The MeidasTouch Podcast - Democratic Star Rep. Eric Swalwell DELIVERS POWERFUL MESSAGE Exposing House Republicans

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell about the Donald Trump indictment, the conduct by the House GOP, and the Democratic Party agenda.  Support Congressman Swalwell: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mt83 Follow Congressman Swalwell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 MAGA Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Midas Touch Network. We are joined by none other than Congressman Eric Swalwell. Congressman, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me back. Well, of course, I want to get your reaction to the indictment of Donald Trump that just dropped yesterday regarding his crimes relating to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, both your perspective as a member of Congress and as a former prosecutor. Yeah. You know, first I'll just say as a guy who sat in the chamber that

day and was tasked with counting the votes, and I don't know if you knew this, but I actually gaveled us in at noon. So I started the procession of bringing the tellers up to count and then handed it over to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Pence. So just kind of as someone who was there and wasn't able to count everyone's votes, you know, I'm relieved that justice has finally come into the sky. It seems like his whole life he's escaped accountability and he's finally starting to meet it. Look, stepping back as a former prosecutor. Sure, he's entitled to due process under the law, equal protection under the Constitution, the presumption of innocence. But damn, is this a compelling case that he lied to his supporters, incited an armed mob, and then aimed them squarely at the Capitol when we were counting an election that he had lost.

And so this is now in the hands of our jury and justice system. And as much as he tries to corrupt that process, I think that process is better than he is and that justice will be served. Now I was struck by the level of detail in the indictment. And there was a particular line in the indictment where special counsel Jack Smith writes, look, Donald Trump was allowed to lie.

Yes, he had a first amendment right to even lie to the American people, and that would not be unlawful. But here is where it got unlawful. And then it went through each of the states, the threats to former Vice President Pence, the fake electors. And when those lies were weaponized into conduct and the conduct then interfered with a free and fair election and the counting of the electoral votes, that's where the line was no longer free speech. And so I've heard all of the Trump lawyers going on there because they had, this is why

it's so brilliant. You and I as lawyers, when you see what special counsel Jack Smith did there, because Trump's lawyers had the talking points all lined up, First Amendment, freedom of speech. Jack Smith was two steps ahead of him there. That's right. And also, you know, that, you know, you can lie in a television interview, but you have a different duty as a lawyer. And so once you start deploying lawyers to lie for you in courts or through these electors, that's where it becomes a conspiracy to defraud. I also think not stated here, but it's very subtle, is the is the idea that we can't let this happen again. Right. That if we don't do this, that we have almost this may be a a chance, you know, to put the, you know, the genie back in the bottle, what he did on January 6th. We may get one shot, you know, to kind of lock

this up, never see it unleashed again. But if this is the new normal, you know, in America that, you know, every election loser can bring frivolous, fake lawsuits, fake electors, fire up a mob, send them to the Capitol. We're not going to look like, you know, the country we want to look like. And one thing really struck me just a couple of days after January 6th, I met with a foreign diplomat who had just been posted to America. And he said to me, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, Eric, we've had coups in our country too. You guys will be all right. And I was like, holy shit. Like, no, no, I respect your country, but like, that's, we don't do coups here. Like that's not what we, you know, want to be. It's not a league we want to be, you know, a part of. And so I think a little bit of that is

in play here too, is, you know, we get one shot to say this ain't who we are. Well, it seems to be who the Republican Party has become as they've become the MAGA Republican Party, whether it's Donald Trump holding them hostage or them holding themselves hostage and digging the hole deeper. I truly miss the days where I could have a normal, rational, dick-pick-free conversation with Republicans and say, hey, okay, this is how you feel about this issue. This is how I feel about this issue. Can we come together and figure out a solution? And now it's under Biden, under Biden. It's like, you know, I call it fascist Furby talk here on the Midas Touch Network. I don't even know what it is that their issue, I don't even know what their world they're living in right now. So how do you deal with that?

Well, my mom and dad were, are Republicans. My brothers are Republicans. Married a girl from Southern Indiana who grew up with the Pence family. So I grew up, you know, having these debates about the size of government, our role in the world, government's, you know, role with education, whether, you know, we should tax, you know, the wealthy or not. Does it trickle down? Those were the honest conversations we had. the Judiciary Committee. And Jim Jordan is telling Chris Wray in his opening statement that the American people were deprived of Hunter Biden's laptop in the 2020 election. And had they known more, the election may have gone the other way. And I was just like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that had you guys put out more non-consensual nudes that you would have won the election? You're not a party of idea. You're just a party of non-consensual nudes that she would have won the election. You're not a party of idea. You're just a party of nonconsensual nudes. You're a party of chiding people about their pronouns and just stoking grievances. And that's kind of where they've drifted off to is to just be an own the libs party,

bankrupt of any ideas, defend Donald Trump at any cost. And so this election is I see it isn't it's not about Democrats beating Republicans. It's kind of like team competence, team community of Democrats, Republicans, independents, beating team chaos, because it's just chaos that that's all they have. And it cannot win. That Christopher Wray committee hearing was a sight to behold. Here you have a Republican, a lifelong conservative, Christopher Wray. I think he went to Yale Law School, did everything you do to kind of rise to the level as

an FBI director, someone infinitely qualified, appointed by Donald Trump, someone who I probably disagree with on a lot of political stuff if I were to have these conversations with Christopher Wray, but a law and order guy. And then you have the new Republican party there with MAGA Republican Jim Jordan, an unlicensed lawyer, never passed the bar exam in his life, with all these other MAGA Republicans out there attacking the Republican FBI director, and then seeing you and other Democrats there basically saying, what are you talking about? It seems like everything has kind of like, it is a new landscape. And what we say here on the Midas Touch Network is stop calling the MAGA Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene, all these people, don't call them conservative. Like there's nothing conservative about what they do. How do you feel about that?

Absolutely. And by the way, you know, Midas Touch Network, you guys are playing on their side of the field. And I think that's why, you know, your listenership is growing because, you know, people, and again, it's not Democrats, Republicans. And I just had a town hall where a number of Republicans came up to me and said, this, this is not my party. You know, thank you for staying on offense. And so I think that's, you know, where we have to be. If we're on their side of the field, we're making people, we're making sure people know, you know, what this election is about, where they would take us. But if they're on our side of the field, you know, then they are defining us. And I'm not even going to say it to give them the benefit of the doubt or to give them any oxygen. But like the slurs and the lies and, you know, the fantasies that they have about us, again, because they're bankrupt the some weird shit that you all are obsessed about. Like this guy's non-consensual nudes is like what you want to keep putting out there. And so we went

out, we went back and looked and after I called them out, you know, for their obsession with his laptop, there wasn't another member on their side that said the word laptop. And so that's what you have to do. You have to make it a hot stove so they don't touch it. And so, you know, we're doing the same thing with, you know, the issue of bullying trans kids because they're not interested in having a debate on the merits. They just want to scare every parent in America into thinking that little Sally would be an Olympic swimmer, except for the trans kid who took her spot on the team. This is something that is not happening. It's not an issue. It's not what parents wake up and think about, but they're trying to stoke this issue so they can win an election. And so we want to make sure people know

that they're creating on-demand gender checks. And that's weird. And stay away from our kids, you creeps. And so that's the hot stove on that issue that we want to create. And you've called that hashtag creep summer. And you've talked about how the MAGA Republicans have been waking up every day, you know, talking about like genitals and genital check and, you know, and then showing genitals and house committee hearings. And it's like, to your point, it's hashtag creep summer. But I got to, this is what's on everybody's mind, talking about hashtag creep summer, probably the leader of hashtag creep summer, Kevin McCarthy, the weakest speaker of the House in American history. What happened between you and Kevin McCarthy? Look, I don't want to embarrass him any further. I was minding my business between the start of the Modi speech and when he came out. These speeches tend to be long. I beelined to the bathroom.

McCarthy was standing near the doors to leave the House floor, muttered some nonsense to me, and then I kind of looked at him and said, you want to do this right here on the floor? Went on to threaten me with violence multiple times, you know, something to the effect of I'll kick the shit out of you. I told him what I thought of him. I didn't think he was going to try and take a swing at me with Modi about to come out. I didn't really think he would ever do that. I think he just likes to see himself as a tough guy. And in this party, you know, they prefer violence now over voting.

He said it again that, you know, if I talked to him that way, he would do that. I repeated what I thought of him. And then pretty predictably, he turned away, he kind of went like this, and I passed through. I'll just tell you the very veep-like part of that story after seeing the Speaker of the House threaten you with violence. You know, I kind of blew into the bathroom bathroom and i was pretty fired up at this point and there's only one person in the bathroom and he's washing his hands and he turns toward me and it was modi i was like wait just garthie just tried to fight me now i'm'm like, you know, elbow bumping Modi because his hands are wet. And I just thought this is a Veep episode.

That's so good. I mean, you think Kevin McCarthy is just a complete and total fraud? Yeah, I think he's speaker in name only. He has a title, which is really all he ever wanted, to be honest. Marjorie Taylor Greene has the job. And he can't do anything, you know, without a permission slip from Marjorie Taylor Greene. You know, he's a starburst counting sycophant and that's as much as he's ever going to be. And that's dangerous. Like, look, if there were no consequences, that's great.

You know, you can be the homecoming king. There's no responsibilities for being the homecoming king. But if you have to actually fund the government, keep Ukraine in the fight, worry about the cost of people's healthcare, worry about the cost of college, keep dangerous guns out of the hands of dangerous people, well, it's pretty costly when you have a completely ineffective speaker of the house. One of the last times we had you on the Midas Touch podcast, you told us how in private, some of these Republicans, it was before I think they were fully MAGA Republicans, would come up to you privately and they would say things to you like, this is some weird shit. This is not who we are. We're trying to get out of this. Trump's the

worst. This is a horrible situation are are you seeing more of that like what do they say to you in private um you know you're replying i have to believe there's some normal ones they absolutely still do like i don't go out of my way to make enemies of republicans i've got colleagues that i work with on on real consequential issues uh and you know on one hearing uh on one committee, Marjorie Taylor Greene is on the committee and her colleagues on that committee, you know, who want, you know, to go after Mayorkas about the border for their own political reasons, which I don't accept, I don't believe, but like they're trying to have like a plan and she goes in there and just fucks it up every

single time. And these guys are just like like could you just stick to like the plan that we had and so you know they just see her as chaos agents and again i don't agree with what they're trying to do but they they're not cohesive at all and i contrast that with democrats when we were in the majority and you look at the investigations that we ran whether it was on you know the russia investigation whether it was in bringing Bob Mueller to Congress, of course, the first and second impeachment and the January 6th committee, you just saw like a level of purpose, cohesion, competence. And so now you're looking at these just like rambling, bumbling hearings and

investigations they're putting forward. And, you know, you can't help but have secondhand embarrassment for them. And I mean, the level of talent on the bench of the Democrats, you know, former prosecutors, former United States attorneys, you know, you know, real smart people from across the country who are cross-examining. And for me, that's why I love to showcase what goes on at these, you know, at these hearings. But, you know, you don't go out of your way to make enemies with Republicans, but they sure go out of their way to make an enemy out of you. And there's probably, you know, maybe Schiff, you know, I'm trying to think who else, who they specifically go out of their way

with to attack at such a deeply personal level on a, and not all the Republicans, but the usual suspects. If this was any other work environment where someone actually tried to get a coworker killed, you get arrested and they go, oh, speech or debate immunity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like they go out of their way to try to get you killed. And you posted death threats that you get frequently. What is that like? You know, the threat to the process of the threat to kill you. Yeah. I mean, they have had this China fantasy, you know, about me that the FBI has multiple times, you know, debunked that the ethics committee chair that Kevin McCarthy's side, you know, went to to try and have an investigation, closed the investigation, made no finding. And Glenn Kessler puts it in his top 10 of all time Pinocchios in the last couple of years between me and Schiff of what they've gone after me on. And the way I look at it is that it's just an effort to silence you and intimidate you and make think of Moskowitz and I think of, you know, some of the really effective investigators that we have on our side who are in the breach. And so when they do that to Schiff and they do that to me, it's not just to try and discredit us.

It's to try and silence, you know, some of the other people who are, you know, just up and coming on our side. And so I'm not going to flinch. I'm going to protect my family and my staff. And it costs us a lot of time and money to do that. But I just want to take you back because I think it's a pretty good origin story in my own house of where I learned this. And my dad was a small town police chief in an Iowa town that was corrupt. And he was brought in to clean up the town. Pretty soon learned they didn't want him to clean up the town. And after he started arresting like burglary rings that were connected to people on the city council and they wanted him to let them go, he started issuing DUIs instead of looking the other way when people were drinking and driving in town. It all came to a head at a county fair, which is a very Iowa way of something boiling up. And the mayor and council all parked

their cars in the fire lane. And fire chief called my dad and said, hey, these guys are blocking the fire lane. What do you want me to do? And my dad said, well, don't treat them any better or worse than anyone else. If they don't leave, you have to ticket and tow them. And so they did, got ticketed, got towed. And at the next council meeting, the mayor at a public council meeting told my dad, if you don't reverse these tickets and reimburse us for the towing, I'm going to fire you. And it became quite public over the following weeks and the Des Moines Register and other papers would cover it. And my dad just said, fuck this. I'm not doing what you want me to do just to keep my job. I'm not going to violate what I believe in just to keep my job. And so he packed up our little family, got fired,

and we moved out West. And I was just six years old, but I'll never forget it. And as I think about the job I have now, you have to be able to do what's right and be willing to lose your job. And when I look at my Republican colleagues who know it's wrong what Donald Trump is doing, I see the opposite of what I saw in my dad. I see people who just go along with it because they're afraid of losing their job.

And so for me, dealing with these clowns are easy. Like I learned at six years old, like what the right answer is, you know, in this scenario. So we've seen what the fascist clown show has done. We've seen these MAGA Republican hearings with fake whistleblowers and non-consensual nudes and elevating Russian spies. And we've seen all of that. Walk me through Democrats take control of the house. What are some of the priorities we would see then? that. Walk me through, Democrats take control of the House. What are some of the priorities we would see then? Great. And so that's the frame I use every single hearing. I call it the 3D approach,

discredit, defend, deliver. So before Jim Jordan starts a hearing, make sure everyone knows we're 400 plus days into Jordan never honoring his subpoena. So you have no credibility, Jim. Then defend any bullshit claim they make that is substantive and needs to be defended. And then third, pivot to that third D, deliver. What would we deliver if we were in the majority? And I can tell you, after a summer of mass shootings, we would be doing everything to pass background checks and an assault weapons ban in the committee that can do something about that. We'd be passing Voting Rights Act on the Judiciary Committee to make sure that the freedom to vote is a freedom everyone enjoys everywhere. We'd be codifying a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. That all goes through

the Judiciary Committee. And instead, they have created a law firm that just fights every day for one client, Donald Trump. So again, discredit, defend, pivot to what you deliver. And I think if we use that model, it's a good way to tell people what's at stake and to show them that you're fighting, you're on offense to get us in the majority. For people who want to see actual things being delivered for the American people, is there a place that they could contribute, whether it's to your campaign or somewhere else in general? Yeah, I think we've dropped the link in there for you all and you're going to put that up. Thank you for doing that. At Eric Swalwell on Twitter and Insta and threads and also ericswalwell.com.

But I'm in this. Tomorrow night, I'm going to be in a Hudson Valley congressional district that we lost last fall. We need to win it back. And so I'm on the ground there doing everything I can to help us win seats and get across the country because this coming election, like if you like a TV series, if you have a favorite TV series, think of this as the series finale. We're either going to extinguish Trumpism or it's cemented in American culture and politics forever. So this is the

finale. We get one shot. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you. My pleasure. All right. Congress member Eric Swalwell here on the Midas Touch Network. Make sure you hit subscribe on the YouTube channel and check this out on the Midas Touch podcast, wherever podcasts are available. Hey, Midas Mighty. Love this report. Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram at Midas Touch to keep up with the most important news of the day. What are you waiting for? Follow us now.