Words Matter: 25 Years After 9/11 and the Greatest Threats We Face Are From Within

subbasement 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 Rothkoff and this week, as every week, I'm joined by the great Norm Orenstein, we had a week off, Norm, did you rest, did you go to the French Riviera, what did you do to recharge your batteries? I went to Rehobeuth Beach and every morning, pretty early, I walked with my dog Henry

on the beach and that was a restful. The rest of the day, I had to worry about the fate of the nation.

“Well, you must feel great, though, Norm, because he came back and almost as soon as”

he got back, he got worried that the president of the United States is going to send

you 5,000 bucks, that could pay for a few more weeks at Rehobeuth with you and Henry. And that's, it's just going to be great, he's the generous man, Norm. There's no doubt about it, and but I'm expecting that it will not be $5,000, it will be $5,000 in Trump cryptocurrency put into some place in the ether. Of course, it's, well, how many ways can we deal with this?

It's illegal, it's a bribe, but it's not going to happen in any way. But it's better than that, Norm, because it's a bribe with your own money.

“I mean, think of it, no, no, it's tariffs, it's coming from the tariffs.”

Well, that's the thing, that's the thing, Norm, we live in a golden age, I mean, if you're not paying attention, president tells us all the time. And we got a check like this when he reduced the health care costs. We got a check like this when he put in place the tariffs, we get a check like this when he did doge.

I mean, each one of those, he promised the thousands of dollars, so we must have a big fat bank account someplace that we can go and spend, take each other to lunch, have a great time because our president has a big, big heart. You know, the next time you and I have lunch, instead of paying the bill, why don't you tell them to put it on your Trump check account and see how that plays at the four seasons.

That's a great, that's a great, that's a great idea. You know, when I heard the president making this claim again, I thought, you know, how desperate that he is literally trying to bribe voters, saying vote for me will give you 5,000 bucks. How desperate that he keeps doing the same thing over and over again. He doesn't have like another angle, he just keeps doing the same thing over and over again.

How desperate that he's doing something that's obviously illegal, there will cost a trillion dollars that would add even more to our deficit. How desperate must this ban be to host a Trump-a-Palooza party in Dallas, Texas, in the middle of a midterm when he's not on the ballot, how desperate is this guy to sort of remain relevant

“as he seems to be sinking into the worst kind of irrelevancy of lame duck status?”

So desperate, just check the true social postings that he's made, which go beyond the usual unhinged and embarrassing to a level of unhingement unseen and unheard of, as he says,

never before have we seen anything like this, but I want to segue just briefly from

this to somebody who's tweet on this, I just saw. And that is Roger Marshall, the Republican senator from Kansas, who's up for reelection who tweeted, "Let me know how you're going to spend your $5,000." But let's note that there was news about Roger Marshall in the last few days from the New York Times.

Richard Marshall is an OBGYN, and let me caution women everywhere if you can find an OBGYN, which in states like Texas and Georgia are increasingly difficult to come by because of the

But if you do, whether you're in Kansas or anywhere else, and you know that you're dealing

“with a MAGA lunatic, find another doctor, or if you're desperate go to web MD or some”

other place like that, what we know from Roger Marshall, who bragged about what he had done for rural health care, is that he, for hundreds of women who came to him, some with miscarriages, others for deliveries, many of them poor rural people.

He, first of all, made them sign something saying that if they didn't pay everything immediately,

there would be 18% interest charged. And then he had almost 100 of them arrested because they were late in their payments. One woman who was eight months pregnant, who was having trouble making ends meet, and others who just simply had no money to pay, and charged hundreds of others for refusing to pay everything immediately.

We have had kindly doctors in the past. When I was growing up, when you were growing up, they actually came to the house. And if you couldn't pay right away, they could cut you some slack because it was first to know harm.

Roger Marshall is first to harm.

This is a man who does not belong in the Senate. He frankly does not belong in civil society. If the medical association had ethical standards, they would say, "We are not going to give a license to somebody who treats patients this way." Let's hope that Mr. Hamilton, Reverend Hamilton, who's running against him, it's uphill

in Kansas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate.

“I think since the 1920s, let's hope that he can prevail and take this monstrous individual”

out of the Senate.

And I should note as a sideline that just last week, Nancy Landon Casabond, a long time

senator who happened to be somebody I was pretty close to when she served in the Senate. I worked with her, as I worked with the man who became her husband, late in life, Howard Baker. She was a lifelong Republican, not surprisingly she died in Kansas in her beloved Kansas. Her father, Alpha Landon, had been a presidential candidate. Nancy Landon Casabond was not only a lovely person, she was a model of what you hope we hope

will find in a two-party system. A moderate individual looking to solve problems, trying to find bipartisan compromises. He will be missed, but since she left Kansas like so many other states has turned to the

“fringes, and that's why we get monstrous people like Roger Marshall.”

Here from Kansas, vote for Hamilton. If you're not from Kansas, send him money. Just like, you know, I brought up the $5,000 thing Dallas, and we're like the Kansas, and I'm like, think, did we pay that the doctor come when I was like, I don't remember. I do remember the Dolly Part, and apparently said prior, you know, in one of the interviews

I saw when she died, that her parents paid for her childbirth with a bag of cornmeal. So that's probably the kind of experience you had minutes of did your parents pay for your delivery with a chicken or something like that, is that why it's like, maybe brisket. It would have been brisket. That would, that would be, that would be well, well, well worth it.

By the way, one of the few pieces of good news that we've seen this week, the people would expect us to address is that New York's famous Carnegie Dallius reopened. Yes. And that's that's good news for people who understand what New York is all about. Let me shift the subject before you go from that though, I'm sorry.

I want to also say it was really good news this week for the people who make impossible burgers, those burgers that are meatless. Why? Because we learned that Donald Trump met in the Oval Office with a Brazilian billionaire who has given him money, who's close to his family, who unloaded 30,000 pounds tons of beef,

which it turned out had been rejected by the European Union because it didn't meet any

And it turns out, apparently, that a lot of this beef had been frozen for years was being

mixed with others, so if this is going to be sent into this country, even as Trump tried to modify the beef processors and farmers by telling the processors that they could do their own inspections, even as we know, they've lost half their people because of the immigration crackdowns. So if I were you out there, go to the impossible burger.

You had Henry must have had some conversation with me at the beach.

“Why don't you think about the fact you're mentioning the Kansas case?”

It seems like Democrats are doing better and state after state, and I want to get to

Missouri in a minute, but not quite.

One state where the Democratic candidate seems to be astonishingly leading the Republican candidate, Texas, and remember, Trump was in Texas last night. What he did on behalf of his candidate was in South the way he looked, but James Talerego, the Democratic looks like he's doing pretty well, was doing an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, and apparently the FCC called up ABC and said, "Oh, no, you can't run it this way."

And they're not running it, and Jimmy Kimmel is having to put it on up by YouTube or something like this. But this is just extraordinary intervention and suppression of free speech on the part of this FCC.

You know, we have had an equal time provision in the rules of the FCC for many decades.

The equal time provision is such that if you bring a candidate on in one of your broadcasts,

“you need to offer comparable time to the other candidate.”

But for almost all of that time, talk shows, late night shows, entertainment shows, have been exempt from it. President and car took away that exemption on his own. And then is used this as a tool to bludgeon people doing things he does not like. You know, we've talked before many times about my wish, which has not been fulfilled,

that a host Democrats would bring impeachment resolutions to the floor against some of the worst monstrous people in the Trump cabinet and other places in the administration. Brendan car richly deserves to be impeached because he's a thug and is by far the worst chairman of the FCC in its history. And he is not doing what he's supposed to be doing, he's using his position as a tool to try

“and punish people who speak he does not like and punish and shake down broadcasters”

who are doing those things. And when broadcasters cave in, it makes it that much worse. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I really have to tell you about our sub-stack. The DSR Network sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio. The DSR Daily words matter need to know, silicon consciousness, AI energy and climate

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of David's need to know Sub-stack. Please consider joining us at DSR Network.substack.com, that's DSR Network.substack.com. Thank you and back to the show. Well, they don't really like the law that much. They see it as an impediment to doing what they're doing, you know, this $5,000, you

know, the president doesn't have the ability to allocate $5,000 to people, requires Congress, quite a part from the whole bribing. Another thing that happened in Dallas was that the Attorney General get up at stage or scheduled to get up on stage and promote these political campaigns, even though that's a violation of the law.

See, the primary law enforcement officer of the United States breaking the law publicly, which is pretty awful. But some of your favorite law twisters actually did the right thing today, nor because your friend Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas and all those folks up on the Hill there, right behind that Congress in the Supreme Court building, actually did the right thing and told

to, even with multiple courts trying to confuse the issue.

“And they were going to have to go back to a map that was actually essentially one seat better”

for the Democrats. How do you feel about them doing the right thing? I am grateful and surprised, modestly surprised, since Brad Cabinah had actually acted earlier to effect an injunction, but let's also note, David, that this is not entirely done. We have an injunction that goes back to the eighth circuit, which is not the best circuit.

But what Missouri was doing was so blatantly and obviously wrong, it's top election official violating the courts and the law, and one would hope that the Missouri Supreme Court, which had done the right thing earlier, would hold him in contempt. They've already asked him why he shouldn't be held in contempt.

“Missouri and its governance, you know, this is another instance.”

Kansas was always a pretty red state, but it's elected democratic governors.

It's had some terrific public servants. Missouri used to be a model of public service, you know, Stuart Simington, and so many other terrific people from Claire McCaskel to Tom Eagleton, who were Democrats, and there were some, you know, terrific moderate Republicans. And it, like so many other states, has seen the Republican Party turn into a fetted swamp

of right wing, not conservative, right wing lunacy, and their state legislature tried and their other, you know, statewide elected officials tried to pull a fast one here.

What the top election official did was to try to keep a referendum, which is right there

clearly in their constitution on the redistricting process from ever being put to the voters. These are really bad people, and it's a measure of what's happened to our politics. A responsible, conservative, problem-solving Republican Party turned into a road insurgent outlier. Yeah, although there are occasionally, you know, uh, responsible Republicans, one of whom

has a kind of a mixed record, but I was interested to note today, Brad Raffinsberger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, came out and said what the president's trying to do with mail-in balloting is raw. He actually took a stance against it, and there do seem to be a few Republican secretaries of state who are lining up with Democrats saying, "Leave us in charge of the electoral system

because after all the constitution says it's up to the state."

“And, you know, I think there are two reasons for this, obviously.”

One is, some of them actually have some integrity, and I think you could say that at base about Brad Raffinsberger, but I think there's another reason, too, which is they realize that if we do get these precedents of a president who has no role in the constitution over federal elections is able to intervene and counter, uh, counterman what states are doing. If and when there's a Democratic president, and they try to do things that might be, uh,

a little off base, or even if they aren't to put the thumb on the scales, they'll be the ones who suffer. I'm fine with that. If pragmatically you look at something and say, you know, this might benefit my party, but turnaround will be fair play, and they resist it, that's okay, because they're resisting.

We should note that this, uh, love fest for Trump in Dallas doesn't just include almost every cabinet member who is violating the Hatch Act, worse for the attorney general, of course, but also Senate candidates, one of whom is Mike Rogers of Michigan, and I would like every one of these Democrats for Rogers in Michigan who will not identify themselves, because my guess is they're mostly Republicans who call themselves Democrats for Rogers,

along with those who have identified themselves, a number of Jews, including a number of rabbis, saying they can't abide by Abdul al-Said, so they're going to vote for uh, microchairs and many of them sending him money and helping to support him, watch Mike Rogers, who is down there to become yet another lickspiddle for Donald Trump, and it was very funny yesterday the Detroit

a Democrat all my life, I care about the Democratic Party, but this is a bridge too far.

Turns out she lives in New York. Yeah, well, and the backlash against the news people writing in saying, what are you letting a carpet bag or write this for? It tells you something. Well, Rogers lives in Florida in Norm. Yeah, that's right. I mean, he does, he, he, as soon as he lost the Senate, he moved to Florida, but you know who else supports Rogers, Norm, a force who brags that he delivered the 2024 election for Trump, that his and Trump himself has said that it was

“his secret knowledge of how computers work, that enabled Trump to sort of sneak away with the”

election when nobody expected it, a guy who was celebrating the victory in Saxony on Halt in Germany

this past weekend of a neo-Nazi right-wing faction as the majority party in their state as, uh, uh, legislature, uh, Elon Musk, pro-Nazi, anti-democracy, hateful, doge, criminal, Elon Musk is now saying Rogers is the man. And Elon Musk also denying over and over and saying how terrible it is that people call him and his ilk Nazis. No, even this has offered this, uh, gushing support for the neo-Nazi's in Germany, the head of the AFD, of course, is the granddaughter of a prominent Nazi,

so we have that. As we're talking about, Mike Rogers living in Florida, let us also note that the

Republican candidate for governor and Alabama, who is a senator from Alabama, and will probably win because it's Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is, uh, or should be unable to run for that office, because he not only lives in Florida, even as he represents Alabama, but he's voted in Florida

“has taken a homestead exemption, has done all kinds of things that make it clear that you have to”

have lived in Alabama. I believe the their constitution says for seven years to be eligible to run for governor. Um, will they ignore this? Of course they will. Well, he was the coach of the Auburn football team. Right. I mean, he's dumb as a post. And yeah, well, he is. But I mean, look, it can't pass and running for Senate. Yeah, in Texas, he has houses everywhere, you know, on his, on his major government salary, I think it's 15 houses, multiple millions, and he was making

$150,000 a year. That's, you know, he's the financial genius. You know, um, I would be remiss if I did not turn the subject to another person who frankly our listeners love very much you to talk about. And that is our secretary of commerce, um, uh, because the president is now turned to him and said, you handle all these voting machines that may have foreign parts in them, and therefore may be suspect and we're going to go after them. You handle them, secretary,

let neck. And I have to say it very carefully, because you have said nut lick on this program so many

“times. I don't even remember his proper name. That's the goal. The goal should be to call him nut lick.”

And, uh, but this is an evil man, evil evil man. I watched a video of him talking about 9/11. Talking about how it was particularly difficult for him, because he'd lost family members, and because his firm lost hundreds of people and how he mourn for them all, and what we know is that as soon as he could, he cut off the financial support from the families of his employees who were killed in the World Trade Center, the candor fits Gerald family. We know he is a grifter

and his kids who now run candor fits Gerald are making up like bandits. We know that he lied about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and if there is anybody who is unsuited to deal with election machines or anything else of substance or of moral concern or of honesty, it's Howard nut lick. We have to, we can't finish without also noting that the Commerce Department is in

millions of people in a way that goes against every bit of American history and bipartisan support.

Well, it does against something else too, Norm. It does against the 14th amendment of the Constitution, which says that everybody will be counted regardless of their citizenship. Yes, and they're trying to go direct against that, or at least that's the way it's been interpreted for the past 150 years. I'll just come in off for you side story here. I know you're in the middle of a bunch of good grants, but I'll just offer side story. So as we're recording this, it's September

10th, the day before the 25th anniversary of September 11th. And your comments on

“"Luttenek" require me to tell you a little story. Two years before September 11th, I think it was about two years.”

I co-hosted a scenario exercise on terrorist threats on Wall Street, and the scenario exercise

was done in conjunction with the US Naval War College and some other folks senior US government officials. And it was done on top of the World Trade Center at the World Trade Center. And we talked about what terrorists might do to attack the financial community in New York. The scenario exercise was underwritten in large part by Canter Fitzgerald. At the scenario exercise, we're dozens of people who later were killed in the attacks that we predicted might happen at this event. And so I wrote

Howard Luttenek after all of this and said, "What a tragic loss and so on and so forth."

And got a pretty form response saying, "Yes, this is terrible loss to all of us." And then

started hearing the stories you were talking about, "Luttenek promising to do things for the families and not actually following through to do it." And so I just want you to know that not only did they lose people that day, but there were other layers to this story. And to me personally, having literally done an event on top of the World Trade Center with Canter Fitzgerald people a couple of years before he had been talking about terrorists and how they might end up targeting

the financial community. It was doubly seconding. And it's not something I talk about a lot, but it resonated with me as you recount all of this. And of course, we didn't even get to the

“part of the story that I think is important here, which is almost every key official in the U.S.”

government is currently playing a role, happening a team to disrupt the upcoming elections. Whether it's Todd Blanche, whether it's DHS, whether it's people in the White House, whether it's "Luttenek," whether it's people at the state level, they're all having their avenue and "Luttenek's Avenue," which is these, and DHS is involved too. These machines are not entirely made in the U.S., which makes them suspect. So we should be able to impound the machine. I think this ought

to put a chill through everybody's heart. The courts are trying to stop Trump. There's some secretaries of state that are trying to stop Trump. The people seem to be headed into direction contrary to Trump, but he's got so many cards in play. He's going to do some damage. So I have two more rants to give you. One directly related to 9/11, which is, of course, these multiple efforts to try to keep Mayor Mondami away from the commemoration.

“He was, I think, in ninth grade, when 9/11 occurred, but because he's a Muslim, they want to”

tar all Muslims with the notion that they have a relationship to 9/11. That's one part of it. Just one. The most disgusting, of course, is Rudy Giuliani. And here's my rant. Rudy Giuliani was absolutely wrongly lauded as this great hero after 9/11. And I still vividly remember when he went on Saturday night live when they decided to do the broadcast. And they brought him out there and, you know, they loved it because he was sort of

giving them the okay to do a show that might have something funny in it after this horrible tragedy.

9/11, 9/11, 9/11. The fact is he was a villain, not a hero for 9/11. As mayor,

“he put the command center in the shadow of the World Trade Center. He and his henchmen,”

Bernie Kerrick, the later felon, Bernie Kerrick. After the World Trade Center had been targeted by

terrorists before that, when 9/11 occurred, because the command center was basically

almost impossible to operate and to work under, there was much more of a fog of war and more people died, more people got injured. And then in the aftermath of that is we're just finding out, and this wasn't just Giuliani, but it wasn't toxic materials in that area. They hid it, the word from people who ended up getting cancer and other horrible diseases because they weren't told what the dangers were of getting out of there. And of course, we have the Republicans

“in Congress despite the heroic efforts of John Stewart and others trying to keep away appropriate,”

help care, medical care, and other support for the people who cleaned up after the World Trade Center felt who ended up with horrific diseases. The monstrosity of this and that Rudy Giuliani is still out there as a free individual and not in the jail or prison of which he belongs, that he is going to be lauded again tomorrow as one of the great heroes of 9/11 makes me sick.

Now, the second rant, I've done a long piece which I hope will be out in the contrarian tomorrow

on the continuity of government issue 25 years later, which has been a major effort of mine over all of that time. It's mostly a history of everything that was done or not done.

“In the aftermath of 9/11, where I started that day and the next few days to point out that we were”

completely unprepared in our constitution or in our laws, if somebody took out a majority of the members of Congress, or if we had to deal with an antiquated and full of holes presidential succession act and a Supreme Court that wasn't prepared either. And that was followed, of course,

that was horrible. We came close, but didn't get anywhere in the end with it. But that was followed

by another horror story, which was an attempted assassination of many Republicans in the house at a practice for the annual congressional baseball game that sent their majority whip Steve Scalisse to the hospital and rehab for 14 weeks. And jolt at some of those members into realizing that it wasn't just about whether a majority of members of Congress, meaning you're without a quorum, would go leaving no Congress for months until you could do

the special elections. It was also that with close margins in Congress and the parties so far apart. The attempt to assassinate a handful to change the majority was a real challenge. And we got some additional support, but again, didn't get anywhere. Then came COVID, COVID, which told us that what happens if in the midst of a horrible pandemic? Members of Congress are scattered all around the country and can't travel to Washington and Congress can't meet where they might have to

meet to appropriate money or do other emergency actions. Can we do something at least under emergency conditions to have a ability to meet remotely? I could circle back and say that 9/11 was followed by the anthrax attack, which could have disabled the Senate entirely. But then we have January 6th. And I raise all of this because January 6th was an attempt, obviously to change the majority and to change the election results through a violent insurrection.

9/11 was a terrorist attack from outside the country. We still have not dealt with continuity of government and now we're having terrorist attacks from within the country, including incited by the president of the United States. And 9/11 should remind us of what happens when there's a danger from terrorists. And those terrorists can be homegrown, the contemporary equivalence of Timothy McVeight, but much, much, many, much larger in number, and including large numbers of elected officials.

this date, not just to commemorate the losses and the heroism of some who stood up in trying to,

you know, Trump basically saying one of the great heroes who saved so many lives and then lost

his own with the red band Dana saying, "I'm really unhappy because he's more famous than I am." You know, the level of narcissistic psychopathy is just so great. But we need to use this condemnation 25 years later to raise the specter of a reality that we still faced terrorist threats, only they're just as much if not more coming from within our own government.

“There's no question about that. And I think that's a worthwhile thing to remember.”

The reality is that in the wake of 9/11, the United States government reacted precisely as

of some have been lawed and thought it would. And that is it overreacted and it did so in a way that weakened and discredited the United States. In fact, I doubt that Osama bin Laden could ever predicted the United States would spend trillions of dollars on forever wars there that it would ultimately not win and that that trillions and trillions of dollars would weaken the United States

“to the degree that it has and weakened our standing with our allies as it has. And throughout”

this period, in the 20 years following 9/11, we focused on the global war on terror as though it

were the great threat that we faced throughout this period, of course, what was growing in the United States was an extremist threat that was domestic and not international. And today we live in a world in which the extremists have actually seized the government, seized all three branches of the government, are working to dismantle democracy, led an assault on the capital on January 6th, have led assaults on our other institutions, are now rumored to be contemplating other kinds of assaults

if they lose these elections in the same way that they have before. And so as we remember heroes

“as you say, we need also to remember that there are threats that sometimes the threats are not”

where we want to see them, but we have to open our eyes and rise up and prepare for those things in ways that we have not done in the past 25 years. And I certainly hope that the next 25 years produce more enlightened leadership from the United States than the past 25 years have done. In any event, part of the way we can get there is a people listen to you each week here and words matter. And you know, on all of our other podcasts and they read what you say in the

contrary, and I'm no no, I was thinking to read what I say someplace else daily beast, the daily beast, and at the need to know a subject. And you know, we encourage you to join in our conversations this week. We're going to do our DSR daily live on Friday tomorrow at 2 p.m. and joining us will be our good friend, Lee McGowan, who is known to everybody as politics girl, who has some real common sensical perspectives on how we can address some of these issues. And of course next week,

we'll be back with Norm. We'll be back with everybody. And we hope you'll be back with us until then thanks very much everybody. Thanks Norm. Thanks. Thank you David. Thanks Henry. Bye bye.