Jimmy Kimmel tries to explain the looming government shutdown with a coffee cart

The government starts shutting down Saturday morning if Congress can't pass yet another stopgap spending bill. "This really is amazing, we've reached a point somehow at which North and South Koreans have a better relationship than Republicans and Democrats do," Jimmy Kimmel shrugged on Thursday's Kimmel Live. Republicans have spent the week trying to blame Democrats for shutting down the government, but the GOP controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, he noted. "Democrats can't even shut down their computers without Paul Ryan's permission."

To persuade Democrats — who are insisting on a plan to protect DREAMers — to vote for the stopgap bill, Republicans have attached a six-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which expired 100 days ago. "Funding for CHIP should have never been allowed to run out in the first place," Kimmel said. "This is a program that's supported overwhelmingly by both parties, Republicans and Democrats, and all Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell had to do is put it up for a vote and it would have been a done deal. But they decided to use it as a bargaining tool instead, and so now we're on the brink of the whole government shutting down."

"And I know this is complicated," Kimmel said — some conservatives criticized his understanding of the legislative process during a Twitter fight on Wednesday night — "but I have a way to illustrate what's going on that I hope will make sense in a simple way. Now bring in the coffee cart." In this episode of "Barista Theater," the cappuccino (standing in for CHIP) was a two-for-one affair. Scene over, Kimmel reiterated that Republicans are baldly using CHIP as leverage, adding that "unfortunately for them, this ruse got a little more difficult this morning to pull off," thanks to one of President Trump's "weird, occasional flashes of common sense." Watch below. Peter Weber

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