Idol money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money's always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change and tops up your stocks and shares ICER. It even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo current account required UK residents 18 plus T's and C's apply. 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 as every week by the great Oracle of Washington, DC. Norm Ornstein, how are you? Mr. Oracle, sir. I'm pumped, David, because we just got the news that Mike Lindell, my pillow guy, is running for governor of Minnesota. And I'm sure he will take some lumps, just like his pillow. Oh, yeah. How's he going to afford that? Isn't he bankrupt? I have to believe that this is a scam, that this is a way to peel some money off from donations so that he can continue to live his lifestyle. Yeah. Well, you know one thing, he doesn't spend a lot of money on books. It's not a big part of his life. So Norm, let me, speaking of genius, let me ask you a question. Do you remember the government shutdown? Vaguely. Vaguely, yeah. Well, it ended, and then these Democrats were like, okay, well, we've got a deal. And the deal is that they're going to vote on this ACA thing, and we'll really show who they are. And this is a big win for us. And so, you know, tick-tock, tick-tock, nothing happens. Today in the Senate, they voted on ACA extension, did not succeed. Apparently next week in the House, they're going to vote on some health plan, although as of right now, there actually isn't a Republican health plan. But I just have this question, like, was this a big win? Did the Democrats win? Were they secret geniuses in setting this up or not? I don't think they had a very well-established end game for this, David. But let's keep something else in mind, which is not only will these subsidies now very likely end as of the first of the year, and people who have gotten notices of... Three weeks from the day we're recording. But people already are, I think, braced for this because they've gotten notices of their premiums. But the deal to keep the government open ends January 30th. So we may well see another shutdown coming in four weeks after this, three weeks. And then we'll see if there's any kind of an end game. But there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. There are 20 million people directly affected by this, 20 million of those families, actually, with health care plans, some of whom are going to be basically forced off of insurance. And if the Republicans succeed, something they will probably try to do with a reconciliation package that can pass with a simple majority in the Senate, where they will say to all of these people, great news, we've got really cheap plans for you. And that will be cheap plans that cover nothing serious and that include, once again, the kicker that if you have a preexisting condition, you're screwed. So the backlash, I think, will be fierce down the road if that happens. And if not, Republicans are going to be scrambling. Because the fact is, if a significant share of these 20 million lose their insurance, they're going to go to emergency rooms when there's any kind of a problem. And that means that hospitals across the country are going to be in big trouble, bigger trouble than they have been otherwise. It ripples through the entire health care system. And if there's a win here for Democrats, and I put that term in quotes, it is that at least it is now crystal clear who is denying them their coverage. And it is the Republicans. But Norm, let's be honest, it's just you and me here and maybe two million other dedicated fans of this show. Didn't everybody know that already? Haven't the Republicans been against health care for 10 years? Haven't the Republicans the ones that were against Obamacare first and then tried to repeal it 67 times and then put this in this big ugly bill? And I mean, how many times do we have to say they're against it? I just don't see how this is a big win, Norm. That's what I'm getting at. Well, there will have to be more times. But this is now almost 17 years since we've had the Affordable Care Act. When it was called Obamacare back in the day, it was unpopular. Once it became the Affordable Care Act, it became very popular. And people who discovered that not only could they get affordable insurance, not only were they in a situation where if they lost their jobs and the only alternative was so-called Cobra plans where you could keep your insurance by paying 105 percent of the premium instead of the 20 percent when it was employer subsidized that they could actually get real insurance and not have to worry about bankruptcy or preexisting conditions. Republicans opposed all of that. Republicans said we'll have a plan in two weeks. That was two weeks from never. And even now, what you have, Mike Johnson, parenthetically the worst speaker ever and a serial liar, saying we got all kinds of ideas, they still have nothing, not a bupkus. Having said that, remember that we have a sizable swath of the population that pays no attention to much of anything. And so you have to hammer away at stuff where we would normally say doesn't everybody know that, but there are lots of people who don't know anything. So at least we've hammered this a little bit. Is this a big win? No, it's not a big win. In fact, if they had agreed on a plan, and it may be one of the things that could still happen here is that in the house, you have enough Republicans doing a discharge petition that would extend the subsidies for a couple of years, put some limits on the amount. So they're not going to the wealthier segment of the population, maybe throw in a couple of reforms, and that could get out and pass the house. And that would actually put more pressure on the Senate because it would be a bipartisan plan. So we're not dead yet. It is a Pyrrhic victory, you could say, so far. But it may turn out to be a little bit better. Having said that, I wish they had stuck to their guns a little bit further. Yeah, well, he also, who knows what's going to happen because if they try another reconciliation bill, I hear all sorts of rumors about the other things they're going to throw into it. Including, for example, permanent extension of a global minimum tariff of 10%. No, I'm not going to. I know. I know. It's like if you had said to Siri or ChatGPT, ChatGPT, come up with a plan to destroy the American economy. They would have come up with something similar to what Trump is doing now and his Republicans. And also, Don's of me listening to talk that the word affordable, an affordable character, is a lot like the word affordability. That showed a lot of foresight 17 years ago when this was initially promulgated. And we're going into a year in which the only thing anybody's going to be talking about is affordability. And so if you kill the affordable healthcare for tens of millions of Americans, presumably that's off message. You just haven't been listening, David. Didn't you see when Trump did his affordability rally at a casino that he said, it's a hoax. Affordability is a hoax. And the economy is at A+++. So this is a non-issue. It's laughable. 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 thedsrnetwork.com slash by. That's code DSR 2025 at thedsrnetwork.com slash by. Thank you and enjoy the show. It is laughable. The reason he was sent up there was to say affordability was really an issue and we're on top of it. But he can't stick with the main message of the day for more than five seconds before he goes off in a tangent, attacks some reporter, starts talking about Caroline Levitt's lips. I mean, oh my God, the stuff that comes out of this guy's mouth. I mean, the past week, Donald Trump wins the FIFA Peace Prize. Donald Trump hosts the Kennedy Center Honors. Donald Trump says he's going to give himself the Kennedy Center Honor. Donald Trump says he wants to name the Kennedy Center after himself. Donald Trump has band-aids on this and that. Donald Trump's cankles are more swollen than ever. Donald Trump falls asleep in meetings. You know, I mean, I don't even want to bring up the case of the previous president. It's so obvious that this guy is just coming apart at the seams. Do you have any Republican friends, Norm? Many fewer than I used to have. But yes, I do. Don't they, when they get into a private room, though, oh my God, how did we get stuck with this decaying loser? You know, one of the most interesting things about Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is becoming more interesting even though she's still a right-wing lunatic, was saying what others have said, except not so publicly, that they ridicule Trump behind his back. But having said that, the cult is still strong, David, and they're not going to go public with a lot of this stuff. And one good example of that is that the once sort of responsible Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers, now says after clearly having seen the video of these two stranded people on the boat that was blown up being taken out with the second strike. Having seen that video now says, I'm satisfied. I've talked to everybody. We don't need to release the video. This case is closed. This after lying about what Admiral Halsey said when he retired or resigned from his post. Now what does that tell me? It tells me that despite the fact that Trump is deteriorating rapidly before our very eyes from a very low base, despite the fact that large numbers of Republicans are upset with him on the affordability issue, and a few of the preliminary speakers at this rally at the casino were complaining about prices before he said it's a hoax. Despite all of that, when the critical issues come up, when you ought to be getting some pushback, they all cave. And I'm not sure even if he is basically left in a place where he is drooling and can barely articulate, even if now he articulates nonsense, there'll be a very substantial lag before they start to raise publicly their unease with him. That's the world we live in now, and it is not a pretty picture. Yeah, well, it does raise an interesting prospect because we are coming to the end of 2024, 25, I don't even know what year it is. We're coming to the end of 2025, one year into the second Trump administration, one year closer to Trump's departure whenever that may be. Next year. I mean, you've lived through this a lot of times. Midterm elections eat Washington because these people start going home, and if they think they're in bigger trouble, they go home more, and they campaign throughout the year, and less and less is that you can get less and less, but if as they go home, prices are going up, or they're having trouble getting health care, or the VA isn't offering the services they used to offer, or the Department of Education isn't offering the services they used to offer, whatever. Surely, these people are going to come back to Washington and talk to each other on the phone and go, we got a problem. I just can't see how this year ahead is not increasingly difficult for Donald Trump each and every day. I have no doubt that that will be the case, that where we are now in economic terms, I believe are far more likely to get worse and not better. Here's one reason why. We've talked about this before, but I think it's worth emphasizing. In the spring, the term of the chairman of the Fed expires, and Trump will replace him. Jay Powell, very, very likely with Kevin Hassett, my longtime colleague at the American Enterprise Institute. Let me ask you a question. Is Kevin Hassett a person, or is he a hand puppet? Either way, he's hollow. Personally I always got along very well with Kevin. He was a very affable guy. You could go back decades and find a time when he actually did some reasonable economic research, which is why he was there in the first place. Now he's a joke. I can't resist often tweeting, Siri, show me a clown masquerading as an economist. But of course, the fact is that Kevin's goal is to stay in the good graces of Donald Trump. If he goes to the Fed, then he will do what Trump wants, which is to slash interest rates over and over. Here's the problem. What the Fed controls is one level of short-term rates, the rates that banks use in their internal transactions with other banks. They have no control over long-term interest rates. The bond market, unlike the stock market, doesn't just react irrationally believing that great times are coming. It actually reacts to reality. The reality, as we saw when gold hit $4,000 an ounce, is that increasingly external actors who invest in dollars are reluctant to do so. What do we do? Because we need revenue to pay off our deep debt. We have to raise the rates on long-term treasuries to attract the money by people in effect buying dollars. What does that mean? Mortgage rates go up even if short-term rates go down. Car loan costs go up. The things that hit working Americans and everyday Americans will be worse off. And in the global economy, there's going to be a turn away from relying on the United States. So it's going to get worse along with, of course, the- And there's a practical consequence to that. Because if you lower interest rates, you lower demand for the dollar. The dollar falls, imports become more expensive for average Americans. So you get this Trump 1-2 punch of the cost of depreciating dollar and the cost of tariffs increasing the prices that people have got to pay for everything. There's a long-term consequence, which people will not be getting next year, but is worth noting. And that is, people will increasingly be less reliant on the dollar as a reserve currency. As they become less reliant on the dollar as a reserve currency, it not only strengthens other currencies that will come into its place, like the Chinese, Ren Minbi. But also, that's another reason why demand for the dollar will fall. And those long-term rates will go up further. And so it is a cycle of pain born of multiple terrible policies. You increase the deficit dramatically with the big, beautiful bill that's cuts, that increases the deficit. You increase the price of goods with these tariffs. And then you force the Fed to lower interest rates at the same time. It is a perfect store. And what we know is that when you look at countries, Argentina being the prime example, that basically destroy the independence of their Federal Reserve, inflation skyrockets. So we get probably stagflation back for the first time, really, in decades. And the danger here, frankly, besides the economic turmoil and the pain that it will bring with it is, as Trump gets backlash. Because it weakens as we end up with this kind of turmoil. He is not likely to say, oops, we need a different set of policies. He's not likely to do, for example, what Jimmy Carter did, which is to say, we've got to cure this inflation spiral. It's going to hurt a lot. Paul Volcker, you take over and do what you think is the right thing to do, which was a lot of pain that ultimately paid off, even though it hurt Carter. You're not going to see Trump do those things. He's going to send more troops into cities. He's going to deport more people violently. He is going to create more foreign adventures and wars. He's going to kill more people on the seas. And he is likely to invoke martial law when things get really tough. So we could end up in a world of hurt that he has caused on every front. And that's what we get for electing this monster who also, of course, is intent on destroying our allies in NATO and blowing up alliances that have kept the world prosperous and safe by and large for many decades. But it's worse than that norm. Thank God you're the one to say. It's worse than that norm because if all those things happen next year, there are going to be new pressures within markets that could, in fact, produce the AI sell-off that everybody's talking about. It could produce the stock market downturn. On top of that, there are all sorts of little factors that could become big factors. Everybody's paying attention, but I saw a disgusting picture in the Washington Postures up place of a guy with measles. I had a bad case of measles. And there's an outbreak, I think, in South Carolina of measles. People are not getting vaccines. The combination of people not forgetting vaccines and then kicking 20 million people off of healthcare is not going to be good for the public health of the United States. Could there be another pandemic? Could there be another kind of health crisis in the midst of all this other stuff? Yes. How is all this going to affect Trump's ridiculous and ill-conceived forays into crypto, including having the United States have the largest crypto reserves of any country in the world? What is the value of all of that? Bupkis. Bupkis. It was Bupkis to begin with. But people are going to be discovered. You probably went and bought a lot of the Melania Trump meme coin, which has lost 90% of its value in the past couple of weeks. I'm very sorry. I'm very sorry. But I know you have a lot of faith in the first place. Hey, at least I have my supply of those Trump gold sneakers that were $499 when you could get the same pair of Timo for $499. Only, I'd love the fact. Most people don't know the speculative norm. But I know that you do know Timo in a way most Americans don't know Timo. That you are a bargain hunter extraordinaire. I will say this watch band, which is magnetic and very nice on my Apple Watch, which was $1.97 came from Timo. I can tell you who are listening. The story normally show up in a Rolls Royce and top hat and tails and explain how he got the whole thing for $1. Now, let's not go too far with these stereotypes. Well, no, no, you have it in common with my wife. I could actually give you a story about how I dressed like a billionaire for very little money by buying Willie Brown's former wardrobe from the Goodwill of San Francisco store and the Best Dressed Man in America, Keaton and Breone suits for which I paid a pittance. And you still wear them? You know, I do with some. The problem, this is a great tragedy, David, but a closet full of these suits that now retail for like $12,000 or $15,000. Then COVID came and I didn't wear any for two and a half years. Then when I went to the closet, more than half had been destroyed by closet moths. So it was extremely painful. I got to tell you, I got to sit you down with my wife, who also is a Timo and an online aficionado and an absolutely dedicated thrifter. Her enemy in the world, if I said to her, if I woke her up in the middle night and I said, what scares you the most? Who is the biggest enemy in the world? She would say moths. She hates the moths, Norma. Yep. Well, I had a couple of experiences where I would go to, when I had to wear a suit, I would go into the closet after all of this, find a jacket that was perfect and think, okay, thank God I've got something. Then I'd put on the pants and there was nothing left in the crotch area. So I couldn't go outside that way. Unfortunately. But we're not going to digress longer, but a little longer. But a little longer. Isn't it true that at one point you thrifted a suit of some other notable billionaire and then you run into him at a party and it's got his initials in it or something? So Jim Kimsey may his memory be a blessing. One of the founders of AOL and a billionaire, Gruff former Marine, but I liked the guy. I knew him a bit. And I bought a Breone jacket at a store on eBay for, I think it may have been like $150. Beautiful pristine Breone jacket. It arrives in the mail and I look inside and the name James B. Kimsey is embroidered inside. And I thought that was very funny. Then at a gridiron dinner, I happened to see Jim Kimsey across the room and I went over with my wife who kept saying, don't do it, don't do it. So of course I did it. And I said, Jim, I've got a funny story to tell you, which he did not find funny at all. Because he assumed that I was saying that this billionaire was trying to make a little money by selling off his wardrobe. When I know what happened is he gave a bunch of stuff to charity. The charity saw a Breone jacket and sold it to a third party because knowing that at the Goodwill store, they weren't likely to do well with Breone jackets. But it didn't matter. It was a very funny encounter. Say folks, look, we bring you a lot of insights. And as we say, we're not just going to tell you that the economy is going to tank next year. We're going to help you figure out how to deal with it. We're going to make you laugh all the way into the fires of hell. That's right. Every week, Norm will say, and here's the bargain of the week, folks. Breone jackets for a buck fifty. All right. Well, we have a little time left. Let me ask you another question about something that I thought was just so Trumpian and so disastrous for the United States. I was having lunch with just now with our team. And I said, I think I'd like to launch a podcast called Magapocalypse Now because I think every week you could do some disaster story like this. Here's the one that really sent me over the edge this week. And there's so many to choose from. The State Department, which of course, is also busy banning the use of Calibri type because it is too woke. The Secretary of State has actually devoted some attention to needing everything in Times, New Roman, 14.5, which is a little large, I think, but successive. That's government waste. But in addition to this, they announced that they are going to require the visitors to the United States make available five years of their social media activity to be reviewed by the US government before they're allowed into this country. First of all, I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you do it. But secondly, they don't do this in Russia. They don't do this in Iran. They don't do this in Viktor Orban's Hungary. And just to sort of stick a thumb in the eye of the United States, almost the very same day this was announced, the Chinese announced they're extending for another year their program, which allows you to go to China for up to 10 days without a visa. You could just hop on a plane right now and go to China for 10 days, and they are now extending that. So in the United States, God forbid you tweeted something bad about Trump four and a half years ago. You might not be able to come here. This seems to me, tourism revenues are down like $30 billion already because of a lot of the craziness that's going on. This is going to be a killer, particularly in the year before the World Cup and so forth. So there are two things here. First I want to go back to your megacoplyx now. Because it just made me think of the famous line from Apocalypse Now, I love the smell of napalm. So this would be, I love the smell of Trump's tanning oil. On that issue, we know that a number of Europeans have already, who are coming to the United States, been denied entry because they had said something negative about Trump on social media or in another venue, which is outrageous. This makes it far worse. In Florida, a large share of the tourism is from Europeans. The English in particular have loved to come to Florida in the wintertime. It doesn't reflect well on that, but go on. No it doesn't, although they want to escape the dank, damp winters that they have. Who's going to come? Why would anybody who put together a sizable sum of money to come to the World Cup, which means not just paying a lot for airfare, but getting hotels, which will have their prices raised as the World Cup meetings or games take place in these areas, risk it under those circumstances. So we're going to see a drop in revenue that comes from foreign tourists that will affect hotels, restaurants, and other venues that rely on that kind of tourism. It's insane, but it's a reflection of the narcissistic, sociopathic lunacy that governs so much of the policies of this narcissistic, psychopathic president. I used to know a guy who, when I would say things like that, would say, but tell me what you really think. You have to pull your punches. Yeah, pull your punches. To be prudent. You kind of do in the same way that a performer tries to make sure that they can always go a step higher as they get closer to their big finale. And we just know that every day some new craziness is going to come up. I didn't even mention that for a million bucks you could get a Trump gold card and get on the fast track to citizenship. And that the only ones he's letting in are whites from South Africa while he calls vast swaths of population, not just the Somalis, garbage. And admitted that he had lied for years about calling countries like that shithole countries. So there you go. Well, there you do go. Look, the one thing is, and people love you out there, and there's so many people listening to this podcast, and they say, I really love Norm, which I have to say, what am I, chopped liver? But okay, they love you. And they come back week after week. And those people go to bed at night and they say, well, what if everything becomes good in America? Where will Norm go? What will happen? And I don't think there's any risk that that's going to happen anytime soon. We will go back to stand up comedy. You know, what else? Before we go, I just want to reflect on one thing. Slightly different, but it flows from the the Trialic ways in which we handle the world we live in. I went to a session at the National Cathedral the other night with two governors, Spencer Cox of Utah and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. A panel before that with my former colleague Yuval Levin, the Heather Gurkin, the president of the Ford Foundation now having been Dean of the Yale Law School, and Melody Barnes. And they all talked about the need for civil discourse and disagreeing better. And I'm on board with that. The debate camp that we do, the debate program is all about teaching how you have to debate vigorously, but you know, you need to maintain a veneer of civility. But you know, Spencer, who I like a lot in many ways, said, you know, talked about loving your neighbor and all about how you can't treat them as the enemy. And that's true up to a point. When you're dealing with somebody who lies repeatedly, who justifies murder, who is engaged in murder, like Marco Rubio, 600,000 people, innocent people, dead 400,000 children because of how he eagerly jumped on the bandwagon to blow up AID when he was put in charge of it. Whether you decide that they're still human beings and what you should be doing is debating their policies. There comes a point where you have to admit that saying, love your enemies, which would be a little bit like saying, let's love MBS, even though he dismembered Keshavashi, and let's love Vladimir Putin, even though every day he is deliberately targeting women, children, civilians, and infrastructure. And we could go on and on about that. We need to strike a balance here. It's one thing to go after somebody more civilly who just has different policy views than yours. But in this broadcast, in this podcast, we also go after evil people. There are evil people in this world, and they need to be called out. So that's my sandbox. I totally agree with you. One of the things that drives me craziest is when people say, I don't want to be judgmental. It's like, so you want to stop being a human being? The only thing we can do is people is make judgments. It's how we survive on the planet Earth. It's how we pick our friends. It's how we pick what we do. You have to have judgment. Sometimes the judgment is negative about other people, and you have to say it. Because normalizing, giving people a past is part of what got us to where we are right now. And so I totally agree with you. It's why we try to speak truth to power, as they say, and not pull punches that shouldn't be pulled. And you're an expert at it, Norm. Expert. It is a good thing for all of us. You do a pretty good job yourself, David. Well, I'm just here to coax you. In any event, we will be back next week with more of this, more of this Christmas spirit. It'll actually be the middle of Hanukkah for those of you who celebrate. It starts on Sunday. And we will share our thoughts on whatever happens between now and then. For now, thanks, Norm. Thanks, everybody. If you like this and you're watching on YouTube, subscribe, because our number of subscribers is going way up. And if you like it and you want to support what we're doing, go to the DSRnetwork.com, click on membership. And for a few bucks a month, you can support people who have judgments. People who are willing to tell you what they think, because they think it's important to be honest in times like these. People like Norm. So if you like that, please go subscribe. Until the next time, thanks very much, everybody. Bye-bye.
