9, 12, 10, 28, 2, 23.

This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third

sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C., and from other undisclosed locations

across America and around the world.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Words Matter. I'm David Rothkopf. I am joined

as ever by Norm Ornstein. How are you doing this week, Norm? Well, we've had better weeks.

But the consolation, David, is that this week is probably going to be better than next week.

You know, and before I get into the banter here, we've got a guest who's a friend of ours, Miles Taylor.

Miles, you may know, was formerly chief staff, Department of Homeland Security, played a variety of roles in the Trump administration, then started pissing people off when he wrote the anonymous column, then he's written some books.

Recently, the administration has asserted that he is a traitor for committing the crime of actually being critical of the president.

We're here to talk about that. But first, hi, Miles. How are you? David, I was just saying I've had

better years. And I think that fits in the vein with what Norm said is, you know, the only

consolation is maybe this year is better than next year.

Well, it may be, although we do have an election next year.

There's some hope for that.

I know what I was laughing, though, is because Norm, every week I ask Norm how he is.

And every week he gives some answer other than I'm fun.

It's always some kind of, some kind of accurate depiction

of how we all feel at the moment. Let me, let me start with a question just sort of to hook this

into the news. And then I know Norm has some questions and comments for you as well. But, you know, when I watch the news on a regular basis, I watch these kind of people with

good hair and they're like talking to each other about news items and they're very polite

and so forth.

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