House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “the most powerful woman in American history, and the most powerful woman in American politics,” said CBS’s Jane Pauley. “But you can't make the government open?”
”Well, the Speaker has awesome power,” Pelosi replied. “But if the President of the United States is against governance and doesn't care whether people's needs are met or that public employees are paid or that we can have a legitimate discussion, then we have a problem, and we have to take it to the American people.”
That’s about the size of it. That “if” is a definite, as Pelosi knows: The president of the United States is against governance and doesn’t care whether people’s needs are met or that public employees are paid. Full stop. Trump doesn’t care.
Trump doesn’t care about American democracy, either: “The impression you get from the president [is] that he would like to not only close government, build a wall, but also abolish Congress so the only voice that mattered was his own.” Yep. Narcissism as autocracy. And right now 800,000 federal workers and everyone who needs the work they do are suffering for it.