After 35 days of the longest shutdown in American history,
America's government is officially open for business.
The shutdown is over.
800,000 furloughed federal workers
will go back to work today
and should be getting their back pay within days.
TV REPORTER: That fix only opens the government for three weeks,
and it does not provide any new money
for a border wall as President Trump had demanded.
I am very proud to announce today
that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown
and reopen the federal government.
Okay, first of all, there's nothing to be proud of.
Second of all, there's not really a deal.
Like, have you ever noticed how all of Trump's accomplishments
are just fixing things that he broke?
He's like, "Folks, good news.
I've freed the immigrant kids from their cages."
"Wait, who put them in cages?"
"Also me.
"I'm glad to announce
North Korea isn't gonna blow us up anymore."
"Wait, why were they gonna blow us up?"
"'Cause I called him a fat little rocket man."
(laughter and applause)
And who can forget when he dropped
the White House bust of Abraham Lincoln,
but then he was also the one who taped it back together.
Yeah. And you can't even tell the difference.
He's like, "I'm proud to announce
"the refurbishment of this Lincoln statue.
"Sadly, it was not filled with candy
as I had hoped, folks."
So, the government shutdown is officially over.
Which is great,
because federal workers are getting paid again.
The FDA can inspect food again,
and the national parks can finally clean up their trash
and put it where it belongs: the ocean.
And although the shutdown ended,
that doesn't mean it hasn't left behind some lasting damage.
The nonpartisan Budget Office today estimated
the last partial shutdown cost the economy $11 billion,
three billion of which will never be recovered.
The government shutdown was particularly hard
on contract employees.
Those contractors aren't guaranteed back pay.
The IRS is gonna be struggling
to get returns out to some Americans on time.
It could take at least a year to get back to normal
after five million pieces of mail went unopened.
You know, life is so unfair.
The IRS just gets to be like,
"Oh, sorry. We couldn't do your taxes
because we didn't open our mail."
But if we tried that...
If we said, "Oh, we didn't file our taxes
because we didn't open our mail,"
now all of a sudden we're roommates with Wesley Snipes.
And don't get me wrong.
I love Blade, but not 24 hours a day.
So, now, thanks to the shutdown,
the IRS is behind, like, a year,
which is bad news for everyone except Trump.
He's probably gonna be like, "Oh, that's too bad.
I was just about to have them release my tax returns."
So, although it was only 35 days,
the government shutdown's effects
will continue to hurt America for a while.
And maybe it would have been all worth it for Trump
if he had gotten some of that sweet, sweet wall money,
but he folded with nothing to show for it.
And even some of his strongest supporters are admitting
that Trump got owned by Nancy Pelosi bigly.
Some right-wing media analysts have been merciless
in the criticism of President Trump.
"Broken man." "Biggest wimp."
"Trump just allowed Nancy to walk all over him."
It's clear Trump did not come out on top.
I'm not gonna spin it for you.
She has just whipped the president of the United States.
-And this... -No!
No, no. Stop. Stop, stop.
That's a victory for Nancy Pelosi.
It will be perceived as such
on every television monitor and screen in the country,
and to deny it is to try to escape from reality.
Damn. You know it's bad
when even Trump's personal cheerleaders are dunking on him.
You understand these are the people he watches every night
to make him feel good about himself,
and now they're trashing him.
It's like, imagine if you had a book
of inspirational quotes that you used every day,
and then one day you opened it,
and it was like, "Nigga, kill yourself!"
That's the pain he's feeling right now.
(laughter)
And you heard... you heard what Lou Dobbs said.
If you can't acknowledge
that Nancy Pelosi whupped Trump's ass,
then you are not in touch with reality.
And honestly, I don't know
why Lou Dobbs delivered this message on TV.
He could have just posted a sign in the Fox News breakroom.
Anyone out there, by the way,
thinking President Trump caved today,
you don't really know the Donald Trump I know.
He right now holds all the cards.
He will secure the border one way or another.
I don't see it as a cave. I see this as a process.
This is a halftime, uh, stop in the action.
So, did he cave? Did he not?
The answer is absolutely he did not cave.
He did not cave.
He made a tactical decision,
a strategy decision
to pick the ground to fight on.
"To pick the ground to fight on!
To pick the ground!"
Yo, this... I'm sorry, this is unbelievable.
No matter what Trump does, he's always a mastermind
who's accomplishing precisely what he wanted to do.
Like, if Trump was boxing and he got knocked out cold,
like, Jeanine Pirro would be like, "Brilliant.
"Another strategic consciousness pause
"by President Trump.
You can't get knocked down if you stay on the ground!"
(laughter and applause)
What a...
But, look, if you ignore the stans over at Fox News,
it's pretty clear this shutdown
was a political disaster for President Trump.
It hurt the economy,
it destroyed his approval ratings,
and, worst of all, he's not getting his wall.
And remember, Congress only has three weeks
to reach an agreement on border security
before the government runs out of money again.
But the good news is...
the good news is there probably won't be another shutdown.
Because after seeing how bad this shutdown went,
like, only a true moron
would think of shutting down the government again,
and no one... no one is that stupid, right?
We begin today with the president's
acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
Is the president really prepared
to shut down the government again in three weeks?
Um, yeah, I think he actually is.
My man.