WASHINGTON WEEK: Funding fights in Washington usually play out like games of chicken. Right now, neither party seems ready to give in. Join moderator Jeffrey Goldberg, Leigh Ann Caldwell of Puck News, Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News, and Toluse Olorunnipa and Ashley Parker of The Atlantic.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG, THE ATLANTIC, ‘WASHINGTON WEEK’ HOST: But, Toluse, in a piece you just wrote with Jonathan Lemire, you argued that Trump’s handling of the shutdown is very different than the 2019 shutdown. I quote, in part, 34 days into the previous government shutdown in 2019, reporters asked President Trump if he had a message for the thousands of federal employees who were about to miss another paycheck, quote, I love them. I respect them. I really appreciate the great job they’re doing, he said at the time. The following day, caving after weeks of punishing cable news coverage, he signed legislation to reopen the government, lauding furloughed employees as incredible patriots and so on. And then you wrote. It doesn’t really sound like the same guy, does it? So, Leigh Ann, Toluse, fight it out. Like is this a normal shutdown or is this a new kind of shutdown? LEIGN ANN CALDWELL, PUCK NEWS: You can review me afterwards. What is normal is the fact that there is a shutdown. This is a strategy that has been used by a party that doesn’t feel like they have a lot of power over and over again. That’s becoming more and more common. They became — you know, they happened in the 90s, 2013, 2018, 2018 into ’19, and now here we are again. And so this has become a very normal course of doing business in Washington, whether there is actually a down or a threat of a shutdown. This is the only leverage that Democrats feel like they have in a system right now where the administration and the president is just rolling, you know, so fast over Democrats, over the Congress specifically. And so they’re trying to invoke some sort of, you know, pressure on the president in a way that might stymie him or not.

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