Day four of the shutdown begins with an unscheduled motorcade to the golf course.

It is Saturday. The federal government is closed. The shutdown is in day four. The President’s public schedule for Saturday, October 4, lists nothing.

At 9:57 a.m., the motorcade rolls. The destination is Trump National Golf Club. The press pool, the small group of reporters whose job it is to keep an eye on the President at all times, is parked in vans at the bottom of the South Lawn, behind a line of sight that does not include the South Portico. They cannot see him board. He arrives at the club. They cannot see him exit the vehicle. The pool report goes out: motorcade left, motorcade arrived, no visual.

Buddy. That is the move. That is the trick. You do not cancel the round. You just rearrange the cameras so that the round does not officially happen.

I have run a casino floor. The pit boss does not get to technically not be on the floor. If the pit boss is in the building, there is camera coverage. The whole point of the casino is that there is camera coverage on every man who handles the money. The President of the United States, on the fourth day of a shutdown that has 900,000 federal workers sitting at home wondering whether they are going to make a mortgage payment, is on the back nine. And the official record on it, for a few hours, is no comment.

The Sunday shows by Monday morning will be filled with people asking why the President will not negotiate with the Senate. The President will be back at the White House, and the press shop will tell you he was working all weekend. Maybe he was. The pool report does not say one way or the other. The pool report just says the van went up the driveway, the van came down the driveway, and in between, a tee time happened that the agenda swore was not on the books.

Nine hundred thousand people are home without a paycheck. The driving range was open.

I’m arguing with the television.