Monday’s Morning Joe brought MSNBC viewers a confounding explanation for the ongoing government shutdown by creating a political paradox: Republicans were completely at fault, but Democrats were preventing the shutdown from ending.

NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilemann laid out the first component of the paradox:

Mike Johnson on this morning with Ali Vitali said the sentence to your point about the clean CR. As soon as you hear anybody say, “We gave a clean CR,” I'm like, okay, “That — You've lost the debate.” […] But he also said — but he also said when Ali made the point you just made, she said, you know, “Republicans run the House, Republicans run the Senate.” Well, he said, “Well, Ali, anybody who studies civics knows that we need 60 votes, which means that we need 60.” I'm like, anybody who studies civics —

Johnson did not, as Heilemann contended, rearrange the playing field to place Republicans in a more favorable light. The Continuing Resolution passed by the House was practically identical to the most recent CR passed in March, and was thus “clean.”

Accurately defining terms in order to win an argument wasn’t losing. Twisting the truth when you couldn’t win based on facts was a sign of losing.

Heilemann went on to add: “Again, I say most American voters cannot name their congressmen. The 60 vote threshold, the clean CR, those are the terms of debate, but if you are citing any of those things, you are losing the debate.”

It’s not clear how one side was losing when both weren’t winning. It’s a game of who would cave first: 13 Republicans or seven Democrats, and Democrats were already folding. 

Regardless, Morning Joe believed the lie that Republicans were the guilty party. Heilemann then said the quiet part out loud:

This time, what are the incentives for a Democratic Party that is fighting on the grounds of health care right now? […] we don't want to fund this government when it is doing what it's doing with ICE, when it's doing a –  like, much more fundamental things.

Democrats are not in a mood because of what they've seen over the last eight months. And, again, you can criticize this or not criticize it, but the health care thing is the thing that we have to say something. We have to negotiate. We have to give. We want to fight over something that's popular for us.

This shutdown was one of, if not the only, area where Democrats had been able to successfully resist Republicans during Trump’s second term. Democrats had lamented the thousands of federal workers who were going without pay, yet refused to back down on partisan tactics.

This is the crux of the paradox: Republicans, since they were the majority party across all three branches, should not be allowing the shutdown to happen; but Democrats shouldn’t back down!

It’s hard to make those two points square without ignoring reality. And in Heilemann’s own words, “But the reality is they don’t want, really, to fund this government.”

Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Johnathan Lemire continued to build off the incongruent foundation:

SCARBOROUGH: Again, Republicans own everything. They own the White House, they own the House, they own the Senate, they own the Supreme Court. They own absolutely everything. It's kind of hard to make the argument this is the Democrats fault.

[…]

LEMIRE: So many of these sort of extreme moves put forth by the President, and that includes blessing this shutdown is, they think that they can use this to political advantage. History will find out if that's true or not.

Yes, Trump and Russell Vought were capitalizing on the opportunity to carve up the federal bureaucracy. No one could deny that. But Democrats were using the shutdown to signal to their base that they’re not completely inept. It’s not like a certain Senate minority leader was worried about getting primaried or anything. If anyone had desperately taken political advantage, it’s the left.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, MSNBC. Either Republicans really are holding federal workers hostage, or Democrats need to stand down. 

The transcript is below. Click "expand" read:

MSNBC’s Morning Joe
October 6, 2025
7:11:33 a.m. EST

(…)

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You know, John, it's so fascinating while you're going through this, and you're — I can just speak for myself — when you're in the House, you think this is the most important thing in the world. And it takes you a couple months to realize nobody knows what we're doing up here. They see their headlines. And this is a headline. Well, and one of the reasons I always say Republicans lose these things, the headline is, “Donald Trump is President, Republicans run the Senate, Republicans run the House —

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: The government shutdown.

SCARBOROUGH: — conservatives control the Supreme Court, dominate the Supreme Court, Republicans control the bureaucracy, Republicans have a monopoly of power in Washington. And, oh yeah, the government doesn't work, the government shut down.”

I'm sorry. That just doesn't, like, somebody that's working like a midnight shift and comes home, they're not going, “Let's see, is this a clean CR or not? I think Mike Johnson gave them a clean” — no.

What they're seeing is Republicans run everything, they’ve slashed a trillion dollars in health care coverage for Americans, and Democrats are trying to get it back for them. I don't see how that ends up being a winning hand for Republicans. Much better that they talk about crime than have this debate over how they've slashed a trillion dollars in health care.

JOHN HEILEMANN: I think there's even a meta headline that exists above those headlines that's even — for most people who actually, really. You know, most people don't know who their congressman, okay?

SCARBOROUGH: Most people work for a living and are not, like —

HEILEMANN: — and just are not engaged in this, are watching football, they're watching Major League Baseball playoffs. Their, they — what their headline is for the last eight months, “Washington belongs to Donald Trump.” That's what people think. Most people just — this is the Trump era for ordinary voters. That's all they see. Trump's running roughshod doing what he wants to do. Whether you like that or don't like that, you think, “Trump is in control. Why isn’t the government not getting funded?”

Mike Johnson on this morning with Ali Vitali said the sentence to your point about the clean CR. As soon as you hear anybody say, “We gave a clean CR,” I'm like, okay, “That — You've lost the debate.”

SCARBOROUGH: “You lose.”

HEILEMANN: But he also said — but he also said when Ali made the point you just made, she said, you know, “Republicans run the House, Republicans run the Senate.” Well, he said, “Well, Ali, anybody who studies civics knows that we need 60 votes, which means that we need 60.” I'm like, anybody who studies civics —

SCARBOROUGH: We've been complaining about nobody studies civics for like a generation now.

[Crosstalk]

HEILEMANN: Again, I say most American voters cannot name their congressmen. The 60 vote threshold, the clean CR, those are the terms of debate, but if you are citing any of those things, you are losing the debate. And I think, you know, to the point of, you know, going back to 2018. 35 days, which took place after the midterms, when it was clear Democrats were taking over control — retaking control of the House of Representatives, the politics now are so much more forbidding, are so much less likely to yield. At that point, it was Nancy Pelosi arriving in Washington, arriving and taking control of the House that broke the 35 day, longest shutdown in history, 35 days.

This time, what are the incentives for a Democratic Party that is fighting on the grounds of health care right now? But truly the party, it is really animated by something equally simple, which is — and much more overarching — which is, we don't want to fund this government when it is doing what it's doing with ICE, when it's doing a –  like, much more fundamental things.

Democrats are not in a mood because of what they've seen over the last eight months. And, again, you can criticize this or not criticize it, but the health care thing is the thing that we have to say something. We have to negotiate. We have to give. We want to fight over something that's popular for us.

[Crosstalk]

HEILEMANN: But the reality is they don’t want, really, to fund this government.

(…)

7:18:40 a.m. EST

SCARBOROUGH: Again, Republicans own everything. They own the White House, they own the House, they own the Senate, they own the Supreme Court. They own absolutely everything. It's kind of hard to make the argument this is the Democrats fault.

JONATHAN LEMIRE: Yeah. And — but yet they're trying anyway. And so much of this is because they're so desperate to stay in control of next year's midterms. We talked about this last couple of weeks. So many of these sort of extreme moves put forth by the President, and that includes blessing this shutdown is, they think that they can use this to political advantage. History will find out if that's true or not. But they're trying to find these —

SCARBOROUGH: Do they win by slashing health care by a trillion dollars, giving tax cuts to Elon Musk? I mean, I'm serious. I mean, there's no world that any of this polls well. The Big Beautiful Bill is upside down for good reason, because you are stealing from rural health care providers that — rural health care already in a crisis — and you're giving that money, in effect, to Elon Musk, to Mark Zuckerberg, to tech monopolists, to multinational corporations. I mean, I'm not really good at this politics thing, but that doesn't seem like a winner. That doesn't seem like something you want to focus on in a government shutdown.

LEMIRE: The West Wing knows that the so-called Big Beautiful Bill is unpopular, which is why they're not talking about that. They're trying to get back to the territory they think helped them win in 2024. And it's, you know, they're using this shutdown as a way to, again, press unfounded, let's be clear, false claims about Democrats and people who — migrants who are here illegally, and as well as even transgendered issues. We've heard from the President about that too, making claims that that's what the Democrats want. They think those culture war issues, which won them in 2024, they think can again, because they know they can't run on their bill right now, because it's that so deeply unpopular.

And to Mark's point, the President just feels like he has the bully pulpit. He is dominant of the political scene like in a way we’ve never seen before. And he thinks he — through sheer force of his personality and messaging can carry the day.

(…)