RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
LUI: "Eleanor, as the president sits in the White House, he did not go down to Florida for Christmas, he'll also not be down there for the new year, it's also a lonelier place. According to a memo from the White House, they're down by 60%. They're down to like 40% of staff, at least in the shutdown scenario. And so as the president looks for the support to potentially cobble together a solution with the house and the Senate, he has fewer folks to look to to help."
CLIFT: "Yeah, you picture him sitting in the White House, you know, tweeting, watching television, and sort of stewing in his own bile. And I don't know that he's having any conferences with Mitch McConnell."
LUI: "Don't hold back, Eleanor."
CLIFT: "Right. And McConnell, it will be interesting to see whether he just salutes the president and says, I'm not going to put anything on the floor unless it has the money for the wall, or whether he goes ahead and, you know, puts options out there. I think there are going to be a lot of new Republicans in the Senate, Mitt Romney for one, anyway, and you'll have some 20 Republicans up for reelection in 2020, will they want to vote to keep the government closed? Again, the president is cornered. He's not only cornered on this but in other ways as well. All the investigations are closing in as well. So I would worry about his mental health to some extent."