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Trump Hosts a Rose Garden Club Lunch

October 21, 2025 · The White House · 0:44:33

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump hosted Senate Republicans for a Rose Garden Club lunch at the White House on October 21, 2025, opening with a tour of the renovated Rose Garden — the grass replaced with stone matching the White House itself, so that, as he put it, press conferences no longer leave attendees sinking “about five inches into the mud.” He pointed out the Presidential Walk of Fame along the colonnade and the marble work inside, which he said he paid for personally.

He thanked the Senate Republican leadership team by name — Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso, Conference Chair Tom Cotton, Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, Vice Chair James Lankford, and NRSC Chair Tim Scott — and noted the conference was nearly complete: “We have everybody but one person here.” With the shutdown in its fourth week, the President called it “the Schumer shutdown or the Democrat shutdown,” and Senator Thune told the gathering: “This is the fourth week of the Democrat shutdown, but we are all here today because your Republican team in the Senate is unified. This is now the longest full shutdown in history.”

Why it matters

The lunch is the White House’s show of Senate Republican unity at the midpoint of the shutdown fight — the full leadership team hosted on the President’s renovated Rose Garden, recorded on the Elections & Governance hub.

Scoreboard watch

The unity display and the “longest full shutdown in history” framing, as stated by Senator Thune at the lunch, are recorded here against the shutdown’s eventual resolution.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Hosts a Rose Garden Club Lunch,” The White House, October 21, 2025 (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the President and by Senator Thune at the lunch.