he s a very sensitive guy, but he s basically saying, i m with you on your policy issues. domestic domestically. or the points he talks about in the op-ed. so, you know, that s the reason a lot of democrats are sort of rolling their eyes about this. but he gets credit, maybe his team gets credit for effectively creating some buzz for him as he gets sworn in tomorrow. what do you think? republicans are republicans who don t like what he did, as well. yeah. look, i don t think there s much news here. i mean, the one piece that you mentioned, that he isn t endorsing the president for 2020 is maybe a little bit of news. but, you know, mitt romney, in his interview laid out very conventional republican points of view on a whole variety of issues. some of which the president has departed from, particularly on foreign policy. so, i mean, i actually thought it was a fairly unremarkable i mean, not in a bad way unremarkable interview in the sense that mitt romney is going
democrats feel they have an extremely strong hand to play right now. it s a unifying issue coming into this majority. and, again, what we saw today, lamar alexander, republican senator, he put forward three options that could move past this shutdown impasse. none of those involved what the president is asking for, $5.6 billion. so i think among republicans who are not necessarily in the president s base and his core constituency, certainly an acknowledgment that the $5 billion of wall funding or perhaps even less than that is just not possible. and sung minn, almost a million americans are either furloughed so not being paid or working without pay. many government workers who don t make all that much money and some do live paycheck to paycheck. and it s unclear when and if and how this is going to end. take a listen to president trump when asked how long the shutdown might continue. how long are you willing to keep the government shut down?
both the defense secretary, jim mattis, and special envoy to defeat isis, brett mcgurk. why is he making a mistake? well, the reason that we re in involved is to make the world safer, which is good for the world and good for us. because we trade with places throughout the world. we sell products throughout the world. people come and go into our various countries, and we share not only culture, but education, technology, innovation. and so having a stable world where we can conduct trade is a very good thing for us and for the world. and so we re in syria with a very small footprint, about 2,000 people to help our allies there, the kurds. and in some respects, to provide some stability to that region so that assad or erdogan or the russians or the you know, the iranians don t rush in and slaughter people. slaughter our allies. so so pulling out on a precipitous basis without interacting with them and coordinating this with them and getting the input, for instance,