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 to DSR's Words Matter. I'm David Moroskov, joined this week as every week by the man you want to hear from, Norm Ornstein, Savant Oracle, man who can tell the future, Norm Ornstein. He said, don't vote for Trump. Look what happened. Okay? You see what I'm saying? Put two and two together. Norm, the president today, greeted the Prime Minister of Japan in the Oval Office. Somebody said to the president, hey, Mr. President, why didn't you tell the Prime Minister about this? And the president said, well, you know about surprise. Why didn't you guys tell me about Pearl Harbor? What a perfect analogy. So there's a big debate on the internet. Is this worse than when George H.W. Bush threw up in the lap of a Japanese Prime Minister, which is more embarrassing. So this is your opportunity. You were there. You were at Pearl Harbor. What do you think? Yeah, this is more embarrassing. But I do have to tell you one heroic and related story, which is many years ago when my son Danny was six years old, we went to an AEI World Forum in Beaver Creek, Colorado. And very high altitude. What a dad. Yeah, very high altitude. We spent the day hiking around and I clearly was not a good enough dad to give him enough hydration. The open with a dinner and of all things, we were seated right next to former President Jerry Ford. And my son Danny was right next to Jerry Ford, President Gerald Ford, when soon after the dinner started, without saying anything, he jumped up and ran outside. And I ran out to join him where he proceeded to vomit in the bushes. So instead of even at that young age, doing what most kids would do, which is to puke in the lap of the former president, recreating the George H.W. Bush scene in a different way, he averted this national embarrassment. And Trump cannot avert a national embarrassment no matter how much he tries. And you started, David, by saying, let's put two and two together. He couldn't add two and two together if his life depended on it. I think that's true. I think it does bear saying we are watching him every day during this crisis. And he was getting old anyway. And he's kind of slumping down. His head is sinking into his shoulders. He doesn't sit up straight anymore. His ankles are swollen. One of his hands is turned completely purple. His brain is kind of mush. But this crisis seems to me to be bringing out the worst of him, because he does not know how to respond to things. He has spent his life bullshitting his way out of problems he's created. But he is just finding, you can't bullshit your way out of this kind of thing. He can't coordinate with the Israelis. They blow up stuff we don't know about. Obviously, the Iranians are going to do things on their own agenda. Our allies in the region are pissed off at him half the time because of kicking this thing off. Our allies in Europe and in Asia are pissed off. He's almost norm. I'm not saying all the way, but I almost feel sorry for him. I don't. I feel sorry for the rest of us and for the world, because this is of course careening out of control. And while at the same time, we know he's getting pressure from a lot of people around him to just the clear victory and pull out, there is no guarantee that if he did that, that the Iranians would say, okay, you're gone. We're fine. We'll just reopen the straits. And what we know is Israel is not ready to do that. And Israel has begun to bomb the resources of Iran, their oil and gas resources, which has led Iran to retaliate by bombing the oil refineries and other sites in the other Gulf states, which means that we are likely to face a substantial period of time with a major shortage in oil supplies and in fertilizer. Now, that's going to have a huge impact on the world. I was talking with an Asian American friend of mine today, actually a doctor who said he has relatives and others he knows, very poor people who rely on gas for heating their food. And they can barely pay for it. Take away the gas. We're going to have problems with hunger around the world. Food prices are going to go up here because fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. The travel goods across the country in trucks relying on diesel fuel, now over $5 a gallon. And the possibility that oil will go from $100 a barrel to $150 or even $200, leading to a global recession or worse, all because of these ignoramuses jumping into a war without having any clue what was likely to happen. And I have to say, David, watching, God knows why I'm such a masochist, but watching Tulsi Gabbard and the other intelligence agency officials, including John Ratliff, the head of the CIA, testify yesterday in front of the Senate, knowing that every intelligence assessment, every war game, everybody who's ever studied this region and Iran has said for decades, if there is a war, they will close the Straits of Hormuz. And that was, of course, part of what was in our intelligence reports for years. We know that Trump very possibly was briefed on this, but whether he was or not, when he said, nobody knew that they would do this. And you have these licksbittles to Trump trying to avoid saying, well, of course we all knew this. What's wrong with this guy? It just made matters that much worse because nobody's going to go to Trump and tell him, boy, have you screwed this up. We've got to find a good way out of this. That's not happening. And Pete Hekseth, of course, going off on all of our allies and threatening them just makes it clear that this is getting worse. Plus, we have to add the one other element, which is increasing intelligence, telling us that the Russians are doubling down using their most sophisticated technology and their most sophisticated ability to amplify the role of these drones to kill Americans and take out our vital assets. And what do we do? We give more to Russia. We do. We've given not only sanctions relief for people who buy oil from Russia, but we lifted some sanctions on a couple of Russian oligarchs yesterday. We are lifting sanctions because Whitcoff gets along with some of the Belarusians. The Russians are cashing in while targeting Americans to kill them. Yes, go ahead. No, I was just going to add, and it makes it more and more clear what Trump's priorities are, including one other little aside here, which is we had another dignified transfer of the bodies of American military personnel killed in this conflict. And the family said, we want to do this quietly. We don't want any publicity. Trump basically gives the families a middle finger and starts to put out on social media pictures of this because he thought it looked better because he didn't have his baseball cap on. And it tells you his priorities. His priorities aren't protecting American lives. His priorities aren't protecting our most vital intelligence assets and our bases in this tense region. They are giving more to the Russians and doing whatever he can to try and keep those oil prices from skyrocketing even more, no matter what the cost is. And this is who we have as a president of the United States who took an oath. God help not just us, but everybody else in this sorry world. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoy an ad-free listening experience, access to our discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. Use code DSR26 for a 25% off discount on sign up at the DSRNetwork.com. That's code DSR26 at the DSRNetwork.com slash bye. Thank you and enjoy the show. No question about that. And I have to say, as we look towards the future, there are a number of signs that suggest things are getting worse. You've talked about some, likelihood of continued unrest, likelihood of rising oil prices, likelihood of shortages of fertilizer, likelihood of shortages of fuel, consequences of that for the global economy for markets for recession and so forth. But there are even others. So the administration now is floating here in Washington the idea that they need a supplemental budget allocation of $200 billion. 20% of the defense department's already bloated budget, enough to fund every social program in the United States for a long time to come. And when asked about this today, Donald Trump said, well, some of it's for this Iran war, excuse me, but some of it is for things that may come next. And all I can think of is, here he is, seeking a supplemental in advance for what? Cuba, Greenland, his next adventure. And I have to ask you, what are the odds that this supine Congress gives him the money that he is looking for? I don't think he's going to get $200 billion. Part of the reason being that to give him $200 billion is acknowledging on top of an already wildly bloated budget for the Pentagon that they've increased dramatically, adding even more to our burgeoning debt. But a $200 billion appropriation for this ensures that this war goes on for a very long time. And I got to believe that at least Republicans, enough Republicans are going to understand the implications of giving in the money and will cut it back. How much they'll cut it back, I don't know. But the other thing, of course, that's happening here is that we are rapidly depleting whatever stocks we have of many of the critical weapons that we want to keep to prevent mayhem here at home, including Patriot missiles. You know, by the way, Pete Higgs has blamed that on Joe Biden. Well, of course. He blamed everything on Biden, including, I'm sure, every element of anything that goes wrong gets blamed on Biden. And that'll be true even if they're still in the White House in two and a half years, if Trump is still alive and well. When I first heard this warning that we might get drones attacking California and the West Coast, I thought, what kind of nonsense is this? How insane are they? They're not going to have drones that can go 8,000 miles. But then I realized that there is actually a potential threat, which is sleeper cells or others that would have small boats off the coast of California that could, in fact, be able to have a range that could reach population areas there. We know that the Iranians have prepared for a very long time, the revolutionary guards, for some kind of attack or invasion. And it's not just that they prepared by being ready to close the Straits of Hormuz, not that they were ready to take on their erstwhile neighbors and allies, some of them allies, in the Gulf States. But that they would find ways to hit the American homeland. And we barely scratched the surface on that, while we have almost everybody who was involved in counterterrorism, including the elite squad at the FBI, the cybersecurity areas at Homeland Security and elsewhere, and with a 22-year-old former grocery clerk being the chief on this kind of potential attack in this SORI administration, we all have to brace ourselves for what might be serious bloodshed at home. Well, you know, this was unsurprisingly brought up. You were talking about the hearings with Chelsea Gabbard and John Ratcliffe. Also, participating was cash-patel or confidence-inspiring head of the FBI. And when asked about firing these people, he said, well, I'll have to take your word for it. I didn't know they had anything to do with Iran. And so, again, you're a great scholar of the Congress. And I have to ask you a question. We have now entered, you know, sort of through the looking-glass version of congressional hearings, in which Trump administration officials come in, lie, obfuscate, attack the people who are asking them questions, avoid addressing any of the issues, completely undo this whole idea of congressional oversight. And yet, they seem to be getting away with it. I mean, it's gotten to the point where you can't watch a hearing and get an answer about any of the subjects of the hearing. You get weird shit. I mean, the Mark Wayne Mullen confirmation conversation yesterday, in which he got into a debate with Rand Paul about whether or not it was legal to engage in a duel in the United States was fucking weird. But I just have to ask you, you know, doesn't the minority side have any ability to get things back on track here? No. And it's because it's a cult. And until it goes much further south, I don't think we're going to be seeing more than a couple of Republicans who are retiring, basically, willing to step up in any way, shape, or form. And, you know, watching Mark Wayne Mullen in his tense, shall we say, exchange with Rand Paul, one other thing became clear to me, and it was pretty dismayed. Mark Wayne Mullen is, as I have said many, many times, the dumbest member of the Senate. And given the competition, Tommy Tuberville, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, that's saying something. He also, we know, is thoroughly corrupt. This is a guy who did stock trades using insider trading and made a ton of money. And it was including, by the way, before this war started, you know, by doing stock trade, and energy plays and things to cash in on it before it happened. He is also a serial liar. And if you watched any of the grilling of him about him saying that he had participated in a top secret mission where he knew the sights and smells and trauma of war, but wouldn't give any information about it and claimed he couldn't because it was classified, but said it was a congressional operation. And since Congress can't classify anything, he's just flat out lying. He goes through all of that. He shows this terrible anger management problem with his exchanges with Rand Paul, where he had called Rand Paul a snake, his own Republican colleague, where he had exalted in the fact that Paul was viciously attacked from behind by a neighbor and suffered serious physical damage and would not apologize and basically gave a middle finger to the chairman, Rand Paul, a member of his own party, saying in effect, you don't deserve an apology because you're not Republican enough. And he did this because he knows that John Federman, the erstwhile Democrat before this hearing happened, announced that he would be voting for Mark Wayne Mullen, which meant that Mullen didn't have to worry about his confirmation getting stuck in the committee, that he had the votes because of John Federman. This is a man utterly unqualified for this position and getting it because Trump has watched him over and over on TV, including frequently on CNN, where he has done nothing but apologize for all of the actions that Trump has taken, defended the utterly indefensible. Trump likes that and basically knows that he will do anything that Trump wants. And that's why he's picking him for this post. And he will make it through in a Senate that's utterly feckless. And that gets back to your question. Is there anybody there who can block him, where they can pull together enough votes to make it work? And the answer now into the foreseeable future is tragically no. Well, let me play a little name association with you here because you've touched upon some of them that I have some interest in because of the news of the week. But let me start with one, John Federman. I mean, this guy is so damaged. He's certainly not a Democrat anymore. I mean, he doesn't even make any pretense of it. He claims he's still a Democrat. He'll never become a Republican, but he does nothing except criticize Democrats and praise Republicans. Now, I'll give him one small thing. He at least announced yesterday that he could not support the so-called Save America Act, which he had endorsed before because he said who could be against voter ID. Somebody at least clearly was able to sit him down and tell him what's actually in this bill, which has almost nothing to do with a voter ID. It's pure voter suppression. But that aside, he is a now a reliable vote for Republicans. I've heard at least one suggestion made that the only person he's listening to at the moment is a brother-in-law who's full on MAGA. I do know having tried to get other Democrats in the Senate to talk to him, to talk to him about the negotiations with the administration over ICE and the Border Patrol to try and get them to abide by the Constitution and the law and about the SAVE Act. And the response I've gotten back is he won't talk to any of us. So I suspect he's also talking to some of the Republicans. They're treating them really nicely, and he likes that. But this is a damaged man. And unfortunately, he's going to be in the Senate for the next three years. Well, someone who may or may not be in the Senate for the next three years is John Cornyn. John Cornyn was sort of forced to sort of embrace the SAVE Act in order to get the endorsement of Donald Trump against Paxson in the Texas Republican Senate primary. But the date for one candidate or the other dropping out has passed. The President hasn't provided that endorsement. Do we think we're going to see Cornyn continue to cow-tow? And more broadly, what's your current prognosis on the SAVE Act? I expect that he will continue to cow-tow. He is still very concerned about the possibility of Trump endorsing his opponent, Ken Paxton, who is, you know, speaking of competitions, may be the most corrupt public official other than Trump in America, although admittedly, Howard Lutnik, Steve Wittkopf, and too many others are competition for him. And, you know, I remember back in the previous Congress, when we had these discussions about changing the filibuster, nobody was more passionate about protecting the filibuster than John Cornyn. Nobody. Talking about the traditions of the Senate and how much it meant in history, and as soon as he faced this election challenge from Ken Paxton, he doesn't op-ed saying, well, we got to ditch the filibuster to get the SAVE Act. So the willingness that even people like John Cornyn, I happen to know John Cornyn well, I worked with him going back in the days and years after 9-11 on continuity of government. He was thoughtful, strong, and understood the issues and dealt with them. I enjoyed working with him then. He is more soft-spoken and polite than a whole lot of the other Republicans in the Senate, but he has sold his soul now to stay in office. And that's shameful. Well, but to the second half of the question, SAVE Act prognosis at the moment? In the short run, they are not going to be able to change the rules to make it happen. What I would tell you is to keep in mind two other things, David. The first is, if this war goes even worse, as it is likely to, if Republicans blame Trump even more, and you've probably seen that viral clip of a Trump voter when asked, what would you say to him now, said, he's a piece of shit, I voted for him three times, and what an idiot I was. That may not be universal or even typical now of that base, but you can imagine a lot more people turning not just on Trump, but on Republicans. And if they believe that their majority is going to disappear, and maybe even not just by one vote, but by more than that, they'll change the rules. The second though is, if they don't change the rules, sometime in the near future, we're going to have another budget reconciliation bill. Most of our viewers and listeners have followed this enough to know what budget reconciliation is, at least in its basics. It is the one way in getting through a bill involving spending and taxes that can be done on an expedited basis and requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, 50 votes. All of these huge tax cuts in the past were done using budget reconciliation, actually the Affordable Care Act as well, other pieces of legislation. But it's supposed to be in the rules in the law in the Budget and Apartment Control Act of 1974 that created this process, restricted to things that involve spending and taxing, and that are not allowed or supposed to be allowed to increase the deficit. Extraneous things where the primary purpose is not appropriations or taxation are not allowed under the rules. And every time we have one of these budget reconciliation bills come up, they have to vet it through the parliamentarian who tells them what's allowable and what isn't. This will not be allowable, the SAVE Act. However, it can be challenged on the floor when somebody brings up an amendment to include the SAVE America Act. The parliamentarian says that's out of order because it's not allowable, and then under the Senate rules, any Senator can appeal the ruling of the Chair, and a simple majority can overrule the parliamentarian. It is violating their own rules up and down, but don't discount the possibility that they will do it this way knowing that whether it's a violation of their own rules or even a violation of that Budget and Apartment Control Act, no court is likely to challenge it. Our only hope in the courts is that it will be a knock down or a good part of it knock down because it's a poll tax. Well, that's what I was getting at. The rules of elections are to be made by the states, are they not? And aren't some of the elements of the SAVE Act overreaching? They're vastly overreaching, and the parts that require proof of citizenship to include a passport, passport card, or certified birth certificate, all of which if you do not have them in your possession cost significant sums of money, are the equivalent of a poll tax. So it's entirely possible that that could be struck down by the courts. Now, if they pass this, however, they will make each of these elements separable, meaning the court can strike out one part, but not necessarily the whole thing. And at least as pernicious, maybe even more so, because the fact is there'll be plenty of Republicans disenfranchised if they don't have, or can't afford a passport or find their birth certificate, much less pay for a new certified copy. But remember, this bill requires every state to turn over to the Department of Homeland Security, their most sensitive voter information, and to use a voter purge program created by DOGE, using social security data, which they have stolen, the privacy of all Americans, and which will disenfranchise millions of citizens who will find it almost impossible to get back on the voter rolls. And it doesn't require that citizens be notified if they've been struck from the voter rolls until they go to the polls and are being told, no, sorry, you were struck because you are not a citizen. Yeah, I'm a citizen too late, too bad. That's the problem with this bill. If it gets enacted, we're in a heap of trouble. I don't know if it would be enough given what's likely to be this enormous backlash against these horrible people who are blowing up the world and blowing up most of our values at home. But it would be a big hurdle if it ends up getting through in any way, shape or form. Yeah, although, isn't it likely that one other thing that would happen is that this would get challenged a thousand ways in a thousand courts, and that some of this stuff would just simply not be implementable before the election? I think it's reasonable to make that assumption. The more they can keep this from happening until a point where it is too late, because the election rules and the ballots have been set and codified and states have already prepared, but then you'd have to put it past the Supreme Court to go along with their own, what's called the Purcell rule, that you don't change the rules too close to an election. It's not clear to me that they would abide by that if it meant that their partisan friends would be enhanced in their likelihood of winning by violating their own standards. I don't have unlimited amount of time each week to trigger you, although I wish I did. But as you bring up that, I'd like to bring up one last thing, because as I read it, I thought, I really love to see Norm's reaction to this. That was John Roberts indignantly saying that people shouldn't criticize the justices. If you have problems with the opinions, it's fine, but don't be mean to the justices. I could just only imagine you having a minor neurological incident as you read this, and I was just wondering if I was correct. I got to use the famous phrase, spilkas in the genetgazoid over this. John Roberts, who unleashed Donald Trump. John Roberts, singularly responsible for creating an out-of-control dictator. John Roberts, who achieved his goal of the unitary executive, now finding that the monster he unleashed, as I watched the clips of the movie Frankenstein up for an Academy Award for Best Picture. I just thought of John Roberts as Dr. Frankenstein creating this version of Donald Trump. Trump goes off on truth social with an out-of-control rant against Roberts in the court. Now it's Roberts saying, how can you say that about me and us? So if you'll pardon the language, fuck them all. I mean, they're all just people who have dug deep into the ground to create a grave for our constitutional system. And the idea that now you want to step up and say, where's the respect for our court? Forget about it. You feel better now? I do feel a little bit better. Have I helped you a little bit? But before we go, let's point out your latest piece in The Daily Beast, built on your decades of experience as a foreign policy guru in the Situation Room at times, watching the globe, and trying to put this war against Iran into context. Everybody should read it. Well, you're very kind to say so. And weep. But yeah, but you will read it in Weep because what we're doing now certainly qualifies as among the stupidest things we've ever done. It's too early to say whether it's among the most damaging things we've ever done. But when you look at the list of the most damaging things we've ever done, and this is a bit of a spoiler for people who are going to read the article, you know, you have Vietnam, you have the Iraq War, you have other mistakes that we may have made throughout our history. I once read historians felt the biggest mistake that we made was not Annex in Canada when we had the choice in the 19th century. And I'm sure Trump would agree with that. But if you look at actions that have been taken by the United States that have damaged our standing, hurt our national security, produced innocent deaths, produced unnecessary costs, nothing compares with electing Donald Trump. It has been the most damaging blow to our standing and our security and our leadership role and our alliances around the world and to our allies and to tens of millions of people who are going to die around the world because of shortsighted foolish decisions made by Trump, by Musk, by Doge, by Rubio, by Hegseth, and others. And so I just thought I would put it in perspective. You can go to the Daily Beast and read that. And of course, you can keep following us here on the DSR Network, subscribe on YouTube, or subscribe and become a member of the DSR Network by going to thedsrnetwork.com. And know that you're on the show with the big momentum. Last week's show with Mary Trump was the highest rated show we've ever done. We are approaching, I think we're approaching 250,000 downloads on YouTube of that show. And so it's not as big as some of the big, big, biggies, but it's up there. And it's all because you're very well-dressed, very handsome man. You are the well-dressed one. But buddy, we're dressed, I think that was the same way. We're wearing our quarter zips, our shirts. We're sitting here. It's warming up outside. We're like, we're going to stay warm against. Anyway, it's a pleasure. And I look forward to joining you again next week. And of course, join us for everything else right here on the DSR Network. Until then, thanks, Norm. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.
