Here it is.

From deep inside your audio device of choice.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems to have gone down the memory hole already.

Things move so fast these days. I don't...

It was Epstein out of the news.

But there was a government shutdown.

Remember that?

Ask your dad.

A government shutdown that ended this week and the, early this week.

And the consensus judgment in the media was that the Democrats lost that fight because they didn't get what they were supposedly campaigning for in the fight, which was an extension of Medicare subsidies.

I have a kind of a theory about all that, which comes from having watched,

yes, I'm old enough to have watched Richard Nixon dealing with,

particularly the North Vietnamese during that beautiful war, that big beautiful war.

And that's where I learned about a thing called the Madman theory, which his policy was

following.

The Madman theory is simple. Two drivers heading towards

each other about to crash head on. Neither wants to swerve. Neither wants to chicken out.

But one of them as a madman takes his steering wheel and throws it out the window.

And the other driver, unless he wants to die, swerves.

And that pattern became obvious in the shutdown debate because the Democrats were noting and

kind of gloating about the pain that the shutdown was inflicting on constituents, theirs and

others. But they somehow were borderline rational enough to know that wasn't a good thing.

...