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Al Franken - Al and Norm Ornstein on The Blueprint for Trump's Cruelty
What's actually driving the Trump administration? Our good friend and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Norm Ornstein, joins Al to follow the blueprint laid out by Project 2025.
The chief architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, now runs the Office of Management and Budget, the perfect position to carry out The Project’s agenda. Norm and Al cover the human cost of gutting USAID, DOGE’s chaotic assault on the federal workforce, an immigration crackdown that's begun alienating the Hispanic voters who swung to Trump in 2024, and a cabinet culture so consumed with flattery that Ornstein calls it the "Lickspittle Olympics."
Plus, Trump promised to keep us out of wars, but with the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Venezuela invasion, preparations around Cuba, and a growing rift with NATO, it seems like he might not have been fully honest with the American people.
Norm discusses how this administration's corruption dwarfs every previous White House scandal combined. And what should Democrats actually do if they retake Congress? Is impeachment smart politics or a distraction? And what does a credible "Project 2029" look like? - 06/07/2026.
LISTEN to Norm's podcast "Words Matter" with fellow friend of the show David Rothkopf: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dsrs-words-matter/id1420216970
4 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Norm Ornstein IS A LIBRARY of information on just how EVIL, PLANNED OUT and JINGOISTIC this administration truly is from its inception till now!
Step by step, he takes us through the 'hows and whys' of the incarnation of our government into an almost completely FASCIST state!
THIS IS A MUST HEAR SEGMENT! Thank you, Rhiannon!
Step by step, he takes us through the 'hows and whys' of the incarnation of our government into an almost completely FASCIST state!
THIS IS A MUST HEAR SEGMENT! Thank you, Rhiannon!
This, from Wikipedia's page on him:
""Norman Jay Ornstein... was a child prodigy, graduating from high school when he was fourteen and from college when he was eighteen.
He received his BA from the University of Minnesota and subsequently, received a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan in 1974. By the mid-1970s, he had become a professor of political science at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and was establishing a reputation as an expert on the United States Congress.
He... criticized the Electoral College, saying that the more that presidents are elected without the popular vote, "the more you get the sense that voters don’t have a say in the choice of their leaders".
QUITE AN AMAZING GUY!
""Norman Jay Ornstein... was a child prodigy, graduating from high school when he was fourteen and from college when he was eighteen.
He received his BA from the University of Minnesota and subsequently, received a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan in 1974. By the mid-1970s, he had become a professor of political science at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and was establishing a reputation as an expert on the United States Congress.
He... criticized the Electoral College, saying that the more that presidents are elected without the popular vote, "the more you get the sense that voters don’t have a say in the choice of their leaders".
QUITE AN AMAZING GUY!