The MeidasTouch Podcast - DeSantis HUMAN TRAFFICKING stunt, Biden DELIVERS for Labor, GOP Federal Abortion BAN + MORE

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we have an incredible show about mostly despicable people. Ron DeSantis took credit for flying undocumented migrants into Martha’s Vineyard and other locations around the United States in a stunt that is more than just grotesque, but likely illegal. Yes, that’s right. The Republican Party have decided to become human traffickers. And that’s not hyperbole. But if that wasn’t bad enough, Republican Lindsey Graham just announced his plan for a federal abortion ban. When Republicans tell you who they are, believe them. But that’s not all from this fascist circus. Mike Lindell (yes, the MyPillow guy) reportedly had his phone seized by the FBI as the investigation into Donald Trump’s interference into the 2020 election continues to gain steam. But over in the world of hardworking, pro-democracy Americans, The White House just reached a tentative deal to avoid a railroad strike by siding with workers in a deal and celebrated the historic passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Jordy and Brett also briefly share their experience attending a briefing in the Roosevelt Room with President Biden himself. Also, don’t miss our interview with South Dakota Candidate for United States Senate, Brian Bengs, who is facing off this November against Republican John Thune! If you enjoyed this episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast please rate, review and subscribe. New episodes of The MeidasTouch Podcast are released every Tuesday and Friday mornings. To hear the FULL STORY about our briefing with President Biden at The White House, listen to the exclusive podcast on our Patreon! Become a member today: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Get Meidas Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Republican governors and Republican legislators and state houses are engaged in human trafficking. Let's just call it what it is. They are sending migrants, undocumented migrants from other countries.

They're herding them and they're shipping them to locations where they're not telling them where they're going and just leaving them there stranded because that's their way to own the libs or get back at Democrats. It's cruelty. It's disgusting. It's despicable. Most recently with Ron DeSantis doing this in Martha's Vineyard, we'll break it down and we'll break down

these heinous and despicable tactics by Republican governors. Republicans are also pushing for a federal abortion ban. The party that said, oh, we're the state's rights party, it's a state's rights issue, is now saying, no, we want to impose our dystopian handmaid's tale vision for the country, and we want to criminalize it and put women and doctors in jail and take away choice everywhere in every city, in every town. We're coming for you is what the Republicans are saying. Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, the radical right Republican fascist who was intimately involved in the insurrection. I mean, just even saying that sounds bizarre, but that is what MAGA

Republicans is. Sounds like a mad lib. I was gonna say insurrectionist mad libs is exactly the words coming out of my mouth. Anyway, he was leaving a Hardee's. One of his staffers first called it an Arby's, but let's be clear, it was a Hardee's where he was approached by the FBI and his phone was seized pursuant to a valid search warrant. And the White House continues to impress me. I mean, they brokered this deal against all odds at the 11th hour for a potential freight railroad strike, which could have harmed the economy. They were intimately involved in the negotiations. They got results.

This and more on this episode of the Minus Touch podcast. And we have a guest who I'm actually really, really proud to have. The guest is he's the Democratic candidate for senator of South Dakota, Brian Bangs. He's a lieutenant, retired lieutenant colonel, 26 year navy and united states air force vet like very emblematic of the type of candidates democrats are putting forward not the bs fake patriotism but then we're going to steal top secret sensitive compartmented information and steal our nuclear secrets and then side with Vladimir Putin like real freaking people who fight for this country and fight for the people.

He's running against John Thune, who I think is the swampiest, fake, phony piece of crap out there running for who's been a Republican senator. He was the guy who got rid of Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle was the Democrat who was the Senate majority leader, Democrat, and Dune won in 2004. I was there on the Hill. But South Dakota has an interesting history I want to talk with bangs about because South Dakota, there have been circumstances where Republicans tried to put referendums banning abortions and the people have rejected it. Like if you actually ask the people, they side with all of the democratic issues. This and more on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast, joined by my brothers, Brett and Jordy, back

from Washington, D.C. Brett, Jordy, how are you? Back in action, man. It was so good spending some time with Jordy this week. I've been I've from home since August 26th. So I'm just honestly so happy to be home. But it was such a cool experience, Jordy and I being in DC, covering the various events, Jordy at the DNC convention, as we spoke about last week. And then Jordy and I met at the White House and saw the Inflation Reduction Act ceremony. It was very cool. Got to see up close, in action, all the work that's being done for the American people. And it was just super cool to see and just super cool to hang out with Jordy, grab some dinner, grab some drinks. It was a lot of fun, man. I miss you already. I know, bud. That was a great time. I think for a lot of our new subscribers,

because we're just gaining tons of new subscribers and podcast listeners, we're all brothers. And so many people think like, hey, you guys must all live close by. No, we really don't. I see these guys whenever we do the Zooms and we do our tech stuff. So it feels like we're together a lot. But that was the second time I saw Brett in about six months in person. So to be there with Brett at the White House, Ben, we missed you, bud. But it was such an incredible experience. Can I one- up you here? Because despite the fact that Ben and I both live in Los Angeles, Los Angeles is a big city. And

now I think I've seen you more over the past weekend than I've seen Ben in the past six months. I love it. I love it. I want to talk more about your experiences at the White House. You were there for the celebration of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. We're going to spend more time on that because we have a lot of topics to discuss on this episode. We just started a Patreon account at patreon.com slash Midas Touch, patreon.com slash Midas Touch, where you can become a patron at the various membership tiers and support independent media. But let's talk briefly about it here on the Patreon dot com.

We're going to post like a full rundown of everything that happened on the White House. But if we talked about that here, it would take up the full podcast. And I need to get into these news topics and keep the ships sailing and keep the trains running. And that's going to be a topic like Biden keeping the trains running. But tell us a little bit, if you can, Brett, just a brief summary of and I say a brief summary because it's some of the most exciting things I've heard. But about your experience there at the White House, being in a meeting with President Biden, you got to see it firsthand. Yeah, no, it was it was very cool. And it was honestly really heartening to see kind of the work that's being put in behind the scenes in the administration, especially like the contrast to get such whiplash thinking of kind of the

events of prior years, prior administrations like the Trump administration, when it was just all about like those meetings would go around and it would just be, how do we praise Trump? How do we praise Trump? How do we hurt people? And all the people who we met throughout the weekend were just dedicated public servants who put their heads down and really wanted to just do the work for the American people. And so they first held this meeting, this briefing in the Roosevelt room, which is very cool.

You know, historic meeting room right next to the Oval Office, the same room, you know, the famous picture of President Biden, you know, holding Contagi Brown Jackson as she was nominated for the Supreme Court. We were, Jordi and I were basically sitting in that exact location, which was just a cool piece of history to kind of be able to be a part of right there. And they had a meeting where they brought in various members of the administration to talk about their policies and answer questions. And just in generally, I'll say here that the questions that the administration officials were asked by the people in this briefing, who were basically all digital creators, tick tockers, people on Twitter, people on YouTube. They were hard questions. They were not easy questions. And I thought the Biden administration officials handled them with such grace and with such passion and with such attention to detail. And honestly, like I wish that that could be broadcast every single day. I wish they could hold meetings just like that with the public every single day, I really hope that we could figure out a way with the White House

to kind of get that to be broadcast to the public and have these public events where you have these digital creators asking the real questions that I know our listeners are concerned about and really want to hear about. So I'll say that. And then after that event, you know, they walked us over and we sat and we got to watch the celebration of the Inflation Reduction Act, where we saw really passionate, fired up President Biden. I should have mentioned President Biden. What did take part in those meetings with us earlier came in, probably was with us for about 30 minutes. So was Vice President Kamala Harris.

And I will tell you the details of all that on the Patreon because I really want to get into the news. But a very cool experience and very cool to be able to get one-on-one with them and speak with them about the issues that the Midas Mighty cares about most. And then, yeah, then we watched the ceremony from the South Lawn of the White House and Biden brought his A-game. I thought all the speakers were great. Just such an emphasis on labor, such an emphasis on workers and unions. And that's what I like to see. And also such a focus on climate. This White House seems just so laser focused on dealing with our climate crisis. And it was nice to see how much attention they're applying to that issue and the issue of workers. And yeah, I mean, it was great. It was

a really good experience. We got a couple of great days of weather in D.C. Jordi and I got to hang out. We got to do dinner together after. And so it was just it was just fun. And I'll share more details on the Patreon because I want to get into the news. But it was it was it was a great experience. You know, who's not focused on those issues, Brett, about labor, about climate, about actual making change in people's life, the media, the media and Republicans. But the good news is, is that independent media like ours and others that are growing are focused on these issues. And that's the issues that we focus on and what we program on the Midas Touch podcast. So yesterday I saw on social media, Martha's Vineyard was trending.

And I said, why is Martha's Vineyard trending? Is there a film festival? It's past Labor Day. So, you know, tends to quiet down after after that. I'm like, so what's going on in Martha's Vineyard? And I read a story that I first didn't believe was real. And it was that a plane load of about 50 undocumented migrants arrived there and were shipped. People were herded together and shipped purportedly from Florida and arrived. They didn't know where they were. We're told that there was going to be work when they landed. And we're talking about adults and children, families.

I mean, you see these pictures of little children with their backpacks. And, you know, and I'm thinking to myself, like, what is going on here? Is this is this real? Just people, just undocumented workers that are undocumented migrants, human beings be happening, put together these human beings who deserve dignity and decency and to be treated with respect on an airplane, at least 50. They treated them like cattle. Like cattle. For a political stunt, shipped them to Martha's Vineyard, coordinated with Fox, because Fox

was ready to get the exclusive. That's why I say coordinated with Fox. And then basically bragged and boasted how they were sending these Venezuelan workers and their families to Martha's Vineyard as a way to, this is what they said, to own the sanctuary cities and states. And that's their way. Now, I want to read you as we go into the story, what someone from Martha's Vineyard said, because the people at Martha's Vineyard rallied together, right, helped the individuals, the government, community groups provided them food and shelter and want to help, are willing to help. The problem is, is that a humanitarian

crisis was created because the governor of Florida just literally dumped people like cattle in a location and didn't tell anybody could kill them. These are human beings we're talking about. I just want to read what this person said, though. I was at St. Andrew's Church and Martha's Vineyard helping to feed these people. They were told they were going to Boston where housing and jobs were waiting for them. In other words, they were lied to. There were men, women, and children. They hadn't eaten anything since 6 a.m.

What kind of depraved individual loads up 50 people onto a plane and dumps them in a strange place without even notifying anyone that they're coming? These are, quote, leaders. These are, quote, leaders. These are, quote, Christians. I'll tell you what this is. It's a disgusting political stunt at the expense of human beings just wanting to work and provide for their families. But you know what? On this island, we treated them with dignity. We fed them.

We gave them medical attention, and we will give them a warm and safe place to sleep. Tomorrow, we will give them breakfast and help them figure out what's next. Because on Martha's Vineyards, we won't turn our backs on people in need who are being abused by extremist Republican governors for some cheap soundbite on Fox News. Thank you to all the volunteers who were there. It restores my faith in humanity that we came together to help people in New Britain. Well, I mean, I think that's, you know, I think it says it all about the people in Martha's Vineyard, how they rallied together. And I think it just shows how despicable these Republicans are for, like we said in the beginning of the show, let's call it what it is. They're engaging in a human trafficking, human smuggling operation. And to me, this sounds wildly legal. I don't know your

legal take, Ben, but to me, this seems to run afoul of eight USC section 1324, which criminalizes conduct that involves smuggling aliens into the United States, transporting aliens within the country or otherwise facilitating unlawfully present aliens to remain in the United States. And like you said, Ben, it's for what? For Twitter clout? For Fox News clout? That's the thing. I mean, we talked about this last episode. It's like, what is the point? What is the point of these stunts at the cost of human life? It's cruelty. It's cruelty. Cruelty is the point. It's the common theme that I just keep seeing over and over. And Jordy, it's clearly a distraction ploy because Republicans are getting their asses handed to them on other issues like abortion, like same sex marriage, like the economy.

I mean, you name it. Republicans are getting trounced. So what do they do? Do they try to do things that are going to actually help people? Oh, you know what? Let's actually propose a policy that's going to help people keep their social security and Medicare. Let's actually try to help. No, they try to double down on, like you said, Jordy, on cruelty. How can we take a distraction and just try to just hurt people in such a way that we're going to cause so much noise to try to own the libs? And it is frankly just disgusting. And these are not states without problems. I mean, Florida has an incredible teacher shortage right now. They could have used this money to pay teachers, to recruit teachers, to help them with their benefits, to do anything, to help them get books in their schools. But no, instead they're banning books in their schools and they are human

trafficking people to other states. That is what's so despicable. Texas has a failing power grid. They could have used this money to fix the power grid to save the lives of Texans. But no, they instead decided to use their money to human traffic people in this country. And it's disgusting. Because here's the thing. Republicans are not serious politicians. The MAGA Republicans, which is who the Republican Party, they're not trying to solve serious problems. Ultimately, what Democrats have always said and continue to say in Congress and at a state level, at a local level, is that there should be comprehensive

immigration reform that deals with the situation like adults. It doesn't make sense to be xenophobic, to just be hateful, to separate families and to build a wall, which can't even be accomplished. Donald Trump built a fraction of a fraction of the wall that he claimed and then just goes, the wall is built. The wall is built. No, it is is it isn't even built you didn't build the freaking thing number one and number two even if you did one

you said mexico was going to pay for it which they didn't either but but three two three even if you even if you built a whole wall all over the border with billions or trillions of dollars, you wouldn't stop the issue because that just people would dig under it. They'd go through it. There'd be holes in the wall. So the very concept of what Republicans propose is let's be cruel. Let's separate families. Let's build a gigantic wall that we can't actually accomplish in the first place. And then let's be like, we're done with the issue. And then let's just be horrible to people. And let's throw the people in camps. That's not a solution. Democrats are coming up with the solution. And Democrats are not saying, hey, we don't want to have the people in this state or that state. We're actually saying, let's come up with a solution. And Republicans are saying, no, let's be horribly cruel. Let's herd people like cattle. Let's ship them to other states.

Let's not tell the states. And it's not just Martha's Vineyard, right, Brett? You mentioned as well, this is happening in other states. Rather than bringing the people to the locations where they claim they're going to bring them as well, one of the stunts that they do is they'll like drop them off at midnight in another location in the city and just have thousands of people there to create pandemonium and chaos. And that's what we're seeing, you know, repeat over and over again. So like here, Governor Pritzker play this clip. This is just an example, but

they're doing this in D.C. They're doing this in other states. Governor Pritzker in Illinois said, we've tried to direct the buses to reception centers in Chicago that we actually have prepared. But states like Texas are bringing them to other areas in the dead of night. Here, play this clip. The governor of the state of Texas is choosing not to notify the city or the state when he is sending busloads of families. The state government of Texas has been non-responsive when agencies like human services, public health, state police, or emergency management reach out to them. We hear about buses arriving only through unofficial means.

For example, from Texas nonprofit organizations on the ground that are attempting to help these migrants. And that's not because they're receiving any official notice from the state of Texas either. No, in many cases, it's because they've just literally watched the bus drive by. The NGOs don't know who is on the buses, and the governor of Texas is choosing not to tell them or to tell Chicago how many people are on the buses before they arrive. They won't tell us how many infants, children, seniors, or families are on board. They won't tell us what route they take or when they will arrive.

They won't provide any information that would actually help their fellow Americans welcome and care for these human beings. What the governor of Texas is doing is a stunt and he's playing games with people's lives. We have tried to direct the buses to reception centers in Chicago that we have prepared for the arrivals. But the state of Texas instead chooses to send them to Union Station, dumping these human beings off in the dead of night. And by the way, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that, you know, it always seems like also our border security works much better under Democratic presidents. It's another one of those things where Republicans are very loud about, but they actually are shitty at solving the problems because they don't actually want to solve the problems. They want to exacerbate

the problems for political points and Democrats get in there. And that's why you see all these phony tweets. President Biden has seized records amount of fentanyl at the border. Isn't that a good thing? What was president Trump doing? What was Trump doing? He was letting the fentanyl all come into America. More fentanyl. That's such a great point because the lack of tweets from that GOP account that always says President Biden seized. I don't remember any seeing any Trump seized X amount. So what the fuck was he doing? Where was all the fentanyl going? Yeah. I mean, it's it's you saw like Kevin McCarthy the other day on TV just lying about fentanyl also and saying, even if you just even if it just graces your skin, there are police dying. It's like that's not even how science works. That's not even how these things work.

And the Biden, the Justice Department and the Biden administration has also been laser focused on these issues. I mean, it was two days ago, two days ago where the Justice Department announced the disruption and dismantling of a prolific human smuggling operation across Texas and the United States. You have the Justice Department on the front rounds, on the front lines. The operation was called the Joint Task Force Alpha, and they are now going to put eight kingpin human smugglers behind bars, saving lives, protecting our national security. And according to the indictment that they filed, these people facilitated the unlawful transportation and movement of migrants within the United States in deplorable conditions for profit. And when I listened to that, those words from that indictment, it sounds awfully similar to right now what Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott and these Republicans are doing. They are smuggling migrants across the country, hurting them like cattle. It is despicable. It is

disgusting. And I hope the Justice Department looks into this as well. But make no mistake, the Justice Department is taking care of these issues, which, by the way, these states are not taking care of. They are letting these human smuggling operations run rampant in their states. So the Justice Department has to come in and they're the ones who have to put the smackdown on on these operations and actually step up talking about disgusting and despicable republicans through south carolina senator lindsey graham who is too chicken shit to even respond to a subpoena before the fulton county grand jury to discuss whether or not he engaged in any election interference he believes it's part of his legitimate legislative activities.

But as part of his other legislative activities, he held a press conference and he made a big announcement that if Republicans take control of the House and the Senate, that they will be proposing a federal abortion ban. And so what their ban would do is to ban abortion and make the right to choose prohibited in all states. And so you would basically have a threshold of a total abortion, of a federal abortion ban. And then the states that want to enact their total abortion bans, they could have their total abortion bans and basically turn the entire country into the like dystopian handmaid's tale. These stories that we hear every single day, Brett. I mean, just unfathomable and tragic to even talk to what women are going through every single day right now. I mean, here's one of those stories. Let me let me just say it on the show. And I like, you know, a trigger warning for anybody, you know, right now who,

you know, has trouble listening to these stories of trauma. But it's important that we tell our listeners exactly one of the examples of what's going on due to this draconian Republican leadership to say a true story. Louisiana woman carrying a skullless fetus, a fetus without a skull. This is a fetus that would die shortly after birth, cause untold trauma to the mother. She was forced to travel 1400 miles to New York City to get an abortion because her local hospital refused to decide the service for fear of violating state law. And she was 10 weeks pregnant when she found out. And the state, the hospital,

would not give her that procedure. I mean, that is just absolutely monstrous what we are seeing. And Republicans right now are trying to make that happen nationwide so that if this woman gets in that situation, she would have to fly out of the country to get the care that she needs. This is just disgusting. It is disgusting. And there are just no words to describe the depravity of these Republicans. And that is what they want to have at a federal level. And when Lindsey Graham went on the propaganda network known as Fox to discuss it, what their main focus was, was the timing, not that they were proposing it. It was, why did you do this today? Today was our day where we were trying to own the libs, where we were

trying to own Biden. And we were trying to create the narrative because there was a bad day in the stock market, that that means that the Inflation Reduction Act didn't work. That was our fake phony talking point. And you ruined it, Lindsey Graham, because you proposed a federal abortion ban. You should have proposed it a few days later because we were all colluding and coordinating to own the libs today and root against the economy. That's the thing, too, like the Republicans root against America at each and every instance like they have genuinely tried. Every single day they did this under Obama and they've ratcheted up with Biden to literally harm our economy. They've tried to pull stunts like the way Greg Abbott would try to pull stunts at

the border to try to stop trade, literally causing his own state billions of dollars in damages on the Southern border. We've seen at the Northern border, people from the Southern border, like Ted Cruz and others trying to promote these like Canadian protests that would shut down trade and commerce into the United States of America, you know, you know, economic terrorism, frankly, so that they could say, ha ha ha, ha, ha, the economy's down. They root for bad economic numbers despite Biden continuing to perform well. And if Biden's numbers, as Biden solves and addresses a problem, they don't go down as much and exceed expectations. And Republicans are like, see, see, he's not doing it good enough. And then the media

like buys into those tire narratives, it seems like over and over again. One other point I wanted to make, though, Brett, about the federal abortion ban as well. I think that if the Republicans take power, there will also be a federal contraception ban as well. I mean, that is where they are going next. And, you know, we have this tape where Governor Brian Kemp was caught, where basically was saying that depending on where the legislatures are, he could consider taking up banning contraception. In my constitution class, we're talking about how the dog decision went back to the states. During that, can you ban plan B in that process since everything's now at the state level? Cuz I mean, now you can- Yeah, I mean, you can take up pretty much everything, but you

gotta be in legislative session to do that. Is that something you could do? I mean, obviously after you win everything. Just depends on where the legislators are already. But if they're on board, we can do that because I mean, I think I'd have to check and see. I mean, there's a lot of legalities. And that's been floated at all levels. I mean, by the by the radical right MAGA Republicans. And frankly, when you look at, for example, Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, I mean, she's called for the Supreme Court cases that have the right to Americans for contraception to be overturned. If you think for a second the Supreme Court is not going to overturn the cases that give

a constitutional right to contraception, you have not been watching the Supreme Court. I've told everyone what was going to happen in the Dobbs case, overturning Roe v. Wade. I mean, to go back to the podcasts a year ago, I told you the dynamic that was good and how it was going to happen. The right to contraception by this current Supreme Court will be overturned. And then they'll claim it's a state's rights issue. And then and then when it actually that's the whole thing. When it becomes a state's rights issue, look what happens in Kansas. When you actually let people vote, people say, no, we want the right to choose. If you put all of the issues that Democrats support

on referendas that would go in front of people, they would vote in favor of those issues one by one by one. Because yeah, we want lower prescription drug prices. People want the right to choose. People want to preserve and protect social security. So actually, when they say state rights issues, what they really mean is allow Republican state legislatures where they figured out how to gerrymander and kind of seize their statehouse seats there. Let them be the ones who decide. Let the state legislate, not the actual people vote, not actually the people in the states make those decisions. And you saw in Michigan where people overwhelmingly wanted to put a ballot initiative to make it a constitutional

right for the right to choose. And what did the Republican ballot surveyors basically say? They go, oh, we don't want to put this initiative on the ballot because the commas, because you can't put it on unless like literally the sentence is like spelt wrong or there's typographical errors or it literally doesn't make sense if you get the amount of signatures to put the item on. And so the Republicans try to get it off the ballot by saying the commas and the semicolons were in the wrong places. And that's why Republicans have just gone full fledged. They're representative of people like the pillow guy. Right. I mean, when I think about MAGA Republicans, no one really exemplifies the weirdness,

the fascism, the incompetence like pillow guy, Mike Lindell. The fact that you have a pillow guy in the White House with Trump, remember he left the White House just even days after the insurrection with a piece of paper talking about appoint Kash Patel as acting CIA director, declare martial law. He left with a piece of paper that said that. People took photographs of him. That's what he was meeting with Donald Trump about doing. The pillow guy. The pillow guy, Brett. I literally had yesterday. I don't even know if I should share this on the pod. Working on pulling this up. So I spoke about this dude who I used to go to college with back in the day, who's like full fledged MAGA. I probably

shouldn't even go here, but you know, it's the Midas Mighty. So keep this between us. So the guy messaged us and the 500,000 people who listened. It doesn't leave the hundreds of thousands of people who listen to this show. Okay. So this guy messages me yesterday, right? And he goes, he was basically like WTF. Now the democratic, you know, the democratic justice department is going after the pillow guy. All he does is care about his country. So they want to prosecute him.

Oh, I literally, I couldn't even like dignified with an answer. And you normally, I'm like, don't you think that X, Y, and Z, but this, like, I'm like, you're so lost. You're so lost that I can't. You took the bait. You responded to him. I responded to him. And I said, my exact response was you're kind of a clown, dude. I said, you're kind of a clown, dude. LOL. I mean, come on. I said, just come out, please come out of the far right echo chamber. I'm like, I know inside of there, there's a good person. I went to college with you. Like I know who you are and I know it's not this, but but you cannot be serious. Like I said, we should be able to agree on like basic things. Right. We should be able to agree on that. Trying to overthrow the results of an election is a bad thing. country. And he tried to write a wrong that he thought was wrong. I'm like, and I sent him the article with that image, Ben, of the martial law. I said, I don't think this is in the realm of traditional political discourse. I don't. I don't think trying to go to the White House and proposing martial law to try to overturn the results of election. I'm sorry if we can't agree on that, then there's really no use of having this conversation at all. Like, listen, if you want to talk about tax policy-

What do you say back? What do you say back? You know, it's funny. As I really dug into the guy, like I went very aggressive at first with him because I was like, you're a clown. Like, you're just being like ridiculous. Like, snap out of it, dude. Ultimately, we were actually able to get to a point where we were able to start finding

some common ground on things. Once I was able to get him away from, you know, he went from pillow guy to then talking about Hunter Biden to then talking about how Biden's a dictator and how his Department of Justice and it's a banana republic and sharing memes with Biden and it says banana Republic on it. And I said, dude, I'm like, listen, if you want to be a traditional conservative Republican, I'm OK to talk to you about these issues. But if you're going to try to rail against our Department of Justice and our FBI agents for just trying to investigate and prosecute criminals who are trying to harm our country, then this is not a discussion that that we could have here. And then, you know, he kept kind of trying to pivot to other issues. Eventually, we're able to find common ground on some other things and speaking about like, don't you want, you know, once I was like, don't you want like workers to get the benefits of

things, right? Don't you want people, you want, you like tax cuts, right? But do you really think these billionaires deserve more tax cuts? Or do you think we should be giving tax cuts to workers and families? Like if you were to pick between the two, what should we do there? You know, and we were actually in, in homing in on those sorts of things, we were eventually able to agree on certain things. And at the end of it, I was like, I know I started out by calling you a clown, but I think we ultimately landed on, you know, at least a little bit of common ground here. And I'm never going to agree with you on the other stuff.

And I think you need to reevaluate that, but at least we're able to find something, you know, at least we had something productive in this conversation, but it just so wild to me that people are just so entranced by this right-wing media. And I think that's why. And so it's so important. What, what we're all doing is important here. And what like you, as the listeners are doing is important in going out and kind of not being afraid to have those difficult conversations. And you're not going to, like, I'm sure I didn't change this person's mind one bit, but I think I at least showed him like, listen, we share common values at the end of the day, you know, and we need to stop supporting, you know, the true banana Republic is letting somebody

like a Donald Trump be able to overturn our elections on Federer, you know, is not investigating somebody who has committed those sorts of heinous crimes against the United States. OK, like we need to be able to agree on this common sense sort of stuff. But I think that's why it's so important that, you know, you are there to provide a sort of soft landing point also for your friends, your family who may have kind of been pulled into this cult kind of unwillingly, unknowingly, because the power of this propaganda that they're receiving every day, I mean, it's intoxicating for these people and they fall for the BS constantly. And if they don't have a community to land in, they're just going to

continue to go deeper and deeper and deeper into that. And, you know, it's funny, I'll tease this conversation too. That's actually a lot of what I spoke about with Vice President Kamala Harris when I was speaking with her on the White House front lawn, how we need to provide a pro-democracy community. And we were speaking about the Midas Mighty. And now people need to know that there are other people there, out there, who think like us, who have our values, who have their back. If they want to say, you know what, all that crazy stuff out there, I got pulled into it because I was isolated during COVID and blah, blah, blah. But I have a pro-democracy movement who I could rely on. Democracy is cool again. And I think that's just an important thing that we need to be pressing forward to and why the community aspect of Midas

Touch and all the legwork that you do, why that's so important. And that's the silent majority that exists. And the silent majority are people who want to go about having normal lives, right? These are people who want to take their kids to a sports game or, you know, go to a movie and to just enjoy dinner and peace or to read a book or do whatever hobby is your hobby and spend time in nature, whatever it is that you love to do to pursue that happiness devoid of MAGA Republican extremists, like spitting in your face and like wearing shirts that have like Trump with six pack abs and telling me weird QAnon conspiracy things and like and like enough of that weirdness, dangerousness. And I don't want to fully belabor this point on this podcast, but because we talk

about it a lot, though, is that these QAnon conspiracies have actual real dangerous consequences because it is a dangerous terrorist organization. And so when Donald Trump goes on his failing social media platform and before 10 a.m. posts 80 different things and they have photos of him wearing he posts photos of himself wearing QAnon pins and saying the storm is coming where the storm is coming refers to a QAnon conspiracy where he will overthrow the government, hold military tribunals and kill all of the Democrats. That's what the storm is when they say the storm is coming. The level of dangerousness in that is actually provoking people to kill people. And we see that recently. There's been a whole slew of QAnon-related violence

that we've seen throughout this country. This one story, too, is one where a Michigan man who was fatally shot by police, he killed his wife. And his daughter talked about how he went down this weird QAnon MAGA rabbit hole and got more dangerous. And that story, I can give'll talk when we talk in a little bit about John Thune, the Republican who's afraid of Trump attacking him. It's like if all of these Republicans just got together and said, OK, fine, we'll lose. You want to torpedo this party and turn this party into the MAGA Republican Party? We're not standing by on the sidelines. This is the United States

of America. We stand for real values, not QAnon. But no, they're afraid of a man who posts 80 times in the morning with QAnon memes. Brett. And then I want to also emphasize a point because Republicans are afraid of losing their power, right? I mean, that's why they are appealing to this MAGA base. They are afraid of be replaced with somebody who is full MAGA. And you may think you're safe now. You're not safe now. So if you don't come together right now with your other fellow Republicans, guess what? Your ass is going to be on the curb, man, because all you have to do is look and read into Donald Trump's statements. And I want to read Donald Trump's statements about his upcoming rally, because I think it

is actually quite instructive of the way Donald Trump speaks about the party and the way the people who these Republicans are speaking to speak about the party. And Donald Trump made a statement aboutS. Senate from North Carolina, and the entire North Carolina Trump ticket. Now, I think it's important that we home in on those words at the end, the Trump ticket, because we have seen people in Donald Trump's family, including Eric Trump, say it's not the Republican Party anymore. It's the Trump Party. And what you see here is you are seeing Donald Trump subtly right now try to rebrand the Republican Party

as the Trump Party, as the MAGA Party. And that's where it is headed if these Republicans do not stand up to the forces of evil that are within their own party. I'd do one different, but I would say it is already there. It is the Trump party. It is the Trump MAGA Republican Party. They just don't call it that yet. But literally, it's just a branding issue. Right. So they are the Trump MAGA Republican Party. And I would go a step further to say the irony is these are people who are afraid to lose their power. And I would say this. They've already lost their power. What power does someone like a Lindsey Graham have where he has to say, whatever my position is, has to be what Donald Trump says?

What power does someone like a Ted Cruz have where no matter what he says, he has to make sure that he's obedient to Donald Trump. So they are powerless to begin with, because if they say anything that their cult leader Trump disagrees with, then they will be kicked out and exiled, deemed a rhino and then exiled from the party. So these people are clinging on not to power, but to the perception of power. And they are willing to give in all self-respect, all dignity to simply say that they have power that they already don't have. All these people need to do and not to give unsolicited advice to the Ted Cruz's and to the Lindsey Graham's though, is that Ben, is to have some sort of backbone to just show some sort of, you know, self-respect for, for your own self, for your own person, for your family, for your country, and just stand up to this

lunatic with orange hair and an orange face who just says these crazy things. Like, why is that the person who you're going to go along with? Why? And meanwhile, you know, let's talk about the real problems that Democrats are trying to solve. We brought it up earlier in the show, but we haven't really dug in just yet. But Ben, tell us a bit about the background of the rail strike and where we at with it right now. You know, the issues with the unions representing the freight rail workers have been brewing for some time now because they were owed a lot of back pay since the pandemic. And then they haven't gotten a raise in forever.

And the companies themselves, the freight companies, have made record profits all the while the workers haven't gotten any raises. And in addition, one of the key issues that the workers were very focused on and frustrated on, because it impacts their lives, is that they had to be on call seven days a week, basically. And even if they wanted to take a sick day or wanted to take just some time off, that they could actually be fired and retaliated against because there were no kind of clear rules governing their ability to even take time off. But it was that constantly being on call and this quality of life issue.

And so while they labored away and the companies made billions of dollars, no raise in all of these problems. And so the unions of the freight rail are governed by a separate set of rules and regulations where there's a bit of regulation at the federal level that if they want to have a strike, the federal government can kind of stop that from happening for a period of time. So that was invoked by Biden, I believe, in July. But that deadline was set to expire this Friday. And the odds of a deal happening seemed very, very, very insurmountable. One of the ways, though, that you could have gotten an extension of this Friday deadline,

though, would have to be through congressional legislation as well. And so as this deadline approached, Biden invited the union leaders and management to have conversations in Washington, D.C. These conversations were overseen by Marty Walsh, United States Secretary of Labor. And while that hard work was being done, what were Republicans doing? Gimmicks. So they introduced legislation that would basically try to extend the period of time from which, you know, a strike could take place, but basically give in to all of the concessions that management wanted. And then when Democrats said, you're just basically doing a bill that supports management,

then what they did, Republicans railed against the Democrats and said, Democrats are trying to destroy our economy. We try to avert the strike and Democrats are voting against it. Meanwhile, what Democrats were saying was there's a negotiation taking place. You're trying to tilt the scales in favor of management. We're trying to preserve the status quo of the negotiations. Labor workers need the rights that they're asking for. So no, we're not going to give into a bill or legislation that doesn't recognize workers' rights. And Republicans tried to say Democrats are torpedoing the economy. Because Democrats held the ground and didn't give up on

that, way into the night at about 5 a.m., a temporary deal was able to be struck, which Biden oversaw, which basically it has to be voted on. And so it's still a fluid process. But a deal has been struck where labor will be treated with dignity under this deal. They will get back pay. They will get significant double-digit raises and back pay from previous years. It's a major victory for labor. Management's still going to make profits. So it's not like maybe not quite as much profits, but we'll still crush it and do great. But it was a deal that focused on Biden's plan of kind of bottom to middle up and then out as opposed to trickle down and the deal was done trickle trickle trickle everybody loves your trickle down impression down but when you talk about the art of a deal

that what i just described is a true art of a deal versus the strikes aren't real it's gonna magically disappear and go away. Or Ben, it's hard not to see. And I know these are very different issues. So please don't act like I am comparing apples to apples here, but it's hard not to see the same sort of Republican strategy and Trump strategy that would have played out in a place like Ukraine as well, where it's just, oh, give all the concessions, give it all to the Russians. Just give it all up. That's their negotiating strategy in every situation. Just give it to the abuser in the situation.

Just make them happy and then they'll shut up and everything will be okay. Give all the concessions to management. Give all of the concessions to Russia. Just literally give whoever the power party is, whatever they want. And that's how you deal with a dynamic. The existing power class gets more power. But Brett, the situation is, as you said, it's emblematic of a broader approach. It's emblematic of the stark differences. One, it's rolling up the sleeves and Democrats trying to actually solve a problem, address it seriously. There

will always be difficult and conflicts and doing this is hard. There's always a lot to criticize in a compromise, but that's what you have to do sometimes. But there's also a focus here on fighting for the many, on fighting for the workers,'m fighting for truly who we the people are versus the billionaire class who's making the record profits. And by the way, I don't think that we should want profits. I mean, that's a good, it's part of a capital. But what we shouldn't have happen is allow billionaires to crush the worker, to billionaires, to squeeze the worker so they could exponentially just do things that are so extravagant and have eight yachts and 15 homes that they don't even

stay in and hoard their money for future generations so that no one in their family ever has to do work for the rest of 18 generations. We want to make sure that workers are just treated fairly at a bare minimum, period. That's not a hard concept. And Republicans are fighting against that. And whether it's on social security, Medicare, lowering prescription, these are the issues. And this is the thing. This is the big MAGA grift. The people at those rallies are not billionaires or mostly not millionaires. I would venture that most of them rely on social security. Most of them rely on other state and federal safety nets. Most of them rely on having lower prescription drugs. Most of them rely on having lower prescription drugs.

Most of them rely on Obamacare. Most literally rely on it and then go to rallies where they give standing ovations for a person who wants to literally pick their pockets and take all of those things. And it's a dynamic that we highlight here. It's a dynamic that Democratic candidates continue to highlight. And it's why I want to highlight this candidate who's running for a Democratic senator in South Dakota. Before doing that, everybody go to store.midastouch.com, store.midastouch.com for the best pro-democracy gear out there. Let the world know that you're a member of the Midas Mighty, store.midastouch.com. And again, check out that Patreon account. That's how you could support independent media. P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Midas Touch.

Patreon.com slash Midas Touch. We're close to a thousand members in that community right now within the first week, which is pretty impressive. Let's continue to grow that. And it's how you can help. You always say, hey, we'd love to help. How do we grow independent media? That is how.

Go to patreon.com slash Midas Touch. There's also that super chat, super fan button, that dollar sign button here, where you can also contribute directly to independent media here. Let's bring in our guest, Brian Bangs, Democratic candidate for senator of South Dakota. We are joined by our guest, Brian Bangs, the Democratic candidate for senator of South Dakota running against Republican John Thune, who I think is the definition of going all Washington, D.C. We want to talk about the swamp. I think Foon is the biggest swamp monster that there is out there. Let me give you a little background on Brian Bangs, a retired lieutenant colonel, 26 year Navy and U.S. Air Force vet, attorney,

professor, husband, father, and the Democratic nominee for South Dakota. Brian, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I was thinking about your race because I worked on the Hill. And when I say I worked on the Hill, I interned on the Hill. Ben got flowers for Hillary Clinton. Let's knock him down a notch here. His nickname on this podcast is Flower Man. I got members of Congress their flowers and their lunch. But you got to start somewhere when you're when you're there. But I was there in 2004. So I remember very vividly that South Dakota seat that John Thune took. And it was Tom Daschle seat who was the Democratic majority leader who had been doing a lot for the people, fighting for the people. And John Thune ran this campaign as I'm the outsider. Tom Daschle is the epitome of a D.C. person. And here you have

John Thune in this race. When I think about it and I think who is more prototypical lobbyist, D.C. swamp person, it's Thune. And so that's why I thought of you and I wanted to have you on the pod in addition to a lot of the accomplishments. But I want to talk about that and the dynamic of the race. So welcome to the pod. It's not going to be all me talking, but tell me about John Thune a little bit and the race. Well, I think you've hit the nail right on the head there. John Thune is exactly everything he's criticized about Daschle, but worse, arguably, because when we talk to people and say, hey, what has John Thune done for you? And people end up scratching their heads the, you know, if the GOP takes power again, the number two Republican. And we wouldn't want to give that up, which is the exact argument that, you know, it would have applied to Daschle. But John Thune and Daschle are very different people.

Daschle delivered for South Dakota and brought stuff to South Dakotans. And Thune's big position seems to be to prevent things that would benefit regular folks, regular South Dakotans. And Thune's big position seems to be to prevent things that would benefit regular folks, regular South Dakotans. So he's not going to deliver for people. And that's why people don't have any answer for what has John Thune done for me? Why'd you decide to run for this? You seem like you're having a good life. I mean, you don't need to run for the seat. Like what made you say right now is the time I want to get involved in politics and duke it out with this swamp monster thune? Yeah. Well, the big motivating event was January 6th. So as you said, I'm a retired Air Force officer. I spent a lot of years doing that and

teaching a lot of topics related to how our society is supposed to work, how democracy is supposed to work. So when I saw January 6th, if you had asked me 10, 15 years ago, hey, do you think something like that could happen in the United States? I would have said, you are crazy. This is the United States. That will not happen. And yet it did. And so when I was watching that event, I was very disturbed and then paying attention to, okay, so what are we going to do? Again, military, I'm trained to let's fall in line behind somebody who's leading us in the right direction here. And I wasn't seeing that. So at a certain point I said, well, I'm somebody, I'll go ahead and do something. And so that's why I'm in this race.

Let's talk about the issues too. And it seems that Thune is literally against like every issue that the people of South Dakota are for. And so I wonder why the guy is one in the past. Like if you actually break down the issues, I mean, like, let's just start with prescription drug prices and reducing the cost of prescription drugs, right? Not a contra, like people want that. No one wants higher drug prices. We want the price of insulin to be as low as possible,

preferably free, but if not free, as low as it could possibly be, because that like lets us live, you know? I mean, we need prescription drugs because that's how we live. He's against that. So how do we just like tell South Dakotans, hey, look, this person is literally is trying to raise your prices to kill you.

Like, is it more complicated than that? Well, you know, again, I taught, you know, state and local government, so I can tell you how the system is supposed to work. But I did not realize until I became a candidate of just how broken the system is. So telling people, and that message resonates, particularly with the insulin, 9% of, a little over 9% of the South Dakota population is diabetic and on insulin. And we've got another percentage or two that are pre-diabetic and just don't know it yet that they're going to be on insulin. So the fact that he has not only voted against capping the

cost of insulin to still keep it the most expensive in the world, but to make it more affordable, but that he organized the filibuster to ensure that it would not go through, those sorts of things, when people hear it, it makes them very angry about it. But getting the message out is the big issue for me. So that's the problem I'm having is trying to break free and have people pay attention because I am not a career politician like John Thune. I am just a guy who said enough and is trying to do something. Yeah. And I would say, look, my friends, you know, I don't know about your friends.

It's very different for Thune, like not like just rolling and hanging out with billionaires and just like chilling with like, you know, in the penthouse suites of these places like like we support workers on this show and we support unions and we support people who do things, who build things, who roll up their sleeves, you know, who want to know, hey, I'd like sick leave if I get sick. You know, that's one of the big discussions of this, of the freight strike, where Republicans were trying to basically say, if you're sick, you still have to show up to work

and you're going to get fired even if you're sick. And so like there are issues that that where Republicans are pushing for these anti-worker positions. And I feel it's the same with Thune here, you know, and I know you've been a big supporter of workers. You've been a big supporter of unions. And Thune's been the exact opposite on all of these issues as well. And I have to imagine, too, a lot of the voters there, most of the voters aren't billionaires, right? They aren't Thune's friends. No, we only have one billionaire in the state. So, yeah, most of the people in South Dakota are

regular folks that work for a living. And those are the folks that I'm talking to. And basically to a person when I'm out talking to people, they believe that the working class, middle class have gotten the shaft over the last 40 years. And John Thune is one of the folks that is pushing that to ensure that that continues in the future. So when I point that out to them, then they, yeah, they reflect a little bit more. One of the most hot button issues right now is the issue of abortion, the issue of choice. And we see Republicans right now coming out with these very extreme radical plans to ban abortion on the federal level. They went from states right somehow to, oh, we were just kidding about that whole states rights thing. We got to ban it everywhere. What is that? What's the temperature in South Dakota? Like if a vote was put to South Dakotans right now about abortion, how would they vote?

Well, South Dakota actually has a history that we can go back on. So in 2004 and 2006, South Dakotans had that question that they answered decisively when there was an attempt to put a abortion ban into the state constitution and they rejected it both times. And it's looking like we're going to have it on the ballot probably again in 2024. So it's a little bit late. We're not going to be able to get it on this cycle, but it's probably going to be defeated yet again. And the big proponents for abortion bans, of course, our state legislature is big on that. So the elected officials are not respecting the will of the people because they disagree with it. So that is the big fight that we have in South Dakota is trying to get our elected officials to when the people vote on something to go, all right, well, the people voted. That's the answer. Not I want to overturn that and do what I want to do. You know, that's actually an interesting point that I want to home in on for just a second, because, you know, like

I was saying before, we constantly hear states rights, states rights, states rights, give the power to the people, let the people decide. But in reality, in practice, that's not actually what these Republicans mean when they say states rights. They mean don't give the power to the people, it appears, but it means give the power to the politicians who want to withhold those rights from the people. Do I do I have that kind of structure right when I'm when I'm looking at this as an outsider in a state like South Dakota? I would say absolutely. South Dakota actually, fun fact, was the first state to adopt direct democracy in 1898. And that was after a protracted fight with the state legislature to try to get them to support what the people wanted. And those fights have continued with multiple different

issues. It's not just abortion, but other issues, ethics, for example. The state legislature freely overturns what the people want. So when we talk about states' rights, when you have the governor, South Dakota, most recently, the governor had the state suing itself because she did not want the vote for recreational marijuana to come to fruition. So the state literally paid to sue and defend itself from being sued in this asinine world of, hey, state's rights. I think it's one of it's really a fascinating thing that when you put those policies on the ballot that Democrats are fighting for across the country. Those policies always win. I think we need to find the disconnect between why those policies win, but why it's often so hard in these

states to get Democrats to win. And I was wondering, what is your strategy right now? Obviously, you're going against some very big moneyed interests right now in South Dakota. You have John Thune, who is a career politician. So how do you plan to break through the noise? Are you doing door knocking, postcarding, town halls, speaking with the people? What's the strategy right now? Well, my approach initially was to be out meeting with the people, going to the small towns. And so I'm doing that to the extent possible, but I spend the bulk of my time trying to raise funds. So that's limiting my ability to do it. But I'm kind of handicapped to a certain extent by John Thune, who has $16 million in his campaign war chest, knowing that

he has that and I don't. And he has literally ignored me entirely. So I proposed when he won the primary, I proposed that we do a series of debates at towns of 10,000 or more in South Dakota. And he's ignored that. And he's finally just recently agreed to do one debate on the Friday before the election. So he's put it off to the last second and he doesn't acknowledge my existence. So trying to get some attention and make some noise when I cannot even engage with an opponent, he won't even shake my hand and talk to me. I tried to meet him at the state fair not too long ago, and I was shooed away by his staff. So he's trying to suffocate me by inattention and just ignoring me. It seems to be a Republican strategy. Yeah, it seems to be a Republican strategy across

the country. But I think while you're being ignored by people like John Thune, you are being looked at by the people who are really important, which are the workers. And we were speaking about them earlier. I know you're a proud supporter of labor and labor unions. And I saw that the Teamsters Local 120 just announced that they were endorsing you. So congrats on that big endorsement. Thank you. Just tell us a bit about your commitment for labor and why is it so important that we elect pro-labor politicians? Well, you know, and I've been talking to people across the state, as I said, and one of the things that I tell them is that I grew up in a working class union family. My dad worked in a factory and he was a shop steward with the union there. So my experience includes, you know, working class labor experience. I remember him being on strike and being very nervous.

Like, geez, are we going to be able to pay our bills? And, you know, what's going to happen here? And how long is this strike going to last? So I'm sympathetic to the folks who I believe have been getting the shaft for the last 40 years, because the system has kind of shifted to be more in favor of the billionaires and the large corporations who are giving money to these career politicians. So the system is being undermined, the concept of democracy is being undermined by the influence of money that literally to a person, I've not met anybody who said money is not corrupting our politics. And that's the question I ask most people when I talk

to them. So I can tell you with 100% certainty that every person in South Dakota I've spoken to agrees with that. And then that's leading us to where we are now, which is why I'm taking up the mantle of labor and trying to kick the Democratic Party in the butt a little bit to get back to, you know, you dance with who brought you to the party. And labor brought democratic politics to the party back in the mid-20th century. And we need to go back to them and look out for the regular people. And the regular people will then start looking out for you. Yeah. And we are definitely in agreement there. We are big supporters of labor and workers here on the pod. But here's the thing. Constantly, I feel like the

battle with the other side is we want to be able to get into these policy discussions, right? We want to be able to talk about nuances and how do we keep social security going? How do we expand social security? How do we protect people's rights? But we're getting caught up right now in these debates that shouldn't be debates at all. And one of the big things is this whole issue of our national security, these top secret documents that were found at Mar-a-Lago. And I've just seen the hypocrisy here from your opponent, John Thune, in this regard, where he can't even say a peep about Donald Trump. He can't even say it's a bad thing that he has top secret information in his golf course in Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, you go back to 2016, he was one of the people at the front criticizing

Hillary Clinton over the emails. He was a big, but her emails guy. Oh, she jeopardized our national security. The rules of handling national security are very clear. She should know better. And that pales in comparison to what we're seeing now. It's just not even in the same category. Why do you think Thune can't even stand up to Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party and say, listen, this isn't a matter of debate. This is our national security at stake. This is global security at stake. And we got to take a stand and say this is wrong. Yeah, well, we've seen what happened to Liz Cheney with this. And John Thune tested the waters and he kind of tested the waters a little bit in the immediate aftermath of the election last year as well.

And Trump tore into him hard and labeled him a rhino and called him Mitch's boy. So he is not favored among the mega folks. So he needs to to be elected. Fundamentally, he needs to have mega support because there's a lot of mega folks in South Dakota. And, you know, one of the things, again, that I talked to is about this, you know, corruption of money in politics and career politicians. Mega folks don't like corrupting career politicians who are corrupted by money. So they're obviously not a fan of him just in general. And when Trump called him Mitch's boy,'re obviously not a fan of him just in general. And when Trump

called him Mitch's boy, they're not a fan of Mitch McConnell either because of the corruption that they perceive in the system, which, you know, I sympathize with them and I share those beliefs. So, you know, we can kind of find common ground on that. But Thune is just trying to keep everybody happy by remaining silent on issues that are of grave concern. And fundamentally, I think it is a moral weakness on his standpoint. You have to stand for something or you fall for anything. And that's what we're seeing here. And I want to dig into that.

What do you think, by and large, it doesn't have to be Thune, but this Republican Party, this current day Republican Party, what is their platform? What is their agenda? We were talking about this the other day in the show, and I kind of landed on just cruelty is the point. They want to take away women's right to choose. They want to take away your rights. They want to make issues about culture wars instead of helping the people. What have you been seeing? Well, I'd ask the same thing here. I don't know if I'd go with cruelty as the point. I would go with money as the point, probably more so that you've got the big money interests are obviously lined up behind the Republican Party and the corporate interests behind the Republican Party. So to the extent that there's money to be made, then they want to defend the prospect of maximizing the money to be made.

And if it's useful to, you know, I've talked to folks and I said, there's two ways to pick a pocket. And if you can distract somebody, then it's easier to do it because they're focused on something else. So I would say the issues, the cruelty, uh, are more so a distraction to ensure that they don't notice their pocket is being picked. Right on. And then, so as a veteran, what do you make of Republicans who wrap themselves in the flag and then push agendas that are anything but American? Yeah, when we're talking about the anti-democratic aspect of things, I'm not a big, you know, I've spent my life in the military service. So, you know, I've I've woken up in the morning and I've saluted the flag and gone to all the ceremonies and done this sort of stuff and worn the United States on my shirts over my heart throughout my life. And to wrap yourself in the flag, particularly those folks that have never worn a uniform in their life and to cozy up to veterans. It just disturbs me. It disturbs me so much.

And then lastly, where can people help out with the campaign? I mean, I know we're talking about how Thune is, you know, this millionaire has a stockpile of cash that's allowing him to do X, Y, and Z, but where can our listeners go to learn more about you and also help out? Okay. Well, I'd say the website is the best first bet, uh, bangs for Senate. And that is B E N G S for senate.com. We've got a launch video that we put out a few weeks ago that has done extraordinarily well nationally and has garnered millions of views. So it tells a good story. If nothing else, it's like a mini Western. I'd encourage anybody to check it out because I think you'll like it. And, you know, I'm on Twitter at Brian Bangs as well and various other social medias. So you can find me making comments about John Thune in a lot of

different places. And thank you, Brian, for joining us on the Midas Touch podcast. And thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Again, go to patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Midas Touch. And for real, get this Midas Touch merch before we run out at store.midastouch.com, store.midastouch.com. We'll see you next time, Midas Mighty. Let's keep fighting for democracy. Jordy, take it away. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. Midas Touch is unapologetically pro-democracy. And look, we know you are too. So please make sure you check out our bestselling shirt and best-selling gear, the unapologetically pro-democracy gear. And hey,

while you're at it, make sure you check out my favorite shirt and one of our most famous designs. It wasn't rigged. You're just a loser. That's store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com.