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- [00:00]
Al Franken
Wondry plus subscribers can listen to the Al Franken podcast ad free right now. Join Wonder plus in the Wondry app this new year.
- [00:09]
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- [01:03]
Al Franken
Hey everybody, we have a depressing one today. You know, for a change, Norm Orenstein is with us. That's not why this is depressing. No. Donald Trump won the election. He's going to be our president for four more years. I, I thought that was possible, but of course I was hoping for a different outcome. I guess I thought that Americans just wouldn't elect Trump again, but what do I know? Maybe it's just me, but when he mimed fellating a microphone, I thought that he had gone off the deep end. He did that at one of his final rallies. He mimed committing fellatio on his microphone. I guess it was just a, just a crude joke or some kind of comment on the fact that he could do that and that it wouldn't hurt him at all. Kind of an inside joke for the fans at the rally. Oh look, he's doing that. I hope the kids don't didn't understand what he did there. Anyway, he won by quite a bit actually, and we'll have a majority in the Senate and probably in the House. And he's only the second president to pull that off, the other being Grover Cleveland. Let me be clear. Grover Cleveland didn't do that. I'm not sure whether they even had microphones in the 1880s. No, heretofore, Grover Cleveland is the only president to serve non consecutive terms. Now Trump will be the second. Okay, I looked it up. The microphone was invented in the 1870s, so Grover Cleveland could have mimed fellating a microphone in either or both of his two non consecutive terms. But I doubt very much that he did. There's certainly no record of it, I would imagine. I have no idea how to even look that up. But you can see why I thought it was odd that Trump did that. Right? But he's done a lot of offensive shit and now he's going to be president again. Well, Norm Ornstein is with me today. We're going to discuss how that happened. A lot of it happened because President Biden should not have tried to run for a second term. But that only became evident, woefully evident, during his debate performance this June. It was June, right? And clearly his age should have nipped that in the bud because it put Kamala Harris in a very odd spot of having to run a presidential campaign in a hun 107 days. Norm and I discussed that campaign, how it turned out, and what lies ahead in a depressing one today. You know, for a change.
- [04:02]
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- [04:07]
Norm Ornstein
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- [04:10]
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- [04:13]
Norm Ornstein
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- [04:15]
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- [04:20]
Norm Ornstein
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- [04:33]
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- [05:17]
Al Franken
Hey Norm, thanks for doing this.
- [05:19]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah, sure, Al.
- [05:20]
Al Franken
Well, how you feeling today?
- [05:24]
Norm Ornstein
I'm feeling not great today. I'm feeling a little bit better than I did on Tuesday night or Wednesday with when I was just sick. But I'm not feeling great because I think we are in for a real problem. The only thing that made me feel slightly better was Trump picking Susie Wiles to be his chief of staff. Fun trivia fact. She is the daughter of Pat Summerall.
- [05:58]
Al Franken
Really? The great, the great announcer. Great sports announcer, Hunter.
- [06:04]
Norm Ornstein
Yes, but one of the better announcers. Look, she, you know, nobody around Trump is going to be able to control him. But I do think that she will try to resist the worst instincts of the monstrous people he will surround himself with. She has a commitment from him which he will break on the first day, that people who want to see him have to go through her. But of course, what's going to happen is he'll go down to Mar A Lago and all of these people will follow him down there. He'll have dinner with, with them. She won't be there constantly. So I'm still feeling sick to my stomach.
- [06:43]
Al Franken
So what happened? What happened? How did this happen?
- [06:47]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah, look, we're going to find a million explanations for it. I think the biggest overarching explanation goes back to Covid, and it's partly what we know from all of the industrialized countries that suffered from COVID and then had an explosion of inflation that followed. Because at least as much as anything of the disruptions in supply chains, right? And in every instance, whether it was a right wing government or a left wing government, they took a big hit from voters who were dissatisfied. So I think that's a significant part of it.
- [07:28]
Al Franken
What's interesting is that during that period that you're talking about when Trump is still president and even when Biden came in, that the American people were given money and so they had the money to buy things. And then when they couldn't, when the supply chain was so screwed up, they had all this money in their pocket and fewer things coming, of course, you got inflation. And that happened all over. But people felt during that, when Trump would say, are you better off than you were four years ago? And you'd think, four years ago we were actually in the pandemic and people couldn't work and all that stuff, but they got that cash, which drove the inflation to some degree. I mean, obviously this happened everywhere, right? Every developed country.
- [08:29]
Norm Ornstein
It happened in every country. Actually, you know, going back even further, and I think it's more than just the inflation. When I saw Glenn Youngkin win the governorship in Virginia, which was a, A, a shock in a lot of ways, what made the big difference there, I think, was the backlash from COVID and Covid fatigue. That was a harbinger of this. And it was this. It was, and this started with Trump. But people don't even remember that. We very quickly shut down the schools and put in a bunch of other mandates. So think about it. If you are a family that has two earners needed to, you know, pay your mortgage and deal with all the bills that you have and all of a sudden one of them can't work because your kids have nowhere to go. There's no school, there's no daycare. So you lose income. Then imagine if you are just a, a family that may not have the two earners, but you've got three kids and a tiny two bedroom apartment. And we know that, you know, there's an upsurge in physical violence and sexual violence. And I think the sense that Democrats, that the government was indifferent to it, that basically condescended to people, hey, sorry, this is what science tells us to do, began to create this populist backlash against experts and, and the elites who.
- [10:01]
Al Franken
Were running the country, like you and me.
- [10:05]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah, we're the elites, but you know, the populism obviously goes all the way back to the Tea Party movement. We've had it on the right, in the center and the left. It's a distrust of elites. We had Tom Nichols, a very good analyst, do this book on the death of expertise. And of course we have Republicans who've tried to blow up respect for science for their own cynical purposes. And I think all of that played out. Now you're right that what Biden did when he came in was one begin to control the bad effects from COVID including the inflation. And it took a while, but he had brilliant success, more than any other country.
- [10:51]
Al Franken
Yeah, but boy, oh boy, you can't tell that to people.
- [10:54]
Norm Ornstein
No.
- [10:54]
Al Franken
When they look at the price of eggs now still they're thinking like that inflation was terrible and when is it going to go back down to that? And nothing ever goes back down, or at least in a macro way, the.
- [11:14]
Norm Ornstein
Numbers don't matter if people are feeling it. But just to pick one example of all this, which Judy, my wife, says all the time, and she's right, we often go to a Dollar Tree store. I love Dollar Tree especially because unlike some of the others that say that they're dollar places, but you know, half of the stuff is $5 or more at the Dollar Tree, virtually everything was a dollar. And I would buy batteries or eye drops or shampoo sometimes or soap or whatever it might be. And when the supply chain problem hit, they went to a dollar and a quarter for everything. And of course they're not going back. So.
- [11:54]
Al Franken
And they didn't change the name of the store. So the dollar and a quarter and.
- [11:59]
Norm Ornstein
You know, for, for me it's nothing. But if you are operating on a fixed income and, and these places, I just, when I go into one, usually out in Delaware, I see a lot of People shopping for food because there you could buy a dozen eggs. They were smaller eggs. I mean, they were medium for a dollar. Now it's a dollar and a quarter, 25% increase for people who have to watch every penny. That's big stuff. So I think all of that mattered, but I also think that it's just a broader sense of disdain for the people who've been running the country. And it came back to roost because people see the Biden administration as running the country and it's all, you know, of course, it's a lot of these other issues.
- [12:48]
Al Franken
It's elites and deep state. And that's what he ran against. And the whole character of his candidacy was I'd watch him and I could listen to his speeches because he had new material all the time. Right.
- [13:10]
Norm Ornstein
Having worked with you and, you know, doing shows where all the time you need new material. Yes, I understand that.
- [13:16]
Al Franken
Yeah. And so he had the quality of a stand up comedian who doesn't just do the same act every time. That's, you know, that's a gift that he has that he's able to do. And a lot of people would hold that against him, saying, like these meandering speeches. And he called it the weave. It was somewhere in between. I mean, it was hard to stick with him for an hour and a half. Which he did all the time. Right, he did.
- [13:48]
Norm Ornstein
Now, you know, one of the things that lulled us into a false sense of security was that his crowds really were diminished and you had people who would leave after an hour. So we had this sense, which was wrong, that his support base was not as enthusiastic. And one of the reasons that I really thought Harris would win and not in a nail biter was that she had put together with Jen O'Malley, Dylan, her campaign manager, the best turnout machine we have seen in politics. And I thought we would have a big turnout edge. Turned out not to be the case. We missed the level of discontent and disdain out there. Now, admittedly, it's at the margins, but, you know, almost every group, with the exception of Jews and of black women, moved, you know, three or four points in his direction, enabling him stunningly. Although the numbers will shrink when all the California votes come in to win a majority of the popular votes, it was a much deeper level of discontent. And the idea that he's not an elite, that Yale Law School educated JD Vance is not an elite.
- [15:08]
Al Franken
Well, and he plays the populist. I mean, even though he went right from Yale Law to Silicon Valley.
- [15:13]
Norm Ornstein
Right, exactly.
- [15:15]
Al Franken
But he has the bona fides of growing up in a very difficult situation.
- [15:20]
Norm Ornstein
And Trump has managed, and I would say in this brilliantly, to portray himself as the anti elitist. He is clearly not a typical politician. The degree to which people ignored his pathologies this time, brushed aside the fact that he is an adjudicated sex offender, rapist, and was convicted on more than 30 counts and had other trials going forward that were legitimate.
- [15:49]
Al Franken
Well, I think that was used in his favor. He used that in his favor.
- [15:55]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah.
- [15:55]
Al Franken
You know, and if you look at the 34 counts and what they are, it was for covering up this payoff. Right.
- [16:03]
Norm Ornstein
Covering up the $130,000 bribe, in effect, or payoff, to keep Stormy Daniels silent.
- [16:11]
Al Franken
And people look at that and say, why are you trying him for that? That's such a little deal. And you can argue it both ways, but, boy, I think a lot of people, if they're using that as merchandise, that his picture that he took when he was booked in Fulton county, you know, that people feel that it was a cheap shot against them. That's what they feel.
- [16:35]
Norm Ornstein
I think that that's accurate. And, you know, it is unfortunate that Merrick Garland waited so long. Pick an independent counsel where, look, the, the documents case, which in many ways is as disturbing as the January six case because he took our most sensitive documents and shared them with people who weren't supposed to have them and then covered it up. It was a clear obstruction of justice. But that had to happen later because it took a long time for that to come about. There was no reason to avoid picking an independent counsel early on to deal with the January 6th insurrection. And in particular because when Mitch McConnell engineered it so that Trump was not going to be convicted on the second impeachment, he basically said, this is not the venue, it's the criminal justice system. And, you know, if that, that trial had gone forward, maybe we would be in a somewhat different place. But I have to tell you, Al, people understood who Donald Trump is. What stunned me as much as anything is I also was confident after the Madison Square Garden hate fest that Latino votes, starting with the Haitian Americans and then the Puerto Ricans and others who understood that they would be next when he had pledged to do this mass deportation.
- [17:58]
Al Franken
Well, Latinos voted with Latino, especially males.
- [18:03]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah. 60% of Latino males in Michigan.
- [18:06]
Al Franken
And she was dragged down by Biden.
- [18:10]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah.
- [18:10]
Al Franken
And this all has. I think we all go back to Biden staying in this race, you know, not. Not running earlier. I think that that may have doomed her.
- [18:22]
Norm Ornstein
Well, it possibly. I Will say this, a little bit of a devil's advocate on this.
- [18:28]
Al Franken
Okay.
- [18:29]
Norm Ornstein
That Biden a year ago or two years ago had said, I said I was a transitional president. I'm not going to run for re election. And we'd had an open contest for the Democratic nomination. We would have had 10 or 15 candidates there. Everybody who is fancies himself or herself as a president. Knowing that this would be maybe the last opportunity for a long time jumping into that race, from Gavin Newsom to Gretchen Whitmer to Cory Booker and a host of others.
- [19:04]
Al Franken
Sure.
- [19:05]
Norm Ornstein
And we had a bitter contest that ended up picking a white male instead of the heir apparent, a woman of color. You would have had a deeply divided party. And I'm not at all sure that it would have been better. Now, I think if we look at this as a reaction not just against Biden, but against a party and a. An atmosphere of all the elites from the military with Afghanistan ignoring our former chairman of the Joint Chiefs saying Trump is a fascist, to the scientists who dealt with COVID appropriately to keep more people from being killed, but causing disruption to the billionaires. And they ignored the fact that Trump is the patron of the billionaires. I don't know if any other Democrat would necessarily have won, but I do think that you're right that you could look at the sexism, look at the votes at the margins, black males at Latino males, maybe that would have made just enough of a difference to tilt those blue wall states a little bit differently.
- [20:16]
Al Franken
So she ran not a perfect campaign. I think the two biggest ads that ran against her that I think were unbelievably effective was the one from the 2019 campaign. Her 2019 campaign, where she talks about paying for transgender surgeries in prison. I think that was. You just look at that and you think, boy, oh boy, people are not going to like that. And there was that ad, and the other ad was the one interview from the View where she said, I can't think of anything I'd do different. And what would you. I mean, the answer to that, what I would have done different, what was that? Would that be norm?
- [21:00]
Norm Ornstein
So if we could roll back and. And go back to that interview and if she had handled it, say this way, I regret that we didn't take serious action on the border earlier. I was not the border czar, but I was there to try and get the countries in Central America to alter their policies enough that we wouldn't have seen so many people wanting to leave, fearing for their lives because of the social fabric in those countries going down. But I think we could have taken these tough steps on the border and maybe cut a deal, the same one that Donald Trump scuttled at the end. I would have done that differently. And the second is I wish in retrospect that we had handled Afghanistan better, that we had understood better, that the whole country would collapse quickly and I would have gotten people out of there and tried to handle the withdrawal better.
- [22:01]
Al Franken
Couldn't they have handled it better in terms of negotiating with the Taliban, saying, we're going to leave, we have this money of yours that we're holding. You're not getting it unless you let us leave in a certain way?
- [22:15]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah, I think that would have been certainly better. And my guess is that we would have had a much stronger ability to negotiate with the Taliban. Now, having said that, and I do think it would have been wise for her to make it clear that the Harris administration would not be just an extension of the Biden administration. I'm still not sure, given the broader framework, that you had far too many people. And part of this, frankly, is the sane washing of our prestige press of Trump.
- [22:48]
Al Franken
Explain Insane washing for those who don't.
- [22:50]
Norm Ornstein
Know that Trump would go into these rants or through this weave, which reflected, I believe, in significant part, serious mental deterioration, and they would frame it as if it were a traditional speech by a candidate. So you'd have Trump go into rants about how it was going to be an administration of retribution. He was going to depend support all these people. He was going to deal with the enemy within.
- [23:22]
Al Franken
He's going to prosecute people that are the enemies.
- [23:26]
Norm Ornstein
And it would be. Trump lays out economic vision.
- [23:29]
Al Franken
Oh, that's the sane washing. In other words, that's the same washing.
- [23:33]
Norm Ornstein
And you have a lot of people who voted for him who basically thought, you know, he says all kinds of shit, but he doesn't really mean it. And he won't. It won't be any different than it was in the first term. And a part of that is the failure of the press to try and treat both candidates as equally legitimate in their objectives and not to treat Trump as an autocrat in waiting. But it's also that, you know, it's. Again, it's human nature. Human nature is gas Prices go from $2 to $4, and every week you're screaming about it. And when they go back down, you don't react the same way. But it was this sense that Trump kept saying over and over again falsely that things were so much better when he left office and people believing that his four years were actually a time of peace and prosperity, which was not accurate.
- [24:27]
Al Franken
Well, the first three years, you know, were peace and prosperity in the sense that he added jobs at the same rate, almost the same rate that Obama did, that Obama's last three years. So he was taking credit for something that was in motion when he became president. People do remember those three years. I think there is an amnesia on the pandemic and deliberate. People don't want to think about it that period. And don't blame him for it, even though I blame him for. I think a lot of people died that didn't needlessly because of him.
- [25:07]
Norm Ornstein
Well, you know, it's not Even just the 400,000 who died needlessly because of him. And if you look at what Bob Woodward is saying now, he said this, some of it a year ago. I hate the idea that he held on to this stuff for his book instead of letting us know before. But one of the things that he said from his interviews with Trump before was Trump knew right at the beginning or soon after the pandemic hit, the virus came in, that it was an airborne deadly, deadly. And he downplayed it. He refused to do some of the things that would have made it a little bit better and then contributed to the demonization of the vaccines that he had helped create and of masking. And if you look at the number of deaths that occurred under Biden because of COVID the majority of them were from people who believe Trump and wouldn't get vaccinated or boosters wouldn't mask. And in the areas where you had people who did mask and did take boosters, the deaths were far fewer. But, you know, people didn't blame him for all of the deaths that occurred on his watch. And they forgot about the child separation stuff. And our media didn't focus on another reality, which is that so many of the people around Trump, including the vast majority of cabinet members and top officials who refused to endorse him this time, kept him from doing the worst things that he wanted. We had generals where Trump said when we were having these antifa demonstrations and issues and shoot him in the legs, and they kept him from doing some of these horrible things. But we know that those people are gone and he's already made it clear he's going to replace them with those who won't stop him from doing any of this stuff.
- [27:04]
Al Franken
Right. So this term is going to look very different from the first.
- [27:08]
Norm Ornstein
Yep. And he has already said promises made and promises will be kept. So Joe Rogan who I view as an idiot who endorsed Trump, but basically said it was because Trump traveled to him to do the interview on his podcast and Harris said that she would do it, but she do it remotely because she was out campaigning. But just yesterday Rogan said, well, now he has an opportunity to bring the country together to not to focus on the divisions and the retribution.
- [27:45]
Al Franken
Trump.
- [27:46]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah.
- [27:47]
Al Franken
Saying that Trump has that the Trump.
- [27:48]
Norm Ornstein
That he endorsed now should bring the country together. Yeah. Right. Fat chance of that.
- [27:57]
Al Franken
Yeah. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back with Norm Ornstein.
- [28:04]
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- [29:33]
Al Franken
The Seine Washington.
- [29:34]
Norm Ornstein
Yep.
- [29:36]
Al Franken
You think of the, the press as part of the elite and part of the liberal elite. But they were doing him a big favor by doing that.
- [29:44]
Norm Ornstein
They were. And they couldn't help themselves. And you know, the New York Times in its last two or three weeks really hit the right stride. They did the, the pieces showcased on the front page. They did a terrific editorial endorsement of Harris taking on Trump.
- [30:06]
Al Franken
But that. Does that matter anymore, ever?
- [30:10]
Norm Ornstein
Well, you know, if they had started doing that a year ago instead of, you know, when they did stories that criticized him, they tended not to be on the front page and they had a lot of front page stuff going after Harris. And they're an opinion leader. Others take their cues from them, it might have made a difference. But I think also people, even those who might believe that he's going to do some of these terrible things, thought, one, they'll do it to others, but not to me or to the ones that I'm close to, and two, it's worth it. We got to blow the whole thing up, because anything would be better than this. And you're going to have, I think, a huge amount of buyer's remorse before we're far down the road. I saw a tweet from somebody yesterday saying that a Guatemalan friend, a citizen who voted for Trump, said, my mother is here illegally. I voted for him because I thought he would bring prices down. But they won't go after her. She's never committed a crime. And Julie Brown, who's a reporter for the Miami Herald, who was the one who did more to uncover Jeffrey Epstein's predations, as anybody responded to that by saying, here in Florida in Trump's first term, I know a lot of Latinos who had been here for years, had families here, had jobs, were contributing and who said, they'll never get me because I've never committed a crime and they were deported. So you're going to have a lot of people who are going to say, hey, this wasn't supposed to happen, but it's going to happen.
- [31:55]
Al Franken
And how many people? I mean, he's targeting what, 10, 11 million people, right?
- [32:02]
Norm Ornstein
11 or 12 million. And let's keep in mind that he also said when he was saying they eat the cats, they eat the dogs, that the Haitian Americans, the Haitians who were in Springfield, Ohio, who were here legally under a program enabling them to work, he said, they may be legal. Now I'm going to make them illegal. Can he do that, given this Supreme Court? Yeah. Now, I will say, here's one message I give to Democrats. We need to find our Matthew Kazmarick. Matthew Kacmark is a Trump appointed, Trump nominated and confirmed right wing radical judge.
- [32:45]
Al Franken
Oh, yes.
- [32:45]
Norm Ornstein
In Amarillo, Texas.
- [32:47]
Al Franken
Right. And he's, he's a district federal judge who is the only judge in that, that district. And so anything you send to that district goes to the most radical right wing judge.
- [32:58]
Norm Ornstein
Exactly. So. And we have this process where a single district judge can issue nationwide injunctions, which he has done many times. So we need to find ways to fight fire with fire. Now, it's not that these things are necessarily going to last because they'll be appealed and they'll go up to the Supreme Court.
- [33:20]
Al Franken
And he's Basically threatened to do this. I mean, he's. What has he said in terms of what he will do in this term? What does he actually acknowledge that he will do?
- [33:34]
Norm Ornstein
Well, let's just take the blanket statement that he made after John Roberts issued his immunity decision, basically saying every official act taken by a president is immune from prosecution, and that includes acts at the perimeter of official responsibility. And Trump said, this is great. As president, I can do anything I want. Now, even if the Republicans have a majority in the House, and we may not know that for a few weeks, but I think it's probably a 65, 35 odds that they will have a narrow majority in the House and they have the majority in the Senate because of the Senate filibuster. We'll see how long that lasts.
- [34:22]
Al Franken
McConnell said it again that he wouldn't, you know, he's not in charge. Of course he won't be in charge. Right.
- [34:30]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah. And of course, he has pledged that they won't touch the filibuster if they have an ambitious agenda and we're already seeing a backlash from the public and they know that they've got problems enacting some of the things where they think they can transform the society and there won't be an opportunity to send it back. Then I can imagine McConnell, Lindsey Graham, John Thune, John Cornyn, Rick Scott, whoever the next leader is saying, yes, we believe deeply in the filibuster as the core of the Senate, but we had no idea that these radical Democrats would operate with the level of obstruction blocking the country from what it needs. And we have to do something reluctantly, but we have to do it, and we'll do it as one offs. It'll just be for this piece of legislation or for that piece of legislation. That may happen, but regardless, Trump is going to take executive action and violate laws. We have a Supreme Court where we know that basically the law itself does not matter to Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas.
- [35:43]
Al Franken
That's a harsh thing to say now.
- [35:46]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah, it's an accurately harsh thing to say.
- [35:49]
Al Franken
Right.
- [35:49]
Norm Ornstein
Or a harshly accurate thing to say. And if the court actually says, no, you can't, we know what Donald Trump will say, sorry, screw you, I'm doing it and I can't be prosecuted for it. So I think he'll go ahead with all kinds of actions, and that includes using the military.
- [36:07]
Al Franken
And will he pardon these January 6th?
- [36:10]
Norm Ornstein
Yes, he's already. He'll pardon the January 6th people. Including the violent protesters?
- [36:16]
Al Franken
Did he say including the violent protesters?
- [36:18]
Norm Ornstein
Did he say everyone made no distinctions he didn't say I am going to pardon the ones who just got caught up in this but didn't really do anything. And he's basically said they're all hostages. And if he pardons the proud boys and the Oath Keepers, he'll have his own militia to go along with whatever he wants to do with law enforcement and with the military. And remember, you know, one of the things that happened at his rally at Mass Madison Square Garden, which really took me aback, a top official in the NYPD in uniform at Madison Square Garden appearing on Newsmax and gleeful in what was going on there. There'll be plenty of police, constitutional sheriffs and others who will do whatever he wants to enforce his actions. So, you know, we're in for a very difficult time. But at minimum we need to be able to showcase and educate people about why they were even if the ruling elites made mistakes, that it is far better than letting know nothings like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Do we really think.
- [37:39]
Al Franken
He'Ll be like head of HHS? I mean is that a possibility is or that's insane. Right?
- [37:45]
Norm Ornstein
It's far more likely that. And he's already said I'm going to put Bobby in charge of almost everything. I think he will have him as a czar operating out of the White House rather than going through a confirmation process. Although we know that a, you know.
- [38:01]
Al Franken
What'S they have 52 or 3 or.
- [38:04]
Norm Ornstein
3 they'll confirm almost anybody I'm hearing. We know now they floated the name of Ken Paxton as Attorney General. Ken is the Attorney General in Texas.
- [38:16]
Al Franken
Oh yes, that's the Kate Cox decision that he reversed. The what the Supreme Court and, and said that she had to leave the state basically that she couldn't get the abortion.
- [38:30]
Norm Ornstein
What we also know is Ken Paxton was under indictment for security for eight years and then prosecutors cut a sweetheart deal with him after he was scot free for eight years.
- [38:44]
Al Franken
And he's the ag he was impeached.
- [38:48]
Norm Ornstein
By the Texas House, the conservative Republican Texas House because of fraud in his office, where the majority of his legal staff pointed the finger at him and said he is unfit to serve. And the impeachment went to the Texas Senate where the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick put in millions of dollars to senators and they basically, you know, let him off scot free. We also know that this is a guy who was caught on videotape at an airport in Texas where somebody inadvertently left a thousand dollar fountain pen going through tsa. And there's video of Ken Paxton running up taking the pen and running off again. He is a common thief, a liar and a fraudster.
- [39:43]
Al Franken
How do you know it wasn't his? Because he hadn't gone through yet.
- [39:48]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah, well, later on he said, well, I took it by accident. It wasn't mine, stole this pen, and it was only because they have video of him doing it that he took that action. This is a nightmare. And despite having been indicted, charged and doing a plea bargain in, impeached and avoiding conviction only because of bribery and chicanery, lying, repeatedly, taking extreme actions, you'll get confirmed by this Senate coming in, and you know he will. Trump promised to politicize the Justice Department and go after his enemies. That's just what Ken Paxton will do.
- [40:38]
Al Franken
You're saying that Ken Paxton may be.
- [40:40]
Norm Ornstein
The Attorney General, he might be the Attorney General. Rick Grinnell might be the head of intelligence or the CIA or Cash Patel. We know that Steve Bannon is going to be basically running things behind the scenes. And it's only a question of whether Susie Wiles is the chief of staff, can somehow block that, which I seriously doubt, or will not last long in this job. Roger Stone will be there whispering in Trump's ear. All of the worst players that we can imagine are going to be in charge of things.
- [41:16]
Al Franken
So people who were convicted of crimes and pardoned, or were pardoned before they could be convicted, will be in the White House, like.
- [41:24]
Norm Ornstein
Yep, they will have Trump's ear. And, you know, the promise that Susie Wiles got that she would control access to him. She's not going to be down at Mar a Lago, sitting at the dinner table and saying to Steve Bannon, no, you can't sit here and whisper in Trump's ear.
- [41:44]
Al Franken
He won't have to whisper. Yeah, yeah. And he won't have anti Semites and, you know, pro Nazi people.
- [41:54]
Norm Ornstein
No. Now, there's another element to this that we have to be aware of, which is I expect that we're going to be in the middle of a serious economic crisis within three to six months of Trump's inaugural.
- [42:08]
Al Franken
Now, why is that?
- [42:10]
Norm Ornstein
Two reasons. The first is he has promised, yet again, assuming again, we have a Republican House, that he will not only extend the huge tax cuts for the rich.
- [42:22]
Al Franken
And corporations that we know he's. He said he's doing that.
- [42:27]
Norm Ornstein
Said he's doing that, but he has also said he is going to add an additional huge set of trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthy, the hedge fund people and corporations.
- [42:38]
Al Franken
Again, corporate. The corporate tax is going to go down. So what. What happens to the deficit and it.
- [42:46]
Norm Ornstein
Explodes beyond where we are.
- [42:49]
Al Franken
Oh, but, but wait a minute. China will be paying all those tariffs and we'll collect that money.
- [42:54]
Norm Ornstein
That's the second part of it. Because instituting those tariffs is going to raise prices across the board on enormous numbers of products. And because we will have a trade war, other countries facing big tariffs from us are going to retaliate. And if you put that together with the deportations, if they occur at any level at all, it's going to mean that, well, you're going to have huge problems in the labor market. So something I was saying to you the other day before the election, I did a zoom with a number of other people with Dan Osborne, who was this independent for the Senate, Nebraska, who put up a good fight against, did.
- [43:42]
Al Franken
A lot better than any other challenger in, in Nebraska.
- [43:47]
Norm Ornstein
Real scare into Deb Fisher. But it's a deeply red state. But anyhow, he was saying, you know, one of the big industries here in Nebraska is meat. We have these meat packing plants. Who do you think works in the meatpacking plants? It's the migrants, because they're the only ones who will do those jobs. And if they're not doing the jobs.
- [44:09]
Al Franken
That'S the case certainly in Minnesota.
- [44:11]
Norm Ornstein
Yep. Then we're going to see the meat industry take a big hit. Trump has promised that he is going to blow up regulations, including food inspection. So imagine if these meat companies, Hormel or any of the others do their own self inspection of the plants. We know what's going to follow. Food poisoning, people dying. We already saw it. Even when we had at least a little better opportunity to get inspections with McDonald's and these big Macs that ended up in several states resulting in, you know, a number of deaths. So, you know, I, when we drive out to, to Delaware, to the beach from Washington, we go through the eastern shore of Maryland. That is the biggest area where they do chickens.
- [45:06]
Al Franken
Right.
- [45:06]
Norm Ornstein
Purdue and Tyson. And what do they have? If you've ever seen one of these chicken processing places, it's disgusting because you're surrounded by feathers and feces and just all kinds of horrible stuff. It's the same group of people working in those plants. So we're going to see hits to American industry from the tariffs, we're going to see inflation go up. And I believe that within six months you're going to have a whole lot of people who voted for Trump saying, wait a minute, that's not what we wanted. That's not what we thought would happen. So the hellscape of an autocrat imposing the hellscape. Hellscape.
- [45:55]
Al Franken
So I think that's the title of this episode. Yes, the Coming Hellscape. Norm Ornstein talks about the coming Hellscape. Well, thanks, Norm. This has been, See, I thought you were going to cheer me up.
- [46:16]
Norm Ornstein
Well, okay, so let's, I, I, I do think we have to learn some lessons from this, and I believe the lessons are not what we're seeing in so many places, which is the typical Democratic Party form, the circular firing squad and point fingers at everybody for blowing this. We're going to have to find the best ways to fight back. And that includes, I actually believe we have now more than 70 days in which Joe Biden will be the president and the Democrats will have a majority in the Senate. I, I see a lot of people saying, I know this won't happen, but it would be kind of fun that Biden, before the end of his term, resigns from the presidency so that Kamala Harris becomes the first woman president, even if only for a few days.
- [47:11]
Al Franken
I see.
- [47:11]
Norm Ornstein
And, and Trump has spent a fortune on Trump 47 merchandise that he would then be Trump 48. You know, it'll be a little like some of these athletes who spent most of their careers with one team, but then were traded, but they come back to retire on the last day so that they can put their banner up, you know, in the stadium. That would be fun. I, I don't care if he does it on January 19. But there are a couple of things.
- [47:46]
Al Franken
Then she would be at the, at the inaugural.
- [47:50]
Norm Ornstein
Yes, as the president. But there are a couple of things here that I, I believe are necessary. One is Biden should use every bit of his legal authority and stretch beyond it to stockpile every armament he can and give as much money as he can to Ukraine to enable them to continue the fight against Russia, which Trump will try to undercut on his first day. And if he violates the law and the Supreme Court says, no, you can't do that. Well, he's got immunity because it is an official act. And once you send the arms and send the money, they're not getting it back. The second is we need to have the Senate back Monday at the latest, this coming Monday.
- [48:42]
Al Franken
Is this going to happen?
- [48:43]
Norm Ornstein
So I don't know. This is what Republicans did when Trump lost him through as many judicial confirmations as they could. And that's what they need to do. Their business is filling every judgeship, and it's also finding that district. It may not be quite like Amarillo, where There's only one judge, but there have to be districts where there are a couple of Democrats in the judiciary and make sure that you bring the cases to block the worst actions that Trump takes by executive action or that get passed by a Republican Congress if it's there. And at minimum, you send them to the Supreme Court. And if they reject those, you have highlighted the fact that they're trying to do horrible things and it's only being allowed because of a corrupt Supreme Court, a partisan, lawless Supreme Court.
- [49:42]
Al Franken
You know, if that's the conclusion, I can see Trump laughing at that conclusion.
- [49:48]
Norm Ornstein
Well, of course he would laugh. But I think, you know, we don't know how often we'll have elections. What I will tell you is the other thing that I would do is, well, to two more things. We need a coterie of Democratic billionaires to create a new communication structure that at least to some degree is parallel to the right wing communications and, and information structure.
- [50:15]
Al Franken
They haven't done that yet.
- [50:17]
Norm Ornstein
No. I suspect one of the things that's going to happen, by the way, is I was reading today about how some of the executives who run our media companies like David Zaslav are buoyant because they think that Trump is going to give them an regulatory structure that will enable them to do, you know, trading consolidation and the like. But the caveat there is if cnn, which is a part of Universal, Warner Brothers, does what it is supposed to do and Trump goes after it, they he will retaliate against these companies, let them spin off cnn, make it a non profit entity. Get Jeff Bezos, who gave this, who didn't endorse. Well, not only didn't endorse, but then sent this sycophantic congratulations to Trump on winning. All right, sell the Washington Post to another group of billionaires who will spin it off into a non profit. We need a different information infrastructure. But what we also need to remember is that the next set of elections is for governorships and state legislatures, including in a lot of these red states that are going to suffer tremendously. In Florida where because of DeSantis corruption, they did not pass a referendum to end their six week abortion ban. We're going to see doctors leaving. We're going to see terrible issues in the health care arena. And if we can get a few of them in states where people say, you know what, you're the ones responsible for this now, it may change the momentum here and maybe we can keep having elections. I would do everything I can.
- [52:04]
Al Franken
Maybe we can keep having elections. Is that what you just said.
- [52:07]
Norm Ornstein
Yes.
- [52:08]
Al Franken
Okay. Well, that's a great way to end. Well, you know, one of the ways.
- [52:13]
Norm Ornstein
That I fear Trump will act is not just not to cancel elections, I think that's a small possibility, but to do what Orban did in Hungary, which is to get states and the courts and maybe even the Congress to do a set of things that will, you know, turn our elections into a farce where they're out there as a Potemkin village of free elections, but they're tilted so that they win no matter what. What?
- [52:37]
Al Franken
You're, you're really painting a bleak picture here.
- [52:41]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah. And I don't think I'm exaggerating much, but, you know, if we have an election in the midterms, it's going to be tough to turn the Senate, even though there are many more Republicans up. But we may have a few options. One is Susan Collins in Maine. And if we can turn the spotlight on her again, maybe that will make a difference. Another, potentially, is Alaska, where Dan Sullivan will be up. And if Alaska suffers, maybe Mary Patola can run for that seat and in a ranked choice voting atmosphere, could win. Keep in mind that Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, has to now choose a replacement for J.D. vance, and that Senate seat will be up in 2026 for the remaining two years of the term. I don't know who DeWine will pick, but it could well be some radical and Ohio may suffer enough of a backlash. It wouldn't disturb me if Sherrod Brown runs again for that seat. But there could be a very good Democrat. You know, maybe there's a chance of turning the Senate if we still have a structure of our democracy in place.
- [53:58]
Al Franken
Okay, thank you, Norm.
- [54:01]
Norm Ornstein
Have a nice day, everybody.
- [54:03]
Al Franken
Yeah. Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kottke, the great Leo Kottke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.
- [54:32]
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- [54:36]
Norm Ornstein
Free right now by joining Wondery in.
- [54:38]
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- [54:41]
Norm Ornstein
Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.
- [54:43]
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