The Stack: Inside the Shutdown and the Emergency Medicaid Fight

Abstract symbolic artwork representing U.S. government shutdown and Medicaid debate

Republicans offered a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open through November 21. Democrats rejected it, pushing instead to restore emergency Medicaid reimbursements for hospitals treating illegal immigrants. Todd breaks down what this means for taxpayers, how the media spins it, and why Trump is floating a potential reduction in force if the shutdown drags on. Plus, Turning Point USA expands high school chapters in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and Eric Trump is set to join the program next Wednesday. Conservative, not bitter—this is The Stack.

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📝 Transcript: Chasing Truth after the Charlie Kirk Assassination

The Todd Huff Show – October 3, 2025

Host: Todd Huff

TODD HUFF: Well, that is right. My friends, thank you for tuning in to America's home for conservative, not bitter, talk. I'm your host, Todd Huff. You want to be part of the conversation, you can always email.

TODD HUFF: Tata tatashow.com thoughts, questions, feedback, adoration, and praise can always, will always be accepted at that email address, my friends. The appropriate amount, of course, which is a little bit more than you might think, my friends. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

TODD HUFF: It's ten to 15% more, but it's good to be here with you today, my friends, on this Friday. And I want to talk about a couple of things today. I want to talk about the state of the government shutdown. I want to talk about that.

TODD HUFF: And I want to talk, time permitting. Time permitting, I'd like to get into some, I guess, some growth, some good news for the organization of Turning Point USA. They've got a lot of momentum and traction as more high schools are inviting them, or starting, I should say, chapters, onto their high school campuses.

TODD HUFF: And we'll get to that, my friends, time permitting. Also have an announcement to make. I had alluded to an interview, a guest. We don't do a lot of these, but I'll tell you who our special guest is going to be here on this program next week. Next week on Wednesday.

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TODD HUFF: All right. Let's give a little bit of an update here regarding the federal government shutdown that began at midnight, technically, on October 1. On October 1, which was Wednesday morning.

TODD HUFF: That's because Congress refused to pass a continuing revolution — resolution, I should say. There is a revolution happening here. A revolution, hopefully back toward conservative principles and values in the Constitution. But a resolution is what was passed by Congress — or refused to be passed by Congress, I should say.

TODD HUFF: And the Senate has been voting on competing proposals from both sides since then. Neither of these are expected to pass anytime soon. In fact, both parties have signaled pessimism about ending the shutdown even this weekend. So, again, I don't know how long this is going to last.

TODD HUFF: I do know that there is a lot of disagreement, of course. And I do know the solution to this is easy. Because Republicans had introduced a clean continuing resolution, a clean CR that would have kept the government open and simply extended the time to have the negotiations.

TODD HUFF: So to me, the important takeaway here — the important takeaway is that we understand that Republicans said we can keep everything the same and just simply extend the time that we're going to have set aside to negotiate a longer-term agreement.

TODD HUFF: They offered to have a resolution, a continuing resolution that was going to fund the government through November 21, which is what, six, seven weeks, whatever from now? And Democrats rejected that. They rejected that. So that's why it shut down.

TODD HUFF: So listen, I think one of the things — for those of you, and I know we've got some seasoned political observers, people who have followed this stuff for a long time. I followed it for a long time as well. Closely for over 25 years. And I would say even beyond that, I've always had an interest in this sort of thing from the time I was a teenager.

TODD HUFF: So over 30 years at least, following what's been happening in our nation's news and political fights and all that sort of stuff. What's maddening to me, and what's maddening to those of you who follow this, is that this is so easy to read.

TODD HUFF: This is a very easy problem to understand as far as the source of the problem. Now listen, I want to be clear here. I'm typically on the side politically of Republicans, but I — and I consider myself, I guess, technically a Republican.

TODD HUFF: But there's a lot of things about the Republican Party, or maybe I should say about individual Republicans who are running for office and who hold office, that I don't like as well. I'm not coming on this program every day to be a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. I think that there are problems with Republicans as well.

TODD HUFF: I think those problems typically manifest themselves in an individual's strategy or style, or issue by issue — how individual Republicans think about things, or talk about things, or whatever. It's less about the philosophy of the Republican Party and more about how it's implemented on a case-by-case basis, or how leadership manages things, that sort of stuff.

TODD HUFF: But they're politicians still, right? Politicians do politician things, both sides of the aisle. So I'm not here to be a defender of the Republican Party. In fact, if you listen to this program for any length of time, when I talk about this state of Indiana, there's a lot of things I don't like about the Republicans in this state.

TODD HUFF: In fact, I do like Governor Mike Braun. You know that. Micah Beckwith, the lieutenant governor, he's a friend of this program. He's been a guest host in the past. I've known Micah for a while. But when you look at some of the other Republicans who have been holding prominent positions within the state, the state of Indiana — that's where I live and reside, that's why I'm mentioning this — but Governor Eric Holcomb, when he sat in office, was far from a conservative.

TODD HUFF: Senator Todd Young, who occupies one of our two U.S. Senate seats, is far from a conservative. And I could go through this. There are problems that have been — I could say, created by, or made worse by — Republicans in this state. Now, nothing to the degree that you find leftists and Democrats utterly destroying their states and cities around the country and this country from the inside as well with their ridiculous ideas and so forth.

TODD HUFF: But I'm not here to defend Republicans. I'm on the Republican side here because it makes sense to be on the Republican side. The Republicans offered a good faith extension to the Democrats. And the Democrats chose not to go along with this and to let the government shut down. That's what was agreed upon. That's why we're at this particular point — because that was offered, and the Democrats would not basically accept it.

TODD HUFF: And so it's maddening to watch all of this other stuff because the finger-pointing begins and all of that. And you can finger-point about ideas, you can talk about who you think's right and wrong about these bigger policy ideas. But all the continuing resolution — the clean CR offered by Republicans prior to the shutdown — all it would have done would be to keep things exactly the same through November 21. And we could use that time between now, or between the time of the shutdown and November 21, to hammer out the details.

TODD HUFF: Of course, no matter when we set the deadline, there's going to be last-minute — what do you want to say — panic. Last minute, the sky-is-falling sort of stuff. And this is done for one major reason, and that is to get a political victory. The left has no political victories.

TODD HUFF: In fact, if you're a Democrat today — and I always have an olive branch out to the reasonable Democrats, yes, there are still reasonable Democrats. There are not reasonable leftists out there, radical leftists. They've got to get back to the point of just being liberal again, not woke, not in a purely anti-God, anti-truth state of mind. But there are reasonable Democrats out there. There's less today than there were when I was a kid, but nonetheless, they're out there.

TODD HUFF: And I think any reasonable person can see a very fair approach to managing whatever negotiations have to be done would be to simply extend the timeline. And Democrats rejected that. Now why did they reject that? They think they've got a political — or they're looking for a political victory here. They're looking to cast political blame on the Republicans.

TODD HUFF: They're looking to, again, fuel the narrative that says, look, when Trump's in office, there's all of this discord and upheaval, even though, again, they are the ones to blame for not cooperating with Republicans here to keep things open. Nonetheless, why did they — what else did they cite, I guess, as a reason? If you look at their proposals and so forth, for not going along with what Republicans had offered them simply to keep things status quo until November 21.

TODD HUFF: Well, they have been insisting that funds to pay for some of the healthcare costs of illegal aliens be included in this funding. This is 100 percent not debatable. Democrats are seeking to restore Medicare and ACA cuts — that's Affordable Care Act cuts. And these cuts were made in the one big, beautiful bill that was passed earlier this year. And they want to restore funds to what's called — let me make sure I get this right — EMTALA.

TODD HUFF: They want to include emergency Medicaid reimbursements to cover treatments for illegal immigrants. Hear me say that: to cover treatments for people who are not here legally, under what's called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986. That is a federal law that requires hospitals with emergency rooms to treat all patients in emergencies, regardless of their ability to pay or regardless of their immigration status. Hospitals must stabilize the patients, then they can seek reimbursements of these funds.

TODD HUFF: And so this does a couple of things. Number one, by fighting for these funds, and once you understand what these funds are for, we realize that everything that the Republicans and Trump told us about the Medicaid cuts in the one big, beautiful bill are accurate. The cuts to Medicaid are for people who are receiving federal funds who aren't even supposed to be here in this country legally. They're not supposed to be here. They're here illegally.

TODD HUFF: And so there was a big fight about this. In fact, you'll hear this — in fact, as I was preparing for this program, and putting together summaries and so forth, I was seeing a phrase that says Democrats are not — it's illegal for people who are here illegally to get access to Medicaid and Medicare and all this sort of stuff. But if you dig a little bit deeper, you find out — in fact, it's not even deep that you have to dig, it's just beyond the first layer of understanding what Medicaid is.

TODD HUFF: There's these emergency funds, and again, there's two things going on here that I want to talk about. Number one, the Medicaid funds were going to pay for healthcare for people who were not supposed to be in this country legally. They're illegal aliens. Medicaid funds are being used, and they're wanting to allocate more of them for this.

TODD HUFF: Now you can say, listen, I'm not here to say that some of this stuff isn't understandable. I mean, the idea here is we have a healthcare system that doctors and people in healthcare are there to provide services. If someone's in dire need, then they are going to provide services, and I would say that that's a good thing. First, cause no harm — the Hippocratic Oath. These sorts of things come to mind as I talk about this.

TODD HUFF: Of course, these things fly in the face of — when you talk about issues like abortion, that's the direct cause of harm to the unborn child. Or when you talk about transgender surgeries and operations, especially for minors. The whole “first cause no harm” sort of thing goes out the window. But the idea, when it's fairly followed, is a good thing — to have healthcare professionals that say if someone's in dire need, we're not going to turn them away.

TODD HUFF: Maybe if it's an elective process, if it's a non-emergency situation, hey, you've got to be able to prove that you can pay for this and that sort of thing. But if someone is in a very critical situation, we're going to treat them until they get stabilized, right? We're not going to let them face that emergency alone and die.

TODD HUFF: On the streets like Jimmy Kimmel. By the way, Jimmy Kimmel, the hero of the left, wanted people who were not vaccinated, who had heart attacks back during COVID, to basically not be allowed a room, if you remember that, from the very virtuous Jimmy Kimmel. But nonetheless, this is not a bad thing. But someone has to pay for this, right? Someone has to pay for this.

TODD HUFF: And you can't begin to say, well, if you're a certain person or a certain immigration status, we're suddenly going to let you suffer without having some sort of treatment. That goes against the idea. How are we supposed — this is an emergency sort of situation. How are we supposed to go through all that? We should just be focused on taking care of the person who is in need. Democrats want more money for that.

TODD HUFF: So again, you start to think about this. First of all, you're not supposed to be here. If you're an illegal alien, you're here because the previous administration — and candidly, other folks, other administrations over the past 40, 50 years anyway — have not really done anything to try to stop the flow of illegal aliens across the southern border.

TODD HUFF: By the way, I talked about the terrorist cells, the sleeper cells. It's amazing to me the number of people, especially on TikTok, who think that that's just made-up information. But you have people coming across the border just in general who aren't supposed to be here, and you have people who are known terrorists as well coming across the border that are intending to inflict great harm on this country.

TODD HUFF: But make no mistake, back to the issue here. Democrats are stopping negotiations because they want more funds to pay for healthcare services of illegal aliens who are in this country. There is no debate on this. That's what they want. By the way, the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, said that since 2021, Americans have paid $16.2 billion on healthcare, Medicaid in particular, spending on illegal immigrants.

TODD HUFF: I thought Medicaid didn't go — see, this is a lie. This is a lie from the left. This is why, this is precisely what Trump and his administration were trying to limit. Let's get the people out of here who aren't supposed to be here, and let's cut the federal dollars that we're spending on these folks in areas like this. This is exactly what the Trump administration said, and it's exactly the opposite of what the Democrats and the media tried to tell you.

TODD HUFF: So that's the first thing to note here. The other thing to note here is that, remember, this idea when the left talks about healthcare, they talk about that healthcare is denied people. See, this is not true either. Healthcare is not denied people in these situations. Again, if it's elective, if it's something that's non-emergency, it's a different situation. But if there's immediate healthcare needed, it is provided.

TODD HUFF: The question about healthcare is always who pays for it. Who pays for it — not whether or not it's provided in these situations, because it is. Again, something else that they've told us for a long time — people are denied healthcare. This is an example of when people are required, hospitals are required, to treat people in emergencies. All patients, regardless of their ability to pay, regardless of their immigration status.

TODD HUFF: Again, we're told that they're denied basic healthcare, and they are not. Democrats’ bill, the bills that they have proposed, do not create new benefits, but they want to restore the funding that has been cut — that pays for the Medicaid funding that pays for this sort of healthcare benefits for illegal aliens. That is the facts, my friends. Them is the facts.

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TODD HUFF: All right, so I'm at about a minute shy of the break here, and I think what I'm going to do, I think what I'm going to do as I'm looking here really quickly, I'm just going to tell you — I'm going to tell you, this is an Easter egg I wasn't planning on popping in here, but we're going to do that. On Wednesday of next week, October 8, we're going to have the good pleasure here of speaking with the son of the President of the United States, Eric Trump.

TODD HUFF: And he'll be joining our program on Wednesday during the second segment, which will be about this time on Wednesday in the program. So I wanted to share that with you. I'm excited. If you have questions that you would like me to ask Eric Trump, I invite you — you can email me todd@toddhuffshow.com. You can also text those questions to 317-210-0283. I'll take a look at all these. Obviously, I won't be able to get to all of them, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about where we can steer this conversation.

TODD HUFF: Todd@toddhuffshow.com or text 317-210-0283. I have to take a break, my friend. Sit tight. You're listening to conservative, not bitter, talk. I'm your host, Todd Huff. Back in just a minute.

TODD HUFF: Welcome back, my friends. Again, if you missed the announcement last segment, at the end of the segment, we are having Eric Trump join this program on Wednesday, October 8, this coming Wednesday. And I welcome your thoughts on what we could ask on the program. You can email me your thoughts, 317-2102 — that's my text message — todd@toddhuffshow.com or you can text us at 317-210-0283.

TODD HUFF: We shared this, announced this in our email newsletter, The Daily Truth, yesterday, but I wanted to tell you as well. But the reason we do that is because that's a direct line. People can just respond with their questions. And as a subscriber to the newsletter, you get some of this sort of stuff a little bit quicker.

TODD HUFF: It's where we — it's kind of — it's eventually, I think, we're going to — it's at least going to be connected with this, the concept of the inner circle. We may rename it the inner circle, to be quite honest. But anyway, being part of the inner circle, you get some information first, some of the behind-the-scenes stuff. It's kind of what the newsletter is to begin with.

TODD HUFF: You can sign up for that, by the way, at toddhuffshow.com/truth. Totally free. Check that out. There's a couple of things I didn't get to last segment that I want to make sure that I get to. I would say the best argument that Republicans have, or that both parties have that they're trying to make, I guess — I should say the best way to present both of them fairly, best I can.

TODD HUFF: Republicans are saying Democrats are trying to use taxpayer dollars to pay for illegal immigrants' healthcare. And of course, we have record debt. We have problems within our country that we're not able to address and fix because of some of these expenses. The cost of illegal immigration has been massive, despite what the left and the media tell you. And this is just another way of metaphorically nickeling and diming the American people.

TODD HUFF: And if you give even the slightest bit of tax dollars to something like this, it kind of opens the door for this to be further abused in the future. And, of course, they've denied that this was even happening up until this point. Democrats will say, wait a minute, you're misrepresenting what we want. We're not expanding Medicaid to all illegal immigrants. We're restoring cuts that keep hospitals solvent because they have to pay for — they have to provide services, I should say, for these individuals by law, which I referenced in the 1986 law.

TODD HUFF: And without reimbursements, these hospitals could collapse, and then that could lead all citizens in those small communities in particular to lose access to healthcare. Emergency Medicaid is moral and practical. That's what I think the left would say.

TODD HUFF: I think fairly, I think that this is — again, I think we've learned some of the core things here that we referred to or, I guess, referenced last segment. Now, one other thing I wanted — let me — oh yeah, one other thing I want to get to. So the left, this is a straw man.

TODD HUFF: This is a straw man because Republicans say Democrats want to fund, use Medicaid, for illegal alien healthcare. Now, I don't mind the left responding and saying we're not asking for an expansion of Medicaid to cover healthcare, all healthcare, for illegal aliens. It's a specific type of healthcare which we've covered. I don't mind that. That's a fair response.

TODD HUFF: But it's a straw man to say that — that's what Republicans — I should say, to make the claim that Republicans are saying Democrats are trying to create a new program here. They're not trying to create a new one, although they've also told us that they would be happy to create a new one.

TODD HUFF: In fact, you may have seen the clip — I don't have the clip queued up, I just want to read you a quote from a 2019 Democratic candidate presidential debate. I don't know how many candidates were on stage at the time, probably around eight. I've seen the video. This was the campaign.

TODD HUFF: This was prior to the Democratic Party power brokers making the call that Joe Biden needed to be the candidate and that other folks needed to drop out and throw their support behind him. Because they were not going to support a candidate, Bernie Sanders.

TODD HUFF: And so the moderator of the debate asked a question: Raise your hand if your government plan, talking about healthcare, would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants. There were ten, it says it here. I thought there were about eight. There were ten. All ten candidates raised their hands.

TODD HUFF: Again, I don't have a picture, but that would have been people like Joseph Robinette, bribery. That would have been Kamala Harris. That would have been Pete Buttigieg. That would have been Amy Klobuchar. That would have been — who else am I forgetting here? Oh, Pocahontas herself.

TODD HUFF: And I can say that, by the way, if you're a new listener to this program. I am a documented descendant, 13th great-grandson of Pocahontas. No joke. I love this. I love that this is the case, because I can say this. I am the unofficial, yet self-appointed, spokesperson for the family.

TODD HUFF: And I can tell you we have no problems calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” because it illustrates that she wants to try to somehow get an advantage from superficialities, from claiming to be Native American. And we think it works just fine. It's actually much more offensive for someone to claim to be something they're not than it is to mock them a little bit, tease them a little bit, for claiming something as outrageous as she had.

TODD HUFF: By the way, even as a descendant — I'm a distant descendant, 13th great-grandchild, I think, of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, by the way, which would make me the 14th great-grandson of Powhatan. Which is just really cool stuff. I love genealogies, by the way.

TODD HUFF: Anyway, I've never once told someone I'm Native American because of that. In fact, we have closer relatives who are Native American, and that's just not — normal people don't think about things like that and try to position things like that. I point it out to say this is absurd, how she's going about trying to get an advantage because of some sort of identity politics.

TODD HUFF: But nonetheless, my friends, it is still pretty interesting and cool, and I have some fun with it. But that's who was on the stage. And there's others — I forget who else was up there. But all their candidates, all ten — it wasn't half, it wasn't three-quarters, it wasn't 90%. There was not a single holdout.

TODD HUFF: Every single one of them raised their hand and said that they wanted their healthcare plans to include coverage for, as they put it, undocumented immigrants. As I put it, illegal aliens. And all ten of those candidates raised their hands.

TODD HUFF: Biden in 2019 said this — this is another quote. He said, quote, “We need to make sure everyone is covered, regardless of immigration status.” So you'll forgive us, Democrats and people on the left, if you're suddenly lecturing us. And the media has done this a lot. I've seen several clips where they're talking with someone and they're saying you're misrepresenting this. No one is trying to call for healthcare for illegal aliens.

TODD HUFF: Yes, they are. Number one, they most certainly are. Kamala Harris in 2019 said, “We must separate immigration status from access to healthcare.” So again, what do these things mean, if it's not providing healthcare to people regardless of their immigration status — which would include people who are here illegally?

TODD HUFF: Trump says — Democrats want to shut down the country until they get free healthcare for illegal — so there's two things here. They're fighting to reinstate cuts that were made to Medicaid that paid for emergency services, emergency treatments for illegal aliens. So that's the issue at hand here. But it's also accurate to say that they are on the record of saying that they want much, much more than that.

TODD HUFF: So that's the issue. That's about all I can say about that given the time that we have. There's two things I want to get to, and we'll see how to navigate this here real quickly. I want to tell you, though, my friends, if you have a business, if you work in HR, if you're in marketing, if you're responsible for putting your logo on anything — and I mean anything that has your logo — Red, White and Brand is here to help you.

TODD HUFF: Red, White and Brand — that's the website. Promo code Todd will save you 10% there, and you can put your logo on almost anything. Drinkware, apparel, you name it. Promotional products, premium items. Anything with your logo, my friends. Red, White and Brand is here to help you. RedWhiteandBrand.com. Promo code Todd saves you 10%, and if you complete your order online, you'll get free shipping as well. RedWhiteandBrand.com. Promo code Todd.

TODD HUFF: I'm going to jump into something and just mention this, because I really want to get to something else I didn't have time to talk about in the final segment. But I wanted to mention here, and I hit this off the top: Turning Point USA is expanding now after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

TODD HUFF: They have announced recently that there are 2,700 new high school chapters that are opening nationwide. And that's an expansion that comes, again, in the wake of the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was part of his vision, part of his legacy. This is one of the largest youth-based expansions of a conservative movement in the history of this great nation.

TODD HUFF: This is good — to get this information, these opportunities in front of young people, especially young people who are being told lies. Listen, I don't want to say every public school teacher is lying or anything like that, but there's a lot of deceit, a lot of hatred against the conservative movement, against conservatives. There's a lot of hatred against America in some of these classrooms, even at the high school level.

TODD HUFF: This is a great way to combat that. This is wonderful news. Congratulations. It's sad how we got here. It's tragic how we got here. But again, his legacy and his vision is going to get more traction here, and I think that that's absolutely wonderful. I have to take a break, my friend. Sit tight. Back here in just a minute.

TODD HUFF: Welcome back, my friends. Final segment of the week. And I want to get into one more thing that I've talked about a few times this week, but I want to give you a bit of an update on before I do that. My friends, you know that investments are like the seeds that we plant.

TODD HUFF: You know that these things grow. They multiply. But the question is, are they bearing the kind of fruit that we want, or are they bearing a kind of fruit that we didn't expect? At Four Eight Financial, they believe your money should reflect your values. I believe that as well. My friends, we can't control every little facet of every company's decisions and so forth.

TODD HUFF: But we can certainly invest our money based upon wise decisions with companies who are not going against our beliefs and values. And Four Eight Financial has tools to help you do that. They specialize in wealth management and biblically responsible investing. They screen out those companies that do not align with your principles, your values, your faith.

TODD HUFF: It's all part of what they call purpose-centered financial planning — helping you live a life of meaning and purpose. If you want to see if your investments align with your values, or to what degree they do, hop on over to foureightfinancial.com/todd. You can take an assessment. It's quick. It's easy. Four Eight Financial, they're here to help you worry about your money so that you don't have to.

TODD HUFF: My friends, foureightfinancial.com/todd — that's where you can take that assessment. I did it. It's painless, it's quick and easy. You can as well. All right, so one more thing I want to get to today. And this is really, I guess, a continuation of what we had talked about earlier in the week.

TODD HUFF: If you remember, I had shared that the Trump administration had talked about during a government shutdown, moving away from furloughs and actually moving toward what's called RIFs — R-I-F. That stands for reduction in force. That means elimination of jobs, not just the temporary suspension of a job until the funding comes back with back pay, by the way.

TODD HUFF: This is different. A RIF would be the job is gone. And so I mentioned this, and I even alluded to the idea that this could be a tool for Trump, and I saw he had posted yesterday something like, “The Democrats, they're idiots.” He said something like this: I'm having a meeting with Russ Vought, the architect of Project 2025, to identify agencies and programs that we can dismantle or downsize.

TODD HUFF: I'm paraphrasing, but that's the basic idea here. And so President Trump is now out there saying what we talked about here earlier this week, which is, hey, look, this is an opportunity to actually change the government for the better. These clowns — the Democrats, I'm saying what Trump's argument is — they shut the government down.

TODD HUFF: We gave them a good faith option, extended an olive branch for them to basically keep things status quo through November 21. We've talked about this, and they denied it. They refused to do it. And so now the government shut down. And now we're going to look at maybe RIF-ing some of these positions to get them more in line with the size and scope of government as we think it should be, than just making these simple furloughs where people can come back.

TODD HUFF: So listen, this is an important little detail that's easy to miss in the narrative. Because the narrative right now — the Democrats are trying to get a political victory. They're trying to make it look like Trump is reckless, they can't cooperate with him, he's dangerous, all this sort of stuff. Republicans under Trump's leadership are just burning this country to the ground. That's the argument the left is making.

TODD HUFF: When in reality, this is a political sideshow. Political theater. It's not even good theater. Trump's theater is good theater. It's at least entertaining. Have you seen some of these videos he's been posting? Sorry, I'm thinking of Hakeem Jeffries. He puts, what, I guess, sombrero on these folks and creates AI videos and just different things. It's at least entertaining to me. He's out there trying to win this information war.

TODD HUFF: I also saw the White House posted kind of a montage of Michael Scott clips. If you don't know Michael Scott, that's Steve Carell's character in The Office. He was the office manager of Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania. But, I mean, just mismanaged so many things. In other ways he was a brilliant salesperson, just naturally good at it, but just wasted so much time and engaged in some of the silliest things you could possibly imagine.

TODD HUFF: So they have basically clips of Michael Scott doing silly things, wasting time, and they basically posted on their social channels — the White House did — “Here are the Democrats one minute after the shutdown.” The government shutdown, and they're partying and acting a fool and everything else because they got what they wanted for the political messaging and so forth.

TODD HUFF: It's just interesting to watch all this unfold. And really, we should keep our eye on things like this, because if Trump is able to RIF some of these positions, this might be the quickest way to cut the size and scope of government that exists. I don't know that he can, but he's at least making overtures to those — Project 2025 in particular — who has big plans to reduce the size of government.

TODD HUFF: Trump says, come on in. He announces this. He took a lot of criticism during the campaign of being a part of Project 2025 or having that be part of his agenda and so forth. Now, he's just kind of taunting them with this and pointing to the possibility of RIFs.

TODD HUFF: I've got to go, though, my friends. Have a great weekend. We'll see you soon. SDG.

Please note that transcript are generated automatically with transcribing tools and AI. While fairly accurate, it is not perfect. 
Todd Huff

Todd Huff is a popular talk show host and podcaster known for his intelligent and entertaining conservative discussions on The Todd Huff Show, which attracts 200,000 weekly listeners. He covers a variety of topics, including politics and culture, with a focus on authentic and meaningful dialogue. Outside of work, he enjoys traveling with his family, spending time outdoors, and coaching his kids' soccer team.

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