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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 the podcast. I'm your host David Rothkoff, coming to you from Washington, D.C., where it's 1 million degrees Fahrenheit outside, and I'm very glad to be in here.

And with you, I am also very glad to be joined by our friend, Norm Eisen, who is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute and chair of the States United Democracy Center,

Norm previously served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the impeachment proceedings and trial of President Trump in 2019 and 2020.

He also served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014, which is a very nice gig because Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Welcome Norm.

Thank you David. It's so great to be back with you and your listeners on Deep State Radio, which I am very glad to be here.

Well, you're kind to join us. You know, the first time I ever met with an ambassador to the Czech Republic, it was actually Czechoslovakia, and the ambassador was Shirley Temple Bell.

And she was just delightful and took us around and was a great hostess. So you were following in some very small tap shoes there.

I think we've talked about this before, but you know, my first book, which I wrote, I now have five to my name as author or editor, but my first book, which I wrote after I served as ambassador,

included a substantial amount of research into Ambassador Black. The last palace, it was called, and it told the story of that wonderful ambassador house that I lived in, the optimistic Jewish Czechoslovak billionaire who built it, the Nazi who ousted him, the American anti-corruption fighting post-war anti-communist ambassador.

She's the house, but lost the country to communism and Shirley Temple Black, who was there in the house in 68 for the Prague Spring and the brutal repression of the Soviet block and returned as ambassador in 89.

So, and I told this, and then I woven my own story present day. It's a story of the vicissitudes of democracy and boy, are we going to talk about some present day American vicissitudes of democracy today?

Well, it's a great place to start. I once, a long time ago, and we're both, you know, reminiscing too much here, but I once met with a guy, and I'm not going to go into all the detail who participated in the Czech show trials in the 1950s.

And he talked about the various ways that people had to contort themselves to get around the communist, authoritarian government, and the mockery of the justice system that they made.

...