It takes Bret Baier about four minutes to get House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to admit that “Obviously, they work some places.” But those places don’t seem to be anywhere that Trump wants to put them because Hoyer is still working his talking points about the shutdown. Still, Hoyer’s halting, awkward admission that this debate isn’t about immorality and racism is about as good as things get with today’s Democratic Party.

“We don’t think the wall works and as you know an awful lot of Republicans don’t think the wall works as well,” Hoyer said. But he went on to say, “We’re prepared and want to see good, effective border security to protect Americans and stop drugs and illegal contraband from coming into the country.”

That was a perfect segue for host Bret Baier who played a clip of Speaker Pelosi earlier this month intoning, “A wall is an immorality.”

“Do you agree with that, Mr. Leader?” Baier asked. “Look, I don’t think this is an issue of morality, it’s an issue of ‘does it work?’, Hoyer replied.

Baier would get to the question of whether or not the wall works but first he asked about another far left take, noting that Beto O’Rourke had called it “a racist reaction to a racist myth.” “Do you think a wall, a barrier is racist?” Baier asked.

Hoyer stuttered a bit before saying, “I don’t talk in those terms and I don’t think that’s the way we ought to look at it.” Again, Hoyer said his objection was simply about whether the wall would “work” and whether it was an effective use of money.

Baier pressed on this point, asking Hoyer about border barriers that have already been built: “Would you remove those existing barriers because you say they don’t work?”

“No, no,” Hoyer replied.

“So they work there?” Baier asked. Hoyer rambled for a bit about people living along the Rio Grande and eventually, Baier asked him again, “So they work some places.”

“Obviously they work some places,” Hoyer said as if it hadn’t taken three minutes of concerted effort to get him to admit the obvious.

Here’s the full interview. If you want to skip to the portion about the wall it starts about 3 minutes in and runs almost to the end.