Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. 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, D.C., and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello and welcome again to DSR's Words Matter. I'm David Rothkopf, your host, and also known as, you know, the trigger around here, because my job is triggering Norm Ornstein. How are you, Norm? On a hair trigger. On a hair trigger. That's usually all I have to do is say, how are you, Norm? and you go, life is horrible. Okay. I'm going to try an experiment here. I'm going to talk about some things. I'm just going to say one word and then you can respond to the word or phrase and then you can respond to that. We'll move on to the next one. Okay? Yes. Kennedy Center. Goodbye and good luck. I was going to say Washington Post next. You could say that. I know. I'll respond to that. Of course, they've destroyed the Kennedy Center. And this plan to close it for two years is insane. But we also have a pretty good clue as to what Trump will do, which is along the same lines of the mega ballroom at the White House and the gigantic Arc de Triomphe that will dwarf the Lincoln Memorial, which is to redo this so that it looks like neo-Nazi architecture in honor of Donald Trump. And then they will put new signage out that will have the Trump name in huge letters. And if we're fortunate at all, there will be the Kennedy name there, but it will be much smaller. It'll be a tiny asterisk down at the corner of the building saying formerly the Kennedy Center. Yes. The building formerly known as. But what we also know is this plan is in part a face-saving device. It not only meets his goals as a malignant narcissist to redo it, but it is also face-saving because they've destroyed the audience for the Kennedy Center. And we were going to have two years of a pretty empty building. So this is a good excuse to fulfill his goal as a malignant narcissist. Yeah, he said he's going to tear it down to the steel frame, which may be partially usable, and they're going to save some of the marble. So he's already thought this all through. This plan is undoubtedly going to go forward. But there's just one little thing. Wasn't this building built by the Congress as a memorial to John F. Kennedy? Where does the Congress come this? Now, that's a whole different topic. A Congress that has completely given up on its own responsibilities. A Speaker of the House who is beyond pathetic, is actually a clear and present danger to American freedoms, democracy, and elections. But they're nowhere to be found with this stuff. And I can go back and give a little mini picture of the rant I've done before on the Kennedy Center. What Trump did to take it over was illegal to begin with. The management and board of the Kennedy Center and its chair, David Rubenstein, basically pulled an Obi-Wan Kenobi, you know, dropping their lightsaber so that they could be eliminated without fighting back against something that I would make a strong case and did in writing was manifestly illegal. So all of these things are illegal. And remember, too, that the legislation creating the Kennedy Center in a very complicated way set up a board. The board had some people nominated by the president, some people nominated by the leaders in Congress, a bunch of ex officio positions, including, for example, the mayor of the District of Columbia. But Trump had his board, the handpicked board that he made, meet in secret to take away the voting rights from those members of Congress who are in the legislation as being full members of the board. So it's more illegal stuff done by the crime boss. You know, Norm, you're a Washingtonian. I mean, you're an American treasurer also, but you live here in Washington. And as you look at Washington and you look at what Washington was even just a year ago, The White House, as it was, is gone. The Kennedy Center, as it was, about to be gone. a big beautiful open space by Arlington Cemetery is about to be filled by an arc de triomphe an arch of triumph an arch of trump that nobody needs it's going to block the views of the Lincoln Memorial it's going to cast a shadow literally cast a shadow over the graves of the dead at Arlington Cemetery. The Smithsonian is being gutted of certain exhibits. The National Portrait Gallery is having signs changed within it to suit the politics of Donald Trump. He wants to change the name of the terminal at Dulles Airport. Maybe it'll allow it to continue to be named Dulles. Frankly, that's one name I could do without. But he wants to change the name of the terminal to the Trump terminal. Hitler, while he was sitting there with his, who was his architect? Albert Speer or somebody, was sitting there planning Berlin to be the capital of the thousand-year Reich showed more taste and more restraint in using his own name than Donald Trump was using. You know, Nero, more taste, more restraint. Caligula, more taste, more restraint. But the same sexual habits. But very possibly. And frankly, had Trump followed in Caligula's footsteps and appointed a horse to a senior position, it would be better than, you know, half of his cabinet. But what happens? You know, Trump leaves at some point, you know, one way or another, feet first, by an election, some way. And all of a sudden, the city has been defaced by this mad vandal. Do people just tear it all down? I think they may have to. You did raise something interesting. Caligula appointed a horse. And Trump has called himself a stable genius. So maybe we're heading in there. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't realize that. And it is the year of the horse, by the way, coming up any minute now. So, you know, I think we are going to be faced if, and it's becoming increasingly unlikely, we are able to maintain elections and take back control of our democracy for people who actually believe in democracy, the rule of law, the constitution, ethics, and the like. What do we do with all this stuff? It's not going to be something where you're going to take this mega ballroom that he's building illegally and tear it down and rebuild the East Wing, as it were. By the way, also, weirdly, he's building a bunker to live in underneath it? I mean, it's weird. There's some weird shit going on here. I don't know. You can't tear it down. You got to rename it. Maybe you can tear it down. Speaking, though, of Washington institutions, going back to my original plan to just trigger you with phrases, Washington Post. I am so distraught today 300 people eliminated some of them friends and terrific journalists Ishan Tharoar, who is just a terrific foreign policy guy and working on the foreign desk, part of the Tharoar family, you know, quite remarkable Indian family, laid off. my friend Zach Pincus Roth, who grew up with my kids, who was running a good portion of the style section, just had a baby, laid off. But they're eliminating the sports section, much of the international section, all of their bureaus in the Middle East. Imagine at this point in history, deciding you don't need to have a presence in the Middle East. And what's... Apparently they fired their Ukraine bureau too, including the reporter in Kiev. And she was just like, okay, you're fired. And now she's stuck in the middle of a war zone. Not only did they fire them, but they told them all to stay home today for an 8.30 a.m. Zoom meeting where they would make announcements. They announced the 300, sent the emails to them during this meeting, and then told them that all their access to the Post's computer system would be shut off at 9 a.m. So this is thuggish behavior. But it's also, you know, there was a terrific scathing announcement by Marty Baron, who ran the Post after running the Boston Globe for years through some of its finest moments when they coined the term, democracy dies in darkness. And now the Post is dying in darkness. And while Marty Baron praised Bezos for how he had acted courageously during the first Trump term, protected the paper and all of that, basically said that this was beyond destructive. He used the harshest language for what's happening here. This paper, which was a jewel for a newspaper in a democracy, is headed for demise. And they lost huge numbers of subscribers when Bezos decided at the 11th hour to kill the presidential endorsement in the 2024 election. Lost even more when they went through more waves of buyouts and cuts. and now basically the Washington Post is either going to be sold so that somebody can buy and resell or scrap its printing presses, its lease and the like, or it will limp along as a pale shadow of what existed. Not all the journalists are gone. This was a third of the staff and there are still some really good people, I haven't seen the full list of the 300, who are going to try and soldier on to maintain at least some semblance of usefulness as a newspaper. I don't know how long they can stay, but this is not going to be a paper that's going to go anywhere but down. in what is Jeff Bezos trying to do? It is one of the most venal and cowardly plays I have ever seen. This is a paper he bought for $250 million. This is a man worth $250 billion. The losses that this paper has accrued are in the range of $100 million a year, which is truly, with no exaggeration, the equivalent for you and me of finding a couple of quarters in the couch cushions. So he didn't have to do this. He's doing this even as in so many other ways, including a nice contribution for the White House ballroom and other fashions, to protect his other business interests. And if that's what he's out to do, to make sure that Blue Apron is going to get some government contracts for space exploration, to make sure that he still is able to avoid harsh regulation for all of the packages sent by Amazon. Then why buy the damn paper in the first place? And why keep it? Why not sell it to somebody who's actually going to do something good with it? What a disgrace is Jeff Bezos. 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 signup at thedsrnetwork.com. That's code DSR26 at thedsrnetwork.com slash buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. photos, inventory, and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Yeah, but on the other hand, the objective was what is happening. You know, I mean, you know that as far back as the 1970s, when Richard Nixon was under siege during Watergate from the Post, the people around Richard Nixon began to fantasize an alternative U.S. media landscape, people like Roger Ailes. And they had a couple of goals, and one of the goals was to eliminate papers like the Washington Post, which they saw as liberal, And the other was to create a right-wing media ecosystem, which Ailes, of course, was involved with creating with Fox. But it's gone beyond even what they sought to do then. And by the way, they worked through the 80s on this, Murdoch coming in, getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine and so forth. But when you think of how badly the landscape of Washington, D.C. has been defaced by Trump, think of the media landscape. What were the pillars back in the 70s of good journalism? The New York Times, the CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times. What were the emerging ones that rose up in the interim on cable and other platforms? CBS is gone. Los Angeles Times is gone. Gone to the right. Washington Post is gone. Fox News has been created. ABC News bent the knees to Trump. NBC News is pulling back and spinning off MSNBC to be separate from any responsible reporting. Twitter went. TikTok went. Now, as you look at the mainstream media landscape in the United States and some of the new media landscape in the US, it is heavily dominated by the right. and you don't know where you see the voices, even of objectivity. You know, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are sort of the two last paper standing. Wall Street Journal is owned by Murdoch, and the New York Times is notorious for both sides and things. It's as bad as Washington looks. The media landscape looks worse. Not only does the media landscape look worse, But the reporters covering the demise of democracy are failing over and over again. You know, Caitlin Collins at CNN, who came out of a conservative background, but has really been quite impressive in what she's done, Ask Trump at a press conference what he would say to the Epstein survivors, the ones who are being outed as they've released the Epstein files, even as they make sure they protect not just the pedophiles, but the ones who threaten murder. it's hard to imagine. And when she asked him that, Trump responded with his usual slurs and insults in the most disgusting and gross way. The other reporters said nothing. Right And that was two days after an ABC reporter said well why are you suing the Department of the Treasury the IRS for billion And are you the one who going to make the decision And he yelled at her and abused her That was two days before he arrested Don Lemon and another reporter for covering a news story. Here you have the greatest assaults on the First Amendment we've ever seen. And I'm not talking about the White House kicking out good journalists, the Pentagon kicking out good journalists, Trump not bringing good journalists on trips, Trump's other abuses of journalists, the lies that are spewed at industrial levels by this administration. The First Amendment has never been under attack like this. And the Don Lemon story was a one-day story. that Caitlin Collins is not a story anymore. The last journalists standing are not doing their jobs as journalists. And, you know, one element to this, of course, is that when Steve Bannon said in 2015, we know how to control the media. We flood the zone with scandal after scandal after scandal, and they don't know how to handle it. and everything becomes a one-day or a one-hour story. And there are so many things out there now. The fact that the United Arab Emirates, right before Trump was inaugurated, bought 49% of a Trump company. And then we see the rewards coming into them, including, of course, selling them the most sensitive computer chips from NVIDIA that the Biden administration would not do because this is highly sensitive stuff and can damage our national security. We have reports that classified documents, some of which had apparently been in Trump's possession, are being sent to or sold to Russia. There's stuff going on out there that ought to be not just a four alarm fire, but a 40 alarm fire. Right. And that's not to speak of, you know, up to four billion dollars of personal enrichment from Trump. There was one New York Times story on it. I have it on good authority that other papers were trying to cover that story and there was no pickup on it. There was no interest. So they killed the stories. And so the covering corruption is not a story that is taking place in the United States. But just to move on, you know, you mentioned Steve Bannon, which is always a good way to trigger you. Today on some podcast, he said, well, this is how the elections are going to go. Trump is going to send in federal authorities like the ones that he sent into Minneapolis. They're going to be around voting areas. They're going to intimidate people from showing up to vote. And that's going to help us win this election the same week as, of course, Trump apparently served an illegal warrant in Fulton County, took 700 boxes. boxes. There's now countersuit to get them back. All the voting records of Fulton County, under the leadership, by the way, of Tulsi Gabbard, who herself is the target of a whistleblower report, that she was illegally passing on classified information. Surprise, surprise. I don't even know what part of that story will trigger you the most. So I'll just leave it all there and you can pick your favorites. You know, the other, well, let's talk about the latter stuff. And I actually think it's worse than what Steve Bannon said. I think, and Trump has, Trump's strategy with a lot of this stuff is to say he's going to do something that's so outrageous, so unconstitutional, so illegal. And the general reaction of the media is to just shrug, well, he says all kinds of shit. And then he says it a second time, sometimes even tripling down, and sometimes a third time so that he can deaden the reaction to it if and when it occurs. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your 1 euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I believe that what he has in mind as his standing and the Republican Party's standing declines, as they're facing a potential bloodbath in November, is they are going to send their thugs of whatever sort, probably from the FBI, into the voting precincts and areas where the votes are taking place. As he mentioned, 15 states, not all just plain blue states, but swing states where there are blue areas. After the polls have closed, right after the polls have closed, seize the votes and go off claiming that there's massive fraud and take them away and count them. And of course, the count is going to be significantly short of what the actual vote totals were, or they'll just distort what those outcomes are and then destroy the ballots and declare that he's won in a landslide. And governors have to start preparing for this, as do other election officials, to make sure, for example, that they have National Guards people protecting the polling places. Which I just want to point out, per Article 1 of the Constitution, are the responsibility of the states. and the responsibility of the states with the ability of Congress to govern the time, manner, and place of elections, which means Congress theoretically can step in and create some national voting standards. There is zero role for the president except to either sign or veto any bills that passed by Congress. And here we have to note one other thing, David. There's an increasing drumbeat from people who want to steal the election in 2026, and again, if there is one in 2028, led, I might add, by Elon Musk, but with a large number of Republican senators joining in saying, pass the SAVE Act. And the SAVE Act would require not just any photo ID for federal elections, but you would have to show a proof of citizenship that would either be a passport or a birth certificate. And let's note that where we've had places that have required photo IDs, Texas, for example. In Texas, by the way, where their photo ID requirement is we will allow a gun owner's permit, but not a state-created student ID. But they take birth certificates for married women who have changed their names and say, no, this doesn't match. And you're going to have to get a new birth certificate at a cost of $65 or get a passport for people who don't travel, who are poor, older, who don't have those documents. Lots of people couldn't find their birth certificates, sometimes because they no longer exist, or they're from countries that don't have the records. They're trying to suppress the votes and they're trying to take away mail-in voting so that they can, in places where they have control, limit the number of polling places so the lines are very long, so they can send in their ice thugs to pull a few people out of line, beat the shit out of them, take them off for three days, and have voters say, I'm not going to stay here and leave. And they may end the filibuster for just that if Republicans in the Senate think their majority is at stake. Yeah, I would go on to say that they're trying everything. Trump already laying the groundwork to put people in the cities. They are starting to claim voter rolls by one mean or another. They are challenging things around the country. But they don't just have to be successful in scaring away voters or whatever By doing investigations like the one in Fulton County which is based on long disproven conspiracy theories all they have to do is raise questions bring it into court, delay the seating of people, and do that for an extended period of time in the courts and get the effect that they want of denying people their choices for Congress and the Senate. And that's egregious. And frankly, if it comes to what you're describing, there will be blood in the streets. If it comes to what you're describing, the only response, if you can't work within the system, is to work outside the system. And this will be a breaking point for the United States of America. It is not a tolerable option. option. And of course, at that point, the president will have, you know, he'll have troops in the cities and ice in the cities and so forth. We don't have unlimited amount of time. I do want to talk about Minneapolis because it's your home. But also, you know, on a couple of grounds, Tom Homan, author of the family separation policy, was sent there to put a new face on it. As Trump said in interviewed today, a softer face on it, has said that we're going to send home 700 of the troops there. Mayor Fry of Minneapolis, by the way, pointed out there are only 600 cops in the city, which means that the 2,300 ICE agents in the city are four times the size of the police force. But, you know, and that they're going to wear body cameras. But this is clearly all aimed at getting a vote on the one part of the budget bill that didn't pass, the DHS part, in the next two weeks, so that they get access to the $70 billion, insanely high budget that's been set aside for DHS, bigger, as we've said before, than the budget for all but, I think, four militaries in the world. and so it's all a ploy they're clearly going to go back on it they've clearly not made any real moves to change their underlying policies and the democrats on the hill look like some combination of some kind of bullshit moves let's pull a few people out let's do a body cam etc etc is going to get them to go along with it and by the way well deal with that i'll come back with something else starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side okay first this is the first and only time that anybody would associate tom holman with a softer face well it's pretty his face is pretty pretty soft but well i've said before that he uh if central casting said bring me somebody who could portray a prison guard at Buchenwald. Tom Holman would be at the top of that list. He, of course, has already lied repeatedly. He could also do a pretty good job as Mr. Potato Head, however. He lied over and over in the press conference he did when he got to Minnesota, said they were going to change the way they operate. They have not changed the way they operate. They're still breaking windows in cars, pulling people out. I've seen videos that they are still using pepper spray and other toxic agents against innocent people standing there doing nothing to obstruct or delay or interfere with what they're doing, just recording it. All of those things are happening. This is a ploy to try and take people's attention away from the horrors in Minnesota, which are not going away anytime soon. And, you know, I am really awestruck by the number of brave people in Minneapolis, many of whom have never been to outside to deal with anything that either resembled a protest or a presence against something bad going on, who are not engaged in politics in their lives, and look at this and say, I cannot stand by anymore. That part of the culture, I think, is just to be lauded everywhere, and it is a model for everywhere. And now we know that Congress passed the Compromised Spending Bill for many of the agencies in the federal government, many of the individual appropriations bills, but still have left in place this two-week deadline for the Homeland Security budget for negotiations ongoing between the Trump officials and the Democrats in the Senate. And that day of reckoning is coming soon. And now that the rest have passed and we're not talking about a larger shutdown, we need House and Senate Democrats to step up to the plate, put on their big boy pants and understand, given everything else that's happened and that continues to happen, that they need to have firm conditions in place before they provide this funding. And that's not just body cams. After all, we've seen plenty of instances of police with body cams that just coincidentally get turned off before some horrific event happens. And it's not just taking off the masks. It's having clearly identified on their uniforms, their names, so that when bad things happen, we know who should be held accountable. and it's holding them accountable and it's changing their rules of engagement and putting into legislation something that makes clear that this bogus legal memo circulating among ICE agents and others in this area, that you can enter any house you want without a judicial warrant. And having the Speaker of the House, one of the most despicable people ever to come on our scene in American politics, say, well, if we just abided by the Fourth Amendment, we wouldn't be able to do any of these things, which was not to say, therefore, we're going to stop doing them. It is, of course, we're going to continue to have massive invasions of people's houses because we can't sit around and wait for a judicial warrant. We can't abide by the Fourth Amendment. That's what we're dealing with. And that is frightening, disgusting. And along with that, of course, is the mayhem and horror stories and sheer hell taking place in all of these facilities that are, to use the appropriate term, concentration camps. Are you comfortable that that's what's going to happen? Do you actually believe the Democrats are going to do that or they're going to do El Fulda. I would just point out, I would point out that we were supposed to right now, because we had a promise from, you know, John Thune, we were supposed to be figuring out how to deal with the healthcare subsidies. Well, that program is just two weeks away. Just two weeks away. Exactly. Forever two weeks away. Yeah. But the point is, I don't think we can be confident that the Democrats are going to do the right thing here. It's pretty rough times. And, you know, I guess that's why we're here. I guess that's why we talk to you. We do limit the length of the show to 35 or 40 minutes because, you know, your cardiologist says that's, you know, anything more than that would be bad for your heart. Along with many of our viewers. Yeah, no, it would send their blood pressure up too high. And we don't want to have that on our hands. so we'll continue it next week everybody so rest one of the things we advise you do before you listen to the show take a nap and have an adult beverage nearby that also is very helpful a lot of you are watching on YouTube we love that if you're watching on YouTube by the way subscribe you know this is really where our growth is and you know I know you love to come and hear Norm's perspectives but you know watch Norm's perspectives today he's wearing a fantastic sweater from TJ Maxx thank you thank you and if you're if you're listening to the podcast you're not going to get to see that sweater whereas if you're watching it on YouTube you will so join us again next week in the meantime thank you very much Norm and we will see you around folks bye bye
