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Al Franken

Hey everybody. We got a great one today, you know, for a change. Well, I'm not sure how great it's going to be. I'm a bit rusty. I've taken a bit of a break. I want to thank Norm Ornstein, Heather McGee, Trey Crowder, and Kathryn Rampel for filling in for me and Peter, of course, for doing a great job producing and engineering the shows. And thank you to my audience for sticking with us. Things have been pretty fucked up in the meantime. There's the Iran war thing. When it started with Trump announcing it on Truth Social in a USA baseball cap, you know, as presidents do, it sounded like a bad idea to me. But he said it would be easy, starting with regime change. Well, no, that didn't happen. We still have an Ayatollah Khomeini, but evidently a worse one who we're not sure actually exists. Or we just wounded him very badly and he's very pissed off and just

Norm Ornstein

won't talk to us.

Al Franken

Then the Strait of Hormuz. Gee, did Tulsi Gabbard or CIA Director John Radcliffe, they just didn't see that coming. Giving us $4.50 a gallon gas and $6 diesel and creating a global economic crisis. Thanks, Trump. The Iranian nuclear program, which we had obliterated last June. Or did we? The highly enriched uranium stockpile, which, according to to our intelligence, had been safeguarded, still evidently exists. And of course, they very likely wouldn't have had that highly enriched uranium if Trump hadn't backed out of the jcpoa. And when and if this war does actually end, we will no doubt negotiate something very much along the lines of the jcpoa, you know, JCPOA Lite, which I suspect will conclude with our giving them back billions of dollars of their frozen assets. It'll be fun to see how Trump explains all that. And at the end of all this, I want to hear Trump explain that we won this war. Little things like how we depleted our missile stocks. I'm sure that this emboldened China. And of course, losing 14 of our service members with hundreds wounded. Not to mention the thousands of Iranians killed and Lebanese. Not just Hezbollah, but hundreds, if not thousands of non combatants. I can't wait to hear about all the winning. And Trump's gone completely off the rails, putting his face on a $250bill.

Heather McGhee

That.

Al Franken

That can't happen, right? We don't do that. We don't put the faces of living presidents on our currency. George Washington said no to that and he was no Trump. Oh, did I just make a comparison between George Washington and Donald Trump? I'm so sorry. Americans want to feel good about the 250th anniversary. We want it to be about the 250 years of our glorious, if sometimes checkered, history. What Americans don't want is it to be all about Donald Trump, a president whose approval rating is in the low 30s. Trump has floated the idea of scrapping his great American State Fair concerts after most of the artists bailed because he he decided to make it all about him. Instead, he threatened to call him off, writing this untruth social we should have a great Make America Great again rally for 250 instead of having overpriced singers who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring and yet who do nothing but complain. I am thinking about bringing the number one attraction anywhere in the world. The man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime and he does so without a guitar. The man who loves our country more than anyone else and the man who some say is the greatest president in history, Donald J. Trump. To take the place of these highly paid third rate artists and give a major speech rallying the country forward like I have done ever since being president. Gee, Mr. President, you're making it really hard for me not to tune in. And I haven't even gotten into the corruption by the most corrupt president in history by far. In just the first 17 months of his second term, Trump's estimated net worth has increased by 165% over $6 billion, according to Forbes. And that's not counting the rest of the family's profits, an awful lot of which is from their crypto ventures. Like when the United Arab Emirates bought a 49% interest in World Liberty Financial, one of Trump's crypto companies, for half a billion dollars. Sweet. And of course, we saw the IRS settlement with the Trump Organization that included a $1.8 billion weaponization fund, which may or may not be going away. Do you believe Todd Blanche or Donald Trump? Plus the agreement by Trump's IRS to forgo any Audit of the Trump Organization's tax returns, which could save the trumps upward of $100 million. I wonder if that hundred million would go to buy some shame. What am I saying? And Donald Trump has nominated Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to be ag. You know when I knew Blanche would get the job? When he indicted James Comey for threatening President Trump's life by posting a photo of seashells on a beach range to say, 86, 47. I mean, Comey had posted that photo on Instagram in May of 2025. And you know that then Attorney General Pam Bondi just refused to charge him. Well, it was just a matter of time before Bondi was gone. But Blanche, Blanche said, yes, sir, Mr. President, Comey's intent was clear to incite someone to murder you. I think that should come up in the confirmation hearing. So, Mr. Blanche, let's get this straight. You really believe that it was former FBI director's intent to murder the president? Then there's Bill Pulte, now acting Director of National Intelligence, has had zero, not one second of experience in intelligence. All I can say is he better be a quick study, you know, to Prevent, say, another 9, 11. Now, I've said we're going to have a great one today, and this time I really mean it. Norm Ornstein is joining me. You all know Norm, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has appeared on the podcast many times. I tell you how many over the years, but we don't keep count. I blame Peter. But before we go to Norm, I have an announcement. On a personal note, I've been doing the podcast for about seven years now, and as much as I love it, I decided that after I finish this run of shows, we have four left. I'm going to step away from the podcast. It's been a great run. We've had folks on like Harry Reid, Anthony Fauci, Chris Rock, Jamie Raskin, and Michelle Obama. Well, not Michelle Obama, but guests like her. And for upcoming episodes, we've got our favorite friends of the pod, Norm, Mark Leibovich, Frank Foer, and Dahlia Lithwick. And then I will be focusing a lot on the midterms. I will be helping Democrats take the House and God willing, the Senate through my Midwest values pack. And there will be a lot of other fun projects to come. I know you'll miss the podcast and I'll miss all of you. Thanks for sticking with me all these years. We've got a great last month shows lined up for you. So on to Norm Ornstein. It's a great one.

Norm Ornstein

You know, for a change. I want to start, oddly enough, with Project 2025.

Trey Crowder

Oddly? Why do you say oddly?

Norm Ornstein

You know, you don't hear a lot about it lately, but this is what's really been motivating this administration.

Trey Crowder

Precisely, Al. And that's why it's a good place to start. Because the fact is that despite Trump's lies in denying that he knew anything about it or that it had anything

Kathryn Rampel

to do with his administration, one of

Trey Crowder

his first hires was Russell Vaught, who was the architect of Project 2025.

Norm Ornstein

One of the main authors.

Trey Crowder

Yeah. And really, it was his brainchild, as it were.

Kathryn Rampel

A little bit like Rosemary's Baby.

Trey Crowder

And he's now the head of the Office of Management Budget, which one could argue is as powerful as any position.

Norm Ornstein

The perfect place to implement 2025. And. And he did it.

Trey Crowder

He did it, he did it.

Norm Ornstein

And.

Trey Crowder

But the reason we want to continue to discuss it and the fact that

Kathryn Rampel

it's unsettling, that it's hardly talked about,

Trey Crowder

is that it is the blueprint, and it's a blueprint of nihilism, blowing things up to blow them up. It's a blueprint of extremism. It's a blueprint of trying to return us to an era, a dark era, in which women, people of color, Jews and many others were treated not just as second class citizens, but often attacked and treated as if they were vermin, which is a term that Donald Trump has used frequently.

Alexandra

And just in general, federal workers, I

Norm Ornstein

mean, first thing they did when they got in was doge. They hired Musk to go after the federal workforce. Vought said famously that he wanted to. The first thing he wanted to do was drive them into trauma, federal workers into trauma. And he did that. You know, the mass firings began. He said. He.

Al Franken

I remember.

Norm Ornstein

Didn't he say he was going to save the government $2 billion or something?

Trey Crowder

Two trillion.

Norm Ornstein

Oh, that's what I meant.

Alexandra

Two trillion.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah.

Alexandra

$2 trillion.

Trey Crowder

Billions. Trillions. After a while.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah. No, no.

Al Franken

Yeah.

Trey Crowder

You know, to pick Elon Musk for this was itself a fool's errand. And of course he picked Elon Musk because Musk had been a stalwart of his, and Musk has a lot more money than Trump has. But it fit Russell vaught and Project 2025's blueprint perfectly, because you were picking somebody not who understood government enough to be able to sort of get into the weeds and take out things that were wasteful or even that didn't fit your basic Priorities and make government work better and be more efficient and less corrupt. It was picking somebody who was just going to blow things up for the sake of blowing things up, who was reckless and ignorant. But of course, to make it much worse, he brought in a bunch of these doge bros, 20 something, some of whom had worked with him at Twitter and at Tesla and at SpaceX, who may have known kind of computers but knew nothing about anything else and most important, didn't even care. So just let's pick one good example

Kathryn Rampel

just to start with Al.

Trey Crowder

So the first thing they go after, which is maybe in some ways not a surprise, so called foreign aid.

Norm Ornstein

Well, usaid, are we going there? Yeah, I mean, that is. He said, we're putting it in the wood. Wood chipper, right?

Heather McGhee

Putting it in the wood chipper.

Trey Crowder

Not a care about what it actually did or what it meant for America. And what's interesting at another level, and it says something about the, the Doge people who were involved, he fired everybody at the top in aid and then installed his secretary of State, newly confirmed Marco Rubio, as the acting administrator. And Rubio at least said he put out a directive saying don't do away with or eviscerate life saving programs.

Norm Ornstein

But they did. They did.

Trey Crowder

So what happens? These Doge people do a search for life saving, as if the program itself is going to say this is life saving, and they eliminated them all. And then Rubio lied, his people together said, you know, he kept all of those programs. He went through the list of all the programs and decided that the ones

Heather McGhee

that were going were expendable, which meant nothing.

Trey Crowder

That was life saving was kept. We know that at this point there are probably a million people who have

Kathryn Rampel

died as a consequence, and many of

Norm Ornstein

them, of course, children. This is about food and medicine that didn't get delivered.

Trey Crowder

Food and medicine, including food in warehouses that they let rot rather than deliver it to starving people, including AIDS medications that they wouldn't let out of the warehouse. So people died and pregnant women who

Heather McGhee

were on AIDS medications transmitted it to their kids and many other diseases.

Trey Crowder

And we also know just to, you know, fast forward a little bit and bring it up to date that they cut the aid to the Republic of Congo by 80%. That included almost all of the ability of the Congo to deal with Ebola. Now we have an Ebola catastrophe. Marco Rubio, who was confirmed unanimously, and

Kathryn Rampel

I wish we could have a secret

Trey Crowder

ballot now in the Senate about whether

Kathryn Rampel

they think he was an appropriate choice,

Trey Crowder

is not letting people who have Ebola come into the country where we have virtually the only in the globe state of the art ability to help these people from dying. So they're going to die in Kenya. And we also know now, to take another example, where they put the Centers

Kathryn Rampel

for Disease Control in the wood chipper.

Trey Crowder

And of course, the lunatic head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy

Heather McGhee

Jr. Got rid of the Ebola task force and now at the Centers for Disease Control because they are so undermanned, understaffed, they are begging employees who remain to volunteer to go to airports to

Trey Crowder

try and help with, you know, screening people who might have Ebola and, of

Heather McGhee

course, risk themselves along the way. The level of insanity here. And Russell Vaught is thrilled with all of this.

Norm Ornstein

Well, let's talk about other 2025 programs. I mean, obviously, immigration.

Kathryn Rampel

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

Was a big part of 2025. Americans have seen what they've done and don't like it.

Trey Crowder

No question. What they promised was they get the

Norm Ornstein

worst of the worst.

Trey Crowder

Yep. They were going to get the criminals out. And of course, they had a handful of examples of horrific crimes committed by undocumented people here in the country. But what we knew was behind Project 2025 and behind Trump and his Svengali, Stephen Miller, was getting rid of all

Kathryn Rampel

immigrants, including those who've been here for 30 or 40 or 50 years or more.

Norm Ornstein

They have done that. And you have. Yeah. And Americans don't like it.

Heather McGhee

No.

Trey Crowder

And in fact, one of the things that we've seen, which is, among other

Kathryn Rampel

things, offering hope to Democrats in Texas,

Trey Crowder

is that Hispanic voters, who tend to

Kathryn Rampel

be more conservative socially, many of them,

Norm Ornstein

and went and went in Texas for. And all over the country, went for Trump in 2024.

Heather McGhee

Yeah.

Trey Crowder

And have trended more Republican. But now they have begun to abandon Trump and Republicans in droves because for many of them who are citizens, it was, hey, these are not. That's not me. It's not my family. Now they're realizing that everybody is vulnerable to this.

Kathryn Rampel

And the level, of course, of nativism

Trey Crowder

and racism that's right at the surface is starting to penetrate for people who are suddenly recognizing that it affects them.

Norm Ornstein

I think that some of those gerrymandered districts in Texas, the five that they're going to pick up, they may not pick up five, because a lot of those were assuming that Latinos in. In Texas would be voting the same. And I think they aren't going to be.

Trey Crowder

And Florida may be another example.

Norm Ornstein

Oh, yeah. They, of course, went out, have gone after the LGBTQ community. I. They're actually part of 2025 was to get rid of same sex marriage. They can they do that. This court is going to do that isn't going to go back on this

Trey Crowder

court, I think will not do that. But what we also know from Project 2025 is not only was it same sex marriage, it was same sex sex, it was premarital sex. They have talked, many of the people who are a part of this project of outlawing contraception.

Norm Ornstein

Wait a minute, premarital sex? So you can't outlaw premarital sex, can you?

Trey Crowder

Any more than you could outlaw alcohol during prohibition. And of course, you know, let's face it, for most of them it is outlawing premarital sex or extramarital sex for everybody except them.

Norm Ornstein

And that was in, that was in Project 2025. I remember they wrote that. Except for us.

Trey Crowder

Yeah. And you know, of course it's also the number of people who are being prosecuted for child rape and pedophilia now appear to be substantially overrepresented among those who spoke out against pedophilia and child rape. So the level of projection here is astonishing as well.

Norm Ornstein

Where does that data come from? How do you.

Trey Crowder

I sort of, I keep track on social media through Google and the like of accused pedophiles. And it's astonishing. How many are evangelical Christian preachers, Baptists, Protestants of all different sorts? How many are MAGA people? Even more astonishing is the substantial number of those who were there on January

Heather McGhee

6th who were prosecuted, convicted, pardoned by

Trey Crowder

Trump, one of his first acts to pardon everybody who had been charged or

Kathryn Rampel

convicted on January 6.

Heather McGhee

The number who are now popping up in the aftermath as child predators.

Norm Ornstein

One of them, I, I know went to the children that he molested and said that he thought he was going to get some kind of money. This is, I guess, pre the 1.776 billion dollar fund. But, but he said that don't tell on me and I'll give you pay you off. But he's in prison now.

Trey Crowder

Yes, but that doesn't mean he won't get the money.

Norm Ornstein

Well, I don't know. As we speak, I'm not sure exactly where the fund is going to be.

Trey Crowder

I just don't think we have a temporary restraining order from a judge preventing them from giving out any money. Now that could be, you know, irreparably gone where they couldn't get it back. And we'll have other courts rulings on this. But what we also know is this is the first time for many of the MAGA cultists in Congress.

Kathryn Rampel

The Republicans who said in some instances

Trey Crowder

publicly, this is insane.

Heather McGhee

Yeah.

Trey Crowder

And so it may be that there'll be a big enough backlash there, but,

Kathryn Rampel

you know, that's only one instance of something we'll talk about a lot, I'm sure, which is the level of open corruption here.

Norm Ornstein

And now, of course, in Texas, we have Paxson now going after Talarico for defending trans rights.

Trey Crowder

And what we have as well is Stephen Miller, the disgraceful, odious Stephen Miller, saying on television and putting on social media that Talarico is the first trans

Kathryn Rampel

candidate for the Senate.

Norm Ornstein

Well, if that's true, I think that Talarico has a really tough Hill decline.

Trey Crowder

If it were true.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah.

Trey Crowder

But, you know, they're going after him for presumably being a vegan, which actually he's not.

Kathryn Rampel

He's just said that his campaign will

Trey Crowder

be vegan, you know, to protect the climate. They're going after him for his theology. And I've seen multiple people, one of them being Erik Erickson, a prominent right wing commentator, saying, people are asking me now how could I support Paxton over Talarico? And the answer is, we will vote for morally repugnant Republicans if they share our policy interests. And one of the things I'm seeing,

Heather McGhee

Al, is the Republican approach on Paxton is to say, well, yeah, he committed adultery, but that's, you know, his personal morality. That has nothing to do with how he would govern. They're trying to focus on the adultery. You know, this is a guy who was indicted over securities fraud. That was an open and shut case that he managed to postpone and dodge for a while until he couldn't be prosecuted for it, who was on film stealing $1,000 Mont Blanc pen out of a been at TSA. They show him going up, looking for it, taking it and running off. And after he was exposed, saying, well, I didn't realize it, when he obviously knew full well who his own staff as Attorney general, so appalled by the bribery that he was engaging in, outed him for it. The Republican majority in the impeachment house impeached him.

Norm Ornstein

Yep.

Heather McGhee

And the only reason he didn't get convicted is that the presiding officer in the impeachment in the Texas Senate was Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant governor, who not only was an ally of Paxton's and had contributed to him, but got $3 million from wealthy Paxton supporters, got up to preside over the trial, refused to allow evidence, refused to enable Paxton or others to testify. And of course, Paxton's wife, who then I think thought that he was a pretty good guy, who as a member of the Senate sat on the impeachment jury. But what that did was to raise the bar of what was needed to convict him. The two thirds from 20 to 21. And he escaped conviction. So this is a serial liar, a fraudster, an extreme lunatic, and not just a serial adulterer. But it turns out, having been in public service for all these years, somehow was able to pay $2.2 million in cash for a love nest for his new paramour, with whom he was committing adultery while married to his wife, who herself had been married with seven children and is an evangelical Christian. And, well, you wonder where the money came from. But it didn't come from his salary.

Al Franken

Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Norm.

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Alexandra

Well, let's, let's move on to

Norm Ornstein

Trump's approach to foreign affairs. It's changed, hasn't it? I mean, he was, when he ran in 24, it was about staying out of.

Kathryn Rampel

Yes.

Norm Ornstein

And in 16, right.

Trey Crowder

In 16. And in 24 it was, we're not

Heather McGhee

going to get into war.

Kathryn Rampel

There will be no endless wars.

Trey Crowder

There will be no American adventures abroad. And there is, I saw, I think it may have been the Lincoln Project, but I'm not sure. A compilation of Trump statements during the

Kathryn Rampel

campaign and even early in his presidency Saying this over and over again.

Trey Crowder

And now of course we not only had the invasion of Venezuela, short as

Kathryn Rampel

that may have been.

Norm Ornstein

Well that gave him the confidence to think that Iran was going to go

Trey Crowder

swimmingly urged on by Bibi Netanyahu who

Kathryn Rampel

said this can be another Venezuela.

Trey Crowder

We know that they're preparing for an invasion of Cuba, that they've already done an illegal act of war which was embargoing Cuba and making it unable to obtain any oil and putting the society

Kathryn Rampel

in a terrible place before what may

Trey Crowder

well be an invasion there. He's turned out to be a warmonger.

Heather McGhee

Surprise.

Norm Ornstein

This was not what he sold to the American people. We've also abandoned our allies in NATO basically when you know, and he's taken Russia's side, Putin's side over Ukraine. More. More or less.

Trey Crowder

Right, yeah. And you know, some of these areas

Heather McGhee

are ones where he signaled it.

Trey Crowder

He signaled obviously during his first term disdain that he has for Ukraine and especially for Zelensky.

Norm Ornstein

That was the first impeachment, of course,

Trey Crowder

and you know, tried to get Zelensky

Kathryn Rampel

to cast doubt about the election results.

Trey Crowder

He has always told us how fond

Kathryn Rampel

he was of Putin, how much he

Trey Crowder

likes strong arm dictators. He has long expressed his disdain for NATO including by saying, often falsely, that

Kathryn Rampel

all the countries were contributing a smaller share than the US which of their GDP for defense.

Norm Ornstein

Well, most of them were.

Al Franken

Right.

Norm Ornstein

I mostly a lot of them were

Trey Crowder

and some of them and they've increased too.

Norm Ornstein

And that's probably a good thing.

Trey Crowder

And by necessity our contributions were not as great.

Heather McGhee

And now he's basically at war with NATO because none of the NATO countries

Trey Crowder

joined him when it came to the

Heather McGhee

invasion of Iran or helping out in the Strait of Hormuz.

Norm Ornstein

Well, when he was talking about invading Greenland, it was pointed out that the Danes that Denmark had gone to Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said, and he, this is so him. He said, well yeah, but they really hung back. And it turned out that the Danish forces sustained higher casualties, including deaths than, than we did as percentage of their troops.

Trey Crowder

And the notion that we would invade Greenland means that we would be invading a NATO country, which would mean that we would have the obligation of fighting against our own troops.

Kathryn Rampel

So go figure.

Norm Ornstein

That's why it didn't work out.

Kathryn Rampel

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

Now Democrats we think are have a really good chance in the midterms of taking at least the House, even with the gerrymandering that Republicans have done. And it's like the polling I've seen of late has democrats leading by 10 points or something like that.

Kathryn Rampel

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

And I was wondering whether you think that Democrats, when they get into the majority, should consider going after Trump on basically his. Just the profits that he's been taking illegally on the profiteering that he's been doing.

Trey Crowder

You know, what we've seen is so unprecedented.

Kathryn Rampel

We've had corruption in previous administrations.

Trey Crowder

We've had presidents who've had their own

Kathryn Rampel

direct problems with corruption.

Trey Crowder

But the frank reality, Al, is that if you took every scandal in previous

Kathryn Rampel

administrations, you put all of those together,

Trey Crowder

they are a trace element compared to

Kathryn Rampel

the level of corruption that we've seen in this administration and from Donald Trump.

Trey Crowder

We've had presidents who've lied.

Kathryn Rampel

We've had presidents who've misused our resources and troops, Iran Contra being a good example. We've had presidents who turned a blind eye to financial corruption of people in their own administrations.

Trey Crowder

We've had many scandals, like under Eisenhower,

Kathryn Rampel

his chief of staff, Sherman Adams, who was forced to resign over what now would not even be considered jaywalking.

Trey Crowder

We've had that. But we've never had a president openly

Kathryn Rampel

enriching himself to the tune of billions

Trey Crowder

by taking money from foreign governments. Money and other assets, airplanes by having foreign governments invest in his properties and

Heather McGhee

his crypto, for example.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah. In the uae.

Kathryn Rampel

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

Some sheikh who's part of their government invested a half a billion dollars, Right?

Trey Crowder

Yes.

Norm Ornstein

Into World Liberty Financial. A half a billion dollars. Then the administration turned around and approved the sales of millions of advanced chips, Nvidia chips, to the uae, which, some

Kathryn Rampel

of which made their way to China, which will be used to create more sophisticated military options for them, offensive and defensive. And previous administrations had blocked them from going those chips to the UAE for

Trey Crowder

just that reason, a belief that they

Kathryn Rampel

would be a sieve and that they would get to places we didn't want them to go to.

Trey Crowder

We have CUTTER Giving this $400 million

Kathryn Rampel

jet to Trump, ostensibly for his library,

Trey Crowder

and then having $1.2 billion in taxpayer money going to refurbish it and, you know, make it into a luxury airplane,

Kathryn Rampel

which he has claimed will be on display at his library, but which you can be sure will be used by him as his own private Trump jet.

Trey Crowder

And it goes on and on and

Kathryn Rampel

on, including, of course, domestic emoluments.

Alexandra

Are Democrats preparing this stuff now?

Norm Ornstein

I mean, are they researching this stuff now? And do you think it's wise for them to start impeachment hearings on. On this stuff or that the American people don't want them to do that?

Kathryn Rampel

This is going to be a delicate balance, Al. I mean, let's assume that Democrats win the House and the Senate, and then

Trey Crowder

it becomes a question of what your

Kathryn Rampel

focus is going to be. You can do more than one thing. Obviously.

Trey Crowder

We know that they're very much focused,

Kathryn Rampel

including during the campaign, on affordability.

Trey Crowder

We know that Trump has committed far

Kathryn Rampel

more impeachable offenses in this second term

Trey Crowder

than you could ever imagine a president doing. But you have to be careful that it's not seen as Democrats doing what Republicans have done, retribution, or Democrats focusing on impeaching him to the exclusion of trying to help those people struggling with prices, with jobs, with all of the

Kathryn Rampel

other things that are happening in the

Trey Crowder

world, including the possibility of another pandemic

Kathryn Rampel

for which we have no protections or defenses left because of what they've done through Doge and Project 2025.

Trey Crowder

My advice to Democrats over the past year and a half of the Trump presidency has been impeach Cabinet members. And the reason for doing it first

Heather McGhee

is most Americans are unaware of this stuff.

Trey Crowder

There's so much corruption out there that

Kathryn Rampel

it just washes over, and you need to get a focus.

Trey Crowder

And the second is if you do

Kathryn Rampel

an impeachment resolution in the House, it's privileged.

Trey Crowder

They have to bring it up. Mike Johnson, the feckless speaker, can't deep six it. They have to give for each article, an hour of debate on each side. And they don't have to necessarily vote directly. They can vote to table these articles, but you only need three or four Republican votes. And if you simply force them to vote against impeaching, say, RFK Jr. For taking away our ability to deal with pandemics, for undermining food safety and drug safety, for all of the things that he has done that have led to, for example, deaths and terrible problems with the measles epidemic, for lying about evidence, for getting rid of people who are responsible for protecting us, for eviscerating research, all of those things, some of which are bad but not impeachable, others of which are impeachable, put them on the record saying, yeah, that's okay. You know, it's not a bad idea.

Heather McGhee

But it's more of a distraction at this point with him.

Trey Crowder

But, you know, now he's crossed another threshold. You're right about that.

Norm Ornstein

I would certainly like to see them legislatively trying to repair some of the legislation we've seen in terms of reducing Medicaid and that sort of thing.

Kathryn Rampel

Yep.

Norm Ornstein

Have you been looking at watching any of the Cabinet meetings? Yeah, this is in. In Trump's first term, he surrounded himself with some professionals.

Al Franken

Right.

Norm Ornstein

Mattis, the defense secretary, H.R. mcMaster, the national security Advisor, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, of course, the Chief of Staff, John Kelly, who said that Trump was a fascist and loved Hitler, admired Hitler. No, they're none of them now. Right.

Trey Crowder

And it's a lesson that he unfortunately

Kathryn Rampel

took from his first term.

Trey Crowder

And you watch these Cabinet meetings, and the New York Times did a wonderful job.

Al Franken

Yes.

Norm Ornstein

And I want to play some of these. So he has these cabinet meetings where I think they said one out of six statements are just in praise of him. And so we have a few of them.

Al Franken

Just to give a taste of that.

Norm Ornstein

Here's Commerce Secretary Ludnick. Can we play that?

Commerce Secretary Ludnick

Peter, Year ago today, I was working on transition with President Trump. Right. To build the greatest cabinet ever for the greatest president ever. And I, as I sit here today, I can't be more proud of how you did it, sir.

Norm Ornstein

Okay. Well, that's pretty typical. Here's Rubio.

Marco Rubio

The country owes you great debt of gratitude and the world, really, because, I mean, you're the only leader in the planet that can bring the two sides together to bring an end to this conflict.

Norm Ornstein

The conflict he's talking about is a conflict he started. Right.

Trey Crowder

Yeah. Okay.

Norm Ornstein

And here's kind of my favorite is Hegseth.

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What happened in Afghanistan, what happened in Ukraine, a war that never would have occurred. What happened on October 7th in Israel never would have happened under President Trump.

Alexandra

Can I ask you something?

Norm Ornstein

Okay.

Alexandra

What happened on October 7th in Israel

Norm Ornstein

never would have happened under Trump. Now, how would Trump have stopped that? How does Netanyahu didn't stop that.

Trey Crowder

Yeah. Not only would he not have stopped it, but he probably would have, just as Netanyahu did, if Hamas had said,

Heather McGhee

you know what, we'll start to prepare plans for a golf course in Gaza. Trump would have given him some foreign aid money so that they could have used against it the notion, of course. Remember that he promised that he would stop the Russian war with Ukraine on day one. It's, you know, not just nonsense.

Norm Ornstein

That's Trump, of course.

Trey Crowder

Yeah.

Heather McGhee

But it's beyond pathetic. He had nothing to do with any of those and wouldn't have done anything. And this is, you know, I, I call it the lick spittle Olympics. And, you know, who's going to get the gold in his cabinet. But one more example I would use, which is not, it's not just the Cabinet. Kevin Hassett is his top economic advisor. Kevin was my colleague at the American

Trey Crowder

Enterprise Institute for a number of years. You could go back 20 years.

Heather McGhee

And you would have said, kevin Hassett is a respectable academic economist who's actually

Trey Crowder

done some halfway decent papers, and then

Heather McGhee

he became a core part of this cult. So he's embarrassed himself publicly over and over again. Why does Kevin Hassett embarrass himself this

Trey Crowder

way, knowing that his peers, at least those who are also PhD economists, are

Heather McGhee

going to look at him with derision and disdain? Because for all of them, there's an audience of one, and it is Dear Leader who demands, just as Kim in North Korea does, lavish praise. And it's part of the malignant narcissism that now has them inside pushing for an illegal $250American bill.

Norm Ornstein

I love that.

Heather McGhee

With a picture of Trump on it.

Norm Ornstein

Yes, I love that. Is it me, or is the. The picture that he chose himself, the one that he took at Fulton county when he was indicted?

Trey Crowder

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

Is it?

Heather McGhee

If it isn't. I mean, you know, he has that look on his face of, you know, steady determination in many places, but it

Trey Crowder

sure looks like the one from Fulton County.

Norm Ornstein

Well, I suppose.

Al Franken

I don't know.

Norm Ornstein

A $250bill must. We don't have one, I guess. Right. So this would be new. And so this come in handy when you're buying, I don't know, a kilo of cocaine or something like that. I'm not sure why.

Trey Crowder

Well, it could be a kilo of cocaine imported by the former Honduran president who imported 400 tons of cocaine.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah.

Trey Crowder

And was part of the gang and then was pardoned. Yeah, it could be that.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah. Maduro must be mad at that.

Trey Crowder

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

I want to ask you about the White House press pool. I mean, obviously, I guess if you ask him too harsh a question, they kick out. Is that. Is that what happens?

Kathryn Rampel

Yeah.

Norm Ornstein

But he really. He basically calls them piggy or stupid

Kathryn Rampel

or one of the reporters, the women who asked him a question. Bitch. But, you know, as Linda Richmond might say on the White House press corps,

Trey Crowder

don't get me started, but I will get started. It's pathetic, frankly. And, you know, a part of the problem, part of the reason he got reelected, got elected a second time, is that we never got the level of

Kathryn Rampel

penetrating analysis of courageous looks at what

Trey Crowder

was actually happening from our press corps. They treated it as if it were relatively normal, maybe a little bit outside the bounds. But by normalizing the abnormal, they made it easier for people to say after

Kathryn Rampel

a first term that was, you know,

Trey Crowder

pretty bad, but not as anywhere close

Kathryn Rampel

to as horrible as it is now.

Trey Crowder

Well, maybe it won't be so Bad if he gets elected, having done that. Now the White House press corps and they're afraid. But it's also that the currency for

Kathryn Rampel

a reporter at the White House, this is true of congressional reporters as well, is access.

Norm Ornstein

Sure.

Trey Crowder

If you do not have access to

Kathryn Rampel

the decision makers, you're not going to

Trey Crowder

be in that job for very long. You have to have people willing to talk to you. And if you are too harsh on them, they won't. And that's why in Congress for many

Kathryn Rampel

years and I, you know, just excoriated

Trey Crowder

many of them, they, they wanted their

Kathryn Rampel

Republican sources and so they wouldn't point

Trey Crowder

out that the Republican Party had turned

Kathryn Rampel

into, as Tom Mann and I said almost 15 years ago, an insurgent outlier that was misusing the rules and the norms for mass obstruction.

Trey Crowder

And now you have reporters, when they try to ask a tough question, which

Kathryn Rampel

is what reporters should be doing, asking

Trey Crowder

the tough questions, they get ridiculed and they get abused. And instead of uniting together for good journalism, they all shrink back. You know, you have a reporter called a bitch or called stupid and you don't follow up and show some solidarity. Where are you? What are you worth?

Al Franken

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Norman Jay Orton.

Norm Ornstein

Oh, good.

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Al Franken

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Al Franken

And we are back with Norm.

Alexandra

Are Democrats going to put together a project 2029?

Trey Crowder

Yeah, there are already a number of people working on this in different places.

Kathryn Rampel

There's an effort out of Arizona State University. Andre Czerny, together with Michael Tomasky, who is the editor of the journal Democracy and of the New Republic, has pulled together a number of task forces and

Trey Crowder

a number of people I'm helping a bit here and there to come up

Kathryn Rampel

with alternative proposals for Democrats.

Trey Crowder

And they're on two fronts, Al. And we're also seeing many members of

Kathryn Rampel

Congress starting now to focus on what they're going to do. And you know, it's, it's dicey because

Trey Crowder

you're going to have a lot of people who don't want to protect democracy but just want to focus on kitchen table issues. And you've got to be able to do both. But they're starting to look at different

Kathryn Rampel

ways of delivering for Democrats, which is really healthy.

Trey Crowder

You know, you don't have to agree completely with Ezra Klein on the notion

Kathryn Rampel

of abundance, where you're going to strip away a lot of environmental protections or

Trey Crowder

labor protections or at least, you know, get housing and.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah.

Trey Crowder

So that you can actually, you know, get high speed rail, get housing, get projects done. But you need to have that dialogue and you need to find a better way.

Heather McGhee

You know, one of the big problems

Trey Crowder

that we had with Biden is he gets this great infrastructure bill that promises

Heather McGhee

all kinds of things and then for a year or two, almost nothing happens

Trey Crowder

because they're caught up with permit needs and different balances.

Heather McGhee

We have to find a way to

Kathryn Rampel

get services out there better.

Trey Crowder

We have to find a way to

Kathryn Rampel

make sure that it's not just all done by bureaucracies.

Trey Crowder

All of those things need to be

Kathryn Rampel

a part of Project 2029 and innovative ways of approaching big problems facing the nation, from housing to health care to homelessness to safety net protections.

Trey Crowder

And then you have to come up

Heather McGhee

with, as a lot of people are doing, a reform agenda that's going to be difficult to do because of the Supreme Court's, you know, reckless anti constitutional

Trey Crowder

notion of immunity for a president and the unitary executive.

Heather McGhee

But you've got to bring ethics back. You have to change the Supreme Court in a variety of ways. You have to make sure that you have honest people running government and the government can work. So they're not as far enough along as they should be, but they're working

Kathryn Rampel

on it, at least.

Norm Ornstein

Well, it's good to know that good people are working on it. So we're kind of looking very optimistic here. What, you know, I listen to Democrats. I find myself now persuaded by, like, candidates who says that the gaps in wealth and power have never been greater and that Democrats have to really go after these powerful forces. And I see young people who went for Trump in 24 now not buying him anymore and are buying that narrative.

Trey Crowder

You know, we're in a populist age, but there is pernicious and destructive populism that leads to autocracy and sadistic behavior

Kathryn Rampel

and inequality, racism and nativism. That's what we're seeing pursued in this administration and with Republicans in Congress and,

Trey Crowder

and in a whole lot of states

Kathryn Rampel

from Arkansas to Florida to Texas to Oklahoma.

Trey Crowder

And then there is a populism that appropriately focuses on inequality and tries to protect people who are vulnerable in so many ways. Vulnerable economically, vulnerable because of their immigration status, vulnerable because there aren't protections for safety on their jobs, vulnerable because of healthcare. And the healthcare. Yeah, that I think is the mood of Democrats. But there's another part of this and it's part of why Platner, who despite significant flaws, to say the least, is winning, was actually able to force Janet Mills, the pretty popular governor, out of

Kathryn Rampel

the race for, well, he was clobbering for the Senate.

Trey Crowder

He was clobbering her because, and this

Kathryn Rampel

is a lesson Democratic leaders in Congress

Trey Crowder

have not learned enough.

Kathryn Rampel

Democrats want somebody fighting back against the

Trey Crowder

predations of these horrible authoritarian thugs who are now running our country at the

Kathryn Rampel

national level and in many states.

Trey Crowder

And if you're basically back there saying, you know what? It's about affordability. We're going to focus on affordability or

Kathryn Rampel

we're going to find ways to work

Trey Crowder

together with them if need be. You're not fitting the zeitgeist of the

Kathryn Rampel

country right now, which is in a

Trey Crowder

more general way, it's penetrating finally that

Kathryn Rampel

this is not business as usual and that the consequences can be and will be catastrophic.

Norm Ornstein

Well, thanks, Norm.

Trey Crowder

I'm glad we could end on a lighter note.

Al Franken

Yes.

Norm Ornstein

Well, I'm optimistic for the midterms. And then I just, I don't know what, what happens after the midterms is. It doesn't seem that Trump right now cares about them. And when he's saying things like I don't care about the price of gas, I, I, you know, I care about the, whether they're, they're going to be able to get a nuclear weapon.

Trey Crowder

In Iran.

Norm Ornstein

Yeah, in Iran. And I'm looking forward to seeing what the deal is they get on the watered down jcpoa.

Trey Crowder

He's going to declare victory with something that will be anything but a victory. But you know, I thought it was

Kathryn Rampel

kind of funny you talk about the price of gas. Your best friend Ted Cruz said something the other day, a picture of him on social media standing next to a pump in Texas where the gas was

Trey Crowder

399 and going after Democrats who said

Kathryn Rampel

gas was well over $4 a gallon.

Norm Ornstein

Really?

Trey Crowder

And you know, saying it's 399 here, what is it in California, without mentioning or noting that it was $3 when Trump took office. It's not like people are going to say, oh, thank God, it's only 399. They're trying to brazen their way through this. But there's another more chilling element to

Kathryn Rampel

Trump saying he doesn't care about the midterms, which is a lie, of course.

Trey Crowder

He has said over and over to

Kathryn Rampel

Republicans as he's tried to get them to pass their voter suppression bill, the Save America act, as he's pushed these states on gerrymandering.

Trey Crowder

If they win, they're going to impeach

Kathryn Rampel

me, which he does not want. And maybe that's a good reason to follow your advice and impeach him. But also because he knows that they will thwart him.

Trey Crowder

And if the Senate goes to the

Kathryn Rampel

Democrats, there go his judicial and executive

Trey Crowder

branch confirmations, which they're now doing. John thune is doing 100 at once. So they mix into that hundred people who are corrupt, unqualified and the like.

Kathryn Rampel

They'll put a stop to that.

Trey Crowder

But the way he's going to do it is not just through gerrymandering where

Kathryn Rampel

they've had a couple of setbacks of late.

Trey Crowder

It's through violent actions.

Kathryn Rampel

Maybe if he's able to use his

Trey Crowder

slush fund to pay off the proud

Kathryn Rampel

boys and the Oath Keepers and others to, you know, begin to use violence on election day.

Trey Crowder

It's sending ICE and the Border Patrol to long lines at the polls and pulling American citizens out, beating them up

Kathryn Rampel

and throwing them in jail for three days or in a detention camp so they can discourage people from voting.

Trey Crowder

It's the manipulation that he's already done with voting by mail. You know, they're going to try and take an election that looks like a

Kathryn Rampel

wave and turn it into something else through chicanery and nefarious actions.

Trey Crowder

And we have to be on guard there.

Norm Ornstein

They wouldn't do that.

Trey Crowder

Well, thanks nor thank you, Al. And you know, I was, I just

Kathryn Rampel

have to say, as we move to a close, a couple of nights before we are taping this, I went to the Bruce Springsteen concert in Washington, which was absolutely amazing, three hours nonstop, as all of his concerts are.

Trey Crowder

And I just thought back to the old Air America days. And when he sang Born in the

Kathryn Rampel

usa, I sang along with him. But I sang Norm in the USA

Norm Ornstein

that's how you, that's how I always introduced you. Yes, Norm in the usa.

Trey Crowder

You still got the voice.

Norm Ornstein

Al I still have it.

Trey Crowder

Yep.

Alexandra

All right, Norm.

Trey Crowder

Thank you. Al.

Al Franken

Thank you.

Norm Ornstein

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening.

Al Franken

That beautiful music is by Leo Kottke, the great Leo Kottke.

Alexandra

I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

Norm Ornstein

Foreign.

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