When you put the right things together, boom! Great things happen. It's like having a chat with the Cambridge Building Society. You'll always find us in Tune with You. The Cambridge Building Society. Mortgages and savings. We can work it out. Rural Britain. Gigaclear goes further to bring you fast, reliable, whole home coverage. 100% full fiber, affirmative. Free Wi-Fi installation. Engineers ready to go. Amazon Eero Router. Next level. All from only 16 pounds a month. Cosmic Quasars. Switch to Gigaclear. Faster broadband for Rural Britain. 18 month contract. Prices may vary. Verify at gigaclear.com. 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 Rothkoff, your host, who's here basically to elicit bits of wisdom and to help coax out whatever is necessary in the way of anger and expiation from the Oracle of Washington, DC. Norm Ornstein here on this Eref Memorial Day, the eve of the Memorial Day weekend. How are you, Norm? You know, the same, David. But I am thrilled that we could introduce to our audience the word expiation. You know, part of the value added that we can bring is words that are not used very commonly. And so people can now ask Siri or Google Expiation. Exactly. I talk to Siri all the time. Yeah. Other than you, she's my only friend. It's not exactly true. No, there's also chat GPT. You have a plethora of friends. Because sometimes I said there was Siri, Chatti, Claude. We have a little exchange. It's fantastic. What's nice about Siri is that if you call Siri a name or use a profanity, Siri does respond and saying things like, that's not appropriate. You know, my wife, who, you know, speaks seven languages, I think, has been working on her Chinese for years. That she feels she really needs to practice it. And she practices Chinese with chat GPT. And she, you know, she can do it while she's driving in the car. And she'll say, chat GPT, let's have a conversation in Chinese. And if I make a mistake, correct me. And off she goes. And she'll do a half an hour conversation in Chinese with chat GPT. And it makes up interesting stuff. And it corrects her. It's kind of, you know, I mean, I know all of the kind of died in blue liberals, especially, you know, the Gen Zers who love this podcast, hate AI. I think nothing good can come of it and that I am, you know, sort of a vish, vishi progressive, because I think some good can come out of it. But I do like there's there's some useful applications. I will say that I agree and disagree on the disagree front. AI is going to use up all of our water and triple or quadruple electricity prices, partly, of course, because the idiots, nihilists and Philistines running the Trump administration are busily destroying our main sources of electricity, in particular, wind and solar. But that's another matter. On the other hand, just as an example, I've been noodling for quite a while on a piece which I have called the Three Toxic Parts of Trumpocracy. We've talked about this a little bit before, cacus, talk, Risi nihilism and kleptocracy. And I am finding that as I'm, you know, trying to fill out the number of examples, and this is going to be a long piece that won't by any means be comprehensive. But I'm going to have probably 5,000 words that doesn't come close to covering all of the toxicity of these idiots. But as I, you know, start to go through what I already know, I can turn to AI and say, give me additional examples of this kind of corruption. And I get the examples and then I can investigate them further, but it saves time. Does it? But one of the things that leads people to have AI psychosis, which is a real thing, is that AI, the algorithm is programmed to make you feel smart. So when you ask for this, is it going, yeah, this pisses me off to norm. You're so right to be digging deeper. I'm actually, I've been using Gemini rather than ChatGPT. But I will tell you that when we asked ChatGPT about some complicated issues, medical issues involving my sister-in-law, a combination of different things, ChatGPT came back with like a 16 page memo that was unbelievably comprehensive with sites and links, places to go, things to do. And it was pretty damned impressive. And the only hiccup is that she's now seeing a veteran there. I try not to rely too heavily and I try to trust but verify, put it that way. Trust but verify. Okay, well, let's get into some of the news of the week and I'm going to ease into it. Okay, because I know there's certain things that are just going to send you off and, you know, I've spoken to your cardiologist and I know that I have to approach these things carefully. Yes. So let me start with something that seems a little soft, but to me, listen, today, the DNC, which I don't know, was in competition with the New York Mets for being the worst run organization I could think of, released a post-mortem on the 2024 campaign, just in time to screw up everybody's conversations about everything else. And, you know, a lot of it was what you would expect, finger pointing and this and that and both sides. But in it, if you go deep enough, in it, there is a list of the amounts of money spent with different consultancies. And I read this and I thought, holy fuck, Democratic consultants are making not tens, hundreds of millions of dollars through their organizations to give terrible advice. Advice is like, you know, the advice that would have won the 1988 campaign, but was useless in the 2024 campaign. And it's this giant establishment in Washington across the country that is taking the little donations of everybody out there and is using it to buy beach houses. And I just, I have to say, I read it and I was just livid. And you understand this world better than I do. So I was wondering, do you think my lividity is misplaced? Not in the slightest. I will say, just stepping back for a minute, that you'll recall after a particularly awful Republican loss, the then chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reintz Priebus, did an autopsy, which is not the term you really want to use about a party. Although in this case, when it came to the Republican Party, it was perfectly accurate. The Republican Party died around that time. But I was happy to tell people that if you take the name Reintz Priebus and remove all the vowels, what you get is RNCBS. So I got a joke out of it at least. That's good. Having said that, It's not accurate though, because there was the P and an R. Yeah, but go on. Yeah. If you look at the DNC, we can't find a good joke out of it. It's a bunch of bad jokes. But obviously, they commissioned this. There is a long explainer and mea culpa from DNC chair Ken Martin saying they wanted to look at what went wrong. They commissioned it from a consultant. Of course. That it came back not ready for prime time, including without sources. And so we held it back. But now here it is. And it is going to result in a huge number of stories on one of the favorite things for journalists, Democrats and disarray. Now, I could criticize that by saying there'll be more stories of Democrats and disarray than Donald Trump's $1.776 billion trust-slush fund. Oh, we'll get to that. But we'll get to that in a moment. But having said that, that doesn't mean these stories are inappropriate. And I will say this is a scam that has been going on for a very long time. And a good part of the scam is if you do television advertising for political candidates or a party, not only do you get paid for producing the television ads, you get 15% off the top for the cost of broadcasting those ads. Right. So surprise, surprise, most of these consultants, and it's not just the beach houses, let's also give a shout out. Mercedes-Benz and BMW dealerships were not doing so well thanks to the consultants. They're fine. They pour all this money and tell their candidates it's still television advertising, it's still broadcast television because they're pulling off a huge chunk of the cash from it. And the advice is, it's a little bit like financial advisors who tell you, you've got to invest in this product and they're getting a 25% commission. And of course, when... It's a conflict of interest. It is a direct conflict of interest. But who are the victims here? They're not the candidates who should know better. They're the people who give the money to the campaigns. And boy, if I were advising a candidate right now, Pro Bono, I would say when you're out soliciting money, tell your potential donors that you're not going to be driven by high-priced political consultants who will take your money and use it for their own greedy purposes. 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 bye. Thank you and enjoy the show. Indeed presents. Highers you can't afford to get wrong. Like a warehouse operations manager. Uh, where are the forklifts? I sold them. They were too expensive. I got a great deal on these scooters though. You expect us to move a two-ton pallet on a scooter? It'll be fun. Just think of the core strength you'll build. This is a job for sponsored 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 sponsored job. Visit Indeed.com slash NextHire and sponsor your job today. I want to cut my energy bill. Can solar panels help? Yes, that's good energy. And they'll help lower my carbon emissions too. That's good energy. And I can get paid for the energy I don't use. Yes, that's good energy. And you have 25 years experience in-house engineers and a five-star rating on truss pilots. Yes, that's good energy. Sounds great! One more thing, the solar panels' batteries and other hardware, it's all quality tech that's built to last. Of course! Making solar simpler for your home. That's good energy. Visit goodenergy.co.uk Yeah, although you know Norm, we've been in Washington a while. Yeah. We've been in Washington a while. And we know some stuff. We know the stuff these people do. And when I'm looking at the amount of money that some of these people made off of this, I'm thinking we are schmucks. Because, oh, they give terrible advice and made tens of millions of dollars. We could give mediocre advice and I would charge half that. I have a feeling that the DSR political consulting network is in the offing here. Words matter, associates. But I mean, it's just crazy. It's absolutely crazy. All right, I know I put it off for too long. Everybody's like, okay, the most corrupt thing that ever happened in the history of the United States happened this week. And I'm literally, there are tens of thousands of people out there like, I want to see Norm's aneurysm. I want to see Norm react to this because I don't think I'm overstating it. What happened with this, and I do want to be clear here, the media calls it a settlement and a deal. It's not because there was no case. This is Trump negotiating with himself. And it is just grand theft US Treasury. It is just people stealing our money. So don't dress it up like these are legitimate. When the Trump gets an agreement and it says, US Department of Justice on the top, but then it says, he'll be held harmless for all tax claims forever. That's illegal. So it's not a real document. Now somebody's going to have to go and challenge it. But I don't want to go into this with the misconception that what's happened was legal. I just want to take it from the perspective, this is a big fucking huge crime that occurred before our very eyes and would have, in my view, resulted in the instant impeachment and removal of any other president in our history. And I just don't get why it hasn't. I agree totally with that. This is an utter outrage. It has no legal or constitutional value. And let's add the perpetrator of this, no doubt, even though he said Trump had no role at the urging of Trump, is Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general. I've known people, had people tell me that they had worked with Todd Blanche back when he was an assistant US attorney, I believe with the Southern District of New York, who said that he was very smart and very diligent and a good attorney. He has turned into a disgraceful monster. And I have little doubt that the assault that the Trump administration is now making on the bar associations is aimed in significant part at intimidating them from doing what they should be doing. Because this isn't just about impeaching and removing the president. It's about disbarring a rogue, monstrous, acting attorney general doing utterly illegal and unconstitutional things and in your face about them. Now, if you look at this so-called settlement, and it is not a settlement, you're right, it's grand theft. It's not even just that they've taken, first of all, lying saying, we tried to look at what all of the different damages should be and came up to roughly 1.8 billion and then made it 1.776 billion for the obvious reasons. It has nothing to do with anything real. It has to do with theft. But they've also, as you said, barred any involvement by the IRS in the past, in the future, on any crimes committed by Trump or his family, which they cannot do. And boy, if I were an incoming Democratic president in 2029 and talking to candidates for attorney general, one of the first things I would do is make sure that there is a commitment to undo this corrupt bargain immediately to begin to look into what crimes Trump and his family have committed against the IRS. And we know, we have from the past, double dealing, inflated values here, deflated values there, all of that stuff, and clawback whatever money went out. Except that, we also know that they've set this up so that none of it will be public. There will be five members, four of them appointed by Trump, basically, by Blanche, and able to be removed without cause by Trump. So we know that not only is he going to direct who gets this taxpayer bribery slush fund, but we also will not know how much he's skimming off for himself and for his family. But there's two other elements to this that I want to discuss. The first is that it's going to be really difficult to get standing, to sue, and handle this in the courts. And Steve Flattick, who is the Supreme Court whisperer and really the go-to guy when it comes to anything involving the court, had a very thoughtful column today saying, We can't count on the courts in this case to rescue us. This is a political matter, and it ought to be resolved by impeaching this president, whether he's removed or not. And I have been reluctant to go for impeaching Trump right now because it's not going to succeed, but also it gives them traction to fight back. I wanted to impeach cabinet members and others. I'd impeach Todd Blanche right now. I'd impeach RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, and the list goes on and on. But now you've got to impeach Trump over this because you get a privilege resolution and debate in Congress, and I want everyone to have to vote on whether they're going to support this utterly corrupt and outrageous action. So that's one thing. Maybe, and I'm hoping, we have two of the former police officers who were beaten on January 6th during the insurrection who are now suing, and they may be able to get standing. It's hard to imagine anybody else, given that the court system is structured to keep this stuff from being dealt with. But we've got to do it through whatever means we can in impeachment, and has to be on the table. But the second part of this is this is not just to reward the violent insurrectionist, seditious conspirators, cop killers, pedophiles, and sexual molesters who broke into and defiled the Capitol and tried to hang the vice president. This is a down payment for future thuggery on their own. And one of the things that really worries me is we're going to have proud boys, oath keepers, and other assorted thugs who will be sent out on election day to incite violence to try and alter the terms of the election. And they might do it anyhow, but they're going to do it in part with the promise of big bucks dangled in front of them for doing whatever Donald Trump is going to do. And the promise that if they cross lines, they will be pardoned. The level of corruption here is one thing. The level of what it can produce in terms of overthrowing our constitutional system and blowing up an election. That's another and even more chilling. 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I wrote an article about it in The Daily Beast and I love working for The Daily Beast and everything, but somebody put in the headline the word, grift. And I'm like, no, this isn't grift. You know, this is something beyond even corruption. We have a lot of people who are not going to be able to do anything about it. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Because we have to use even corruption. We have to use language that is the appropriate language about the scale of these crimes. What these people are doing is backing a truck up to the US Treasury taking out money, taxpayer dollars and using it to pay off criminals who attempted a coup against the United States. They're trying to use tax dollars to pay for overthrowing our own government. This crime is so heinous. crime is so heinous that it makes Watergate look like a walk in the park. No president. I can take Watergate and multiply it times teapot dome times everything that was ever done by Tammany Hall times everything that the Gotti family has ever did. This is that great a crime against the United States. And if we treat it like it's a deal they rake the system too bad, or we treat it like it's more Trump chicanery like Trump stakes and Trump phones and Trump coins, then we're missing the point of what is going on here. And it's why your point about impeachment is so important. There is no other choice. I do think it's important and I'd love your reaction to this, but I do think it's important that people recognize this is not covered by the Supreme Court's immunity granted the president because it is explicitly forbidden. It therefore cannot be considered an official act and the president has no immunity against prosecution He may think he does, but he's wrong. And there is however an option for him which is harder for us to deal with and that's pardoning and the ability to pardon himself and his family to pardon blanche for all the crimes associated with this. Now there's some debate about whether or not you can pardon yourself, but there is one thing that blocks the pardon power that the pardon power can't be used against and that's impeachment. The impeachment is treated as a class unto itself in the Constitution and that's where we have to recognize they raise the stakes, they raise the degree of the crimes and they are making it that there is no other choice for anybody who wants to protect the country than to do what you just said. Absolutely true and let's make another point here which is in a broader sense Trump keeps trying to go further in terms of open corruption and horrible actions and every time he does one it's not you know going up to the line it's leaping over the line and creating a new line then leaping over that one it gives him license to do the next one and to do more and he will keep doing so until something stops him. And if anybody who believes if he gets away with this one that this is the last time that he'll use this ploy is naive to put it mildly. So imagine that he gets away with this and then what happens in another few months he sues the National Archives because of the damage done to him over the stolen classified documents and if you notice today after one of his favorite clients or favorite lawyers for whom he is a client that is the case with Todd Blanchett it's also the case with Judge Eileen Cannon who took the only report of this sort on from Jack Smith on the utterly open illegal acts. We have the pictures of classified documents and you know stacked up at Mar-a-Lago. We know we have evidence up the wazoo. She took it said no you can't prosecute him now after immunity and no we're not going to release the report because it could damage the president and one of the people who had been working with Jack Smith apparently took a copy of that report and you know was holding on to it perhaps so that it could never be completely destroyed and is now being prosecuted for it and we know what they're trying to do. They're trying to open the door for him to do this again so he will sue the National Archives for another 10 billion dollars and settle that for another two billion dollars and use it for even more of his slush funds. Everything that he does is corruption but let's add David that it's not just Donald Trump who sees taxpayer money as a personal piggy bank for their own wealth and luxuries. It is Cash Patel using taxpayer money on his jets. It is Christie Noam who purchased these luxury jets with bedrooms for her own pleasure with her assistant and said that they were for transporting people to be taken out of the country for illegal immigrants as if they are going to be going on luxury Gulfstream jets and they're still around and being used for those purposes and then bumping the Coast Guard commander from the home that has long been the residence of the commander of the Coast Guard using it for herself and staying there as a squatter even after she was removed from that position and you could go on and on about the use of luxuries using taxpayer money for officials in this government because if they see Trump getting away with it they know that it's open season for them to get away with it as well. We have never seen anything even close to resembling this. This episode is brought to you by Coca-Cola Zero official partner of the FIFA World Cup 2026. 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Yeah, well, and I think that's lovely. It's the beginning of a holiday weekend. Everybody should benefit from that. But let's be honest. Donald Trump, by all independent accounts, has made hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars, since he returned to the presidency last year. And he's done it in some of the most outrageous ways possible that makes what Christie know and these others don't seem ridiculous. His sons are cutting contracts with the Department of Defense. His sons are cutting deals with governments around the world to build hotels. One government gave him a $400 million airplane for his use, which is then going to be transferred to what? To his library so that he will effectively have personal control over it from now on. And you can't leave that without noting that they then spent $1.2 billion in taxpayer money to refurbish it. Right. So he will get the benefit of the taxpayer money over a billion dollars when the US government went into Venezuela illegally throughout the government, kidnapped its leader and started illegally demanding payments by oil tanker. The money went into a bank account in a foreign country controlled by Donald Trump when the Gaza solution, which was not a solution, was arrived at with regard to the Board of Peace. Billions of dollars went into a Board of Peace that is chaired by Donald Trump, who will determine how those dollars get allocated, including over a billion dollars of US taxpayer money. In case after case after case, and frankly, as we have talked about here, we do not know how much has gone into Trump or Trump family accounts in crypto because we can't trace all of that. Right. And they are lifting up crypto markets from a regulatory perspective to ensure that all this, that they have siphoned off, maintains its value and its liquidity. So in area after area after area, Donald Trump, Donald Trump's kids, and also the kids of Steve Wittkopf and the family of Howard Lutnik and other people in this government are making unbelievable killings. And then they're saying, well, this is secret. You can't reveal this. There's a non-disclosure here. We're going to shred the records. We're going to hide what's going on. We will never know. But the fact of the matter is that, and look, just one last thing, I'm sorry to go on, but we're talking about what happened with regard to this overt effort to steal $2 billion from the United States and use some of it to pay off criminals that attack the government. But just a couple of days before, a report came out that said that Donald Trump has been doing something like 40 stock trades a day trading millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, and in identifiable, regular ways, doing so to capitalize on his actions as president of the United States, which in and of itself is the most corrupt act we've ever seen of a president. Like getting the airplane, the most corrupt act we've ever seen of a president. Like siphoning off the Venezuelan money, the most corrupt act. Any one of these things is the most corrupt act, and this is a pattern. And the reason I bring it up is just to underscore your point. Every time they see an opening, they take it, and if they get enough out of it, they do it again and again. And you will see this with the Trump library being turned into a hotel and him making money off of that, naming airports after him and giving him the naming rights and the property rights of the swagger in area after area after area. We are being stolen from by a president who actually is doing nothing for the country except giving gifts to his friends in terms of tax cuts and regulatory cuts and taking services away from the people who need it, who are dying. We have Ebola. We can't stop it because we took the money away from it. We have nuclear waste in this country. We can't protect it because we fired the people who protected nuclear waste. How fucking crazy is this? I don't know. Sorry. Sorry. You were being very calm and charitable, but it's just got me wound up. Well, certainly as it should, but be careful. At our age, you don't want to much built. Why go to the gym? It's why go to the gym every day, Norm, so I can be this pissed off. But let's add to this that this is, it's not just sort of finding these ways and manipulating. It's using thuggery to accomplish some of them. We now know from some digging and reporting that the reason that the Palm Beach board changed the name of the airport to the Donald Trump airport and gave him exclusive rights to market merchandise surrounding this is because they were threatened with actions that would damage Palm Beach by the president or one of his henchmen to be able to do this. They're using the coercive power of the state to shake down entities to help them get ahead. And of course, they're also using the grasping of these lick spittles out there to try and curry favor with him to give him something more. So we know that his library, which will be in Miami, is going to be built on a very large and expensive plot of land that has been owned by Miami Dade Community College, which is one of the most prestigious community colleges in the country. And they gave him this plot of land worth many, many millions for 10 bucks. And he's using it not just for the library, but for a hotel and probably a casino would be my guess, or other things associated with it. And whether they did that because they're trying to curry favor with him, or because the appointees, almost all of whom were put in place by Ron DeSantis, is DeSantis trying to gain favor for whatever ambitious purposes he thinks will work in that regard. This is a crime family operating as president of the United States and built King the rest of us for their gain and for the gain of their cronies, thugs, and henchmen, and women. That's where we are. That's where we are, America, on Memorial Day. The president marked Memorial Day today by saying that he was pleased that only 13 people have gotten killed in the war so far, that he got a kick out of that. Only 13. This is the pro-life president. Yeah, first of all, the number is probably a lot, as we've found out with most of these numbers. But Trump has a long history of revealing his contempt for the military. And I am sure it will manifest itself again this weekend. By the way, did you note, we've got to go, but did you note that Trump was asked whether he was going to go to his son's wedding this weekend? And he was like, well, I have a lot of things going on. It was like, well, there's this thing called Iran. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it. There's this thing called golf. It's not golf, it's golf. What a piece of suppurating, odious, odiferous, nasty, fly-covered excrement. Very good. Our president is. It's just, oh boy. Anyway, look, Norm, I hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend, everybody. I hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend. We'll be back here next week. And we will undoubtedly have plenty to talk about because every day there's something new here in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, Mr. Trump's neighborhood. And we are here to tell the truth about it. So please join us. If you haven't subscribed on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube. If you want to support us, go to the DSA Network, become a member, contribute a couple of bucks a month. It helps us. We're not one of those big, giant, independent media organizations where just a little struggling one trying to tell the truth. And we appreciate your help. So until then, bye-bye. That's good energy. And I can get paid for the energy I don't use. Yes, that's good energy. And you have 25 years experience in-house engineers and a five-star rating on trust pilots. Yes, that's good energy. Sounds great. One more thing, the solar panel's battery is another hardware. It's all quality tech that's built to last. Of course, making solar simpler for your home. That's good energy. Visit goodenergy.co.uk
