This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 7 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
It appears Attorney General Pam Bondi was given some very specific marching orders when she testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: Don’t answer any questions, pass the buck, and when all else fails, launch personal attacks against the senator questioning you.
Just consider Bondi’s answer when Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois questioned her about the Trump administration’s decision to deploy Texas National Guard troops to Chicago. Durbin asked Bondi what the “rationale” was behind such a move.
In response, Bondi attacked Durbin. “You shut down the government,” she said. “Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you. I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump.”
Now, you would think the nation’s top lawyer might have a view on the president’s highly controversial decision to deploy American troops in American streets. But all Bondi did was avoid the question and pass the blame.
Perhaps the same strategic geniuses who prepped Bondi are the ones in charge of the White House strategy around the government shutdown.
It’s a strategy that might work if you actually have no power, but here’s the thing: Democrats are not in charge of the federal government; Republicans are. They’re in charge of all of it — the White House, the Senate, the House, the Justice Department, to say nothing of the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. They are in charge of everything.
Yet Republicans have built their entire governing philosophy around playing the victim in almost every situation, like they are observers of the problems happening in the world, including the ones they created.
Perhaps the same strategic geniuses who prepped Bondi for that hearing are the ones in charge of the White House strategy around the government shutdown. Republicans have spent a week pointing fingers at Democrats, even though the majority of the public isn’t buying it. In poll after poll, we see that Americans — by wide margins — are placing the blame squarely on Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress.
The president and his party aren’t helping themselves when their answers make no sense. For instance, airports from Burbank, California, to Nashville, Tennessee, literally went dark this week thanks to a shortage of air traffic controllers, which has prompted delays around the country.
When Trump was asked about those delays on Tuesday in the Oval Office, he told reporters, “They’re all Democrat delays. There are delays at the airport. That’s standard.”
According to Trump, those delays are because of Democrats, but they’re also totally standard and fine. It’s like he’s torn between trying to blame Democrats for the shutdown and trying to pretend that everything happening under his leadership is hunky dory. Trump has no idea how to deal with the fact that he is the one in charge of everything and so his behavior has been all over the map.
On Monday, Trump claimed he was finally negotiating with Democrats over the shutdown and suggested he was even willing to work with them on their key demand to restore the Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“We are speaking with the Democrats,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “Some very good things could happen with respect to health care.”
But Trump’s apparent optimism for a deal seemed to come as a surprise to senators of both parties — perhaps because it was entirely untrue. After the president was called out, he abruptly reversed course and said Republicans would not negotiate an end to the shutdown that would extend the ACA premium credits.
Trump is not a policy guy or a details guy, and apparently he is not a negotiations guy, either. It remains unclear — now over a week into this shutdown — if the president even knows what this entire ordeal is about or how to bring it to an end, which is probably why his administration has effectively handed over control of its shutdown strategy to Trump’s budget director and architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought.
If I ever told a reporter that OMB was “in charge” when I worked in the White House, I would have been escorted out of the building.
On Tuesday, Axios reported that Vought’s office has been circulating a memo that argues the administration does not have to pay federal employees back pay for the work they do during this shutdown.
Now, I should note, it is technically illegal to deny those workers the back pay they are owed. It is a direct violation of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, which was signed into law by none other than Trump during his first administration.
In fact, guidance put out by the White House before Tuesday’s report said that all furloughed workers should get automatic back pay. But when Axios asked the White House for comment about its plan to deny workers that pay, a senior White House official replied, “OMB is in charge.”
If I ever told a reporter that OMB was “in charge” when I worked in the White House, I would have been escorted out of the building.
On the same day that Axios report emerged, Trump was given a chance to clear all of this up. He was asked directly whether his administration plans to deny furloughed workers their back pay. But instead, the president just made everything even more confusing by suggesting he would withhold backpay only from some federal workers, specifically the ones he doesn’t think “deserve” it.
So the law says you have to pay federal workers their back pay, Vought says no federal workers are entitled to their back pay, and Trump says he wants to use back pay as some kind of tool for retribution.
If you think the Republican leader in the Senate might be able to tell us what is actually happening, think again. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota told reporters he had not “looked at the memo specifically yet” but was under the “assumption” that furloughed workers would get back pay.
Republicans in Congress are acting like they are mere spectators to all of this, like they are not the ones in charge of running the government and negotiating a way to fund it.
But it’s also not clear that the president knows what is happening from moment to moment during this shutdown, at least, according to Democrats like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
While speaking to Fox News’ Peter Doocy on Sunday, Kelly said that, based on what he heard from Democrats who met with the president, “it didn’t even seem that he understood what these premium tax credits were.” Adding, “The first step here is the president has to understand what’s going on.”
Now, it’s no secret that Trump spends the bulk of his free time watching Fox News. So it’s no surprise that Trump saw those comments by Kelly and immediately started rage-posting about it on Truth Social:
Why is FoxNews and Peter Doocy putting on Democrat Senator Mark Kelly to talk about, totally unabated or challenged, Healthcare? … Republicans are so tired of this fight with Fox always trying to be so ‘politically correct!’ Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Trump is the most powerful man in the world. He is supposed to be the one leading his party out of this shutdown fight. But instead he is acting like he isn’t in charge of anything, sitting back and playing armchair critic on social media, complaining about Fox News’ coverage.
Meanwhile, Democrats are making it crystal clear to anyone paying attention, including the people watching Fox News, that the president does not have any idea what is going on.