Good Wednesday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing, sponsored by Chevron.

And I'm Anna Palmer. Welcome to Trump's Fun House Me Review of Washington. He's blasting away at two critical Senate Republican votes.

He's in a quiet war with a powerful Senate majority leader and is taking a staunch and some would say irreversible position on keeping the government open, threatening a shutdown one month before funding runs dry.

Trump has certainly changed the contours of the presidency.

He doesn't conform to political norms.

He brushes off drama in his ranks and rankles players on the world stage.

Back at home, Trump seems to have a contorted view of a few fundamental political realities.

He's operating with an extraordinarily

thin majority in the Senate, seems intent on poking key senators in the eye like Jeff Flake and

John McCain, Dean Heller, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and Susan Collins of Maine.

He's in a prolonged battle with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he could never push out,

he can't even weaken, and whose support he needs to get anything done.

He's threatening a government shutdown over a border wall he will likely not be able to build.

And he's been unrelenting in his criticism of Democrats and disinterested of doing

anything to bring them into the fold.

Anyone who spent more than a minute observing or participating in our legislative politics would describe Trump's moves as some combination of self-defeating, illogical, and

misguided. That's not to say the White House is doing nothing right. Top Trump aides are still

in touch with Hill leadership aides to ensure the government doesn't jump off the rails. There

still remains a glimmer of hope for some kind of tax reform effort to get off

the ground, but the president's bizarre view of governing is not helping. Alex Eisenstadt was in Phoenix for

us covering Trump's speech where the president put the Republican Party on notice. He implicitly intact

two GOP senators in their home state, threatened to shut down the government over that border wall,

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