Politico on Monday ran a column by one of their Capitol Hill reporters, Rachel Bade, headlined “The Shutdown Fight That Could Play Right Into Trump’s Hands: There isn’t one neat trick to defeating Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s war on the federal government,” warning that Democrats might live to regret trying to use spending bills as leverage to get the convicted felon and his ketamine-brained boss to stop with the bullshit and lawlessness that have paralyzed wide swaths of the government.

“Republicans, after all, will need Democratic votes to keep the government open, given the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and House conservatives’ aversion to supporting any funding bill. Why not play a little hardball, the thinking goes, and try to get Trump and Musk to back off? But having covered more than a few of these shutdown fights, I can say confidently that this isn’t the leverage point Democrats and much of Washington seem to think it is. Not only is this a battle Democrats probably can’t win, it’s one that could play right into Trump and Musk’s hands,” Bade writes before going to into the vagaries of how there’s a lot more leeway for the executive branch to exempt certain departments and agencies from the effects of a shutdown than most people understand. Which means that a shutdown could just fail to inflict any pain on the favored MAGA constituencies.

Okay, fair enough on that. We’re already in uncharted waters with this DOGE circlejerk, so worth noting. However it’s where she tries to lay out the political implications is where this whole piece falls apart – based on what Bade acknowledged upfront: That Republicans need Dem votes to make anything happen, “given the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and House conservatives’ aversion to supporting any funding bill,” writing that it’s just going to be a political loser because Trump’s approval is at 53 percent in that one CBS poll and the party making the demand that leads to the shutdown gets the blame and also that the time Trump forced a shutdown in 2018-2019 his approval recovered because people forgot. Oh and “the same CBS poll found that 68 percent of voters thought the Trump administration is doing the ‘right amount’ or even ‘not enough’ spending cuts; only 32 percent said ‘too much.’ And despite beaucoup negative coverage about Musk and his potential conflicts of interests, a slim majority of Americans think Musk – yes, an unelected foreign-born billionaire – should have ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ influence on government operations and spending.”

Again though, Bade wrote it right up at the top that Republicans don’t have the votes within their own party to act on the mandate they’ve been handed. Aside from acknowledging the fact that the Trump Reich can exploit gaps in what a shutdown actually shuts down, she could have stopped right there and said either Republicans get their shit together, they make concessions to win Dem votes, or they walk the government into a shutdown. Everything else is just another reminder that Politico and their ilk – while they still have some use in reporting factually – have simply abandoned any pretense of holding Republicans and Democrats to the same standard of accountability.

Seriously what the fuck is this bullshit? When were Republicans ever expected to help Democrats govern for the good of all Americans over the last four years? Are you telegraphing in advance that, even though you acknowledge that Trump caused the last shutdown and didn’t pay a political price, they’re going to make sure the Dems pay it if one happens this year? This insanity just cost Politico millions in operating revenue and still they’re putting “You Dems will be sorry if you don’t actively collaborate with the Reich” on their home page. This is some real Silence of the Lambs shit.

Meanwhile the fat fuck just posted an impotent whine about judges with the sand to check his dismantling of the US government, “Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government. Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!” which should be energizing Dems to take him on.