Words Matter: Trump’s Biggest War is Against the American People

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 Words Matter, I am David Rothko, I am your co-host, well partner, I don't know how to describe it, but I sit here with Norm or it's seen, but we talk about what's going on in the world and I know people really want to hear Norm, but I provide a little bit on chance for him to catch his breath and have a drink, so how you do

a Norm? I can use a drink.

“Oh, I bet you could, I see you're wearing a button, what is the button Norm?”

The button is 117 and my late son Matthew who died on January 3, 2015 and who was a national champion High School Debater with his partner Alex Burger, had for reasons unknown 117 as his favorite and lucky number, so all kinds of people former Debate friends from college and elsewhere all do 117 sightings, but we now do this summer Debate camp for public school kids in the Washington B.C. area and we created a 117 club for those who have been

at the camp for three years or more, there are now more than 60 of them, we had one who

been there for 11 years, through from basically rising into sixth grade all the way

“through high school and came back to teach in the program over the summer, we have others”

who have been there for seven, eight, nine years and now over 60 of them for what amounts to close to 300 kids now, more than half, almost two thirds of the people we have teaching in the program are alumni of the program, they come back to pay it forward. It's fantastic, it is a great program and it didn't make a documentary or something about this program.

There is a documentary called Immutable and if you go to PBS.org, you can find it or you can find it on YouTube by just searching for a mutable or you can go to our website for our foundation and memory of my son, Emma Ornstein.org and find a link to it there. It's free, it's heartwarming and inspirational and if there are two things in short supply these days, along with moral core and ethical behavior on the part of Republicans in Congress

or any of those in the Trump orbit, it is what you'll see in this documentary.

“Well, I think that's fantastic, I've seen it, it's a great documentary, people should”

see it. The work you guys do is great and based on my intensive research in the past 30 seconds, 117 January 17th is Benjamin Franklin's birthday on top of all of that. So I can tell you, I hope I'm not spilling a secret here, but Matthew is Debate Partner Alex Berger, a brilliant young man, is an executive producer and writer for a really good

show on CBS called CIA. It actually follows a show called FBI and they're both a brain children of Dick Wolth who has got almost 117 shows on the air right now, but Alex finds away when he writes one of the episodes to weave in a 117. He's being held hostage at

117 Baker Street or some other way of doing it and it's always a hoot.

That is a cool tribute and it's a little bit of an easter egg that everybody here can listen for when they're listening to CIA. Let's switch the subject a little bit. I was thinking to you because I was thinking, I'm doing an event tonight with a member of Congress and

for most of August and then I was thinking they're back for a couple of weeks in September

“and then I was thinking they're gone for all October and they've only got like 15 working”

days between now and the election. I mean, this Congress is coming to a rapid conclusion and working as a term that should be in an air quotes. We are actually potentially heading for another big speed bump because the house under the vial Mike Johnson, worst speaker ever which is really saying something, is now trying to do a couple of things. One is a spending bill that will take it past the election into December. They don't have the votes

for that. They want because in part, they don't have the votes because they're freedom caucus right wing knows that adding another almost half a trillion to the defense budget with no offsets adds to the debt and they care about that only when it's not cutting out

the vital programs for poor people or tax cuts. The second thing they're trying to do is

somehow shoehorn in their save act, this voter suppression measure that they, you know, I'm watching some of these people who have very limited intellectual capacity saying things like you need an ID to get the all you can eat pasta at Olive Garden as if that's comparable to need to pay $165 for a passport to be able to vote under the same act.

“Now, wait a second, you're saying Steve Scalese, who is the guy who sent that, is it dope?”

Let me just say that Steve Scalese has self-identified. This is his turn, not mine, as David Duke without the baggage. And it's only half accurate because the baggage is there, but it's also Cynthia Lumis and Anna Polina Luna and, you know, a host of others and Mike Lee, of course, the Vio Mike Lee, but they can't get that done with that. That's not going to happen, right? I mean, Mike Lee is different because he's in the Senate. The Senate's not going to prove that. No,

and they also, you know, want to pass something that will satisfy only their members and leave town until mid-September and leave the Senate holding the bag with a bill that the

“Senate says is an on-starter. So we may be creating towards a shutdown before we know it.”

Yeah, well, we may. I have serious doubts whether these, this Congress could pass gas

without medical intervention. And, you know, as I look ahead, but wait a second. Explosive

diarrhea happens for them every single day. Well, they created it. We call that Trump diarrhea, right here. Yes. And they made that possible. But when you look at the Senate, the, you know, Markowski said she's not going to support the say that. I'm not sure whether I don't know when Lindsey Graham's sister gets to vote or not. Although I thought it was interesting today, she said she was not going to support the same issues he supported. She was going to stick to

kitchen table issues. But, but it doesn't look like there's enough for Republicans in the Senate to pass anything. 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 siliconsciousness, AI energy, and climate, and the daily blast. Sign up to get notified every time a new episode drops and stay up to date on the latest news

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is whether they can somehow muster the possibility of doing a third reconciliation bill

“under the Budget Act, which means they can expedite it and do it with the majority.”

It's not clear they have the wherewithal to be able to do that. But, of course, the Senate has a different agenda, and that includes confirming or not Todd Blanche, and there we have a very interesting phenomenon with Lindsey Graham Gaughn, if a single Republican in the Judiciary Committee votes against the confirmation under their rules, that's it. Now there are ways around that, but most likely that would kill the nomination. We have two people in particular on the

Senate Judiciary Committee who were watching. One is John Cornean. John Cornean was a complete Trump loyalist all in on the coat until Trump stabbed him in the chest and supported

“the unbelievably vial corrupt disgusting Ken Paxton. And every time you hear about Graham”

Platner or hear about any of the other Democrats and all of the tuttutting that goes on, and now the guy who succeeded Platner, we're seeing all kinds of stories that he's got a terrible temper, just think about Ken Paxton who spent his July 4th overseas with his latest mistress, another quote unquote fundamentalist Christian who left her husband and children to go gallevanting with Ken Paxton. That was his July 4th. After, of course, having been indicted, convicted,

clearly a criminal, just an impeached, went all of that. Let's put that to the side. John Cornean has every reason to stick it to Donald Trump. He's going to be retiring.

“John Cornean was a pretty distinguished lawyer and officer of the court in the past.”

He said some harsh things about Todd Blanche. The odds of him voting against Todd Blanche, I put around 20%. Now, then we have Tom Tillis of North Carolina, retiring, who has been

more outspoken and critical of many of the things Donald Trump has done than almost anybody else.

And first Tom Tillis said that he was leaning towards supporting Todd Blanche. But first, he had to get a commitment that Blanche would meet with the survivors of the Epstein predations, which Todd Blanche and his hearing said he could not do. He was not allowed to do it. Then somehow magically he turned around and said he could and then stiffed these victims. And did that stop Tillis from supporting him? No. Tillis has made other demands of him.

Blanche is basically given him the middle finger daring him to vote against. And I do not hold out a lot of hope that Tom Tillis who's said many good things has the moral wherewithal or the courage to actually follow through, they all know that Todd Blanche is a disgrace. What Tillis asked for the last time was commitment in writing

that Blanche would kill the more than billion dollars slush fund which everybody in the Senate

almost opposes. Blanche said you have my word. His word is worth nothing. And when Tillis said I need you to confirm this he wouldn't. So we're going to see he's playing a game of chicken with Tom Tillis. And right now I would guess that Tillis becomes the chicken. So you're actually sort of thinking that Blanche will get through it. I am scared to death that Blanche will get through. And it's not that the world will change dramatically

if Blanche gets through. Because he's still been confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. He will stay in that position and until Trump nominates another Attorney General prospect who then gets confirmed. Blanche remains acting Attorney General. And he's got all that power.

looked at him and said no you do not have the qualities appropriate for a Attorney General. And

“after that there's at least a chance. Of course if he had any sliver of a soul he would take”

that as a sign and resigned from his post unlikely to happen. But it's still more than symbolic. It's a lot to take in for the average person. One of the elements of it is something that I find almost impossible to believe. Just the Pentagon is now saying they don't have any money that they've run out of money because they've been spending billions of billions on this

war. And so part of the idea of this budget is to pump first of all potentially insane amount

into the overall budget of the defense department up to 1.5 trillion. But also just even an

“emergency basis almost $100 billion more to pay for this war which is as of right now the least”

popular war in American history. But when asked about this today Senator John Foon, a man who does not look like Mitch McConnell but acts like him in every respect, said what we have to honor our troops which you know to me is a non-sequitor. But it's really at the core of all is. It's worse than a non-sequitor. The Pentagon under Pete Hicksith covered up injuries just in the last couple of weeks to more than a hundred American service men and women. They let us know about the deaths

of two young wonderful people clearly but not about the injuries. And we know that many of them

“including injuries that go back to the earlier stages of this war that are serious and debilitating”

and will probably destroy a lot of young lives. They didn't even tell us about it. They haven't had a briefing on this war in a very long time. Pete Hicksith is lower than low and he is a clear and present danger to American national security. We also know that this necklace unnecessary stupid, dangerous debilitating war is not only cost us hundreds of billions of dollars has drawn down our defense stocks to a highly dangerous level if any other country.

China, for example, decided to do a military adventure. We are incapable of dealing with it. We also know that if Trump really does decide to escalate including sending in ground troops where we will have huge numbers of casualties. But even trying to do more to protect the bases that we have in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, because it's our bases that have been attacked that have created these enormous injuries and in Iraq, northern Iraq.

We do not have the capability with our patriot missile system or others to defend against their

ballistic missiles. We also know, of course, that in the first venture into Iran,

Trump and his White House said, "Anybody who claims that we have not completely destroyed Iran's nuclear capability is spouting fake news." Now he's saying, "Well, we have to go further because we have to take out their nuclear capability. We're getting information that they moved huge numbers of centrifuges around. We've done nothing except destroy the lives of thousands of innocent Iranians by taking away their water supply in the middle of summer by destroying

the lives of families with 175 kids that they've lied about. And if we know now, we targeted

probably with a second strike because of faulty data that they refuse to update,

all that money isn't going to give us a greater capacity. And we know that it's going to take us years to recover from the radar systems and the other sensitive listening posts that we've had

of our weapons stocks. And we also know that we are way behind the curve compared to other

“countries in 21st century warfare. What Trump wants is to build more aircraft carriers and”

destroyers that will have his name on them that will be shiny objects just like the golden glitter that he's put into the White House or his proposed arc to Trump, which will do nothing for American national security during the coming decades. The damage is just so great and it goes on and on. And John Thunes says we have to honor our troops. What a clown. I truly, if you wanted to honor our troops, we would say they shouldn't fight in an illegal war.

We would try to protect them, which we have been unable to do. We would try to ensure that what they were doing was focusing on advancing U.S. national interests, which they are not

“doing. And in fact, the war they're fighting in is actually putting Americans at risk.”

It's as bad as you say, and it's worse. Because in addition to not destroying the Iranian nuclear program, we introduced to them tools that are more potent than nooks, the control of the straight-of-war moves, and their ability to launch massive drone attacks. They have a major drone industry there. They have the ability to use weapons. We're not targeting in ways. We are not targeting but we help teach them that they have this. And it's possible with recent actions by the Houtes

that this is now going to spread further. As the Houtes try to stop Saudi oil flows into the red sea, which would then lead up to the Suez Canal. And that there are now moves of foot of other

“countries, including the Saudis, to say, well, if that's the case, we have to control that region”

let's go into the horn of Africa and try to offset this. So here's a war we shouldn't have started that is illegal that we have not been successful at that. We are getting deeper and deeper

into that is costing billions that is fucking up the world economy. And here's what the

president's response to that is. Let's just keep going. Let's keep doing more of what we're doing. And at a moment, we're three months from an election, three months from an election, gasoline prices going up, food prices going up. What is the president do today, Norm? He starts launching tariffs again, big tariffs against Canada. They're talking about more tariffs on more countries because this is he's not a quite a one trick pony, but he's only got two or three tricks. And what

is this going to do? Push up prices. There is probably never been during an election campaign, more of an effort by a US government to push up prices and punish American consumers in the

months leading up to an election. Let's take it just a couple of steps further, first of all,

something we've talked about before, but continues to need more emphasis. Our oil stocks are at the lowest level in decades. We have we produce oil. We export a significant amount of it, and it's because we need to have the oil that we get refined and we don't have the refinery capacity. And this war is destroying even more refinery capacity. So I'm expecting oil prices and gasoline prices to go up even more. We had a temporary dip. Trump did his victory dance. It's hard to even

think about the jiggling and that dance, but he did it will not last. And that is going to be a problem that will be there for a very long time. And we're going to see oil prices rise. We're going to see fertilizer prices rise. We're going to see even more increases in food prices. At the same time, we know that these tariffs he wants to impose against Canada. Because they're two reasons here. One is simple ego. Trump goes to the final of the world cup. Goes down onto the stadium floor

with the victorious Spanish team and gets thunderous booze. The co-host of this world cup

Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, gets cheers. So he's going to punish Canada. But the second

air quality is not what it should be. My friends in Minnesota have it even worse. Those in Ohio

“worse yet. Because there are horrible wildfires. Canada has an enormous quantity of forests,”

many of which are inaccessible. Climate change has brought forest fires. Trump keeps saying what he said when there were California fires. They didn't clear out the brush. It's their fault. Somehow when there were horrible fires in North Carolina, a red state, he didn't say anything about that. Now it's the Canadians haven't maintained their forests. We're getting the effects of it as if they're blowing the wind down south. So it won't be there. So he's going to put in 50%

tariffs, which under the North American free trade agreement, he signed calling it the best deal

ever, are flatly illegal. But that never stops him. But let's note, he violates a treaty that he

“signed. And what does that tell anybody in the world about signing a deal with Donald Trump?”

It's meaningless. He won't keep his word or his signature to mean anything at all. And that is not going to change throughout the remainder of his presidency. And if somehow we get through this and get a credible president, everybody around the world is going to look at the agreement signed by an American president with skepticism knowing that it could be revoked in another four years. We are so fucked by this guy that is just hard to even imagine. Well, you know, we talked a lot

about this in Washington terms because, you know, you're fancy Washington guy. And although I'm a

“simple guy from New Jersey, I try to keep up. But there are other implications of all of this, you know,”

and I saw something earlier today, which was a budget analysis of the first nine months following last year's reconciliation law. And the result was that the number of people receiving snap,

what we used to call food stamps, fell by more than four and a half million. And based on the

data, the estimate of the economists who put out this study is that 1.5 million American kids are now off-stop, are not getting food aid. Do not have enough to eat because we wanted to give tax cuts to Elon Musk and the rest of the Epstein class. And I just, you know, it would sometimes it sounds like we're talking about a lot of highfalut and stuff. But to me, a million and a half kids who don't have enough to eat is crushing. It's sadistic and not pro-life, shall we say.

But let's note that a good part of the reason that these four and a half million people

are no longer getting food support is because they tried cleverly to put in such onerous paperwork requirements for people who are clearly eligible and not slackers, they just need the support because food prices are high and they don't have the income. And now the barrier to be able to get it, you and I educated as we are would have trouble deciphering this paperwork. So they're sticking it to people using nefarious means and I got to add one other thing because this is an

issue I followed for a very long time. We've had, we had a really strong study in North Carolina some years ago because North Carolina's public schools have different times each month when they do testing of the public school kids. So they were able to do a study where they could look at the first week or two with families getting food stamps when the food stamps were there and they had enough ability to provide adequate food for their kids where it dwindled as you got to the

last two weeks and they were able to test kids when they had enough food in their bellies compared to testing the same kids when they were food deprived and the results were striking because the

Now what does that tell us? What it tells us is that we are creating a generation

“enough people who have all the qualities we would want to be productive in a workforce”

and sending them far back. And I mentioned all of this not just because these are monstrous people doing these monstrous things and this is just the beginning. It gets much worse after the midterm elections and we also know the vial Mike Lee among other things has said publicly he wants to get rid of social security medicare and medicare and the rest of them just want to cut them. They want to reduce them but if you're the business community which is standing behind Donald

Trump because they get tax cuts and they get breaks on regulations and they know if they're

under investigation for something and they send a couple million dollars into a Trump account

the investigation goes away. This is the workforce of the future that's being undermined with the immigration policies, with the attacks on public education, with now what they're doing which is trying to completely undermine head start and turn it into a Trump propaganda operation taken away from large numbers of kids. We are eating our seat core in this administration. It's the business community that will suffer along with all the rest of us who believe in

a humane and decent society and what do they say? Nothing. I don't give a shit. Reading fucking traders. No, they are. They don't really give a shit. You know when you look at this, you look at the cuts and key programs whether it's to veterans or it's snap programs or programs to invest in the schools, the desire to shut down the Department of Education, but other programs as well. There's a story in the front page of the New York Times today

which is about how they want to kind of billion dollars in medicate funding

to two states because they're blue states. One of which, by the way, is Minnesota. The other is California. What does that mean? That's not a number. It's old people suffering and dying

“for political reasons. When I think about it and I think about the war on these old people and”

the war on these kids and the war on veterans and the war on people and schools, Trump's bigger war is not with Iran. It's against the American people. If you had sat down with Vladimir Putin, which apparently Cash Patel, our FBI director is about to do. I want to give him the Albert James chair at the, weeks before the election. Yeah. And you wonder what he's going to discuss anyhow, put that to the side. If you'd sat down with Vladimir Putin several years ago and

said, in your wildest dreams, if you could have a president who would do everything you wanted to undermine America. It's role in the world. It's national security. It's ability to function as a society. What steps would you like to see taken? And it's like Donald Trump has the checklist everything that he's done undermines America's security at home, security abroad. And piled on that is a level of corruption that has to make even Vladimir Putin and Medvedev and the other

oligarchs in Russia and Vies. He's walking away with billions openly violating the law and the Constitution. As his family is doing, he's selling gardens and he's selling national security in return for money. And we can't leave this without noting that he took

unconstitutionally, this $400 million gift of a claim and spent $400 million in taxpayer money to

“presumably bring it up to snuff. And then ended up flying it and widened wonders where the secret”

service was because when they put it into a position where it could be flown again, they didn't add the highly sophisticated countermeasures against ballistic missiles or other attacks that are on every Air Force one to protect a president. He flew it rashly over to Europe. And then when they realized that they didn't have that protection, they wouldn't let him fly it back home. He lied about it, of course. And now they're sending it in to be retrofitted again. And I mentioned

$500 to $700 million in cost to taxpayers for a plane that we didn't need right now

“that he likes because it's fancy and will be his. And he claims after he leaves the White House”

will be on display at his library. Why do we need to spend $1.1 billion or theirabouts

of taxpayer money to upgrade a jet that is not going to be flown in two years? And it's all

“to satisfy his ego and it's like our taxpayer money is another piggy bank for this peak.”

No question about it. Norm, I'd go on and on because there's a lot to complain about here

and you're on a roll. But you also have all these hundreds of kids who are in your debate camp

“who need you over there because you are helping to do what the education department of the United”

States is not. And that is prepare them for the future and also ensure that we've got a group of people who can argue for the interest of average Americans in a way that is not adequately being done right now. So let me once again congratulate you on the debate camp and wish you well with it. And thank you and say we'll talk to you more next week and say it is same to everybody else. We'll be here every day. And we hope you'll be with us for all of that until then. Bye bye.