Hey everyone, this is Scott.

Listen, after we taped this week, Paul Ryan made an announcement in front of the White House

after speaking with President Donald Trump that the deal to keep the government open has fallen apart.

But all the stuff we talked about on this week's show is still operative, how Trump is an agent of chaos in the Republican Party and also how he's completely taken the Republican Party over, thus creating chaos within it.

So we've got a great discussion for you.

We're going to see what happens with this government funding situation, but enjoy the show.

Hello listeners, this is Politico's nerdcast. Welcome to another episode. I'm your host Scott Land.

This week on the show, we're going to talk about whether Donald Trump has

ghosted Republican Party leadership in Congress when it came to the budget

deal. He said he was psyched for a shutdown and then he kind of backed away from the fight this week, and now he seems to be a little conflicted about whether or not he might want to fight all over again.

So we're going to talk about that in the context of Trump's near total takeover of the

Republican Party and what it not only means for Republican congressional leaders

in situations like this but also what it is meaning for his 2020 re-election

campaign as that gets going.

Plus we are going to check in on an exotic species of Democrat,

the conservative kind, ahead of some races coming in 2019.

Yes, there are more elections next year before we even get to the presidential

races, some really interesting gubernatorial campaigns that we are going to jump into.

Stick around for the end of the show. We've got a first of its kind contribution from a

super fan in the credits and a brief reminder before we get started that we are

taping this a little bit before noon on Thursday, December 20th so it's all up to date as of them.

All right, let's get started.

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