E-Day, One Year Later (w/ Norman Ornstein)

going to carry? And it quickly became sort of the Baton death March as Florida fell, then North Carolina, Virginia she eked by despite the fact that her vice presidential running mate was Tim Kane, the Senator from Virginia. I started wondering about the outcome when that happened. And then she started showing weakness in states that had been won by Democrats for a generation. States like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Was it Wisconsin before Michigan, because wasn't Michigan? Really was wisconin? I remember it was around ten o'clock, I believe, when Wisconsin was called for Donald Trump. I wrote a note to Jamal Simmons, the Democratic Right, and I said, how bad is this? And he wrote me back. I put it on my legal pad really bad, and he looked, honestly sway he did. He looked so stunned, and I think everybody was kind of thinking, wait, seriously, what is going on here. I'll never forget that one moment when

a Donald Trump presidency became a reality. Well, I remember the Clinton official I was texting with who earlier in the evening, had said, Yeah, we can afford to lose Florida, we can afford to lose North Carolina. He wasn't arguing that they could afford to lose Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. They just always assumed that those states were in the bag,

and as it turns out, they were not. Here we are nearly one year since that election night in two US in sixteen, and we thought this was a good time to take stock of what happened and what has happened since by talking to one of my favorite political analysts, Norm Ornstein. Norm is kind of like the fourth branch of government. He's been around, so that's what that's what he tells us kidding. He's a very modest, wonderful guy, and he's made a bit of a transition over the

last few years. He was kind of a centrist thoughtful, very academic analyst of thoughtful but low key, and he's gone rogue, to quote Sarah Palin, and and has become just a ferocious, angry critic of the way Washington has failed in general, and Donald Trump in particular, and the Republican Party as well specifically. He's taken sides. You know, he used to say, oh, both parties were broken. Now he says very clearly no, no, the Republicans have gone

off the deep end. So we had a wonderful conversation with Norm about election night, about what happened, about what has happened since. We also talked to Norm about his commitment to really removing the stigma of mental illness in this country, something that is very personal to him, Brian, as you know, because his son died in two thousand fifteen after wrestling with mental illness for a very long time.

So this is something that's extremely personal to Norm. So here's our conversation with Norm Ornstein one year after the election of two thousand and sixteen. Norm Ornstein, Welcome to our podcast. It's a joy to be with you. So first of all, you know this podcast is is marking almost the one year anniversary of Donald Trump's election. And it's still actually when I say those words, I still think, Wow,

how did that happen? Brian and I were just recalling norm what our experience was like on election day, and I'm curious, what was it like for you. So when you said we're almost there one year, I did a spit take, of course, in the classic vein. Um so I was not in the same room. Yeah, definitely, and

please wipe off the microphone. Uh. So I was up in New York actually on air with BBC, and uh, to my credit, I would say, trying not too hard to pat myself on the back I had back in two thousand and fifteen said uh, watch out for Donald Trump to win a nomination. But I still thought, based on what I was seeing in the polls and elsewhere, that Clinton was gonna win, but by a narrower margin than we had thought otherwise. And watching as the results began to come in, uh from Florida, I got this

eerie feeling. I'll never forget that. When Frank Lentz came to Yahoo where we were covering this, uh, he said to me in the green room, Oh, it's going to be early. She's got this. You know all the exit poline blah blah blah. And I was there when he called Paul Ryan to tell him that that same information and oh my god, I mean it's just insane. And Kissinger right, he called Henry Kissinger too, and it was sort of fun. He was showing off that, you know,

he had them on speed dial. But anyway, what in a nutshell norm that's frightening in and of itself. But yeah, we have we have so much ground to cover, but in a nutshell real quickly. Just to remind our listeners and help them get their heads around this, what happened? Why did Trump win? Uh? Some of this goes back decades. The new book I did with E. J. Dean and

Tom Man, One Nation After Trump. We spend the first third of the book looking at the roots of Trump is um and it goes to the decline and community, the kind of atomization and society that Robert Putnam wrote about in Bowling Alone decades ago, the sorting that's taken place in the society that Bill Bishop wrote about in the book The Big Sort. And then it moves to the tribalism in our politics that Nude Gingrich really generated.

Starting in the late nineties seventies when he came to Washington into Congress, and it goes right up through the young Guns as they called themselves, Eric Canner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Mitch McConnell in two thousand and nine, using that populist anger flowing from the Troubled Assets Relief Program or the bailout TARP as we know it, that brought this enormous level of anger on the left with the occupy movement and on the right with the Tea

Party movement. And by the time we get to the Republican nominating process, the likelihood that some establishment figure was going to win a nomination had declined precipitously. They were going to go for an outsider, and especially one who played on the unease caused by the stagnant economy and the atomization that included this focus on race and on immigration, and somebody who would say, I'm not going to be like those wosses in my party who cave to Obama

and the Democrats. I won't take crap from anybody, and you play that turbo charging all of those factors that you haven't mentioned is the siloed media environment where some people get a different set of facts from people following the mainstream. Well, I think it further exacerbates the tribalization or tribalism that nor mentioned. Absolutely does, and if you if you look back, of course, the fairness doctrine was

repealed in seven. Rush Limbaugh then went national with a radio show and it was rocketed to stardom with a populist reaction against a big pay raise for Congress and public officials. In nine then we have uh Matt Drudge discovering that the web was a force that could be

used to promote his own ideology. He gets an intern named Andrew Breitbart who takes it to the next level and then moves to Bannon, and along the way we get Fox News and the rest of talk radio and a tribal media that thrives on division, on apocalyptic views. And along with that, let's just throw in that deeper anger at people in Washington, the sense that when Donald Trump says, what the hell have you got to lose?

That resonated with a lot of people who didn't realize what we have got to lose and what we are losing, and the effects of all of these factors that you've described were pretty striking on election night. You mentioned Florida. Florida is an interesting microcosm of what happened because a lot of people assume Clinton would carry Florida because she did as well or better than Obama and a lot

of the swing counties. But then we started to see what happened in Republican areas, and Trump just blew the meter off. You know, if Reagan won sixty or seventy, he was winning, and so here we go. But I think that's the first sign that any of us kind of recognized that something really different was happening that evening. Yeah,

absolutely true. And of course, let's face it, we thought there was a blue wall in the final stages that she'd eke out some narrow victory, uh by winning in Pennsylvania. And remember the Philadelphia Boss Brady uh said, you know, if we can get our turn out to four hundred thousand, were golden there, and they did better than that and still lost because it was in those areas in the you know, the middle of the state, uh, the Alabama

part of Pennsylvania. That once again just what you said, Brian, numbers that would have been fifty five, sixty six for a Republican went to and I think some of it was colored by just antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, to which I don't think you really mentioned as you were going down your laundry list of reasons that Donald Trump wont some deep seated sexism and discomfort with uh I think the Clinton brand, if you will, but also with the notion of a woman who many, unfortunately did not find

very appealing. And you know, there was a thirty year campaign to demonize and delegitimize the Clintons. You can add to that the misogyny. You're absolutely right on that front. And it made her a figure who was marginally more likable than than Trump, but not likable at all to sizeable swath of the electorate. And that did make a difference.

And let's face it, the campaign against her, the monomaniacal focus on emails by the New York Times and other places, including stories that were hyped and went way by on the facts, and some that relied on sources that were less than reliable, didn't help any well, less than reliable, like i e. The Russians, right, I remember a friend

of mine. I remember a friend of mine, not to mention sort of, you know, giving Donald Trump endless media access without oftentimes without any critical analysis attached to it. But I'll never forget a friend of mine sending me a video about Whoma Aberdeen's connection to the Muslim Brotherhood and her family, and it was actually a very quote unquote well done, professional looking piece of video. And I remember this was somebody who was very smart, worked with

me in local news in Washington. And I wrote her back and I said, Dana, this is bullshit. And yet I thought, gosh, if she's receptive to this kind of propaganda, you know, propagated by the Russians, who else is watching this stuff and buying at hook line and sinker. Anyway, we could talk all day about this stuff, and we're going to well at least for an hour. But Norm, I just want to backtrack for a quick second and

tell people a little bit about you. I suddenly have turned into Oprah, But um, Norm, tell us about your background. You graduated from high school at fourteen. We hadn't worked together at CBS News, and I never realized you were quite the child prodigy. Apparently you are, but then you went on and got a PhD. You were born in St. Louis within an area close to Tom Friedman, Al Franken and the Cohen brothers. What the hell were they feeding new people? You know? It was St. Louis Park, the

Jewish suburb of Minneapolis. UM, and I actually had a a more checkered background than that. Um. I was born in Minnesota and uh grew up largely there. But I also my father had originally been Canadian, and I actually went to high school in Winnipeg with Neil Young, among other things. Uh, and then we moved back. If only love could break your heart. Sorry, I sing once. I try to sing once during every podcast, so thank you for that opening. I think once would be good. Um. No,

once is good, It's really good. Uh. Any And actually, you know, Neil would perform at all of our assemblies and around and he had a little group called the Straight Gators and they played a coffeehouse and we all thought that he would be able to make it as a sideman uh somewhere. And but the band we had playing with us UM because we needed a band for all of the dances and proms, also decided to go to l A when he did and change their name to the Guests Who. So we had to rock and

roll Hall of Fame Max and high school time. Okay, sorry, I in health it Okay, you're mentioning the artists from my past. Norm How can I resist the role done Randy where I was headed for. Don't forget American Woman. Uh I love, I know, I like America also done well by Lenny Kravitz. But anyway, we digress. Well, given the company you kept and your experiences growing up, what made you want to earn your living working with politicians and hacks and really as an observer of our national

political scene. So I think some of it went back to when I was younger. My grandfather, who had come from Russia, became a labor leader in Minneapolis and was one of the group of people, a kind of kitchen cabinet that recruited Hubert Humphrey to run for mayor of

Minneapolis and then to get involved with politics. And I had an uncle who was in the state legislature and ran for attorney general in Minnesota, and just uh, I was really interested and intrigued by how politics works and how the institutions work, and then working on the hill was just really interesting and exciting. And you know, I must say at a time when there were a lot of people you could look up to as heroes, people who were in it for the right reasons and courageous

and doing the right things. And then I found, uh, you know, as I started to teach and I began to write for journals and things. It was frustrating because you write a piece and send it to a political science journal, and maybe a year later you would get word back on whether they were going to accept it, and then it would get published a year after that

and be read by a couple of thousand people. And uh, then I just stumbled into writing a book review for The Washington Post that came out two days later and was read by many, many thousands, and I even got a little money for it. And all of that. The intersection of politics and the public how the Institution's work

really kind of intrigued me. So, norm, I think a lot of people are surprised given your political bent, given the tweets you've written not just against Trump but against Republicans, that you've been based at the American Enterprise Institute for all these years, which is a right wing think tank, former home of the Chineese etcetera. You know how did you end up there? I mean, are you kind of

the skunk at the garden party? Uh? So in the nine UM, my dear friend Tom Mann, who had gone to Michigan with me and came to Washington, and I decided that we needed to try and find a place with more resources than a university would provide. And we went to a EI, which was then you discovered all the Republican money. Uh. You know, back then it was more sort of little center right, but more center than

anything else. And we pitched the idea of doing what we call the Congress Project, kind of acting Congress as an institution, all the changes, how it affected policy, and they bought it and we did it part time, and then in four uh, I quit teaching and went to a e I full time and I've been there ever since. Uh, and I didn't change much. I was basically a moderate person. Um. And uh the institution, as the politics of the country evolved,

became more sharply conservative on the whole. But the most important element for why I stayed there, and uh, it's interesting that they allowed me to stay there was that I had and continue to have complete freedom to do anything I want and to say what I want, and nobody's ever said to me you can't do that, you can't say that, And if they did, I'm fortunate, especially at this stage of my life, where um, I could

leave without a second thought. We're gonna take a quick break now and we'll be back soon with more from Norm Ornstein. So, Norm, at the American Enterprise Institute where you work, which is a conservative think tank, Mitch McConnell came in one day as a speaker and you had a pretty sharp exchange with him, and I just want to play a little bit of that. I've enjoyed dueling you,

Norm over the years. You've been consistently wrong on almost everything, and h I've always wondered, you know who each lunch with you over here at an organization. I got more friends than you think you're And actually, some of the worst things have been said about me over the years have been staid of a normal Arnstein and you and you've been entirely wrong on virtually every occasion. I'm glad

to see you. What's on your mind? Ouch? Awkward? That was where that must have felt pretty uncomfortable, Norm, uh So, I had to think at that time, how am I going to respond to this, and my first inclination was to say, not only will people have lunch with me, Senator, they'll even have a drink with me. Um. But I didn't touche. So you got into a big fight with Mitch McConnell over a campaign finance reform, among other issues. But you helped write the McCain fine Gold bill, and

he was the principal opponent of that. Can you describe a little bit about about that fight and why since that legislation was passed and signed, the campaign finance system is still a mess and big money is still so powerful in our system. Well, of course, the answer to the latter question, Brian starts with two words, citizens united. It goes to another two words, a decision that followed speech now by the Appeals Court that led to super PACs.

I could see in the mid nineteen nineties that we had a real problem emerging in the campaign finance system. I convened a little group of people who knew a lot about it. We sat down and hammered out some pragmatic solutions. I went to John McCain and Russ fine Gold and somehow convinced them to take a different approach. Um and uh then with some adjustments, we managed to get a bill through and I was one of many players,

but I was proud of helping to shape it. And then I saw Mitch McConnell at the Supreme Court when the oral arguments were there with McConnell versus F. E. C. Which was the case challenging this law, and the Supreme Court rebuffed him. He was not at all a happy camper.

And then Sandra Day O'Connor left the court because her husband had Alzheimer's and that not the Constitution, but O'Connor leaving and sam Alito coming in set the seeds for a Supreme Court to blow up all of the campaign finance regulations that were actually working pretty well, and now we have the hell of dark money and billionaire dominance of our process. You've written a book called One Nation After Trump norm and since we are at the one year mark of the election, how would you assess this

last year in terms of Donald Trump's accomplishments. Let me ask you kind of turned this question on its head. Do you give him credit for anything? I give him credit for poisoning the discourse in America, creating a kleptocracy, defining deviancy down to use Pat Moynihan's term uh and UH not doing much of anything to either drain the swamp or help out those working p bowl. He said he would much less as he addressed African Americans, what the hell have you got to lose? Uh? Showing them

very bad things. I have a hard time, Mrs Lincoln. I have a hard time, Katie, finding anything positive there. During the course of a year, Um and Tom Man and I wrote a book in two thousand and six called The Broken Branch, How Congress is Failing America and How to get it back on track, and we lamented what had happened to the institution, but we blame both

parties for it. Two thousand and twelve, we wrote a book called It's Even Worse than It Looks, and that was heralded by a Washington Post outlook piece from the book that our editor called UH, titled UH, Let's just say it the Republicans or the Problem, And it was a Republican party that had gone off the rails and become an insurgent outlier, and we saw the seeds of Trump is Um emerging. At that point. We revised that and didn't one called it's even worse than it was.

And now we have this and what Trump has done is in some ways the logical extension of a party that had turned from a conservative problem solving one to a radical one, and a party that opened up the doors with its uh desire to blow up government and to give enormous tax breaks to the wealthiest um for a guy like Donald Trump. And now they're putting no checks and balances on him, and that is maybe, in

some ways the most depressing part of this story. The political system was set up by our framers to build some boundaries around the possibility that and a moral uh kleptocratic sociopath, if somehow that person got elected, we would be able to put boundaries around And it started with

an independent Congress. And now you look at what the Speaker Paul Ryan says, what the Senate majority, the leader Mitch McConnell says, and what they say is, well, never mind that we're going to get our tax bill through. All of that has to leave you alarmed, um. But also what we are seeing is so many people are alarmed that maybe we're going to have a jolt that gets the public more engaged and gets the possibility of bringing those boundaries back. Before we talk about that, I

want to ask you about your tweets. I mean, you've called him a seventy one year old, lifelong narcissist, sociopath. You've called him a congenital liar blowing up American ideas. You've called him an ignoramus. Is it his personal behavior that you find so offensive or are you equally um incensed by the policy proposals he's put forth and the way he's actually conducted the real business of governing versus the personality of his presidency. Uh So it's all of

the above, but more. And Uh, you know, the Twitter has become a catharsis for me as I watch things deteriorate. The biggest the biggest problem that I see is the direct challenge to the fundamentals of our small, our republican or representative form of democracy. And if you look at all of the indicators that historians have written about Timothy Snyder in his book on Tyranny, even the exhibit at the Holocaust Museum about the signs that you're moving towards

uh fascism. Uh. It starts with de legitimizing the press. When you have a president who says that the press is the enemy of the people, a phrase begun by Stalin that was banned by Kruschoff when he took over because it was too dangerous. That is the most disturbing element. When you have next a president who moves to delegitimize the judiciary, as Trump has done by attacking judges and they're into a gritty and then goes after any kind

of legitimate judicial or process of prosecution moving forward. That's disturbing when you have a president who pays no attention to truth, and when you have a president who, instead of moving to unite the country moves to divide it, as we saw even now with the reaction to the horrible tragedy in New York City, but we have seen with the reaction to Charlottesville in other places. His personal behavior, the crudeness of his past, all of those things are horrible.

The fact that nobody else in the political arena in his party except for a handful of dissidents, is challenging those things is disturbing, But it's the direct challenge to our governance. To that point, norm you're an expert on Congress, is it as simple as Republican leaders realize that they have a pro Trump base and don't want to alienate it,

or is there something deeper than that. I think it's that, and more certainly what we know is at Trump who has focused on shoring up that base and a base which may be shrinking a little. But let's give him thirty to thirty percent of the electorate. That's sixtent of the Republican primary voters for the House and Senate. And along with that, I think is the fear that they have that challenging Trump frontally means you're going to take

on the Mercer family and their billions. You're gonna take on the talk machine that will be led by Alex Jones and Sean Hannity uh and Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingram and Mark Levin and Bright bart Uh and they'll make your lives miserable. Along with a primary challenge, and in some cases, as we've seen with Bob Corker, maybe even give you death threats. And then you've got the

other reality, which is they didn't want Trump. Very few endorsed him privately, most were appalled by him, but when he got elected, it was here we got a guy who has no policy interest, no policy knowledge, but he wants victories and he'll sign anything we put in front of him. So we want to protect that possibility because we can get tax cuts. And all of those are reasons. Some of them are reasons you can understand in terms

of self preservation. Others do such violence to the fundamental norms of civic behavior and protection of all that we should hold dear about our democracy that it's uh troubling to say the least. So when all these people drop out and say they're not going to run for re election, like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, will they be replaced by uber right wing senators. That's the real danger here now.

It may not happen um in Arizona right now. Of course, the challenger who was going to take on Jeff Lake, Kelly Ward uh is a conspiracy theorist and somebody who is way off the charts on the radical right end of the spectrum. Maybe there'll be another Republican challenging her, and maybe the Democrat Kristen Cinema can actually win that race, But it's far more likely that you end up with

somebody Jeff Lake is a very conservative guy. But he's also an right He's well, he's a real Barry Goldwater conservative, isn't he? He is? And Barry Goldwater, by the way, would also be appalled by what he's seeing now in his own party. But Jeff, whom I've known since he was in the House, also wants to find solutions to problems and build across party lines. And the same is true of Corker, who is more likely to be replaced

by somebody much much further to his right. So you know, the prognosis at this point is a troubling one because the people who are inherently problems solving oriented are the ones who were most discouraged by this dynamic and willing to leave, and the ones who are more radical uh and believe in a revolution are waiting in the wings. We should just add for the benefit of our audience. You mentioned the Mercers earlier, and I bet a lot of people don't know who they are. They're probably the

most important conservative billionaire family now after the Cokes. They're big Bright Bart funders, huge Steve Bannon supporters, etcetera. But I want to ask you something different, Norm, which is you've been in Washington for all these decades. How have you seen Washington change, um, both as a as a culture,

institutionally politically since you first got there. UM. When I first got to Washington, UM, I was very good friends with a lot of people in public life UH and an elected office from both parties, and we would all socialize together a fair amount. UM. There was a feeling of UH institutional loyalty and a pride in what you were able to do to help make the country better. We could get through very difficult times. And it's not to say that it was all rosie. Back then, we

had the Vietnam War. When I arrived, we had been the impeachment process of Richard Nixon. We had some dark elements of racism and UH, issues of crime and other things. A lot of unsettling moments, but people on both sides who are dedicated to trying to steer their way through this and work together to find a better time. Democrats and Republicans saw each other as adversaries, not the enemy, and UH often an adversary one day would be an ally the next dinner. Parties were very much mixed. Now

A couple of things changed. One was you didn't have very many members of Congress back then who would serve and then leave office and stay in Washington. Mostly they went back home. That began to change and they stayed and what they did was they went into law firms or became lobbyists. And the same was true of the staff. Back then. You had staff who would make careers out of it, were very proud that they could be a

part of it. That began to change and instead people would see, UH, staff opportunities as jumping off point to make a lot of money outside. Uh. There is a swamp in Washington. Trump is adding to it, not draining it. But that's been a change from what we've seen in the past. And the tribal ism that began to develop in the late nineteen seventies driven by Gingrich, has become

much worse. And while you still have some instances of senators who will socialize across party lines, UH, you don't have it much compared to what used to be there. And we still have a situation that also really began with Gingrich in the seventies where members don't bring their families to Washington and they spend as little time there

as possible. UH. And you now see dinner parties where people are very careful not to mix across these lines because you'll end up with shouting matches or cutlery being thrown or dishes broke. Before it's so depressings, I'm gonna say, is there any hope for the future? Can we um do anything to make this better? So UM, let me come back to the book. And I have to mention

the subtitle because I'm very proud of that. Uh. It is a guide for the perplexed, the disillusioned, the desperate, and the not yet deported um and UH, which covers a lot of people. But it's a hopeful book. UH. And the path forward I think comes in a couple of directions. And I'm hopeful in part because I think Trump could be our Dunkirk, the jolt that the civil society needs to realize that a lot of what we have held near and dear is imperiled. And it's a

jolt in two ways. The first is a lot of these UH larger trends in the society, the loss of community, the atomization, the economic inequality, the stagnation of wages, the sharp divisions on race and party lines. But also UH between the thriving metropolitan areas and highly educated. Now we have to think about how we can bridge some of those divides and focus not on white working class people, but on working class people and on policies that can work.

That's one part of it. A second is we've been jolted by the challenge to the fundamentals of our system by Trump, and now we're seeing all kinds of elements of the civil society step forward. It's the lawyers stepping up with the Travel Band to deal with some of these horrible cases of Ice stepping in and taking undocumented people, most recently, of course, a ten year old girl with

cerebral palsy. It is the religious organizations, including the Catholic bishops, now focusing on the problems of destroying the safety net. It is conservative policy intellectuals and a handful of courageous lawmakers and people like Bill Crystal and Jennifer Rubin and Max boot Uh and Evan McMullen and others standing up to try and transform their own party back into a

problem solving, albeit very conservative party. And then it's groups like Indivisible and the grassroots movement to try and get people more engaged. It's young people deciding now that they're going to be looking at running for office, something that we didn't see a decade or more ago. So there are signs out there. I have to ask you about

Bob Muller. This is sort of the beginning of the Russian investigation, or or the outcome of the Expression investigation, as we've seen this week with with Paul Manafort and to other Trump associates. Um, how do you see this

all shaking out? Norm? Uh? So, here's the worst case scenario, uh, that as uh it begins to close in on Trump, that we see another Saturday Night massacre, uh as we had in the early seventies with Nixon, and that Trump goes down the line and the Justice Department to find somebody who will fire Mueller and all the people around

him and then pardons everybody, including himself. But if that doesn't happen, then I think we're heading inexorably towards a large group of people around the president not only being charged with money laundering. And the president in his own family may very well find that their business dealings drag him into it in a different way. But to me, that is very very likely that Mueller is going to look at him, not necessarily for direct collusion with Russia,

but for pretty obvious obstruction of justice. So when wait, wait, what does that mean? What does that mean? Does that do we think we're on the road to impeachment? Uh, well, we're gonna hit I believe, uh sometime within the next six months to a year across roads for Republicans in Congress. UM. And I don't know where they come out on this, I really don't. Um. We don't seem to have much

leadership that is even willing to put some boundaries around Trump. Uh. Right now, for example, one of the obvious things that Congress should be doing is making it overtly clear to the president that if he fires Muller, all hell will break loose and that at minimum Congress will empower Muller to continue his investigation. And that's not happening. Uh. It wouldn't surprise me that ultimately we end up with an

indictment of the president. And for those who say that that's not allowable, we have a very long memo written by Ken Starr back in the nineteen nineties as he was investigating Bill Clinton about why a sitting president could be in fact indicted. Before we before we go and I think Brian and I could talk about this all day. I really wanted to ask you about the culpability of the Democratic Party, since you are so um willing to to really take aim at Republicans, But I don't think

we have time to do that today. Norm So we're gonna have to have you back, or we're gonna have Let me say, Democrats are not angels here. It's not like one party is great and the other is awful. But what is the cases that one party is much much worse? Right now, let me ask you a little bit about something personal you shared with people in a New York Times article. Um, your son Matthew. You spoke very poignantly and movingly about his ten year battle with

mental illness. He died in early two thousand fifteen. And that's, I know, a cause that is so important to you and that you've worked tirelessly for. Um. Can you tell us a little bit about about Matthew and and sort of what happened? Sure? UM, Let me start by saying how proud I am of you, Katie, for taking your own personal tragedy and the role that you can play in society and trying to pay it forward so that others will not have to go through the horrors. And

that's how I've felt about this. My son was a brilliant, brilliant kid. He was a national champion high school debater, or went to Princeton, went out to Hollywood and was having some success. Actually had his own little show on a kind of a funny take on debate. And then he had a psychotic break at the age of twenty four and went through a tenure struggle. A part of his illness is what's called a nosagnosia um, where your brain diseases such that you don't recognize that you're ill.

He would not accept any kind of treatment or any diagnosis. And we live in a society id where if that's the case in your over eighteen family members, loved ones, medical professionals are powerless to do much of anything about it, and the family may not even be able to know what's going on. And he struggled, I'm sure, with horrible pain, I know, and we struggled as a family with pain. He died an accidental death. It was a carbon monoxide poisoning that we are pretty sure was not deliberate. Um

many others, it is deliberate. Uh. But you know, the prognosis for people with serious mental illness is not a very good one, and the way the society deals with it is itself insane. And we've, uh, my family has spent a great deal of time and whatever money we can, and we've set up a foundation in his name, the Matthew Warnstein Foundation, to try and do something about this, and especially to try and bring about best practices. So many are homeless or are in horrible states because there's

no way to bring them to treatment. Um. But also the criminal justice system is a disaster when it comes to dealing with people with mental illness. And we got a minor but important piece of legislation through Congress, but it's still very, very difficult to change the law and to change the way that people deal with this. And there isn't a family, I believe, in the country that is not touched in some way by the tragedy of mental illness. Uh So, Uh, this is something that has

become a very near and dear to me. And I will have to say that on this subject, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who do not view me very highly, um, did step up to the plate to get that bill passed. It sounds like such an overwhelming problem. Are you optimistic norm that that things can be put in place that can actually, if not fixed, the problem, make it less dire and severe. And where by the way, so sorry

for your loss. I can only imagine how how horrible that was, because not only did you have a son who was sick, you couldn't do anything about it. You must have felt so powerless. And you know, here, uh, we have a family, my wife, a lawyer with uh you know, a brilliant lawyer with all kinds of uh interest, knowledge, resources, another son who is also a brilliant kid. We had the resources and the connections that most people don't have and couldn't do anything. And that's the case with so

many you know. Now, whenever I see a story about somebody losing a child, uh, you feel it in a different way when you've had that loss yourself. There's nothing like, uh, the unnatural event of losing a child. But you also see the frustration and an understand I understand in a way I didn't before. Uh that through no fault of his own. And a brain disease is a disease. It's the same as any other kind of disease, but the

society doesn't view it that way. How difficult it was for him, and you become a pariah in the society. And there are you know, worse uh tragedies for many who have these kinds of illnesses. They get put in prison and uh, they get locked up in solitary confinement. Very few people in prisons have any understanding of how

to treat those with mental illnesses. I will say one of the things that I find most troubling about the Trump administration is Attorney General Sessions wanting to bring back private prisons, which are a cancer on everything that we should believe in. They want more prisoners, They make money when there are more people. They don't care how they care for people. They love recipivism. Uh, and it's much much worse. We see these tortures Shareff Clark and mill

wall Key, one of Trump's favorite people, uh in his jail. Uh. They tortured somebody with a serious mental illness, wouldn't give him food or water, and watched him die in a cell. And that's not an uncommon experience. But I do think that we have lots of people out there dedicated to trying to make this better. And if we can mobilize those people whose families have been touched by this, many of whom I don't want to talk about it because there's such a stigma. Uh, then I believe we can

turn a corner on this. I think you're right. I think if more people speak out. And by the way, I just want to add, as brain science becomes more advanced and our understanding of mental illness increases, which is happening right now with technology and and and an ability to really, you know, take a deep dive literally into into our brain, perhaps that yeah, perhaps, yeah, well no, actually no, with with scans and um, you know, all sorts of the science that allows us to really look

deeply into brain chemistry. You know, That's what I meant. I don't mean, yeah, we're not putting it on our wet suits and going into the brain. You guys know what I meant figuratively. Okay, thank you, Brian. But anyway, UM, I'm hoping that that will help reduce the stigma associated with with mental illness as we show their real physiological biological factors that are responsible for when someone is sick with mental illness. Just as if they're sick with cancer. Norm.

I always love talking to you and hearing your perspective on just about everything, and we're so grateful for you joining our podcast today. Brian, I think you should come to the lunch that Norman I have in New York if you're in town. I didn't. Of course, you're invited. Um, if you let me get a word in edgeways, if you don't pull out like what happened in nine and uh was consin in the eighth congressional district. And if you don't do that, come up with a hard I

think Reagan carried that distress anyway. Norm, so wonderful to have you, and we should mention the name of your book again, Brian. The book is called One Nation After Trump. And for those of you who are depressed, despondent, disillusioned, I think you're gonna like the book. For those of you are big Trump supporters, Uh, maybe maybe keep reading the Danielle Steele, Well, actually, isn't that part of the problem. People should read Norm's book at their trumps. Everybody should

read Well. Not only that, but I think part of this siloing of American discourse is also at the foundation of why we are so divided, and uh gosh, I don't know how you solve that except for people who are really willing to to listen to the other side and to acknowledge some of their issues and concerns. Politicians are just a reflection of us on some level. So it's we've got a there's a problem with the voters as well as the as well as the politics, as

well as the media. Yeah, indeed, anyway that note, Norm, thanks so much and any email you and please send me an autograph copy of your book. Thank you so much. To our team behind the scenes, Giannah Palmer is our producer, Nora Richie is our production assistant. Jared O'Connell engineers and mixes the show. Alison Bresnik is our social media mastermind, and Emily Beana holds things down over at Katie Currik Media.

Mark Phillips wrote our theme music. And remember, if you want to keep up with us on social media, you can find me under Katie Currik on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. On Snapchat, I'm under Katie dot Kurric and Goldsmith the is on Twitter That is Brian's handle. Yeah, I'm like two followers short of two thousand followers. Really, let's get you over the two thousand mark. Come on, and how many followers do you, Katie? I have one

point seven million. Brian, uh, not dragon or anything, but I think to make you feel better, I think a lot of them are dead or our bots, so who knows. But anyway, Russians, don't be a stranger. Drop us an email at comments at current podcast dot com. We love reading and we're flying to those. Some of you are so nice. Thank you. They really make our day. Or feel free to leave us a voicemail at nine to

four four six three seven. We'll take guest ideas, feedback, anything you want to say, but please people keep it clean. I'm like us anyway, Thanks for listening. Bye,