Hey everyone listen to the podcast. This is Ari Melbur, and I want to play for you something we worked hard on that might be relevant for a long time.

This is, we hope, a definitive evidence-based explanation of why it is ridiculous that Donald Trump shut down the government to break his own promise over the wall.

He always promised Mexico would pay for it.

Without further ado, here you go.

Congress and the president went back to work today, while much of the federal government remains closed for this shutdown.

This is having a very real impact.

800,000 Americans missing their paychecks this week.

Federal offices that provide food for the hungry are now closed.

Key disaster assistance programs put on hold,

leaving 250,000 Americans who fled those fires and Thousand Oaks of Malibu, California,

now without help.

And as the governor in shutdown grinds on,

the stock market has seen the worst drops in a decade. This shutdown is a drag on the economy.

It's hurting hundreds of thousands of Americans. And we've seen these kind of effects in previous

shutdowns, to be sure. But this Trump shutdown is actually different than every

other shutdown recorded in the modern era when presidents drew lines in each of those years to defend

their positions on taxes or health care or spending. But this is the first time a president

has shut down the government not to defend a pledge

but to break

a pledge

just to stop there and consider

how bizarre this is tomorrow

...