Trump's tantrums: It isn't a shutdown. It's a let-down!

• The government shutdown leaves 420,000 federal employees working without pay while 380,000 have been furloughed.

The US government is ending the year 2018 just as it had started it: in the state of uncertainty over a federal shutdown. This is the third US federal government shutdown of 2018, with the previous two (January 20-22 and February 9) lasting for 69 and nine hours respectively. Before this year, the US government witnessed shutdowns on eight occasions. The last US government shutdown in 2013 lasted for 16 days, when 800,000 staff were furloughed (sent on involuntary, temporary, unpaid leave) while another 1.3 million worked without known payment dates.

On the day the shutdown began, the-then POTUS Barack Obama wrote a heart-warming letter to "the dedicated and hard-working employees of the US Government" in which he thanked them for their work, acknowledged that the shutdown was avoidable, and promised to continue to work towards reopening the government "as quickly as possible".
This time around, the government shutdown leaves 420,000 federal employees working without pay while 380,000 have been furloughed. The difference is that this time around, President Donald Trump seems to be 'proud' to have shut down his own government. Trump, in fact, didn't need to shut down the government, not when he seemed to have taken the higher ground a few days earlier.

It was, perhaps, too much for Trump when his admirers-in-chief, including columnist Ann Coulter and the commentators on TV programme Fox & Friends, called him out for his "gutless retreat". It's a temper tantrum gone bad. One that was avoidable, to begin with, and one that should be done away with immediately to avoid a bleak Christmas holiday season for 800,000 employees and millions in their families.