Donald Trump's shutdown gambit gets fully exposed, and I have three interviews.

I interview Wes Moore, Dan Pfeiffer, and Fox's Jessica Tarlov.

I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

We've got full mask off on Trump and Republicans.

So the quick summary is this.

Government shuts down because the Republicans want to cut funding for Affordable Care Act subsidies. Democrats want it restored. Without that funding, health care costs are going to double, triple, quadruple, or more. And this is an 80-20 issue. Eight in 10 Americans want these subsidies restored so that health care does not become more expensive. Makes sense.

Republicans don't want to restore it, though, because making health care too expensive is literally the goal. They have been trying to hobble the ACA for 15 years, but it's too popular,

so they have to make it less popular by making it too expensive. Hence the standoff.

But an added consequence of the shutdown is that funding for

food stamps or the SNAP program doesn't get allocated, which means that 42 million Americans

won't be able to eat. And suddenly, Republicans see a glimmer of hope in that, because they

can use the urgency of getting the government reopened immediately without an ACA extension to fund

snap. So that's what they did. Republicans said, look, we the Republicans want to feed Americans,

but we can't do it until the government is open and we have access to that funding. So you better

just reopen it right away because we don't have time to spare. But there was a small problem. There is a contingency

fund and that is in place so that in the event that there's no funding for SNAP, people still get

fed. And this is exactly that scenario we find ourselves in. But Republicans don't want to use

that contingency fund because remember, they want starving Americans to serve as leverage to reopen

the government immediately

without health care. So they say, we can't use the contingency fund. It's illegal.

And of course, we all know how deferential the MAGA GOP is to the law. And so once there's

even the utterance of dipping into that contingency fund being illegal, well, you know that

...