Absolutely as painless as possible. Make the govt seem absolutely unnecessary.
government does not own the national parks... the people do... so if the government cannot man the booths to collect money from visitors, then it is free... the government cannot keep people out, just because they are not there.
That lead photo EXACTLY shows the problem: the prior “shutdown” was a costly _absconding_ to wit _theft_ (maybe someone can find me a better phrase). The monuments, parks, etc are _PUBLIC_ property - yet the administration spent taxpayer money to actively (and sometimes violently) drive taxpayers out of PUBLIC property. Locking an office door at the end of the day is a normal action; dragging out expensive fencing, and paying police to repel people, to keep the public out of public property is NOT normal and is tantamount to theft.
Trump can make the shutdown as “painless as possible” by locking up as they _normally_ would at the end of any day, or against any reasonable expectation of theft, and otherwise leave open-to-the-public properties open to the public. As such, the Left may discover that the populace at large actually LIKES using “public property” without harassment, and insofar as it may need caring for may actually do so voluntarily (cutting grass at monuments, enforcing polite order in campgrounds, etc).
Oh, BTW: any “shutdown” furloughs should absolutely not involve a wink-and-nod “you’ll get back pay upon return.” The whole point is that the money isn’t there.
Trump should order the Army Corp Of Engineers to build that wall.
It would be one heck of a solid wall.
The less visible a government shutdown is, the more people will ask “why are we spending so much on it in the first place”?
In any situation, a good general rule is that Trump should do the opposite of what Obama did.