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. This Christmas week, I'm David Rothkopf your host and we're joined by the Christmas elf himself, Norm Orinstein, who's in some sunny climb enjoying the season while Tannet. Right, Norm? Uh, if only. But it is a sunny climb, I have to say. I will also say that I am in Florida, but I would not come to Florida if it weren't out of necessity. Because Florida, I am in a place called Longboat Key, which is right by Sarasoga. It's a beautiful, beautiful spot, ravaged by the Hurricanes last year. But it's also become the home of the proud boys and the oath keepers. Michael Flynn lives down here. They actually tried. This is a Longboat Key is this very narrow spit with a bay on one side and the Gulf on the other. And it's on one road, Gulf of Mexico Drive. They tried, DeSantis tried, to change every Gulf of Mexico Drive to Gulf of America Drive. And this Maga area, when they heard that they would have to replace all the signs and raise taxes to do so, said, no, thank you. So at least I wouldn't call it a bright spot because it was all about money. But this remains the Gulf of Mexico Drive. Well, that was just what he was getting started with the name, ain't thing. Now he's a little John. Right. Yeah, everything is named after him. What I don't understand is how there is nobody in his family, in his office, in the administration, in the Republican Party, who will go up to him and say, hey, buddy, naming everything after yourself is a little weird. Maybe just skip this one. But he's not doing that. Is there anything after himself? Yes. I think Michael Beschloss had one of the best tweets about this, which was a picture of John F. Kennedy's birthplace with a bronze plaque, John F. Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy was born here. And Beschloss said, this still is John F. Kennedy's birthplace. So it's not the Trump John F. Kennedy birthplace yet. You might think from all of this, David, that this guy was a narcissist. I think we're getting a little bit of proof that maybe he's a narcissist. Oh, yeah. The one with the malignant narcissistic psychopath. Well, you could, you could conclude that. And frankly, Norm, I think that's the easy conclusion. I think it's the woke conclusion. Another way to look at it is this. Donald Trump is a man of great character. And he is saying, no, we're past the era where people do not accept responsibility for their mistakes. I will take responsibility. I will put my name on everything. Well, but wait a minute. There's one exception here, David. He is refusing to put his name on any part of the Epstein files. So battle, jerks, shoes, wines, Kennedy Center, Institute of Peace, and it goes on. But the Epstein files, nothing. Take his name out. They've spent a year trying to scrub his name. And what we learned today was they had to release some files that had Trump in them. And the Justice Department said, there are some things here that are clearly baseless and rumors and have nothing to do with reality. Yeah, well, and right. And you know, the minute you read it, and frankly, the minute anybody who knows how to read read it, they said, Oh, that's probably a lie because the Justice Department is a bunch of liars right now. And they lie on behalf of Trump. And the same thing happened to me this morning when I saw an announcement from the government that we, the fourth quarter or the last quarter that they were tracking had had growth of 4.3 percent. And Trump immediately, you know, put on true social opposing. See everything's great. But my first reaction, this is the first time it's ever happened because he's taken everywhere. Everything was, I don't believe the government numbers. And I think we're into some kind of a new era now where if the government says, don't take this vaccine, then you should maybe take the vaccine. If the government says, here's the economy, you don't believe them. If the Justice Department says this is what, you don't believe them. I don't know that, I don't know that anybody's really thought through the consequences of nobody believing anything the government says. I think you're exactly right. And the long term consequences of that, unfortunately, may be there if we ever get an honest government back. But you're absolutely right. But what's also true is Trump believes, as he always has in his narcissistic way, that if he just keeps saying something over and over again, people will believe it. Now that may be true of some things. But if you're sitting there and your rent is going up, your health care is going away. The groceries that you get at the store continue to stretch your pocketbook. And Donald Trump says, everything is great. The economy is booming. Prices are coming down. You're not going to believe that. Any more than people believed when the Biden administration kept talking accurately about how inflation had gone from 9% to below 3% and other things where the economy actually objectively was doing very well. It doesn't matter what matters is what people see and feel. And there was a really interesting piece by Michael Green, a sub-stack about how the poverty rate has been miscalculated for six decades plus because the woman at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who first came up with the poverty rate came at a time in 1960 when food made up a third or more of people's budgets. Health care was a negligible proportion. Rents and mortgages weighed out, a price of housing weighed out. And so if you took the average price of a family's food budget, multiplied it by three and said anything below that if you're making it is a poverty level, that seemed reasonable at the time. Now when food is a small portion and when you have to look at things like childcare, which is a huge portion for those who now, back then, it was one earner in a family. Now it's far more to you. You take into account childcare, the price of rent and of housing, the cost of health care, and instead of a poverty rate that might have been $30,000 in today's dollars, it's $120,000. And while it varies, obviously North Dakota, rents and housing prices are significantly less than those we face in Washington, DC or even a place like Indianapolis, we're talking much more money for people who are pressed and probably in a place where one rod going out on the car sends them into a downward spiral. And the idea that Trump can just say everything is great and getting better or that JD Vance recognizing a slightly different reality can say, well, it's not all great, but it's all Biden's fault. A year into this administration isn't working. And obviously we see that in most of the public opinion surveys. But on the other hand, Caroline Levin pointed out one of these insider advantage bias for public and polls that had Trump at 50% and was ecstatic about it. But every other poll shows him very deeply underwater and his standing on the economy abysmal. Yeah, and today the conference board's consumer confidence index came out and it was at a low for Trump. When independent evaluators are certainly coming to conclusion, that strikes me as really harsh, right? The $120,000 is, you know, kid comes out of college and it gets up to make it out of $20,000. Still fairly pleased with that. And yet, you can't live on it. Well, I will tell you one little anecdote. I walk my dog at a park not far from our house. And there is a pickleball court there. And one of our neighbors, where is the scourge destroying a lot? You know, I can hear the whacking blocks away. But one of my neighbors with the dog also sort of is the referee for the pickleball court. And he said that he sometimes will just get into a conversation with these 30 somethings over playing pickleball who are all either associates at law firms or working in places where they're making pretty damn good money by any of the standards we would have. And they all complain that 40% or more of their income is going to rent the apartments that they have. Some of them, the rents are so high that they have to have roommates, which they would prefer not to have. And you know, that's a reality for an awful lot of people now that's different from before. With all of that, I do think it should be a wake up call to progressives that if you look at a piece like that, look at this really interesting book by my friend Jean Ludwig, who was the controller of the currency, called the mismeasurement of America, saying that not for malign reasons, but we also very much underestimate real unemployment and real inflation measured by what people who are working poor or others actually buy inflation is much higher. We need to think through what policies would make the most sense to actually provide that floor for people. One part of it might be returning to a real discussion about the universal basic income. And for those of us old enough to remember the Nixon administration, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan was his domestic policy advisor and convinced Richard Nixon to support a guaranteed annual income and the left rejected it because it was coming from Nixon. We would have a transformed America if that had happened. And that's something that you know, might be worth thinking about at the same time, finding ways to make sure that reduced childcare cost and subsidized costs are made even lower so that it actually pays for people with two incomes for the second one to work and not pay it all into childcare. We have to rethink housing policies so that we can bring those costs out. But the other reality here, David, is that next year we've talked about this before. Up in his crazy end of year rant, said, I'm going to replace the Fed share in March and we're going to bring interest rates down, down, down. The Fed controls one sliver of interest rates, which is the short term rates, mostly that affect banks, the transfers between banks, but that sets the short term rates. They don't have anything to do with long term rates. And people around the globe who have relied on the dollar and are willing to buy treasury notes and bills, long term ones, because it's the safest investment, are moving in other directions. That's why gold is $4,000 and ounce. And what that means is for us to attract the money coming in from Americans and from abroad for treasuries, those long term rates are going to have to go up. That's how you attract the money. You have to pay people more. What that means is next year we are likely to see mortgage rates go up, construction cost rates go up, car loan rates go up, and for people who want to get a mortgage or want to need to change a mortgage or who can't buy a car outright and have to take a loan, all of those costs are going to go up and no matter how much Trump says everything is great. It's like telling people whose house is on fire, yeah, but at least you're getting warm. It's all wonderful and you can build a wonderful new house. That doesn't attract a lot of support. And then the only question remaining, the dark question is how does Trump react if he goes further and further south? And that's the scary part. Marshal law becomes more of a real possibility. 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 enjoying ad-free listening experience, access to our discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. Just code DSR 2025 for a 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR Network dot com slash by. That's code DSR 2025 at the DSR Network dot com slash by. Thank you and enjoy the show. Attention. Rail travelers, platform paces, window gays and our rest negotiators. Have you heard the big rail fair for ease is here. Rail fairs have been frozen across England until March 2027 on standard class tickets, including off-peak, anytime and season tickets. For more information, visit nationalrail.co.uk slash fairs for ease. Season season excursions apply. We looked at city cars and quietly disagreed with the formula. Quietly we added more space. Quietly we upgraded the tech. But kept the price honest. The all new MG4 EV urban from just £239 a month with 0% APR. MG Motor Financial Services £2300 deposit over 49 months, £7223 optional final payment of the end of March 2026 conditions apply visit MG.co.uk. Well, Merry Christmas to you too, Norm. It's a happy holiday spirit. You are just, you are Scrooge, Mick Duck. What? David, I am talking in a calm voice this time, unlike getting out of that. That's because that's where you're in Florida. You're relaxing. Well, let's not done though with the anger. Well, let's flip the narrative a little bit. So look, we talk a lot about what's going wrong this year because a lot's going wrong. And we talk about Trump and the Supreme Court and the Congress and what we think they ought to change. And if I said to you, you know, give me a grade for each of those, it would be just FFF. So that's not easy. I mean, that is easy. But why do we, why don't we do this? Why don't you give me a couple of people or institutions that you would give an A to for 2025? Okay. So I would first give an A to Jamie Raskin and a number of other members of the House and Senate, including Sheldon White House and Erick Swalwell, who stood up to Trump and keep pushing him hard. I'd given A to a couple of governors, including Josh Shapiro and JB Pritzker, who are standing up to him. I give an A to Tish James, who refuses to fold in the face of all the pressure on her. A few conditional grades to give. One, much as I cringe from it. Rand Paul has been particularly honest and strong on the illegal war crimes committed in the Caribbean with Venezuela. And for all of his whackingness to put it nicely in every other area or a March or retailer green for that matter, just the fact that they're getting a tiny bit of distance from Trump from that end of the spectrum, not an A, but a pass, a passing grade. We view them as pass fail. We're almost every other Republican fails. There are some state attorneys general who deserve very good grades. There are some other House members like Madeline Dean, who have been particularly strong Sean Caston, Jim McGovern, the ranking member on the Rules Committee, who gets on the floor and ridicules the actions of House Republicans. But unlike in the past, where I could have a list of 50 who have really done exemplary work in this environment, it's hard. And so are you saying that Rand Paul is America's best Republican? I would say if the best Republican may be one who's not in office, and that's Justin Amash, who is the purest libertarian out there, who was bounced from Congress because he was a pure libertarian. And on that basis has views on so many things that you and I would find ridiculous. But he is an honest man. And if you follow him as people should on social media, he goes after the Republicans in office from Trump on down really, really well. But let's face it, if we're looking for Republicans in office who are the best, we're not going to find any. There are none who would meet that criterion. Maybe the best of them is the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, who's a decent human being and who's trying to raise the level of discourse in the country. But I could find many flaws there too. Because if you're a Republican in office now, even if you want to have and show basic integrity, there's only so much distance you'll be willing to get from the cult before the backlash becomes too great to take. Well, speaking of that, we had a story just today that a bunch of people are leaving the Heritage Foundation and joining not-for-profit associated with former Vice President Mike Pence, who seems to be alone among mainstream Republicans who are not crazy like Rand Paul or libertarians, sort of taking a course and saying, I don't go with the president on everything. Of course, the fact that the president tried to arrange his murder might have influenced him, but what do you think of the Mike Pence phenomenon? Because as I said on an earlier one of our podcasts, for the first three years of the last Trump administration, I thought he was carved out of balsa wood. So I've known Mike Pence. I've known him since he was in the house. We had a nice relationship when he was in the house. I thought he also was a guy with integrity. The fact is when Mike Pence was in the house, you would have put him at the far right end of the Republican spectrum. That he is now the moderate as we were, the avatar of reasonable conservatism also tells us how far to the crazy end the Republican party and the right have generally have gone. Having said that, you know, when he paid that price as vice president of bowing down, bowing and scraping, being loyal to Trump for more than three years, and then paid the price of having a president celebrate chance of hang Mike Pence. And that has made him rethink a little bit. But the fact is that the conservatism of the Republican party 25 years ago, which was more center right or right center than anything else, Mike Pence represents the right, right end of the spectrum. And the fact is that the Trump people are not on that spectrum. They are nihilists. They are extremists. They are authoritarians. They don't believe in the kind of conservatism that was, you know, we want lesser government, but there are a lot of areas where we need government itself and we need public private partnerships. And we have problems. We need to solve whether it's the climate or the healthcare system or education. And we believe in free market solutions, but we're going to have to find ways to compromise. That's gone. Gone completely. And whether and how it comes back, I am at a loss to figure that out. And of course, the other reality is the damage being done is not going to be undone and with just a change in leadership. Somehow we come through this catastrophic era and get back to sane governance. So much of government will have been blown up. So many decisions will have been made that have destroyed our alliances and our role in the world. So much of American credibility will be shot. We've talked about this before, but if you are a candidate or France or Britain or Japan or Australia and you have for many decades since the Second World War shared your most sensitive intelligence with the United States because that's how you thwart terrorist plots. That's how you see where danger is coming. They can't trust the United States now. Something that they do or say is going to go right to Putin and to Moscow and maybe even to Beijing. And you get leaders who say trust us. And if you start sharing sources and methods that are going to be a danger five years down the road, how can you be sure that there won't be another Trump coming in who will share all of that and make your lives more miserable? So all of that when Michael Ludig and actually I Michael Ludig might still consider himself a Republican, a long time judge, a mentor to many of the Trump judges, even who were on the Supreme Court said last week, forget about the America we've known. That's gone. And that is not coming back. The damage is much too great for that. So we've got a big problem on our hands and three more years of this lunacy if that's what we get is going to make it that much more difficult. 500 orders a month was manageable. Fast, thousands is madness. Embrace intelligent, order fulfillment with shipstation. The only platform combined in order management, warehouse workflows, inventory returns and analytics in one place. But used to take five separate tools, shipstation does him one. Got a shipstation.com and use code start to try shipstation free for 60 days. Okay, well, I've tried again to find something positive to stay here and it's not work. Yeah, right. Exactly. We'll do a little lightening round now. I'm just going to ask you a few questions about 2026 and you can just tell me what's going to happen. Okay. Yeah. So the first question is, are the Democrats going to win back to house or represent this? The answer is yes, but the caveat is how much will Trump and his justice department and his department of Homeland Security and his thugs and the FBI do to blow up the elections. If they don't, even if they set up large barriers, Democrats win the house. Senate's in play and I think there's a very real chance if we have anything close to a fair election. I think Democrats have an even shot, despite the fact that they're not having many obvious targets. They have a shot, an even shot of taking the Senate. What are the targets? Well, we're going to have Maine to start with, of course. Iowa, where I think the farming crisis is going to be considerable and the extremism there is very, very great. Nebraska, where the independent candidate who ran the last time is at this point running even with Pete Ricketts. I think Florida will very potentially be in play. You've got an extremist Republican and if Democrats come up with a decent candidate, there may be a backlash there. We can always hope for Texas. There, we're going to have Cornyn possibly being supplanted by Ken Paxton, although the divorce proceedings, some of which are coming to light show what a monster this guy is. Not just corrupt, not just evil, but immoral to the core. He might well win that nomination. That could at least potentially, although we always find it elusive, put Texas in play. And I think it's quite possible that Democrats don't lose a single seat because there is going to be a big backlash against Trump and Trumpism. Ohio, Ohio is very much in play and I think Sherrod Brown is the best candidate the Democrats could have for all the variety of reasons. Well, that's encouraging. Is Trump going to finish the ballroom next year? No. There will not be a ballroom finished, although if you've noticed, there's all kinds of money coming in from all of his billionaire friends and from corporations like Lockheed Martin, not surprisingly, Palantir to help pay for this monstrous ballroom. But one of the things that might happen there and the reason I'm skeptical that it'll be finished, especially because he keeps trying to expand it, is that the contractor he got to begin with, he's already stiffed. That's his pattern. And it's quite possible that he's going to have real trouble finding contractors. And of course, most of those contractors have immigrants who are doing all the work. So that may foil his plans a little bit, although of course, the East Wing already devastated, it's going to be a big hole in the ground. Is the Supreme Court going to reverse Trump's tariffs? I think if there's one area where the court may decide that they will intervene against Trump, partly because it should be absolutely crystal clear that he has vastly extended beyond the law, is tariffs. And they might do that because they recognize more than Trump does that if they leave his ability to manipulate tariffs in place, it will cause an even bigger blow to the economy, which could undermine them as well as the Republicans where their loyalty lies. They are partisan hacks. And they might, for that reason, decide to save him from himself with tariffs. I can't imagine any other area where they're going to show back them. So at the end of next year, will Trump be younger or older, healthier or less healthy? Much less healthy. You can see the downward spiral. He might even reach a point where he can't distinguish a giraffe from a rhinoceros, which is something he is bragging about that he shows how brilliant he is because he can recognize a giraffe. His health is clearly in jeopardy. His mental health is declining. His physical health, there's something seriously wrong there. You don't get MRIs without a reason. The big blotches on his arm, on his hand, the huge ankles, the elephant-tieces, the palar on his face, the falling asleep at all times. Those do not suggest a man whose health is on the upward track, despite the fact that he continues to find doctors who say he's healthier than any president has ever been. You see what I did here, Norm? Yeah, this is not my first rodeo. Yeah, I know how to get you where I want you to go. Democrats are going to win the house. Democrats may win the Senate. Orums not going to be built. Supreme court may do the right thing on one thing and Trump's old and dying. That was the most optimistic assessment of our future that you have ever given on this show. That was your holiday gift to the listeners of Words Matter. You are Santa. And I am grateful. Well, as the Marksbrothers, as Chico Marks would say, there ain't no sanity clause. Yeah, that's the halftag. You have to go and go back tonight at the opera and find that scene, everybody. If you spend any of the next few days looking at Marksbrothers movies, you'll be better off for it. This is the last Words Matter of 2025. And we between now and the New Year, our team has put together a bunch of best of podcasts, including best of Words Matter. And I strongly urge you to go and listen to those because there's a lot of good stuff there. And then we'll be back right after the beginning of the New Year, the week of whatever it is, the fifth of January. And we look forward to joining you all then. But for now, I'm Norm. Do you want to wish everybody a happy, happy? I do. But I would also make a suggestion. They're going to be people desperate for last minute gifts to give here on the eve of Christmas Eve. Here is a great gift to give to your loved ones. And that is a subscription to the DSR network. That is a great gift. It's just a few bucks a month. You can go to a store and wait in line. You can just give it by just picking up your phone or going on your computer or iPad. And you can give it to every loved one. Exactly. And give the gift of Norm. That's the gift that I'll carry through the year. And for now, thank you. And I wish you the happiest, healthiest, most prosperous New Year. Norm, I wish you the happiest, healthiest, most prosperous New Year. Everybody is listening. And we'll see again in 2026. Bye-bye.
