Words Matter: Dead or Alive, Mitch McConnell is a Bad Man

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 am David Rothkoff and I am joined as you”

will be pleased to hear what the man you want to hear from, the source of insight and sanity in a moment of opacity and lunacy in the world, normal or in state. How are you normal? Is it okay, David, if I call you President Putin, you can, you know, if you're the Islamic Republic of Japan today, is that okay?

If you like, I mean, it seems to be acceptable now for our president to do that kind of thing. He had quite a visit in Ankara where he insulted the Spanish, he insulted the Italians, he catered to the Turks and the Russians, he insulted the Ukrainians, he offered Ukraine assistance that isn't really assistance and then it turned out the plane that we have spent 400 million upgraded, it wasn't actually fully upgraded and didn't contain

the kind of protection he needed because he actually started the war with Iran again. I don't know, how do you grade as visit more? Well, you know, for all of that, the other world leaders went up to him with tears in their

“eyes and said, sir, you are the best thing that's come along since the Cold War and”

did. I mean, you know, you got to give him an A+ for that, right? We've never seen anything

like it. I bet they had tears in their eyes, I bet they did have tears in their eyes. You know, it's a little non-fact that we discussed this on Deep Say Radio yesterday, but what are the things they decided to do at this summit, which happens every year, is not to do what it gets. And it's clear why Trump is just a loose cannon and it's really

awkward for everybody to have to deal with this guy. And so they're like, well, yeah, we'll get together some other time and maybe Donald got invited, you know, I don't know, it's a little awkward if you care about, I don't know, the North Atlantic Alliance U.S. security, global stability, because he's, you know, he's cookup for Cocoa Pups, nor him.

But let's add one other element here, which is that having talked about Erdogan as such a dear friend for so many years and he's strong, boy, he's strong. He's now prepared to send our most sophisticated fighter jets to a country that has a Russian defense missile defense system so that they can probe and find out the vulnerabilities, which means once again, nothing has gone better for a Vladimir Putin than having Donald Trump in the White

House doing his bidding and if not his bidding, doing things that just make him giddy. So it's a good thing they're not going to have another one of these. And let's hope that

when they go back to his $400 million gift at plain with the retrofitting that's supposed

to cost up to a billion dollars, $400 million plus so far, that they manage to get rid of at least a significant share of the listening devices, that the UAE put into that, like you know, I was cutter, let's excuse me excuse me excuse me yeah, my apologies UAE, I'm sure they're grateful, but you know, you're absolutely right. Of course, there is a little uncertainty

“around his decision to lift the sanctions because I think the Congress has a world”

of play in this. Yes, anytime we talk about the Congress having a role to play, we have to roll our eyes yet again because this Congress doesn't seem to know what role it's supposed to play outside of being a mixed middle for this guy. No, well, that's true, but Norma

you know, for for everybody listening or watching Google me and Mitch McConnell because you

“will find some comedic value in this in this video. A number of years ago, many years ago,”

Mitch came to the American Enterprise Institute where I was then in Wisconsin as a resident scholar to talk about free speech and campaign finance reform. And just for the hell of it, I went and I listened politely and quietly as he gave his talk and then he asked for questions and I raised my hand and many others raised their hands and he went to every other

person first and then finally he couldn't avoid it. He came to me and I got up and I said,

Senator McConnell, I'm Norma Ornstein and he said, I know who you are and I don't know how they still employ you here. I don't know why anybody would have lunch with you here and at that point I was so tempted to say back not only do they have lunch with me but I can go out for a

“drink with them for those who remember when Barack Obama tweaked him at the White House Correspondent”

Stinner about people saying, why don't you go have a beer with Mitch McConnell and President Obama said, why would anybody have a beer with Mitch McConnell? That having been said, I then asked to

polite but difficult questions. One of which was Senator for many many years you opposed all

campaign finance reform by saying, all we need is disclosure. Now that we've had campaign finance reform, you say we don't need disclosure. Please explain. So he went into a discussion of the questions that I asked, lying repeatedly and distorting the reality including distorting pieces he'd written, speeches he'd given and then at the end he went into a long diet tribe against me calling me a socialist and worse. So I decided that I wasn't going to push back that it was better

for me just to sit there, stand there, take it and then I wrote a piece which you can find and roll

call where I got the transcript of this discussion and went through his responses to my questions

and annotated them with what he'd actually said, written and done and at the end I said, I'm not going to call Mitch McConnell a liar. I'm just putting out the facts for you. I report you decide and Mitch did not respond well to that. So my 20-minute conversation with him this past week we had a frank and fair exchange of views. Hey, it's David and I hate to interrupt the podcast, but I want to tell you some exciting news. We are now on Substack. Through Substack,

we're going to be able to provide you with even more benefits including live streamed episodes, access to new content, ways to save money and getting content from us, better quality content from us, it's a revolution, it's terrific, but it's even better than that because to celebrate we're going to offer a special offer to new subscribers. So now through July 15th, new members of the DSR network or to my need to know Substack, which gives you a lot of written content as

well as some exclusive video content, we'll receive one year membership to the other for freight in other words that costs the same. So you'll essentially get two for one. That's one year of DSR or need to know absolutely freight just to take advantage of this deal and support us, which we appreciate. Go to DSR network.Substack.com or David Rothkuff. That's me.Substack.com and sign on for membership and you'll get two for one. Anyway, thank you for your support. We are 100% sure you're

“going to think this is terrific development and that's why we're going to get as many people as possible”

to subscribe to it and while you're at it, don't subscribe to us on YouTube. So you get the great videos on YouTube. The more subscribers we've got, the more support we've got, the more good independent journalism we can do. So we rely on you. We are grateful. Join us on Substack. Thanks. Yeah, I've been tempted to say I had 20 minute conversation but didn't get much done because the

where he's currently injured and then re-insured publicly, there's going to be all sorts of people talking about his contributions and long time Senate service and all this other stuff. He's one

“of the worst things that ever happened to the United States and I think we need to admit that even if he is”

unconscious in a coma alive, dead, whatever because doesn't change the record. No, and you know, he is the longest serving leader in the Senate, having been the norty leader and majority leader.

I first met Mitch when he had come to the to the Senate and he was a protege of John Sherman Cooper

who was a state-week moderate Republican and Mitch said many, many times that John Sherman Cooper was his role model. And when I first met with him, I actually went into talk to him. He was the chairman of the Foreign Aid Subcommittee and was very good on that stuff and was reasonably center-right guy and then got transformed into one of the most villainous figures in modern American history.

“And it's not just what he did with campaign finance reform. It's not even what he did with the”

Supreme Court. It's the fact that Mitch McConnell systematically destroyed all of the norms and many of the rules in the Senate that often, you know, you could argue were to establishment oriented, but they pushed towards some bipartisan agreement on big issues that mattered to the country. And he systematically destroyed them and that included you will recall David that when Barack Obama lost the Congress when Democrats got wiped out in the midterm election of 2010 and the

Tea Party radicals came in. One of the first things they did was to hold the death-sealing hostage.

The death-sealing is basically what determines the full faith and credit of the United States. If, in fact, we seriously breached the death-sealing, it would be devastating to our economy with the costs into the trillions over a period of time, raising interest rates, people not wanting to invest your all of that. And in the end, we haveverted the catastrophe. But McConnell said, "It's worth having as a hostage." And that tells you something about him. But what tells you more

than anything else about him is, besides the Supreme Court, and he's responsible now for so many disgraceful, devastating things that this horrible court has done. But he went after Donald Trump after January 6th. He said, "You're responsible for this. It was a violent insurrection." And then made sure after Trump was impeached that he would not be convicted, knowing that it would leave Trump in a position to come back as president. And if anybody besides destroying the courts,

destroying the Senate and leaving a free pass for Trump, you could point to Mitch McConnell as being singularly responsible for the horrors that we're going through right now.

“Yeah, that was going to be my point. I think you've summarized it extremely well. But let's”

refine it a bit. We would not have the six-person ultra-conservative corrupt majority on the Supreme Court that we've got now. We would not have the bad decisions that court has made. And we would not have Donald Trump as president. If it weren't for Mitch McConnell, because all Mitch McConnell would have had to do as follow traditional procedures on the court. And all Mitch McConnell would have had to do as stick to his guns regarding his assessment of Trump's culpability for January 6th

and push to head with that impeachment and then convicted him. What had just taken a few

votes? He was the guy who made the decision. The fact that Donald Trump is president now that a million

people have died because there's no foreign aid, then several million more will die that there's a war in Iran that Ukraine has been betrayed, that nobody is getting the full support that they need on health care or veterans aid, that they're destroying the Department of Education, etc. etc. All the corruption, you can trace it to a decision Mitch McConnell made not to push for Trump's

majority in the Senate that it would do great damage to the country. He knew he knew full well

“and he put this narrow immediate goal ahead of what was good for the country. So you are absolutely”

right. And when we do, if we are able to write the history and that history also has to include the devastation to millions of people in this country who are hard working people contributing to the economy, contributing to social security, not only being deported, many of them murdered and cold blood with no consequences. We can get to that in a little bit, but so many things. The damage to public health caused by Trump being there and putting the crazy Robert F. Kennedy

Jr. in place. Now the latest and explosion, and I mean literal explosion, of violet diarrhea because of a microbe where which was on our list of those two prevent and watch to be careful for that they've taken off the list. That's only the latest. I've lost count of the damage to public health and public safety caused by this guy. Now we find out that the department of defense what they call the Department of War, with over a trillion dollars is running out of money

as we've been running out of weapons because of this fectuous outrageous war with the people's Republic of Japan, as Trump said. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. He said the Islamic Republic, excuse me. I've got to get my guess straight. So I said let's, instead of calling him the Secretary of War, let's call him the Secretary of Waste or the Secretary of Waste and abuse. Well, I just, I got to tell you, Norm, I want to, you know, we have a great producer here at Joe

Vitaly's listening in all the time on these episodes. Sometimes you can hear him snoring in the background. But I want to make sure that we get the message through Joe Vitaly that Norm is saying that this episode should be called Trump and McConnell are responsible for America's projectile diarrhea explosion. But don't forget our, okay, please. Yeah. But I just, yeah, I just, if we could get all those names into, and all those terms into one headline,

it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll do killer business. I'm sure. Well, I'm sure Joe's noting it right now. We may even get some advertisers out of that one. Yeah. Okay, with that, thanks, Joe.

“And just, and remember, after you write it down, wash your hands. I, I know it's coming, it's coming”

for us all. It's coming for us all. You know what else? You know, I know it's been tough. The past couple weeks in watching Trump and watching everything is going on. And yes, the World Cup provides some relief from that, although Egypt was robbed. And, you know, it does, it does provide some

relief. I want to stop you there. Let's give some credit that they're finally investigating the

utterly corrupt head of FIFA because of the deal he cut with Trump. No, I don't. It's great. So we something good's happening. Now, something good is happening out of that. But if you wanted comedy, here was that, you know, there was, there was an incident earlier this week in which Kevin McCarthy, remember him, the former spaker of the house, got on CNN and said about the Graham Platner thing, you know, on the Republican party, we would not have a person of low character,

like, that's it. And I'm just like, I tears streaming down. I mean, it's like, how are these people? How could he say that with a straight face? I give him credit for keeping this great face.

“Amen. You know, the best thing that ever happened to Kevin McCarthy was Mike Johnson,”

because I can no longer refer to McCarthy as the worst speaker in the history of the house. He's only the second worst speaker in the history of the house. But, you know, lying and lying with a straight face is now the way all of them go. I mean, this is literally within days after the Supreme Court said, you know what? The jury in New York that determined the president of the United States was liable for raping a woman. This was just days before that. And McCarthy's

going, no, we would never have a person of, you know, Graham Platner's low repute in high office.

platinum development and what do you think it all means?

“What happened to Graham Platner, and I have to say, I watched his”

address in withdrawing. And the good thing about that is nobody could be left after that regretting that he was forced to withdraw. Yeah, no, he was, I'm, I'll do the New Jersey commentary on this, which is what a dick. Yeah, I mean, he, he just was like, hey, Kasia had any doubt about my character from the Nazi tattoos and the serial credible accusations of sex abuse and the things I posted online, let me prove to you what

an asshole I started around bad as the day was for Graham Platner. It was a pretty bad day as

well for Susan Collins. Yeah, Susan Collins, even though polls had shown that Platner was leaning her by a couple of points with all that baggage. Now is likely to face a candidate who doesn't have that baggage. And the good thing for Democrats and Maine is they've got a pretty deep bench, a bench of a very credible candidate, some of whom ran for governor for the Governor torial nomination and lost a couple of whom were considered for the Senate.

I have my grave doubts as to whether they'll turn back to Janet Mills, the governor,

who did not perform well to say the least when the nomination was up.

“But they've got others and this, I think we're going to see all of those forecasters”

turn Maine from a toss up to lean Democratic now, although the pressure is off. Even now, even though Patrick Dempsey, McDreamy from Gray's Anatomy has said he will not accept the nomination. He was like, you know, the mix, you know, Brigham Stephen King. Nice, nice idea. I'd love to see Stephen King as the nominee. But they've got it, you know, if I had to guess and this is without anything more than instinct, Troy Jackson, who's a former Marine,

may well be the nominee. They've got to do this in an open fashion. It can't look like a bunch of insiders are going behind closed doors to do it. They have a little time. And I think this significantly increases the chances of Democrats, so being able to take a majority in the Senate. Right. And in fact, because they are going to do it in an open fashion and have a convention and five, six hundred people are going to go. And it's going to happen in July. And that's

going to be the only big political story happening that this, whoever this person is is going to get a great launch into their candidacy because it's going to get a ton of coverage between now and July 27th when they have to make the decision. And what are there? There are 11 Senate

“seats that are potential damn gets and we need aid of them. Is that where the math works out to?”

Well, you know, they have a majority of three Democrats need to win a net of four. And there are six seven or eight Republican seats, which are at least potentially in play. Some of them are going to be a little more uphill or tougher than others like Montana or Nebraska. Others Ohio, I think, which is it's still a red state. But, you know, Democrats have the best nominee that they could have and the Republican incumbent John Houston has been a zero at best. And I think the Republican

nominee for governor in Ohio, the Vek Ramaswami continues to look like the utter fool that he is including videos of him having moved his business from Ohio to Texas, doubt in Texas talking about what a wonderful state it is. And then taking his private plane over July 4th to France. So then you've got Ken Paxton in Texas. Kevin McCarthy maybe you forgot about Ken Paxton went with his latest mistress over July 4th overseas to Britain of all places to go on July 4th

to Britain. Instead of spending it in the United States and of course we continue to have reverberations from the sexual predator who repeatedly raped a child, a male child and as a

still has a license to practice law. So, and James Taloreco, a terrific candidate. I mean we've got

possibilities in states, Florida, another one where there's a, you know, a real chance with Alexander Vink Vinnman of taking a set seat. There are some real possibilities here.

“North Carolina is almost a short thing. Yeah, I think North Carolina is the sureest bet for Democrats.”

Right. So I Cooper. Right. And so you've got, you've got a chance of getting in there. I do want to focus a little attention forward looking because I was thinking a little bit about

2028. And I know it's premature to think about 2028 because the 2028 election doesn't start

for four months. Four months it's going to start for sure. Like the day after the election, it's starting. But in some ways, it's already started because clearly Trump is decomposing out of his ears on his hands on his ankle. Everywhere you look, Trump is on his way out. Whether he makes it to an atmosphere or not, I'm not sure what Pauli Markett says on that, but, but he's on his way out. So you've got this thing where you've got JD Vans going around. He's got a book come out,

trying to present himself as the Arab parent, the moral beacon of the Republican party. And I use all those words together with a tongue and cheek. But you know, I'm thinking about his competition today, Marco Rubio. Because there was a story in the Washington Post, Marco Rubio's decided he wants to hold a conference at the Senate at the State Department about the global rising left-wing extremist terrorism. And oddly enough, nobody from foreign governments wants to go to it,

“because it's not a thing. But what this reveals is that Rubio, you know, you'll remember,”

you're all enough to remember, but there was a time where Rubio was kind of thought of as a fairly serious foreign policy student. And a fairly serious Republican senator has become a complete tool of Donald Trump, supporting the Iran more, supporting everything he does, laughing at his jokes, going to UFC matches with him, turning the State Department into a right-wing nuthouse where he goes to Europe. And they give speeches about, you know, how Europe is

giving up its, you know, identity. And now this kind of thing, and I saw also earlier this week that a guy named Ken Griffin is a billionaire, in Doris Rubio, he said Rubio is the guy I'm backing for the 2028 nomination. And I think there's going to be a big effort to say this is a normal Republican. And I think Rubio is not, I think he's a man with no character who's got blood on his hands, millions of dead has done terrible, terrible things. And I just think Democrats need to sort of get the

word out. That, that, that little Marco is a bad guy. I could not agree more, and I, one of the things that I do on social media from time to time is to say, one could say that Marco Rubio lost his

“soul, but you have to have had a soul to begin with. He is a soulless monster. And we should never”

forget that when Elon Musk and his dosch torps blew up a ID, put it as they said into the woodchipper, and the book on this is just extraordinarily compelling. Marco Rubio was named the acting director of the agency for international development. And presided over the destruction of all of these programs that we now know. It's been documented. And Elon Musk keeps saying, "Nobody died. Just give me a name." And when Nick Christophe gives him a number of names, he attacks Nick Christophe. We know from

objective research that at minimum 700,000 people, probably now over a million, projections that

it could be into the tens of millions. Half of them or more children died as a consequence of this, including drugs, antiviral drugs for AIDS, food in warehouses, all there to be distributed,

saying, "Keep the life-saving programs." The dosch people apparently just googled life-saving

“programs. And of course the word "life-saving" isn't in these. And said, "We're going to do away with”

them all." Rubio went along with it and then lied about it and said, "I've vetted every one of them

and we've kept the ones that saved the lives." It's a lie. He has blood of perhaps a million innocent

people on his hands. Beyond what he's done to destroy American foreign policy, to be this complete lifespan to Trump, all to preserve his presidential ambitions. Nobody should give an inch, a millimetre, or smaller difference to this monster, or think that he has any reason to be considered for any high office. He will go down in history as a murderous villain. And of course he goes out there as this religious guy, you know, it's just, he's a disgrace to humanity. No question, but he is.

Let me ask you a question. This is the toughest question I've ever asked you.

“Yeah, is there a Republican who might run for president who you don't think is a monster?”

At this point, no, are there Republicans or now ex Republicans who could potentially at least be decent in that job? Yeah, we could search around and find some in a different context with no Trump there with a cult receding who might be able to, you know, serve at least bring some honesty to the process, not the rank corruption we're seeing, not just from Trump and the Trump crime family, but the Howard Nutlick, I call him Nutlick, not Latinic, crime family, and the percent

crime family, and it goes on and on and on. Maybe there's one of those, but I don't see it right now. I can't find a Republican in a significant office in the House or the Senate, or

“as a governor, or as an attorney general, who you would want to see in that office?”

Well, let me give you three names. Okay. And then we can move on to something more productive. Brian Camp, Nikki Haley, and the governor of Utah, whose name I forgot? Spencer Cox. Yes. Spencer Cox, I know, and I think is a decent human being. You know, on the other hand, when they packed the Utah Supreme Court, you're trying to get more cultist Trumpy people in there, he signed the bill. He endorsed Trump later in the campaign, but I will say, and I should back off

of my absolute disposition. Spencer Cox would not have a corrupt administration. Spencer Cox would not blow up NATO. Spencer Cox would not carry water for Russia. Spencer Cox would not compare himself to Mao, Stalin, or other dictators, and express admiration for them. Good for him. Brian Camp was honest in the 2020 elections, but basically is a Trumpy kind of guy. And Nikki Haley is marginally better than Marco Rubio, marginally. All right. I just -- she's not

responsible for the deaths of a million people. Yeah. I wouldn't vote for any of those people,

but I do think when I talk to some Democrats, they do mention people like Spencer Cox and say that wouldn't be the worst. But it gets me to another thing. You know, I wrote something the other day about the sort of contagion of corruption in Washington. And it's something you and I have talked about a great one. But it's not just Trump or Latin. It's not just grift. Washington contains corruption on many levels. There's entire industries devoted to it that think tanks -- I saw a think tank

report saying here's why a $1.5 trillion defense budget is not enough. Well, guess who the

those moments in U.S. history. We had one at the turn of the century with the Robert Barron's

“and we had one during Watergate, where one of the big things that's front and center on the minds”

even of average Americans is Washington corruption. And people like Talarik or saying when I run,

the first thing I want to do is hold these people accountable. But you know, I was thinking about it

the other day because, you know, everybody's, oh, this is the candidate. That's the candidate. I was thinking about in 1975 when people were saying Nixon is terrible and Ford is a placeholder. You know, what are we going to do? Nobody predicted that the Democratic candidate was going to be the governor of Georgia, a Sunday school teacher, a quiet guy, a former Navy nuclear engineer, who was known primarily because people believed he could, he was outside or in that he was clean.

And he ran on a campaign, Jimmy Carter, of America deserves a government as good as its people.

And to me, when I was thinking about that, I was thinking, you know, that really fits right now.

It really fits to have somebody come in, who doesn't have to say, oh, I'm going to do policy acts or policy, why it affects this. But who communicates from the get go that they are above the approach, that they are a white knight, that they will clean things up, that they are not tainted by all of this. And there, there plenty of good Democratic candidates who are just too close to special interests or APAC, or, you know, the things that are wrong with DC. And I was just

wondering, what you think of it, can you think of people who are, who could be that kind of

reform moment candidate? So, first, let me opine for a minute on Jimmy Carter, whose presidency,

“I believe, over a longer period of time is going to be judged significantly more favorably than”

it has been. And he made lots of mistakes, but he was both an honest man and a moral man. And I just, I can't resist telling an anecdote, I think I told it before, but I will again, I was a consultant to the Carter Baker Commission after the 2000 election. And we had a meeting at the Carter Center. And Jimmy Carter came up to me at a break and said, "Joy me for lunch. So, the two of us had a lovely lunch." And I said, "Can I ask you a question?" He said,

"Course." I said, "I just want to know, how did you manage to fundamentally eradicate river blindness in Africa, horrendous disease that destroyed the lives of millions, mostly children? And you managed to get rid of it." And he was incredibly modest. And he said, "You know, I went to Africa a number of times and I would see these kids." And I would say, "What happened to them?" And they would say, "Well, they got river blindness." It was an insect that infected their eyes

and a simple bomb applied to the eyes could keep it from happening. An inexpensive bomb. He said, "So I found out about that and I went around to the drug companies that make the bomb and got them to donate it," or, you know, provided for 25 or 50 cents for adults. Then, knowing that just sending it there, given the corruption in Africa, then I would have to do more than that. I went to the African countries. I went to the different places

and put in place procedures to make sure that this got to the people that needed it. It turns out millions of lives saved because of what he did. You look at that juxtaposed with what they've done to AID. And that's only one of many things that Carter did post-president, but his own presidency will look better in retrospect.

“And of course, your righty emerged from nowhere. Is there anybody like that?”

I'm not sure we're going to find somebody we haven't thought about much. The guy I keep an eye on is John Ossoff, who has emerged in his own reelection campaign now as somebody with a rhetorical ability and a drive and I think fundamental honesty and integrity that may not be Barack Obama

on other podcasts, so I'm not going to repeat it because I agree with you, but Jimmy Carter was from

Georgia. John Ossoff's from Georgia, you know, else is from Georgia, Reverend Raphael Warnock. And he is a very compelling guy. And again, he presents as somebody out of the moment on issues like this. It is absolutely astonishing that Georgia of all places now has the 18 of senators with Ossoff and Warnock. I also will say, as I look at possibilities here, and we have to keep in mind that given the toxicity of our political system, the tribalism

that exists, the fact that with Trump gone and all assuming we have an election in 2028, the Trump cult and the craziness will still be there. Having that ability to inspire is not enough. It wasn't

“enough for Barack Obama. You got to have more than that. You have to have a political savvy”

and a toughness about you. And I think we have some other possibilities there as well. Somebody who doesn't have that same charisma, but who has the toughness and credibility

is Mark Kelly. The former fighter pilot astronaut married to the incredible Gabby Giffords

taking on Pete Higgs at now is somebody to keep an eye on from Arizona and J.B. Pritzker who doesn't look like a politician at a time when people are anti-politician and it may be that we're going to need somebody from outside Washington. So there are, I think there are a number of credible candidates out there and God knows there may be somebody else who emerges from nowhere to be able to take on that mantle. You're a political historian and I've been more policy

historian, but that doesn't stop me from making big sweeping political statements. You're at a dinner party, people are like who's going to win and you know I could say I don't know but that's not how I was brought up. So you know one of the things that I say that I've found to be true is that in most of the presidential elections of my life, the candidate who is best able to present themselves as an outsider and as an optimist who goes on offense rather than defint they win.

“And and and I think what we're talking about here, the outsider really matter. Now you know”

you can be a O.C. in salmon outsider. I've always been treated like an outsider and that might be

plausible. The reality is George W. Bush somehow, despite being the son of a president and the grand son of a senator, managed to say versus Al Gore who was the son of a senator, I'm the outsider I'm from Texas. You know and it's just a competition of how much you can do that. But but you know I think there are some simple formulas and I think in this moment, whoever these candidates are have got to say I'm not taking corporate money. I'm not part of this. I'm not taking you know

pack money from special interest groups. I you know I support reform. I have a clean record.

“I'm not part of that Washington grifty crowd. I think they need to say that or they're not going to win.”

So many years ago, Al Franken wrote a book called Why Not Me. And in that book he becomes the Democratic nominee against Al Gore in 2000. We and I'm his campaign manager in that book. And we needed a balanced ticket. So long before gourmet his choice, we picked Joe Lieberman. So we could have a reformed Jew in an orthodox Jew to make the balance ticket. Nice job by the way. And then he won. And we picked an all Jewish cabinet of which my contribution was Ralph Laurenne

is Secretary of the Interior. Now it was a pressian book and maybe I will get a J. B. Pritzker Alyssa Slotkin all Jewish ticket. Who knows? You got us off. You got us off. You had the interestingly. You know, you got us off Shapiro, a Pritzker, and Rama manual. You got four of the top 15 or so candidates are Jewish. Rama manual was in Tel Aviv this week. And yesterday gave a speech

in Harrods that you saw, which essentially said, that's the best offer you're getting Israel.

“Things are changing. You know, Rama may sound harsh to you, but every other offer you're going”

to get tougher than that. So it's an interesting ship. You know, I'm not the biggest Rama manual fan, but I have to say that was a masterful speech coming in Tel Aviv, not doing it

from Washington or Chicago, from a guy whose family has deep roots in Israel who has close

relatives buried there, having fought for Israel in the past. And it was the best example of tough love with pointed criticism where it belongs and with a plan. And even though, you know, every plan that we've ever seen is fallen by the wayside, give Rama manual credit. In this case,

he deserves credit for it. I doubt very much that he will be the nominee. But this was an important

“moment. And a important moment for the Democratic Party as well. I think it's beginning a dialogue”

in the dialogues essentially. The message is, it's not going to be your father's Israel policy. That's over. A pack as the big voice is over. Some changes, the foot, who drives the change, that remains to be seen. But I was speaking to somebody who's very close to Rama about the speech. And I said, well, you know, he may be punished for this. He said, boy, what do you mean? He said, well, if he doesn't get to be president, he may end up having to be ambassador to Israel.

Oh, which, you know, it's going to be, it's going to be tough time. Anyway, Norm, it is excellent to talk to you. Uh, the, you know, it's not a dreary mid-Summer lots going on. So people will eagerly follow this and be back next week. For now, thank you, Norm. Thanks, everybody, for listening. For those of you who will follow this on the DSR network, you're now getting this through a sub stack. You know, you can go for the next week and get my

sub stack need to know in addition to this one for free. If you're a member of the DSR network, or if you're a member of the need to know network, you can get the DSR network for free.

“Only for one week. So you should go and take a look at that. And of course, subscribe on YouTube,”

where all the action is in terms of video. And I'm telling you, I'm looking at Norm right now, and he is a damn fine-looking man. So, you know, just to sign up for more and we'll see you next week. Until then, bye-bye.