 One of our most interesting experiences and shows every Friday at 10am, Tim and me and sometimes Cynthia and we talk about Trump, this is Trump Week and today is the new comma new normal because the normal is moving ahead, you know. What does that mean? What does it signify? What are we trying to say? Things are not as they should be and they're wackier than ever. That's my translation of the new new normal. Yeah, let's talk about the 25th Amendment for a little while, you know, it seems to me that one of the great sea changes is that our president is decompensating. Do we have any evidence of that? Well, I think there's a lot of people scratching their head when he proclaimed that windmills are the source of cancer. I just don't know where his empirical data comes from and I, knowing Donald Trump, there is none. Trust me, there is none. It's a scientific matter. What about his father? Well, my understanding, his father was born in the United States yet. He has been proclaimed as being from Germany. So where does this come from? I'm sorry. Alternative facts. The problem is, no good reason, but you know the thing is if you find alternative facts like this, if you find the man making these Pinocchios as the Washington Post calls it all the time every day, then really you wonder about some kind of organic problem. Not only does he not tell the truth, but he can tell the truth. His mind doesn't work correctly. So when you see him, you know, confused on where his father was born, you know, or windmills causing cancer, you have to go a step further and say, doesn't that reflect a thought process problem that affects the other things that he does? I mean, how can you not conclude that? It's interesting you mentioned organic decomposition because, you know, many times people have a pine about certain psychological conditions that he manifests. All through his term. All through his term. But there's one thing that I think people can look at, and then he is proclaimed and he's actually boasted about the fact that he doesn't need sleep and that he's a three or four, maybe a three hour, a night person that requires sleep. Well, there's enough studies, empirical data that says that most humans, all humans need sleep. And there are organic changes that occur to you within your body, within your mind. If you don't sleep properly, taxing the heart, taxing the mind, taxing your memory and your emotional well being, all these things occur when there's a lack of sleep. Now, he's again, he's really boasted and proudly boasted that he doesn't need sleep. And for decades and decades of his life, he doesn't get sleep. And that has an effect, for sure, medically. We need to hear more about that as a matter of fact. I think we will hear more about that because he'll do more of these, you know, windmills and father in Germany kind of incidents and we really have to connect it up. And here at Trump Week, we should connect it up because it's one of those threads we have to follow. Well, we're not qualified to say, you know, he's a bonafide narcissist. I think we know he's a narcissist. And we're not bonafide to say there's other psychological conditions that he manifests or appears that he manifests. But we can say when you, when you claim and you are not getting the sleep you need each and every day, there are recognized, documented, adverse effects of not getting sleep. Well, process problems. Well, one of the things that I noticed that he's been doing this week, he and the people around him is a little group, all of whom are yes men, all of whom report as he instructs are saying that he can and will win the 2020 election. He's really bent on that. He's raised a lot of money. He has that guy, Pascal, the Smith Brothers guy, and who's very good. And they're going to use social media. They don't even need Putin. Although what I think we're going to have is we're going to have, you know, social media through the Trump campaign plus Putin. We'll be working on dividing the country again, dividing the Democrats again. And he's bound and determined to win next time around. So he's very focused on that. And why? I don't know. But he's very focused. He wants to retain the power and he wants to have this way of expressing his narcissism. It's all part of a package. He's been expressing it since the second day. He was, you know, took the oath of office for presidency. He's been doing campaign stops since really the beginning of his presidency. That's what he does. He doesn't have press conferences. He has campaign stops with selected people behind him holding pre-printed signs, you know, finished the wall. I think that's remarkable. Anyway, let's talk about some of the remarkable things that have happened this week. The one that strikes me is that now that Mueller has gone, and it amazes me here how few people know who Mueller is, amazes me. Try it. Ask a stranger. You know who Mueller is. What do you think of Mueller? And you're going to get a really interesting answer usually. But anyway, now that Mueller has gone, he's done his report. He's discharged effectively, you know, from his mission, his assignment. Things are leaking. Which, you know, to me is happy news. I would have liked to seen that right away. They're leaking for the proposition that our attorney general has misstated the Mueller report. And we're not going to find out about it until the fickle finger of, you know, the media has moved on, so it won't mean that much to the public. But I think they're good for them. I mean, I'm with them. I think it's good that they have leaked this stuff. What do you think? Well, you know, I don't know if we're dealing with a situation like the Pentagon Papers, depending on, you know, if the whole report would be leaked, to what degree would that be damaging or potentially damaging versus things that have been classified as confidential, but they're not confidential. So we have this spectrum of where do we really stand within one end of the spectrum of the other. And if it's not going to be forthcoming to the oversight committee and the, you know, the judicial committee, then, yeah, it's time to have it leaked. The American public need to see the Mueller report. Well, it's a lot of people who firmly believed that he was completely exonerated, that he won against Mueller. It was Trump against Mueller and Mueller against Trump and Trump won. But that's not really true. That's not really true. We know that's a spin. Trump, the Trump folks know that's the spin and they're getting out there ahead of the story because, remember, when Nixon, you know, was in trouble, that report didn't come for 40 years. And then when Clinton has his, you know, the Ken Starr report, well, that took quite a while. We live in an age where we expect now instant information because we're required to respond to everything we used to. And now we expect to see that report probably much faster than it's, you know. We're not going to see it so fast. In fact, we may not see it. And you and I, actually, Tim and I have a bet. We have a wager. And a wager is at, what's it? 28th is when we'll see it. And lunch is the right one. What before? It's going to be a big lunch. Biggest lunch you want. That, you know, he says that we're going to see the report. And I would agree that even in redacted form can be major redactions by the 28th of this month. Or, and I believe that we're not going to see it. There's going to be obfuscation and delay and all kinds of distraction and manipulation, machinations. So when I win, this will not be a fast food bet. No, no, this is serious lunch. Yeah, okay. But I win though. You'll see. I'm going to call you on this. Okay, anyway. So what we have is the report comes out and then we have a series of distractions. And you and I have so often discussed, you know, the concept, the process, the mechanism of distraction. Can you name some distractions that have come up since the Mueller report? I think... How much time do we have now? I sure can. I think the biggest distraction is that now the Republican Party is going to be the party of healthcare and that he is, with all his might and power, is summoning the courts and they are going to strike down the Affordable Care Act and they will be placed with nothing. It's going to strike down Affordable Care Act and 21 million people will be the recipients of nothing. Yeah. Because there's no plan. And windmills cause cancer. And windmills do cause cancer. It's just an asserted statement. Yeah. And even our friend McConnell couldn't go along with that. McConnell, who goes along with everything that Trump does, in this case, he couldn't. Well, he backed him into a corner that the Republicans can't get out of that corner. So that's why he said, what are you doing to us? Stop talking about retracting the Affordable Care Act when you've already tried it before. We tried it before. It didn't work. Yeah. And we're not going to get it done now. Short memory. Your short memory is part of decompensating. So, you know, is this mean as a fissure? Some kind of separation between McConnell and Trump, doesn't it? No. This is par for the course. You know, Trump just gets ahead of everybody. He leaves everyone out in the back, you know, the back 40. He starts proclamations of greatness and policy. And he's forgotten to tell anyone about it. He probably came up with it 20 minutes before he got before the camera. That's another threat we have to watch. It's a one-man-band thing. It's a sole proprietorship, as your brother stated. Sole proprietorship. Let's not forget the other big proclamation. That is, he's going to close down the border. There's a distraction. And that was to be made as almost an immediate action and policy implementation. Well, guess what? He now in the last couple of days said, okay, in a year's time, close down the border or implement tariffs against Mexico. Well, he walked that back. He walked that back. He had to walk it back. Why did he put it out there in the first place? It's obviously not doable and it's stupid. And he immediately comes out. You know, it has to be a distraction. Okay, and what is running around in his decompensating mind that he would come up with that? I'm going to tell you something I was told many years ago. And it's actually served me very well. And that was coming from an HR professional. 30 years, 35 years in the business. And I was trying to rationalize the motivations of one of my employees. And this very wise statement was told to me, Tim, never try to rationalize an irrational mind. Yes. No. No, that's true. We're trying to assign rational minds and motivations. When you find out the mind is irrational and pathological and you find that in the practice of law, by the way, I've seen that many times. Yes. What do you do? You can't really outwit him because he works on outwitting all the time and because he's not rational. And so what do you have? You have to play defensive. You have to circle the wagons. You have to not give him any opportunities. That's all. No yardage. Yeah. No yardage. No credit. You know, you have to freeze him. And I mean, that's the best method. That's the best way I've been able to handle the last two years. Yeah. Because if you try to figure out what's going on and why, you'll go off the deep end. No, but we can still do that. Yeah, we have to. So he had to walk that back. So these two major things that he came up with, neither was defensible. Both are in the genre of windmills cause cancer and my father was born in Germany. They're ridiculous. And they're not sustainable. Nobody is going to accept it. Even his best friends aren't going to accept it. Why does he do that? Because he wants to change the subject. He wants to do sort of a shell game and keep something else on the table. Remember, too, that when he was doing his real estate business in New York, he would plant stories just to show how great he was in order to manipulate the press and the public. And I think he's doing that now. There's a story about how American manufacturing is doing better now because of the tariffs. I think it's a planted story. And I think there's a lot of other things like that. Oh, that he's just about done with his deal with China. He's going to make a deal with China. I don't think that's true at all. It's all about distraction. So why? So here's my theory. Even the Republicans are going to say, why didn't you stay with the fact that you've been vindicated from the Mueller report? Why did you move on to the border shutdown and the Affordable Care Act demolition? Why? You could have spent more time on this and got more points. Well, maybe, just maybe, the President of the United States really has seen the report and it is not as glossy and, you know, it is not as beautiful as the bar four-page summary. Maybe he's suspected. And he knows that it's not. So let's change the subject. Right. And let's get everyone to forget about this four-page summary. Absolutely. It's exactly, you've seen this process before with him. So he's worried that there may be leaks about it, that, you know, bar is not the last interpreter of what it is. The parts will come out. That, you know, what happened this week will happen. And so he wants to cover that over, to pave it over so it doesn't mean anything. That's why he's coming up with these distractions. So before the report was released, we sat here at this very table and said, count on more distractions. You said 27 of them or 17. I can't remember. I wouldn't bet against that. So it's coming to be true. We're starting to predict the unpredictable. And that's scary. Absolutely right. But we are starting to do that. And we call this, and we're correct. He's coming up with all these distractions. You're probably happy we didn't make a bet on that. All right. That's right. Okay. So yeah, so there was a, what I really like is the, I think it was the border patrol and a border control. And he appointed somebody, but it was subject to Senate confirmation, something like that. And it's been sitting and languishing for four or five months. Well, this morning he pulled it. He pulled it. And he said, he said, I don't like that guy anymore. I'm pulling his name. I need somebody tougher. We need to get tougher on this. I mean, that's, that's crazy. That is also a distraction. And that is also an example of dumping on the people around him. When the press went to the guy whose name he pulled, the guy refused to make a comment. And I understand that. But if I was him, I'd leave town. You know, that's so embarrassing, humiliating. But this happens all the time. It happened with Kellyanne Conway's husband, who he's now attacking, personal attacks and hominem attacks with no evidence, no reason, just dirty words like a kid, like an adolescent in a schoolyard. And he keeps on doing that. I wonder how the guy feels. You know, Kellyanne Conway feels. She actually defended Trump in Trump's attacks on her husband. There's a good marriage, Sean. Well, it's just a sad comment on where we're at in politics and the media and how this plays out in front of the, you know, 320 million people of this country. It's sad. And the world, actually. Oh, I think the world's given up on him. The question is the base. And I think that's the question we have to scratch our heads about. We're going to take one minute to scratch our heads over the base. We'll be right back. Start scratching. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your coworkers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that, you know, may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me, because security matters. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Yukari Kunisue. The host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show. And it's streamed live on Think Tech at 2 p.m. every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. All right, we're back. We're talking about the White House and the people in the White House and the breaks in the White House, the breakage in the White House. And one of them is a security clearance issue. Sounds like that was a leak, too. It wasn't a leak. It was a whistle blow. Okay. Let me tell you who did this. Teresa Newbold. And she's been with the personnel security office for many, many years. Shout out to Teresa. Yeah. Well, what you hear in the second or two years is going to go, I can't believe this is true. But she was a whistle blower and she protested that their recommendations of not providing security clearances to a number of Trump acolytes were overridden by the president himself. So she protested. Well, she was given a two-week suspension and then, of all things, her supervisor... Oh, by the way, Trisha is... she has a rare form of dwarfism. And so what the supervisor did is not only lay her off for two weeks, but also took all her files and put it on shelves higher than she could reach to. Adolescent. Two-bestions. Two-bestions. How about a violation of the American Disabilities Act? Oh, yeah. Well, thank you for that. But, you know, this is an example of the kind of attitude that exists in the White House. How dare she... Not only is he an idiot, but he has idiots surrounding him. It's really terrible. Well, and the buck stops with the president because it's his administration. Well, he seems to think he can do everything. Let's talk about Yemen for a minute. So Congress... Both houses are Congress. Pass a bill that says, no more money for Saudi Arabia to prosecute this crazy war, this destructive, sickening war in Yemen. No more proxy war. Yeah, no more proxy war. And they both pass it. Trump says he's going to veto that because he wants to prosecute the war despite how the majority of Congress feels. It's like a national emergency. It's obvious that he's wrong. Any right-thinking, sensible person is going to say, don't do that. It's crazy policy. But he's going to do it anyway. He's going to override Congress and do a veto. And then the Republicans will be able to stop, you know, on the overriding of the veto. So it'll remain in his hands. His veto will stand. Is that disgusting or what? Not surprising. It's disgusting, yes. It's a surprise, you know. He didn't chastise Saudi Arabia for the brutal murder of Khashoggi. Yep. And so we clearly have an alignment between the Trump office presidency and Saudi Arabia. Yep. And nothing's going to get in the way of that. And you know, a proxy war is one of them. Now, if you remember before he became president, he thought that many of the wars that we've been involved with were a waste of lives and money. So what are we doing? There's a way to cross the war. America was left and right. You know, I was thinking, I was listening on the way into what's going on with Maduro and Venezuela, and now there's disease outbreak. You know, all kinds of diseases. And people are dying from these diseases. And Maduro doesn't, you know, let the drugs come in. Now, you could say that Trump, you know, has made a statement to try to get drugs and food and aid in there. But the fact is that he has created this kind of divisive thing as he has created in so many other ways. So Maduro is mad and Guaido is mad, and everybody is divided, and the result is the Venezuelan people. Millions of them, you know, are exposed to horrible conditions. The country is coming down from arguably a first world oil producing country to a mess. It's being destroyed. It'll take decades, if at all, to fix it up again. And I would say, you know, that has failed international policy. It's failed diplomacy. He's not making peace. He's making trouble. That's what Trump is doing. And it's not helping anybody. Same time, he's withholding aid to Honduras and other countries down there. He's putting all this pressure on Mexico. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. It doesn't stop at the border, Tim. No. It's all central and South America. Well, and he's also allowed Russia now to come in to Venezuela. Yeah. And they are. They are actually shipping in all sorts of unknown products and goods. Now, I hope that's not weaponry. And weapons, I'm sure, will crop up Maduro. That's what I'm suggesting. It is weaponry. And, you know, I'm just hoping that we're not going into another 1962 Cuban situation. We are. I think we are. I mean, he creates these divisive situations and then Russia and China move right in. I don't know if he's stupid or decompensating, but this isn't helping us, certainly. We have fallen from the world leader. And we're still falling. And it seems to be faster and faster. Gee. So where is the country now? The base is with him. 47-odd percent. Terrible. And the institutions that should be speaking on this are not speaking. The courts have been corrupted. McConnell has corrupted Congress. This is a pretty bad time. This is a time when democracy and the rule of law in this country and the Constitution is under attack as never before since the Revolution. And I mean, where are the people who should be speaking out? Well, they're called our Senators in House of Representatives on both sides of the aisle. One half of the aisle is speaking out. A small portion of the Republican side of the aisle actually is speaking out. But we need more than just a few Republicans to stand up and override these vetoes of the national emergency. Override the veto of the Yemen involvement. That's when we need them. And now is the time we need them. Yeah, don't give up on the 25th Amendment. And don't give up on impeachment. Because I think it's going to get worse. It is getting worse. It's a new normal. I'm winning my bet. I'm going to win the bet. It will be before April the 28th. We will know what that report looks like. Well, the public may not know, but at least the House committees will know. I think they'll have it. Well, I hope they can make traction. They got a lot of subpoenas out there. So the wheels, remember, the wheels of democracy are very slow and they churn at a snail's pace far slower than our expectation. But I'm never going to, you know, say that we are beyond help and beyond improvement. I sense there'll be other bets between us in the future. Okay. Yeah, oh, yeah, Federal Reserve. He's making appointments to the Federal Reserve of people who are completely unqualified. Okay? And then he's doing something, which he has done before. He's doing command influence on them. He wakes up at 3 o'clock in the morning with his hamburgers. And he says, I want the rates to go down. What's that about? It's command influence. There's a body out there that's supposed to have a certain amount of independence and he's overriding and giving them instructions and planting people who will just be yes men on the Federal Reserve. This is a very dangerous business for the economy. You mean Herman Cain? Yes. No, he's not the only one. I mean, we got a couple of them. And the problem is their plants. And then on top of that, he's instructing them what to do, like he did in all those cases in the military, right? Right. So it's improper command influence. We cannot tolerate a sole proprietorship presidency. Can't do that. Well, it's happening. So it's time, as I said, it's Congress, they need to stand up and do something about it. Now, he claims it's the economy of why the Fed should not be increasing the Fed overnight rate. Yeah. And I suspect it's his personal loans. Because most of those commercial loans are based on a LIBOR index or a Treasury index, and they float. There's nothing fixed with any of his loans that he has outstanding. So every time the Fed does increase the rates, Donald Trump's personal loans also increase, and that amounts to millions of dollars in debt payment, that he wasn't paying if the Fed had just listened to him and cooperated with him. It's unbelievable that a president of the United States with all the power and responsibility of that office would make this command influence and make these appointments for his own personal benefit. And yet, I believe it. I think you're right. And yet it occurs. And yet it happens. And if it happens here on that, we can clearly see it. It's happening in other things on environmental issues, on energy issues, on social safety net issues. I mean, he's wrecking the environment and he's wrecking social safety net. Where are the people? I mean, the system we have, they don't have enough leverage. They should be campaigning in Washington on the streets. They should be campaigning with their respective congressmen and senators. They should be all over this government to try to get the government to get straight. Well, we may never hit that 40... What is that? 43.8% now is this recent favorable ability rating. It was 42.... 43.2% previously. We may not be able to chisel into that, but there is that percentage between the 43% and 50%. And I think a lot of Republicans, especially farmers, they're feeling these tariffs. They're feeling the disasters that they've recently experienced with the floods and the rains. You know, it's hard to support someone when you're not putting food on the table and paying your bills. It's hard to support a president when you've been laid off as a federal worker. You don't even have $400 in your bank account to make the next rent payment. It's hard to support the president when you've been promised jobs that were going to come back to America and they haven't. Well, aside from the plants and the newspapers, you've got plants that the jobs are coming back. You've got plants that the farmers are doing better. I don't believe that. I think it's the same thing as what he was doing in New York when he was in real estate, planting news stories. You've got a lot of friends out there. And of course, the most hideous of all is the gross invasion on the First Amendment by having him, the sole proprietor, manipulate and enjoy this unholy relationship with Fox News. That is so destructive. What will historians say in 20 years or 30, if we last that long, about what happened to the First Amendment during this administration? They'll say it held. Yeah. It held. Just because he has influence over Fox and his loyal broadcasters and in partnership with Murdoch, doesn't mean that he's taken over all the airways of all the social media, all the different avenues now of news sources. Okay. But it's a thread. It's a thread. And the new normal seems to be moving in the wrong direction. And I sense coming on another bet, another lunch. I can only afford one lunch at a time. I know. We'll stretch these out. But it may happen faster than you think. Okay. That's Tom Appichella, Tim Appichella. And we're talking about Trump week, and we do it every Friday. And Tim, how about next Friday? What do you say? Let's do it. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate you having me on. Aloha. Aloha.