9, 12, 10, 28, 2, 23. This is Deep State Radio. Coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, DC, and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to DSR's Words Matter. I'm David Rothkopf. I'm joined this week is every week by Norm Ornstein, although look at Norm Ornstein right now. He is wearing the jacket and tie. He looks super elegant. Where were you Norm? So my wife Judy Harris and I were honored to be one of nine actually Washingtonians of the year by Washingtonian magazine, not for any of the stuff that we generally discuss, but for the summer debate camp for public school kids that we do as part of the foundation we established in memory of our son Matthew. So it was a nice, nice honor and an opportunity to wear a tie which I now do maybe three times a year. Well, it's a lovely tie and it's a well-deserved honor and it shows a lot of good judgment on their part. And I just want to know, did you thrift the tie or did you buy that one full price? I have. I don't buy anything at full price. It's baked into who I am. This one I actually got at a thrift store of all things, but it's a very high end tie. I have a whole lot of ties accumulated over a whole lot of time where I needed to wear one every day. And now they just kind of sit there mostly. I look at them. But you look. And some of them no doubt will end up back in a thrift shop. Well, that's the circle of life, you know. Yes. And I hope our listeners will take a take a page out of that. By the way, I want to say thank you to the listeners. The past few episodes of this podcast have done extremely well, particularly on YouTube, where the interest in these conversations has gone up and up and up. I'd like to think that it's because of our wisdom or maybe the electric chemistry that we have together. But there's another possibility and that is because the world is going to hell. Deep, deep, deeply into hell. And every day brings more giant strides into a hellscape worse even than I could have imagined. And my imagination has been pretty, pretty strong. I know you have a pretty bleak imagination, but this morning you woke up to the president of the United States saying that he thinks that he should impose the insurrection act in your hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota because of the out of control insurrection. Now I've gone online and I've looked as much as I could at reliable media sources. And I actually see no signs of an insurrection anywhere near Minneapolis where people are known, by the way, folks for being nice, Minneapolis, nice, Minnesota, nice. But you're in touch with people there, Norm. Is there an insurrection going on in Minneapolis where should we view this as something else? Well, we of course have had visible signs of what an insurrection really is. That was from January 6, 2021, when we had truly violent people storm the Capitol, kill policemen and injure many, many others. This is not an insurrection. And one of the great ironies here, as you know, David, is we have seen these demonstrations against the Iranian government calling it that loosely. The religious fundamentalist hellscape that is Iran and the Iranian government has responded by killing clearly thousands of people, ordering others to be summarily executed for simply going out there and demonstrating. And Donald Trump has said we are not going to let this stand. People rising up against tyranny should be protected. What we're seeing in Minneapolis is a pale imitation in many ways of what democracy supporting protesters in Iran, not just in Tehran, but around the country are doing. And Trump's response is to crack down even more. We've already seen deaths. We will see more. And I will tell you that another one of the Washingtonian of the year honorees today was Anne Friedman, who started this remarkable museum. If you live in or visit Washington, go to Planet Word, which is a museum about language. And it's absolutely wonderful. I just want to second this suggestion. My wife is on the board of Planet Word. And so we, I think we both are enthusiastic supporters of the institution. Anne is the wife of Tom Friedman, who, like me, grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis. And you'll remember many who are listening will remember. Tom's first big book was called From Beirut to Jerusalem. It was about his time as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon. And I talked to Tom today and I said, our state is triggering something that's going to make this country look like Lebanon was for many, many decades, divided into tribal animosity and governed by fundamentalist insurrectionists. It is just beyond belief that Donald Trump's reaction. I guess it's not beyond belief because it is what we would expect from him. He is, as you and I have said over and over in this podcast, a malignant narcissistic psychopath who has already said thanks to our Supreme Court that he is unleashed and can do anything he wants globally, which we will no doubt talk about soon. And at home, without any restraint except his own moral standing, which as we know is entirely absent, and that he would respond to what is a really laudable, restrained public reaction to the vicious thuggery of his ICE minions. You know what, you and I, David, had speculated long ago after the pardons of the violent insurrectionists, all of them, that Trump would use the proud boys and oath keepers as a private vigilante force. We just learned that the head of the proud boys is joining ICE. There are many others of them who are already there. They're bringing in neo-Nazis, white supremacists, people with violent backgrounds, with no checks on them, and with no training, and they're running rampant in Minnesota. They've said basically his top advisor, Stephen Miller, an odious figure, has basically said that there's complete immunity they can do whatever they want, including murder. And Minnesotans have reacted the way you would hope we would see a reaction in a democracy, and his response is to threaten to call out the military and tell them to shoot to kill. Indeed, present. Iars, you can't afford to get wrong, like warehouse operations manager. Where are the fort-lifts? I sold them. They were too expensive. I got a great deal on these scooters though. You expect us to move a two-term pallet on a scooter? It'll be fun. Just think of the core strength you'll build. This is a job for sponsor jobs! This is what happens when you don't sponsor your job on Indeed. So the next time you need someone to get the job done right, get matched with quality candidates with an Indeed sponsor job. Visit Indeed.com slash NextHire and sponsor your job today. Well, his response went a little bit further even than that, which is enough. And it is, he also said, you know, maybe we shouldn't even have elections. And many people have speculated that the reason he wants to institute the Insurrection Act in places like Minneapolis and make the mistake, Minneapolis is just a test bed for this. He intends to do it in other major cities. But a lot of people have speculated that the reason for this is suspend elections later this year because he and the Republican Party know that they will do very poorly in those elections and in fact lose control of at least one and possibly both houses of the Congress. And I wonder if you think that that is, you know, crazy left-wing conspiracy theorizing or if this is really something we need to worry about. So the reality is that crazy left-wing conspiracy theories are the reality right now. I've worried about this and we talked about it even going back to the beginning of this administration, which we knew would be bad, but I think has turned out to be even worse than we had feared. That he would, if there was an uprising against him and the things that he was doing in both the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. I think we're moving closer and closer to that and it's clear from every public opinion survey that the country, including some of his most avid maga followers, although tragically not enough, have turned against him. There was an interesting piece by Eduardo Porter, who was a long time and often underestimated economics correspondent for the New York Times, who now does a sub-stack. Pointing out that Trump basically won because enough Hispanics supported him, that was enough to make the margin of his victory, the increase in support, and that they've turned against him. It's mostly what they've seen with immigration. Many of them voted for Trump saying, well, we're here, legally, and they didn't necessarily identify with those either in the country or coming into the country who were not here, who had not been documented. But now they're seeing that it's a war against all of them. If you look like somebody with a brown skin, they will pick you up, even if you have proof that you're a citizen, they'll beat the crap out of you and throw you in one of their detention camps. He is doing this now. I mean, one of the most evil things that I've seen is picking up several Native Americans, members of the Sue Ogolala tribe in Minneapolis, all, of course, not just citizens. I wrote that this would be ironic picking up Native Americans, but we're past irony right now. They are holding three of them, refused to release information about them, and Christy Nome has said, you can have them out of there as soon as the tribe agrees to sign an immigration agreement with ICE. This is kidnapping and extortion, and that's what we're seeing. And people are turning on Trump. The more they see these videos, and they're out there, including to a large number of people who generally have not paid attention and have not seen all of the outrageous, immoral, illegal, unconstitutional things that the Trump administration has done. They're seeing this now. They're realizing what's going on. And the fact that he is online, the way things have been going to lose the house, and I think increasingly likely to lose the Senate, and likely to lose control in a number of state legislative chambers, including in some red states that this is not something Trump and the people around him will easily accept. We have to prepare ourselves for the invocation of martial law and the suspension of elections. And what we have to do is just like what the brave people of Iran are doing, even in the face of official violence, make sure that there is an understanding that the vast majority of people are not going to stand for this. This is not America. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoy an ad-free listening experience, access to our Discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. Use code DSR26 for a 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR Network.com. That's code DSR26 at the DSR Network.com. Slash by. Thank you and enjoy the show. Yeah, it's absolutely essential that Trump's threats of using the insurrection act do not cow people off the streets or do not cow people into sitting in their homes and lamenting this. People need to demonstrate, organize, witness what's going on, post things online, do things within the law, but do them in larger and larger numbers. I do think it's interesting as you point out that even his supporters are turning against this. You had an incident earlier this week that has perhaps seldom occurred in the past several years in which you and Joe Rogan agree. Because Joe Rogan on his podcast talked of what Trump is doing as a Gestapo tactic because essentially what's happening is you've got these masked unidentified thugs in the streets of places like Minneapolis going up. And by the way, they're now sending a big number into Maine as we speak, but they're going up to individuals in the street and saying, show me your papers. As if this were Nazi Germany and the most recent opinion polls show now that the majority of Americans think that ICE is making America less safe and only a relatively smaller minority think that what Trump is doing is right. This trend seems likely to meet it continue, which is going to increase the pressure on them to take some kind of steps with regard to these elections. But in our country, as we have talked about in the past elections are controlled by the states. How does Trump get the Georgia or the Virginia or the Minnesota state board of elections to cancel elections? What's that going to look like? He is not going to be able to do that, but what he will do is send in troops to key people from the polls. He's already said that he made a mistake in 2020 and not seizing voting machines. He has, I should note, zero legal authority to do any of that, but legal authority doesn't seem to matter to him. Two points about what you just said, David. The first is that under the law, the way that ICE and customs and border people can behave is different if you are a hundred within a hundred miles from a border, Canada or Mexico. Then it is for the rest of the country. You are able, if you are within a hundred miles, to stop somebody if you have suspicion that they might have come in over the border illegally and, you know, see what papers they have. You cannot do that legally when you are more than a hundred miles from the border. What we are seeing is ICE thugs in many apples and its surroundings going door to door, utterly illegally, utterly unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. In some instances, blowing up the doors, but demanding that people show their papers. It is American Gestapo and it is outrageous. The second point is the pretext of this was we are going to deal in Minneapolis. It was the entirely racist attack on Somali Americans and the Somali population heavily concentrated in Minneapolis, triggered ostensibly by the scandal, partly real, partly wildly exaggerated by some of Trump's minions. Over getting money and fraudulent activities during the pandemic from government programs to protect feeding and housing and the like. The number of people who are here who are not citizens in Minnesota is a tiny fraction of those in Texas or Florida or Alabama or cities of that states of that type, which have far more people who are not citizens. Many of them undocumented others with documents and they are taking away documentation from people who are here on green cards or within one meeting of getting a green card. They are not going after those who they have identified as undocumented or what they call illegal. They are going after anybody with a brown or a yellow or a red or a black skin that they see on the streets or in a house, hassling them and beating them up. They are now going after an assaulting people standing a distance from them and filming them, taking their phones. One instance, they took an American citizen a kid, a 15 year old. Beat him up, took his phone, threw him out on the street miles from where he had been. He went to find his phone, used the app, find me, and discovered that it had been taken by one of these ICE agents, probably sold and then put out in a bin as a used phone. They are corrupt and beyond evil. That is the world we are living in at home. It is more dystopian than anything we have seen. Even if you look at novels like Philip Roths about what could have happened if Charles Lindbergh had won the presidency and if the neo-Nazis and Nazi enthusiasts had won. That was chilling. This is far worse than what we might have imagined could have happened there to all accept those immediately targeted for concentration camps. We are seeing plenty of concentration camps in the United States right now. I would point out just because people are going to wonder that many Appleuses between 150 and 200 miles from the Canadian border. The fact that within the normal bounds of the United States, the statutory limits on what an ICE agent can do are quite severe. They are not law enforcement officials. They are responsible for one thing and one thing only and that is immigration enforcement. This idea that they can go into homes without warrants etc is completely beyond their bounds. One of the things that continues to haunt us as a country is that even as Republicans, an increasingly large number of Republicans recognize how dangerous this is. The Republicans in the Congress are unwilling to stand up to Trump. I saw an interview with one today on CNN when he was asked about the insurrection act. He literally simply refused to answer. He could not bring the words out of his mouth. He could not think of a way to question it. We see this every day and every way. We are not talking about it right here. We talk about it in some of our other podcasts. There was a move of foot in the Senate yesterday to limit the President's ability to wage war in Venezuela. A couple of Republicans voted with the Democrats but it ended up being a procedural vote of 50-50 where JD Vance cast the deciding vote. The Republicans refused to limit Trump's abilities in Venezuela. Trump is also now talking about attacking Canada. I mean, talking about attacking Greenland. As I look at this, I also see a Donald Trump who is increasingly and rapidly looking like somebody who doesn't know what Rome is. He did an event yesterday on milk of all things because RFK Jr. is persuaded that we all need to drink whole milk. I think one sip of milk into this and he was ready for night night. He's out of it. And I get them vibe that it is a declining Donald Trump who is being manipulated by people like Stephen Miller and JD Vance who say, hey boss, you're great, you're energetic. This is terrific. And if we keep doing the stuff I'm telling you to do, you're going to look great and Trump goes, okay, go ahead and do it. I mean, it seems to me like there's a small cluster of extremists around it increasingly, at old and empty headed President who are actually pulling the strings here. Is that what it looks like to you? Yes and no, I think there's a large part of it. But I also think that Trump as a malignant narcissist is increasingly incapable emotionally of handling the reality that most Americans are turning against him. And he can't simply even in his own mind believe that it's just what he would view as the crazy left. It's many of those closest to him. And his reaction to all of that is going to be even more violent. So it's a combination of being adult and having others manipulate him. And of course, some of that manipulation is people who are gaining from this whispering in his ear, pardon this grifter, pardon this drug dealer, pardon this sexual perpetrator. And in some cases giving him money and he just goes ahead and does it. So a lot of it is, you know, puppeteers, but a lot of it is his own malignancy. A couple of other points you raised so many good ones. Ice and Minneapolis are wearing jackets along with their masks and hoods that say police. And as you point it out, they are not police. They are not law enforcement. They're trying to portray themselves as law enforcement. And what they're doing is using that tool for some of their worst abuses, but not doing the restraint that comes with being trained in law enforcement. And I do wish, tough as it is, that the police, the real police in Minneapolis, the Minnesota state troopers would start arresting some of these thugs for the stuff that they're doing on Republicans in Congress. Every once in a while, you'll see a modest uprising against him, which is more than we've had before. And he's not happy with that. But the reality is just as you said, the level of moral cowardice, there is no outrageous action that Donald Trump and his fascist contingent can do. It appears to bring at home or abroad any kind of significant pushback. And I'll single out here Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri. Many of us remember, Hawley was one of the leaders instigating the violent insurrection on January 6th. Then when it actually happened, we have the video of coward Josh Hawley running as fast as he could away from what he had helped to instigate. Josh Hawley was one of those who drew a line in the sand and said, we can't have any more incidents like Venezuela. We can't send troops into Venezuela. And then of course caved when it came to the actual vote. This is a level of moral bankruptcy that is greater than anything I have seen in many decades of being immersed in Congress and American politics. And loathsome doesn't even begin to describe the degeneracy of the people involved here, letting this happen in our country, violating the oath of office that they took to the Constitution. I have to say the Democrats themselves, I'd like to be equal opportunity here. Also behaving in what I consider to be a troubling way. I saw a video today of Chuck Schumer, who at least in name is the Senate Democratic leader. And he was talking and he was giving the speech, you know, while all this horrible stuff is going on in Minneapolis saying we will focus this year on affordability and blah, blah, drone, drone, drone on. And you know, we all know affordability is a real issue. We should not minimize affordability is an issue. You know, prices are going up. It's harder for people. They're not getting the jobs they thought they would. Healthcare costs are going up, etc, etc. But there is Gestapo in the streets of Minneapolis. There are things that need to be called out and stood up to. There are going to be opportunities and requests from the government to provide additional funding for DHS. It seems to me that it is a reasonable position for the Democratic leaders to say no more money for ICE, no more money for DHS, until XYZ, setting some criteria, telling them out of the cities, telling them not to work beyond their legal ambit, you know, setting some guy and there should be no more money. This is not this is not the equivalent of a few years ago saying defund the police, which was I thought a foolish position to take. This is not that. This is an out of control, private, secret police run by the president with, you know, the guidance of Stephen Miller and Kristi Nome and Tom Homan and a bunch of literal thugs that is tearing America apart. Shouldn't shouldn't shouldn't Democrats draw a red line there, no more money for ICE. There is a level of myopia and perhaps wishful thinking among top Democratic leaders and sadly many of their followers about this. It's as if you're standing in front of your house, which is burning to the ground and you're saying, you know, I just don't want to focus on the arsonists right now because people might not like that. I'm going to talk about affordability. I'm sorry. Right now we are at a crisis point that is deepening by the moment. As you know, and we've talked about before, I have for some time been a proponent of House Democrats bringing periodically impeachment resolutions up not against Trump so much, but against his cabinet members and other officials who are committing atrocities. Finally, we have 70 House Democrats who signed on to an impeachment resolution against Kristi Nome who's at near the top of the list in terms of atrocities lying, grifting and the rest. The thing about an impeachment resolution is it's privileged in the House. Once you formally introduce it, they have to bring it up. They have to debate the articles of impeachment and they have to vote at least procedurally on whether to table them or let them go forward. The Republican margin in the House is down to two right now. Bring this up. Get a vote on there ought to be at least a half dozen articles of impeachment against Kristi Nome. There is a reasonably good chance that three Republicans will join with the Democrats and you can actually have them impeached. Now it's not going to be sent to the Senate where the Senate will vote two thirds to remove them from office, but you then force the Senate to take it up. And what it does is it focuses and highlights on the abuses being carried out by these monstrous people. Do the same with Pete Hegsiff. Do the same with RFK Jr. We should note RFK and his Department of Health and Human Services and their subsidiary, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, SAMHSA, arbitrarily cut overnight $2 billion worth of mental health care, much of it for children, some facing deep crises or suicide, losing their support overnight. There was enough of a pushback, including from Republicans that they reversed that, but this is RFK Jr. It's not just about radical conspiracy theories having kids die of measles, potentially of tetanus and polio and the like. He's doing other things that are mayhem and if we don't point this out and if our members of Congress don't, if they don't focus on what's happening to shred our democracy, the idea that affordability is what people really care about, true enough, will be enough to win an election that could very well be and most likely at this point will be suspended is insane. So I have no truck for leaders and many of their more timid democratic followers who don't appear to grasp the gravity of what we face right now. Yeah, I have one last question because of course we run out of time all too quickly, the points you make are so profoundly important. I am glad our audiences growing. I do think more and more people need to see this and hear this and share this. There are steps that can be taken by Democrats in the Senate and the House, but just to go back to a point that you made earlier, ice is breaking the law in these cities. It is time for democratic governors and democratic mayors to step up and enforce the law in these cities. Now I think that's going to happen and I don't know whether it's going to be in Minneapolis or in Louiston, Maine or a New York City or Chicago, but there will be a confrontation. And I think it is going to be a breaking point. I think it's going to define who the leaders are and who the cowards are. But I also think these people need to be tested. I think one of the lessons of Trump and Trump is is that if you try to work along with them, if you try to find a way to game them, you end up always getting screwed. Trump betrays his wives and his business partners and, and I think that's what I'm going to do. And his supporters all the time, you actually have to stand up to them. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are and what your advice would be to a mayor or a governor who is going to face this difficult challenge of enforcing state local law, which by the way, the president has no ability to pardon people out of. So in order to rein in these federal abuses. So we get this lie repeated by Stephen Miller, Kristi gnome and all of their acolytes that there's total immunity for federal officials, which is a lie. Federal officials can be arrested and charged if in the course of what they view as their official duties, they break the law or violate ordinances. And it's absolutely, I think, mandatory to begin to arrest those who do for police to stand by while they watch citizens. We had an incident the other day of a protester who had not done anything violent being shot by a non lethal chemical thing in his eye. And he lost his eye. He's blinded because what was done. How can you stand by and not arrest and jail the thug who committed a violent assault of this sort with no bearing. They lie all the time. They ram into cars and then claim and break the windows, drag people out and arrest them saying that they had in fact assaulted the officers. They're lying about all of this stuff. The first person who ought to be arrested in Minneapolis is Greg Bovino, who lied openly to a federal judge saying that he had been assaulted when there was ironclad video that he had been the assault or not the assaulty. How he has not been arrested on contempt for perjury. I don't know. But he is now leading bands of thugs committing atrocities in Minneapolis all the time. Throw his ass in jail. He deserves it. He has perpetrated crimes that are state and city crimes. And what we've learned is not just that Trump will betray his friends and allies if it's in his own interest. What we also should have learned is if you try to appease this psychopath, he isn't going to see that as a good thing. Fine. I'll be good to you. He's going to see the weakness and he will double and triple down on what he did. And if people don't understand this and that includes, as you say, mayors, governors. Some of the best workers coming from state attorneys general who do understand the assault on the rule of law. But if they decide that what they're going to try to do is appease him, they're going to reap the whirlwind. No, no question about it. Well, I'm afraid we've come to the end of our time here for this week. We'll be here each and every week. And we hope that you will join us for this and for everything else we're doing here at the DSR Network. But for deep state radio for silicon consciousness for our daily for the daily we do with the new republic. The numbers for all of those things are going up tremendously, particularly in YouTube. So if you can subscribe on YouTube by all means do that as well as going to the DSR network.com. Click on membership and providing the few dollars a month that we ask for support for the independent media and perspectives we're providing here. I think we are headed into a year. That is going to be unlike any that we have ever seen in American history. And it is a year where we all need to work together in an informed legal smart way. And I, you know, one of the things that we want to focus on here is helping provide some guidance on that. We are very fortunate each and every week to be able to talk to norm about these things. He is our Washingtonian of the year every year. Regardless of the origins of his neck ties and we very much look forward to continuing the conversation with you norm next week. And with all of you who are listening until then thanks very much. Bye bye.
