agreement as a major victory for the president. By early afternoon, Mr. Trump had turned an appearance with Air Force Academy cadets in the Rose Garden into a pep rally for the spending bill, which he declared “a clear win for the American people.” And he dispatched Mr. Mulvaney to brief reporters twice — once by telephone in a conference call that devolved into a comedy of errors, and once in person — to defend it.

So White House staff, as usual, had to find a way to handle Agent Orange’s tweets. I mean… what the fuck?

This was hilarious, though…

Mr. Mulvaney argued that the president had actually outfoxed Democrats who were eager for a shutdown.

“They wanted to try and make this president look like he could not govern,” Mr. Mulvaney told reporters in a chaotic call that featured a shouting budget director, dueling on-hold music and reporters frantically trying to figure out how to ask questions (mostly without success). “They wanted to make this president look like he did not know what he was doing, and he beat them on that at the very, very highest level.”

Democrats, Mr. Mulvaney added, “were desperate to show that we were not reasonable, and we completely destroyed that narrative by negotiating this deal.”

“This is a huge victory for the president,” he said.

What a load of bullshit.