Washington might be closed, but Trump’s brand of governance remains gloriously open for business

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or most presidents, a government shutdown means canceled plans and gridlock. For Donald Trump, it’s an opportunity to spend more time on what he truly enjoys. While the bureaucracy went dark, he kept the spotlight squarely on himself, mediating wars over lunch and pitching arches over dinner. The message was clear: Washington might be closed, but Trump’s brand of governance remains gloriously open for business.

The Art of the Meal

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky sat down with President Donald J. Trump in the Cabinet Room this past week for what had been billed as a “working lunch.” Both men came hungry — Trump for credit and Zelensky for Tomahawk missiles, though only one would leave satisfied.

The night before, Zelensky had checked into Blair House, the White House’s official guest residence. Meanwhile, security was tighter than a Mar-a-Lago nondisclosure agreement, with entire streets sealed off.

It was Zelensky ’s first time staying there during the Trump era, a detail that fueled speculation that the accommodation upgrade might come with a softer tone than their more combustible encounters earlier this year. Optimism would prove premature.

The latest Trump-Zelensky summit was less “meeting of the minds” and more “collision of the narratives.” On one side of the Cabinet Room table sat a wartime president begging for Tomahawks. On the other sat Trump, a man who’s never met a weapon system that he couldn’t turn into a metaphor for himself.

Zelensky opened the meeting by applauding Trump for brokering peace between Israel and Hamas, expressing his hope that the same momentum might finally ripple eastward toward Ukraine.

Trump reaffirmed his intention to mediate a peace deal within weeks, framing it as “War Number Nine” in his ledger of resolved conflicts (maybe ten if we count CNN). However, POTUS made clear he wasn’t expecting a breakthrough that day.

“We have to get together, and it’s a very small group of people,” he shrugged, summing up the situation in classic Trumpian geometry: “It’s the president, the president, and the president. Okay? Three presidents. And I’m the mediator president.”

So what was the point of this meeting if it wasn’t going to produce peace?

For Trump, every meeting is both diplomacy and content creation. The Zelensky lunch wasn’t meant to resolve the war, it was meant to reframe it as something he can solve. Coming off his Gaza ceasefire photo ops, he needed another high-visibility foreign-policy moment to keep alive the storyline of “Trump the Peacemaker.”

Second, Zelensky secured agreement for expanded joint production of air-defense components, a potential lifeline as winter approaches. He even offered to sell Ukrainian drones to the US in exchange for the coveted Tomahawk missiles, which Trump politely and respectfully demurred.

Third, both leaders agreed to coordinate through a new reconstruction working group to help repair Ukraine’s decimated power grid, though whether “coordinate” means “collaborate” or “compete for credit” remains to be seen.

Behind the headlines, the real story was about leverage. While Zelensky pushed for weapons and guarantees, Trump pushed for Europe to pay more. Both agreed on the need for “peace,” though they seemed to define it differently. For Zelensky, peace means victory. For Trump, it means headlines that use his name and the word “historic” in the same sentence.

Later, Trump advised “both sides should stop where they are,” suggesting that both leaders should simply “declare victory” and let history judge the rest.

By the end of the lunch, no treaties were signed, no missiles promised, no wars ended. But the optics were “tremendous.” The biggest winner was Zelensky’s tailor, with Trump calling his get-up “very stylish.”

Zelensky left with a handshake, a working group, and possibly indigestion. Trump left with another episode in his ongoing world tour of “I Alone Can Fix It.” For now, the can of peace was kicked softly down the diplomatic highway. It’s expected to rattle back to life in a subsequent summit in Budapest in the coming weeks, assuming it doesn’t dent along the way.

Momentum’s Monument

There’s a special kind of irony in watching President Trump unveil a new triumphal arch and host a donor dinner for his still-under-construction White House ballroom while the federal government remains closed for business. On one side of the capital, agencies are shuttered, paychecks are frozen, and national parks are padlocked. On the other, the president is serving beef Wellington to a hundred donors, pitching a marble monument so grand it could make Lincoln blink.

The proposed shrine, which Trump calls a tribute to America’s upcoming 250th birthday in 2026, is already being nicknamed the “Arc de Trump,” which is just like France’s Arc de Triomphe, but with oomph to the nth degree. Renderings show a monumental white-stone structure with a single grand archway, towering columns and sculpted eagles, capped by a gilded statue glinting above the skyline, facing the Lincoln Memorial and visible from across the Potomac.

According to those in attendance, Trump presented three different models of the arch: small, medium, and “bigly,” before declaring his preference for the largest one.

“We’ll go big,” he reportedly said. When one reporter asked who the arch is for, the president replied: “Me. It’s going to be beautiful.”

But for Trump, the optics aren’t a glitch, they’re the feature. The shutdown is just another stage on which to act out his lifelong creed that when government grinds to a halt, business carries on. In fact, his approach to governance has always been business first, a transactional worldview that has diplomacy doubling as deal-making and statecraft running on investor relations. It’s the same formula for his Middle East peace efforts, by and large fueled by the business world, often bypassing bureaucracy altogether.

The pattern holds at home. The government may be out of cash, but the ballroom expansion rolls on, funded by private donors and framed as a symbol of resilience. Critics call it vanity, while supporters call it vision. Trump, ever the marketer, would call it momentum. In his world, bureaucratic paralysis is just another market inefficiency waiting to be leveraged.

So, if Washington shuts down, he builds up. When governance falters, enterprise steps in. If Congress won’t sign, donors will. Trump has hinted that “leftover” ballroom money might help get the arch started. And if anyone wonders about the symbolism of unveiling a triumphal arch during a fiscal standoff… well, that’s the whole point. The government may be closed, but the business of Trump remains gloriously, relentlessly open.

Meanwhile, the National Capital Planning Commission hasn’t yet approved anything. But then again, the administration has never let zoning slow down destiny.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1083)