Congress, the Republican Congress, passed a budget bill in December before the Democrats took control. Trump vetoed it. Let's not pretend this shut down was completely in Trump's hands from the beginning.
Just to clarify, Trump didn't veto it - he THREATENED to veto it (despite its unanimous passage through the Senate), which led to the still-GOP-controlled House to tack on the $5.7 billion for the wall despite the Senate Democrats stating that they absolutely, positively would not vote for a funding CR that contained money for Trump's wall. The bill never went through reconciliation since there was zero chance of the Senate approving the House version of the bill, and the GOP wasn't willing to face down Trump and use congress's veto override ability.
Once the shutdown was in effect, McConnell spent over a month blocking any bill that didn't have Trump's permission. When he finally allowed votes on two competing bills, that wasn't an attempt to get either passed - that was McConnell showing the White House that they were beginning to hemorrage GOP votes on the matter.
Trump caused the shutdown, but McConnell and the rest of the Republicans enabled it.
Trump also continues to state that he will use executive order to declare it as an emergency and fund the wall. He could have done this throughout the entire shut down to end the problem. Why hasn't he?
Probably because his lawyers and experienced political people are telling him it won't fly. Even McConnell understands that creating a precedent where POTUS is allowed to bypass Congress any time he wants is dangerous erosion of Congressional authority and a potential constitutional crisis, and he has too much invested in being the actual power in government to allow that to happen. On top of that, it's going to be awfully hard to convince even right-wing judges that there is an actual emergency when Trump keeps waiting and waiting to declare his state of emergency.
Trump claims that the new trade deal will fund the wall. Why not put his money where his mouth is? Wait for the money to come in and use it for the wall instead of forcing American tax payers to pay for something that was promises Mexico would pay for? Does he not really believe it?
Almost certainly not. That's just another case of him saying whatever comes to mind to placate the people who believe everything he says. It's not even remotely an attempt to convince moderate voters.
Both sides are playing political games to get the other to cave at the expense of American workers. Far left and far right fans keep purposely dodging these points. Why aren't more people actually calling them both out for their ridiculousness?
I would disagree with that paragraph. Pelosi and the Democrats said from the start that they would under no circumstances fund Trump's wall as his requirement to allow the government to function. Their position never waved on that from well BEFORE this thing ever blew up, and in the end, they got almost precisely what they wanted - the continuing resolution that had been unanimously passed by the Senate back in December. The only thing they probably weren't happy about was that it's only a 3 week resolution, but even that short duration was something the Democrats put on the table early on.
The only real politicizing is the blame game. The Democrats hold Trump personally responsible and getting the majority of the blame and the GOP getting the rest for meekly giving in to his extortionate demands, while the GOP is busy painting the entire thing (as seen on their official Twitter account) as entirely the fault of Democrats not stepping aside and letting Trump and the GOP do whatever they want.
The important part was what the public thinks, and overall, recent pools place blame 60% on Trump, 30% on Democrats, and 10% to the GOP as a whole, and this is including the partisan percentages, where at one point 90% of GOP voters blamed the Democrats for not doing what Trump said, rather than Trump for his veto promise or the GOP members of Congress for not stepping up and keeping government open over his veto threat. That means that the deciding group - the moderates and unaffiliated - overwhelmingly blamed Trump as well, and that's what's going to be remembered.