WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump slammed his hand on a table and stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders today after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said she would not fund a wall along the southern border, dramatically escalating the confrontation over the government shutdown.

Stunned Democrats emerged from the White House meeting declaring that Trump had thrown a “temper tantrum.” The president’s allies accused Democrats of refusing to negotiate. Then he tweeted that the meeting was “a total waste of time.”

The afternoon altercation came after Trump appeared to rally nervous Senate Republicans around his strategy to keep parts of the government closed until Democrats accede to his demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall.

Emerging from the lunchtime meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump declared that Republicans were “totally unified” even if he faced some questions about “strategy.” Largely, senators signaled that they agreed.

“There was no discussion about anything other than solidarity,” Trump said.

The president’s defiance, and his apparent success at lining up his restive party behind him — at least for now — all but ensures that the impasse will continue into the foreseeable future. Democrats reiterated their own entrenched position Wednesday, insisting the president end the shutdown that has affected 800,000 federal workers and rippled through the economy before settling the border dispute.

Moderate Republicans who entered the room confident that senators were coalescing around the idea that the government should be reopened while the border security debate continues left disappointed, convinced that for now, the party would follow Trump perilously further into a shutdown with an uncertain end.

A handful of them, including Cory Gardner of Colorado, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and James Lankford of Oklahoma, pressed Trump on the mounting impact on federal workers and related industries in their states. His response was consistent.

“I was able to raise the issues that I have with using a shutdown,” Murkowski said. “He listened and urged that we all stick together.”

For now, at least, the president’s forceful response in the meeting and on television has papered over cracks that threatened to upend his negotiating position.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who chairs the appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, said before the lunch meeting that she could potentially support reopening the government as talks continued on border security.

“I mean, I think I could live with that,” Capito said. She said she expected pressure from federal employees and voters in her state would only mount the longer the impasse drags on. “I’ve expressed more than a few times the frustrations with a government shutdown and how useless it is, so that pressure’s going to build,” she said.

But she apparently did not speak forcefully in the private lunch with the president.

Nor did Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who lamented Wednesday morning that government shutdowns “never work” and turn federal workers into “pawns.” Though Senate Republicans had not reached a point of direct intervention yet, he said, “we’re getting pretty close.”

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