The MeidasTouch Podcast - BDSM Republicans with Dan Pfeiffer

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Thanks to President Biden's vaccine rollout, Brett and Jordy reunite in person for the first time in over two years, while Ben recovers from Moderna #2. The Brothers discuss the life-changing work of the Biden administration, which has brought families back together and is getting Americans back to school and back to work. President Biden's latest approval ratings are in, and it turns out, he is very good at this whole President thing. Yet, Republicans, led by their feckless "leader" Qevin McCarthy, continue to live in a fantasyland as they prepare to oust Liz Cheney from her leadership role because she believes in… reality? The Brothers then discuss the new breed of #BDSMRepublicans like Mitt Romney and Larry Hogan who still think they can co-exist with a party that abuses and humiliates them daily.  Next, the Brothers proudly welcome former Dan Pfeiffer, former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama for Strategy and Communications from 2013 to 2015, current co-host of Pod Save America and writer of The Message Box newsletter, to discuss the current state-of-play for Democrats heading into the 2022 elections and how we can take on a party that has turned into nothing more than a cult. They discuss the importance of the For The People Act, what we do if it doesn't pass the Senate, the importance of a robust progressive media ecosystem and much more. Later, the Brothers highlight some more good news across America, including plummeting levels of hunger amongst Americans and California's staggering budget surplus. You can subscribe to Dan Pfeiffer's newsletter The Message Box by clicking here. Buy the latest MeidasTouch Merch here. --- 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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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. a great show for you today. We have guest Dan Pfeiffer. You know Dan from Pod Saves America, but fun fact about Dan, he was also the White House communications director, senior White House communications official under Obama, but has truly remade the communications landscape in the progressive space. And you know what I like about what you do? You're like very much like a mom or a dad in the way you say people's names and things like you called it pod saves America. It's pod save America.

You're the kind of person who says, did you watch that Games of Thrones last night? Games of Thrones. It's a very accurate description. I bet Ben calls it Games of Thrones Alright well I got my Moderna 2 shot today and so my Brothers are picking on a weak Older brother who's

Just trying to rest and relax and do the Podcast he added an S Into the end of Pod Saves America Apparently that's a felony in the Mycelis household I'm a big Pod Save America Fan and I'm not going to bring this up with Dan, I don't think. But, you know, before we started Midas, one of the things I was trying to do to try to quench that that thirst to be an activist and try to get out there into politics was I applied to multiple jobs at Pod Save America and Crooked Media. Did not get a call back. Did not get a call back.

Did not get an email back. You know what? It's all for the best because we started Midas Touch. And I don't have a bone to pick with Dan about this, but I just want to say for the record, my resume did end up on the floor of the Crooked or in the email trash bin at the Crooked Media offices at some point. So this Brett Mice cellist guy nah pass

well brett's attempting either i'm not sure maybe brett's seeking a job interview i thought you were happy and content at midas but brett's like wearing this yeah you're also wearing a friend of the pod t-shirt yeah brett's wearing yeah brett's wearing friend of the pod t-shirt. Yeah, Brett's wearing friend of the pod t-shirt. He's wearing a hat. He's basically dressed up. He's dressed up in all friend of the pod gear. So Brett's come very well prepared for this interview. I think he understands,

Brett, that you're a fan. But as I said, Moderna 2, I got my second shot today. I'm fully back and not fully relaxed yet because I hear day two is shot. Two's sometimes can be a bit difficult, but it's definitely well worth it. Make sure if you're out there to get vaccinated, get everyone in your family, friends, colleagues, make sure they get vaccinated. Joe Biden is handling this pandemic as a leader should by getting vaccines out to everybody in the United States

of America. I was just thinking this might be the first presidency where I've actually felt the tangible benefits of a new president like immediately from almost day one. I mean, the fact that now we as a family are all fully vaccinated, the fact that and this is a big announcement for people who may not know, I got to see Jordy. Let's go time in jury. I mean, how long has it been over a year and a half, two years, two plus years, two plus years. That's crazy. Crazy. I'm I'm at my in-laws right now so i'm not with jordy right now but i will be back with jordy soon um but got to see jordy for the first time in a long time got to meet his his i was gonna say his little dog mellow but it's actually his big gigantic behemoth of a dog mellow who apparently comes with an instruction manual because what are you talking about jordy

comes to the house i arrive at mom's house first. I surprised mom the day before Mother's Day. It was incredible. She had no idea we were coming, rang the doorbell. She came out. It was really emotional, really exciting. And so Jordy and I planned it so we would get there around the same time. So Jordy is scheduled to get there about a half hour after me. Jordy sends me a text message

and I get a pretty lengthy text message from Jordy over here. And it's about his dog. And I'm pulling it up now. He says, can you put Moch on a leash? Moch is my dog, which is a little tiny Shih Tzu. Can you put Moch on a leash for the initial meet. It'll make Mello, Jordy's dog, more comfortable since we'll have him on one. Also, just completely ignore Mello for the first five minutes he's there, and then he'll warm up very quickly. Tap three times, spin around, go in the other room, and call, Mello, Mello. Now you're adding things to it, but I think what that shows is I'm a very good dog dad. You know, I know he's going to be a little anxious.

Hey, he's just a puppy. He's just a puppy. It hasn't been not only a puppy, a pandemic pup. Hasn't been around a lot of people. You know, he gets really excited. I want I want to make sure Mochi, your your dog is safe. And Jordy, what kind of what kind of dog is Mello? Mello is an English shepherd.

A beautiful. Are you allergic to it? No comment. Jordy goes, look, I brought my new, what was it, an inhaler? I showed off my new inhaler. Yeah, I think it was the first thing Jordy showed me. It was not, it was, hey man, what's up? By the way, you got to see my new inhaler, bro.

I was really proud about it. I'm really proud about the new inhaler. But the biggest thing is Brett's scared to play me in basketball. He's dodging the basketball game. So I don't know what's happening, Midas Mighty. We're going to have to put pressure on Brett to play me so we could get a score. We could compare scores, how I did versus Brett versus how Ben did versus Brett. And just try and figure out- We will have a game. I came in on the red eye, got zero sleep on those flights, which are really impossible to sleep in the most uncomfortable seats on the planet. I was in no shape to play basketball when I arrived. However,

the challenge is on. The gauntlet is thrown and we will play later this week, but great to see you. Maybe the next podcast will be doing it from the same room, which would be awesome. I mean, just us being together. I think that's everything right there. I mean, how could you get better than that? It's actually also just a really dark comment that you made, like a very morbid comment. I know it's coming from a very sweet place, but saying how we've actually seen the tangible changes, but the tangible changes are us getting shots because the prior administration handled everything just so ridiculously bad. Well, Jordy, that's how fucked up everything was, right? That's how screwed up the world was.

Exactly. That's where our standards are now. And we had a president who was really responsible for 580 plus thousand deaths for not only botching a coronavirus pandemic effort, but maliciously making it worse, holding big rallies, not ordering enough vaccine supplies, not having a distribution plan to now having a competent president in the White House who's getting down to business, who's getting shots in arms, who's getting checks in people's pockets, who's reuniting families from the party who complained about, oh, the Democrats war on

Christmas, war on Christmas Democrats war on Christmas, war on Christmas, war on Christmas. You know what Donald Trump and the Republicans did? They not only canceled Christmas, they canceled every single holiday last year. You know, Trump said, like, we got to open up for Easter. We got to open up for Easter. They closed. They had to close all the churches for Easter. They had to shut down the 4th of July. They had to stop every single holiday the entire year. And that's the whole irony of the Republicans, which, once again, it's all projection. And now with Joe Biden, families are being reunited.

People are seeing long lost friends. Those life moments that we all missed out on, the proms that people were having, the weddings that people had to put aside. Those are all starting to come back on. And it's just a great moment really for America and hopefully the world soon once everybody's able to get vaccinated and get up to speed. But I think it just shows you the importance of leadership, of competence, of having an administration who cares and who leads with empathy. So we went from basically having a broken rotary phone that literally is jammed. That spit out COVID. That spit out COVID in the phone and fucking killed you. We went from

that to like the most current iPhone that actually does things like, wait a minute, you can actually do things. We can actually go places. I mean, there's a reason why Biden's overall approval rating right now is sitting at 63 percent. the pandemic, 71 percent of Americans approve, including 47 percent of Republicans, which is fairly shocking because if you still consider yourself a Republican, you essentially believe in covid as your God. At this point, I got to assume if you were one percent of Americans support Joe Biden's pandemic handling of the pandemic, I got to assume the other twenty nine percent are they support covid at this point? Because how could you how could you be against getting people vaccinations and making having people wear masks and getting businesses open and getting kids back to school? How could you be against that as a policy? Well, you know, because they're fucked up. And, you know, internal GOP polls have also been showing that Biden is perilously, to use their words, popular

in the core battleground districts. So in the core battleground districts that decided the elections this year, 54 percent favored Biden, while 41% would prefer to die than to be alive. I should reframe that. 41% favor Donald Trump. And of course, in typical GQP fashion, they've hid this polling result from its lawmakers and from other Republicans when they did their GQP retreat, according to the Huffington Post. And so these numbers were actually leaked. And that's how they've become available, because why even deal with reality? And that's the whole GQP shtick at this point. Don't deal with reality,

just lie. So in the face of those numbers that I just gave you about Biden's popularity that Brett and Jordy have talked about in terms of the vaccinations that I just gave you about Biden's popularity that Brett and Jordy have talked about in terms of the vaccinations that are coming out. You have representatives going on propaganda network, GQP representatives going on their cult network, Fox News, and basically saying that the economy is in a tailspin. Meanwhile, Biden has actually presided over more job growth in his first three months than any other president in history. Play the clip. Let me tell you, Republicans are almost completely unified in a single mission to oppose the radical, dangerous Biden agenda and win back the majority in the midterm election.

And any other focus other than that is a distraction from stopping the Biden agenda from what it was already done in three months, sending this economy in a tailspin, the crisis at the border, making America less safe abroad from appeasing those like in Iran by by flirting with reentering the Iran nuclear deal. That's our focus as a House Republican conference. I just don't know how you went on that message when you try to pretend like the economy is tanking. When you tell that to people and they know that they're going back to work, they see their kids going back to schools. How do you tell people that and have them believe something that they are able to see the opposite is true with their own eyes every single day?

With their own eyes and their own dollars. And I say it weekly at this point. Who said this? Jim Banks? Yep, Jim Banks. It's the Bernie cheat sheet, the Bernie talking points for the Biden test, the radical Biden agenda. I mean, they're ridiculous. Yeah. You can't use radical this, radical that after you launched a domestic terrorist attack against the United States. You just can't because when you use those words, all I think about is is shaman man

shouting at the Capitol and trying to kill Congress people. That's all I think about when you use the word radical. You know what I don't think about when you use the word radical? People getting their jobs back, people seeing their families, Joe Biden, who could not be further from this image that they try to paint from him. It is just so far removed from reality that that's why they're not really running on reality at all. They're running on the big lie. And this is a party now that, you know, Kevin McCarthy released a ridiculous statement today saying, oh, we're a big tent party and all points of view are welcome. And now that I said that, Liz Cheney is going to be expelled because even though she voted with Republicans 90 plus percent of the time, she will not promote

the big lie that Donald Trump actually won the election despite the fact that he lost by historic numbers in the popular vote. And so she's got to go. The big lie at this point is all they have to run on because you can't call Joe Biden radical because people know they're going back to work. All this stuff just doesn't jive with reality. So they have to invent their own fake reality. And that's what's so dangerous about these people. I think we should play the clip of Kevin McCarthy immediately after the insurrection, stating that Donald Trump should be censured and that there should be an immediate investigation into an impartial investigation

into the insurrection. The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. We heard what Kevin McCarthy said. The ultimate irony here is that all Liz Cheney is doing is saying the exact same thing that Kevin McCarthy said then, more information of how Donald Trump, Giuliani, and all these other G, this GQP, loud, crazy, sick, psycho, cult behaving, disgusting human being side of the population who supports really the overthrow of America, who supports the performative bullshit that is the GQP, this made up patriotism that in reality is all about looting and destroying the United States while just making up weird, bizarre, patriotic refrains that bear no resemblance to your actual conduct. And I think you even have it right here. You know, one of the best analogies was GOP representative Adam Kinzinger. I don't know how he calls himself

GOP anymore, but he's in the Liz Cheney camp of the party. And he basically says the Republican party is like the Titanic amid the eternal battle over rep Lusheni. And so I think what the reality is, is as a party, we have to have an internal look and a full accounting as to what led to January 6. I mean, right now it's basically the Titanic. We're like, you know, in this in the middle of this slow sink, we have a band playing on the deck and telling everybody it's fine. And meanwhile, as I've said, you know, Donald Trump's running around trying to find women's clothing and get on the first lifeboat. And I think there's a few of us that are just saying, guys, this is not good, not just for the future of the party,

but this is not good for the future of this country. We're four months after January 6th, an insurrection, something that was unthinkable in this country. And the message from the people that want to get rid of Liz Cheney is to say, it's just time to focus on the future and move on. Like this was 10 years ago, and we've been obsessed about it since. It's been four months, and we have so many people, including our leadership in the party, that has not admitted that this is what it is, which was an insurrection led by the President of the United States, well deserving of a full accounting from Republicans. So you could count right now the amount of Republicans, the amount of elected Republicans who will refute the big lie,

who will openly admit that, no, Donald Trump is in fact not president and that he legitimately lost the election. That's a sad state of affairs about this party living in their fantasy land. And I think the comparison to the Titanic is apt. I mean, they're trying to act like, oh, look, the GOP is stronger than ever. Look at us pressing on. But this is a disaster of a party. I think it's our responsibility now, though, to make sure that they paid the consequences, because the worst thing that could happen, in my opinion, is if they get away with this. And what's getting away with this, in my opinion, is if they find a way to win back the House or win back the Senate in 2022. And I would say that they probably have a structural advantage

just in the way the system is set up of doing that with the redistricting that's coming and just with the way that midterms generally trend. So it's our duty to stay active and stay motivated because I would go as far as to say that 2022 is going to be as, or I'm going to say it's going to be more important to protecting democracy than even 2020 was, because in 2020, you saw a smattering of Republican officials saying, oh, yeah, I'm and when Democrats win those elections, I see no reason why the Republicans are going to certify any of them if they have control of the House. And that's a terrifying thought. And that's how democracy dies. Well, they're pro insurrection. So when you say, you know, yes, they support the big lie. They not only support the big lie, they support one of the most dastardly days in the history of the United States of America, where we saw, you know, thousands of Trump inspired domestic terrorists storm the United States Capitol and tried to kill our lawmakers.

Ultimately, when we think about what terrorism is, we always say America doesn't negotiate with terrorists. America stands up to terrorists. But what this GQP party is doing is ultimately siding with the terrorists. They're letting the terrorists win. They're letting the terrorists, the domestic terrorists, run the Republican Party. And they're letting the terrorists win they're letting the terrorists the domestic terrorists run the republican party and they're terrorists they are the terrorists i mean they are it's it's the sad thing about it and when you have people like chuck todd on meet the press putting these people on who refuse to who refuse to accept reality the results of the election and spread the same lies the same fantasies and incite their base the same way they incited them to attack lawmakers

on January 6th, they are giving a platform, in my opinion, to, at minimum, people who support domestic terrorists, and to its logical conclusion, domestic terrorists themselves. One of the GQP leaders, of course, is an attorney by the name of Lin Wood. Lin Wood is basically going around preaching QAnon cultism to this GQP base. He's basically looked at as a major leader of Trumpism and in the party. And so if you want to see what these people are talking about, what the GQP is saying, how strange and peculiar it is, our friend at Patriot Takes, a group that we've been working with of late to help them and help protect them and help amplify their message as they've gone from this incredibly impressive, you know, research-based account

to professionalize and operationalize and get them ready for the upcoming elections. We're working with them to help that. But they uncovered this Lin Wood footage that they published exclusively on Patriot Takes. Play this clip of Lin Wood. I see the future. How do I know the future? Only God knows the future. So either I'm not God, if I ain't got a bad memory, I don't want to create the universe,

don't want to create myself, could have Alzheimer's. But I see the future. I see things before they happen. I've called it not always right on the facts, but in terms of the resolution. I've been saying for months that this is exactly what's going to happen. I call it the spirit of Elijah. Elijah's the end day prophet. I've thought maybe I was Elijah. Because I see the end days. I know exactly where we are.

I've been saying for months that this is going to be culminating in the final harvest. It is. And more people coming to God right now than ever before. I'm speechless left after hearing that. And Jordy, you point this out quite frequently. It's when he talks to these stadiums of a thousand, three thousand. These aren't gigantic, gigantic stadiums. I think a week ago we saw him in Oklahoma in front of about about 5,000 people, the way they look at him, this GQP base, it's the same eyes that are lost. These are lost Americans who are completely just being swayed by just crazy snake oil salesmen like

that, Lin Wood and Donald Trump. I mean, if you believe that, if you listen to that and that makes sense to you, I suppose you could say anything to them. I mean, to me, if you're a religious person, that's the very definition of a false idol. It's the very definition of somebody who is just a charlatan, a fraud, somebody who's using the language of religion to trick you and brainwash you into whatever it is. And by the way, I think Lin Wood is actually a true believer in this stuff. And for all the people out there, by the way, who want to say, you know what, Lin Wood, he's that guy's psycho. You know, that guy's crazy. You can't paint the entire party with the Lin Wood brush the same lies that the mainstream Republican Party is pushing. They are one in the same. This is the party of Linwood. This is the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is the party of Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert. This is the party of Kevin

McCarthy. All of these people, to me, are one in the same. And you know who it's not the party of anymore. It's not the party of Mitt Romney. It's embarrassing that Mitt Romney sticks with them. I guess if you're willing to stick with them and take that level of abuse, you should just be called basically like BDSM Republican. Right. Like, yo, is bit romney a technical term b yeah yeah yeah you know he's not you know i mean he's he's a bdsm republican like you're either a q a non-republican or a bdsm republican right because at some point you just you must just fucking love getting this shit beat yeah you must really like we're not king shaming we're not king shaming. We're not king shaming, but we're Republican shaming. You go, what shaming? King shaming?

Yeah, you can't. We're not king. I just want to make it clear. If you're into BDSM, all you, good for you, but don't be a BDSM Republican like Mitt Romney. I don't think we were offending any particular community there. You came very quick to their defense though, Jordy. So I'll give you the floor right now. You called me out about the furry community the other day. I'm just like, Hey man, they do what they want, man. It's all good. It's all posting a lot of photos of furries, but we're, we're, we're getting off track. Yeah. The point here is that they like, exactly. The point is, is that the Mitt Romney's of the world, they love apparently getting booed and they love the abuse and they love getting on stage and being just humiliated.

And it's also not the Republican Party of Governor Larry Hogan. You know, Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, who is legitimately kind of a conservative person, but who is normal and who, you know, has common sense ideas and believes that maybe there should be a bit of a smaller government, but doesn't believe that Donald Trump and Lin Wood speak to God Almighty. This is what Larry Hogan had to say this weekend. It just bothers me that you have to swear fealty to the dear leader or you get kicked out of the party. It just doesn't make any sense. Well, to me, the most damning part of this, Liz Cheney voted for President Trump's single,

singular legislative achievement. And what many Republicans tell me is very important to protecting the person that they're replacing her with voted against it. I mean, is the party now what you just said? If you're not with Trump, you're not a Republican. Well, it's sort of a circular firing squad where we're just attacking members of our own party instead of focusing on solving problems or standing up and having an argument that that we can debate the Democrats on some of the things that the Biden administration is pushing through. And here's the thing about, you know, Governor Hogan, who is a BDSM Republican, when asked a very simple question, he said it's like a circular firing squad. It doesn't make

sense. It does make sense, Governor Larry Hogan, that the party is following what your dear leader says. You are part of a cult. Your party is a cult. And your party has a cult leader. The cult leader is the former guy, is Donald Trump. That's your cult leader. So your party does not focus on real issues. It doesn't focus on the health, welfare, economic issues. They focus on fealty to Donald

Trump. So what the hell are you doing staying a member of this party. Do you just love the word Republican? Republican. Does that word itself like fucking turn you on? Like what could be so important that you have to identify yourself as part of a team that fucking hates you and doesn't want you to be a part of their team? You, Governor Hogan, I hate to say it, are a BDSM Republican. And what you need to do is leave the party. There are normal, we can have normal conversations. I will debate you all day on a bigger government, on a smaller government. Should the vaccine plan be deployed this way? Should we be doing this policy or should we be doing this policy with taxes? You know, does it make sense to do this with an estate tax? Does it make sense

to do this with capital gains taxes? Will this stimulate the economy? Will that stimulate the economy? Great conversations, Governor Hogan, that I'd love to have with you. And I'd love to have you on the podcast where we can have these conversations. But the conversation that I simply don't understand is how are you hanging out with the party that hates you? They're like, yeah, this this Jim Jones guy seems a little off the rails, but I still consider myself a proud member of Jonestown here. Imagine I'm imagine I'm a member of a gym. Let's just take it and make it a very simple. I join a gym, right? I pay my gym membership and I'm a member of a gym. Let's just make it very simple. I join a gym, right? I pay my gym membership, and I'm happy. The first time I go to the gym, it's a great gym.

And then I go back to the gym, and as soon as I go in, people go, get the fuck out of here. Don't get my fucking gym. You're fucking disgusting. Don't even touch the bars. Get the fuck out of here. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to stay and work out of this gym. A lot of people are a little mean to me, but I'm going to stay a member of this gym where everybody fucking hates me. And then the leader mocks me. They have photos

of me that basically call me a piece of shit. But every day I go in, I put on my fucking gym shorts. I go into the gym. And the moment I go in, they go, fuck you. Boo. You motherfucker. Boo. Fuck you. Boo. That is that who wants to go and hang out with that? They hate you. I mean, that's these guys like every day, every day. Governor Hogan wakes up and belongs to a gym where they call him fucking pathetic.

Every day, Mitt Romney works out and they're like who the fuck is this guy fuck this guy and they just go i think this is like a circular melancholy of dismal blah blah dude they just don't fucking like you just leave join my gym they're like all right guys see you tomorrow same time same place oh how was your day, honey? Well, you know, it was a bit of a circular firing squad, some might say. Some might have the presupposition that it was a bit melancholic. And I wonder if we could transpose the Titanic nature. Is it a bit like the Tentonic with the violin playing? No, they hate you.

Just leave the fucking party and join the normal squad so we can help the United States of America. We will be right back after these messages with Dan Feigl. over the recent weeks is the new improved and revamped Midas merch store. And the Midas merch is absolutely crushing it from hats to t-shirts to mugs to masks. You name it, we have it at the Midas merch shop and we appreciate the support. I mean, we're selling out of most of that gear almost instantaneous. We got Saki Bomb designs. We got B of most of that gear almost instantaneous. We got Socky Bomb designs. We got Bax and Relax, the fan favorite. We got Be Mighty. We got Club Democracy. You know what's funny about Club Democracy, guys? That one really set off Republicans, probably because democracy is a dirty word to them. So when they say, hey, democracy, they get really angry. But that's what I like to say.

And it's half jokingly, honestly, Midas merch might be the best GQP repellent out there. Talk about not wanting anybody to think you're a Republican. You rock the club democracy shirt. You wear a vaxxed and relaxed mask. No one's going to think you watch Tucker Carlson. That's all I'm saying. Absolutely. And you left out my favorite design too, the shout out to the Midas Mighty. That's become a fan favorite catchphrase. So hey, if you're interested, if you want to get some merch, help support us, help support the brothers, please check out store.midastouch.com. That's store.m-e-i-d-a-s-t-o-u-c-h.com and get your Midas Touch gear today. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast, joined by Dan Pfeiffer,

former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, White House communication director and senior advisor for strategy and communications through 2015. Of course, you also know Dan as the co-host of Pod Save America. Dan's got two incredible books out that I'll plug at the end and just started an incredible newsletter, The Message Box on Substack, which I'd love to hear your thoughts on too at some point. We're thinking about doing a Substack and would love to know about your experience there. But welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Well, thanks for having me, guys.

Great to be here. I should say from the outset, Dan, that and I mean this truly, when we were just three brothers kind of sitting around in the pandemic, we don't have any political background and we wanted to get into political messaging. You know, we still do look up to you, of course, but we looked up to you then and kind of what we wanted to create. And we knew we weren't political insiders by any stretch, but we wanted to message things and speak to people like people and not speak to people like politicians. And I think that's what Pod Save America does so brilliantly. And we hope that we do some justice as we kind of create this next wave of a following to help get these democratic

messages out, which are really messages for the people. Well, thank you. That means a lot. That is ultimately what we start. We try to do with positive America was to talk about politics in a way that was approachable, not just tell people what was happening in the news, but what they could do with it and to inspire people to do things. So the fact that you guys took at least in some part from what we were doing to lead you to start Midas Touch and get so involved in politics and put out all this great content means a lot to us. Dan, I remember right when we started and I somehow caught your attention and I slid into your DMs and I was like, okay, man, you got to tell me, how do I do anything professional with

this thing? How do I get ads on TV? We don't know. We're just making videos. Like we're just like three guys making videos and you were just like higher election attorneys. That was the big advice, uh, which we took and we figured out our structure and all that. So thank you for the legal advice. Yes. I wanted at least the least I could do to try to keep you out of bill bars, jail. So much, much appreciated. And basically, we've just become a law firm now at this point with everybody trying to, with everyone trying to take shots at us at this point. You know, you go in for the right reasons.

And before you know it, you got cease and desist letters from Loeffler and Fox and everybody. And I want to talk about that though right now. I want to talk about the messaging piece of it here. I want to talk about the message box, if you will. You know, at Midas Touch, we don't shy away from, you know, calling the GOP the GQP. We make sure never to call them conservative. There's nothing conservative about what they stand for and that they are full-fledged fascists, in our view,

who legitimately want to destroy the United States of America. We don't mince words, but I just don't think the mainstream media gets it. And they keep giving them the benefit of the doubt as though there's two sides of the debate. PodSaves is doing what it's doing. Midas could only do what we can do. We can't control every story ever that's out there. What can we really do to confront what's really going on out there? This is always the big dilemma for Democrats, which is Republicans have a decades-long strategy of running against the media and convincing voters to a shocking level of success that mainstream media should not be trusted. And Democrats want to both support progressive media and have progressive media, but also still exist within the framework of

traditional media where we just aspire for the old days where there were rules and referees and the Washington Post and the New York Times and CNN and NBC and ABC were the primary vehicles by which people get their information. But if we abide by a system like that, we're always going to lose. And I go back and forth all the time about how we handle – well, I go back and forth on one aspect of how we handle that. In 2019, I took as my New Year's resolution that I handled about as successfully as everyone else handles New Year's resolutions, but that I was going to spend less time critiquing the media on a micro level, right? Like to get mad about this article or this headline or, you know, and like everyone else who says they're going to give up sweets or go to the gym,

it was a sort of sporadic adherence to it. But the reason why I did that was, I think that they're ultimately if Democrats, if progressives are going to win the messaging wars, if we're going to find a way to compete against Fox, Breitbart, Facebook, all of that, we're going to have to build up a robust progressive media, right? That is why Crooked Media exists. That's why Positive America exists. That's why I've got Midas Touches out there and so many others is that all of the culture of mainstream media is ill-equipped to accurately describe what's going on, to fight back against what is happening. It just simply cannot do that in no amount of tweets. Maybe every once in a while we Democrats and progressives can tweet themselves into a correction or a change in a headline or maybe pulling down the Tom Cotton op-ed in the New York Times or whatever else, but ultimately changing the political conversation America is going to require building up a robust progressive media

that can push back aggressively against all the things you said about what the Republicans are doing to this country. How would you describe the GOP today? What's their identity? identity. They are a counter-majoritarian party trying to hold on to power despite representing a shrinking size of the American population. That is the accurate description. That is not the message I would use to persuade voters or non-voters anywhere else, but we have to understand them as people who cannot win in a democratic system, which is why you've seen them actually begin to make intellectual arguments against democracy. And I use, this is mostly an audio medium, but I use intellectual in air quotes here. You know, you saw there was an article from Kevin Williamson, who is a sort of conservative writer that all the intellectual conservatives love, even though I think most of his stuff is

relatively putrid, saying that democracy is not a great thing. You've seen this. Mike Lee made this argument during the, I think it was during the Kamala Harris-Mike Pence debate in 2020, is they cannot win if the system operates on a democratic basis. And so they're going to do everything they can to undermine that. And that is in service of a plutocratic corporatist agenda. And they're going to punish people in their own party who support democracy. I mean, we've seen what's going on right now with Representative Stefanik, her taking Liz Cheney's leadership. I mean, shit, you have Liz Cheney right now who seems like the reasonable person in the Republican Party because she supports the concept of democracy and speaks out against the big lie. And Kevin McCarthy in his letter today that came out said, we can't have dissent within our own party, even if that means dissent

favoring democracy and against the big lie. I mean, that is who they are right now, anti-democratic. They don't care. Yeah. And the Cheney thing is interesting, too, because it's not just that she is pro-democracy and therefore they're against her. She's willing, she is unwilling to adopt a completely absurd, improbably false lie that led to almost all of those Republican members getting murdered by Trump supporters. It's like it's that absurd. sense, as it relates to Trump's and his role in the incitement of violence on her workplace, is, as far as I understand it, completely okay with all the voter suppression laws being passed all across this country, and has been a person who has promoted the big lie that underlied this

big lie, which is that voter fraud is rampant in this country. The Republicans have been pushing that long before Trump ever showed up as a pretext to pass these voter suppression laws, voter ID laws, cutting back on early voting, cutting back on same-day registration. And Liz Cheney was there with them for all of that, too. And so there are no heroes in this Republican party. There's only slightly less villains. So why do Democrats allow this to happen? Democratic policies are supported on a bipartisan basis amongst the people. When you talk about regulation of guns, when you talk about raising the minimum wage, when you talk about infrastructure, these are numbers that the public overwhelmingly supports. Yet the Democrats are not even making a robust fight to eliminate the

filibuster. We're literally watching a minority party wield arbitrary mechanisms to prevent not only just the party that's in power, but the party that represents the voices of the people from enacting legislation of the people. Like, why is the Democratic Party so weak and anemic in the face of something so obvious? I mean, it's... I'm not sure that I would agree with that characterization of the party, because where the party has power, it has used it to expand the vote in recent years and to fight back and stop these voter suppression laws. There's a reason there are not new voter suppression laws in Michigan, because Governor Whitmer is there. There's a reason there's not more voter suppression laws in Wisconsin,

says Governor Tony Evers. There's the reason why Virginia and even New York and others have passed voter expansion laws in recent years. And so many states that have Democratic control have gone to automatic voter registration. The problem we have is structural. And it is what is the Democrats have been because we're operating in decade old gerrymandered districts in Texas and Georgia, we don't have the power to actually stop this. Democrats, they are to their credit, are using what little power they have, what little megaphone they have to scream from the rooftops about. It's why everyone knows about what's happening in Georgia. In the Senate, we're going to see how hard Democrats are going to fight right now. And the question,

it comes down to, ultimately, Joe Manchin and to a lesser extent, Kyrsten Sinema. Are they going to allow the Republicans to steal future elections, to cut back on democracy, to basically put America in a very dangerous path, you know, on a counter-majoritarian path? Are they going to allow that to happen over an absurd legislative loophole like the filibuster? And I want to just be caught, you know, people could say, like, why isn't Joe Biden screaming from the rooftops about this? Why isn't't Joe Biden screaming from the rooftops about this? Why isn't Senator Schumer screaming from the rooftops about it? We don't – I just – as someone who has been on the other side of this, I want to at least give them the benefit of the doubt that there are conversations happening behind closed doors. There is a plan being formulated to try to get the votes they need. Because everyone's,

the Joe Manchin thing is so annoying because the traditional political levers do not really work on him, right? He does not care. He probably sees it as a victory for his political strategy if Ponce of America is furious at him, right? He doesn't, he cannot be primaried. If he, we anger, if you were to anger him too much, he could leave the Senate and he could leave the party and flip the Senate to Republicans, much like Senator Jeffords did to the Republicans in 2001, the last time the Senate was 50-50. So I think I'm going to hold out judgment

on whether Democrats are going to fight hard enough for democracy to see where the For the People Act fight happens in the next few months. And they're going to start marking up the bill tomorrow, I believe, tomorrow on Tuesday of this week. So we'll know, we'll sort of know then what is happening. But I think it has been, Democrats have recognized the danger of what's happening more slowly than we would have hoped. But it's too early to say that they have failed to stop this. I want to talk to you about the For the People Act. I know we talk about it a lot here at Midas Touch. I know you guys speak about it a lot at Pod Save America.

I'm trying to game this thing out. I'm trying to figure out any which way that we could see this important piece of legislation pass. But it's hard to it's hard to really see a path for it in the Senate to actually go through, in my opinion. And that frightens me. But I think as Democrats, what's plan B? Because we're hearing a lot of doom and gloom from our followers that if the For the People Act doesn't pass, it's the end of democracy as we know it. And so what is what is the plan B? What can Democrats do? Is it the end of democracy, or do we have another way after that? At Crooked Media, our advocacy campaign around for the people act is called HR1 or we're fucked. I think we use hashtags and other

symbols in there for the purposes of not getting our emails. Getting to the Twitter censors. Yeah, exactly right. And I think there's a risk in that, which is you want to create absolute urgency, because I really do believe if we do not stop these voter suppression laws around this country, democracy is fucked. Democracy cannot survive a world in which a growing, diverse, progressive majority is governed for decades by a shrinking, conservative, mostly white minority. That is a textbook example of how democracy is filled all over the world, and it cannot happen here. Does it mean that if we do

not pass the For the People Act this year, that the Democrats are doomed in the 2022 elections or the 2024 presidential elections? Not necessarily. We're certainly making it more of an uphill battle. If you just think about, take Georgia, right? If the For the People Act passes, it would undo some of the worst voter suppression aspects of the suppression in the Hall of House in Georgia. Georgia is a state that Biden won by, I think, like 10,000 votes. Warnock and Ossoff barely won, certainly by margins less than they saw on Election Day. So it's going to make winning Georgia to reelect Senator Warnock in 2022 and for Biden in 2024 harder. In a close race, you make it harder for people to vote at a law targeted at the supporters of your party.

It's going to make it harder. Does it mean you can't do it? No. Jon Favreau and I talked about this in last Thursday's podcast, and he asked me, I will say on a question that was not on the outline, so I was not prepared for it, what do we do if it doesn't pass? And I was sort of flummoxed there. So I spent the last – spent my weekend, portions of my weekend, working on an answer to that question for my newsletter.

So I don't want to front run all my work over the weekend, but there are things we can be doing right now, as activists in the party to support down ballot candidates to support democracy to help us hold on to the house and expand our Senate majority. And those things. And if we you do all those things for the next six months, and the Four People Act passes, you didn't waste any time. There were all things we have to do anyway. But there are some things we can do to help protect democracy. And I'll give one example. Focusing on electing secretaries of state in places like Georgia, which has a very big secretary of state race, Arizona, where Kate Hobbs, who's a Democratic secretary of state, who was very helpful in ensuring that the election, that there were not shenanigans in that election. She is up for reelection. There's

an election in Nevada for a Secretary of State. That was a race that was much closer to anyone thought. And we also have a Senate race in 2022. So getting Democratic Secretaries of State elected will help in even in states that have Republican governors, will help at least provide one bulwark against stolen elections, right? Or all sorts of shenanigans on voter roll purges and things like that. And I can promise you the Kochs and the Republican billionaires are going to dump untold amount of money into the Secretary of State races. And those are things that we have traditionally not paid enough attention to as Democrats. Yeah, I think that's really good tangible advice.

I mean, we saw they were like the last line of defense in the last elections against everything that the Republicans tried to do, even Republican secretaries of state, which is why we're seeing the legislation in Georgia trying to take power away from people like Secretary of State Raffensperger over there. Well, I think that's an object lesson right there, which is Brad Raffensperger did the exact right thing and stood up to me. He stood up to an actual criminal attempt by Trump to get him to steal the election. And he had his power taken away. He's been censured. Other Republicans who have played similar roles in other states around the country have all been censured. And so we cannot we should not count on or expect a single Republican to do the right thing in 2024, because those that did it in 2020 paid a severe price for doing so. That's really what the Republicans are essentially putting Liz Cheney's head on a pike as a warning to anyone else who wants to stand up against the big lie. Meanwhile, McCarthy's letter today said, unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate. He said, as he booted

one of the most conservative members of Congress out of a leadership role, because she won't promote the big lie. What did you make of that McCarthy letter? I mean, just Orwellian, huh? I mean, I mean, I mean, Kevin McCarthy is one of the dumbest people who's ever been in American politics. He is he is filled up the whole way. And when he was the whip, when the Republicans ruled the House when Obama was president, there were at least four or five times that the Republicans went to the floor and lost a vote they were sure they were going to win because he couldn't count. And so he is basically his only – he's not a good messenger.

He's not a good – he doesn't know anything about policy. He's not a good political strategist. What he is, is he's very good at knowing where the wind blows and he quickly getting ahead of it. And that and that's what this is about, because he was he defended Cheney last time. He spoke out against Trump because he thought that's where the political winds were blowing. And he felt the change. And he has gotten right in front of the train.

And just to be clear, he literally can't count as in like one, two, three, seven, 12, 19, 44. He can't. I mean, in his defense, he can't he can't get up. I don't know how high he can count, but I know it is no higher than 2000, the 217, because he could not get to the 218. He needed to pass laws when Obama was there. I mean, I just can't imagine. I've seen, you know, his book when he was the young guns and it was him and Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. And you look at that cover and it's just such a relic of history. All these people have just been such failures throughout the whole thing.

I mean, with these McCarthyists who just blow with the wind, centering the Liz Cheney's of the world, just really assaulting democracy itself. I mean, we just breathe the sigh of relief for democracy after we kicked Trump out of office. And I think we were all hoping, OK, you know, we can move on. Democracy is saved. But now I think what we're seeing is 2022 might be even more important to protect our democracy than even 2020 was. And would you agree with that? I just think the shenanigans that they could pull if they get the House back are terrifying in future elections and beyond. I think that you could make a credible case that if we had not taken the House in 2018, Donald Trump would be president today. And that's not just because of the oversight investigations or impeachment. It's for the simple fact that if the Republicans controlled the House,

they would have the majority to stop certification in the Electoral College, therefore throwing the election to the House. And it's not who has the majority. It is who has the majority of state delegations, which was the Republicans in 2018, was the Republicans in 2020, was the Republicans, is the Republicans now. Just because the Republicans in 2020? Was Republicans? Is the Republicans now? Just because of for the same reason the Senate is very hard for us, that is also true.

That will also be true in 2024. And so there is a very real chance that if we end up with even a somewhat close election like we did in 2020 and the Republicans control the House, we will – you can see the election stolen from the person who won the popular vote and the Electoral College because of an even bigger lie being told in 2024. So for everyone who wanted to take a break or breathe a sigh of relief, we are right back in the suit because the problem is ultimately not Trump. It's Trumpism. And that is even stronger today than it was when Trump was in office. Thanks, Dan. I'm going to sleep great tonight after that. That's right. That's my point. No, we got it. We got to be active. And I think one of the things we have to do is we have to figure out how to persuade voters and how to engage voters and how to turn out voters.

And so I'm going to turn one of the least favorite questions that we receive on a daily basis onto you. And that's, you know, people go, Midas touch your videos, you know, people go, Midas Touch, your videos, you know, your efforts, aren't you just preaching to the choir? Isn't Pod Save America just preaching to the choir? What do you say to people when you get asked that sort of question? And also, by the way, I don't think Fox News has ever asked that question. I don't think OAN has ever asked that question. But what are your thoughts on that debate and how we persuade voters? This is how we think about it from the Pod Save America perspective, which is there are a couple

different ways to approach it. One is, particularly in the post-2016 environment, our goal was to be a place for people who had not been paying attention to politics before, but then were sort of shook awake by an unexpected election result. We're looking for an easy on-ramp to politics, something that seemed hopefully entertaining, hopefully with absence of some of the jargon and was sort of relatable, sort of relatable on-ramp to politics. So now we've got you interested in politics. Can we turn you into a voter? And now once we turn you into a voter, can we turn you into an activist, someone who

will donate money to campaigns or causes, someone who will volunteer to adopt a state under one of our programs, to make phone calls, to go door to door in a pre-pandemic environment? And once you become an activist, can we turn you into a better activist? And that is ultimately what we're trying to do. If you have a hardcore MAGA uncle that you have to sit next to at Thanksgiving, we are probably not the person who is going to turn him into a Biden supporter or a Pelosi supporter. What we are trying to do is get how just amazing our audience has been. Raised over $40 million for candidates to date. Has hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours. Hundreds of thousands of people have adopted the six states in our program. And whether it's Crooked Media, Midas Touch, a whole bunch of other really impressive upstarts in progressive media that have started in recent years.

That is not something that existed in any scale when I started in politics, certainly not even when we were in the White House or in the Obama years. It is a very new thing. what's happening on the right, but every little bit of that helps to get people engaged and provide some throw weight against a political conversation which leans right in this country. It leans right because Facebook leans right. It leans right because of the power of Fox News. And too often it leans right because the mainstream media, and in some cases it's gotten better about this over the last four years, but prioritizes balance over accuracy. And so you get these right-wing narratives that creep into it. And still happens to this day. You can see it in the briefing that our friend Jen Psaki does every day. She's people asking questions about lazy people not working because of unemployment, as opposed to

asking Democrats why lazy people aren't taking jobs because of, you know, generous unemployment benefits, which is something that's mostly false as opposed to asking Republicans why they don't support paying those people more money. Right. And so, you know,

that, you know, that is a thing that more, more progressive media helps push back against. And that's what we hope to be a part of. And we know that's what you guys are a part of. And that's what we coined the term sake bomb, Dan,

just like that. I'm going to toss it over to Jordy. I know Jordy has some questions for you in a sec, but I just want to say anecdotally, you know, I could say that I definitely got more involved as an activist because of Pod Save America. I mean, I'm wearing my friend, wearing my friend to the pod shirt right now. I saw you guys at the Ace Hotel when you guys were here in Los Angeles and you guys definitely informed my politics, made me more informed, made me speak to my friends about politics in a different way. And I was always a voter. But you get you guys really activated me in a different way. And I would say there's probably no Midas touch if there's no crooked media. Well, that means a lot. So thank you.

And I want to add just one more point to that, which I think is something we both do, which is, this is really true of your videos too, is what people don't recognize is that what you want to do is turn your audience, your followers into force multipliers, right? It's not just who's, it's the, every person who follows you is then sharing this video and showing it to more people in their network. And you know, that our hope is the same thing as that. And then this is why I started my newsletter message boxes, give people messaging so they can use it in their lives with their people. And that's what all of us are trying to do is to turn democratic activists and do force multipliers to push back against a right wing media machine. So Dan, before I ask you my question,

I just have to say Brett now has done what he does in every interview, which is he hogs the mic for me. And he takes over the whole interview and does not let me get a question. And so I know we're running short on time and I have one question for you. So I noticed I noticed on on your Twitter feed that you mentioned that an NBA team who I won't name is shamelessly tanking this season. So for those listening who don't know the term tanking, tanking is when an NBA sports team or a sports team in general loses intentionally in hopes that they get a good pick in the next year, their pick of choice the next year. So metaphorically speaking, do you think Republicans are shamelessly tanking their party in an effort to put forward a candidate of their choice and not just any candidate, the most evil candidate of their choice in 2024

in hopes that he wins, he or she wins. And just before you answer that, Jordy doesn't know what the word metaphor means. So you may have to you may, you may have to just go in and take a step back, but I'll let you. I will. You did not name the team I named, but I will name it. It was the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are playing basically a G League roster and are paying former 76er Al Horford $30 million a year to not play for fears that if he did play, they would win more games and possibly get a lower draft pick. I think the Republicans are actually just tanking America. I'm not sure they could tank their party anymore. You don't get preferable, like in the NBA, for those who don't know, the worse your team is, the more ping pong balls you get in the lottery, therefore,

the greater odds of getting a top pick. You don't get more votes, better ballot position if you tank in the Republican Party. I think their plan is basically to tank America because they do, I think they do recognize that under the current system where voter suppression is in place, gerrymandering is in place, there is the geographic biases of the Senate and the Electoral College, which give Republicans a huge leg up in elections, that their embrace of Trump and Trumpism is not politically insane. That's probably politically wise. And the message that I take from that is that we have to change the system. We can't operate in a world in which embracing Donald Trump, a man who called a horse a junkie and misspelled junkie in a statement this weekend, should be someone that people should ever be in anyone's political interest.

The horse got canceled, Dan. That was cancel culture. I know. Which I think, as Jon Favreau pointed out to me this morning, Donald Trump has found himself on the wrong side of the cancel culture debate. He rushed out to cancel that horse. Is that true? He canceled the horse and then the guy went on TV and said he was canceled. The horse was queuing on. He didn't realize that the horse was queued.

The whole thing queuing on. He didn't realize that the horse was queued. The whole thing was so bizarre. But I think that all that – I will tie it back up right to the Four People Act, which is the best way to deal with all – where you're never going to convince the Republicans to be better – congressional Republicans or elected Republicans to be better people. You're not going to convince them to do the right thing. You're not going to convince them to be patriotic. The one thing you can do is make them is speak to them in the only language I understand, which is brute political force.

And that means we have to beat them and we have to beat them bad. And we can only do that. If we, if we deal with these voter suppression laws and pass for the people. So I have brought this all the way right back around to the most important piece of legislation and generation. Pro podcast move right there. Yeah,

that's right. And Dan, to close, just let us know about the newsletter. Where can our listeners find it? And just tell us what you write about in the message box. Sure. So I started the message box back during the campaign under – to sort of test out this theory of politics I have, which is politicians, all politicians, not just Democrats, they treat volunteers as ATMs, door knockers, phone callers, but they don't treat them actually as messengers.

And every single person has on average a network of a couple hundred people. That is a platform. That's Instagram followers, Facebook friends, the people in your phone contacts, the people you work with, your family. And if you – instead of just asking them to call strangers or text strangers, what we should ask them to do is speak to their friends and family about politics and we should give them messaging to do so. So I sort of took this idea that I was used to write these memos for President Obama that would – sort of political strategy memos. Now I'm trying to, through the message box, try and rewrite them for activists to give them actual – the sort of same sort of messaging and political analysis and advice that I would give a politician, a campaign, a client into them. So they can use it to try to persuade their friend who they're not sure will vote, their formerly MAGA uncle, their aunt who was Republican but is now concerned about what's happening.

All those people – how do you speak to them about the issues that are happening? And you can subscribe to it at messagebox.substack.com. I like to think about it as advice and I think actionable advice for activists. So you can just sort of think about how to invest your time and your energy and your communications in this sort of post-Trump environment that we're operating in. So that's message box. That's substack.com. Yep.

I'll let you say it one more time, even for the people. Yeah. That's it. That's right. Message box at substack.com. They tell you, you have to hit people like five times for them to remember it.

So I'll stop. Dan Pfeiffer. Thank you so much for joining us on the Midas touch podcast today. Again, we can't say this enough. Thank you for much for joining us on the Midas Touch podcast today. Again, we can't say this enough. Thank you for inspiring us. And we hope that we are doing justice to us being activated as accidental activists during this election.

So thank you so much for joining the podcast. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks for everything you guys are doing. It's a huge help to have a bunch of creative people out there pumping content into the ecosystem and spreading the message. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Great interview with Dan Pfeiffer. Yeah. Hey, why do you guys always try and make me look like a dick in front of our guest? I know what a metaphor is. That was the perfect use of the word metaphor metaphor i don't think it was a bad use of the word metaphor per se but i

still don't understand what you were getting at with the metaphor how about that exactly it was a bad metaphor you may know what metaphor fine deal deal it was a bad question hall of fame jordy i just need to be i just need to hit three out of ten times the good news is is that pfeiffer actually got the he he pivoted on your metaphor and actually made your metaphor. Are they trying to take the United States to then win an election? Was the right metaphor as opposed to. Yeah. Are they trying to tank the party? So he actually he knew what he said in a good way. Pfeiffer saved you there, J.R. I was really nervous after I saved America. Pod saved Jordy.

Pod saved Jordy right there. Jordy could have been, that could have been BDSM Jordy there. Everyone, all the people online would have been like Jordy boo shitty question. And if you were, and if you were a member of the GQP, you'd be like, keep them coming metaphor, metaphor, metaphor. I got a lot more metaphors for you. That's what Mitt Romney would do, right? Let's talk about some good news. Hunger rates are plummeting in the United States. The percentage of Americans struggling with hunger is at its lowest level since the pandemic began, suggesting that the recent aid from Washington, D.C. is making its way into the heartland of the United States.

It's still shocking that in the United States of America, we have a hungry population and not an insignificant portion of people who are hungry. And we still have politicians, mostly all GQP politicians, who fight against the living wage. They fight against the human beings. They want, they are okay with their fellow human beings being hungry and not even addressing the systemic causes of hunger. And, and so that piece of it kind of just bugs me, but I am glad that hunger rates are down. Yeah. I mean, think about how meaningful that is. Literally people

who could not eat could now eat. And I know I sound like a broken record with this, but hey, leadership matters. And when you put money in people's pockets, when you provide programs for them to get food, guess what? It helps people. And isn't that what government's supposed to do? Aren't we supposed to help people? And I think across the board, you're seeing the success of democratic policies. And I think it's important because I think this is something that should be mimicked everywhere. You know, you have a lot of conservatives who point to California and go, oh, what a mess California is.

What a mess California is. Once again, because these people do not live in reality. And today, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California has a $75.7 billion budget surplus, $75.7 billion budget surplus. And keep in mind, that's a surplus during a pandemic. During a pandemic. And California gave checks to its citizens. There was a lot of things that the state government needed to do to help take care of people and businesses during this pandemic. And still, a $75.7 billion budget surplus. And not only that, California has the lowest COVID case rate in the entire country. So when you see Caitlyn Jenner go on TV talking about how her friends have to leave their private

airplane hangers and go to Sedona, Arizona, guess what? You know what raising taxes on the richest Americans did in California? It provided a $75.7 billion budget surplus. It allowed us to take on the COVID crisis and be a national leader in the COVID crisis. And now California is going to be able to take that money, reinvest it, try to help solve the homelessness issue, try to give tax rebates back to the citizens of the state. This is a big deal. And it's really, I mean, unheard of kind of for any time, but especially during a global pandemic. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I think that if somebody wants to have a private jet, multiple private jets, and you've worked for it, like go, you could have your private jets, go for it. But at the end of the day,

you still should care about human beings and other human beings and come up with ways to help people who don't have what you have at the very least to live, at the very least to give them a living wage and to not cry these invectives like spoiled fucking brats the moment that you may not be able to have five private jets, but you may have to have four private jets or you may just have to travel this year first class and you

can't fly in your private jet all the time. We should, at the end of the day, promote and support people who do well, but I also don't want to hear people who do well whine and complain that they can't get multiple X of the well that they're already doing and that they can't then help other people out. It's that selfishness. And why are we promoting on the front page of like the L.A. Times, Jenner talks, vaccines,

taxes and the wall? Haven't we learned our lessons? Why are we giving major platforms for marginalized, crazy people the same way there was for Donald Trump? for marginalized, crazy people the same way there was for Donald Trump. There should be a responsibility out there, especially amongst these historical newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times. Stop elevating the crazies.

De-platforming works. And do not let these crazy people have a platform. And I'll say it would be one thing if Caitlyn Jenner was polling at 43 percent and Gavin Newsom was polling at 50 and it was a tight race. Sure. You know, then that person earned the platform. But Caitlyn Jenner is polling at something like below five percent. I'd poll better than her. If I announced tomorrow that

I wanted to run for governor, which I'm not going to run against Gavin. Is this it? No, I'm not going to run against the Democratic. Not talking now, but in the future. I'm just saying that I would have more than 5%. If I were to run for election, I would have more than 5% of the governor and more than 5% of the vote for a governor's race. And we're giving her a front page LA Times platform. Ridiculous. Absurd. And finally, other good news.

Dr. Fauci is predicting dramatic differences in the pandemic outlook if more are vaccinated. I suppose the latter is the caveat right there. Dr. Fauci said, I hope that by next Mother's Day, we're going to see dramatic differences than what we're seeing right now. I mean, that's probably a, you know, I hope so. If not, there's really not something fucking wrong. I believe that we will be about as close to back to normal. This is the important part. I believe we will be about as close to back to normal as we can. And there are some conditions to that.

We've got to make sure that we get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated. When that happens, the virus doesn't really have any place to go. And what we're fighting here is that at the end of the day, the GQP, they're whiners. I think they love the virus because it gives them a chance to just get out their full fucking weirdness. It gives them the ability to just rant and rave about everything else affecting them. The party of personal responsibility just wants to whine. Okay. And I think COVID gives them an opportunity just to whine and just be the brats that they fucking are. At the end of the day, this is a party that was saying that COVID has no major

impact at all. 1% to 5% death rates are so minimal. Oh, but then when it comes to the vaccine, 0.000% of adverse reactions to the vaccine are all of a sudden, oh my God, the vaccines are way too dangerous to take. So I just want to get this straight that they said COVID was not dangerous at all, but the vaccines to them are incredibly dangerous. Make it make sense. Make it make sense. You can't make it make sense because this party doesn't make sense. They're just a bunch of crazy people. And what they talk about is they love to point out one example of a vaccine that has a very bad reaction. Just talk about that one example. Meanwhile, you have hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled and the GQP goes, oh, they're just

elderly. They're just old. They're just above the age of 60. That's OK. They're just 60. They just have a preexisting condition. Motherfucker, you have a preexisting condition. I'm willing to take a bet, GQ peer, that you are obese or have diabetes or have asthma or have some other issue that actually makes your percentage of death from COVID significantly higher than the rest of the population. And for you to just go, huh, these are just people who have underlying health conditions. Guess what? 70 plus percent of Americans have underlying health conditions. You're just going to write off a majority of the American population because of your kooky conspiracies.

And once again, these are the people who are constantly saying we need to get back to normal. We need to get back to normal. Why are the big government tyranny? Why won't they let us back? Why won't they let us back? Then we go, oh, here's a way that we could get back. So scientific, you know, this amazing breakthrough. Joe Biden has distributed these vaccines to everybody. You take the shot. Once we get people taking the shots, you know, everything's going to be able to get back to normal. They go,

hey, Trump made that vaccine. Trump made that. OK, OK, whatever you want to say. Well, you want to get it. You want to take it? No, it's made by no, it's made by Bill Gates and Mike. Wait, what is it? Who who gets credit for this then? Is it Fauci trying to trick you? Did Trump make it? Is it Joe Biden? Is it Bill Gates? What do you want here? What's what's going on? Keep your story. Stop whining and please just take the vaccine. You know, one of the kind of ultimate ironies and kind of to sum this up is that American, what used to be called American conservatives would always want to say, we have a better health system here in the United States than Canada. Canada, socialism, medicine, America here, we have a better version of medicine. Now,

in the United States, we do actually have a better vaccine distribution than Canada. We have the resources. We have the wherewithal. There's only one thing. You just need a leader who can activate the incredible resources and American ingenuity. And when we had a previous leader who was an idiot, who wanted to appoint himself as the scientists and overrule what the doctors were saying, America was in a much shittier and horrible position than Canada and elsewhere in the world. Now, all it took was somebody to basically say, okay, look, we're going to follow the scientists here. We're going to actually do what you're supposed to do. We are the United States of America. We want to tap into what makes our country special. And that's what Joe Biden did. Having a rock, literally a rock, not the rock, but a rock or

a pebble or an inanimate object would have been far more successful the past four years than Donald Trump at the end of the day. And now actually having a president who not only can work, but can work well and understands the operations and apparatus of government. That's why we're seeing basically, as I said, we went from a broken rotary phone that farts COVID to a United States president that is the way for me to have my second vaccine. I'm feeling great. Make sure you're getting vaccinated out there, getting your family vaccinated. Let's get back to normals. Thank you to Dan Pfeiffer, Brett, Jordy, any final words? Nope. Thank you, everybody, for listening to us. And we will see you for our next episode on Friday. Uh,

new episodes of the Midas touch podcast are every Tuesday and Friday. Please tell a friend about the show, spread the word, get your Midas merchant store. Dot Midas touch.com. And thank you from the bottom of our hearts for listening and supporting us Wednesday. The basketball game is going down.

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