Welcome to Words Matter. I'm Elise Jordan along with Steve Schmidt. Our goal is to promote objective reality.

As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts. Words have power, and words have consequences.

Steve, we are chatting today as the longest government shutdown in American history continues.

And Donald Trump seems as unconcerned as ever about the real life consequences of this government shutdown.

If you remember, no one thought a shutdown was going to happen, and then right before Christmas, Donald Trump had to create a self-inflicted crisis.

It's just a moment, at least, that speaks so profoundly to the brokenness of our politics, our political system. It has ceased to work.

I mean, how many times I've actually lost count? Has there been a shutdown in recent years over, over basically nothing?

And this one included, Trump has backed himself into a corner here. He went out and celebrated the fact how glad he would be to shut down the government.

And here we are, and we see real, real effects starting to accrue to the economy, real costs.

We see government workers who are unpaid, doing their duty, doing their service from TSA agents.

The State Department personnel, as you pointed out earlier, endangering as posts, most outrageously, first time in the history of the country, members of the armed forces on active duty have gone without pay.

The United States Coast Guard is not being paid.

You have soldiers who have now been deployed to the border. The deployment has been extended for a year. So you have that disaster going on, that other element of the self-inflicted crisis.

And at this point, I honestly do not see an exit ramp for Donald Trump where he can save any face at all. And I would certainly not predict what he's going to do because he seems so volatile and really just flying by the seat of his pants and not approaching this with any rationality whatsoever.

He doesn't seem to quite frankly understand the human consequences, not only that it's you men and women at the State Department who are getting their pay, but also the contractors at the State Department, the janitors who keep the building running, who haven't gotten paid.

And how a month without a paycheck in America, the staff that you use frequently talking about how most Americans do not have $400 in savings, that this is a real problem.

And Donald Trump is painting himself into this corner of appearing like the Emperor with no clothes and like he is just so absolutely and completely disconnected from the concerns of real Americans. And he's starting to make their lives harder.

And having everyone experience the pain of his tantrum.

It's the ultimate example of the big guy screwing the little guy and this is just consistent with Trump's behavior all through his life when he stiff the contractors and the casinos or the job sites.

He's a con man, he's a grifter, and he's always stuck it to the little guy. And so you have government workers, hard working people, you know, they get up every day.

They have children that they have dreams for that have piano lessons or maybe they're saving for a summer vacation or for a college education or they're struggling to keep their kids in private school.

People trying to fulfill the American dream of get up work hard, honorably do the right thing play by the rules and they're and they're utterly getting screwed here by a totally broken system and a president who revels in the cruelty and he's utterly indifferent to the suffering.

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