Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast.

I'm your host Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome to the show, the anchor of CNN News Night.

She's the author of a new book, A Dream Deferred Jesse Jackson,

and the Fight for Black Political Power. It's Abby Phillip. What's happening?

Hey, Tim. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on. Good to see you. Congrats on the book.

We've come a long way since you were an embed or whatever. And I was the flack for the last

place candidate in the Republican primary in 2012, John Huntsman.

I was trying to remember how we had met, but it had something to do with that.

I have an image in my head of a sad, half-empty town hall somewhere in New Hampshire

where I was trying to convince you things were going well.

I think, you know, that's, I can't remember the

details. I knew then that you had a really bright future, Tim. So that was not, that was not the end.

Neither of us. I want to talk about the book, obviously, and I've been kind of ruminating myself on the

value of doing debate shows and stuff.

So I want to talk to you about your show.

But first, if we can do a little news, you're covering the shutdown every night, hearing arguments from both sides.

It's a weird shutdown.

It's hard to see an off ramp.

Trump is in Asia right now, the president.

The GOP Congress hasn't been in session for like

five weeks, basically. What's your sense of who's winning the argument? If there's an off ramp,

...