It's Wednesday, October 1st, 2025 from Peachfish Productions.

It's the gist I'm Mike Pesca.

And a government shutdown is a lot of things, a line in the sand, taking a stance, an opportunity

for executive overreach.

But it's also, in some small part, a natural experiment.

We do get to, should we wish to, go back and assess the logic of not shutting down the

government last time. Now, if you remember back then, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

argued that if you give Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk permission to destroy vital government

services, they will. He was very, very worried about the havoc the Trump administration,

with the then assistance of Elon Musk, could bring about. Now, the experts look at the situation, and they say, indeed, still,

Trump could use executive power to reshape federal agencies to force layoffs. In fact,

this is what Trump has announced he wants to do. We can do things during the shutdown that are

irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them,

like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they

like. But Chuck Schumer has made another calculation. Remember again, back then, he said,

quote, there is nobody in the world, nobody who wants to shut the government down more than Donald Trump and more than

Elon Musk. I guess he found a couple of months later, wait, there is one person. It's me,

Chuck Schumer. Why? What changed? Circumstance. Musk is no longer there. He would say that the

calculus has changed because it is clear that Trump is going to try

to do this anyway. Would he try to do it with as much chance of success? I don't know. That remains to

be seen. It does seem, even allowing for the fact that the facts on the ground are slightly

different, it does seem that this worry of the last time

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