Catie Edmondson

Well, that's right.

And I think the biggest example, Michael, is that he has taken a number of actions to ensure that U.S.

military personnel, that the troops continue to get paid despite the fact that Congress has not passed any spending bill to ensure that they would be able to get their paychecks as normally scheduled.

Where did he find that money?

Well, it's a great question, Michael.

We're still trying to figure that out exactly ourselves.

They initially told us the administration initially indicated that there were some unspent funds over at the military meant for research and development, probably of weaponry.

Again, we don't, I think, exactly know.

Yeah, I can't think of anyone who would want to take up that particular fight.

And we saw that reflected up on Capitol Hill, where you actually had Democratic leaders, including Hakeem Jeffries of New York, say that he was happy to see the troops continue to get paid.

Well, I do just want to return sort of quickly back to the idea of keeping the troops paid.

I think, Michael, a lot of people thought that this first deadline in which the troops were going to miss their regularly scheduled paycheck, they thought that that was going to cause Democrats to buckle.

And to cave and to say, all right, you know, we view ourselves as the responsible governing party.

And so we can't let this happen, right?

We will vote for this Republican stopgap bill to reopen the government.

And in deciding essentially that he wanted to insulate himself from the blame of the troops not getting paid, President Trump also sort of extended that insulation, I would say, to Democrats, right, who now will not be getting calls from angry troops, wives of troops, right, saying, where's our paycheck?

Yeah, that's right.

That was a big one.

Now, obviously, there are a number of other federal employees outside of DOD who are missing those paychecks.

Right.