united united contribu some of the problems we're having in washington right now. you have some ideological extremists who has a big bank roll and they can entirely skew our politics, and there are a whole bunch of members of congress right now who privately will tell you i know our positions are unreasonable, but we're scared that if we don't go along with the tea party agenda or extremist agendagenda, we'll challenged from the right and it was very specific and they toed the line. that's why we see a breakdown of normal routine business done here in washington on behalf of the american people. and all of you know it. i mean i'm not telling you anything you don't know because it's very explicit. you report on it. a big chunk of the republican party right now is -- are in gerrymandered districted where there's no competition, and those folks are much more worry ed about a tea party challenger than they are a general election where they've got to compete against a democrat or go after independent votes, and in that environment, it's a lot harder for them to compromise. all right? mark. >> thank you, mr. president. this week the president of china has visited several of the asian countries that you were going to visit and have had to skip because of the shutdown. >> right. >> he's also take an big role at two of the regional summits, both of which you have made a pretty broad part of the pivot. more broadly you've said in general that this hurts the reputation of the united states oversea. are there specific things that you can point to where you already have seen some damage? and one that occurs to me is the trade deal that you've tried to do in asia. the leaders today announced that they still want to wrap it up, but they no longer are able to say they want to wrap it up by the end of this year. had you been there, do you thing you could have gotten that additional push? >> i think that's a great example, and we don't know, but it didn't help they wasn't there to make sure that we went ahead and closed a trade deal that would open up markets and create jobs for the united states and make sure that countries were trading fairly with us in the most dynamic fastest growing market in the world. i should have been there. but, you know, i can tell you because i had to apologize to some of the host countries that they understand that the most important thing i can do for them and the most important thing i can do for the bilateral relationship in america's re