Alex Wagner

And at the same time, I think it was the only strategy that could have been pursued.

You know, I just think...

I have a real aversion to business as usual because nothing here is normal.

And it could blow up in everyone's face.

But I do think you have to try and do something bold and different, something that sort of resets the conversation.

You know, it's risky.

I have no idea what Russvote is going to be able to do.

I think that you make a really important and astute point about how politically this could be costly on just a policy level and then a political level.

And you have to hold on to that in a moment like this.

We're just in terra incognito.

So like, yeah, I mean, maybe Chuck Schumer was right.

But the last time Chuck Schumer saved Republican asses, that didn't go over so well either.

And it's like we can't keep like Democrats can't keep doing the same thing over and over again because the administration is acting with impunity.

And this is the first time there's a little bit of soft shoe back and forth with Democrats over an issue that really matters.

They'll go bankrupt because of chemotherapy, as AOC explains to us.

This is very real.

And I will say, as someone that spent a lot of time with furloughed federal workers in the last prolonged government shutdown, people who had been working for the federal government for decades, who were in line...

at soup kitchens to get canned food because they could no longer afford their groceries.

There is a group of people who are doing the hard work of government who are going to get real fucked for every day this goes on.

And those lives are real.