It's both not pretend, and full of political considerations. Republicans think they can blame the Democrats, when Republicans are in charge of the executive and legislative branches, and they spent Obama's presidency obstructing everything. Democrats will be seen as finally growing a spine, and anyway, Trump's next scandal will dominate the news cycle instead.
Well, given that it's a shutdown with one party in charge, the definitions of terms like "pretend" and "smoke and mirrors" start to become important.
You'd have to ask the architect of the shutdown (Trump.) He had a deal before he pulled his "shithole" act.
Considering there is no reality in the acknowledged politics of the Republican Party at the moment, and this is that Party's party, smoke and mirrors seems a reasonable take. Partial government shutdown is of course an ongoing project of said Party, not a one time event, so there's a sense in which this is pretense: but it's going to be fairly expensive and troublesome as well as marked progress in demolition - not entirely symbolic.
I read that they shut down the statue of liberty.. Perhaps they should stick her in a crate and send her back to France...she is definitely not deserving of the Trump administration...