Transcript
Alison Gill (0:00)
What I'm about to tell you is something that no one is talking about, at least not yet, but everyone will be probably very soon as this Trump and Republican manufactured government shutdown continues. And if you know me, you know I bring receipts. This is a really important episode of the Breakdown, so I'm very glad you're here. Thanks for joining me. Aside from the shutdown bombshell I'm going to tell you about, I'm going to cover the mobilization of military against American cities, more atrocities from ICE as they return violent agents to duty, and how Stephen Miller is pulling all the strings. I'm Alison Gill, and this is the Breakdown. All right, first of all, thanks to everyone who watched our MSW Media Midas touch Collab of Andrew McCabe's side of the story in the Comey Indictment from the unjustified podcast. Over 750,000 of you listened to that show here on Midas, and we're so heartened that so many of you are committed to the truth. So thank you. All right, let's talk about the key thing you need to know about the Trump and Republican government shutdown. If you didn't already know, let me be the first to tell you. Republicans can end the shutdown anytime and they can do it without a single Democrat. Republicans are doing their best to pin this on Democrats because they know how much pain the shutdown is going to cause. They know how unpopular it is, and not just with federal workers, but Americans writ large. Of course, things like your student loan bills are going to keep coming in the mail after Republicans sued to stop Biden from forgiving your student debt. Oil drilling is going to go on, of course. Coal plants, Trump's tariffs, the construction of the Let Them Eat Cake Ballroom is also going to move forward unabated. But all the Democratic programs that the billionaires have been trying to get rid of since forever so they can steal our money to give themselves tax breaks. All that's going to go away and they love it. SNAP benefits, wic, our Affordable Care act tax credits are going to expire at the end of the year. Of course, the release of the Epstein files is on ice. Now the courts are going to be funded through October 17th.ish. But past that, all those civil cases against the Trump administration will be on pause. Except for emergency filings. ICE is going to keep working. And the message from Trump is that this is all the fault of the Democrats. I've been sent dozens of emails received by federal workers who have been sent language about their furloughs and their pay being taken away, saying that it's because of Democrats. Here's just a tiny sample of the dozens of ones that I've received. Here's one from the Small Business Administration saying Senate Democrats voted to block a clean funding bill. Here's one from the Department of Homeland Security. See that? Senate Democrats are blocking its passage. The Department of the Interior told its employees that Democrats are blocking the continuing resolution. The National Archives sent out an email saying Democrats are blocking this resolution. So is the Social Security Administration and the Department of Commerce. And here's an email I got from the Department of Veterans affairs because I'm a veteran. I'm no longer a federal government employee, but I'm a veteran. And it says, as you may be aware, funding for some government agencies, including portions of the Department of Veterans affairs, expired at midnight this morning. Whatever midnight this morning means. President Trump opposes a lapse in appropriations. Does he? Does he? And on September 19, the House of Representatives passed, with the Trump administration's support, a clean continuing resolution to fund the government through November 21st. Unfortunately, tax Democrats are blocking this continuing resolution in the US Senate due to unrelated policy demands. Now, that email also went out to all recipients of veterans benefits. So it's not just federal workers getting this propaganda in their inbox. It's tens of millions of veterans and veterans dependents. And get this agencies sent out recommended out of office reply language for furloughed employees blaming the Democrats. And NBC reported that five furloughed employees put up a nonpartisan out of office message, only to see they were changed without their permission to partisan messages that blame Democrats. So the Republicans know this is wildly unpopular. But what you might not know is that they can end this shutdown right now, anytime, with zero Democratic votes. I recently covered a story on the Daily Beans podcast that Senate Republicans changed the rules just about three weeks ago so they could push through 48 Trump nominees at once. The New York Times reported that Republicans bulldozed past Senate precedents and changed the rules to break a Democratic blockade of President Trump's nominees. The change, pushed through along party lines, lowered the existing 60 vote threshold for considering a group of presidential nominees to a simple majority. Now, I spoke to a couple of congressional staffers who are experts on the nuclear option to find out if the same is true for a continuing resolution. And they confirmed it is. Republicans in the Senate can pretty much change the rules however they want and whenever they want with just 51 votes. They can even write something as narrow as literally nuking the filibuster for just the this one bill by creating a resolution that's a rule and going nuclear on just that one rule. So they don't even create a broader precedent. Well, maybe Republicans just forgot that they can change the rules whenever they want. I mean, to be fair, this happened three weeks ago. Maybe they can't hold that reality in their heads for three weeks. But look at this tweet. This tweet that went out from Andrew Desiderio after one of the failed votes to fund the government. It says, John Thune has scheduled votes for this weekend on Friday and Saturday. And those government funding bills will have a 60 vote threshold. But it says, look, they'll also be voting on a package of 100 plus Trump nominees, which they can now do with a simple majority because Republicans just changed the rules. So they know, they know they can stop this shutdown anytime they want, but they won't because they want the shutdown. And we didn't have to wait too long for Trump to openly admit it either.
