A former senior aide to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign outlined exactly what went wrong in an Oval Office meeting Donald Trump intended as a photo op -- and shot down a conservative pundit while she was at it.
"President Trump brought the cameras into the Oval Office as a power play," CNN analyst and political operative Symone Sanders said during a Tuesday panel discussion following the president's disastrous meeting with Democratic leaders.
"He thinks he just knows how to handle and 'manipulate the media,'" she added. "And I think he thought that those cameras would be a strong point for him. And I think it just dug him a bigger ditch."
Sanders went on to say that with the GOP still in control of all three branches of government, a government shut down would be not just on Trump, but on the whole Republican Party.
Conservative "never-Trump" pundit Bill Kristol pushed back: "Most of the government is already funded. It's not clear what the effects of a shutdown for a week or two would do."
"During Christmas?" Sanders rebutted.
Kristol responded first by saying that he doesn't like Trump and didn't like the antics the president exhibited earlier in the day before again dismissing concerns about the effect a government shutdown could have.
"It really offends me as an American that this is the way the White House is being treated as this ludicrous stage for squabbling," the Weekly Standard editor said. "But I'm not so confident that Democrats win this fight as a pure political matter."
Sanders pointed out that "if the government shuts down on December 21st, even if it's just through January 3, that means federal workers will have their paychecks withheld during Christmas."
"I definitely think it matters," she added.
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