President Trump proudly owned the longest government shutdown in history. He said as much long before the shutdown even started, choosing the time, place, and manner of this battle. For 35 days, 800,000 federal employees went unpaid. That was 35 days of private businesses seeing their revenues crashing, markets balking, and our economic growth possibly grinding to a halt. The shutdown caused billions of dollars lost in economic output and the direct waste of back pay for furloughed federal workers who got paid to do nothing.

Trump said he secured a deal, but make no mistake: this concession is anything but. In a war of his own choosing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., not only won, but managed to subvert the obvious narrative that she abdicated her responsibility to negotiate and govern.