The MeidasTouch Podcast - Branding the GOP with Rachel Bitecofer

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

On today’s episode, the brothers sit down with elections analyst and the founder of the new organization StrikePac, Rachel Bitecofer. Bitecofer was recognized for predicting the size of the "Blue Wave" in the 2018 United States midterm elections much earlier than other forecasters. Her prediction was one of the most accurate of the cycle. During the interview, the team drills deep into big ‘B’ Branding and why it’s so important for the left to champion pro-democracy messaging. The conversation then shifts gears as the brothers discuss the latest updates around Lindsey Graham’s COVID diagnosis as well as the uptick in vaccinations across the country. Finally, the brothers chat about the potential of an "insurrection part 2" and how everyday Americans can do their part in combating the radical right. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe. As always, thank YOU for listening! --- 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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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. What's up Midas Mighty and welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Whether you're listening to this on your podcast device or watching it live on YouTube, welcome to the movement. And I'm loving these YouTube lives. I'm loving chatting with everybody as we do this. I have to multitask, which makes it a little bit difficult, but I do my best at both. So thank you everybody for your support of the Midas Touch podcast on all platforms. We have a great show for you today. We have Rachel Bitticoffer, who will be joining the podcast. Rachel, for those who don't know,

has made some immaculate predictions about previous elections. In 2018, she guessed the blue wave to a T. She is a Ph.D. in political science. She's got incredible qualifications. And what I love about Rachel, and I think you'll see this when we interview her, is that she's real. She talks the truth. She speaks from the heart. She speaks with passion and she tells the truth and she breaks it down in simple terms. And I want to discuss today, since we have Rachel on the show, I want to talk about the reality that we're facing, both the positives and the problems. And then I want to also talk about branding because we can't look at branding in a vacuum. I hate when people just talk about branding, but ignore the reality.

But we need to be loud, proud Democrats because we're the ones who are fighting for truth and justice and our democracy. I'll leave it at that. Brett and Jordy, how are you doing today? Doing fantastic. I am excited, really excited because, Ben, we're going to see Jordy for the first time in how long has it been? I mean, this is like years at this point. Well, when's he coming? Well, it's definitely well documented. I saw Brett a few months back, which was amazing. Ben, I haven't seen in person in two and a half years. That's not an exaggeration. I'm not exaggerating.

So to put it into perspective, we started Midas Touch at the end of March, 2020. We have not been together. The three of us brothers have not been together in the same room since way before we even started Midas Touch. That's how long it has been. And that's how devastating the pandemic has been also on another level that it's kept us apart. That's how long it has been. And that's how devastating the pandemic has been also on another level that it's kept us apart. It's made traveling actually really difficult. And I'm lucky that I got to see you when I did, but it's made things very, very tough. But that's why I hope that everybody is taking vaccine seriously, is masking up when you need to be masking up, because that's what we get when people get vaccinated and people are masking up when you need to be masking up, because that's what we get

when people get vaccinated and people are masking up and we're following guidelines and we are staying on top of everything. We get our freedom back. I mean, that's that's freedom to me. Like all these anti-vaxxers who are out there right now who are saying no masks, no vaccines, fuck it. Like you are the anti-freedom party. It is your fault that we will go to more lockdowns. It is your fault that kids will not go back to in-school learning. It is your fault that kids will die. That is on you.

We could stop this so quickly if everybody just gets on the same page. And while I'm out there, thoughts and prayers to Lindsey Graham, who just announced that he is COVID positive after mocking masks just a few days ago, telling Democrats, oh, they want to mask up. Maybe they should mask up the border. Well, if you recall what happened here, Brett, particularly is that they were enacting common sense mask requirements in the House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi's watchful eye to keep things safe. Those same rules did not apply on the Senate side. And Ben, once again, because the House, the GOP House members refused to get vaccinated.

Oh, absolutely. When you're not following basic safety precautions and then you have to be babied and then you go, oh, but my freedom. Yeah. Well, guess what? This is on you. And so a large maskless group of the House GOP members met with the GQP senators. So GQP Congress members, GQP senators all congregated like, oh, it's kind of it really is. Oh, Jordy. I mean, I'm looking at this particular photo. It's just a group of people. I think I see Marjorie Taylor Greene in there and a bunch of other GQP members like what they would do and the way they're on top of each other. And Jordy, you know what you're doing, the smelly symbol for those who are listening.

This is not how people would congregate even before the pandemic. Like they almost want to like breathe on each other's face. You know that friend of yours who's like the mouth breather who like literally breathes and you're like, yo, that's gross. The entire GQP is a bunch of mouth breathers who just like literally take pleasure in spreading their germs onto each other. This is in all

aspects, a death cult, but at its peak, just a group of really disgusting people. And so the story told in two parts is this gathering, mocking masks, mocking vaccinations. And frankly, I've had friends who have got COVID, who have gotten the vaccine, who have been in places with unvaccinated people. And you know what? They're pissed off. They're pissed off. Just get the freaking vaccine. And we see the stats internationally. Canada has now become officially the world leader in fully vaccinated people. Major kudos to Canada. But here's the thing. America was leading it three months ago, four months ago, and then Canada was leading it before then. And we plateaued because there is all this disinfo out there. The entire GQP has become an anti-vax party that if they were around when polio was

there, there would all be smallpox, polio, all of these diseases would still exist today. And now the Canadian people are like, you know, we're going to get the vaccine because that's what healthy people want to do. What actual conservatives would want to do is conserve their life and not be a living death cult. There's a lot of sensationalism out there about these breakthrough COVID cases. You have people saying, well, if you got the vaccine, then I guess the vaccine doesn't work. First off, let's remember also the vaccine, the virus. These are all very new things that we learn more and more about every day. But what we don't need is that sort of sensationalism,

because here are the facts. 99.9% of people who get vaccinated are not getting infected with COVID. In fact, less than 0.004% of people who are fully vaccinated have been hospitalized and less than 0.001% of people who have gotten the vaccine have actually died from COVID after getting the vaccine. 0.001%. Let me put it another term. The vaccine is like 99.999% effective. So get the vaccine. Let's get through this pandemic. We are all in this together. And I was joking, obviously, when I said thoughts and prayers to Lindsey Graham, because I really don't have a lot of really heartbreaking stories now out there. I feel like every single day we see like the story about the father of a five-year-old kid who, while he was on his deathbed, said to his kid, you know, I wish I got the damn vaccine. And we're seeing, I feel like every single day, at least between one and five stories like that of somebody on their deathbed just wishing they got it. And some of

these people aren't even anti-vaxxers. Some of these people are just people who figured, ah, you know what? I'll wait. Like I could get it down the road. Because the stream of disinfo was so much that even a person who was not an anti-vaxxer said, you know what? I need to wait because they're getting hit with this loud disinformation campaign. And those stories strike a chord. You look at these statistics for new covid cases. You know, yesterday, California, five thousand three eighty four. The population of California is about 40 million in Florida. Twenty one thousand six hundred eighty three reported cases.

And we know Florida is not actually reporting their cases accurately. And if you look even in talking about these stories, Brett, I saw this story and maybe we play the clip of it in Lauren Bobbert's district, a health professional who runs one of the hospitals there who even stated that they claim that he's, you know, quote unquote, conservative. I want to talk about that term. Super conservative. So, yeah, I think he's super conservative. Yeah. They said that he's, you know, quote unquote conservative. I want to talk about that term. Super conservative. So, yeah, I think he's super conservative. Yeah, they said that he's super conservative. He goes, I'm embarrassed to have her as my representative in the district.

Play that clip. Andy Daniels, who describes himself as a super conservative individual, is the hospital's chief executive officer. How does it make you feel the way Representative Boebert has treated this pandemic, the masks, the vaccine? You know, I'm embarrassed for Colorado, too, quite frankly. I'm embarrassed that she is my representative. So you're the CEO of an important hospital in her district, and you're willing to go out on a limb and say that? I am. I think if you're going to take a stance in health care policy, you might actually want to learn something about health care policy.

And the weird thing is, though, and this is where we talk about branding, is that the reality is this is an individual who is still calling himself a super conservative. He's still supporting a party that anoints Lauren Bobber, who is a complete clown. Marjorie Taylor Greene, complete clown. People like that and complete clown and people like this play the duty Giuliani. That's what we call Rudy Giuliani. Play this clip because Rudy Giuliani is someone who people say, oh, he's a super conservative. This is your other face. We have

Bobbert. This is duty Giuliani talking about whether or not he'll be going to jail for violating the law and helping our foreign adversaries interfere with United States elections. Play this clip. I mean, I'm more than willing to go to jail if they want to put me in jail. And if they do, they're going to suffer the consequences in heaven. I'm not. I didn't do anything wrong. Why are you willing to go to jail if you if you feel that you're innocent? Because they lie and they cheat. How embarrassing is it that you have Bobbert Giuliani and you're still calling yourself a super conservative? There's nothing conservative,

ladies and gentlemen, about what you just heard Doody Giuliani say. What he said literally made no sense. And what he was talking about was committing a crime and helping our foreign adversary kill us as Americans and try to destroy us as Americans, because ultimately that's what foreign adversaries want to do. They want to demoralize us and destroy us as Americans, because ultimately that's what foreign adversaries want to do. They want to demoralize us and destroy us as a nation. And he goes, why are you willing to go to jail if you feel you're innocent? Because they lie and they cheat. Literally, a non sequitur makes no sense. It's more projection. That's what he's been doing.

Did he say that they will get punished in heaven? I don't think that's a, I don't think heaven is the place where people go and get punished. That's what he said about the people who want to jail them. Oh, I think they'll get punished in heaven. And so going back to branding and Jordy, you are a marketing executive. I am. Or joining Midas Touch podcast. And now you're a male model, but trying to, trying to go use that marketing brain of yours that is an award that Jordy made himself it says best looking brother congrats Jordy you did you did win that award thank you for showing that to everybody and it's debatable whether or not

Jordy is the best looking brother because age has to be weighted into that fact. I'm so sick of this fucking argument. Let's throw it out. You have the Internet existed when you were twenty seven, twenty eight. I think you have to truly take photos of each of us at the age of twenty one to truly the peak model age would be. I'm just joking with you, Jordy. But Jordy, seriously, using your marketing brain here, why don't we see, though, more Democrats out there talking, one, about the negative framing about all of these crazy idiots, but number two, just being out there and saying, look at what we're doing here. We are for democracy. Look, I think that's a great point. I don't think that existed before groups like Midas Touch started to fucking throw hands, man. I'm serious. It's something that's

been lacking within the Democratic Party. And I think that's why we've been able to make our impact so so special and so loud is because we don't pull our punches and we like to make our splashes and we like to figure out the very nuanced debates and how to have the conversation in a very colloquial manner that people can understand. And Brett, to Jordi's point, we see we make fun of these, you know, Charlie McGurk, the Kirk's and the CPAC events and these fascist rallies that exist. And they're disturbing. They're disgusting. They are loser paloozas. But, Brett, talk to us a little bit about that. Like there is no real pro-democracy rallies out there. There is no celebration or like fun events that Democrats are doing where

we could celebrate helping people, huh? Yeah. The one thing that those events do, and while it's easy for us to mock and we should be mocking them relentlessly because they're crazy, they're shows of craziness and it's a literal circus. What they do though, is they motivate the base and they keep this 24 seven, three 65 GQP fascist movement going. They keep pouring fuel into that fire and they keep motivating their base. Now, do I think this helps them reach out to independent voters? No. Do I think it helps them reach out to democratic voters who I think they I think it helps them reach out to Democratic voters who I think they might want? No, but I don't think they give a shit at all with that. I think they

just want to, I think that's why these events are as crazy as they are, because they are trying to motivate their base as much as possible. And that really doesn't exist on the left in any real form or fashion. And it's just kind of starting to be created. And I think we're doing that a lot, even just with these podcasts and the various events that we're doing and Midas meetups and things like that. We're getting like-minded folks together to help build a movement from the grassroots. And this is something we spoke about a lot when Dan Pfeiffer was on the show from Pod Save America. And he was talking about the importance of having a strong liberal media out there, a pro-democracy media to counter this

fascist media. And that's what Crooked Media is doing. That's what Midas is doing. And we need much more of this because we need to make sure that people know, hey, like we're fighting for you out there. We're in this together. And we got to counter fascism with our pro-democracy messages. If you put and then if you put those events side by side, you look at the Charlie Kirk Turning Points USA, you see crazy fucking people there. You see people talking about election fraud and then people and Venezuela and fucking Hugo Chavez and just the craziest stuff. And then you do a flash cut to a democratic event. And it's about democracy. It's about sending your kids back to school. It's about kids living, being able to grow up. It's about taking care of the elderly,

social security, COVID relief, all these sorts of programs. You put those side by side. Then I think if we do that, we will be able to reach out to the disaffected Republican, to the independent and say, hey, do you want that craziness or do you want this? Do you want pro-democracy? Do you want money in your bank accounts? Do you want your health and your life and your freedom? That's what it's all about. One of the biggest revelations in starting Midas because I didn't have a community of pro-democracy, unabashedly pro-democracy-like friends who talked about that. We were all obviously pro-democracy and we all supported candidates who support our constitution in its truest sense and not the GQP version of fascism and overturning our government. But like a lot of the people before Midas Touch came on the scene,

like you wouldn't talk about it. You would just go through your day. You know, you'd go to the, you'd either work out, you have maybe a hobby or two, you'd go to sleep, you start your day again. And all of that noise was just noise. But we have to unite and build this together because ultimately sharing that community with each other is a way that we can then empower exponentially other people and make sure that they are not being influenced by the dredges of Facebook disinfo culture. Now talking about, you know, the dredges of Facebook disinfo culture, one of the other groups that if you're a quote unquote, super conservative that you like is a group called the cyber ninjas and they call the cyber ninjas or they called something else. I had to say that. And as I said that out loud, I was like thinking that that's the stupidest

name ever. And that I know I've said Cyber Ninjas over and over again, but it just sounds so dumb off the tongue that this is who they worship. It's a group that we now learn has essentially received based on new reporting. all of their money from Trump backed disinfo groups is what's funded this group. And again, Maricopa County, which was Republican in what we thought was a Republican, you know, you have Jack Sellers, the chairman of the board of supervisors. These are not a group of democratic board of Supervisors. These are people who are hardworking election officials who do their job the right way, but who let in this creeping form of fascism overwhelm and take over their party. And now they're perplexed that what the fuck is going on in a August 2nd, 2021 letter.

Jack Sellers writes to the senators who basically empowered and funded the cyber ninjas. They said it's now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over. Just as you read this letter, they talk to these senators like they're fucking toddlers. Like that's a letter that you would send to literally like a like a five year old. When I was reading it, I'm like, who wrote this, Ben or Popak? Which which one of them wrote this one? But you have. But but, you know, but I appreciate good artistic writing. And here the motif was treat these motherfucking toddlers like motherfucking toddlers.

It's now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over. If you haven't figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair and accurate, right? I'm not sure you ever will. The reason you haven't finished your quote audit is because you hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how professional elections are run. There's one more paragraph there. But this is why just a note to the wise. There are some people who have these like super long 30 page letters,

but sometimes a nice pithy letter like this that just says to them, you are a fucking idiot. You are a fucking traitor. Here it is in three paragraphs, two big paragraphs. Now here, release your report and be prepared to defend any accusation of misdeeds in court. It's time to move on and recall these cyber ninjas, all of the wild, crazy conspiracies from bamboo to election results being tampered with in jungles. Like these people have a secret compound in Montana, had political money funded and literally are trying to tamper with the election results. So here's the point, brothers. These are not conservatives anymore. There's nothing conservative about tampering with

election results in hidden compounds in Montana. There's nothing conservative about spreading anti-vax messages. There's nothing conservative about rooting for our enemies, both in terms of allowing them to tamper with our elections, number one, and two, literally rooting against the United States Olympic team. We need to call these fuckers out. Let's not even forget they tried to cheat in Arizona and they couldn't even do it right. They botched their whole recount. They couldn't even produce data. They couldn't produce any sort of figures whatsoever,

probably because they didn't have the data on their side. So they just were like, oh, I guess it all got fucked up. But they literally could not even cheat correctly. That's how incompetent these people are. And we're lucky that they're incompetent, honestly, because had they been competent, maybe they could go around there and actually effectively make shit up and make things worse for the country. But good thing, A, there is no fraud whatsoever. And B, they are completely incompetent and totally embarrassed themselves and botched this even more. And now they're trying to take this embarrassment on the road to delegitimize our elections across the road. It's frankly disgraceful. And then, yeah, Ben, you have the

same people who are now rooting against our military, rooting against the U.S. Olympic team. I mean, to me, I don't care who's president when the Olympics are going on. I'm going to root for the United States of America. I mean, I don't know. Well, let's see. Who's president right now? Is it George Bush? Is it Barack Obama?

Is it Donald Trump? Then I'll decide how I want to proceed with my if I'm going to root for Russia or the United. No, I always will root for the United States team. It's just an absurd concept to even think that you would ever do otherwise. And I'm excited to see these talented people out there, these talented athletes out there who have dedicated their lives to doing this sport for our country and are doing a kick-ass job at it. And frankly, anyone who considers themselves a Republican or a conservative right now should really just be ashamed of what's happened to

their party and should leave. The GQP is not conservative, but they are another C word and they are consistent and they are consistent with their anti-democratic rhetoric and that they are anti the United States. So that was the other C word. I don't know what y'all were thinking. Let me just say this before we move on. Speaking, I'm just going to shift the conversation completely and hope everyone forgets about that. Speaking of not being able to cheat properly and the spirit of sport competition, I just wanted to be made very clear

that Ben and I will definitely be playing a game of one-on-one basketball when I go to visit him. Now I'm saying this publicly and in a public forum, so Ben could start practicing now. So there's no excuses by the time I come to see him. I think we need to play on the right court that has sufficient. Okay. That's fine. Wherever I want to play on the right court. You heard that there first. And when we come back from these messages, you're going to hear from Rachel Bitticoffer, who is going to talk to us about branding the Democratic Party as the pro-democracy party, which we are,

and branding the GQP as the fascist GQP anti-American party, which is what they are, and what we need to do as Democrats to win elections. That is our goal. We need to win elections. We'll be right back after these messages. What's up, Midas Mighty? We got something special for you right now. Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? I don't think they're ready for this. They're ready. No, they're ready. All right. So by far our most popular vaxxed wristbands out there have been the rainbow wristbands that we've put out. And we have a big announcement right now that we are going to be putting out a small amount of extra wristbands on the Midas Touch website

at store.midastouch.com. And when I say small, I mean we have like 30 of these remaining. And you could get yours right now if you are watching this. Trust me, you're going to want to get these right now while you're with us at store.midastouch.com. And if you're too late, you know, don't worry about it because we've got a lot of incredible products at the Midas Touch store. My personal new favorite, the vaccinated and caffeinated coffee mugs. That's what keeps me going all day. Jordy Ben, what are your favorite items that we got going these days? Well, let me just say this. What I like about this ad read right now, since we're

doing it live, the people in the chat are the first ones to get in the people listening. Well, you guys should be watching next time. Not knocking your listen. Definitely keep listening. But here are the perks. My favorite, the Vax Day F-Mask by far. I love that thing. I'm going to rock that thing tomorrow when I'm in the airport. He's going to keep me protective. Ben, how about you? I like the Club Democracy just line in general from the Club Democracy sweatshirts. Anything Club Democracy. I love get all your Midas Touch gear at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast.

We are joined by none other than Rachel Bitticoffer. Rachel, an election analyst, a political scientist, the founder of Strike Pack. Her predictions in past elections have been on point. And as we move towards 2022, there is no person I'd rather have on the Midas Touch podcast than Rachel. Rachel, welcome to the podcast. Man, thank you so much. I'm also a heathen that's going to hell if I don't change my evil ways.

But thanks for leaving that on. And so, Rachel, I just want to thank you from the outset, from really day one of Midas Touch. You had reached out. You saw what we were doing. You thought that we were on to something. And here we are, what, Brad, 18 months almost later or so. And we're still kicking. We're still fighting for our democracy.

So we wanted to thank you for that. Hello, hello. You guys are killing it, not just kicking, right? You're killing it. I love what you did down in Florida. It's a branding exercise, ultimately, right? Shitting all over DeSantis. And I can't wait to engage in that space and just really fucking

hang the deaths of all these people on him, like, you know, an albatross. So, yeah, but yeah, you guys have no doubt. As soon as I saw the first ads you produced, I was like, I got to, I got to reach out to these guys. They're doing what I say we need to do. And Rachel, it is when you say a branding exercise and and Trump, a piece of shit fascist, though, was a master, though, in branding and riling up his base. And Democrats and progressives sometimes are just afraid to speak to people, their hearts and their passions. And so really, all we did was say, we want to celebrate democracy. We love this country and this country could be better and it should not be run by fascist piece of shits. That's our simple message. And do you think that's a message that should be brought to 2022?

Not only should, it must be brought to 2022, right? And, you know, the way to do it is, you know, this, this, like, it's really like two areas, right? You have to, you have to create a positive image and lean in to being a Democrat, to being a liberal, right? Because like, if you don't, then your opponent's message about you is, hey, don't vote for Rachel Biddecoffer. She's a Democrat and Democrats suck. Right. And then if your message is, oh, well, I'm not one of those kinds of Democrats or, you know, oh, I break with you. No, hell no. Dude, your message needs to be you're right. I'm a Democrat. Let me tell you why, dude. And then you lay out the contrast. So, you know, you know, Democrat, everything the fucking middle class has and likes, Democrats gave it to them. And in most cases had to give it to them over the complete and total opposition of the Republican Party. That is not

a new feature, though, you know, they've become more common on that opposition. Right. And so you do that and then you tell people, and by the way, let's look at the other party's brand, right? It's a neo-fascist movement. It wants to reinstall into the presidency a moron who tried to enact a coup. I mean, no one's ever done that in 245 fucking years, right? And if we don't have that conversation with voters who are not having that conversation naturally, we have to make that salient to them, then we're really fucked. Because the other side is full-swinging branding operation 24-7. So I guess the one advantage I will say, other than groups like Midas Touch, StrikePak,

Lincoln Project that are coming in to fill these messaging deficits and deficiencies, the thing that we do have going for us is stability on the Republican side. I can tell you pretty closely exactly what they're going to do, exactly how they're going to do it, exactly how effective it's going to be. Because, you know, I learned in 18 that they didn't need like an external source of negative partisanship because their entire apparatus is negative partisanship, right? And so like in 18, their turnout went up with ours, or we would have trounced them in the Senate as well. And that was kind of the surprise. But in 2020, I knew Trump was going to turn out huge, huge turnout. And the only thing that saved us was our bumps are bigger. And if those bumps, as you boys well

know, disappear, and history says they will in 21, and these recall in Cali and Virginia and then 22 everywhere, we will be well and truly fucked this time because it's not about Obamacare and tax policy or even climate change, which is obviously existential at this point. It's about whether or not we're going to wake up on November, you know, whatever, six, the day after the election in 2022 in a democracy still or in a autocracy that no one but us will notice right away. But that's exactly what they're going to do. I mean, they're showing us who they are. We need to believe them. Yeah. Do you see signs of hope, though, in 2022? I mean, I think you accurately and we can accurately diagnose the problem. We're out there every day pounding this

message, both the negative partisanship message of look at these fucking crazy fascists, the positive messages. We're Democrats. We're proud. We support democracy. Is that going to be enough? I mean, it depends, right? So, I mean, I can't, I got to be careful, but I will say like, it's not, my followers are always telling me, listen to Rachel Benicoff, right?, I mean, I can't, I gotta be careful, but I will say like, it's not, you know, I got my followers are always telling me, listen to Rachel Benicoffer, right? And I mean, I will tell you without going into specifics, like people are, important people are listening. It's just a matter of,

can we organize and implement this stuff, right? And here's the thing between your guys' creative outlet, my stuff at Strike Pack and Lincoln's thing, the fact is, is the only thing that we are missing to build an effective shield that at least gives us hope. Because keep in mind, we are running up against a huge fundamental and a gerrymander in the house. So like saving a House majority by one seat would be an astronomically sized win for us in 2022. It would take like, you know, Trump's full straight to win in 16.

We need something similar to pan out for us in 2022, right? But the only thing that's preventing that right now, I think, is funding, right? But the only thing that's preventing that right now, I think, is funding, right? Like if you and I and Lincoln had good war chest, we would be able, I mean, we have the plan, we have the message, we have deployment strategies that are innovative, right? I always say it's like SpaceX versus NASA. We're going to space, but everything about how we get there is different and modernized and much, much less bureaucratic. So my fear is that we have this toolkit, this solution sitting right here. And unless we can get the funds to deploy it, it doesn't matter how good the strategy is. If no one sees our message,

we're really in trouble. And I think that's one of the strange things that I've experienced in launching Midas Touch is when I've looked at the Democratic Party, they expect results. They whine and they cry about, oh, woe is me. The worst is going to happen. And they don't really do anything about it. And then when there are groups that are out there, I mean, look, we have to fundraise the way we do with small dollars because there is really no Democratic Koch brothers. That's exactly right. There's no group. You think we want to be

on Twitter saying, hey, we need, you know, X amount of dollars for our billboards. We're blessed to have people in small dollars who support it. The grassroots wants to. But people who have money, I think they're afraid they rather keep their money than try to then save democracy. That's been the strangest thing that I've watched. It's yeah. I mean, that and like here's the thing that really is frustrating for me, because you're right. It's not it's not the grassroots. I mean, it you have to start with the grassroots fundraising and it makes sense. And but, you know, once if you had like elite, a party, a billionaire buy-in, I mean, Michael Steele and I are buddies, right. And I had told him, look,

dude, I cannot get like the party to fund this, even though like I'm showing them A plus B plus C plus D. And like, this is how specifically you execute it. like i still can't get any money to do it right and they keep telling you well i want to see the the results well you can't do testing without money right and and um you know the thing that that i i've been told steel was i was like dude i don't get it because i feel like you know if this was on the republican side like boom let me lay it down right and like he was like hell yeah dude if i was if this was on if you came into the rnc office with this shit dude when i was in charge i mean granted steel's a little biased right because like i've created like our version of nationalization and stakes framing and a mode of shit off of basically the 2010

midterm. Like that's really where you see the modern Republican messaging emerge. Right. And he was, of course, in charge of deployment. So Steele's a little biased, but still, he was like, dude, on the right, you guys would be rolling in money with this effort. You want to come play bad cop to my good cop, is what he said. Like, hell yeah, dude. So, you know, I mean, that's why I mentioned it on the pod. I assumed you guys had similar experience. And, you know, I just want to say, like, for God's sakes,

if you've got a, if you want to wake up in a democracy, big funders on the left, like we are fucking this up again. Right. We should have been hot to trot out in California blowing up turnout for the last couple of months. And now we're down to four weeks. And there's I mean, there's such an invisible effort. And you know what? If you were to pull this question, which no one ever thinks to pull, just call registered voters and ask them, hey, are you aware of the recall? They're going to be, what's a recall? Like who? What? They don't even know it's happening, you know? And, you know, and then the mid, the fall election in Virginia, you know, people don't understand. If Terry McAuliffe wins, which he can easily do, because the surge turnout still, I think, going to be

there based on what I saw in the primary from Northern Virginia, because like our hot to trot realignment group is college educated voters everywhere. They're realigning and they're surging in their participation because they're afraid and they're the only people that really pay attention. Right. So like that's fine statewide, but down in the Hampton Roads and Richmond areas, there's 10 districts and, you know, they only need half of them to take the majority, right? And guess what happens if they win that? I mean, or this recall, then the narrative is going to be the Democrats are a hot mess. The fundamentals are completely against them and good luck shaping a good positive start to 22 on that kind of message.

And the recall is something I want to talk to you about, but I also wanted to rewind just a second to go back to what we were talking about with these big dollar donors. Cause I actually have a story for you that I think you'd appreciate. And we've never actually like told this on the pod. The closest we once got to a big dollar donor coming to us was, you know, I'm not going to say who it was, but they came and they wanted to offer a good amount of money for us to get our ads on TV and stuff. And then their one condition was, we don't like that you're calling Trump an authoritarian or a fascist. Yeah. Well then I'm like, and we said, all right, then, then goodbye, like we're not going to sacrifice our things. And it gave us an insight like, oh my gosh. So this is why the messaging is so diluted out there. The people who have the money

are afraid to say what needs to be said. And that's why I think groups like strike pack are so important out here. That's why I think groups like Midas touch and Lincoln are so important out here because we're saying what all these old time party infrastructure that quite frankly has lost for decades and decades is afraid to say. The fact of the matter is it's not so much because of political culture and norms and all that shit that they're afraid to say it. The reason they're afraid to say it is because the consultant class is stuck in like empirical 1990 2000, in terms of the political science behavior literature, okay. And they think that what makes the fear of saying it is they think they have to win over card carrying Republicans to win a race like Arizona, which is demonstrably. I mean, look at Georgia. You flip two Senate seats in a runoff,

right? With two dudes, one's a black guy, one's a Jewish guy, and they are both unapologetically liberal, right? They're not AOC nutty liberal, but they are liberal and they are, they owned it and they made it about control of the Senate, right? I was prodding, but they made it about control of the Senate and they made it was some prodding, but they made it about control of the Senate. And they made it about relief money to the voter, because most voters were the 10% that care about other people. 90% of other people care about themselves primarily. So you really want me-focused messaging, not so much we when you're out in that broader space. So it's fear that they think is well informed and it's totally fucking wrong. I think people just want to see people fighting for them at the

end of the day. Like policy is almost secondary in a lot of ways. And I feel like you've hit on this a lot. And you see it when you put, you know, democratic values on the ballot by themselves in a vacuum, they're overwhelmingly popular. And like you're saying, you go to these states and the consultant class thinks, oh, well, we need to run a moderate if we're going to win these states because a moderate will peel off these voters. But meanwhile, you get a truly dynamic, democratic, unabashedly liberal candidate in there, people get excited about that. That's what rallies people to go to the polls. And that's exactly right. So the point is today in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2010, if you want to win, you have to outvote the other side. 95% of voters vote on party identification. Period.

End of story. Full stop. And their decisions to vote are made months. I mean, they are candidate blind. That's why I was able to say in the presidential forecast that the Democrats would win 16 months out with no definitive nominee. And I didn't even really care who the nominee was because it wasn't going to be it was going to be a huge turnout surge for us. So, you know, people need to understand the world has moved on. The Republicans electioneering machine from the very top all the way down to the bottom, is designed for the current environment that we're in.

Our electoral machine ignores the basic fact that 95% of vote choice is inflexible and set in stone. Our system is based on a bigger fluidity there. So we're not even coming into the war, the battle in a, you know, we're battling World War II with or Vietnam with like World War I guns, right? And we have to make this transition right now, like literally right now. And as much as I love the party, and I want people to fund the DNC and DTRIP and all of these party organizations because we don't want a starving party infrastructure, it is critical that some people with some money understand there is a clock. It is hanging over America's head. It is

ticking down every fucking day. And our only hope, our only hope of saving Congress, which, of course, is what will save the next presidential election, is if we do decisive, quick, intensive napalm modernized messaging. And you guys at Midas Tech, at StrikePak, Lincoln Project are sitting here. It's like having three aircraft carriers and just saying like, ah, fuck it. I spent a billion dollars here, but I'm not going to gas this thing, you know? One of the concepts that you've kind of pioneered in a way is the idea of negative partisanship. So I'd love for you to just talk about, define what negative partisanship is and how could we use that to get people to go to the polls and understand, especially here in California, as you mentioned, we have the recall election coming up and then 2022 is going to be a big battle for control of the house. Yeah. I mean, when I say like the

consultant class who, by the way, candidates and campaigns rely on, right. I mean, they're not experts. So when somebody comes in and says to cinema, Hey, the way that you stay in power in Arizona is by being a spineless, horrible senator. Like they believe that, right? Even sometimes in the face of direct evidence to the contrary, which of course would be her colleague from Arizona, Mark Kelly. So, you know, that consulted advice is really important. And there's no, there's very little, you're seeing it now in the Newsom team, picking it up, and certainly the Terry McAuliffe team here in Virginia, this idea that I, there's an element in our politics in the polarized era, it's a product of of the uneducated white voter. And the other is changing because it's becoming the party of the more educated white voter. And those are the persuadable, like realignment people. Like those things have changed how to electioneer. And what we see on the right is this concept of, okay, we're not going to talk about us. We're not going to talk

about what we're going to do for you so much. What we're going to tell you all the time is that the other party is destroying America. The other party is coming to take all your shit, your guns, they're going to kill babies. And the point of that is to make people feel a negative emotion, because what we can see in the data is those negative emotions, even if you can't get a voter to see it, even in themselves, it's not like they're lying to the focus group, they're lying to themselves. Like in a focus group, no one's going to say, yeah, you know what really motivates me? Right.

Shitting on the other side, right? No one thinks like that. I mean, that's why, you know, negative ads, like they pull it like 80%. I hate negative ads. But the reason people use negative ads is because they move behavior. Right. People are terrible judges of what moves them, what they want, like how they respond. And and so negative emotion, as it turns out, is a very powerful force. And what the Republican Party decided to do was create an environment that's all negative

emotion all the time. And so when you ask a Republican, why many of them, why would you vote for Trump? Because I can't let the Democrats have control, right? If I let the Democrats have control, Armageddon, right? And so that's a negative vote. That is not a vote because of that party's philosophy or, you know, Trump's characteristics. It's a vote about prevention, threat mitigation. Right. And we we had a natural threat motivator in Donald Trump. Thank God it's a natural effect because the Democrats didn't lean into it at all. Like when the Republicans run out party, they make it a branding and referendum exercise and they just hammer, right? Like, you know, no matter how moderate the Senator is,

they're Obama's best friend and they were in the church with the pastor or whatever, right? And we don't do that. We never made like 2018 and then even worse of a sin in 2020. We never made for voters here. You have two choices. One of them is a party that passed the Heroes Act and wants to give you more aid and give open small businesses. The other side is killing you through mismanagement and, you know, is blocking aid to you right now. And if you want to have these checks come fall, you have to show up and vote and knock these Republicans out, right? So like, that's how when I say like, it's good to see some movement within the party orgs and the campaigns, like you're seeing credit claiming a lot from Biden's team, and that's great that they get it. And it's

going to help. It's certainly better than the zero credit claim we saw, you know, really in the Obama years. But what really would make credit claiming effective is here is what you have. And the GOP is coming to take that from you. And now this may be data driven, or you may just have a feeling because of your experience in the space. But, you know, which politician in the GQP can move the needle kind of like Trump did in 2016 and said a little bit more differently and pointedly, you know, who outwardly is acting like a buffoon, but can actually get people to go out to the polls and vote for them come 2024, that Democrats really need to start taking a little bit more seriously. Two words for you, Ron DeSantis, right? And, you know, that's why I was delighted

to see that you guys had turned some attention to him. And certainly if I had the resources right now, I'd be blanketing the state of Florida and TV and digital tying him to these deaths. And I wouldn't tie them in an abstract graph way. Hell no. I'd drag out some pissed off relatives and make ads that way. Like, you know, the 2016 convention, remember Benghazi mom, like as if Hillary Clinton, Like, you know, the 2016 convention, remember Benghazi mom, like as if Hillary Clinton, like, you know, directly did something. Anyway, Benghazi mom, you killed my son, right? I mean, if you want to fight back on like these attacks, you know, oh, the Democrats closed the schools and they made you wear a mask. Remind people that's because Republicans in Texas and Oklahoma and Florida murdered children.

You know what I mean? And DeSantis dude is a smart Donald Trump. He's got two qualities Trump lacks, intelligence, okay, but control, right? That's what makes him the scariest thing, right? Is that he's not Trump. Trump cannot control himself. If he could, we would not be sitting in a post-democratic America right now, right? So like, you know, DeSantis to me, you know, more than Abbott, even in Texas, is the number one problem, but I wouldn't sleep on either of them or Gnome.

And if we had the budget, I would be right now shitting on their brands, right? That's like tying them to their awful brand and that the GQP is not conservative anymore. already just the terminology to most Americans outside of the political class, potentially problematic because people generally want to conserve their families and conserve things. So just the framing, I think, harms Democrats. But I don't think that we should even be calling G. That's why we call him GQP. We call him crazy cultist fascist. I don't want to give him the benefit of that title conservative, because truthfully, I look in the mirror now as I'm looking, I go vaccine, not supporting insurrections, wanting a Democratic government. I think I'm more conservative than these. I mean, you know, someone made a joke to me. Yeah. They said, yeah, fuck it. Russia invaded today. I mean, the Republic, half the Republican base would join their effort, dude.

I mean, you need to be ragging the hell out of them. I mean, you know, I would love to have enough. I mean, in a perfect world, we would have enough resources to come in. And like, you know, you've got to prioritize, right? So like breaking party allegiance is really hard, but we, and you can't do it. Like I told you, 95% of the vote choices settled before you even have candidates, right? So you can't do it at the campaign level, but what the Republican party has taught us is that you can actually break identity at the aggregate over time through a sustained branding. And that's what they've done with white working class men in particular, right? It's been about disqualifying the Democratic

brand, strategically unanchoring these people, by the way, from union membership, because that is what tied them to the Democratic Party. So that anchor, you know, the right to work, I mean, it was not only just about helping the business community, it was about destroying one of the Democrats most effective electioneering outlets, which is that union base, right. And so like, we can break party identification to I think, if we zone in particularly on 40 year old white college educated people who have propensity scores or registered as Republicans and start, you know, just putting into their brain your image. Like if you ask most voters, what does the Republican Party do or stand for? They're going to say,

oh, low taxes and they're good for the economy. And that's, you know, both of those things are. But that's how ingrained it is. And you might even see like that they that voters give the edge on foreign affairs. Still, after Donald Trump tried to dismantle NATO and literally, God knows, probably told half of our state secrets to Putin, they look at the Republican Party as being better on national security. And the reason is they don't read the news. They have no idea what these people have been up to. It's all imagistic brand like allegiance. Right. So you kind of have to turn Coke drinkers into Pepsi drinkers or vice versa. And the way that you do that is you make them distrust their brand. And I think the best way to make them distrust it is to say,

hey, you know that Coke, it's literally going to kill you. It's poison. It's actual poison. And then you'll have the consultants say, oh, you know, voters actually like when they hear that Coke is poison and they want to drink it more. And you're like, what are you talking about? What are you saying? Oh my gosh. Yes. Oh, one oh one of the worst like and i just love when people try to teach me about modern political behavior especially when they cite outdated shit right um but like one of the worst like we've got these myths on the left that are just so fucking they're fucking wrong there's no data to support it and one of them is if we go after them we'll just make more republicans vote no assholes. Republicans are already pretty much performing at optimal turnout.

There's less of them in almost every competitive place, yet they win in many of the elections because they, their whole operation is, isn't, it isn't about, you never hear a Republican say, hey, we need to make sure we attract independents. And, you know, God, you never hear him say something about getting Democrats to vote for them. So you would think there was more Republicans than there are Democrats. But the fact is, in numbers,

there's more of us everywhere in these competitive places. But we suck on turnout and they hold steady and even improve every fucking cycle because they're so good. And they've steady and even improve every fucking cycle because they're so good. And they've built this infrastructure. It's just designed for coalitional turnout. And ours is still designed for Bill Clinton, which was a time period distinct in American politics where you had fluidity of the South realigning from the Democratic Party to the

Republican Party, same white conservatives, right, but different parties. And you had ideological heterogeneity. You had liberal Republicans. You had conservative Democrats. Like those times are gone. And if our politics or electioneering politics are not designed for the time we live in, we're going to be in trouble. So to summarize, let's fucking go. Yes. Let's get to the fucking polls. Let's fund good candidates. Let's get our message out loud and proud and follow the true data. We got people like Rachel Bitticoffer out there giving you the data. Enough with these dumb shit myths and let's stand shoulder to shoulder and fight together like we're doing here now and every single day. Rachel Bitticoffer, it's an honor having you on the Midas Touch podcast. My producer over here

saying I got to go to a commercial. I got to go to a commercial break. I want to thank you so much for your time and anything we can do to be supportive. We're here and let's kick ass together. Yeah, I'm super glad to have you guys as partners in crime. So thank you so much, Rachel Bittenkofer. Thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We will be right back after these messages. What's up, Midas Mighty? We've got new merch in the merch store.

Brett, tell them about it. New merch line. This is in addition to the hit lines, Club Democracy, Vaxxed and Relaxed. We now have two amazing new designs in case you haven't seen them yet. We got the It Wasn't Rigged, You're Just a Loser shirt. Fan favorite. Totally a fan favorite. I am loving it. And it's just my favorite graphic graphic to see all the time it just makes me smile to see that phrase because

it is so true and today we are announcing the Midas Touch for the people line we got a for the people tea we got for the people mugs we got for the people totes so get yours today at store.midastouch.com and keep sending pictures of you rocking your Midas Touch Pro Democracy gear. We love to see it. Thank you so much for all your support. That's store.midastouch.com. Let's go. Welcome back to the Midas touch podcast.

That was a great interview with Rachel Biddecoffer. We'd love to have her back on the show again. And she definitely gave me a few ideas in terms of some ads that I was, I was texting you during the, I'm trying to quadruple task here, but also texting during the interview. I was actually putting it on our shared word document that we're all looking at. But I have, I think, some great ideas after that. And that's why that's why it was great to speak to her for a number of other reasons. Look, we talked about Canada passing the United States with respect to vaccinations and percentage of their population being vaccinated. But there is some good news in the United States, which is the rate of covid vaccinations in the United States continues to rise. The CDC reported that eight hundred and sixteen thousand plus doses were administered on Saturday, which was the fifth straight day the agency

recorded more than 700,000 shots in arms. And we've seen those plus 700,000 numbers since Saturday repeatedly. And so I think you have people who were truly plagued by the disinfo, the disinfo from fake news, the disinfo that's Fox News, the disinfo from their leaders who are not leading, who are giving them fake information, false information, and they weren't getting it. I mean, and did you see, Brett, like, you remember, like, what shocks me about the GQP is that they will literally inject any crazy substance up their asses, but the actual substance that actually helps them, which is a pretty consistent aspect of these crazy people in general. You know, the first thing was hydroxychloroquine, which was not helpful, but they tout hydroxychloroquine as the miracle cure you're talking about like literally like injecting hydroxychloroquine in their veins these are people who want to chug fucking clorox um because the president gives them all this dumb fucking information

about clorox and now there's some like anti-pesticide like horseman anti-parasite anti what did i say pesticide yeah an anti-parasite is there a difference i don't know the difference it's like a pesticide that the like planes drop over like crops and these fuckers want to like inject this crazy shit into their veins. And they want to find every other miracle cure, but the actual one that exists because anything that's logical is counter to what their ideology is. That's why I said they are, see, they are consistently stupid and consistently anti American in every aspect.

But, but here's the thing. What, when they're people, when they say, well, do the research on your own, do the research on your own, there's a wink and a nod in what they're saying, which is don't trust what actually the science is. Go on your little Facebook and get caught up in our ridiculous echo chamber to join our cult. So when you see them say, do your research, do your research,

what they're actually saying, what they should be saying is, do your research from scientific sources. Do your research from qualified sources. But what they're trying to say is, everybody should on their own conduct investigations that they're not qualified to do in the dredges of Facebook and TikTok and all of this fake shit. Have you seen the meme going around? It's probably like my favorite meme of the moment. It has on top, I'll pull it up now. It has Vax research on top and it has scientists in the lab. And on the bottom, it says anti-vax research. And as a woman on her phone on the toilet. And that's what it is. That's what we're dealing with. We're dealing with an incredible amount of disinformation. And when you have the COVID-19 vaccine, which comes from the, at least

the Moderna and the Pfizer from mRNA vaccine technology that has been studied for decades and has been recently applied to the novel coronavirus and has, despite what people on the right want to tell you, is FDA approved via emergency approvals. They go, but what are the ingredients in the vaccine? It's not FDA approved. Is it natural? I don't think it's natural. Then they go, oh, hydroxychloroquine. Get it in me. Bleach. Get it in me. In invectorum or whatever this this new drug i don't even know what the new drug is what is it but by the way but but we didn't explain why people are flocking to this drug and it's because michael flynn's lunatic

brother who's equally as crazy as flynn if not uh more he was the one promoting this and touting this thing on his telegram or regram. And then Tucker gave it a shout out. My God. But you buried the lead a little bit when we started off this segment. We're not just getting 700,000 shots in arms consistently now. Guys, we had 70%. If you remember, President Biden had set a goal of 70% vaccination by July 4th. It ended up taking about three or four weeks longer than that to reach that point because we hit a plateau because of this right-wing disinformation. But finally, the tide has shifted in that direction. Unfortunately, it's a little too late and allowed the Delta variant to rise and break through the way it did with record cases,

especially in Texas and Florida, as we spoke about earlier. But hopefully these increased vaccination rates will start paying off dividends down the road and will help get us back on track here. I mean, the craziest thing to me is just the whole just how the Republican Party has become entirely pro-death. And it's easy to say that and think like we're joking, but they legitimately are a pro-death party. And all their comments in the past about being this party of small government, it's all been exposed as a complete and utter fraud. When you have governors like DeSantis or Death Santhus, who very much deservingly has earned that nickname, telling school districts that not only should you not tell people to wear masks, but if you do tell your students in your

schools to wear a mask, that you will be fined. We will literally defund the schools. That is the biggest of government. That is literally what Republicans say that Democrats would do. They're going to defund your schools. They're going to defund the police. Republicans are defunding all these institutions. And this is the crazier point, though. So one can argue, well, the school district is an arm of the state in many respects, And it has, they know, its own education department within the school. But yes, they are defunding their schools. But on private businesses, too, like the cruise industry, the cruise industry is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we need some common sense regulations because if people get sick on our cruise ships and die, then it's going

to be bad for our business if we are a death cruise versus a vacation cruise line. And the DeSantis of the world say, not just cruise industry, but all industry, we are going to punish private businesses for enacting common sense mask mandates by requiring vaccinations. We as the government are going to come into your business and penalize you. We've said this before. That's the shaviest thing. We talked about Hugo Chavez and we said that's the shaviest thing that there is. And for them who have projected the socialism, this branding, branding, branding. Remember this. What this GQP is doing is a marriage of stupidity, fascism, pro-death and big government all in one. are forcing you to get the vaccine. We're saying we're empowering you with knowledge. Go get the vaccine to save yourself and to save your family's life. And I think Biden thought,

hey, look, you know, Americans are a people of liberty and a people who are smart. And when we give them the right knowledge, they'll take the knowledge. I don't think what he accounted for in his prediction was the vociferous stupidity and pro-death mantra of this crazy GQP. that a federal mandate will just drive people fucking crazy, right? Like if Biden said tomorrow, okay, we're mandating vaccinations, the right wing, there would be an insurrection part two, like there would be people storming the White House. It would be bedlam. But we need mandates to happen on a private basis. This is my opinion. We need companies to say, oh, you want to work for us? Oh, you're going to have to get these vaccines so that we have a safe environment. We need cruise companies to say, you want to come on our cruise? Well, you need to be fully vaccinated. This needs to happen across the board. I think it's the only way that we're actually going to be able to push everybody that we need to go across the finish

line here. Unfortunately, we're going to have to kind of force people, hey, you want to like live in our society? Well, you're going to have to get the vaccine. And it's not a controversial opinion. We do it with literally every other vaccine. When we applied to go to college, we needed to have a physical that showed that we were immunized for a whole host of viruses. When I studied abroad, I traveled to Europe. When I did that, I had to show immunization records. When people go to the military, they have to show immunization record. It's just that it's a common thing we do in like all other aspects of our lives. And suddenly we have a deadly pandemic raging in this country. And people are like, oh, what is this? Nazi Germany? It's like, no, it's motherfucker. It's what we've been doing.

And literally they'll say, Brett, they'll be like, it's not that deadly. First off, it's not that deadly. Like the fact not that deadly like the fact that it's deadly it should be fucking sufficient enough that should be the qualifier that should be it's not that deadly okay motherfucker what number one um and number two we know it's deadly like we see everyone we see people dying like like your friend fucking died that wasn't deadly enough for you that the person down this we we all have a person now. 4.23 million deaths in the world from COVID more than 600,000 deaths from COVID in the United States alone. We are number one in the world in COVID deaths, and it's a highly contagious disease.

People say, Oh, well, why aren't we shutting stuff down for cancer? Why aren't we shutting stuff down for X, Y? Because you don't just get cancer by coughing on somebody or by the way we do when we find out that cigarettes cause cancer, we start putting warnings on it and we start restricting it and we start regulating it in common sense ways. When we find out that there is a factory that is causing cancer to the community below and that factory continues to do it, you shut down the factory. When you find that out, you don't go and say, how do we build more factories that are just like that around that community? We go, what can we do to change it? But I guess here's the thing, as I say that out loud to the GQp before this they were like okay that factory is killing people let's build more of these killer fucking factories

because it's never gonna happen to me it's just gonna happen to those poor people who live in the community but that's what's different about this virus is that this virus has now struck home and they're all just losing their fucking minds and everyone's going crazy right now and brett the one person who i hate um recently you know who who's evolved into a fucking crazy just one lunatic you know but a lot of people but specifically this one but even he said it on the laura ingram show dershowitz who's lost his fucking marbles over the past eight i don't know what the fuck happened to this guy but if you go to dershowitz he's asked the question about the vaccine and i think that laura ingram thought she had someone because he says all the other crazy shit and he was going to go on and say it and he's like no no no we all need vaccines it should be mandated you know so go play that clip

and watch her tactic this is not smallpox so it's in it and this is not a fully approved it's not a fully approved. It's not a fully approved vaccine either. Neither was the smallpox vaccine in 1905. No, I think COVID is worse than smallpox in many ways. It may not kill as many people, but we don't know what the long term impact is. I have 300 million people worldwide. I have a million people. I have a right. I know I have the right to get on an airplane and know that everybody on that airplane is vaccinated or tested. You may have the right not to get vaccinated, but you have no right to spread the disease to me, even if you won't kill me. Professor, have you not been listening? This is Harvard Law School. I believe you. I didn't go to Harvard Law School, but I did, but I did hear the president today talk about how if you're vaccinated, you spread the virus. You still can spread the virus. I mean,

the data out of Israel, the data out of the UK, they're freaking out about this. It'll be spread much less seriously. Look, we don't know what we don't know. Okay. You can deprive people of their constitutional rights on the basis of a vaccine that still allows the spread of a virus. There is no constitutional right to get on an airplane and to spread the disease to me, even if it's not going to be fatal. I have constitutional rights. We got to go. We're up against a heartbreak, but I get you. It's not smallpox, professor. Thank you. And one is taking the side of the Constitution, that the Constitution says that you have no constitutional right to spread COVID. And she's arguing that there is a constitutional right to spread COVID. And her tactic of talking over and yelling and just this loud, bombastic.

Harvard Law School. That is why branding is important. That's having this all come full circle. And Brett, the part that I just want to flag that you said before is if they did have mandates, there would be insurrection too. There's already insurrection too being planned. And let's not forget what happened with Hitler. And I don't like just throwing out Hitler examples or this and that, but I consider Donald Trump to be as fucking evil as Hitler. Thankfully, our system had enough checks and balances to hold for now. But think about it. Hitler's initial coup attempts, you look at Mussolini, you look at a lot of coups that take place internationally, and oftentimes the first coup is a failure. And then it's the failure of society at large to hold that future dictator accountable that emboldens them and empowers them and allows them to perfect their theories. Okay, you have some fucking crazy

barbarian looking idiots, you know, who made, who made the insurrection not just be a horrible affront to our democracy and be dangerous and lethal, but also doing it looking like fucking morons at the same time. But I'll tell you what, they are working hard each and every day already, regardless of insurrection, too. And they're planning it in different ways. We saw this, Brett and Jordy, with meetings that are taking place where the Mark Meadows of the world and these psycho fucks are acting like there's like one Trump is still the president, that they're holding cabinet meetings and they're talking about dates in September where they're going to talk in front of the Capitol. And you have Mark Meadows saying things like we will be rolling out certain plans soon. You'll see what's going to happen. That same double speak, but that same

language that predates insurrection one. And they're telling their followers that Trump is going to be reinstated. So don't fucking give these people a break for a single second. Democrats, independents, people who care about our democracy, stand the fuck up and get off of your chair and do something. And I'll give a shout out to Patriot Takes, too, who's been digging up all this stuff and has been bringing it to light, because if not for that, they would be saying this directly to their audience who hears it anyway, by the way, they're tuning into these crazy channels. They're tuning into Steve Bannon's podcast. They're listening to all this already. They're getting that message. But what Patriot Takes is doing is they're telling us, hey,

look what is going on out there. And it's super important that we see these bizarre, fake pseudo cabinet meetings, that we see General Flynn out there with all of his traitorous statements planning to basically overthrow the government. We need to see this. We need to bring it to light. And that's why we need indictments. That's why we need to hold people accountable for the actions on January 6th, because if we don't, this will continue to happen until they succeed. And media, wake the fuck up and stop being like you were before Trump. It's unbelievable. Is it just that you're fucking lazy? Is that it? Is that is it that you just don't give a fuck about what it is that you do, that you're so ethically, morally, intellectually devoid of of fucking holding the right people who need to be held accountable, accountable and stop focusing on these dumb, stupid gotcha stories. Did you see,

I forgot who even wrote it, but there was something in a paper that I thought I liked the Atlantic that basically had an article of don jr and it basically praised him and said don jr like caring daddy meme lord the fuck is that shit am i right what what was that article it was the i i read it this morning when you guys sent it in the brother chat it is the single most bizarre article i've ever read. It tried to make Don Trump Jr. a sympathetic figure. It's bananas. It's bananas. Let me just read you the headline because it's important, and especially because most people will only read the headline. This is a real legitimate article that was written in the Atlantic. And it says, to be honest with you, no influencer has been treated more unfairly than Donald Trump Jr.

I'll leave that there. No. Oh, my God. I mean, it's a reverse mic drop. I usually like to leave these on my mic. Like that was a mic drop on democracy. And frankly, if we care about this democracy i saw some comments when the atlantic posted it people were like y'all realize like you don't actually have to write that like no one's forcing you to actually write to that story you know at the end of the day and do i expect

dumb stories like that from like other people who are on those kind of Facebook disinfo. But I just pulled up the tweet. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just need to read the tweet again because it just makes me so frustrated. Donald Trump Jr. is an angry meme lord, a gentle dad, and an unlikely internet star. The most furious and oddly compelling of the Trumps is developing a personal brand as a victim of the platform he loves. To be honest with you, no influencer has been treated more unfairly than Donald Trump Jr. Okay. That just makes me, you know, I want, you know how they inject hydroxychloroquine

and fucking whatever these drugs are in their veins. I to fuck we need to do it i'm not really going to do it i don't even know how i would do it but i was going to say i need like a like a fake democracy pen that during this podcast i could just inject some democracy in my veins and just become like popeye and just be like what in the world are we doing by the way do you like the suit and tie outfit today by ben we should have done a poll whether you like this or not. Do you like the suit and tie outfit that Ben has and should he wear it more? But Ben, speaking about shots of democracy to the face, to me, that's what we are doing here with the Midas Touch podcast. We are giving all you out there listening a little shot of democracy twice a week. Hopefully we'll be doing this even more soon. But what you need

to leave here, you need to leave here feeling inspired. You need to leave here with the tools that we need to go out there and to win elections and to win hearts and minds and to get our people to the polls to vote, whether it is a recall election in California where these fascists are trying to overthrow the governor presiding over the most successful economy, maybe in the world in California or over the midterm elections in 2022 or the presidential elections in 2024. You need to leave here just inspired to go out there and kick some ass for the sake of democracy. I love it. And let me give the people a little bit of homework on their way out if they're up for it. Look, we're at 70% vaccination rate. We finally hit that. We're a little bit late in the game. I genuinely think this next 10% is going to be due to familial and just personal friendships and relationships like that.

You have to now be the advocate. You've taken the shot. You know it's safe. You know what it's like now rejoining society in a safe manner. Go talk to that person in your friend group who's a little bit wonky and refuses to get the shot. Go reach out to that aunt. Go reach out to that uncle. Have that personal connection because the Biden administration, they're doing a hell of a job rolling these things out and they're ready to go. We have them. Now we're just pushing those other people and making sure that they get them. One of the funny things I always do is whenever I want to make a mathematical point, even when the math is really simple, I take out the calculator. Just to make sure. And it could be a very simple equation. So the math that I did,

and I'm trying to- Oh my God, Ben's being hilarious because his screen's blurry and Oh my God, explain what's happening. Okay. The screen's not blurry. Number one, number two, it's just the contrast is not allowing my laptops to show, but here's the math that I basically did. If our viewers, if each one of you could reach out to about 1,500 of your friends, community. If you focus just on that, that could be your reach. This podcast could be speaking to over 150 million Americans based on the current data of who we have listening. If you could focus to about 1,000 to 1,500, that's a game changer right there. And I think when you think about what you could focus to that a thousand to 1500, that could be, that's a game

changer right there. And I think when you, when you think about what you're able to do in your own communities, 1500 people, you know, isn't in the swing of things like all that much, you know? And so if we could focus there, you have the ability to make that difference. And again, we, I'm gonna give you some easier homework, convince five or 15, five people. I want you to convince 1,234 people. I love the ambitious goals. Cause I look, I believe in the Midas mighty. I believe the Midas mighty is empowered and passion and ready to go. And I also want to thank everybody. You know, it's hard for me to pause the show while we're actually doing it to thank everybody. And so we try to

thank everybody on social media who's given contributions for the podcast. But we want to thank each and every one of you who have gone to that feature in your YouTube, which lets you give contributions to the podcast. Thank you very much for that. And look, it was great having Rachel Bitticoffer on another great day. And as Brett said, I do hope that we could do more Midas Touch podcasts each week. The more I hear stories like the one we just mentioned, the more I feel that we're making a difference though, too, the more I want to do these podcasts as many days as we can. And so of feel that we're making a difference though, too, the more I want to do these podcasts as many days as we can. And so of course we're talking internally about how we can do that because the reason I am wearing the suit today is because I am in court today. And so I

can't do it every single day, but I want to try to do it as many days as I can. I want to thank you all, Brett, Jordy, Jordy, I look forward to seeing you. Maybe we will live stream the video of our basketball game. We'll see who wins. Thank you all for listening to this edition of the Midas Touch Podcast. We will all see you soon.

Shout out to the Midas Midas!