The MeidasTouch Podcast - Exclusive: WI Dem Chair Says Elon Musk Committed State Felony

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump and Elon Musk tanking in Wisconsin right before the key Supreme Court race takes place there and Meiselas speaks with Wisconsin Democratic Chair Ben Wikler about the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And Wisconsin voters are absolutely pissed off. Look, it's no secret that Trump was able to eke out and win the state in the 2024 election by promising lower prices on day one, by promising to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, making housing more affordable, promising this, promising that I alone can fix it, which of course we were warning about was a lie, but some people bought into it. Donald Trump would dress up like a garbage man and do these ridiculous stunts. Remember the garbage man stunt was in Wisconsin. I think we've got a clip of it just to remind you when he went extra orange and dressed up like the garbage man. Here, play this clip. He went in the garbage truck and he promised that he was going to do all of these things.

Well, look, Trump's tariffs are hitting the farmers, manufacturers, workers in Wisconsin hard. Trump's attack on the Department of Education is devastating to Wisconsin. Donald Trump's attack on Social Security, shutting down Social Security offices and services is hitting Wisconsin hard. Trump's attacks on Medicaid. There's not a single thing that Trump's, you know, doing that isn't hitting Wisconsin hard. And, you know, I'll just show you from a local Wisconsin news channel, WSIN 12. I mean, this professor at Madison, it just, he explains, look, it's when you do these

tariffs, tariffs up, tariffs down, you know, Wisconsin's kind of biggest, you know, exports, imports. I mean, Canada, Mexico, China. Here, play this clip. So when you have this sort of whiplash with tariffs, first they're on the table, they're off the table, they're 15%, they're 25%. How does that impact the economy when it's not stable? Well, one of the things that most businesses

really don't like is uncertainty. And it's almost always easier to deal with a known situation and figure out how to best approach it than to be in a situation where you're not quite sure what your steps should be because you're not quite sure what the environment in which you're going to be operating will be. And that applies equally to dairy farms, dairy processing businesses, food retailers, and it's really sort of a nationwide issue that we should be thinking about. So how significant of a trade partner is a country like China for dairy farmers,

and what is the possible impact for Wisconsin's dairy farmers? Sure. So I'd like to point out to people that our top three dairy trading partners, and this is national level data, are Mexico, Canada, and China in that order. So dairy trade is really pretty important for the U.S. dairy industry. It's been the main source of growth in milk production and product sales over the last 10 to 15 years. And so there are potentially some pretty major impacts of having strained trade relations with those major trading partners. About 40% of our dairy product exports by value went to those three countries in 2024. So this is a pretty important part of the dairy economy in the U.S. and in Wisconsin. So now we have a major, major election in Wisconsin for an open Supreme Court seat there. You have a Doge candidate, a MAGA candidate, Brad Schimel.

Then you have a pro-democracy law and order candidate, Susan Crawford. We've had Susan Crawford on our program before, and you've heard her talk about upholding the law. And on the other hand, Brad Schimel realizes right now, Trump, Musk, Doge, very, very unpopular. So what are they doing? Well, Elon Musk is coming into Wisconsin and he's announcing it. He's just giving away a million dollars, giving away checks like throwing money at people. So there's this post excited to announce our first million dollar award for supporting our petition against activist judges in Wisconsin. Next million dollar award will be announced in two days. Then he posts the following today. On Sunday, I will give a talk in Wisconsin. Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election.

I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote. This is super important. I don't know. It looks and feels, as a lawyer, just giving you my opinion, feels illegal to me. But let me bring in the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin party, Ben Wickler. Hey, Ben, we just learned that Elon Musk deleted the tweet where he talked about paying people a million dollars to show up at a town hall. I mean, was that a crime that we saw?

What's going on in Wisconsin right now? Elon Musk deleted that tweet because he knows that that tweet was a crime and it's still a crime. In Wisconsin law, it is plain as day. You cannot promise something of value in order to induce someone to vote or refrain from voting. This is Wisconsin statute and it's a felony to cross that line. Elon Musk has committed blatantly, obviously, an illegal act to help Brad Schimel buy his seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. And Elon Musk should be brought to justice for that crime. This is something that we should not accept in a democracy, vote buying.

And at this point, we have to ask whether Brad Schimel knew about this, whether he approves of this, whether he's going to condemn Elon Musk for trying to buy votes for promising something of value, which is itself a criminal act. This is not an edge case. This is a central question for whether we're going to survive as a democracy or whether the richest man in the world will be able to pay people in order to get them to vote. And we need to make absolutely clear that this will not be accepted in Wisconsin or anywhere else across this country. Ben, you believe a crime was committed and that's why Elon took it down. And it is possible. What did Brad know? When did he know it? That needs to be looked into now, huh?

Absolutely. I mean, the idea of saying, if you vote, you can come to my town hall and you can get a million dollars, that is so far beyond the criminal threshold for vote buying. The threshold is if you offer someone something that's worth at least one dollar, then that itself is a violation of the vote bribery, the election bribery statute in Wisconsin. So you have to ask whether Brad Schimel will immediately denounce this and call for an investigation, whether he knew about this in advance, whether he's planning to appear with Elon Musk when Elon Musk comes to Wisconsin this Sunday. Was it Brad Schimel calling Elon Musk and telling him to delete the tweet because they could get in trouble? What happened here? We don't know. But what we do know is this. If the richest person in the world can go around buying votes in order to buy control of courts the way he seems to have bought control of the White House, then we have lost any semblance of the rule of law in the United States of America

and our democracy has been smashed to pieces, or I should say cut with Elon Musk's chainsaw. We need to fight back against this and it should be prosecuted in court and it should be just triggering an avalanche in the ballot box with voters making 100% clear that our democracy can't be bought. Susan Crawford's victory will send a message to the whole country that Elon Musk's illegal vote buying schemes will trigger an electoral avalanche in the other direction. And if we can make that clear, maybe we can shut this down before it infects the rest of the country in 2026 and beyond. You know, I don't know the laws and, you know, I mean, I have a sense of the laws in Wisconsin and generally, you know, in the United States, when it comes to these things, you know, we saw, I think, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

when Musk was doing it there with certain populations, He likes to claim like, well, actually, what this is really about is a spokesperson. I'm giving somebody a job and I'm giving them a spokesperson position. So it's so that's what it is. I mean, look, I think the people of like, do the people of Wisconsin get what's going on, though? And what do you say when he makes that kind of argument? People absolutely get what's going on. And before it was, you know, if you sign my petition, then you can be entered in this drawing or, or, uh, you know, we can give you a spokesperson fee or whatever it is. This crosses all of those lines because this is explicitly, you can get into my town hall if you voted. And if you voted, then I could give you this check. And so it is,

it is, you know, Wisconsin statute says offering, giving, lending, or promising to give or lend anything of value to go to or refrain from going to poll to the polls that that's a felony in the state of Wisconsin. So he's, he's really like way out over his skis to the point where his skis are on the ground and he's flying over the cliff, like Wiley Coyote with this thing. And Brad Schimel needs to condemn it immediately. I mean, this is an attempt to buy votes by someone who is doing everything in his power, including at this point, close to $25 million by our count to help Brad Schimel get elected to the top legal job in Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court office. I think Brad Schimel is now tied indelibly to this kind of criminal vote buying behavior. And that creates a giant political problem for him. Elon Musk's

money and his behavior in this race is now politically a disaster for Brad Schimel. And what we can see is that Democrats, people who believe in democracy, the rule of law, they are voting at explosive numbers in a way that I think could demonstrate to the whole country that Elon Musk is not the guy that you want on your side in this election or any other going forward. Talk about this race, Ben. I mean, we've had Judge Susan Crawford on twice. I've covered, you know, how dangerous, you know, Brad Schimel is. I mean, I've showed I mean, first, Brad Schimel was trying to be like, yeah, you know, I'm not really like a

Trump guy. Like he tried to do that thing. And then all of like, he dressed up like Trump for Halloween. He had a, he wears, goes to boat parades saying like, I love things. It's like Jesus beer and Trump. Like it was something like that. Like, you know, he wears like Trump shirts out and about this guy. So he's clearly a Trump doge, you know, kind of puppet, but explain to the people watching, why is this so important? Why is he so dangerous? What are the stakes? Yeah. So that clip that you played of Trump in his garbage, garbage man outfit, Brad Chimmel dressed up as that guy for Halloween right before the election this November, this last November.

Brad Schimel is a dyed-in-the-wool mega warrior, and he wants to use the Supreme Court, as he puts it on the campaign trail, to be Trump's support network. He says that Trump keeps losing in court, which you and I in the audience knows because Trump keeps breaking the law. But Schimel says the only way to stop this is in the courts. So he's running to allow Trump to break the law and now clearly to allow Elon Musk to break the law. So there's a deep question of accountability in the rule of law here. There's also Elon Musk has his own personal case around Tesla dealerships going through the Wisconsin court system. So as always, this is a question around Elon Musk lining his own pockets. But it's also this question of whether people who are committed to public service can win elections in Wisconsin and across the country. Because Susan Crawford

is exactly the kind of dedicated public servant that Elon Musk hates and is trying to drive out of the government. You had her on, you heard her story. She has been a prosecutor for years and years keeping the public safe. She went into state government. She led environmental law enforcement at the Department of Natural Resources, which is something that Elon Musk clearly hates and loathes as he drives a gut in the environmental protections in our federal government. In private practice, there was a case called the Planned Parenthood versus Brad Schimel. Brad Schimel said it was an honor to have his own name in that case. The lawyer for Planned Parenthood was Susan Crawford. She has fought for reproductive freedom successfully in our state.

She defended voting rights when they came under attack by Republican voter suppression. She defended workers' rights. She has this track record that demonstrates her value. And now she's a judge who treats everyone equally when they walk into her courtroom, regardless of whether they're the richest person in the world or a random citizen. That's what you want. You want the law applied without fear or favor to anyone. So electing her is also an act of defiance against the people who want to tilt the playing field, who want to rig this country for the mega billionaires at the expense of everyone else. It's an act of defiance against a Trump-Musk administration that's trying to shred our constitution and the idea of equal justice under the law. It is an act of affirmation of the best traditions of this country that we're always aspiring to reach for. Susan Crawford is the kind of person you'd be proud to have on your

Supreme Court. And Brad Schimel represents everything that people who believe in democracy in this country are fighting against the corruption, the extremism, the total partisan loyalty to someone who wants to be king instead of to the constitution that you're supposed to swear an oath to protect. These are the stakes. And what happens in Wisconsin, the closest state in the country, it's the bellwether for what happens in the entire nation for years to come. So this is a must-win race. And anyone who can, you can go to Crawford4WI.com and give directly to her campaign. You can volunteer and donate with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, wistdems.org. We are sending out door knockers day after day. We have virtual phone banks you can join from anywhere in the nation. We're still finding every way that we can to buy more ads and

get in front of more people. This is an all hands on deck moment. If we win, we send a message of hope in a moment where the country desperately needs it. Ben Wickler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Thanks for joining us. Ben, thanks so much for having me on. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.