Are they controlling the message, though?

So far they have been. They have used the bully pulpit of the White House, the president himself. You know, I was told by White House advisors yesterday that a clue as to how they're feeling about things, they feel like they're winning the messaging argument, is the fact that J.D. Vance showed up in the White House briefing room yesterday. The first time he's done that, sort of a swaggering appearance suggesting Democrats, Democrats, Democrats are the ones to blame. He didn't stick to the

facts all the time in that appearance, but that's the messaging. And Democrats are still trying to,

they're on their back heels, the White House feels. Donald Trump is governing like the dictator of

America, right? He promised to be a dictator on day one, his words.

He's compared himself to America's king, even to the Pope.

The goal of the second term, quite clearly, is not hiding this,

is to assert complete control over every aspect of the federal government.

He wants to directly control who gets fired

and hired across the entire government and even civil society, from Fed directors to talk

show hosts. He wants to directly control who gets indicted, most recently with the ridiculous

prosecution of James Comey. He says right now the position of the Trump administration,

Donald Trump, is that he, by himself unilaterally, can raise taxes on the American people by

a trillion dollars entirely by executive fiat, just by being like, yeah, yeah, taxes up.

He says he can rescind or reallocate any congressional appropriate funds basically

in any time entirely by executive fiat. Oh, there's a bill to spend stuff there? No, we're not

going to do it. Okay. But think about that. But now it's the Democrats who are in the driver's seat

when it comes to shutting down the government. That is a pretty tough sell, especially considering Trump

is using the shutdown to, drum roll, govern like a king. In the first Trump term term,

you know, I think Donald Trump's been unstable and to my as right, unhinged for a long time.

But in the first Trump term, there were people who,

and we heard reports of this, people who kind of made a pact to say,

...