RealClearPolitics White House correspondent Philip Wegmann reported on Friday’s edition of FNC’s “Special Report” that the Trump White House is unconcerned about shutdown polling and ready to respond.

SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS: Yeah, and you wonder the blame game, whether that will pressure them as well. This latest pullout from Washington Post/ABC News shows that who’s mainly responsible for the government shutdown? The largest group that you see there is President Trump and the congressional GOP at 45 percent, Democrats at 33. But, Philip, that’s actually closed a little bit. Democrats are taking on a little bit of water here, but still way ahead of Republicans when it comes to who’s responsible. PHILIP WEGMANN, REALCLEARPOLITICS: My sources at White House are dug in right now. They’re not worried about that type of polling, because I think that as we look at the shutdown, at the very beginning the pain was localized, certainly unfortunate, but it fell on federal workers and on some of these military families. Now it’s at risk of metastasizing. It’s not just these families on SNAP. It’s also these mothers on WIC, the air traffic controllers who are working without pay. And I think that on the first day of the shutdown, Vice President J.D. Vance, he said, look, we’re willing to negotiate on Obamacare at a later date once you reopen the government. Now, this week, he’s in the White House driveway with the Teamsters, with union members, attacking Democrats on another front. This White House feels like as the pain metastasizes, they want it to end, but they feel like they have multiple angles of attack here on Democrats. DOUG HEYE, FORMER RNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Some of that polling is muscle memory, that when we have a shutdown, it is Republicans’ fault. I worked in the 2013 shutdown. It was our fault. We proactively did it. The optics may be different here, maybe the same, but clearly what we see is it’s a very different setup for what we’re seeing happening in the Capitol right now. It’s a very different game. BREAM: Well, and the president thinks one of their options should be this, in part, he posts about the filibuster. He says, because of the fact that the Democrats have gone stone-cold crazy, the choice is clear, initiate the nuclear option, get rid of the filibuster and make America great again. So this is that 60-vote threshold that they’ve not been able to move anything through the Senate. But Senate Majority Leader now, Thune, John Thune, his spokesman says Leader Thune’s position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged. And that’s something that, listen, if you’ve been in the minority, as Democrat or Republican, you know that’s the only tool you may have in your toolbox, and you don’t want to get rid of it, even when you’re in control. OLIVIA BEAVERS, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Certainly. And I think that enough senators quickly came out and poured cold water on this, because once you do away with that, it would drastically change how the Senate works. And you might see huge swings in policy, depending on who’s in power. However, this leads more senators to come to the table and be able to negotiate. I actually think that President Trump’s tweet on this, or post on this, put Republicans on their back foot. Rather than doing the blame game, they had to be kind of caught in this weird crosshairs of saying we don’t want to get rid of the filibuster, instead of redirecting, as they’ve been messaging, their blame against Democrats, and saying time to reopen the government. WEGMANN: My sources at White House see this as Donald Trump being sort of the bad cop. I mean, he has had nuclear on his mind a lot this week, from nuclear testing to getting rid of the nuclear option in the filibuster. But I think that if you look back at the first administration, Trump toyed with getting rid of this parliamentary procedure. My sources at White House say they know that Democrats know that, and Donald Trump is putting a shot across the bow, even if it does mean some of these uncomfortable conversations with Republicans. Because, as you mentioned, you know, Leader Thune really, really doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster. They remember what life is like in the minority. But Trump right now is really eager to get the government open once again, even if it means trampling on parliamentary niceties.

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