President Donald Trump held a meeting today with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. It was as pointless as the last few meetings between the three, from all accounts. Reportedly, after Pelosi made her case for opening the government but only extending the budget for the Department of Homeland Security for another month -- to give both sides time to have the border wall fight without penalizing all the federal workers -- Trump asked her point-blank whether she would agree to his wall money in 30 days or not. She said "No," and Trump got up and walked out of the meeting. Which is why the word "pointless" is hard to avoid.

Trump reportedly has staked his entire presidency on the wall issue. He thinks (and he may be right) that if he doesn't get the wall at least partially built then he won't have a chance at a second term, because his base will desert him in 2020. So for him, it's a crucial fight to have. It's almost as important for Pelosi and the Democrats to hold firm, because giving in to Trump's demand now -- right after a very successful midterm election for the Democrats -- would signal that Trump is going to push Pelosi around for the next two years. That would be exactly the wrong signal to send, from the viewpoint of the Democratic base. Added to this brinksmanship is the fact that the State Of The Union address is now less than three weeks away. Whatever happens between then and now is doubtlessly going to be the primary subject of both the president's speech and the Democratic response. This ups the political stakes, since it is the one night a year that Americans are forced to pay attention to Washington politics in a big way.

Because the two sides' positions are not just diametrically opposed, but impossible to reconcile in any way (Trump either gets his wall money or he doesn't -- there's no real middle ground there), it's hard to see how this all ends, or how long it will take to resolve. There's no obvious offramp for either side, at this point.

In most shutdown situations, public opinion eventually forces one side or another to realize that the people are simply not behind them, and they usually react accordingly (because they're worried about the next election). This may not be possible with Trump, because he just flat-out doesn't believe any poll that doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. He is absolutely convinced that: (1) this is a winning argument for him, (2) the longer it goes on, the stronger his position becomes, and (3) if he caves, he will not win re-election. So he's got every reason (according to his logic, of course) not to give in no matter how long the shutdown lasts.

Republicans in Congress aren't quite as oblivious to public opinion, though. Short of either Trump or Pelosi caving (which would end things pretty quickly, either way), there are really only two ways this fight ends. The first would be if Senate Republicans get so nervous about how it's all playing out that they pressure Mitch McConnell to hold votes on the bills to reopen the government. Already, over in the House, Republicans are breaking ranks. Eight GOP House members just voted for a bill today to reopen the Treasury Department, so that the I.R.S. will be fully-staffed in time for income tax filing season. That's a start, but it's not enough.

If Trump sticks to his guns and refuses to sign any legislation without his wall money, then there is only one route left for Congress to get the government open again, and that is to override a presidential veto. To do so requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress. This would mean 290 votes in the House, and 67 votes in the Senate. The Treasury budget bill just got 240 votes, meaning Democrats would still have to convince 50 more Republicans to get on board. In the Senate, Democrats would need 20 Republicans to break ranks, and so far only three of them have indicated a willingness to do so. This leaves a rather large deficit of votes in both chambers in terms of putting together a veto-proof majority. However, the more time goes by and the more paychecks missed, the higher the pressure is going to become on Congress to resolve the mess with or without Trump. The big question now is whether that pressure will cause Republicans to change their stance, or Democrats. Even if the answer is eventually a Republican shift, it will likely take a while for them to get to the point of openly defying their president.

The other way the impasse could end seems rather drastic, but it may turn out to be the fastest way to sidetrack the issue. Trump has been flirting with declaring the border situation a national emergency, which would give him the authority to order the military to build the wall. If this is the route he takes, it would mean he would likely end his resistance to passing the budget bills necessary to open the government again, so the hostage-taking would end and federal workers could get paid.

While this would indeed solve the shutdown problem, it would open up a whole other can of worms, because Trump's national emergency declaration would immediately be challenged in court. This could mean a constitutional crisis. Would the courts even want to intervene in such a political fight? What would Congress do? If the courts even temporarily block Trump from starting wall construction, would he just ignore their order and go ahead and tell the military to start building anyway? Would the military consider such an order legitimate or not? As you can see, the Constitution would be tested in ways it hasn't been for decades (if not centuries).

Because it is almost impossible to predict what Donald Trump will do next, it's hard to see how this is all going to end. It is Richard Nixon's "Madman Theory" come to life in a horrifyingly real sense. Trump's position really makes no sense, because he's had two full years with Republicans in control of Congress and he couldn't get his wall money then, so why does he think he can now with the Democrats in a much stronger position? Democrats are in no mood to give in to Trump, which is entirely reasonable since they just won an election that Trump specifically made all about immigration. Why should they cave, when it is so obviously a losing issue for Republicans?

The truly dangerous thing is how much fun Trump seems to be having in the meantime. He's on television non-stop, he is driving the news cycle each and every day, and therefore Nancy Pelosi can't get any traction for the Democratic agenda she's been introducing in the House (she just filed a bill to mandate universal background checks for gun purchases, but this and all the other issues House Democrats are pushing are taking a back seat to the shutdown fight). As far as Trump is concerned, that's a win-win situation for him. As long as he keeps Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh happy, Trump is happy with how he's being presented in the right-wing media.

For now, though, there seems to be no end in sight. Getting a veto-proof majority behind the budget bills in Congress will likely take a whole lot of polls showing Republicans being hurt politically, which probably means a few more weeks of inaction. And then there's the State Of The Union to get through, when neither side is going to want to give the other a victory. What it all means is that we could be in for a very long shutdown, because at this point it doesn't look like there's any light at the end of the tunnel yet.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant