800,000 federal workers are about to miss a second-straight paycheck thanks to the government shutdown singlehandedly engineered by Donald Trump, American president. Millions more government contractors, and the families of all these folks, are set to suffer. Government employees are going to food banks. Air-traffic controllers are being stretched to the brink. There is no debate over who caused the shutdown, or who is keeping the government closed. It is the president. Here he is on national TV taking full responsibility for the shutdown:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Trump gives the Democrats the best soundbite they could possibly hope for: "Yes, if we don't get what we want...I will shut down the government. ... I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it." pic.twitter.com/e4xbjlMvwj — David Mack (@davidmackau) December 11, 2018

"I will shut down the government," the president said. "I am proud to shut down the government. I will be the one to shut it down. I am not going to blame you for it. I will take the mantle of shutting it down." House Democrats have passed numerous "clean" funding bills to re-open the government based on the terms all parties agreed to in December. Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have blocked them.

Yet the president's senior advisers are popping up all over TV, determined not only to shift the blame, but also to demonstrate they are totally out of touch with normal people. It may shock you to learn that the wealthiest Cabinet in modern history has no idea what dealing with financial hardship is like and, more to the point, truly does not care. Here's Wilbur Ross, the sleepy old codger who allegedly stole $120 million from his business partners over the years before he became the Secretary of Commerce.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Let them eat loans!

Just get a small loan of $1 million from your parents. (Credit where due: that was a cover of a Mitt Romney song.) Oh, your parents can't lend you enough money to get through the president's tantrum over his Big, Beautiful Middle Finger From White America Monument? Take a loan out from the bank—it's federally guaranteed! Never mind that you'll have to pay interest on the loan that you're taking out to cover your Presidential Tantrum Expenses. And never mind that the 1.2 million federal contractors who are also not getting paid may well never get backpay when this freak show is over. Meanwhile, Ross dismissed these human beings as "less than a third of a percent of GDP."

It's been a while since Wilbur Ross has struggled, besides having to sell off his assets that provide a conflict with his job as Secretary of Commerce. (Oh wait, he didn't always do that, either.) Maybe he can't remember what it's like. What do you expect from a guy who has $700 billion, but calls up a magazine to tell them he has $2 billion more so he can stay on their list of rich people?

Wilbur Ross appears on Lou Dobbs Tonight. BAUZEN Getty Images

And then there's Larry Kudlow, the former cable news talking head who doesn't seem to get very much right about economics. That includes a December 10, 2007, column in the National Review, declaring:

Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient US economy continues moving ahead. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told...Yes, economic growth may indeed pause to roughly 2 percent in the next couple of quarters, the result of two years of overly tight money from the Federal Reserve and the ensuing upturn in sub-prime defaults and foreclosures. You can call it Goldilocks 2.0. But you can’t call it a recession.

The Great Recession kicked off a year later, fueled by the subprime mortgage bubble. Kudlow is now the president's top economic adviser.

He popped up for a press conference today, in which he suggested the federal employees who are working without pay are "volunteering." A reporter in attendance justifiably challenged that characterization.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Q: "That's not volunteering if you're being forced to work without pay. If you don't show up you lose your job. That's not volunteering…"



Larry Kudlow: "I'm not even going to go there. You know what I'm saying. It's very clear..." pic.twitter.com/w1CNOmafBZ — CSPAN (@cspan) January 24, 2019

This may be the first moment Kudlow has spent considering what it must feel like to be forced to work without pay. He stumbled through a spiel about how "they honor us" with their service, and then went to this:

They do it because of their love for the country, the office of the presidency, and, uh, presumably their allegiance to President Trump, but whatever: they're doing it. Give them some credit.

Funny, his boss was just saying the other day that they're Democrats. Never mind how fucking weird it is to suggest civil servants have pledged "allegiance" to the current president.

Everyone gives the workers credit. They should also be given money in exchange for their labor. The people who deserve no credit are the ghouls in this administration pretending that the Mad King they serve did not singlehandedly shut down the government because right-wing talking heads were saying mean things about him on TV. Maybe the federal workers can pay their rent with this "credit." Maybe they can buy food with Brownie Points. Or maybe Kudlow and Ross could stop going out in public to pretend like we're all not living at the whims of a man patently unfit for the office, whose complete inability to demonstrate empathy could destroy people's livelihoods.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io