commentary editor and writer for the "washington examiner." thank you both for being here on a saturday night on a holiday. kelly jane, let's start with you. lawmakers are at home. some are on vacation. president trump keeps blaming democrats for the shutdown, saying essentially it's too bad but necessary to keep our country safe. you know, at the end of the day, it's easy to forget that there are actual human beings that are hurt by this on many different levels. do you think that is lost a little bit in what the president is saying? >> yeah, the optics here in washington, ryan, don't look that great. i mean, you do have president trump, who publicly in that meeting with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi a couple weeks ago said he would be proud to shut down the government for the border wall. i think since then, maybe some of his advisers have told him that a shutdown is not necessarily popular. but at the same time, you do have nancy pelosi right now vacationing in hawaii. i'm not sure the optics of that were that -- were very good. i wouldn't have done that personally, but i think one of the reasons that lawmakers haven't -- there's many reasons, of course, they haven't been