Welcome to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine and today we're at the White House with the president's press secretary, Carolyn Levitt.

Carolyn Levitt, thank you so much for joining Podforce One.

Thank you for having me, Miranda. It's long overdue. I'm glad to be here.

We're so thrilled to be here and of, the shutdown's over now. So that must

be a relief for everybody here in D.C. It definitely is. 43 days, the shutdown dragged on because of the

Democrats and Republicans and the president stayed unified and saying we want to reopen the government

and we're not going to be held hostage to negotiate such a serious

issue as healthcare overnight. This is a serious discussion that needs to take place after the

government reopens. That's obviously a common sense position. And that's why ultimately President

Trump won. So we had a late night Oval Office signing ceremony. He signed the bill of 1030 p.m.

And now the government is back open. We're getting

our staff back to work and we're going to get people paid very soon. And what's the mood? Is it

sort of euphoric or a bit exhausted? I think a little bit of both. I think there's a level of

elation in the West Wing and people are of course tired. And we're really looking forward now to

getting back to business and to not having

to talk about shutdown, but to talk about the things the president is doing, affordability,

continuing to work on the border. More trade deals are coming. He's signing a EO on foster care

with the first lady this week, which is really exciting. So now we can focus on the day to day and

all the president is accomplishing. So now we can focus on the day to day and all the president is

accomplishing. And the Democrats got nothing out of this longest shutdown in history,

except they really did because I guess their plan was to blow up the economic figures.

Your next ones will probably show a hit.

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