Mark Shields:

Well, I hope we're not stuck here forever, Judy.

But I would say that there's not an upper hand, but the lower hand is held by the president, I mean, not that the Democrats are celebrating or spiking the ball in the end zone, or they have any reason to, but the president — you mentioned the speech he gave, in which he acknowledged to press people on a background check basis before the speech that he was doing it reluctantly, under duress from his communications director and Kellyanne Conway, going to the border reluctantly.

And the speech came across as somebody who was just going through the motions. It was done with no conviction, no passion, no intensity, and I think very little persuasiveness to it.

The difference in the relationship right now is that Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is no longer speaker. Nancy Pelosi of California is. And the difference, I think, is that he's being called out on facts, which didn't happen in the first two years of his presidency.

When he says there's a flood of people coming across, it's the lowest it's been in 46 years. She calls him out on that. And I think that's a changed relationship.

But I don't think this is the greatest tiff for the Democrats, and especially the rebuttal of Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. I mean, it was staged by somebody from runaway road edition of the American Gothic. And they looked uncomfortably close together. And I didn't think it particularly worked.

But I would say that the Republicans and Donald Trump are very much on the defensive and remaining there.