The MeidasTouch Podcast - Battle for the Soul with Edward-Isaac Dovere and Grant Stern

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

On today's episode, the brothers sit down with TWO incredible guests: Edward-Isaac Dovere & Grant Stern. Isaac is an award winning journalist, lead political correspondent for The Atlantic & author of his new book, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump. Dovere provides an incredibly unique perspective as someone who had traveled alongside the 26 Democratic Party candidates as they were battling it out for the Presidential nomination. Grant Stern is a renowned independent journalist, author and Executive Editor for Occupy Democrats and TheSternFacts.com. Stern was recently forcibly removed from a Kevin McCarthy presser for asking about the Capitol insurrection commission. The conversations are rounded out by the brothers discussing the latest COVID mandates, infection updates and how children are now being put at risk due to political posturing from the GQP. Lastly, the brother's discuss former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his bombshell testimony over the weekend which included "frightening" information about what had occurred at the Justice Department during the waning days of the Trump administration. If you enjoyed today's episode please be sure to rate, review and subscribe and as always THANK YOU for listening! Buy MeidasTouch Merch here!  Subscribe to KREMLIN FILE! --- 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

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Welcome Midas Mighty to the Midas Touch Podcast. Ben, Mycelis, Brett, Mycelis, Jordy. My cell is all together in L.A.

Separate homes, but all together in the same jurisdiction. I got to say, I'm relieved to see you live and in the flesh because I was I've got to say I was concerned about it. Listeners of the show may remember there was a brother Olympics that had taken place this weekend and I stayed well out of it. I stayed neutral. I stayed far away from the events. I knew this was nothing I wanted to be involved with. And then as I saw the updates roll in on Twitter, because where else would you want to share updates of all the personal things happening with the brothers then to hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter? I see a video that Jordy posted, a TMZ style video of you, Ben, limping out to your car, your girlfriend running behind you a bit in a panic. And I was concerned and then I didn't hear from you for a while. So are you okay? What's the

status of the injury? How did the Brother Olympics go? The people are looking for answers. The people will get their answers shortly, but I want to let the people know who will be the guests on this Midas Touch podcast. We have Isaac Dover, award-winning journalist, lead political correspondent for The Atlantic, who authored a new book, Battle for the Soul, inside the Democrats' campaign to defeat Trump.

We will talk with Dover about the continuing battle for the soul of this country. We also have Grant Stern. You know Grant Stern from all of social media. He runs the Stern Facts. He runs the Dworkin Report. He's the executive editor at Occupy Democrats. And of course, you know Grant for yelling at Kevin McCarthy and getting roughed

up by Kevin McCarthy's essentially secret police down in Florida. Minority leader, you said that the 1960 revolution created tyranny on the island of Cuba. And I am asking you a question. It's not a Democratic or Republican issue. So why do you oppose the January 6th commission, sir? Why do you oppose the January 6th commission, sir? So we will be asking Grant about that, his experiences with Death Santas. And we also got a special guest at the end of the show, Jack Cacciaralla. Jack is going to be making a major Midas Touch announcement. Jack was leading a petition to be interviewed on the Midas Touch podcast if he got 5,000 likes. He far exceeded that by getting basically everybody other than President Biden to tweet that Jack should come on.

Seriously. And so based on on Jack's grittiness and how impressive his efforts were and us getting to know Jack, we have a big announcement that Jack will be making at the end of the show. Okay, back to the Brother Olympics. Let's address it. The Brother Olympics commenced with a tennis match. Ben versus Jordy, one set. Ben won six to three. Pretty dominant performance by me, if I do say so myself.

The problem was, despite me believing I was wearing the right tennis shoes, you know, I was not. I got two horrible, horrible blisters on both feet, and I had trouble walking by the end of the match. We tried playing a basketball match to Jordy's credit. Jordy would have beat me, I believe in the basketball match, but I was too crippled to really get through the basketball game. Jordy beat me 11, three, but I wasn't, I wasn't really trying, but I don't want to blame that as an excuse. Jordy was a better basketball

player than me. So I just want to stay that and be excuse. Jordy was a better basketball player than me. So I just want to stay that and be honest about it. But I think I would have made it closer had I been able to. Yeah, I'm not going to just let you get off that easy just by admitting that I would have beat you in basketball. Let's just say one thing really quickly. This whole thing started off. It was only supposed to be a basketball game. That's what we were doing. And Ben knew that he would lose in basketball. So he started to throw all these other sports out there. He wanted to play Cornell. He wanted to play tennis. He wanted to do this. He wanted to make a whole day out of it. Just looking for any game possible. Love to. So we played tennis. I think tennis, though, tennis was a big. Yeah.

Tennis, though, you're eight years younger than me. You should be excuses. The excuses. They're just pouring out. And I think, by the way, that video that I posted of you, it's like a three second clip. It has like 100,000 views right now on Twitter. And Brett, I gave it to him before we started recording. There's actually a little bit longer. I'm going to roll in a longer video while we're speaking right now to just show the full extent of this limp and this injury.

And I mean, this is just I felt bad. Like, as you can see, Ben's kind of hobbling. This is a much longer extended version of the video. And frankly, I know has a hundred thousand views. I want to say though, guys, I had an inside source planted there at the brother Olympics. I heard that you both fought valiantly in your efforts. I heard Ben's main strategy was to tire Jordy out at all costs. That was his main goal. I heard that both you guys were actually like phenomenal tennis players, like professional level. I heard you guys are like both ridiculously talented at tennis, which I knew who knew, who knew. And I'm thankful I did not participate. And Ben, I wish you a speedy recovery. You're not as young as you used to be. We understand it. It goes with the older brother territory. But I am glad to see you guys both standing. And I think this one to one will

have to be settled in the future to decide who really walks away with the gold medal. I love it. Let's get into the news and let's try to get through a lot of news in a short period of time because we've got some great interviews for the Midas Mighty. First, let's talk about infrastructure. The Senate voted 68-29, breaking the filibuster, the stupid motherfucking filibuster, to close down the debate. You like how I bring the news like that? Just throw that in there. To close down debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And that Senate bill is expected to be voted on this week. Infrastructure week. Infrastructure week.

Exactly. And so there is a compromise infrastructure that is bipartisan that we believe will be passed in a bipartisan fashion. But then I think that the Democrats are going to try to pass some of those other things that are more controversial in there through the reconciliation process. And Ben, let me tell you what's more controversial for these Republicans. More controversial is Medicare expansion for vision, dental and hearing. It's child care benefits. It's paid family and medical leave. It's pathway to citizenships for dreamers who have lived here their entire lives. These are the things that are so controversial in the Republican world. right after this. Because as Democratic leadership right now, what Schumer and Pelosi need to do is they need to walk this tight rope, right? They need to pass this bipartisan bill because there is such important stuff that we need and have needed for years and years in the infrastructure

bill. But they also need to get this $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill passed because there's a progressive wing of the Democratic Party who is upset a little bit with the bipartisan bill and doesn't want to vote for it unless they're guaranteed that we pass this reconciliation bill. So Schumer is trying to kind of walk the tightrope right now of making sure that we pass this bipartisan bill and making sure that we make the entire all wings of the Democratic Party happy with the reconciliation bill. When Schumer came out today and said that he's going to immediately move to pass the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, I was very happy about it because I definitely want to see that bill passed. I

think it's important. At the same time, I just wanted to be like, hey, hey, let's wait till we pass this bill. And then let's hit him with that because I don't want to jeopardize the bipartisan bill. I don't want any excuses from these Republicans. And so to me, I'm like, hey, I love that. I love it. But let's keep it quiet. Let's keep it quiet till just a couple of days from now. And then we go for it. Did you hear, Brett, about, you know, switching gears for a second, did you hear about the Senate judiciary testimony that was elicited from the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and Richard Donahue, the acting deputy attorney general, and Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general. They gave testimony on Friday. They gave testimony on Saturday. It's not always usual to give

testimony on the weekends. Also, the length of the testimony, we had Jeffrey Rosen testified, I believe, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for over seven hours talking about this. And the reason why he rushed so quickly to set up this hearing was because he didn't want the Trump people to have any sort of lawsuits or anything that could possibly delay his testimony. He was preempting that move that could prevent them from telling the truth. So it's big on Jeffrey Rosen to step up. I think these names are about to become a whole lot more popular. These people are going to become household names on the nightly news between Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donahue, and Jeffrey Clark. Jeffrey Clark, reportedly,

and we've seen the document, he wrote a document and wanted it to be signed by Jeffrey Rosen and other people at DOJ that was going to try to sow doubt in the election results. And what he wanted to say was falsely, of course, these are total and complete lies and fabrications. He wanted to say that the Georgia election was basically rigged and that the secretary state of Georgia had to throw away the election results and pause on certifying the election for Joe Biden. This is something that came from Trump and Jeffrey Clark. And this is another smoking gun in the case against Donald Trump for this election interference and his attempted coup that obviously finished with, not finished with, that continued with January 6th in a violent fashion and continues to this day. This testimony,

the fact that they are taking this testimony on a Saturday, the fact that Rosen sat there for over seven hours, the fact that Donahue sat there for over five hours, this is not something that the Senate Judiciary Committee is taking lightly if they are taking this testimony on a Saturday. And we need to watch and look how this evolves. I think this is a really, really, really, really big deal here. Donald Trump. You know why? He hasn't said jack shit about it. He hasn't done one of those rambling press releases, rambling, whatever you want to call them. He has avoided talking about this at all costs. He knows he's fucked. That is a good point. He definitely, in any other circumstance, would have said something. He was too busy criticizing Team USA and the Olympic team and calling people who voted for American infrastructure traitors to weigh in. We have that clip, Brett, of all of the GQP. We posted a good one. And I forget who the source

is. So definitely give the source of where it comes from. But we posted this compilation video on the Midas Touch Instagram video. And let's just play the video of the compilation of all of the Republicans attacking the United States Olympic team. They've given Americans yet another reason just not to watch. We are raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles. About a year ago, I could barely walk down the street or sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes without horrible pain of weak people. i could barely walk down the street or sit in a chair like simone biles several teams including the u.s women's soccer team losers led by the poster child of woke arrogance megan rapinoe i will not celebrate the women's

soccer team we get it and that was by twitter user oh man i'm gonna bet you they're not gonna just a bugazella cat on Twitter. Look, check our Instagram and you will see a link to that. But that's what Republicans and the far right media have been doing for the last two weeks. They've been actively rooting against our police, actively rooting against the military. They've been actively rooting against Team USA in the Olympics. I mean, this is really unheard of territory that is just comical. It's just sick and demented.

It's like that expression, jumping the shark. Fox News has jumped the shark ages ago, but this is just a new bag of tricks that it's low even for them. When you look at the medals, the United States won 113 medals, 39 gold. The next closest was China with 38 gold and 88 medals. Russia was 20 gold, 71 total medals. Then you have Japan, 27 gold, 58 total medals. The United States did incredible in these Olympics under very difficult circumstances where they were in Japan. They were there with strict COVID protocols, with the Delta variant spreading, and the United States had some incredible, incredible results. And so the fact that you have all of these GQP members out there just disparaging, disparaging the Olympic team

just goes to show you, you know, who these people on the team. And we said, we said the other day when Kevin Durant wrapped himself in the flag after the team USA basketball team won in the gold, it was such an incredible moment. And we were together at the time and we were like, holy shit, the Republicans are going to hate this. They're going to lose their freaking minds, which should be an absurd prediction. Why would they lose their minds over the American basketball team winning the gold, draping themselves in the flag and celebrating? But of course, we were right and they did. And the right wing media cannot get enough of disparaging these athletes who work so hard for America.

Even just today, I saw that Fox News posted not Team USA wins, you know, incredible matchup. The article that Fox News recently posted was Kevin Durant, Draymond Green were drunk during Team USA celebration. That's seriously the article they posted today. Yes. If I won an Olympic gold medal, you're damn right. I'm popping a bottle of champagne and celebrating. That is not a story. After I beat Ben on one-on-one basketball yesterday, I threw back a couple of wines. That's what people do to celebrate. I said a couple of wines. A couple of wines. Are you still drunk, Jordy? I don't know. A couple of wines. What's happening?

But it's no surprise from the party that's rooting for COVID. You got to think, who are they rooting for here? They are rooting for domestic terrorists. They are rooting for COVID. They are rooting against America. Those things all go together, right? They all go together. And you're seeing this in an active way. You're seeing viral loads in Florida reach such high records that experts are saying if Florida was another country, United States would ban travel to it. You are seeing children filling up ICU units, videos of children on ventilators across the country. It is truly horrifying to see. You're seeing Texas be a total disaster in this. And yesterday we saw Governor Abbott literally playing the fiddle

while his ICUs filled up. You've all heard the story about how Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. Greg Abbott literally was playing the fiddle while Texas burned yesterday. And we are in a dire strait. Personally, I think we need some executive action or something to help out with the efforts on the ground in Florida and in Texas and in these red states that are just being so overwhelmed. This is an emergency situation. We're taking some steps now, though, to write the course here. I saw today the Pentagon is going to require members of the U.S. military to get the COVID-19 vaccine by September 15th, according to a memo obtained by AP. I think that is the smart choice that we got to be doing right here. And this is no different than what's

happened throughout history. In order to get in the military, you needed to have a physical, you need to have certain vaccinations. When anthrax, remember anthrax was being sent through the mail after the World Trade Center attacks was big, the military mandated that people take a vaccine to prevent from anthrax. You could take this way back too to George Washington, who forced his troops to get inoculated for smallpox. This is something that's been in our history and it's important. We can't have a military force be susceptible to a deadly disease. It makes our country weaker and Republicans want to continue to make our country weaker, but I'm happy that the Pentagon is stepping up and doing what is right for the troops and not what the Republican Party wants,

which is for our troops to frankly die. One of the issues about pushing for executive action, though, is you still have people like Governor Death Santas, you know, people like Senator Rand Paul, who are out there, not just providing disinfo, but attacking the CDC every day. I mean, what a bizarre video from Rand Paul. I mean, play this video where Rand Paul, like in this dark room, looks like big brother on steroids, starts talking about how like the biggest threat to America is the CDC.

And while you watch and listen, remember that he got vaccinated. It's time for us to resist. They can't arrest all of us. They can't keep all of your kids home from school. They can't keep every government building closed. Although I've got a long list of ones they might keep closed or might ought to keep closed. We don't have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats.

We can simply say no, not again. So I'm going to say this about Brand. Paul, he is an ophthalmologist. He is not someone you would go to if you contracted COVID. I would going to tell you, please listen to world-renowned epidemiologists. Listen to experts in this field. Listen to Dr. Fauci and not the eye doctor who was board certified by a board, ended up leaving that board after disputes, and literally created his own ophthalmology board to certify himself to practice as an ophthalmologist. Let's not trust that guy. It's basically he created a fake medical board where he's their member because he couldn't actually get certified by the actual board that's supposed to certify individuals. What's with them on the what's with Republicans and doing these fake committees and these fake boards?

It sounds like is this like what Giuliani and Janellis did when Giuliani far goes back, Jordi, to what Congressman Swalwell said, which is for these GQP members, being a member of Congress or being a member of Senate is truthfully the only job that they're actually qualified for. While other people are getting jobs in the Congress and Senate for Democrats and independents because they want to help the country, for GQP members, this job has all the perks in the world and Senate for Democrats and, and independence because they want to help the country for GQP members. This job has all the perks in the world. And to his credit, Bill Maher did a really good rant on this as well on Friday. And I know Bill Maher has been a bit controversial with some of his takes

lately, but he did, he did do a really good rant though. It was a good episode. It was a good episode. And he basically said that, yeah. And he said that these GQP Congress people, basically it's the only job in the world that they could ever do. There's no other job where you could act this crazy and still be employed. It was the only job in the world where you could be dead and actually keep the job at the end of the day. Or when you're dead, your spouse just gets the job automatically.

And so that is one of the strange aspects of Congress. But at the end of the day, they're spreading this disinfo, their strange view that wearing masks and not wearing masks is somehow their biggest civil rights issue. I just want to say this. I say this in all the podcasts. Nobody enjoys, like, you don't wear the mask and go, oh, that feels so good. That mask. I love I love wearing my mask. You know, and nobody says, hey, I love social distancing. Well, there's some good aspects of social distancing. I love social distancing. Oh, my gosh, that's my the best. But people do this because it is what is best for our country. It is what keeps us safe. And we know it has a purpose as

responsible individuals to keep children safe. We're hearing these stories about children dying to keep future generations safe and to be able to go back in and enjoy all of our freedoms. The virus is a real thing and people we know are really dying out there. So stop with this bullshit. And we're seeing in polls over and over again, though, that people are looking at these GQP tactics with disgust. The polls are showing that Democrats' independence are repulsed by these GQP tactics. But what we need to do as Democrats is own our being responsible. We are the adults in the room that is the United States of America. And as we go past infrastructure, as we support vaccines, as we support keeping our kids healthy, we need to be the ones loud,

proud, yelling what we are doing and own these issues because these are democratic issues. These are democratic issues. Democratic issues are democracy issues. I want to talk more about this when we get back from these messages with Isaac Dover, who wrote an incredible book about the battle for our soul. It's a battle that existed in the last elections, and it's a battle that is taking place each and every day. We'll come back and speak with Isaac.

We'll come back and speak with Grant, and we'll finish off this great podcast with our special guest, Jack Cacciarella. We will be right back after these messages. Got me fired up. No, that's not America. The White Chocolate Macadamia Cream Cold Brew from Starbucks is made just the way you like it. Handcrafted cold foam topped with toasted cookie crumble. It's a sweet summer twist on iced coffee. Your cold brew is ready at Starbucks. What's up, Midas Mighty? Just wanted to take this moment to thank you

for the incredible outpouring of support for our new podcast, Kremlin File. You can get Kremlin File anywhere you get your podcasts or you're listening right now. Make sure to search Kremlin File in your podcast app and listen. Thanks to you. Kremlin File is a top eight podcast in the United States. This is the definitive look into Trump Russia. We are so excited to share it with you. And don't forget to get our Kremlin File merch as well. We got a great free Navalny shirt at store.midastouch.com, along with all the Midas Touch merch that you know and love. So check that out. Keep supporting Kremlin File. And this week's episode, it's a good one, guys. It is

compelling. It is riveting. It is fascinating. And I can't wait for you to hear episode two and beyond. Check out Kremlin File anywhere you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. We are joined by Isaac Dover, award-winning journalist, lead political correspondent for The Atlantic and author of a new book, Battle for the Soul Inside the Democrats' Campaign to Defeat Trump. Isaac, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. It's always great to be here. Thanks for having me. Isaac, I want to talk about a recent article you wrote, Biden's Strategy, Treat Trump like a crazy person. Tell us about Biden's strategy here and why he thinks it's advantageous to truly treat Trump like the person he is, a crazy individual, as opposed to actually engaging. Yeah, some of this is about who Biden is and his sort of theory

of dealing with people, which is that you can have a fight with them directly, or you could try to bring down the temperature on the fight. And the way to do that is to not really engage with it. Somebody screaming at you, then Biden wants to say, I don't need to scream back. That's always how he is. Now, particularly about Trump, what he and his top aides feel is that Trump is more a topic for reporters in Washington, people who are most engaged in politics and who are very clear on where they stand on politics, but it's not something that the large majority of Americans are thinking about most of the time. Now, they may be wrong on that, but that is their theory. And so they want to figure out, okay, well, what do you do when the political world wants to talk about Trump all the time, but they don't want to talk about Trump all

the time? So the solution that they've come up with is not to engage him as another president, as an unequal footing, but to be pretty much dismissive of him, to treat him like he's crazy, like the headline says, to say, okay, well, if somebody asks them about something that Trump has said about vaccines or about the election fraud or any of that stuff, to say, this is essentially from any guy who could be on Facebook posting and not say this is the former president of the United States speaking to the current president of the United States and have that. They do it for a couple of reasons. In addition to that larger political strategy, they also know that it kind of drives Trump crazy and they enjoy that part of it too. And it seems like that's not just limited to Trump. With Governor DeSantis, someone asked the other day,

well, what do you think about Governor DeSantis' policies? And Biden said, Governor who? Right. This is not a one-off thing. This is how they have chosen to engage with that whole sphere of politics, to not say that this is a legitimate debate in their minds, to say this is just silliness. And again, to them, it keeps them from getting off their message and keeps them strong on where they want to be, but also has that added benefit of getting into the heads of people in their minds. So we're eight months in, though, to test that theory.

You think it's working? It's hard to tell. We'll start to see a little bit of actual empirical evidence when we get to the New Jersey governor's race and the Virginia governor's race in November. Those are two states that obviously, both Democratic in recent years, but have been more Republican territory in years past.

Right. I think New Jersey, Chris Christie was the governor there just four years ago this time. Right. And if Phil Murphy, the governor there, is able to win reelection, he'll be the first Democratic governor in 44 years to be reelected. So we'll see there, is there some kind of resurgence of republicanism in, again, heavily suburban states, right? And in states where there has been some republican appeal in years past. Those are always the bellwethers, right? Those races both went for republicans in the first year of Obama's term. They both went for Democrats in the first year of Trump's term. It looks right now like Phil Murphy is going to get reelected in New Jersey without much of a sweat. And it looks like Terry McAuliffe has the edge in Virginia. If they're bellwethers, then you'd think, okay, that's good bellwether for Biden. If that happens, then we'll have to see what also goes into the

swirl of inflation, all these things and school closings, if that happens, then we'll have to see what also goes into the swirl of inflation, all these things, and school closings, if that happens, and what happens with the variant, all these things that come together. It's really, I have said a lot of times that after 2016, one of the lessons I learned was to not make predictions publicly. But really, in this environment, with all these things going on, I don't know how anybody's making predictions publicly about what's going to happen. Have you seen these Terry McCullough emails?

It's a little bit off topic from what I wanted to talk about, but they have some of the most incredible headlines I've ever seen. Like you'll get a subject from Terry. It'll be like, why are you doing this to me? You know, and there'll be like deeply personal shots at your soul. That's like my entire inbox from candidates. I get them every day, like eight times a day. That's because you guys are getting Democratic fundraising emails.

It's actually interesting to see the difference in the way that Democratic fundraising emails and Republican emails go. And obviously, this is all, these are all beta tested. They're doing this for a reason. Democratic emails, for the most part, are this kind of like, it's terrible. We're losing. It's all over. And the Republican emails, for the most part, have this feeling of like, you disappointed us. You are failing us.

You are failing what you're supposed to be doing. That's so true. And it really goes into the mentality that Democrats have and Republicans have. That's so true. I need like a psychological assessment of this and what it means. Like put together a voter profile. Yeah. And there is obviously data science to it. They see which emails are getting opened up. And those emails that go to Democrats, I've noticed this for years, that the emails that go to Democrats, that Democrats always make fun of, like, oh, my God.

That seems to be what triggers Democrats to open and to give money. It appeals to your emotions and care. And for Republicans, it's just to like destroy their souls as human beings. Like you freaking asshole. You will be castrated if you do not support. They're daddy issues. It's you failed me. This is exactly why we've coined the term BDSM Republicans out there. Jody tries to bring that up as often as possible on the show.

You may have coined that term. That's not one that I know. In the political circles, Isaac, no one's talking about BDSM. That hasn't come up. All right. Well, we're starting it. It's a movement. It's a movement. One of the things also that is energizing Biden, though, are things like infrastructure, things about building the country, you know, and reaching out to all Americans. And he's spending less energy, I think, focused on the issue of eliminating the filibuster. And in your article, you point out that, you know, Biden and those in his inner circle almost think that that's falling prey to this kind of elitist

trap over time, a highly partisan issue. Look, the filibuster, we all think should probably be eliminated. It doesn't really make much sense, but it's not going to likely happen. And so Biden wants to avoid focusing on that is what your sources are telling you. Well, yeah. And also it's that everybody that that you guys know that listens to this podcast may know about what the filibuster is. But most people don't and most people don't care about the filibuster. They care about what's going to happen in their lives. Now, that may be affected by the filibuster, obviously, and what we see happen on infrastructure is caught up in that. But filibuster, reconciliation, this is not what voters tend to move on for the most part. It can energize the base, which is important. But what Biden thinks is that you have to do things that are going to make a difference in people's lives, really financially in people's lives, that people will care much more about stuff like the child tax credit, right, that started

going out last month, a couple hundred dollars into the bank account of almost every family in America that has children. Now, the question that they have to face is when it's over that or the money that'll go out for, that has been going out to small businesses from the American Rescue Plan or whatever will come out of the infrastructure plan is how they connect people to the idea that Democrats did that for you. Joe Biden did that for you. And that's what they're really facing here. And they've been struggling with.

When I talk to a lot of Democrats in Washington, whether it's officials or operatives, pollsters, they're concerned that that's not carrying through so far. On the tax credit, for example, I think it was three weeks ago, I went to an event that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi did in the Capitol, and they had a blue sign up that said Biden Child Tax Credit. And they were trying to get people focused on it. I haven't seen any event since then that has been done on this. And so the trick here for the Democrats is not only to get these things through so that they're providing money and making an impact in people's lives, but make people feel like it actually is connected to what the Democrats have said that they've done.

Well, you know, in one sense, it sounds like it should be fairly easy to do because they are the ones doing it and they are the ones delivering it. So what what what are you seeing? What makes it so hard to break through with the message? That's the truth here, that they are delivering it while it appears that in most states it's Republican governors who are the reasons why there may have to be some closures again. They're the reasons why they're suffering taking place in their state. I mean, there's a reason why the advertising industry is a multibillion trillion dollar industry. It's you have to convince people things. You have to say it a lot of times when, when candidates campaign and, uh, uh, operatives will talk about things like you have to have

seven touches, right? Like to get somebody to vote for you, you have to, uh, have commercials or ads or whatever, all the different ways to get to vote. And it takes sometimes six, seven times to get and say like, okay, all right, I'll go and vote for candidate X, right? You have to do that. It doesn't just happen. And the Republicans are not sitting back and just letting this go. They're pushing a very aggressive strategy of talking about what they're saying Democrats aren't doing and raising attention to things like whatever you think of it, critical race theory or crime going up or gas prices going up. And so if the Democrats leave this as a vacuum, not responded to in a full, full way, then

of course the Republicans are going to win. And it seems particularly absurd that there are Democrats who are struggling to figure out how to get this message out when they do have certain things to talk about, right? And they haven't figured out yet. Again, that tax credit showed up in the bank accounts of millions of Americans. And you can't just expect that they look at it and they say, oh, that tax credit I see on my bank statement now, that must be because of the American Rescue Plan that was passed by the Democrats that no Republicans in the House or Senate voted for. And therefore, I will vote for it.

That's not the way it works. There needs to be a much more effective strategy that Democrats have if they hope anybody really connects with them over it. What do you make of over the past kind of week or so? I've noticed the shift of Republicans kind of expressing their public support of the infrastructure bill, often to the protests from Fox News. You saw Maria Bartiromo pushing back against Bill Cassidy when he was talking about how he wanted to pass this bill. We saw the Senate voted last night, 68-29, to close down the bait on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and move it to an actual vote. Where is this? It just seems so foreign, right, to have this sort of bipartisan appearance

in Washington. I just, where do you think that's coming from? I think it's foreign because we just have gotten used to Washington not working, but infrastructure is actually the thing that's supposed to be the easiest to get done, right? The easiest to get Republican and Democratic support for. Over the decades, no matter where you are, which state you're in, Washington, it shouldn't be weird that Congress wants to move on infrastructure. But because we're in this polarized environment, because every six hours or so Donald Trump sends out another statement saying how terrible Republicans are for working on infrastructure, it has this feeling like, oh, if it passes, that'll be wild, right? But look, Donald Trump wanted to get

infrastructure done. And probably if this same package of legislation had been in front of the Republican majority Senate and Republican majority House and the Trump White House, this time in 2017, four years ago, right, it probably would have passed in the same way, probably would have passed with democratic support in the same way. I remember a conversation I had with Chuck Schumer in December of 2016, so right after Trump won. And he said to me, look, if he wants to work on infrastructure, we can do infrastructure. We can get it done. And he was actually in the book described this conversation that I have with him.

He was like totally scrambled, like Democrats trying to figure out, like, what do we do now? Right. He would have been there to support it if it had been a bill like this. Right. Not the kind of there was one point where they were going to invest a lot of money through public-private partnerships, and Democrats weren't in favor of that. But this kind of bill, which is a compromise bill, and there will probably be another bill that is the not-compromise bill that the Democrats pushed through in their own way, and Republicans might have done something like that themselves four years ago. But this is actually what's supposed to happen. This is actually what's supposed to work. And these are

Republican senators who want to do it because they believe in it and also want to do it because some of them are up for reelection next year or in 2024 and want to be able to say, look, that project in my state, I helped pass. One of the issues that Republicans had in the spring was that there was a lot of popular stuff in the American Rescue Plan. And because that breakdown of the vote was on partisan lines, zero Republicans in the House and zero Republicans in the Senate voted for it, but was popular out in the country with Republicans and Democrats, then they got caught in this place where they were saying, oh, this great project that we have going. And there was a lot of attention to the fact that they were touting things in a bill that

they had voted against. Certainly did not stop them from taking credit for the bill that they voted no on. Absolutely. And I remember what you were saying. I remember Chuck Schumer. I remember Nancy Pelosi saying, we want infrastructure. Donald Trump put the bill on our desk. We'll sign it.

We want this too. Was Trump just too incompetent to put words to paper? What was the holdup? Sort of. I mean, I think that what you see is that his attention was never there to really do it. Infrastructure is not exciting, right? Joe Biden has paid more attention to the ins and outs of putting this bill together and putting the negotiations together. And some of it is that it's just it has proven over the last 10 to 15 years easier to get the Republicans to say what they're against than to say what they're for in Washington.

And that's unfortunate, but we're seeing play out in a lot of ways. And so you saw that happen over Obamacare too, right? It was 60 plus votes to get rid of Obamacare. And then it was like, okay, so repeal and replace, like what's the replace guys? And they didn't have the replace, right? And so I think that it's the combination of those two things that kept it from happening four years ago or any of the other times that led to it becoming this joke, infrastructure week. When now it really does seem like there's going to at least be a Senate vote on infrastructure. Should be said, that's a far distance from the House voting for it and from it getting to Biden's desk. But we are moving further along than ever happened in the Trump presidency on infrastructure. Now, Isaac, you famously traveled with the 27 Democratic nominees or candidates, sorry, as they were traveling, battling it out for the nomination.

Biden's demeanor, has it changed from when he was on the campaign trail to what we're seeing now today? First of all, I was only 26. OK, don't. There's a difference in Biden as president, as I think would naturally happen. Right. When you're the president, that's it. You're the president. You're a big deal. You have people. There's literally a song that gets played when you walk into the room. You have a really important plane. Everything is pomp and circumstance. I think for Biden, it's also being inaugurated after winning the presidency, after winning the

nomination was this full affirmation, right, of his theory of how politics works and what he was putting forward. If an infrastructure bill can get done, that is the next stage in his theory. People who said like, oh yeah, you think you can make deals in the Senate or you think anything can actually get done in Washington. And he says, yeah, I think you can. I think that there's a way to do it. He's being proven right more than, let's say, two years ago this time. I was just thinking about it. Two years ago this time i i was running around in the iowa state fair uh trying lots of fried things that were not really good for my heart probably but like and biden gave this stumbling speech there and he was a mess at that point in the campaign nobody would have thought then that he would be in this position

now to actually because he was saying i think we can still get things done in Washington. Right. And and so far, we'll see. The American Rescue Plan, again, this is this goes to the Democrats failures, I think, here in promoting things. The American Rescue Plan is one of the most significant pieces of domestic legislation that has ever been passed just by the size of it, right? And you wouldn't know it because nobody talks about it at all, right? And if he can do that and he can do the infrastructure plan, then he will have a really significant presidency just in those two bills, right? It doesn't feel like it right now. And it may not ever feel like it. But to him, you asked about his demeanor, this all just makes him a little bit more confident, a little bit more the guy who will say about Ron DeSantis, Governor who? Or put on that tan suit and just walk out to

the microphones and know that the tan suit is obviously a thing because of Barack Obama. Right. Like that's that's how he's approaching this now. Getting a little bit personal for a second of the 26 candidates. Who is the funniest? Oh, the funniest. I mean, Andrew Yang would always have a bunch of good lines. Biden has a really sarcastic sense of humor that can throw you off because you're not expecting it, right? Because he is like, you know,

the austere old man who is former Vice President, President of the United States. But when I was talking to him for the book, I said to him that we were going to call it Battle for the Soul, and he said to me, yeah, you know, the difference between you and me, pal, is I actually

believe it, Right. Like, and just like sticking me with that. How about the smartest? I don't know what we're judging this on, like SAT scores. But I, look, I mean,

I mean, Buddha judge and Warren were generally seen as the, the brainiacs of the race. Amy Klobuchar is really sharp too. What about maybe the one that was like kind of the most out there we're like whoa that's just kind of like an interesting person you could interpret that however you want yeah i mean i i gotta tell you when i think when i sat down to write the book and when i think back on it part of what appealed to me about writing this book about through the the prism of the race was that these candidates are all interesting in different

ways i mean like marion williamson was like the kookiest candidate in the race but like i don't know in like the most uh in such an interesting way i think uh like they're pretty much all complicated characters i'm trying not to sound like a politician and not answer your question here um yeah it depends who you're looking for, right? Like Cory Booker, who never went anywhere in the race, right? Part of the thing that unlocked him for me is that everybody always thinks he's trying to be weird, that he's reaching for this weirdness. But that he just is a weird guy. He is a weird guy whose dream like his 50th birthday he went to go see the avengers movie and then they took him off the trail to go to comic-con in san diego at one point uh for like

an afternoon uh but he also like has a talmud in his office and like we'll talk about martin luther king and even the the candidates who didn't do so well there were a lot of interesting characters I'm going to look back at my thing here these are all my buttons right I mean I don't want to tell you who's not interesting that they were all interesting because there were a bunch who were not interesting

Tulsi Gabbard is a weird person I don't know interesting I wrote about this in an article at the time. She didn't make it much into the book, but we were in the town in Iowa where there's this thing called the Wing Ding Dinner every couple years. And it's done in the ballroom, which was the last place where Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper played before the plane that killed them. They took off from that gig and the plane crashed.

And there's a monument there that looks like a jukebox, the sort of records on the jukebox come in. And we were sitting down right next to it. And it's playing the music, it's Buddy Holly music. And she looked at me, she said, what is this? What is this monument? I said, well, it's playing the music's buddy holly music and she looked at me she said what is this what what is this monument i said well it's because of buddy holly and all that and she said who who's that and i said you know buddy holly right like a lot of what's in the book are things that you like pieces of who these people are who are not like it's not what you see in the public view and getting to who they are behind the scenes and like i think the last time i was on it may

have talked about the fact that like uh it gets into how kamala harris really loves the word motherfucker it's her favorite word but she will correct people who uh use the r's and motherfuckers and no it's motherfucker. Right. Um, and uses it a lot of that sort of thing. Um, or like, you know, Pete Buttigieg struggling over how people were thinking about him, uh, being gay and protesting him for not doing enough for, for gay people. Uh, it's just, it was a lot of turmoil that was part of these people and part of the country and that we're still obviously living through. I always love these tidbits, which is why I love having you on the Midas Touch podcast, Isaac Govert.

Thank you so much for coming on. Everybody go out. If you haven't gotten the book the first time Isaac was on, please get the book Battle for the Soul Inside the Democrats Campaign to Defeat Trump. And I just think that Battle for the Soul is such a good name, especially as we literally see another political party rooting against our Olympic team, which we've been talking about on this podcast. I never really thought you'd see someone, a whole political party against the American team, which is a whole nother debate, a whole, which is a whole other debate,

a whole other conversation. Isaac Nover, thank you so much for coming on the Midas Touch podcast, and we'd love to have you back on again. Love to do it. Thanks, guys. We will be right back after these messages. What's up, Midas Mighty? While you're here, we wanted to let you know that we got some new Midas Touch merch at

store.midastouch.com. One of my new favorites. We were talking in the last episode that Death Santas has this merch out, Don't Fauci My Florida. And we said, uh-uh-uh, we're not going to let that slide. Don't Death Santas My Country. Get the new shirt right now at store.midastouch.com. Of course, we got our GQP repellent whistles, a bestseller. Blow your whistle a day.

Keep the fascists away. We also got the Vax A F wristbands now in a great, cool orange kind of salmon color. I love these so much. These are a limited edition item, so make sure to pick them up before they're out of the store. And my favorite, the vaccinated and caffeinated mugs. That's good. Where I drink my coffee. So check out all the new merch. It's all a lot of fun. Wear your support of democracy and Midas Touch around wherever you go. That's at store.midastouch.com. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. I am joined by my good friend, Grant Stern.

Where do I even begin with Grant Stern? Executive editor of Occupy Democrats, executive editor of the Stern Facts. But Grant, you and I go back like way back, like a decade, maybe like 2010, 2011. Grant and I began chatting when we both had a similar interest in accountability of police officers abusing their position. And Grant was working as an executive editor there of an organization called Photography Is Not a Crime, which exposed body camera footage of police officers planting drugs and engaging in some of the most egregious abuses. And so Grant and I spoke way back then when I started off as a civil rights lawyer and

come a long way, Grant, together, huh? Yeah, quite a long way. I mean, those things that happened out in Los Angeles were part of a bigger picture that drew me into what I'm doing now. And the bigger picture was that what drew me in was that I saw a rising tide of fascist behavior happening in our country. And it deeply disturbed me. And it was happening at the local level, you know, to the point where, hey, people just getting cameras and getting cell phones all of a sudden changed the game. That tells you something really big. And so, you know, years of doing that trained me in the kind of constitutional law and the kind of knowing what you're seeing on a camera footage

that you really need today. You know, you need to know how to trust your eyes. And when there's video involved, there's always another detail. I'll say this about you, Grant. I mean, Grant is a true fighter for our democracy. You know, Grant doesn't sleep. Well, you live on the West coast so you learned that the the easy way yeah grant doesn't sleep and grant will give you a call at like 2 a.m to talk to you about an issue that at the time may seem kind of esoteric and i'm just going to be honest with you grant like like. Sometimes you called me

in 2016 and 20. Yeah. In the early Trump days, you know, Grant would give me a call, you know, and he would 2 a.m. my time, 5 a.m. his time or, you know, 11 a.m. my time. So it was like, you know, 2 a.m., 3 a.m. in the morning his time. And he would go on and talk about these Trump-Russia connections and all of the things that were going on um you know with the rise of fascism in europe and you know i'd be like all right i gotta go to sleep grant like you're crazy um and you look it's true and you look back on him and grant like you were right about all of those issues. I mean, what the Stern facts were reporting back then, like that became what the Post and the Times started reporting on in 2020.

That's right. A lot of the stuff that I reported in the Stern facts turned out to be a lot bigger than people thought originally. Give us some examples just so people know like what you were looking at. So here's a sampling, right? There's a Russian spy, a guy named Dmitry Symes, who worked at a think tank in Washington for decades called the Center for the National Interest. So as you're listening to this, picture Grant calling me at 2 a.m. in the morning saying this. Right. And so like, you know, you guys are doing this new Kremlin Files podcast with Olga Lautman, a dear friend. And Yuri Felshtinsky is going to be on the show, I heard. Yes, he's coming on. So Yuri did a huge follow up in Gordunia, which is a Ukrainian news outlet, where he pretty much aggregated my reporting about Dmitry Symes. Like he, he took the stuff

about Symes and Butina, Maria Butina out of my story and put it into his story and gave it a little bit of extra context. He's a Russian historian. I'm a journalist. So, you know, he's the PhD and whatnot. He wrote the book that, you know, led to Litvinenko being poisoned with polonium tea in London. So obviously the Putin government doesn't think very much of his writing or esteems him highly, depending on how you consider that. And then Professor Felstensky took my reporting, added one fact to the end, which is that this guy, Symes, was sent to America by the man who went on to found the modern Russian foreign intelligence service. Symes left the country to take a job on

putin's channel one in moscow where he remains today okay this is a man who was a major spy in dc but he was the subtle type right and my reporting also exposed this other russian spy a man named dr edward lozansky and he is mr Mr. In Your Face. He was the top pro-Putin lobbyist in D.C. for, you know, decades. Well, the decades that he was there and Putin was there. And I mean, our reporting exposed that that man Lozansky went on to a very obscure Russian news outlet to kind of leave a marker. Okay? And this was back in 2017 when people were like, what the heck does this all mean?

And I'm not going to tell you this whole story. You'd have to go to thesternfacts.com and look up the grand old Putin party series. This guy was heavily involved with everybody that was big in the Reagan era.

I mean, the people that founded Heritage Foundation, ALEC, Council for National Policy. This guy said on Russian TV that, first of all, before it was public knowledge, he said, Flynn and Rohrabacher will help Trump, so Trump will be okay. Rohrabacher was never a publicly known agent for Trump. But as we all learned later, Rohrabacher was deeply involved in the happenings around the Trump Tower Russia meeting that took place in June of 2016.

So there's two spies that we really outed in 2016 and 17 and 18. And part of that was reporting out some of the things that wound up in Maria Butina's indictment before she was indicted. Just for example, you know, we we found the images of her bringing this Russian delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast. And that was one of the overt acts that they used to convict her as a Russian spy. And the Kremlin was not happy about that, I don't think, because I was getting tagged in pictures by the Russian embassy from the United States. I mean, yeah, this is some real stuff. Actually, there was one case where a foreign nation actually complained about my writing in their court filings as an excuse to seal the case. Wow. And they had been on my butt for writing about them since the Trump Russia dossier came out. The funny thing, Grant, though, too, is you truly are this accidental kind of activist.

Like when I knew you, you're like also like a mortgage broker and you're out. And that's what still pays the bills, dude. I mean, I got to make a living. I got to eat. I built a team and I have wonderful people that take most of the daily load off of me, thank goodness, because otherwise I couldn't do this. And this is truly where your passion is. Tell us, so behind you, the background right now says Source, Walgo Fund Me Sponsor, just, and then your beard's covering up the rest. I'll try and get out of there. There you go.

Walgo Fund Me Sponsor just paid for a nearly $1 million yacht updated. This is one of the stories you broke. When the call came in for the story that you're looking at over my shoulder, I stopped everything and wrote the story on the spot and hit send right before we left to Mother's Day dinner. You know, think about it. Do you think like Mother's Day at noon is the prime time to publish news? Who thinks that's a good time? I wouldn't say it would be ideal, but in this news cycle, if you get a scoop like that, you got to do it. Well, I put it out there and it got 330,000 reads within 24 hours. Damn. Wow.

Yeah. And by the time we left Mother's Day dinner, by the time we left, I was already starting to get messages from Brian Colfage, the fellow you see here over my shoulder. He is the primary scammer behind We Build the Wall. He's a disabled veteran, Air Force veteran, confined to a wheelchair. He's helped by the Gary Sinise Foundation. President Obama brought him to the State of the Union address as his guest back in 2012, I believe. And Mr. Colfage had kind of a lark of an idea and made this GoFundMe website. And he raised $20 million saying he was going to build the private wall. And one of his friends, somebody that he knew, not going to say if it's a man or a woman, but somebody who's been on Fox News, somebody who's spoken with the former guy like face to face.

Actually, the former guy tweeted about this person, not by name, but about their issue. And Republicans are very, very much in tune with this person's issue, even to this day, even if they're not really in tune with the person so much. But, you know, this person saw that it was crooked. What does the name rhyme with, Grant? The name rhymes with busted. So anyway, so this random person out of the blue drops a dime on me. I mean, it really was a drop a dime. It wasn't like me calling up, like beating the bushes here. This was a, someone who wanted this story to get out because they

spoke with Colfage and the story that speaks for itself. They spoke with Colfage, uh, in October of 2018 when his right wing news, that's what he called it right wing news. And it was shut down for being fake news. The source said he was D platformformed. I said, OK, deplatformed. I'm quoting you. Great. But Colfage lost his primary source of income at that point. And that was a fact. The conversation they had was a recollected fact. was opinion that you know this could be criminal that he's he appears to be using his uh income from we build the wall to fund his lifestyle and i wrote it up with a single source which is a roll of the dice sometimes but when you really know the source trust the source have reported on the source in the past somehow uh you know like if if there's a, you know, I mean, it's like, it's this person I've met in person in multiple states. Like, I know they are who they are.

They're real. They're, you know, indisputably who they are and pretty, you know, conscientious, even though they do not agree with me politically. When you think about it, Grant, how interesting. I mean, you go from Miami mortgage broker to now you are a trusted source where people who need to get information out there against the Trump information instead of going to, you know, a large media entity who they probably don't trust. Yeah. They go to Grant Stern and the Stern facts. It's kind of crazy when you think about it. But but you see why you're more trusted than these big media sources. And Grant, we got to ask you about what's going on in Miami right now. I mean, one, you got into a bit of a tussle with Kevin McCarthy. Minority leader, you said that the 1960 revolution created tyranny on the island of Cuba.

And I am asking you a question. It's not a Democratic or Republican issue. So why do you oppose the January 6th commission, sir? Why do you oppose the January 6th commission, sir? Why do you oppose the January 6th commission, sir? Tell us about that. And then I want to ask you in closing a bit about DeSantis. If you really want to understand what's happening in Miami, okay, you need to open up a web browser and you can do this at home. If you're listening, you could do this as well. Open up a web browser and Google the word Michigas, M-I-C-H-E-G-A-S. Oh, you know what that word means.

It's hard to describe to somebody who's an outsider. But I just took a trip to Vegas, like a short vacation. And a friend of mine there was like, Grant, you have no idea how corrupt Vegas is. Vegas is so corrupt. This happened and that happened and the other happened and now we're in court and we're, and I'm like, so where's the corruption exactly? This is like just normal run of the mill stuff. Let me tell you about Miami. And by the time I finished telling him about the crazy stuff that happens here, they were all just floored jaws on the floor. They're like, okay, Vegas is really clean in comparison to DeSantis is Florida. Yes. And, and frankly, all the corruption that you see by the Trumps and all them, it's exported from Miami to the Florida Republican Party

and then out to the rest of the country. All right. Just like COVID. I was going to say the same thing. They're exporting autocracy and they are exporting COVID to the rest of the country. Wonderful point. Exactly correct.

So, I mean, last week I went to a press conference and I got kicked out by police for the sin of the last question, the end of McCarthy's answer to the last question, which was to say that it's really bad when people are being picked up and carted away. And I think he also said it's un-American to stand by and hear the cry of freedom and do nothing. And he said, that's not leadership. So I honestly, I agreed with everything McCarthy said said except that when that happened in front of him well obviously he's not a leader and he's deeply un-american i've got the video to prove it so um yeah they they reached into my pocket as i was starting to ask the question like into my uh journalist bag I'm going to show you guys. I carry around a little bag, right?

And I felt a hand like on the lower, like the small of my back. Just imagine like if somebody is putting their hand on your lower back there and they're not your girlfriend or boyfriend, you might be a little bit concerned at that point. And so you can hear my voice go up a little bit because I was like oh

what the fuck is happening um can you reenact the crit yeah um no is that good is that good one okay and by the way by the way to debunk the look, this is the Zoom recorder that I use. See, guys? It's a Zoom recorder. This is the fancy, you know, portable surround sound recorder that I use for these lovely press conferences. And there's a lot more than people have heard. Oh. Came in here.

Oh, yeah, there is more. So, yeah, like I started asking the question, you know, I said minority leader. I started the run up. And then when I felt the hands go on my shoulder, I said, it's not a Democratic or Republican issue and asked my questions as they were dragging me out of the room. We found the other video that shows you being whisked out of there. And first grant, I mean, how much money did George Soros pay you to ask? I'm just kidding. I am totally kidding. You know, I want to tell you a story, you know, Scott Dworkin and I run the Dworkin Report, and it's just a simple general partnership between the two of us. And that's it, right?

We're independent journalists, the two of us. We just do our thing. And please go to DworkinReport.com, subscribe on iTunes. You know, we've got some great interviews coming out with Philip Rucker, reality winner's mother and sister. And we have, I think I'm going to be on there. Jeez. It's kind of awkward, huh? The head of NewsGuard, the head of NewsGuard, the co-founder of Court TV actually sent me an email saying that calling ourselves independent journalists did not disclose who owns the Dworkin report properly, even though we say it's all done by us.

Yeah. And he actually wrote me an email saying, how do I know that you're not being paid by George Soros or Donald Trump? And I've got to tell you, I was offended. I considered it actually a very anti-Semitic thing coming from a New York media executive. I mean, this is really serious stuff.

Like I could not believe this. And this guy is selling ratings that Microsoft is putting into every single browser that they install in the entire United States. And this guy's company still dings us because we're an independent podcast. Why do you think like there's this animosity towards like an independent operation?

I mean, you are breaking some of the biggest stories of the last four years. The GoFundMe, We Build the Wall. Oh, I got to stop you. You just put your finger on it. Because you're breaking some of the biggest stories. And so there's a jealousy there when somebody is independent. It's not a jealousy. It's a flat out hostility because they consider me the competition.

And I don't consider myself the competition. When I write a story and someone like Rachel Maddow cribs the heart of the story and puts it on her show and it blows up her show, I'm happy for Rachel. I want to see Rachel succeed because she's informing the American people. Yeah. And we need journalists to step up and work together on this stuff. Like, yes, it's competition. But after you asked that question and you were ushered out, in my opinion, every other journalist should have asked the same question. Why didn't Kevin McCarthy support the January 6th commission until we got a straight answer? Because in America, we don't take journalists and drag them out of press conferences for asking what honestly wasn't a hard question. It was maybe hard for Kevin McCarthy to answer

because there's no acceptable answer, but it was a good question and something that we all need to know. Before we go, Grant, anything else we need to know about Death Santas? Will you be filing any sort of legal action for what happened at the press conference? And then we could wrap it up from there. Sure, man. So there's a couple of things you asked about. Legal action for the press conference? Yes. I mean, I'm working on it, but I'm not there yet. It's going to take a little bit. My him or fortunately for him, unfortunately for people who would like to see harm to him. It's not about DeSantis. You're going to sue Kevin McCarthy. You know, I have to figure out who the right people to sue are.

That's part of why we're not we haven't filed it yet. Otherwise, I mean, look, you know, I was accosted by the Florida National Guard and City of Miami Police Department. And I filed suit personally within like eight hours. Right. Because I knew I was just suing these guys. But this is a little more complicated. Like, you know, we have to get every police department and everything. So whatever. I mean, this is just it's going to happen, but we can't say who it's going to be against yet for a lot of reasons. You asked about DeSantis though. I've just got to say there's two big stories coming out. Okay. First of all, Ron DeSantis' enemies list. I've got a redacted copy of it. Wow. But I'm still reporting out the ramifications of

what they're doing, right? Because the most important page of that enemies list is it's got one word at the top. It says associates. And then there's a big black box. Now, I'm going to tell your audience exclusively that based on the body camera footage that I viewed, most likely I'm on the list. They call me one of Tomas's known associates, Tomas Kennedy. So that's concerning. That's ongoing. And that's going to be reported out

pretty much in a couple of weeks. But what's coming down the pike right away, I'm just going to tease it here because I put it on video already. You guys saw me chasing down Ron DeSantis to ask him a question last month. And the question was, why are you doing undercover surveillance of your political opponents? So think about it. I always have the receipts. Grant Stern always has the receipts coming on the Midas Touch podcast with a sneak peek into those receipts. Check out Stern Facts. Check out Dworkin Report.

Check out Occupy Democrats. Democrats, Grant Stern, multi-hyphenate journalist, truly an independent rock star and an advocate for democracy and someone we're grateful to be our friend here at Midas Touch. Grant Stern, thank you so much for coming on the Midas Touch podcast. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys. Talk to you soon. And literally, I'll give you a call right after this because I want to know more about the enemies. We will be right back. Discover the magic of Bad MGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer.

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A great episode of the Midas Touch podcast. But before we go, we have a very special announcement. Oh, yeah. First, I want to just recount how we got to this point. Please tell the story. Please tell the story, Brad. Can we introduce Jack first, though? Of course. We got Jack Cacciarella here on the podcast. You may know Jack from Twitter. You may know Jack as one of the most dynamic young activists out there,

a Florida man, but not in the sense that you are thinking. A man from Florida, but not a Florida man, but not in the sense that you are thinking. I'm the man from Florida, but not a Florida man. A man from Florida, but not a Florida man. He is doing the work on the ground that is needed to turn Florida blue. And it has been a pleasure getting to know you, Jack. I mean, I've seen your tweets. You caught our eye. And then a few weeks back, Jack sends me a message and he goes, Hey, Brett, how many likes

would it take on a tweet to get onto the Midas Touch podcast? And so I was like, Hmm, I got to give something that's a bit of a reach, right? But I don't want to put it too far out of reach where it's impossible. But you know I can get it done. So you got to give me a little bit of something. Yeah. I didn't want to make it too easy for you. So, I threw out 5,000 likes. I said, you get 5,000 likes, you come on the Midas Touch podcast. And probably up to the first 24 hours, Jack ended up with about 2,000 likes. And I was like, oh, Jack, not going to make it, man. A little bit of a struggle at first, kind of an underdog story, but you know. But Jack, this is what makes you a good

activist is you're determined and you don't give up in the face of adversity. And so after that first night, when you didn't reach the goal, you reached out to like everybody under the sun to help your mission. All of a sudden I see like tweets from Rick Wilson. I see tweets from Fred Will, like Steve Schmidt, like all of a sudden I'm seeing these, all these people with millions see like tweets from rick wilson i see the rick wilson tweet was crazy like steve schmidt like all of a sudden i'm seeing these all these people with millions of followers trying to get you on our show and i'm like all right jack is pulling out all the stops he's good he's going all the way with it and surely enough i sent jen sake i sent jen sake an email i did not hear back yeah i did pull up all the stuff pull out all the stuff yeah i i i'm i are you joking

i'm gonna say i'm not i'm not too no i'm gonna be serious about that one Yeah. Are you joking? I'm going to say I'm not. I'm not joking. No, I'm going to be serious about that one. Yeah. I could have seen you taking it to that level where Jen Psaki is asking for likes from the podium for you. That's how serious he took it. But Jack, long story short, you got to that 5,000 likes. Here you are on the podcast. And as we were preparing for you to come on the podcast, the brothers and myself have been talking about, I think this is more than just a one-time thing. Jack is a brilliant guy. We know a lot of super brilliant minds out there who are young activists who are important that they're getting out there and that they're activating other young activists to keep it going

so that we can turn Florida blue, so we can turn Texas blue, so that the future of America could be a democratic one. And so, Jack, without further ado, I think we have a major Midas Touch announcement. I think I'm going to let you take this one, Jack. I have been teasing it on Twitter since yesterday. I think the people have gotten a couple hints about what we're doing. I made history being the first person I think ever to will their way onto the Midas Touch podcast via likes on Twitter. We have to make, again, a little bit of history by me being the first person to announce another podcast that is coming out on the Midas

Media Network. Let's go. We are so excited. I am so excited. I am honored to announce Zoomed In with myself and Aaron Parnas will be coming to the Midas Media Network on Wednesday. We could not be more excited about this announcement and to use our platform on Midas to uplift Gen Z voices, to tell stories that are important to young people, to talk about issues that are important to young people. We're going to be bringing on activists, organizers, elected officials, people running for office, and we're going to be telling great stories and having great fun. And we cannot wait for the Midas Mighty to join in and come on this journey with us. So we are absolutely thrilled to be doing this. Jordy, can I get a let's go? Let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. This is big time, man. The show is called Zoomed In. And just for everybody out there again, Jack, when does it air? It will be coming out Wednesday morning. So make sure you go check us out. We have a Twitter feed. It is ZoomedInPodcast. All the information will be coming out. I know on Midas via myself, you can go follow me, J.D. Cacciarella. That's J.D. C-O-C-C-H-I-A-R-E-L-L-A on Twitter. Or you can give my co-host Aaron Parnas a follow as well.

We are going to be pushing all as well. We are going to be pushing all this information. We're going to have some great clips for you. I think if we hit 10,000 followers in its first 48 hours, Aaron has promised that he will be doing some TikTok dances. We're going to be putting those up on Twitter. So it's a little incentive for you. I'm going to be joining it as well. So there's a little bit of incentive here that we TikTok dances from Aaron Parnas. I'm going to be joining in as well. So, you know, there's a little bit of incentive here that we can reach that 10,000 goal in the first 48 hours of our launch. We are so excited to take this journey

and a huge shout out to the Midas Mighty for getting us here. We could not be more excited. And in all seriousness, we need young activists like you, Jack, like Aaron, like others in the Midas Mighty and others out there who are defending our democracy. We have too many young voices out there being co-opted and corrupted by the corrupt fascist party, also known as the Republican Party. And I truly look forward to you and Aaron sharing your insights.

The first episode will be debuting on the Midas Touch podcast channel, the one you're listening to this podcast on. But we will also be setting up a own independent channel for Zoomed In where people will be able to subscribe. So they should all also start to begin to subscribe to Zoomed In where people will be able to subscribe. So they should all also start to begin to subscribe to Zoomed In when that podcast channel is up. And we'll obviously let everybody know when that's up for the first episode. So thanks, Jack Cacciarella for doing this. We look forward to your podcast. And thanks for coming on the Midas Touch podcast. I appreciate it, y'all. Let's get them.

And thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. We had lots of great guests, Isaac Dover. We had Grant Stern. And of course, the cameo by Jack Cacciarella. Look forward to checking in with you again later this week. But for now, I'm Ben. It's Brett and Jordy. We are the Midas Touch Brothers, and we thank you for tuning in.

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