The MeidasTouch Podcast - Activism in the Post-Trump Era with Amy Siskind

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

On today's episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers sit down with activist, feminist, author and host of The Weekly List podcast, Amy Siskind. During the interview, Amy discusses her journey from Wall Street Executive to one of the most renowned activists in politics today. We discuss a myriad of topics from GOP voter suppression bills, to how we can hold our own accountable without sounding defeatist and dissect the role of activism in the post-Trump era. Amy also takes us through her experiences covering the Trump presidency and how frightened she truly was for democracy. The brothers then discuss some big Biden wins, our special Father's Day tribute video that made headlines across the world and of course the recent news about Trump suggesting that we should put COVID-positive Americans in Guantanamo Bay (seriously). Make sure you tune in every Tuesday & Friday for NEW episodes of the podcast and if you have a moment today please be sure to rate and review this episode! Thank you! Get your new Meidas Merch only at store.meidastouch.com! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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responsibly if you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, Ben Micellis, joined by Brett and Jordy Micellis. We've got an incredible show for you today. We have Amy Siskind, activist, feminist, author of The List, which was a week-by-week reckoning of Trump's first year. She also hosts the weekly podcast, The Weekly List, where she updates The List on a going forward basis of the descent of America into fascism and how we can combat that and prevent

that descent from being fait accompli. It is incredible to have Amy Siskind on the Midas Touch podcast. And we've always been communicating with her with direct messages and text messages. And so it'll be great to get to meet her and get to actually talk to her on a Zoom chat meeting. The Twitter world is so funny, man. Right. It's like, you know, so many people just buy their avatars. Yes. Right. And that's like, that's like who they are. Right. It's like, it's a defining feature when somebody changes their avatar. You're totally thrown off. I'm totally thrown off of who I'm communicating with.

Absolutely. I think that's why sometimes other than to try to flatter themselves, I think that's why sometimes people keep their avatars from like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, because like, it's such an identifying characteristic. It's like your online persona, but we're really excited to be able to speak to people like Amy. And now that we're going out and actually meeting people in person who we've really only communicated with via Twitter or via email or via phone calls. It's a really interesting experience, right? I've made like best friends on Twitter over the last year, over the last like 14 months. And I can't wait now that to your point, things are opening up to do these Midas meetups and meet everybody in person. Well, you never truly,

to be fair, had friends before Midas. It is, I mean, it's great that you're getting to meet people. It's great that Midas Touch has built your identity of Geordie and you found yourself through. This isn't going to help the team Benz out there, I'm just going to say. The Midas Mighty in-person meetups, as the world is opening up, as America is back, there is nothing that makes us happier than when we see Midas Mighty meeting with each other. we're based here in America, but we have followers across the globe who listen to this. We want to develop Midas Mighty meetups where you get to control your own local chapters. You get to control its own identity, where you meet up. Do you meet up at a restaurant? Do you meet up at a park? Is there a reading list? What do you discuss? And really start fostering and building that activism at local levels. And sometimes when I say this on the podcast, I get messages, you know, hey, Ben, I'd like to start one. How do I do it? And my answer is always the same. Just do it. Just start one. It's as simple as you

communicating out there with other people in the community that you know. You know, just like Midas Touch, we started off with five followers before getting, you know, millions of followers out there. And so just start off small and start up with a handful of friends and have that grow and grow and grow and build your own rules, build your own bylaws. Obviously, you can ask us for help to help promote some of these events, and we'll do our best to do that.

But this movement is your movement more than anything. So pivoting for a second now, as we approach this podcast, this is being recorded after Father's Day weekend. I love that we got to replay our Fred's failure video and that it got huge amounts of media attention from Newsweek, across the board, writing about our Fred's failure video. Brett, talk about that video. Fred's failure was the one video we made last year. This was the first video that, before we released it, I think I consulted a few guys, and I was like, is this like too mean? It's a really vicious takedown of Trump. So the video uses Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father's speech when he's accepting an award.

And he's talking about the meaning of success and basically what makes a successful person and what makes a loser. And so we used all the things that Fred Trump said basically about what doesn't make a person a success, what makes you kind of a loser in life. And we applied all those things to Donald Trump because, of course, they actually fit quite well. And so we put this video out last year on Father's Day, That is so ruthless. Ruthless. You know what, though, when you have a despot who is killing 600 million Americans, you know, you got to fight fire with fire sometimes. And this video very effectively shows Trump's incompetence and really also foreshadowed the failures that we were going to see in the future after this video. I mean, it goes kind of one by one through Trump failing to run a casino. He bankrupted a casino. He failed to run a steak company, a vodka company. He inherited money, which I believe if he had put in some sort of trust or something, he would have actually been

richer than what he ended up doing with the money. He lost his father's money. He became bankrupt himself. For anybody, by the way, out there who thinks that somehow Brett is wealthy or that we are, that analysis right there of finances about putting it at a trust or something, I think should dispel any notion that Brett has a trust or anything like that. that i know basically nothing because i know nothing about finances i know i i once tried to like put a couple hundred dollars in the stock market it didn't go super well for me that's really that's really the extent of my knowledge i remember i put like a couple hundred dollars into amazon like 10 years ago and i was very excited about it and

then amazon started tanking and everyone was saying, Amazon's never going to make a profit ever. And I panicked and I took the money out. And if I kept it in, like, I wasn't like, I would have made a lot of money, but like, I actually would be like, you know, I would have made a decent amount of money despite only putting in a couple hundred bucks. Well, going back to the video, I mean, you're going way, way off topic now. Going back to the video, the funny thing about the video that we decided to re-release over the weekend was that earlier in the week, we're like, hey, let's make another version of this. How cool would that be? But there are honestly just way too many failures to point to over the last year to really make a significant change in this video.

Also, Jordy, the first video was so strong. I know. It's like when a director goes, I'm going to make the sequel to this movie. And you're like, but it was so perfect the first time. You're only going to ruin it. So we decided, let's just relaunch this. And, you know, he gets everything he deserves with this video. And I was thrilled by the reception to it.

I think it's important that we remind people constantly of what this country was like being run under this man, because as we get out of this pandemic and as things return to normal, I think people have a tendency to forget things that weren't that long ago. We have short attention spans and we very much are living in the moment. And what I think that video effectively does is it puts you back to that moment of last year when we were all going through this and really just shows what we were dealing with and what we had to overcome. And look, how you take dictators, and if you listen to the show before, I mean, look, by listening to Ruth Bangea, by listening to all the folks who we have, who are experts on authoritarianism and dictatorships, you take them down a notch.

You show their losers. You show they're losers. You make fun of them. It's not that we're obsessed with Trump. No, we're going to point to all of his failures every day so he can never regain or retake power. I definitely listened to Ruth McGee. You thought that you could trail off the last name and not think that I'd call you. You can't point to me by talking last names and you can't pronounce Smith. You go, Smythe. Ruth, Ruth, Ruth. Well, here's one of the things that I want to also, you know, I caught you there.

Yes. It's up to the listeners to decide. I have no idea what you're talking about. So I'm the fact checker. Daniel Dale, my cell is here. So let me fact check. That's Ruth Benghiat, Jordy, not Ruth Ben-Ghiat. And Brett mentioned 600 million Americans killed by Donald Trump.

It's 600,000, although it definitely feels like 600. That's the kind of thing that the conservative media would jump over and say that I have like mental acuity issues and things like if. Well, let me tell you who has truly who truly has mental acuity issues. It's obviously Donald Trump. And I felt putting out that video on Father's Day again was definitely the right thing when I saw Donald Trump's Father's Day message that he issued through a right wing media network. I don't even know which right wing media network at this point. I forget what they even call them.

Frank. They're all made up names at this point that are that are right of right of Fox. And they're just fucking lunatic networks. But this is what the former president. And it just makes me cringe to to even say that. But his statement was wishing a happy Father's Day to all, including the radical left rhinos and other losers of the world. Now, that's legitimately what he wrote. I mean, Adam Parkamenko basically tweeted, it's nice of Trump to wish a happy Father's Day to the other losers. Glad he's accepting his new club. And then Molly Jung,

Molly Jung fast said a Father's Day message that includes the word rhinos and the phrase other losers of the world makes me think Trump is not spending the day delighting and spending just watch what people are saying and the messaging is just incredible. But this is legitimately the former president of the United States and the former leader of the free world was the fact that it's just so petty. It's like what a toddler would write. And so that is the toddler diaper Don in chief, which makes me think Fred's failure may have not gone far enough. Brothers, the thing with Trump is you can never go far enough because he's that horrible of a human. And every day that passes, we learn more and more and more about how horrible he was. And speaking of the fact that we need to remember what life was like under Trump and constantly be reminded as we're coming out of this pandemic, we got to be reminded about how Trump handled this pandemic. And we're just learning now new information from a new book

by a couple of Washington Post journalists. The book is called Nightmare Scenario, Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic that Changed History. And here is just a sampling of some of the ideas that Trump had to solve the COVID-19 pandemic. So one of the ideas was to send Americans who were overseas, rather than having them come back to the United States. Trump wanted to send them to Guantanamo Bay. No, he didn't. Yeah, this was a real life suggestion. Trump reportedly said, don't we have an island that we own?

He asked aides in the Situation Room in February of 2020 before the outbreak exploded. What about Guantanamo? The aides were shocked and moved quickly to squash the idea. But that did not stop Trump, who circled back and asked again, can we send them to Guantanamo? And this was obviously an idea that was quashed, but it shows you just what was going on in this guy's mind. What about the testing piece, Brett? Did you see did you read that from the book? That was one of the things was in the book they mentioned, you know, and we've we've heard about we've seen Trump talk about we got to stop the testing. But there's this scene that's

written in the book of Trump's depicted in March 2020, shouting at his health secretary, Alex Azar, saying testing is killing me. I'm going to lose the election because of testing. Trump reportedly yelled, what an idiot that our federal government does testing. That was what Donald Trump was saying during that. And particularly the words testing is killing me. COVID is almost killed you, Donald Trump, and COVID is killing the people by not doing testing. The people aren't going to use your words, miraculously disappear from the hospitals. But the sick thing about Donald Trump is if he had his way,

like all of those countries, you know, whether it was India or whether it was Brazil or even Russia and these countries that tried to hide it. And then it's ballooned and become a massive, ongoing, never ending problem. If Donald Trump had his way, we would all know someone who was dying of covid, but you couldn't even talk about it. It would have to be kept secret. And even the thought of mentioning it could lead to your imprisonment. That's the kind of country Donald Trump wants. Now, do we know, is this statement a precursor to when he was on stage and he said, slow the testing down?

I think it was all around the same time. I think it's an amalgam of that was his views at the time. I mean, it's at the same time. He's basically saying that the military and those who have died for their countries right around Veterans Day are losers and idiots is what he called, you know, the people who fought valiantly for our country. And so it shouldn't come as any surprise at all that someone with those sick and disgusting sentiments could care less about anybody or about anything. Trump and the GQP does not care about any of the Capitol police officers who were injured or who were, you know, or who was killed.

They refuse to even talk to these families, even though some of these families were former Trump supporters. How crazy is that, that Trump and the GQP refuses to talk to these families? And then he also, so cowardly, he refused to even talk to the families of the insurrectionists who are now going to have to serve decades in some cases of their life in prison following Donald Trump's orders. He refuses to talk to even the families of the people who stormed the Capitol in his name after he said, we're going to the Capitol. So he's just a fucking sellout at the end of the day. He does not give a shit about those who are attacked, those who do the attacking. He's just cares about himself, a soulless fucking idiot who deserves Fred's failure treatment on Father's Day.

And we've said this before, but I think the thing that is the most apt comparison to Trumpism, to the MAGA cult in many ways is Scientology. MAGA, Trumpism, whatever you want to call it, in many ways is like Scientology for the right or for poor Americans or however you want to call it, in many ways is like Scientology for the right or for poor Americans or however you want to put it. And like in Scientology, once you speak out against the group in Scientology, you become what's called a suppressive person and you can no longer be associated with Scientology. Everyone in your family is supposed to shun you. Everyone in the community is supposed to shun you. Once you become a weight on Scientology in any way, you are excommunicated from that group.

And just like that, once you become a problem for Trump and for MAGA, you are excommunicated from the group. It doesn't matter how much loyalty that you've shown to them in the past. Once you become on the other side of it, even if being on the other side of it is because your son was killed because of insurrectionists and you just want to talk about it, that makes you in the Trump world a suppressive person and you are now the enemy. And that's how he operated the government. That's how this operation runs now. That's really the foundation of today's Republican Party. One of the things I want to ask Amy Siskind,

when we have her on the podcast in a bit, one of her lists mentioned the family of the military member who died in Niger. I don't know if you remember this. There's been so much Trump news that that piece of it was kind of faded from our memory. But a military service member who died in a mission in Niger in Africa, I think Trump and General Kelly were all like defaming this family because they were being critical of why this mission even had to take place in the first place. And so I like when, you know, there are, you know, people were saying during the election, I don't like it.

I mean, but it just shows the utter stupidity of the argument. Well, we have no evidence that Trump said, you know, that the military were losers and idiots who sacrificed, you know, for the country. He's literally said a ton of stuff like that in public. He goes after John McCain and called him a loser. Like all of the data points are out there. You don't think that he said the same thing he said in public privately, like literally almost word for word what he's already said. Like he's told you these things. There literally is recording. No one reads

that and goes, that's not the Donald Trump I know. I see Amy Siskind right now in the lobby. I want to bring her in right now. Let's take a quick message. And when we come right back, we'll have Amy Siskind on the Midas Touch podcast. No, that's not America. What's up, Midas Mighty? We've got new merch in the merch store. Brett, tell them about it.

New merch line this is in addition to the hit lines club democracy vax and relax we now have two amazing new designs in case you haven't seen them yet we got the it wasn't rigged you're just a loser shirt fan favorite totally a fan favorite i am loving it and it's just just my favorite graphic to see all the time. It just makes me smile to see that phrase because it is so true. And today we are announcing the Midas Touch For The People line. We got a For The People tee. We got For The People mugs. We got For The People totes. So get yours today at store.midastouch.com.

And keep sending pictures of you rocking your Midas Touch Pro Democracy gear. We love to see it. Thank you so much for all your support. That's store.midastouch.com. Let's go. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. We are joined by activist, feminist, author of The List, a week-by-week reckoning of Trump's first year, also host of a podcast by the same name, The Weekly List Podcast, president of The New Agenda, and former Wall Street executive, Amy Siskind. Welcome to the Midas Touch Podcast. Thanks for having me, guys. And so, Amy, we've always kind of talked to each other, communicated with each other on Twitter, always appreciated your messaging. It's always incredible when we kind of get off of social media and have just real conversations with people. And even before recording, it was

just so great to see you and meet you. You know, we live so much on social media. So just great having you on the show. Likewise. Great to be partners in this battle together. Appreciate you guys. And this kind of partnership in this battle is so fascinating. And your story is so interesting because we call ourselves at Midas Touch accidental activists. Like we never viewed ourselves as being activists. Brett was an editor and had a corporate job. Jordy had a corporate marketing job. I was a partner and am a partner at a law firm. And we just decided we had to do something when the pandemic was raging and Trump was giving those ridiculous press conferences. We said we have to do something. And so we started Midas Touch. And your story from Wall Street executive, a lead trader at Morgan Stanley,

the first female managing partner at a major Wall Street firm focusing on distressed debt and very complex financial instruments. How did you go from that to then becoming, you know, an activist in this space and particularly one of the most prominent voices out there exposing Trump's corruption? So two steps to get there. One, I left Wall Street in 2006 to spend more time with my kids. And I'd been doing it for 20 years and wanted a new challenge and to start to give back. And the first thing that I got involved with was when Hillary ran for reelection in the Senate. And then since I knew her and a lot of her infrastructure in New York, when she launched her campaign for president, that was a rude awakening for a lot of us who are old enough

to remember. And the amount of sexism in our country, and at that point in our party. We've made a lot of headway since then in our party and in the media, but the new agenda, which I co-founded after Hillary dropped out and still president of, was initially focused on speaking out against sexism, because when Hillary ran the first time, those of us old enough will remember, there was nobody speaking out against sexism, because when Hillary ran the first time, those of us old enough will remember, there was nobody speaking out against it. So that was my entree into politics, was really Hillary. But my organization decided to be nonpartisan. So we spoke out against sexism, against all women, pushed for more women in leadership in both parties and corporate America

and in every venue. And obviously, the world has changed a lot since 2008. The idea of being nonpartisan became strained once Trump took office, as did everything else. Our organization shifted. But what happened for me in 2016 is because of that role, a lot of people were saying after Hillary, quote unquote, lost, what do we do now? And I'm a Jewish American,

and I was very in tune to the fact that Trump had all these authoritarian traits. And I read up about authoritarianism. And one of the things that really stuck with me was the importance of writing things down. So I started with a list in November 2016, without any grand ambition or plan. I mean, I think like a lot of us, I had plans for my life after Hillary won and had to pick ourselves up and start fighting for our democracy. And the list, as it grew and my name became better known as an activist, it became more of a leadership role as well to unite people around

what was happening. Because initially, those of us who spoke up were viewed as being hysterical, or various forms of hysterical. A lot of us were women. So it lended itself quite easily in 2016 and 2017 to these crazy women who are speaking up about authoritarianism before the largely white men started to understand we were at risk of turning into an authoritarian state. And then it became something that was widely accepted. But we, you know, I personally thought after inauguration that the Republican Party would right itself. We can talk about that, but that obviously has not happened. No. And not only has it not happened, I think the exact opposite has

happened. There's a just a full on embrace of fascism. But let's go back to the list. The list was the book was published in 2018. And then subsequent to that, you know, I think all of the warnings that you had in the list, all of that indicia of these authoritarian tendencies kind of went from indicia to kind of outright embrace to leading an insurrection against, you know, leading an insurrection against our government. So what did you see kind of after the book was published in terms of those characteristics you identified fully becoming ingrained and institutionalized within the White House? So throughout the four plus years of the project, what I noticed is, first of all, the number of broken norms increased each week. The first week was nine broken norms. The second week was 22. Like when people ask me, were you happy that you did the list? In those weeks, it made sense. By the time the first year was over, I was spending 20 hours a week. By the time Trump's time in office was over, it was 300 not normal items a week.

I was working till 11 or 12 every night to keep up with him. So what had happened was as he got away with things, he kept pushing boundaries further and further. And he was also able to staff up his regime. So he had a lot of hands helping him deconstruct our democracy. And so the exercise that I did in those four and a half years until he left and Biden took office was to basically leave us a roadmap back to normalcy. Because you can already see even before the election and in the aftermath, the Republicans trying to rewrite history that this didn't really happen. And these things were, there wasn't an insurrection. It was just some tourists who happened to be in Washington, D.C. that day.

And that is what happens in authoritarian regimes. But what I saw early on and what history tells us is the importance, again, of writing these things down so we can gradually see in factual order what happened. The book actually was just something that I did because, if you'll recall, in early 2017, the new FCC chair that Trump appointed, rolled back access to broadband. And there was real fear, as has happened in past authoritarian regimes, that our access to information would disappear. That also happened early on in my weekly lists, like things would disappear, the environmental page would disappear, an apology to the LGBT community from the State Department would

disappear. So the reason I actually put the first year in print was for fear that the list would get wiped away. Once it became known that I was doing the project, the Russians were attacking me. It was coming from all over. So that was really why I put year one in print, so it would be saved. And then the project just continued. Eventually, I'll put the other years into print, but they'll be much, much longer. Year one was 400 pages. Year two, three, four will be 1500 pages. And that's part of the issue.

But they are being archived. The list, the podcast is part of a collection at a major university that will be announced soon. So my real concern was that 100 years from now, when people look at this time and how close we got to an authoritarian regime, the fact that battle's not over, they'll understand how it came about. And it's very precise and recorded in history how this happened to us. And I think when you look back at history, you know, Hitler's first attempt at a coup failed and then rallied support and institutionalized, you know, what became Nazism. And that became something that overwhelmed the country. The list that you had deals with kind of Donald Trump breaking institutional norms.

And you talked about years one through four. You know, what does the list look like today? You know, post Trump, you know, with this disgraced authoritarian in Mar-a-Lago who led a failed coup against democracy, yet you still have an entire political party at this point, the Republican Party, that is now, this is not an exaggeration, despite the fact that some people like to say you're still being hysterical. You go, no, the Republican Party is an anti-democratic party that wants to install a dictator and destroy all our institutions. What does that list look like post-Donald Trump? So the exercise itself continued until inauguration day in a separate section between the election. The election was week 208.

So, you know, we went through 208 weeks of him, which is four years times 52. And then I did a monthly section is I would keep up in my podcast what I called, you know, a trip back to normalcy and starting to cover the things in words that we were doing to come back to where our country was pre-Trump. from leadership. And then when Senate Republicans voted against the January 6th commission, that this near fall into authoritarianism was not over, that we were actually in the third or fourth inning. So what I've done is shifted my podcast back to Democracy at Risk. I've started to do in-person events on Facebook and Clubhouse to alert people to what is happening and to start to activate them. I'm co-hosting these with like Swing Left and Vote Forward and Sister District to start to get people revved up again for the battles that come. And for me personally, you're right, it's not just Trump, because somebody smarter, more competent, like a Cotton or a Cruz, could basically use what he did

as a roadmap. I think that's how the Boston Globe editorial board has described it. It's like a trail map for authoritarianism and perfect it. And they're doing that now with voting and so forth. So I might be at this again. I thought I was done with it. I'm trying to, like many of us, catch my breath and resume some part of my old life before Trump. But I'm very aware that in 2022 or 2024, I could be doing the same exercise. And it's about authoritarianism. It's not about Trump. It's experts in authoritarianism advised to keep a list of things subtly changing around you so you'll remember. That's the byline of every week. So I'll continue the exercise if they start up at it again.

Amy, how do we bring this message to the people? You know, one of the fascinating things, too, about you on paper with your background, Wall Street exec. Someone wouldn't think right away. Well, embracing these progressive ideas, embracing the Democratic Party. Yet for me, you know, people kind of have similar views about me. You know, I view this as existential. I view it about human decency. I view it as pro-democracy. I view it as a shared humanity. But how do we bring those messages outside of, you know, the kind of, you know, the echo chamber, if you will, the progressive Twitter sphere, and have these conversations with others? And should we be

having these conversations with others outside of kind of the bubble that we speak to each other on Twitter? Right. So I think what we were able to do in 2018 and certainly in 2020 was set up a construct where it wasn't Republican versus Democrat. It was democracy versus becoming an authoritarian state. And I believe that is still the operative construct. And the reason that we got so many people to vote, and I'm sure you can, you know, name this in your circles as well. I had friends who didn't bother to vote in 2016 or voted Republican because they were fiscally conservative. A lot of those people became alarmed. And that's why we had the record turnout in 2020. And you can't overstate what we did in 2020. Because not only did Biden win

306 electoral votes and by 4 million votes, more importantly, we batted down an authoritarian regime that quickly. Usually, these things last for decades. And what happens is people become numb. They give in. They just accept that it's happening and vote for that. They feel powerless. And that's part of the reason that Trump and these other authoritarian-like figures, wannabes, can rise to begin with is there was, if you've read the early articles, this is in my list, about Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon and the Mercers, they were drawing on old data that said

people wanted a strong man. And we saw that kind of sweep around the world. And now we're hopefully seeing a shift with Bibi gone in Israel, some of the other authoritarian figures being defeated, that right now democracy is prevailing. We just have to make sure that stays in place. The battle is certainly not over, not won. So I think that's the way you present it. And I think Biden is very keyed into this. Biden was not my first choice, second or third, but he was the right person for this time. And I think he's done an amazing job. And I think he has been able to transcend politics in a way at a time when it's needed. And he understands, he said on

Memorial Day, our democracy is in peril. And he understands that just like with FDR in his era of time, he has to prove that democracy and government benefits people and get them off the strongman vision that a lot of our country has had. So it is very much still a battle for our democracy. These are policies, the things that Biden is pushing forward and the Democrats are pushing forward have bipartisan, large bipartisan support. Voting rights in West Virginia has 79% support from Virginia voters and 84% by Arizona voters. So it does have bipartisan support with the American people. And that's what we really need to key in on. Amy, let's talk about voting rights a little more. I too was incredibly relieved

to hear President Biden come out so forcefully in defense of voting rights, in defense of democracy, rising to the moment at a time when everybody seems pretty petrified of what's going on on the other side. I know a lot of people don't have as much faith right now in the Democrats in the House and the Senate trying to figure out what their sense of urgency is and pushing forward legislation and getting stuff like the For the People Act passed. But you actually recently had an opportunity to meet directly with Senator Schumer's staff about the urgency of voting rights legislation. So I'd love to hear your perspective as background. And I have been pushing this notion once it became very clear that what the Republicans had in mind were to fix the things they weren't able to do in 2020 to overturn the election. I mean, these measures that they have put in place,

not only our voter suppression, which they've been doing as a game plan for as long as all of us have been alive, but it also adds in things that would have allowed the 2020 election to be overturned. Things like in Texas, allowing judges to overturn election results. And in other states, to allow the state legislatures where the Republicans are in control to overturn their state's results. So when we say 2020 was a dry run for 2024, we mean it. I mean, this is happening in plain sight. So I think one thing people need to understand is pushing Democrats and speaking out vocally

about Democrats not doing enough and needing a sense of urgency, it doesn't make you a Republican. It makes you a U.S. citizen. These people report to us. Our government is accountable to us. We as citizens have the responsibility to protect and preserve our democracy. And that was why I did the list. That was Eleanor Roosevelt. When I visited her home the day I started the list, Val Kill, the government is the people. Okay, so people need to home the day I started the list, Val Kil, the government is the people. Okay, so people need to understand this is part of the democracy with a small,

deep process. And I have been pushing people on my social media platforms to be in touch with their members of Congress. The voting rights measure has already passed in the House. So it's really about the Senate. I happened to go to an event for Senator Gillibrand, who's my other senator, just so happened she had an event near where I lived, and I showed up. And this was me in the room, waving, waving, waving. And she called on me. I said, what are we doing with voting rights? And I was so, I've known her since she was a congresswoman. I've known her since 2006. I consider her a friend. And her answer was just not strong. It was, oh, we have to have a dialogue. We need to have people write letters to the editor, da, da, da. I was like,

what? And a couple of people asked her follow- up questions, but I was so concerned there was no firm plan. And I kept tweeting about it. And then Schumer's people reached out to me. And I, you know, I'm very involved in New York politics. I love Chuck Schumer. I think he's a lovely man. I don't believe he's the right person for this time. I think we need a street fighter. You're dealing with, I mean, it feels like McConnell is still in charge because you hear his voice and his nonsense so often. You barely hear Schumer. So his people reached out to me and asked me to come into New York City and meet with them.

And I said, no, we can do a call or Zoom. So they ended up coming up here in my town to meet with me and have coffee. And I told them very plainly, this is not okay. The urgency, the lack of urgency, you folks are about to leave for two weeks for July 4th recess, five weeks for the end of August, the summer recess until mid-September. And then it's too late. I'm hosting an event for Val Demings in September in my home, and I'm starting to reach out to people and they're like, we raised all that money in 2020. What happened? You know, what are they giving us to run on? So I really honestly went really hard. His staffers are lovely, but I went really hard at them. And I said, I am going, you know, you need to get these two things done, voting rights and infrastructure. So we have something to talk about when we're starting to raise money for the 2022 candidates to keep the House and Senate. We're not going to keep majorities unless we can prove success and prove successes. And what do you want us to do? You know, if I hear that line one more time, all you're doing is Mitch McConnell's

work for him. They'll take the House and the Senate and they've already told us it's over at that point. So it's really these next few weeks are cannot be more important. And too much people did tell me that they will cut short July 4th week, if need be, the two week vacation that they're scheduled to have. It's technically resets,

but they say, oh, he works every day. He's done, like he's doing virtual meetings. He can do a virtual meeting from DC.C. He can stay in D.C. and vote. Guess how many like of Biden's nominees we have for judges we've passed through. But McConnell passed 262 of Trump's lifelong nominees in those four years. We thus far have passed four. So my thing to them was like, stay in D.C. You do not need to be back in New York for five weeks to hold Zoom events, which is what you're doing now. I said to them, tell me where you're going to be at town halls, because myself and people would like to see him. Oh, no, we're doing virtual events. Like, great, then stay in D.C. and do those at night and vote during the day. Because unless you accomplish things, we get back in September, it's a short time before the holidays. And then in 2022, everyone's on the campaign trail. So these next everybody who's

listening to this, you got to push these people. And the other thing they said that is super helpful, especially with West Virginia, Arizona, to a lesser extent, cinema seems to be a little bit better, is have your friends or anyone you know in those districts call their senators and write letters to the editor. Every day their staffers print out letters to the editor that mention mansion or cinemaema, and they read those. So they need to be hearing from us. If 84% of people in Arizona want voting rights, Sinema needs to see that in the newspapers. So that's broadly what I spoke about. I told them I will lay off him, you know, calling for him to step down as majority leader if he accomplishes those two things over the summer. Otherwise, you're going to be hearing from me a lot. And I'm not alone in this belief. A lot of the indivisible leaders, I'm very close and involved with all of New York politics. They're hearing the same thing from the indivisible leaders in

New York as well. We have to be pushing them very hard to accomplish things because that's why we got everybody in office. And from a selfish perspective, that's how we're going to stay in office. Like, don't you want to do this? Didn't you just want to like reach across the table and be like, how could you go on vacation when democracy is on the line? What are you doing? I like, I can't even fathom it.

Yes. I think they understand how short and precious our time is here, that if we get to September and we haven't passed those two things, we're doomed in 2022. I mean, think about it. What are we telling people we're going to run? I mean, I those two things, we're doomed in 2022. I mean, it's think about it. What are we telling people we're going to run? I mean,

I raised a million three for Senate races in 2020. And I said to them, why did we lose all these races? I Barbara Bolliess or Gideon, what happened with all these people? No answer. Now I'd like to know what they would want us to do differently in 2022 that we have really, we can, we have a strong candidate, candidate like Val Demings. I'm hosting her because I feel like she can lift up all of Florida. She can help us win congressional seats too. What are we doing to recruit more Val Demings? And what are we doing to support them and give them a message and things that we've accomplished to win? The Republican voters just need to show

up every four years and everything's done. All the dirty work is done for them, like it's being done now. But we don't have that in our party. So it throws everything back on us. We, the citizens and activists to be loud and get people woken to what's happening now again. And the Republicans are saying it now just out in the open. They I think it was Ronnie Jackson the other day who basically said, oh, yeah, the way we're rigging the maps, you know, we should win the house easy. Like we don't even have to do anything. And you're like, what did he really just say that in public? Like that's how brazen they are being. And meanwhile, you have Democrats who seem to adhere to all these just norms, all this all this idea of precedent and that democracy, American democracy has been conducted in a certain way. And that scares me personally when you have the other side who has pushed aside all those norms in the past and have said, no, we're going to do it our way. These are the new

norms. And then you have Democrats come in and go, well, if that's how you want to run this government, I guess that's how things are. You were talking about the broken norms. We bring our knives, our barter knives to the gunfights and they, I mean, and Garland, I'm glad the Democrats are pushing back at Garland too. I was about to ask you about that. And so we have, we like, we have Garland now at the DOJ, you know, defending Trump against E.G. and Carol. We have all these things which on their face look pretty appalling and then you

dig in deeper and it has to do with DOJ norms and things like that. And it makes you want to rip your hair out. Like, what do you think Democrats need to do to fight and to show that they're actually here to, you know, to deliver? Well, I saw with Eugene Carroll's case, the 22 House Republicans led by Nadler, who's the House Judiciary Committee chair, wrote a letter to Garland and the DOJ to release Barr's thinking about the four-page memo that basically nullified the Mueller report. The list is getting longer and longer. And I don't have a legal background, so I'll leave it to Ben. Maybe you can dive in here. But I understand like in concept, the concept is he's trying to protect the institution, but he needs to understand there's not going to be an institution in 2024 when we let Bill Barr be the, and Jeff Sessions, basically spy on our media, spy on our members of Congress,

and have no ramifications for it. These things again and again, where our DOJ is not there to protect a president from defaming someone who accuses him of rape. Like what are we normalizing here for the benefit of the institution? So I'm glad to see our members of Congress, some anonymously, some not anonymously speaking out in both the House and Senate about what's happening with Garland. It also just gives people a sense of hopelessness. And it's the same thing we talked about with 2022. We all showed up. We voted.

We got in 2018 and 2020, we took back the House and then systematically the Senate and the White House and all the work and all the money we raised. And I'm sure you guys are hearing it, too. What do we have to show for it? I mean, Biden has done an amazing job. I take nothing away from Biden, you know, in dealing with the vaccines and getting us vaccinated and getting relief to people who need the relief. And that was super important.

Those happened, you know, a lot. Those are months ago. And we've done nothing concrete since that we're going to be running on. And people feel like the wind is being let out. And that's, think about where we were four years ago, we were setting up indivisible groups, we were getting organized for 2018. I am trying to rally the troops to do that, but I'm sure you guys are seeing the same. It's super hard right now because people are feeling a sense of defeat and despair. Yeah. and politics really is a game of momentum.

And so throughout this discussion, this is all about how could Democrats develop policy, push policy and pass policy that is going to help Americans and keep it going going forward? Because I do want to acknowledge that daily COVID cases are way down. The pandemic has completely been turned around.

You know, there are over 300 million vaccines in arms. Job growth is on the rise. GDP growth is on the rise. People are feeling tangible effects of actually being able to go out to restaurants and see their family and go back to work. And that's a big, big deal. But at the end of the day, we want to keep this going and keep delivering wins so that as we get closer to the next elections, that people don't forget that this wasn't normal life. All this that was accomplished was because of hard fought battles by Democrats. I think one of the interesting things that we had to deal with, though, over this past year in the pandemic was activism had to be kind of fully digital because we couldn't leave our house. We couldn't really take to the streets in the same way.

And you famously led the We the People March, which was a big march in 2019, I believe, like right on the cusp, right before kind of the pandemic hit. It was three days before Pelosi took the vote for the first impeachment. And that was one of the main purposes, to pressure them. The goal was pushing for the impeachment. Yeah, three days days later that Tuesday, we marched Saturday and three days later they took that vote. So you've seen firsthand and have been involved firsthand in,

in pressuring officials to do things like impeach Trump and take to the streets. What's the version today of us kind of taking to the streets and organizing when Democrats have power in the House, the Senate and the presidency? What does that sort of on the street activism look like? And how now that people are vaccinated and could go out? How could we use that going forward? Yeah, so people are asking about marching again. And I think if we get to September, and we've not passed voting rights, we've not passed infrastructure,

it might be time to march again. I never thought we would have to march when the Democrats were in control of the House and the Senate and the presidency. But we might be at that point because I think a lot of people understand our democracy is still in peril. And that's what the We the People March was about in 2019. It was about our democracy, that we the people are our government. And that is still something I think is happening. I think what's the problem is, which is getting a little better because people in the last few weeks have really been calling and emailing and doing things to really agitate for action. But there was a sense, I definitely felt that when I sat at the event for Gillibrand, there's a sense of complacency, that things are going well. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, we did a lot in the first hundred days.

Biden was amazing. And Biden will be able to run on that in 2024. The rest of you are not going to be able to run on that. It's just, people do not want to hear the nuance of the little things that the Senate added in and the House added in. That goes right over their heads. Biden will get credit as he is due for what he did to get the vaccines out and his relief plan that was his plan. But I think what we need right now for all of us and what I'm pushing everyone to do on my social media pages every day is to make your voice heard. And if they do come home over July 4th break for recess,

ask them like I assume, or where are your in-person events? Really? You don't have any. So why do you need to come back to district? What's you know, you need two weeks vacation when and another five weeks in August. But if you are holding in-person events anywhere in the state, I want to know where they are and I want to show up. And I'm going to bring my friends along and I'm going to have signs. I'm going to say pass voting rights or whatever it is.

These next few weeks are really key. And I think, again, if we find ourselves in September, it might be time to organize another march. There's nothing like the in-person impact of standing near or at the Capitol. I don't know if we'll be able to do that now after the insurrection, but peaceful protests, which we know how to do, to show up and have the Democrats see us, the people that elected you there, and say, this is not okay. You people are not pressing enough with enough urgency to save our democracy and our time in the majority is fleeting. It's more than a quarter over. That sounds amazing. And I'm definitely there. You tell me where and when and I'm there

for sure. Amy, as you know, we're brothers. I'm the youngest brother, fortunately or unfortunately. And what the brothers seem to do when we have guests is they just hog the mic. It's like an ongoing bit at this point. And I can only ask one question while we have fantastic guests like yourself. So I guess with that, wrap it up, Jordy. See what I mean? They're so mean. They're so mean. You're the hip blood man with the baseball hat. I'll take that. I'll take it. And no, Amy didn't call any of you guys hip. She's trying to avoid commenting on your glasses so she's like thank you thank you so so i'm going back to what we were talking about they're not prescription glasses so he wears it doesn't matter she still loves them she's still there's no basis it doesn't matter she still loves them

it's been made clear okay going back to a more serious topic and going back to what we were talking about when we had first started the interview, when you're curating this list of like all of the institutional norms that Trump was breaking day in and day out, and the list is getting bigger and bigger. Was there one, or is there one in particular that stands out to you that after you finished writing it, you're like, holy shit, what did he do? What did I just write? From November 2016 till January 20th, 2021, I was at it with him every day. I woke up to Trump, went to bed, thinking about Trump, went from spending 10 hours a week to 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 hours a week, keeping up with him. So he was part of like my daily existence. And when you're that

swept up in it, there were a couple of times where as I was pushing the send button, I was literally in tears. And the list gets published late Saturday every week. One was Charlottesville and what happened and the response to it. And the other was after the attack in Niger, when the body came back of one of the soldiers. And there's a picture with that weekly list of the mother and her daughter over the casket. And that Trump then proceeded to attack them. And Kelly, who was defense secretary, attacked them. And that was just, you know, if you think about it, it's so hard to compare what life was like in those four years where you'd have to wake up every morning, turn on your phone, find out what horrible things Trump was saying or doing, and how much I appreciate

what life is like now, what a relief it is. But it was a short relief and the same set of angst that I had in those four years and leading up to those four years, I can feel it bubbling up again because the ground we're standing on is so shaky and how easy it is without the Republican Party writing itself for us to revisit that. I think the most heartbreaking thing overall was the way he treated Americans. And the gaslighting was exhausting. It exists now with the Republican Party.

And that's why it's so important that Schumer and others speak out. But the gaslighting, the lies, it's all part of authoritarianism to make us feel helpless and to just accept what is happening. We can never go back there again. I'm afraid we're in jeopardy of heading back there unless we start working now and get active. Well, Amy, it's great to be on your side, fighting shoulder to shoulder with you. We appreciate your time today on the podcast.

We do hope that you'll come back as a guest in the future. Thank you guys. And thank you for all your work and for taking the initiative to see something wrong and to step up and do something about it. I appreciate you guys. Amy Siskin, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We will be right back after these messages. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Great interview with Amy Siskin. I am going to start listening to the list. I have not before.

I follow all of her tweets and I read her book, but have not listened to the podcast. I'm going to check it out. It seems very interesting. Very, very interesting and data-driven. I love when people give me data. It's one of the things I like about this Midas Touch podcast though, is that, you know, we have a good time, but at the end of the day, I want people to leave here knowledgeable on the issues. And speaking of which, have you guys seen the newest, it's not really necessarily the newest, but like the GQP just tries to gin up all these fake controversies. We've talked about some ridiculous ones, cultural wedge issues that they try to inflame people and make people angry. But the most recent one, which was Jen Psaki, had a great sake bomb with gas prices.

It's like the GQP keeps going back to gas prices with everything going well, with vaccine in arms, with everything great. They like to freeze one specific moment in time when people weren't driving because of the pain. Yeah. It's not only not a thing, it's also a fundamental misunderstanding or not even a misunderstanding because they know. But it's a fundamental misreading of how supply and demand work. Like, yes, when nobody drives and everybody sits home, there's not as much demand for gas and the prices are lower. And when the entire world starts going back to work and starts getting back in their cars and the demand for gas goes up, guess what happens? The price goes up. This is basic supply and demand 101. But in this new GQP post-Trump era, everything is a crisis. It's a crisis at the border. It's a crisis at the gas. It's the Dr. Seuss crisis. It's the tech, the big

tech crisis. Every day there's a crisis du jour that we all have to be scared about. And gas prices are today's crisis du jour. But Jen Psaki did a first. First, before you go into a Jen Psaki does, let's talk about the the setup here is Jim Jordan's tweet on this fake gas crisis that they've invented. They say average gas price, June 2020, two dollars, 21 cents, June 21, three dollars and.07. That's President Biden's economy. So that's Jim Jordan's tweet. I like talking about $2.21 when the unemployment rate was through the roof and all Americans were fearful that they were going to wake up and live the next day because of the horrible mishandling of the global pandemic. But go ahead, Brett. Yeah. So, you know, Jen Psaki was not having it and she couldn't even wait until Peter Doocy or

whoever other idiot reporter of the day wanted to throw this question at her. She wanted to get on top of it right away. So she commented to Representative Jordan and she said, you forgot to mention that gas prices are the same now as they were in June of 2018, or that this time last year, unemployment was 11.1%, and today it is 5.8%. POTUS agrees, Joe Biden, that families should not pay more at the pump. That's why he is opposed to GOP proposals to raise the gas tax. And I think that second line was incredibly smart by Jen Psaki here, because you're having Republicans start to try to tout, oh, there's this gas crisis. Look how much we're paying at the pump. Democrats are doing this again, just like they wanted to take away your Dr. Seuss, just like the crisis at the border, whatever fake things they're throwing at. And she goes, OK, if you're so concerned with with gas prices, then why are you the infrastructure that we would be putting a tax on people earning

more than $400,000 a year on millionaires, on billionaires. You said that wasn't okay with you. You said instead, our taxes should be focused on working people. We shouldn't be raising the cost of living on billionaires. We should make working people pay for this. So I think it's smart that Saki has reframed the issue in terms of, you know, who's actually helping the working class here. that they're doing, the messaging they're bringing is how do we help Americans? I just hope and I want our Democrats in the House and the Senate to follow this lead with the same passion, with the same tenacity. I did the joke last time. I won't rehash it about the analogy I made with the opposing side here, the GQP, what they're selling is let's just say they're not selling things that are productive or helpful to the American people. As Amy Siskind said, and we've talked about consistently, there is bipartisan support amongst Americans for the agenda of the Democrats.

The GQP is just coming up with all of these, you know, fake crises, contrived cultural issues, stoking racism in order to keep power. Look at the Iowa poll. Have you seen this? The Iowa poll shows a significant drop of support for Chuck Grassley. I mean, Chuck Grassley, he's legitimately he's like 94. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Pigeon Grassley.

Pigeon Grassley? Pigeon Grassley? Yeah, I mean, his tweets reflect a real serious issues. I mean, just overall in terms of just what's going on. I mean, the fact that he's there and serving, he can't, if you read one of his tweets, it's beyond just scary that he's one of the leaders in the GQP. But in a poll published Saturday night by the Des Moines Register, 64 percent of those surveyed in Iowa said that it's time for someone else to occupy that seat compared to 27 percent who said they'd vote to elect Grassley to an eighth term in 2022. Seven out of 10 female voters said they wanted vote to elect Grassley to an eighth term in 2022. Seven out of 10 female voters said they wanted to see him replaced. Those numbers match pretty consistently to what we saw in the general election with Biden. People don't want to see this politics of hate, this politics of being anti-American that the GQP represents. Democrats just need to proudly go out there

and champion their successes. That's why I loved hearing about Amy Siskins activism and how she was actually going on the front lines and leading these marches and seeing what we could do going forward now that things are opening up. Because when you see numbers like this, you realize that Democrats are the majority. I mean, we've all seen that map that this, you realize that Democrats are the majority. I mean, we've all seen that map that shows, you know, at first the Republicans like to show the map that looks very red and they say, oh, look at all the heat map. The heat map. Yeah, that this is the look how much, you know, Republicans control. Look how many Republicans there are.

And then there's the gif that peels that back and shows actually if you show the population centers where people are, on doors, if we are getting people to the polls, we could make change because people don't like these representatives. People don't like Grassley. McConnell has a horrific approval rating. And it's at the end of the day, it's a numbers game. It's a numbers game of getting out our side to vote. And that's why we can never be defeatist about this. We need to use any attempts to try to thwart democracy as fuel for us to get out there and work even harder and register voters and get people to the polls. And the numbers speak for themselves if we're going to go through what Democrats are doing for Americans. I know Amy was saying that, you know, there's a lot more to be desired. And I agree with her. We need to be

pushing. But the White House released this great graphic that shows the amount of daily COVID cases where we were at the time, 194,409 cases before President Biden took office, where we are now 11,433. There were more than 3,000 Americans dying every single day before President Biden took office. Now we are at 285. There were 117,558 daily COVID hospitalizations now in 1972. And you could go down the list from unemployment to job growth, to GDP growth, to consumer sentiment, to restaurants, bars, food service sales, things that are open. People like going back to work. People like living their lives. People don't like these crazy politicians like Chuck Grassley. You said a lot of smart things there, Brett, but I have to disagree with you on one major thing,

and that would be your pronunciation of gif. Now you're saying it correctly by saying GIF, but it just really just, it grinds my gears when you pronounce it the way you did. I would probably honestly, like GIF is the more natural saying for me, but I understand what the real way of saying it is. And because we're in a professional setting doing this podcast, I wanted to say it by its true name, which is Jif. I will concede, even though I prefer saying it the other way. So bringing it back though to politics, the reason why it's important to say things by its right name, Jordi, is because ultimately people want predictability. People want to have normal lives. You have to follow science. We don't follow science because it's called science. We follow science because it helps our lives.

The methods that are used have been shown as a way to derive and get out the truth. In Trump's world, you can cover up all of the testing. At the end of the day, people know that others are dying. And when you see other people dying around you, you're less likely to go to bars and clubs, or if you do, you're more likely to die. Okay. So that is why that model doesn't work. And I assure you, assure you that if Trump had won, we would not be going out to Dodger games. We would not be going out to sporting events. We would not be, you saw this, Seat Geek saw ticket sales value and website traffic exceed pre-pandemic levels. They sell event tickets. So not only are people buying tickets for events, it's exceeding.

And that's not- It's a great economic indicator. It's a great economic indicator. And it's because people feel safe. That confidence is an important metric. And as people are feeling safe, as those metrics that Brett mentioned are all reflecting a positive direction, we have the crazy psychotic dictator. He's now figured it was a smart move for him to join with Bill O'Reilly. I think Trump is running out of money, just to be honest, because this is like one of the most desperate moves in the world. So also it shows that like if you ever know, like a band when when they can't headline, they try to like join another band to try to make sure the crowd gets filled. Like if Trump could headline, he would headline on his own. But Trump is doing this speaking tour with Bill O'Reilly and he wants to charge people $100

to $7,500 per ticket. Of course, O'Reilly was ousted after his sexual harassment claims came to light when he was with Fox News. And Trump is like pitching this tour like a third rate salesman. He goes, my tour with Bill O'Reilly is getting a lot of attention. I'm looking forward to it. Maybe tickets would make a great Father's Day gift. Like this is the former president selling the U.S. Stakes again. Oh, my goodness.

And he's and I have no doubt he's running out of money. That's what that shows. I think he's broke, man. I mean, I look at this and I have no doubt he's running out of money. That's what that shows. I think he's broke, man. I mean, I look at this and I see a broke person. And I also think he's way overestimating his appeal at this point, especially without the law of the White House and the presidency. I think that these rallies, if they happen the way they are currently planned, I think they will look much more like the Tulsa incident, which was just about a year ago today, where the crowd was basically empty.

I mean, these are big venues him and Bill O'Reilly are going to, like 20,000, 30,000 seaters, like American Airlines Arena in Dallas, like big venues like that. I don't think he could pull that kind of crowd. And the funny thing about the announcement was he actually really upset the QAnon audience by doing this because, of that, they hear that actually later in the year in December, Trump and Bill O'Reilly are going on a tour and they are starting to think, oh my, wait, were we, why two? So one Telegram user,

and hats if the Patriot takes here for unearthing this one, she goes, okay, I guess Mike, and this is all caps. Okay, I guess my question is Trump coming back? Why would he be doing a tour through the end of the year with O'Reilly? Something doesn't feel right. And this is obviously this is obviously in response to because this lunatic thinks he's going to be president again in August. And she's upset that he's doing this tour through the summer, through the end of the year.

I mean, at the end of the day, you feel bad for these people, but you really don't either because they themselves have gotten themselves so far down this wormhole, this QAnon, this craziness. They're too deep to really even pull back at this point or pull out. This is the type of person that would storm the Capitol again. I have no doubt about it. It's why though we need to continue. It used to be speak truth to power, which is still very important, but now it's critical that we speak truth to crazy cultists and to explain to them what the reality is. They're living alternative cultist realities. But I am buoyed by the fact that people like Amy Siskind, activists out there who are on the ground, are fighting day in and day out. And Amy's one example. There are countless others. And those

listening, you are part of the movement. You, like us, are accidental activists. The fact that you're listening to this podcast right now probably surprises you that you become so politically engaged and that these issues are so important and so critical to you and to your family. It was funny. I guess I'll close with this, brothers, is that during the Father Day weekend, somebody posted about some of the grassroots work that Midas Touch did. And someone was like, I thought you were only like a video group. And it's like, no, videos are the means to the end. Videos are a small portion of what we do. But ultimately ultimately we hope the videos build a grassroots movement, build fundamentals where people can knock on the doors and people can make the phone calls and send

the text messages. And we had and have Midas Touch, Midas Mighty followers, Midas Mighty, who send tens of thousands of text messages, who send hundreds and thousands of postcards. And you individually have a compounding effect. What you can do with how you can convince your family, your family can convince friends, those friends convince their family. That's the way democracy works. And so after you listen to this podcast, after you're inspired, do what Amy Siskind said. Call your senator. Call your member of Congress. Explain to them how critical it is that they fight for democracy. Explain to them that the will of the people will be heard. As we mentioned a few minutes ago, we are the majority. We have ideas that are winning because they help

people. Let's be loud. Let's be proud. And let's go out there and let's change the world together. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. This has been a real fun one. Ben Micellis, Brett Micellis, Jordy Micellis, signing off and telling you, shout out to the Midas Mighty!