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 Rothkopf. I'm joined this week and every week by our friend, mentor, leading light, Norm Ornstein. How are you doing, Norm? About as well as usual, although... I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, as we were saying a little bit ago, we're all mourning the departure of Christy Noem. Well, let's get to, I don't want to leave our guest out of this, so please allow me to introduce our guest and our friend, Mary Trump, who is the empress and CEO of Mary Trump Global Worldwide Media, noted author, and bon vivant. How are you doing today, Mary? Empress and bon vivant. How could I not be doing well despite the tragedy, the tragic news about Christy Noem? Yeah, well, the tragic news. For those of you who have not heard, and I'm sure that's zero among our readers, Christy Noem was apparently let go from her job as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. We can discuss why in a moment. We can also discuss the spectacle of her giving a speech and apparently not knowing she was fired. That seems to be a classic Trumpian exit. I would like to give you, Mary, since you're our guest, the first crack at commenting on this. What to say? Can I have the plane? You need to take a nap You need a nap in the water bed on that plane I wouldn't go near that I wouldn't touch that bed with a 39 and a half foot pole Yeah What to say I mean she wasn't exactly fired Apparently she was given some other Yet to be made up position And it just sort of reminds me like Donald turns everything into a sinecure, like being president of the United States is now a sinecure. And now Mark Waid Mullen, about who you guys have much to say, is going to take her place and what he's going to do as Secretary of Homeland Security is beyond my comprehension. So that's just that that implies one thing, Mary, I don't mean to interrupt you, but he does have to be confirmed by the Senate. Yeah, that's going to be a nail biter for sure. But Donald apparently doesn't even know that because he said he will be the secretary as of March 31st. That's right. So I do have to say the best comment on this that I've seen so far came from our friend Denver Riggleman, former congressman, who said this is like replacing syphilis with gonorrhea. The jokes just write themselves. They really do. Norm, you're an expert on the Congress of the United States. Mark Wayne Mullen, unbelievably, is a senator from Oklahoma. How would you rate him relative to the other members of the U.S. Senate? You know, we have a sort of informal Olympics, the dumbest Olympics for the Senate. And Mark Wayne Mullen has been the gold medal winner. And, you know, given Tommy Tuberville, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, and the list goes on, that's quite an accomplishment. It's a little bit like the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team, you know, emerging to win the gold in overtime. But it didn't even take Mark Wayne Mullen overtime to get the title of dumbest senator. And let's face it, if we're looking at why he was picked, the single reason I would say is Donald Trump wanted somebody who would follow every order given by Stephen Miller. And that is Mark Wayne Mullen. So maybe it'll be a little bit different. I don't think we'll be seeing sex in the bedroom on the executive jet among the seven purchased by Kristi Noem. And I do think, because she's getting another position, that the little button that's going around, justice for cricket, will still be relevant. That was a nice touch from Representative Moskowitz during the hearing yesterday. But, you know, nothing, I don't think anything significant is going to change. And let's remember, beyond the masked thugs out on the street, another disturbing video from Minneapolis yesterday of one of them standing in the middle of the street and daring a woman who was driving to hit him and he would kill her and refusing to get out of the street. But what's more disturbing at this point to me is what's happening in these concentration camps. We had, you know, we had murders. We had innocent people shot by these thugs. But the number of deaths occurring in these private prison concentration camps keeps going up by the day. and now we have a major measles outbreak in one of them where they it's not like they're going to put people into places where they're not going to get measles and possibly die they're enclosing them in this space and keeping everybody else out so is anything going to change with Mark Wayne Mullen no maybe a little bit less lying when he testifies in front of Congress but probably not much. No, Mary. Yeah. I think Norm is exactly right. Nothing's going to change. And it's important, I think, to remember why Norm is getting fired, because she didn't give a Pam Bondi-esque performance in front of Congress. She actually made some concessions to Jamie Raskin that I'm sure didn't go over well. But the fact remains that it's all window dressing. Mullen will be as bad or worse. You know, I think the only thing going for him, and I don't even know if this is true, but he hasn't murdered a puppy. So that's, I guess, something. But we're in really bad shape here because we know that the war of choice that Donald and Netanyahu are waging against Iran is going very badly. And at least certainly for Donald, it is to distract us, yes, from the Epstein files in which he's mentioned a million times, but also from the fact that the United States government has murdered American citizens, has murdered other people on American soil, without due process and is stocking and building more gulags, concentration camps throughout this country. And not enough people are paying attention. Plus, of course, relatedly, as Norm mentioned, there's a measles outbreak because the conditions are so bad there. But also children throughout this country are getting measles because Health and Human Services is being run by a sociopath. So all of this is of a piece with the agenda of the Trump regime, make us poor, scared, tired, and sick. And it's actually going to plan, unfortunately. David, I want to add two other reasons why Trump fired Kristi Noem. One is the executive jet and the seven airplanes she insisted on purchasing for a huge sum of money. And it's not that it's corruption. They're all corrupt. It's that it was unmasked as corruption and she had no answer for it. And the second is another instance of grift and corruption, which came out in these hearings, which we knew anyhow, $143 million from taxpayers going to a no-bid contract to a company created eight days before it got the contract. That's bad. That wasn't what caused her to be fired. It was that the contract that went to her former spokesperson and her husband was used to promote Kristi Noem. And if you are not promoting Donald Trump and instead you're promoting yourself, he doesn't care that they got the $143 million. If they'd use that money to basically lobby for Trump to get a Nobel Peace Prize, he'd be delighted with it. It's that nobody else should be getting any credit or any focus on themselves. 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 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 That's code DSR26 at thedsrnetwork.com slash buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. You know, I appreciate your guys' positive attitude here, and it's really lifting me up today, as it does every week. Mary, I was particularly looking forward to having you on because I have a sort of theory of the case here, and I can't think of anybody better positioned than you to comment on it. I think 2026 has been the worst year of Donald Trump's presidencies by a lot. Every single day he tries to do something and every single day it blows up in his face, whether it's Venezuela or Iran or other policy moves or even, you know, Melania's bribeumentary. Every single thing has brought his, has failed to lift his ratings, which are plummeting, failed to increase the likelihood that there's going to be a big change in the Congress, brought him closer, perhaps even to some kind of accountability for his actions. his ankles are getting fatter his hands have bigger blotches on them he's got now some creeping tree rot on the side of his neck that we can't pinpoint exactly his head seems to be sinking gradually into his chest in other words he's physically declining he's politically declining he's a lame duck To me, it looks like Donald Trump is having a really classic existential bout because he's over and he knows he's over. And people with eyes know he's over. The only people who don't seem to know he's over are the Republican Party who keep treating him as though he was relevant. And John Fetterman. And well, John Fetterman, speaking of people, it was over. But you have a unique perspective on this, both professionally and personally. And I was just wondering what you think of this notion that Trump is really, despite all the headlines, collapsing in on himself and fading. He's sundowning. Oh, yeah. Well, I truly appreciate the description. You had me at creeping tree rot. Yeah, I tweeted the other day pictures of his head and the creeping tree rot. And I just wrote, the portrait is out of the attic. because I saw that. That was very funny. I mean, I'm sure it could get much worse, but please, I don't want to see it. The fascinating thing about where we are at this moment, and I know it doesn't change how bad things are, but we can at least take some small comfort in knowing that Donald is miserable every second of his life. And that's as it should be. again, it doesn't help us, but at least... I'm not big enough to admit that doesn't help me. That helps me. Okay, good. I mean, it doesn't change anything, but it should make us feel a little better because it would be so much worse if he were enjoying this, you know? The fascinating thing about where we find ourselves now is that this is where his entire life has been trending. and this is what he's been trying to avoid for his entire life. Like all of Donald's psychic energy has been spent for his whole life to protect himself from the kinds of massive humiliation, massive and unavoidable humiliations he has now set himself up for. And that is kind of glorious. It's a sort of poetic justice we don't often see. Now, it's not accountability and it's not enough, But this is going to accelerate his metaphorical end, if you will, because in addition to all of the things you mentioned, this is somebody who every day gets older. He's going to be 80 soon, and he is a deeply unhealthy 80. He is clearly suffering from cognitive decline, and he's had serious undiagnosed, untreated psychiatric disorders for decades. So the stress he's under and the knowledge, and this is the thing that you alluded to, David, that is one of the most significant points we need to press on whenever possible. his ability to protect himself from the knowledge of who he is and how bad things are is eroding. And we need to pile on at every moment, or the Democrats do at any rate, and mock him and point out just how deficient and degraded he is because he can't handle it. Anytime you see somebody push back. He like loses his mind. Imagine if nobody ever let up. He wouldn't be able to retain structural integrity at this point. So it's pretty fascinating. Actually, back in 2020, I said that what needed to happen was that Donald and the Republican Party needed to lose so badly that it would wound him narcissistically in a way he couldn't recover from. And unfortunately, that didn't happen. He lost, but the Republican Party didn't lose. And then he got rehabilitated with the big lie on January 6th. We're now in that territory again, where the narcissistic injury he's facing is so deep, it could be his complete undoing. Well, you have seen, you know, older members of your family decline. And it does seem he's got traits of several of them because his father, I believe, had dementia and Alzheimer's and his mother had a really bad haircut. And and he seems to have both. So sorry. Sorry to do that to you while you were drinking. That was unfair. Anyway. That was unfair. Go ahead, Norm. I want to pile on a little bit, too. Please. First, of course, saying. Just now while I'm drinking. Saying the other day that his father had been born in Germany, when, of course, that was a lie. But this is from a speech this morning. Quote, if the prime minister of Norway had given me the Nobel Peace Prize, our submarine wouldn't have had to sink an Iranian ship. So I think as we talk about mental decline and about narcissistic sociopathy or psychopathy, that's a pretty good piece of evidence that he's really losing it on a rapid basis. Yeah, and he didn't say that because of the bad haircut. No. He said that because of the other thing. Yeah, the other problem he seems to have. You make a good point there, Norm. Marco Rubio came up with this super convoluted reason for war in Iran, because he needed to say that it was because there was an imminent threat, so there was an emergency, so he had to respond. So he said that there was an imminent threat because we knew the Israelis were going to attack, And we knew the Iranians would respond against us if the Israelis attacked. But and therefore we had to respond. But Trump, unable to contain himself from not being the center of the story, then said, yeah, but I was the one who told the Israelis to attack, which creates the beautiful situation, which I am a national security specialist, has never occurred in American history, where this is the first time in history that our president is responsible for the imminent threat we were launching a war against. I mean, he was the, I mean, it's like, it's amazing. But, you know, Mary, you and I have been talking about this stuff for, I don't know, 10 years, eight years, for a long time. And we said back then that he was the greatest threat we face. it seems clearer now than ever that there is no threat in the world posed by anybody greater than him yeah which is a devastating commentary on almost 78 million americans who thought this was a good idea uh because he is he has no ideology he has no strategy he has no plans All of everything he does is to bolster himself up in one way or the other either financially or in terms of perceived power or again in terms of protecting his very fragile ego But actually I have to say that the only reason he the biggest threat we face is because of the fascists in the Republican Party. He could easily be reined in, or he could have been anyway. And time after time, along with the corrupt, illegitimate supermajority of the Supreme Court, they refuse to rein him in. They hand him more power. They make it almost impossible for him ever to be held accountable. So at this point, I blame them as much, if not more. Donald has always been a symptom of a greater problem. And they demonstrate that every single day that they continue to kiss his ass and grease the skids for him to be the most corrupt, venal, dangerous, cruel president or leader this country's ever seen, I think. Let's talk about the cruelty because of another element today. Four of our service people who were killed in Kuwait, and by the way, killed because they were in a trailer, a makeshift trailer with no protection because Pete Hegseth wouldn't secure it, landed at Dover Air Force Base today. Not only was Donald Trump not there, Pete Hegseth, who's been doing fundraisers for Republicans in the middle of this war, wasn't there. Nobody was there from the administration to greet these four heroes. So when his former chief of staff said back during the first term, when Trump was at Normandy, that he called the dead suckers and losers, you know that he was not making that up. And, you know, the way that Pete Hegseth referred to the fallen soldiers, it makes it clear that the level of inhumanity here, the lack of any empathy, while you're the ones who are responsible for these deaths, you're putting our troops in jeopardy. And at minimum, you ought to at least laud what happened when they're down in the course of a war that you've started. But no, they don't care. Yeah, it's worse than that in some respects. You know, yesterday, by the way, Mary, I don't know how long you listen to our podcast, The Norm and I do, but the thing that is stated most often is it's worse than that. And we just pile on. But, you know, the Speaker of the House yesterday asserted that we had to go to war because of the crazy religion that's practiced in Iran. And, you know, I mean, there are reports of real kind of religious extremism being used as the guidance and motivation for members of our military. And Hegseth, to just add to what Norm is saying, when he was asked about the dead servicemen at a press conference yesterday, said, this is gotcha journalism. Why are you focusing on this? That's all fake news. um and you know that it you know to steven miller today gave a speech in which he said um that uh you know we're only interested in human rights for uh you know good kind of people but but but we don't care about the human rights of savages who pose a threat to us and you know we know what he meant by that. It's like Donald Trump is declining, but the poison from his body is spreading out through the Republican Party. And it doesn't make me very encouraged about the future, Mary, with what I hear J.D. Vance or others who might pick up the baton. Yeah, I think we have to be very vigilant about what happens next because they are aware that there is no replacement for Donald in their party. So they have to make sure that they don't have to worry about that. And that's why these midterms are so important and so fraud. And it's like this entire regime is a version of watch my drive. Oh, yeah, people are dying. But look at these gold curtains and look at my ballroom. And it's so much worse than being tone deaf. It's this is. This is, as you said, the poison is spreading, the disease is metastasizing. And if we have any hope of rehabilitating this country and the people in it, we need to focus on the kinds of things Norm mentioned. And why did suddenly empathy and kindness become anathema to people? Without them, you get people like Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance and Donald. And it's alarming because when I first started talking about this stuff in 2020, I said it's like 62 million people back in 2016 decided that they wanted this country to be some version of my family. in which kindness, empathy, generosity, and sensitivity were considered weaknesses. And here we are all these years later, and it's so much worse because everybody in the executive branch, everybody in the Republican Party who's an elected official seems to subscribe to that notion that somehow being as inhumane as possible is what makes you viable and worthy. And we are not going to be able to survive as a people if we don't reclaim what it means to be the best we can be as human beings, to be empathetic and kind and open minded and valuing of differences and all that. all the things that the Republican Party is now actively against. But that is going to require Democrats doing something I'm not entirely sure they're all capable of doing. Resisting at every turn, never, ever making common cause with these fascists, even if it seems like a good idea at the moment. So, I mean, Fetterman aside, because I don't think he is a Democrat. They need to get very serious about making the case for why they are opposing every single thing the Trump regime has to offer, because we can't make half measures here. All that does is legitimize them and normalize them and further empower them. So Norm, yesterday was, yesterday? No. Tuesday was an election day in several places in the country. Did you see anything in the results that give you hope for what Mary's talking about? There are a couple of things, although in a broader sense, I think Mary is spot on. Democrats who are running for office, far too many of them seem to think that all they have to do is talk about affordability. And while that is hugely important, and I have no doubt that Susie Wiles and some others are quietly apoplectic that after the State of the Union, where Trump made lip service to it, he then went out and made sure that gasoline prices would shoot up to a level higher than when he came into office and is still playing around with tariffs. But in fact, Democrats need to focus on the radical and sadistic approach that this administration and the Republicans in Congress are choosing. And there's at least a little bit, I think, of positive things there with James Tallarico, who won the nomination for the Senate in Texas. They're already attacking him for some of the things that he said before. One of them, which I saw Texas Governor Greg Abbott jumping all over, was a couple of years ago, Tallarico said, God is non-binary. Now, if you don't believe that, you believe that God has some human form. But whatever it might be, they're going to go after him. But I think he's on the right path. And I think it was a good choice. And Democrats are rallying behind him. The choice of Roy Cooper, overwhelmingly to be the Democratic nominee for the Senate in North Carolina is a very positive thing. But there's a broader point here that we have to keep reiterating, which is they're going to go after stealing this election. In Texas, where the Secretary of State did not tell voters in two key, huge Democratic counties, Democratic-oriented counties, what their polling places would be, because they changed around the polling places and didn't alter some of them to reflect the new map that took place. And then when a judge said, because people were bouncing around and trying to find out where to vote, we're going to keep the polls open for a couple of hours longer so that people will have the chance to vote the Texas Supreme Court which is a bunch of partisan hacks basically said no you going to have to close the polls So beyond this horrible SAVE Act that we talked about many times before, there'll be other things going on. And the other thing to mention here is this morning, the great Maggie Goodlander, Congresswoman from New Hampshire, grilled a top Defense Department official this morning and said, you have plans to send thousands of military forces into all 50 states to prepare for a civil disturbance, which is the precursor to invoking the Insurrection Act and very possibly suspending the election. And his response was, I'll get back to you on that, which is insane. But we are going to have to not only have Democrats focus on the indecency of what's going on, but all of us are going to have to work overtime to combat what will be massive efforts to basically overturn the elections. And let's not forget the despicable potential action taken by the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, if he in fact issues a clemency for a woman who not only tried to overturn the election and seize ballots and do all kinds of terrible things, but expressed not an ounce of remorse for it, went through the legal process and was sentenced not to the most significant sentence that she could have been, but to nine years in prison for multiple felonies. And if he gives her clemency, it would be a shameful act, a Democratic governor who will then be putting himself on the side of election interference and chicanery. You know, Mary, when I listened to Norm describe this, and I have to endure it on a weekly basis. No, I love Norm, but when I listen to him describe this, what we see here, again, are manifestations of a personality of the president that then extends throughout the party who doesn't care about rules, doesn't care about morality, doesn't care about consequences for anybody but himself. And so I'm not a psychotherapist as you are. I'm not trained in this kind of stuff. And so I regularly go through in my mind, you know, is he a sociopath or is he a psychopath? And when I look it up online, it says psychopaths are likely born with genetic biological deficits, appearing calculated, charming and emotionally cold, whereas sociopaths are shaped by environment, appearing erratic, impulsive and prone to rage. And I was just wondering, you know, which is it? Can't it be both? Yeah. It can be. Why limit ourselves? Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I think that there is something wrong here. You know, as I said on a different show the other day, this is the moment in world history since the time that Hitler blew his own brains out in a bunker. that the fate of the world is most impacted by the psychological dysfunction of a single man. Yeah, and this one. That's what constantly is blowing my mind. He's so grotesque. He's so weak. He's so deficient and depraved and just gaudy and grotesque. All the tree rot, all of it, creeping tree rot. That who, what kind of person looks at him and thinks, oh yeah, that's my guy. It's just, it's embarrassing. I know that's not the most important thing, but it's also embarrassing and inexplicable. But the problem is that fragile systems bend towards their most dysfunctional member. And America has become an increasingly fragile system for decades. And it's almost as if Donald was the logical outcome of that. And he is a manifestation of what this country has become, I think. So the question then is, as you said earlier, is his leaving exiting stage left going to be enough to right us? And that's why it is so important for Democrats who are the only party who care about democracy, who try to defend democracy, who care about the well-being of American citizens, generally speaking, stand firm. And it is as awful as it is when Republicans bend the knee or when corporations and white shoe law firms and institutions of viral learning capitulate. That at least makes some sense to me as as vile and unacceptable as it is. But when Democrats do it, considering they are technically outside of the system that created Donald, that I do not understand at all. And all they do is make themselves ridiculous and make our jobs harder. So if Polis does indeed grant clemency to that woman, he needs to be primaried and he needs to lose his run for reelection. I think it's even worse. He needs to be shunned. Yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. So many people need to be shunned. That's true. Like they these are people who there are so many people who do not. Should not be accepted into polite society or society of any kind of decency again. So hopefully we'll get to the point where we can start doing the shunning. Yeah, I love the fact that Norm goes back to his Amish roots to find ways to punish these people. but I'm going to do something here that, Mary, I'm glad you could see it in our last couple of minutes on this episode. Every episode, I try to end on something upbeat. And every episode, Norm confounds me. It's like a regular battle where I try to make it up, but I'm going to succeed this time. Norm, is there not something uplifting in the offing? Is there not the premiere of a documentary on PBS tonight called Immutable that we should all know about, Norm, that will make us feel better? Is that not something positive, Norm Ornstein? Thank you very much for that, David. And Mary has seen this documentary a couple of times. Mary has volunteered at our summer debate camp. Uh, so this documentary is on Friday evening here in Washington. It's on WETA, the public television station at 9 PM. Uh, unless the war takes a, uh, even bigger turn for the worse. We have a segment on the news hour, uh, on Friday, um, with a couple of our remarkable kids and, uh, morning Joe Friday morning. Um, and for those whose public television station, ridiculously is not airing it tomorrow evening, Friday evening, go to pbs.org. And there's also going to be a YouTube version of this that will be up on Friday, which happens to be National Speech and Debate Day. And it is heartwarming, uplifting, inspirational, and God knows that is in such short supply these days. And it's reflective. It's reflective of the hard work and vision and commitment of Norm Ornstein. So yes, and Judy. And so I just want to add my two cents. It's it's so beautifully done. It's so incredibly moving. I had seen it already, but to watch it in an audience with other people and see how moved everybody was. It was such a testament to the work Norm and Judy have done and to the work all of the coaches and administrators do, and especially to the extraordinary work these kids do. I was so honored to volunteer and to see what they do to prepare and become knowledgeable and the ways in which they engage with each other. I think every school in this country should have a debate team. It is powerful, powerful stuff. Thank you for that, Mary. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you'll come back if you enjoyed it. And thank you always, Norm. Thank you, everybody, for listening to us. And please, you know, join us on all the other podcasts we do every day or watch them on YouTube where our audience is growing pretty steadily. We're covering this war in great depth and we've had a number of podcasts on that. We will have more where we bring in very, very high level experts to provide perspectives you can't get anywhere else. So this is a really good time to be joining us. And if you'd like to support what we're doing, go to thedsrnetwork.com and click on membership and support us. But until we see you the next time, many, many thanks, Mary, Norm, and everybody. Bye-bye.
