Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the Gaza peace deal’s political impact

Amna Nawaz:

President Donald Trump is taking a victory lap abroad after the announcement of a cease-fire in the Middle East. But, at home, the government shutdown enters another week with no clear end in sight.

To take a closer look, we're joined by our Politics Monday duo. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Great to see you both.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Hello.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Thank you.

Amna Nawaz:

Let's start with the biggest story, obviously, President Trump overseas there, Tam, signing that major cease-fire deal as the first step to end the two-year war.

Now, you cover this president, but you obviously covered the last president too. You traveled with President Biden to Israel soon after the October 7 attacks. When you compare the approaches of these two presidents, what do you see?

Tamara Keith:

They definitely had different approaches. They had different relationships with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

President Biden had a very long, but also very complicated and strained relationship with Netanyahu. When we flew into Tel Aviv about less than two weeks after the October 7 attack, though, he embraced Netanyahu and hugged Israel close as well, really throughout his presidency.

Occasionally there would be — or, more than occasionally, there would be pushback behind the scenes, but it wasn't out front. President Trump has a very good relationship with Netanyahu, is popular, and even more popular now, in Israel. He's a popular figure broadly in the Middle East.

And he also, though, gave Israel exactly what they wanted, gave Netanyahu exactly what he wanted, including the airstrikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities over the summer. So all of that, though, gave Trump a little bit more leverage to then come back and say, no, this is the time. It needs to happen.

And also because he had those relationships with other countries in the Middle East and the Abraham Accords from his first term and all of that, he was able to get those countries to apply more pressure to Hamas to get them to this place.

But I think it is still really important to note that there was a cease-fire agreement at the very beginning of the Trump administration, very end of the Biden administration, and it fell apart before they got to phase two.

Amna Nawaz:

That's right.

Tamara Keith:

And there are very real disagreements about where things go from here for Gaza that, well, they weren't front of mind today.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, Amy, this is a president, as you know, who ran on America first, right, on reducing American intervention overseas now proudly holding up the mantle as peacemaker on the global stage.

Is this what his supporters back home want to see?

Amy Walter:

Oh, I think what they like to see and what the president has said often is, I alone can fix this.

You were up at the U.N. just last month, where the president basically said, I'm the dealmaker. I know how to do this. These sorts of bodies like the U.N., they do all this talk. They don't get stuff done. I can get stuff done.

What I think is really interesting, though, as we go forward, to Tam's point about the next steps, when you look at Americans' opinion of this war and of how the president has handled it, not surprisingly, very polarized by party, also by age. We have seen, of course, older voters much more supportive of how the president is handling this and of Israel.

The one issue that both sides, both Democrats and Republicans, agreed on equally was Hamas should give the hostages back. So this is a rare point of agreement among Democrats and Republicans. Going forward, though, when you look at — and this was a poll taken obviously before what happened this weekend — most Democrats say what their top concern is the deaths of Palestinians, especially of starvation, and the Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Republicans, their top concern is that Hamas does not attack Israel. So, going forward, you can see where trying to keep — this is the one moment where you had both sides in agreement that this is a good thing. Going forward, it's going to be hard to find that place where everyone agrees.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, he's certainly saying he's a dealmaker abroad.

Back here at home, though, haven't been able to reach a deal. The government shutdown does continue. And we have seen President Trump, Tam, as you know, criticize presidents in the past for not getting involved enough, for doing enough to end shutdowns. We saw the vice president asked about it over the weekend by Kristen Welker on NBC, didn't really answer the question and said, we're more concerned with governing realities now than political ones.

But, again, comparing past presidents to this one…

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

… is this president taking a role in trying to end the shutdown?

Tamara Keith:

President Trump doesn't seem to be trying to make a deal in this case because he doesn't want to negotiate with Democrats. Republicans don't want to negotiate with Democrats because, as they said at the very beginning of this, that Democrats were — it's the wrong word to use on this day, but they're taking hostages, and that the Democrats were using their votes to try to extract political gains, and they couldn't support something like that.

That's still the position. Now, 13 days in, it's been going for a very long time. There really are no negotiations. This is a big difference between past shutdowns, where there were frantic negotiations. I mean, the House is not even in session to take show votes, which typically there are lots of show votes and lots of stunts, but those are only right now happening on the Senate side, where the vote keeps turning out exactly the same way.

So this is just a very different shutdown. I think part of it is that Republicans are usually the ones who are trying to extract policy gains for their votes. And in this case, it's Democrats who are trying to extract policy gains for their votes.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Tamara Keith:

And, as a result, the Republican president is like, no, I don't want to negotiate.

Amy Walter:

Yes, and both sides are dug in because both sides feel like they have the winning hand.

And right now, for Democrats, they believe that this issue of health care is so critical. It's an issue that they want to keep talking about, not just today, but going into the 2026 midterms, and that they are even surprised. I talked to some Democratic strategist who before this shutdown happened said, I'm a little bit worried, our party tends to get fragmented and not stick to message.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Amy Walter:

They have been surprised at how disciplined Democratic leaders have been on this issue.

For Republicans, they also do not feel like they need to compromise because, as President Trump said, it's Democrats who started this and Democrats are going to feel the pain and ultimately he believes that will bring them into ending the shutdown.

Tamara Keith:

But a fascinating situation here is that the White House started out driving a message about, this is a Democratic shutdown, they have never supported a shutdown before. They always say how terrible it is.

But that messaging has really fallen off. In part, the White House is behaving as if there isn't a shutdown at all and they're just doing lots of other things that are distracting everyone from the shutdown that's happening.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Tamara Keith:

And so it's just — and, at the same time, the president of the United States and his OMB director, Russell Vought, are saying, we're going to make this painful, we're going to cut Democratic programs, which in a way then gives them more ownership of the shutdown than they would have had if they were sitting there negotiating in good faith and…

Amna Nawaz:

Trying to bring it to an end.

Tamara Keith:

And trying to bring it to an end.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, to that point, if we can just bring up some of the latest polling, because, Amy, I know you have seen this as well, when it comes to how the American public is looking at this…

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

… at this point — and this was conducted early in the shutdown — Americans seem to be holding Republicans more responsible than Democrats by 41 to 30 percent.

But could that shift the longer this goes on?

Amy Walter:

Yes, it can.

And Tam's point is correct. If the focus is on, oh, boy, the Republican OMB director or the president, they're cutting programs specifically to extract something from Democrats, that could backfire and make those numbers move even higher in terms of do we — who do people see as being responsible for this in terms of Republicans.

At the same time, part of the reason I think it feels so different is that we haven't seen a sort of unifying event that brings folks together that say, oh, the government being shut down is a real problem, people aren't getting paychecks, furloughs are causing so much harm, or in the case of military pay, that's not going through. Of course, they solved that issue over the weekend.

So there hasn't been something that really is the pain point that can really bring this to an end today. It still may be coming.

Amna Nawaz:

Tam, to that point, as you have noted, the president is now pushing through those mass firings. They're kind of doing everything they wanted to do during this shutdown.

Where is the Republican incentive to end it?

Tamara Keith:

I don't know where the Republican incentive to end it is, unless polling continues to show them losing in the court of public opinion on this.

But, truly, leading into this shutdown, Russell Vought — I was at an event, I attended an event, covered an event where he was speaking. He said he thought that the budget process, the spending bills should be less bipartisan. He wanted a more partisan process. And that is exactly what's happening right now, because a bipartisan process would require negotiation.

Amna Nawaz:

Week two of the government shutdown. I think we will be talking about this.

Amy Walter:

I do too.

Tamara Keith:

I think we will.

Amy Walter:

I think we will.

Amna Nawaz:

Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, always great to start the week with you both. Thank you.

Tamara Keith:

You're welcome.