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Hello and welcome to the DSR Daily. I'm David Rothkoff. I'm joined by Riley Fessler and Menestine here in Washington. It may just be that spring is arriving. What day is it?
May 28th. I mean, come on, folks. This is not when it's supposed to be spring. It's supposed to arrive two months ago.
It's the first sunny warm day since, hmm, I don't know, 2019.
Anyway, let's get into the news. There's lots of interesting stuff going on. All of it, but we'll try to lift your spirits as we talk about it going, Riley, or Menestine. Menestine, right?
“No, I'm first, and I'm here to bring a cloud to you, okay, that's how we view you.”
I'm on the clear. Riley is the cloud around every silver line. Well, I can live up to that right now because the US District Judge has declined
to block President Trump's executive order tightening rules on mail-in voting, rejecting
a preliminary injunction sought by Democrats. The executive order directs federal agencies to compile voter eligibility lists using federal data and restricts the postal service to delivering ballots only to state approved individuals. The judge ruled the lawsuit premature because federal implementation is not yet occurred or caused any present harm, though the plaintiffs may request an injunction.
Once again, once actions are taken, yeah, I mean, it does seem like waiting for it to cause harm is a kind of dumb approach to this whole thing, and there is, you know, another component of this, which is that states are responsible for managing our elections, not the federal government, so there's probably some constitutional grant to block this. But they're just trying to gum up the works and come up with more justification for getting
voter rolls and come up with more ways that they can go after people and put their thumb on the scale and make this country less of a democracy, because if you think that they have any other objective, you're wrong. They don't believe in the American public. They don't believe in our system of elections.
They don't believe everybody should have a vote. They only believe that people who support them should have easy access to voting and everybody else shouldn't because they want to win, and they want to stay at a jail, because they know that every single day from the top down, each one of these folks is committing crime after crime, and they all have a huge amount of liability, and they all have committed,
you know, violations or scandalous behavior that an active opposition in control in the Congress will bring out, and so they're terrified because look, you know, it looks like the polls say they can't win, and if they can't win fair, then they're going to win by cheating, and that is, you know, why they are so focused on shouting cheating all the time, because they want you to believe that that's just commonplace, of course, it's
not, but you will see more cheating in the next six months in this midterm election, then you have ever seen in U.S. election history right at down, it's a prediction.
“Well, I know usually Riley is the rain cloud, and I'm the ray of sun, but I think that's”
what we call you little miss with little miss sunshine, yes, but not today, unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a criminal perjury investigation into author E. Jean Carroll, existing, whether the 82 year old lied during a 2022 deposition regarding
The funding of her civil lawsuit against president Trump.
The probe centers on Carroll's previous testimony that she was not receiving outside financial help, which was later amended when her legal team disclosed that billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and prominent Trump critic Reed Hoffman had helped cover her legal fees through a Chicago based nonprofit. This has been addictive prosecution.
They're going after an 82 year old woman who Donald Trump sexually abused, who presented her case to a jury of her peers, and those peers found that Donald Trump sexually abused
her and he had liability for that, he has not paid the money he owes her, he has never acknowledged
that he did wrong. And now, this justice department and one of its most corrupt prosecutors who just had a case of his thrown out a couple of days ago because it was pure, vindictive prosecution is added again. Talk about the weaponization of the United States system of justice.
“Again, it's like the other thing, why do they talk about it?”
It's because they want you to think it's normal, and therefore it's okay for them to do it. It's not normal, it's not okay, and at some point some sensible judge is going to toss this thing out.
Meanwhile, what's going to happen?
What E. Jean Carroll is going to live with anxiety, and E. Jean Carroll is going to have to raise money to pay for this lawsuit, and that's all they care about. They don't really care about the outcome, they care about torturing, and 82-year-old woman with the president of the United States sexually abused, and he just doesn't like her saying that.
But of course, there's another component of this, and that is that the president of the United States wants to intimidate anybody from going out and blowing the whistle on
“him, on his friends, on Jeffrey Epstein, on people who are close to Jeffrey Epstein, he”
wants people to know that the Justice Department of the United States has no screwcals, no rules, no standards, none of the things that made it stand out in the past.
Instead, it is there to torture the people that make the president's life difficult by
telling the truth, and as we've seen with the slush fund they want to go further, they'd like to actually reward the people who join the president in attacking these people. That's what a torturianism looks like. This is not just one little case. This is part of a pattern, and the pattern should be terrifying to every American because
it is about suppression of free speech, about suppression of the truth, about enabling the president and the people around him to commit crimes without being challenged because it's just too costly for people to go out there and challenge them. It's grim. It's really, really grim, and I just, I beg you, try not to shrunk this stuff off.
Seems like something like this happens every day, hard to maintain your anger on a daily basis, try, try. If we're not angry for the next six months, we're not going to be able to deal with what they throw at us, we're not going to be able to get the result that this country needs. It does not have a partisanship anymore.
It's about wanting to save the country in its 250th anniversary year. How is Democrats are introducing a bill to halt construction of President Trump's triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery because, of course, he is. And we have to deal with this, too, in addition to the serious things.
Because everything, because he's insane, he's an insane, megalmonical narcissist who wants to brand everything from New York Penn Station, to parts of the White House, to arch us outside of the White House, and he wants to bring it to Palm Beach Airport, to dull this airport, to brand it all to himself. I bet you didn't even see the story that's the lead story in the Washington Post right
now. Go to the Washington Post right now. We'll just sit here and wait because Riley loves to do this kind of thing. Go to the Washington Post and tell me, read the headline of the lead story on the Washington Post.
Lovely, Trump appointees push a $250 bank note with his portrait.
“It's also the really hideous portrait where it's like, it's his mug shot, right?”
Yeah, it's his mug shot where he looks like a villain. What a glorious moment that would be an American history to have the mug shot of a felon president on a $250 bill.
This is all part of, this is all part of an insatiable ego.
And, you know, I think the arch should be stopped.
“The $250 bill does have one redeeming factor, and not by the way, the fact that nobody uses”
a $250 bill because there isn't a $250 bill and it's kind of a dumb denomination. But you know what that factor is, guys? Yeah, Riley, what's the reason there's this one contains just a little bit of of the silver lining, Riley likes to obscure. I don't know.
Well, there's a law in the United States that says that nobody's face can be on US currency unless they're dead. Laws are pesky things, David. They are pesky things.
They don't care about laws.
Well, maybe, but I just, like if he qualifies for this bill, let's have the discussion when it bad. Right? I'm ready. I'm absolutely ready to have that discussion.
“But it's just, we live in, in the same time, literally, you know, I think yesterday on”
Team State Radio, which was a great conversation with Ed Lewis and Rosa Brooks and Max but Ed Lewis, the term "coliculin corruption." But, you know, this is the corruption at the level of "coliculin."
It this is self-obsession, narcissism, megalomania at the level of the most-drain-strom
and emperors, at the level of the parody of Neuro that has come down through history. Of somebody who wants to build gilded palaces and tributes to himself. As if somehow he thinks this could affect the way people remember it. Don, the day you leave office or the day you leave this earth, these things are all going to be torn down.
Your name will not be anywhere. The gold will not be anywhere. This will be, you know, a void that will be more of a reminder of how you offended the world and your name will be erased. If you're looking for a poetic reference on, I suggest you go and read the poem, "Azamandius,
Statue that just his feet and leg standing in the sands of the desert and which the opening is or near the top it is, "Look on me, mighty and despair because it happens to everybody, but on it's going to be a party when it happens to you. It's going to be a party. I will celebrate, Riley will be there, men will be there, we will be cracking open festive
bottles of healthy juices and celebrate. It's just what I'm saying the same time we're living in. But I'm sure next story will offer us a little bit of hope, right? Not hope, but definitely perspective. You know, we're talking about the sun is going to burn out and up our billionaires.
Yeah. What a relief that's going to be.
“Well, it's important to remember that while we talk about $250 bills and the government”
spending outrageous amounts of money on all these different things including cage fights that a new report came out yesterday showing that more people in the United States are currently going hungry than six years ago during the pandemic. There was a survey done and a painted a grim picture of our K-shaped economy where inflation and food prices and the significant reduce of government assistance is really squeezing
low and middle-income Americans into severe financial strain. The crisis is manifesting across the country with regional food banks reporting unprecedented demand in Augusta, Georgia, lines for food distribution regularly stretched two to three miles with some families sleeping in their cars overnight to receive groceries. What I was growing up, we were led to believe that this is the richest country in the
world, perhaps in total numbers it still is. There is no excuse for one person in America to be hungry. There is no excuse for one person in America to be unhoused. There is no excuse for one person in America not to be able to afford healthcare.
Yet there are those who are saying yes this is how our system should work and...
who suffer those fates deserve those fates and we need to reserve the riches of this country
“for two purposes to make those who are richest richer and to invest in big industries”
that serve the needs of those who are richest. We are an inhumane society and the Trump administration is taking the traits that have made us increasingly unequal over the course of the past half century policies that both democrats and republicans advanced and they are taken at to eleven, they are pushing it
to the max, they are making things worse, they did it with a big beautiful bill where rich
people, billionaires got tax cuts and now we are seeing stories stories in today's paper
“about how many people have to give up their healthcare because the subsidies that once existed”
for them to get healthcare coverage didn't exist. Say it to often folks if you lived in Europe, if you lived in another country, if you lived in Mexico as of just a few weeks ago, if you get sick, the government pays for it, it doesn't matter when, it doesn't matter how long you're sick, it doesn't matter what it costs in all of these civilized countries, people see being healthy, getting healthcare as a fundamental human right and in only one country is that
not the case. We're seeing it as Trump pushes on with this Iran craziness and inflation does
“up and as of today as we report this, there is a new inflation report and inflation has spiked”
and it is now going up to higher and higher levels for gas, for food, making those food lines longer, making people who need food, children who need food, hungry. We also have the despicable treatment of some of the most needy in our society as they end programs to house the unhoused, or they round up people who are trying to contribute to our society and they put them in prisons, prisons where they don't have enough food, where they don't have light, there's no place for them
to exercise and where 90 plus percent of the people in those prisons are not the worst of the worst. In fact, 90 plus percent of those people don't have any criminal record at all. They were just trying to make our society better and today on television, Mark Wayne Mullen, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, is like, well, what do they expect? We're not running a holiday in London. We provide them with the minimum amount of calories that they need. They're all rapists.
These are monsters, folks. These are monsters. Yes, they're egotistical. Yes, Trump is a clown. Yes, building a octagon and the south lawn of the White House is ridiculous, but this other stuff. This is causing pain and suffering. People will die. We talked about the Ebola virus. People are dying. We will not be able to handle a pandemic. We will not be able to compete in the future. Our society will weather. People will leave because what we are doing is immoral and inhumane.
We're committing national suicide. We're committing national suicide by putting monsters like the monsters or in the White House in charge of every aspect of our society. Glad you brought the story out, Mina. There's two often the people who have no voice
are the ones who are punished first because these monsters don't think anyone will
care about them. We'll see their lives. These are people who have podcasts and Instagram accounts and the ability to get the word out sometimes. We have to do that. I encourage all of you to do that. Let's paint a picture of what's really going on here. Ending on a bit of a strange story
An upcoming CBS news interview former First Lady Jill Biden admitted she fear...
Biden was having a stroke during his June 20, 24 debate performance. Which is just a crazy
“admission. Well, but what the fuck Jill? Yeah, wasn't Jill also supposedly one of the voices behind”
the scenes really pushing. Yes, Joe would again. So why would you admit that you thought he was having a stroke? Well, that's one angle on it. But the other angle on it is if you thought he was having a fucking stroke, why would you encourage him to run and why would you push back on having somebody
else run in his place? Because it was all about you, Jill, and all about Joe. And yeah, I know
everybody loves Joe. And yes, Joe did some good things as president. But for fuck sake, he had one job. And the job was to keep mega and Donald Trump from taking over the U.S. government again.
“And the one thing that made it most likely that they were going to do that was having a”
Democratic president who was not up to running again, in able to communicate effectively what he was
achieving, in able to communicate effectively the threat of the other side. And Biden and the
little code of relief people around Biden preserved this notion that somehow he could go on and do this because their jobs and their well-being and their power and their wealth depended on Joe Biden being in that job. And it doesn't say I'm not saying Joe Biden did do good things in his life. I'm not saying he's not fundamentally a decent person. I'm not saying that there were some real achievements in the Biden administration that deserve to be celebrated. What I'm saying is
“they lost sight of what was important and they helped make us in this circumstance today.”
And the consequences we talk about every day, whether it's in Ukraine or whether it's in Iran or whether it has to do with pandemics or the environment or healthcare in the U.S. or lines of people who are starving or people building archers. If Kamala Harris had more than the shortest campaign in history, if she had real support from her president, if Biden had done what he said he was going to do, which was be a transitional figure and helped tee up the next generation of leaders in this
country. We would not be in this situation today. So am I angry? Yeah, I'm angry. And if it makes you unhappy or uncomfortable because you love Joe Biden, I'm real sorry. But it's time to open your eyes. And this chill Biden story should open your eyes. Yeah, think of think of the mail. We're going to get think of the comments. We're going to get for one day people are not going to be commenting on Minna's hairstyle. And you know, let me tell you something. If you're out there and you decided
that it was worth your time to comment on Minna's hairstyle as some people have done. Get a fucking life. But by all means, stop watching this show. We don't need you here. We're trying to produce good outcomes in America by telling the truth. Don't be an asshole. There are plenty of assholes. Every day we're talking about it. This country has an asshole surplus. I'm just looking for sort of balance in our society. But the last thing we
want is that this place to be a breeding ground or a place that attracts assholes. So if you're an asshole, bye bye. I hope you don't see it again. If you care about the future of this country, we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks, everybody.
