Michael Barbaro

And let's talk about the ways in which it is a weird shutdown, Tyler, starting with you.

Right.

In a shutdown.

I mean, clearly, people have weaponized perhaps Trump, especially government in the past, but you're saying weaponizing a shutdown.

Mm-hmm.

And what's the most vivid example of that?

Right.

And those are just message weaponizations, right, Tony?

There's actually funding and job cut weaponizations as well.

How can an agency be Democratic under a Republican president?

Katie, I want to talk about another very weird element of this shutdown, which is the manner in which, even as the president has weaponized it and used it to wield partisan warfare, he's simultaneously using

immunized many corners of the government and the public from the traditional consequences of a shutdown.

Tony, can the president just move money around like that in a shutdown, like take money from pot X to pay people Y?

Right.

And Katie, is it right to think that very few people have any incentive to sue the president to stop him from paying troops with money, even if the origin of that money violates the spirit of the law?

Katie, where else has the president been able to immunize the normal pain points of a shutdown?

Right.

He took away the president the urgency of ending the shutdown kind of on all sides.

Well, I wonder if we can linger for a second on the federal workers who are not being paid like the troops are, who is not getting paid, who is being fired, and who is not getting their normal funding in a way that is genuinely impacting them.

Meaning they're permanently unpaid for this work.