The MeidasTouch Podcast - FAFO with Rick Wilson & Miles Taylor | Meidas GOLD Minds Part 3/4

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

On the third part of our special edition of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers are thrilled to welcome back Rick Wilson & Miles Taylor! With the rapid growth of our audience, it’s become clear that many of our listeners have missed out on some INCREDIBLE guests that we’ve had the pleasure of speaking with early on in our development. Along the way the brothers are going to provide some insights into MeidasTouch, their personal lives and new commentary around these interviews. We hope you enjoy! Support our sponsors: Nuts.com -- MeidasTouch Podcast listeners get free shipping on your first order at Nuts.com when you text TOUCH to 64-000! Wild Alaskan Company -- Get $15 off your first box of premium seafood when you visit WildAlaskanCompany.com/MEIDAS. Stamps.com -- Go to https://stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in MEIDAS & get a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario welcome to the Midas Hutch podcast bet brett and and Jordy with another incredible podcast episode. Feeling good today, guys. Let's go. Let's go. And great. These are the Midas Touch podcast special editions where we bring back- Goldmine. Goldmine edition. Midas Touch goldmine edition where we bring back some of the best interviews, some of your favorites for those who have listened from the beginning. But a lot of people tell us, hey, you need to interview Rick Wilson. Hey, why aren't you interviewing Miles Taylor? Well, guess what? We've interviewed Rick

Wilson and we've interviewed Miles Taylor. And we want to show you those interviews and have you listen to those interviews today. Rick Wilson, May 14th, 2021 on the Midas Touch podcast. Miles Taylor, February 19th, 2021 on the Midas Touch podcast. Rick and Miles, Rick and Miles, Rick, Rick, Rick. Is that the Rick and Morty song? Yeah. I know nothing about Rick and Morty other than I hear that song on TikTok all day as I scroll through TikTok, but I still, I don't even know what it means.

I don't know what the meme is. I don't know what the moves are. What is the Rick and Morty thing? Speaking of moves, do you guys remember when we first started our TikTok page, Ben did videos for us? Not only did he do videos for us, but Ben did the Rick and Morty dance before the Rick and Morty dance was even invented. Rick, can you play that? Who's next? Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Jordy, for playing that. Jordy, what you fail to realize is the way

audio works. I always forget that one. You is the way audio works. I always forget that. You forget the way audio works. So the way people listening to the podcast. But check our YouTube and subscribe to that. They can check the YouTube. I want to give a shout out to the Midas Mighty podcast listeners. And Brett, those TikTok songs

are stuck in my head. I mean, the one that's the one that you keep singing this one all day. I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be violet sky. singing this one all day. I could be blue. I could be violet sky. I can be hurtful. I could be purple.

I could be anything you like. Got to be green. Got to be mean. Got to be everything more. Why don't you like me? Why don't you like me? Walk out the door. Now you got to do all the various harmonies though with it.

And then you build off it like Ryan Reynolds did. I could be brown. I could be blue. it like Ryan Reynolds did. I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be violet sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be anything you like. I could be brown.

I could be blue. I could be violet sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be anything you like. I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be violet sky.

I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be blue. I could be violet sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be anything you like. You're very talented. I could be blue. I could be violet sky. I'm very talented at Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds is a natural. Yeah. Ryan Reynolds is far more talented. No offense, but you're doing great. Yeah. You're doing great. You're doing great. Thanks guys. So let's get into the Rick Wilson, May 14th, 2021 interview. It is nuts. No, you just say nuts because, okay, okay, okay. Okay. Cause I'm going to take the Ben transition and do a little transition jujitsu on you right now and steal your thunder. Because before we get into Rick Wilson, I just found an incredible website

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from nuts.com. That's touch, T-O-U-C-H to 64,000. Why don't you take out your phone right now, send that text message, get your 10% so you don't forget. Terms apply. Those are available at nuts.com slash terms. And without further ado, Rick Wilson, ladies and gentlemen. Joined by none other than Rick Wilson, political strategist, author, and of course, you know him as the co-founder of the Lincoln Project. Rick, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast.

Hey, guys, it's fantastic to be with you. And thank you so much for your support and the Lincoln Project's support of Midas Touch. When we were coming up, we were three brothers sitting around in our couch in March. We saw what you were doing. We saw what the Lincoln Project was doing. We all had a skill set. Me from a legal background, Brett as an editor, Jordy as a marketer. You know, we said, look, let's just try to do a video and see what happens, you know, through the support, actually, of many people in the Lincoln Project retweeting our videos. It caught on, grew into an incredible movement. And so just want to thank you for all the work Lincoln Project has done and continues to do. And thank you for your support of Midas Touch.

Well, it's absolutely some of the best and most fun creative that from the cycle came out from you guys. We always enjoyed it. And you know, maybe slightly differently than some people. It's we, we believe that, that the problem is so big was then is now so big. It takes a lot of different skillsets. It takes a lot of different people, you know, many hands make light loads as they say. And so, you know, it was a real pleasure to see some of the stuff you guys did that was really cutting and really pushed out there. And I, I loved your work. I think it was fantastic. And I'm just glad to be on the glad to all be pulling the boat in the same direction. And so as we talk about pulling the boat in the same direction, that boat right now is floating against a tide of orange fascism, of stupidity, of idiocracy in the form of the current Republican Party, which doesn't even deserve that name anymore, Republican.

You know, we call them the GQP. You know, frankly, they are a fascist, authoritarian party of just crazy cultists. How do we collectively, the universal we, the Lincoln Projects, the Midas, what can we do now to fight that tide of fascism that still exists in Trumpism? Well, you know, it is one of those questions that took, I think, a lot of people a very long time to get their head around, is that, and a group of Republicans yesterday or today announced that they are forming this new group saying they'll leave the party if they don't, you know, if the party doesn't change. Well, I, a lot of these people are my friends. A lot of them are colleagues. I have bad news for them. It's not going to change. The party would sooner adopt conspiracy theories and this authoritarian statism and this modern-day fascism than it would be inclined to try to clean its act up, try to get back to

something that looked like the guy I started in this world working for, George Herbert Walker Bush. And in this day and age, he's spat on by Trumpists because he was a person who believed in America and the Constitution and bipartisanship and human decency. None of those things now apply in the world of contemporary Trumpism. There are no incentives for it. There's no incentive to be better or do better or be different or do something different than being this transgressive asshole of the minute, own the libs, scream fest all the time. And those people are now rewarded for shitty behavior, so they'll get more shitty behavior, which is why I think this reform movement that's launching in the GOP,

they're trying to put the paddles on a zombie. It's not going to bring it back to life. I think the response today by those 100 Republicans kind of is the problem with the Republican Party. Them saying, look, we are going to leave if it doesn't make certain changes. Like at its core there, there's this hedging. There's this level of kind of weakness of basically saying, is it not bad enough as it is? Your party was overtaken by a fascist. Your party was overtaken by a by people like Bobbert, by Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like Congressman Cawthorne, who's saying, no, no, no, no. Hey, hey, hey, goodbye to Liz Cheney. And that's not enough for you to leave right now. It's that to me, it's that hedging. It's it's like appeasement. And it's like World War II appeasement, you know, to Hitler in a way, just letting him come in and conquer and still watching it and saying, well, you know, if book called The Nightmare Years. And he talked about how people just sort of slowly slid into it. They, you know, it was bad. It was crappy. They didn't

like what was happening, but it was always like, yeah, but I got to keep working. I got to, you know, I don't want to lose my job. I don't want to lose my friends. I don't want to do this and that, you know, that would upset my own personal, you know, day-to-day routine. Well, we are in a moment, not unlike that. We're in a moment where people, you know, in Washington particularly, and I mean this by the way of Democrats also, they still think there's some rational counterpart in the Republican party they can do business with. They cannot. At the end of the day, if Donald Trump calls up Kevin McCarthy and says, hey, tomorrow I want you to propose human sacrifice as the center of policy of the party, there'll be a fucking human sacrifice bill introduced by the Republicans that afternoon because he controls everything.

We stoked a war between McConnell and Trump in the last few weeks that is rising in bitterness. And we've been pushing very hard on that because Mitch McConnell realizes that Donald Trump has a gun to his head every day. Mitch McConnell is not going to be able to go out and recruit the candidates he needs unless Donald Trump approves them. And we're going to do our best to make sure that Donald Trump finds all the flaws and deficits in McConnell's candidates going forward. Because, I mean, real talk here, because of redistricting and because of the way the country has shifted in population, Republicans will gain about five seats just by people have moved from blue states to red states. That's not cheating or, or redistricting or gerrymandering.

That's just like demographic shifting. So Texas and Florida gain seats, New York and California lose them. So they're going to gain about five seats in the house with that off year elections. There's only three times in the last 120 years where the party in power in the white house gained seats in Congress. 2002, 1928, and 1902, I think. And so the Republicans are going to gain back the House almost certainly if the Democrats don't understand they are fighting an immediate action drill. This is an immediate war that is being fought in real time that is going to cost the control

of the House unless they understand these people cannot be dealt with. They must be crushed. I'm boggled that the Democrats aren't doing their version of Benghazi with the Capitol attack and the insurrection. I mean, if I were King, there would be a 24-hour line of witnesses being dragged out from the Trump administration every fucking day to testify. All these people that have been indicted, they would be dragged there to have their testimony heard. The Republicans know how to do this shit. And I'm sorry, my Democratic friends just do not understand the raw exercise of pure malicious political power.

And that's the other side of the scale there. We talked about this Republican appeasement of someone with dictatorial intentions. But that person also comes into being because of kind of democratic weakness. You know, one of the things that we've seen firsthand as political outsiders kind of walking into the space is there really wasn't another democratic group out there that was doing what we were doing. And we would always say like, why is it us? We're just, we're just three random dudes three random dudes who are on a cell phone text message chat making a video. Like, look, if we're supposed to have Hollywood and this and that, like, where are all these other people come out and start making movies? It's Brett Mycelis from his little five foot five closet editing videos. That's's it it's so true and i gotta say

you know normalization bias works throughout history when bad people do terrible shit so many people try to say well we can reason with them we can talk with them you know when i know the the lp guys i know we were a bunch of notorious history nerds, but when Neville Chamberlain came back and everyone told him, don't negotiate with Hitler, don't make this deal with Hitler, he came back and Churchill said, you can have war or honor. Well, you left without honor and now you will have war. People compromise and compromise and compromise. And by the time the shit gets really bad, very few people stand up and very few people will be bold enough. When Hitler was taking control of Germany and the Nazis were taking control of Germany, they had these things called

the Enabling Acts. And they were basically to allow the Nazi party to take over every aspect of German life from religion to business, to society, to politics, to media. One guy stood up in the German parliament at that time in the Bundeswehr and said, no, because it was Otto Wells. And it was one guy, by the end of it, there was one guy who was willing to stand up and say, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. And right now, there are still way too many people in our society, in our governing system, in our elected offices, and in the press who are unwilling to say, no, this is crazy. You can't deal with these people. You can't accept this kind of slide down into authoritarianism. There aren't many Otto Wellses around there. And honestly, for all that Republicans scream about the liberal media, the reality is the press

in Washington is transactional. They are institutional. And the Republicans know how to play that. They know how to play that game. They fuck with, look, I'm a fucking pro at it. I used to do it for years. They relentlessly play them over and over and over again and say things like, well, you know, behind the scenes, we know Trump's a silly, silly man. And we're just, everything's normal. Don't worry. We're not going to invade the capital at his orders and kill people yeah and the press falls

for that shit over and over you know why mitch mcconnell comes across as like with these with these weirdly glowing press coverage about how sensible he is it's because his guys control access to mitch mcconnell in the press if you don't write nice things about him, you don't get access. And this is a world where normalcy bias and the belief that we're not in a different kind of political space now is going to be incredibly dangerous in the future. What do you think a Republican takeover of the House in 2022 would mean for America? To me, I'm terrified at that prospect, given all the shit they tried to pull this past election. You should be. To me, I'm looking forward to, it's not just 2022, but let's look at what that means for 2024. If a Democrat wins a presidential election then, are they going to certify the election? In my opinion, no freaking way.

What do you think? I just want you to really tell people like what are the stakes of this fight right now whether you want to live in a free country or not those are the stakes and i i don't mean that you know sarcastically i mean that seriously if the republicans take over the house they will impeach joe biden they will run run show trial Benghazi hearings every day that will never end. They will drag the administration into a constant stream of having to defend itself in front of yahoos like Cawthorn and Green and Gosar and Jim Jordan and Gates, all these other morons, they will constantly grind away at the administration's ability to do work and to do business and to get things done. And again, they will impeach Joe Biden. They will impeach Vice President Harris. They will go after with

all the brutality that the Republicans bring to bear. And as Stuart and I always joke, we've been around this thing a long time. We helped build a lot of these systems. We know what they can do. Yep. And Democrats who think they're going to easily keep the house are out of their damn minds. I mean that with tough love. And I say that just on my knowledge of the electoral map in the country, in the shifts in the population, in redistricting, in population increases. And the most important thing they can do right now is forget about policy. You know, you guys, and we made this election in 2020 about a referendum, a referendum on Donald Trump. That referendum was, it's America or Trump. What's it

going to be folks? And America chose to not have Donald Trump visit the white house for a return engagement. The Democrats can, they, I know many of them are like, well, we're going to go into the 2022 elections and our, our policies will save the day. Elections are about personalities. They are about broad directional feeling and movement in the country. And it is important to make this race a referendum on this new Republican party. It's not going to be about the Green New Deal or climate change or gun control or daycare or anything else, it needs to be a referendum on whether you're going to choose a party that is on the long slide into fascism and authoritarianism and statism and engineered cruelty, or if you're going to choose a party that you may not agree with it on everything, you may not love everything it's doing, it may not be far enough left for you. It may not be far enough in the center for you, but

you've got to decide if you're going to choose that imperfect party or you're going to embrace a party that will essentially mean the end of free and fair elections in this country and the beginning of an authoritarian nightmare from which it is difficult when you start on that downhill slope from which it is very difficult to emerge traditionally speaking so i'll ask you the you know the billion dollar question here um how do we keep the house i mean with all that in mind you have the republican playbook right now being a purely emotional one in my opinion it's democrats are taking away your gas dr seuss mr potato head cancel culture they're trying to throw all these things out there so how do democrats who in my opinion kind of intellectualize things more like you said with with policy well

look at the look at the you know the deficit and look at the what we're doing with the infrastructure bill how do we combat that just 24 7 shit storm from fox and oan that's just pumping into these people's veins well and that is that is the billion dollar question that is the existential question one of the things you've got to do is recognize that the country is not politically homogenous. There is not a single flavor of Democrat that wins everywhere. If you give me 50 AOCs, I can maybe grab two or three more seats for you. You give me 50 Katie Porters, I got 35, 40 seats for you. You give me 50 Katie Porters, I got 35, 40 seats for you because the country is largely not as blue and as progressive as many Democrats believe it to be, nor by the way, is it as red and as conservative and many Republicans believe it to be, but you've got

to pick the right candidates for the right districts and states. That's a really hard assignment, politically speaking, but it is a absolutely vital operation going forward. If you don't manage to select high quality candidates who can get through a general election, then you're going to find yourself holding the bag. I mean, the Republicans have gotten very good at this about finding candidates they can pretend are either more centrist or more diverse than they are and slot them into seats in races where they can win. We used to do this trick a lot. I mean, I'm a guy who helped elect a Republican in Vermont four times as governor. So when you ponder that willingness on their part to be tricky and to select the right people, it's not something people should shake their heads and go, how dare they? It's we should be doing that shit too, man.

Yeah, no doubt. So are there certain house races that you're looking at right now that you're like, okay, this is what we need to focus on. These districts, these states, this is where our energy needs to be. I think what you should be looking at, and we're going to actually say some more about this in the next couple of weeks, we should be looking at races where the Democrats had pickups. Anything they picked up in 18 and lost in 20 is still in play. And there are about a dozen of those seats we should be going back at, I think, pretty hard. I think they need to work

the suburban Republican voters that we proved at Lincoln Project. You could nudge. You know, people who are critics of the Lincoln Project are like, well, you didn't change the minds

of a single Trump voter. I'm like, no fucking shit. And I didn't try. I want to slap those people across the face, Rick. And I didn't. It's like,. And I didn't try. I want to slap those people across the face. It's like, yeah, I didn't try. I didn't try to change their minds because their minds are not either changeable or extant. So we went after a game of small numbers in places like suburban Detroit and in places like suburban Detroit and in places like suburban Atlanta

and in places like Philadelphia, the collar counties around Philadelphia. Those things are where the Democrats are going to have a lot of contested house races. Those areas, the suburban areas, which are, again, not as progressive. They are, a lot of those people are now former Republicans or independent leaning toward Republicans. They are not about a 700-page climate change plan. They are about, can my kid go to school? Am I going to be financially secure? Is the country going to be what I thought it was when I was growing up? So, and again, I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's progressive philosophies. I'm just a purely practical

political guy. I just believe in the risk that we face going forward is that the bad guys only have to win one big election. And look, if you have the nightmare scenario where you have the house in the hands of the Republicans again, and by the way, folks, one thing you should be thinking about, the speaker might not be Kevin McCarthy. The speaker might not be, you know, back slapper Kevin from California. The speaker might be someone, you know, back slapper Kevin from California. The speaker might be someone more amenable and more comfortable with the Trump world. Yeah. So it used to be that there were about a quarter of the caucus in the House in 2018. About a quarter of them were actual Trumpers.

You know, the rest were eye rolling or terrified. So they didn't really have a core. Right now, about 80% of the House caucus are Trumpers. And about 50% of that 80% are what I call Trump hotties. They'd strap on a bomb vest if Donald Trump told them to. They'd do anything. So he you know, he might end up, McCarthy might end up not being House Speaker. You might end up with a Jim Jordan or a Matt Gates or a Marjorie Taylor Greene or someone truly batshit fucking crazy in that job. I mean, say what you will about Kevin McCarthy, and I will, he was a mainstream California Republican. He was a Bush guy. He was not some far right extremist.

He was a moderate by any standard in the old world. But now, what is the scorekeeping mechanism? It's not whether you win. It's not whether you produce good policy. It's not whether you produce good electoral results. It's does the dear leader love me enough? And do I show my love for the dear leader every day? Eric, I have a bit of a loaded question for you here. In 2021, who do you think is the biggest coward in the GQP? It's not a loaded question at all. It's a great question. There's an astounding transition from a guy I used to really admire, and it's Marco Rubio. And Marco is a smart guy and a effective, was a guy who believed in effective government. He wrote a great book called 100 Great Ideas for Florida way back in the day. And it was very smart

and it was all practical nuts and bolts stuff. And he had this optimistic, forward-looking, inclusive message about where the party could go. And right now, the minute Trump broke him in the 16 campaign, something went wrong in Marco's brain. And he spent the last year kissing Trump's ass because he was terrified Ivanka would run against him for Senate. And she would have won. She still might run against him for Senate. You never know what's going to happen but i it's it the guys like holly and cruz and cotton and ron johnson those guys aren't cowards they're just fucks yeah i mean i mean those guys are just i mean ron johnson is a in a world where i have met some real pieces of shit, Ron Johnson is like the frozen fecal tip of a Mount Everest-sized pile of shit.

He is a truly bad person. And the morons in the party, you know, have taken over. But most of the cowards have either, like, been broken or they've left. I knew a member of Congress who hated Trump. He hated, hated him with the fire of a million suns. In early 17, he goes back to his district, does the town hall. And someone says, red hat guy stands up and goes, are you going to be with Mr. Trump a hundred percent? And he gave the right answer. He said, you know what? I endorsed the president. I was with somebody else before. I was with Cruz

before. I endorsed the president. I look forward to supporting his legislative agenda. We agree on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the guy goes, no, I ask you, are you going to support Mr. Trump 100 hundred percent? And he says, well, you know, as long as it's good for the district, if it's not good for you, I'm not going to support him. By the time he got off stage, it had gone viral. It was in Facebook, his Twitter feed, his email, they called his wife's business and tried to get her fired. They went absolutely apeshit ham on this guy, right? And it broke him mentally. It broke him. And he's like, oh, I, and he lost in 18 after running a campaign where he basically just dialed it in. He wasn't, he,

it broke him. So those guys who were cowards and wouldn't oppose him when they would privately tell me and others how much they hated him and they were afraid of trolls, they're pretty much gone now. The few that remain, guys like McConnell are actually delusional. They're not cowards. McConnell thinks, I'm a crafty, wily ass Republican insider. I've beaten everybody in my path before. I can take this guy, Trump. Well, my grandmother, who is a classic, like Southern eccentric, used to tell that thing. She said, son, you can sit on the dock and throw that alligator fried chicken all day.

But eventually the alligator is going to come up on the dock when you're out of fried chicken and eat you and you know that's what mcconnell thinks they thought they could send rick scott down there with a little bowl to give donald trump and a plaque and that'll that'll make him that'll make him like me it's crazy rick did you see this come in though as as a republican i mean were there times yeah whether it was you H.W., when you were just like, even privately? Not with 41. I'll tell you. I mean, people look back now. I was telling this crazy story the other day.

I was an appointee in the Bush administration, in the first administration. I was a young guy, right? I was 24 years old. And I'm working for this guy named dick cheney you may have heard of him he's secretary of defense at the time and david duke gets in the governor's race in louisiana so the white house political office they are like we need a bunch of guys who can swing lead pipes to go down to louisiana because we're going to go beat the republican nominee on the orders of the president david du would have been governor if George Bush had not said, go kill that motherfucker.

Jeez. And so they deployed a whole bunch of us down there to go run, you know, the operations and grassroots and everything else for the campaign. And it was a moment of pride. I was like, let me just be the fucking Klansman. That's awesome. You know what? If David Duke had been on the ballot they would have roy

mourned it they would know well you know he may not be perfect but he's better than the socialist antifa unbelievable un-fucking-believable yeah and then and then you got you got w do you start looking though at the tea party and a a flirtation with some of the it's interesting because we we forget about we forget about how w ran because 9-11 and the war okay and not not to litigate all that shit but the 2000 campaign with w was about education compassionate conservatism increasing home ownership among minorities around the country i look back on that campaign we're like what world was that i like that i like that world um but i i think where it went off the rails and i look at this a friend of mine has a great theory of the

case in 2010 as the tea party was rising you started getting people like sh Sharon angle in Nevada. And you started getting these, these people who were performatively crazy. And I worked for a lot of them. We did 35 or 36 super PAC and candidate races in 2010, all over the country. And man, we elected some fucking stinkers. And these people were,

they were the prototypes for what happened under Trumpism. Because just by themselves, they weren't a sufficient force to alter American politics. But three confluences came together to produce where we're at now. One, the rise of what I call oppositional defiant disorder, republicanism, everything's wrong. Fuck you. Burn it all down to the rise of Fox, the most powerful normative force in Republican politics by an order of magnitude. And there's nothing even close to being like Fox, especially in the 2010 to 2020 window. That decade of the machine that Roger Ailes built for Rupert Murdoch demonstrated more power to shape a political party and a movement than anything else we've ever seen. And once you get on the crack pipe of crazy, you need more crazy. So it got darker and darker. And it wasn't like, you know, if you looked at Fox in 2010, the arguments would be about, you know, debating about health care and tax rates.

Not about whether Antifa lizard super soldiers are invading our cities to burn down our villages and rape our women and dogs. And they've become adjacent to all this conspiracy crazy. But the third force that rose in the same window was the power of social media to help people segregate and select out what they wanted to see and hear. And it's particularly effective among people on the right. They wanted to be told that there were lizard super soldier Antifa murderers in their neighborhoods. They wanted to hear that creeping Sharia law was going to destroy America. They wanted that because it let them be shitty people. If you give somebody something that lets them be the worst iteration of themselves

without consequence, they're going to do it. This is an observable fact, not just in politics, but in life itself. Let someone be shitty, they'll be shitty. And so Fox and Facebook let those people be shitty. And in Facebook, it put them in a group where they would say, well, I don't need to watch the news or talk to my friends or talk to my neighbors or talk to people at work about what I believe. I'm going to go on patriotic eagle, patriot, super MAGA flag, death to infidel forum.ru on Facebook. And I'm going to talk to my friends there. And that's what we're going to do. That's where it's real. That's the real news. And so you combine those three factors and you're in this political moment that we're in right now. I mean, people forget Adolf Hitler had the world's first cable TV channel being built in Berlin

during the war. He had radio networks that used people who spoke English or French or any other set of languages where they were targeting their propaganda, telling them things that were simply not true. But many people picked up those things and believed them. And you look at the toolbox that exists today between a propaganda network exclusively dedicated to A, enriching Rupert Murdoch, and B, controlling a large mass of people who are deeply committed to it as a cultural signifier, the power of Facebook and other social media platforms to allow bad people to organize and discuss and plan and plot things like the insurrection on January 6th, and this post-political, post-policy, post-philosophy Republican Party, which believes in nothing but the retention of power, owning the libs, and hating the media. And you've got a very dangerous moment in the country. And that's why we need the Lincoln Project. That's why the Lincoln Project came

in at the perfect time, because nothing like that existed. And we hope that we've done you proud, Rick, at the Lincoln Project and what we've built at Midas Touch. And we love fighting shoulder to shoulder with you. Absolutely, guys. You guys are fantastic. Look forward to many more battles ahead, unfortunately. But it's good to have some warriors on our side like you guys as well. Welcome back to the Midas Touch Special Edition Podcast.

Goldmine. Rick and Miles. Rick and Miles. Goldmine. Rick and Miles. Rick and Miles. Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick. All right, now we have Miles Taylor. I really love this interview from February 19th, 2021. Miles Taylor was the anonymous writer who exposed much of the inner workings in the Trump administration and courageously reported what was going on then. He then revealed his identity and who he was and

was a major voice during the 2020 elections of exposing all the corruption that took place in the Trump administration. And some of the stories that he told us, you know, it's you always think that the worst possible things were happening during that administration But to hear it from somebody who sorry, I just watched Hamilton was in the room where it happened It's actually just the most horrifying thing the room where it happened. Did you watch it on? Did you watch it on streaming Disney Plusney plus yeah it's oh my god i could watch hamilton every single night this really is like the best play and it also brings me back to like that era of like an obama america when we were all just so hopeful for the future it really does there's that one youtube video when the cast of hamilton was in the white house

that was like before it was even like a play right like i think hamilton was actually birthed like at the white house and i think obama even made a comment to lin-manuel miranda to the effect of like good luck good luck with that good luck with the hip-hop rendition of the life of alexander that'll work but look lin-uel Miranda, undeterred. He had a dream. He had a vision. Everyone told him the same way Midas Touch. Yes. You can't do that.

You can never do that. No one's going to want to watch hip hop and Alexander Hamilton. And he's like, know what? I'm going to make this work. And he made it work. And anyone at home who's listening to this, wherever you're listening to this, wherever you're watching this, you can make it happen. Go watch Hamilton. You can watch Hamilton. I don't know how this became a Hamilton advertisement, but I was talking

about Miles Taylor being in the room where it happened. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Why don't we just go to the interview? Well, let's get the room where it happened with the Midas Touch brothers and Miles Taylor from February 19th, 2021. But first, I want to talk about another important Midas Touch sponsor, the Wild Alaskan Company. When you defrost seafood, the countdown for freshness has begun. And who knows how long that fresh grocery store fish has been sitting out for. I did the bunny ears when I said fresh there because Wild Alaskan Company, unlike that grocery store stuff, freezes their fish right after it's caught. So it's perfectly handled

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That's M-E-I-D-A-S, and you'll get $15 off your first box. That's wildalaskancompany.com slash Midas. Make sure to use our URL to make sure you know that we sent you, or as Ben likes to call it, a URL. A URL. For those listening who didn't hear the past episode, I call a URL an URL. And I just thought that's generally, I've been calling it an URL since the age of internet and nobody has corrected me, which I blame everybody for not correcting me and not me for saying Earl. So let's talk about some other... Wait, wait. You've always

called it an Earl? Yeah, it wasn't just... You're kidding. No, I always called it an Earl. I have very funny ways of pronunciating things. That's the most absurd fucking thing I've ever heard. That was the joke, Brett, pronunciating. Yeah, that was the joke. Nice save. We're so far down this 3D chess game that I don't even know what's going on anymore. Enough joking around. Go order your Wild Alaskan

Company. Highly recommend it, but let's take a listen to what Miles Taylor had to tell us. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's taxes extra. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. We are joined by Miles Taylor, co-founder of Repair, which stands for Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform. Having integrity and reform next to the word Republican is incredibly refreshing. Miles Taylor, as you know, was formerly anonymous, may still be wishing that he was anonymous.

Yeah, you've got that right. But he inked the op-ed for the New York Times. He later published a bestselling book, A Warning, based on his experience within the Trump administration. Remember, he served as the chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security. Miles Taylor, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you guys for having me. And I appreciate the introduction. Really, what you could have said is the only reason this guy knows anything about homeland security is he was roughed up in a house of six kids. So that was my expertise in Homeland Security from the get go. Everything else has

just been, you know, reliving childhood drama. Well, us being three brothers, we're halfway there. Maybe if we had a few more brothers, maybe we'd have to come here else. I love that. Wait, where were you in the order, the pecking order of the siblings? Second to last, second to last, which meant I could only dump it down onto one other person who was much younger. Yeah, that's that's what Jordy gets from me. So he could understand that. But thanks for having me, guys. Thanks for thanks for being on. Before getting into the work that repair is doing, we've been talking about this natural disaster that's taken place in Texas with obviously predictable consequences based on the complete incompetence of government there. And of course, Ted Cruz just wants to add insult to

injury. And he takes this trip to Cancun at first. I wasn't sure whether or not it was Ted Cruz there because we've seen different looks of Cruz recently. We saw the impeachment trial, Ted Cruz, where he had the kind of mullet insurrectionist from the back and senator from the front. And so it actually was Ted Cruz who flees his state, suffering one of the biggest natural disasters and the predictable consequences from government incompetence. And now they're trying to blame it on the Green New Deal, when, of course, we all know that Texas is primarily a gas state. So what do you make of all of that and particularly Ted Cruz now fleeing to a Cancun vacation during all? Well, I honestly right now I feel good for Hugh Jackman, who I think was really nervous. They were filming Wolverine

two down in Cancun. And then they figured out, no, that wasn't that wasn't a Wolverine stand in. That was just Ted Cruz. But look, it's it's a it's a massive screw up. You just those are the types of things in politics. You have a really tough time explaining and getting past. In fact, I'm willing to go as far as to protect to protect in Ted's reelection. This is going to be the central issue. It's who cares about Texas and this guy'd rather vacation in Mexico when people are dying than be there to help manage the response. Now, I want to say something that is really important here, because supporters of Ted Cruz, defenders of Ted Cruz will say, come on, right? Like anyone else, the guy's trying to get away with his family and escape and have a brief vacation. And we're all going through tough times in COVID. And besides,

it wouldn't really matter if he was there because senators aren't part of the executive structure managing the response, right? That would be the charitable defense of Ted Cruz. It's completely and patently false. I mean, from someone who spent a ton of time in government, I oversaw FEMA and FEMA's emergency response structure. I've worked on Capitol Hill with Ted Cruz's office and others. Having a senator there to advocate for the people on the ground as they're getting effective is or getting affected is mission critical. And here's why. It's because someone like Ted Cruz can reach out directly and quickly to cabinet secretaries who are overseeing the response. So Ali Mayorkas is the Secretary of Homeland Security. He's not going to take a phone call from a 95-year-old

grandma in Dallas because he can't, right? The lines are deluged. But when Ted Cruz calls and says, hey, I'm getting reports here on the ground that aid is not getting through fast enough here, here, and here, that can cut through the system. That's why he needs to be home. That's why he needs to be paying attention. And it's why right now Beto O'Rourke looks like he's being the real Texan and Ted Cruz looks like a slouch. So look, this is going to catch, this is going to haunt him all the way to reelection. What do you think about this? I guess it's a PR strategy, but it seems to be a floundering and failing one because it's based on lies of Greg Abbott, governor of Texas and others, blaming the Green New Deal, which wasn't passed in Texas, where there have been Republican governor after governor from Rick Perry,

you know, to Greg Abbott now, you know, and that they're just deflecting all of the blame for the infrastructure that they've developed, banishing all federal help with respect to infrastructure, removing Texas totally off any other national grid. What do you think just about that strategically? And what does that mean just in terms of overall gaslighting that they're doing? Yeah, look, it seems to defy logic. I mean, there's one thing that people appreciate when it comes to leadership more than anything, and that's honesty. And when it comes to honesty, they really appreciate, you know, in the humorous sense,

it's self-deprecation, and in the non-humorous sense, it's apologies. And that's probably what we should have heard from state leaders is we could have done more. We should have done more. We have to learn from this right now. Let's manage the response. But there's going to need to be a reckoning at the back end. That's leadership. That's what people would say is refreshing. And we would be beyond this point the finger, blame someone else. The longer you point the finger, the longer the finger gets pointed back at you. And that's what's happening right now. They're pointing the finger.

And so we're talking about it right now. We're paying attention because we know that those leaders have some culpability, their infrastructure not being ready to handle the load. That said, you know, I always got to call the balls and strikes. You know, when you're a leader in any state and you've got finite resources, you're going to invest where the greatest need is. So this type of weather event is very rare down in that region. And so it's understandable why states like Texas or Florida aren't making that level of investment and preparation for demand that would be beyond the scope of normalcy. That said, the first thing that leaders should do is hold themselves accountable. And we're not

seeing that quite yet. Miles, you said that people see the truth and people know where to point the finger. But I think one of the issues that we're seeing is, is that day in and day out, where a lot of these voters are getting their news from is Fox News. And every night, Tucker Carlson is going on there. And he's saying everything that everybody is telling you is a lie. This is actually caused by windmills. This is actually caused by the Green New Deal. So do you think what message do you think is winning out over Republican voters?

Yeah, well, look, I mean, if I had 10 seconds with Tucker Carlson, I would say you are giving the Russians and the Chinese everything they want because you're spreading so much disinformation, not just about this. and the Chinese everything they want, because they're spreading so much disinformation, not just about this. But, you know, you guys saw Tucker a couple months ago when he was talking about the COVID vaccine. And it was almost like his segment had been produced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin himself, where he said, you know, he was casting doubt on the vaccine and was, you know, paying homage to these mind control conspiracy theories and Bill Gates being behind it. I mean, it was insanity. Now Tucker's doing that almost every week, it seems like. And like I said, spreading that level of disinformation is doing China and Russia's jobs for them. Why? Because people propagate that disinformation. It divides America.

It puts us in two different spheres. One, objective reality. One, Candyland. And Trump is the mayor of Candyland in this version of Earth Two or Earth Three. And, you know, I think that that's a really big problem. And we're going to be grappling with this for years to come. But it starts with people who are in those positions of authority, people who are media elites or elected officials actually checking their rhetoric. I mean, we saw the ultimate outcome of unchecked rhetoric on January 6th, 2021. That is really where this can go, is you deceive the people for this long and this deeply, and they get angry, and they get potentially violent and

militant, not just towards buildings and monuments, but towards human beings, towards their neighbors, towards elected officials that we put in office. So this is scary stuff. And, you know, people like that are playing with fire. And I think if Trump is the mayor of Candyland, then Vladimir Putin is basically playing Candyland like The Sims right now. That's what I would say. So you co-founded an organization called Repair, which I guess inherently built into this name is the idea that you can repair the Republican Party. But as I see the Bobberts of the world and the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world, as I see the GOP party in various states censoring people who can actually use the term conservative, people like Mitt Romney, I wonder, can you really repair this Republican party? Can we or do we need a new party, Miles?

Yeah, I mean, look, actually, right now, you know, we were just reassessing our 501c4 status. And I probably should change the name on the forum to it may be beyond repair. But then we're IMBBR. And that would be another really bad acronym. But that is the truth. It may be beyond repair at this point. And we've got to take that very seriously. So one of the conversations that I've been having with a lot of conservative thought leaders is where do we go next in the wake of Trump and Trumpism? How do we get to a post-Trump era and become rational conservatives again, center right centrist conservatives, you know, like in the Bush era?

And there's not good answers because right now the party is so beholden to the last regime. I call it regime for a reason, because Trump really views himself as an autocrat. He applauds autocrats. He loves autocrats. He wanted to be an autocrat. So it's still beholden to that last regime. And one of two things needs to happen. Either an insurgency within the Republican Party needs to be created to bring it back to the middle. So think Tea Party light, but less to the right. Or there needs to be a breakaway party that stands for the things that we stand for. I came in as a Republican because I believed in free minds, free markets, free people, some pretty basic things that people in the political middle can agree on. And a lot of blue dog Democrats and others

want that to happen. But of course, we've seen the extreme polarization of the parties, we see two tribes, two extreme tribes, what we want to do is create a new center of gravity in the middle, a new tribe in the middle. And that maybe can happen in the Republican Party, but maybe not. And if it can't, then it needs to be something else. So I've been working with other groups to have a conversation about where we go next. I think in the coming weeks, we're going to have some big announcements about what we intend to do with this momentum and the wind that's at our backs to create a new conservative movement. And hopefully, whether we're within the Republican Party or outside of it, we pull them back towards the middle, back towards reality, away from Candyland and back

towards the planet we're all living on. I guess one of the things, though, with the two separate tribes, though, is that for anything you want to say about the Democrats, though, we essentially elected a blue dog style kind of centrist person, you know, whereas the Republicans elected the most extreme element or, you know, or a Russian puppet pretending to be whatever the hell that, but, you know, so to some extent though, your, I mean, the views that you espouse seem to be very close to Biden, you know, and just in terms of even what Biden said, you know, even recently with whatever you want to say about, you know, student loans, Biden said, look, I'm okay for forgiving student loans, but I'm not just going to forgive student loans for

the sake of it. I'm not trying just to help people who don't need it. So why don't though, you just say, you know what, These acronyms are difficult. I can't be FBBR. You know, why don't you just say, you know what? I'm a centrist. I may just be, you know, look in the mirror and go, Miles, I may just be a centrist Democrat. I may be at the end of the day. Have you ever looked in the mirror? Maybe I am. Well, look, I mean, the closest I got was I think when I came out and endorsed Joe Biden, I was the highest ranking ex-Trump official to do it at the time. And when I explained the reason why I didn't just come out to oppose Trump, but to endorse Biden, I said that it was because

Biden was a man of character and Trump was not. And the most important thing to me in that election was that someone with character be in the Oval Office, because I'd seen the waterfall effect across you know, first few weeks of the president's term of office, there's been a lot of things on policy that I've been surprised that I align with Joe Biden on. He has governed so far as a moderate centrist Democrat. And I think that's a really good thing. It's a good thing, not just for me selfishly, because I'm a centrist Republican, it's good for the country, because right now, the country can't handle someone veering to one of the polar opposites at the moment. And it's why I think Joe Biden, as you noted, I think it's why he won in the primaries. I think it's why he was elected president, because people are sick and tired of the extremities of these two parties.

That said, you know, for us and our organization, look, we want to be able to attract, you know, Democrats to our cause. And we're very heartened by the fact that Joe Biden has gone out there publicly and said, we need a rational Republican Party. We need a centrist Republican Party, because that's important to governing. I mean, just him saying that was a huge leadership move, especially because Donald Trump wanted nothing more than for the left to veer hard towards socialism. He said that to us once in the Oval Office. In fact, I think I was one of the first people that heard Trump tease his reelection narrative. We were in there on a totally separate meeting on national security issues. And Trump said, you know, do you

want to know what my reelection slogan is going to be? And Sarah Sanders kind of said, we shouldn't be talking about this. This is the wrong meeting. You don't talk politics with the Homeland Security and national security team. But of course, Trump doesn't care. And so he says, it's going to it's it's so great. It's going to be keep America great. How amazing is that? And I remember sitting there thinking like, that doesn't really have a good ring to it. And of course, he had to mostly discard that with coronavirus. But the point being, Trump wanted to, he had a conversation about how CAG was going to be all about keeping America great while the Dems became evil socialists. He couldn't wait to run against a socialist, in his words, and he wanted to run against Bernie Sanders. he was disheartened that someone as moderate as Biden got the nomination because their whole plan was to tack hard against, you know, an extreme left wing. So I think we're all lucky that Joe Biden's president and he's covered as a senator. When you would do a meeting like that, though, with with Trump and he would do exactly what you did when you would leave, how far after

would you leave? Would you then turn to whoever you were with or would you do this and go like, yeah, what the fuck was that? Like what the verbatim verbatim. And and I'll tell you how far we'd go. Like the exact amount of steps. It's about seven steps from the couch in the Oval Office to the outer oval where the president's staff assistants sit. So about seven steps out of the Oval Office, you would say, what the fuck just happened? And in fact, in that little room, you would have conversations with people who would come out of the meeting and say, well, the president just told me to do X, Y, or Z.

It might be a crazy thing. Go build a theme park inside the Department of Interior. And you would say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, don't go do that. OK, we're going to get this back in the box. Just give it a couple of days. Right. And the White House staff or someone else would say, I'll go back to the president. No, we're not going to build a theme park inside the atrium of the Department of Interior, which, you know, goofy example, not totally beyond the realm of things we would be told to do, although usually they would be sicker, more destructive and terrifying. Like, why don't you guys gas, electrify and shoot innocent migrant women and children at the border? OK, that's not going to happen. And so, you know,

but the scary thing is you get people who go into a meeting with the president who haven't been in the meeting with him and they get an order and they leave and they think, if I don't follow an order from the president of the United States, am I violating the law? Is my job at stake? And so you had to have people, you know, that that were really the guardrails to say, you know, look, don't listen to that. We're going to have to go back and revisit that decision. And those conversations would happen seconds after you left the Oval Office. And we're truly chilling. And then, of course, you know, we all know as the guardrails came off, that stopped happening. And the Oval Office became an echo chamber and more and more bad things came out into the world because people were unwilling to say no.

Are you familiar with the Adam Kisinger situation where his family sent him a letter basically disowning him? Yeah, I mean, insane, right? It's nuts, but how common do you think that is within your party? And have you had similar situations in your own life? Yeah, no, I mean, unquestionably, you know, first of all, Adam is a fantastic guy. He's a great conservative.

Ideologically, he is a conservative, but he's a moderate. He wants to get things done. He wants to work across the aisle. And just that desire to work across the aisle and to lower the temperature has caused his own family to disown him. Like, let's forget people on social media. Let's forget his colleagues in Washington, D.C. Let's forget his constituents for a moment. His blood is saying, get the hell out. And I think they said, you know, you're an offense against God or something like that. Disappointment to God. It's a disappointment to God. Mind blowing.

Now, I don't want to weigh in on Adam's family situation too much. I don't know what the dynamics like. And I wish him well. I hope that he's able to repair those those bonds. But but that's the reality of what dissent looks like in America today. And all of us that came out against Donald Trump are people who worked in the Bush era and would have expected that criticism of a sitting president would be met with anger and vitriol, but in the sort of high-minded political sense, or maybe the rough and tumble of politics, but not such that our own family members would disown us, or worse, that we would have to fear for and in some cases run for our lives. And I know a lot of the people

that spoke out against Trump, I spoke with, was good friends with, were recruited to come out against the president, have been dealt severe blows like this in their lives, losing friends, family, or having to leave their houses, leave their marriages, quit their jobs, get fired from their jobs.

Dissent is punished right now in America. And it's not just the fault of our leaders. They're certainly setting the tone. It comes down to us. I mean, we're the ones who go and decide to attack people, to blast them, to show up at their houses. Now, not that all of any of us would do that, but, you know, that's what we have to be cognizant of. I mean, we're all responsible for the tone. And I think it's really alarming. Look, in my case, I was lucky that we're in a pandemic. I was lucky we're in a pandemic. And, you know, just for this reason, because I've lost a family member to coronavirus and many people have. And so, you know, this has been a horrible experience. But for me, the little tiny silver lining, which I'm always looking for is, you know, there's people

who hate me so much in the MAGA circles that if they see me, it's vitriol or physical attacks. So I'm lucky because in a pandemic, I get to wear a baseball hat. I get to wear a mask. And if I had my shades, you know, I'd have my shades right on. So you wouldn't know me unless you knew that I had this hat from this brewery. So that's been, you know, an unintended benefit, but like, that's how it's gotten. I mean, just the other day I was going down the sidewalk and I was with someone and there was a group coming of MAGA people because that's what happens in D.C. There's still little flash protests and that sort of thing. And we had our masks off and we were breathing fresh air. And I thought, yeah, time to put this on and put the shades back on.

Would rather just not create a stir. That's not how it should be in our country. Full circle from anonymous to anonymous, but saving the Republican Party. Indeed. Yeah. I mean, look, my advice to anyone would be if you have anonymity, relish it, cherish it and think really carefully before you decide to get rid of it. Miles Taylor, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. You've been been an incredible guest come back on whenever you want to uh we appreciate your time thanks friends godspeed welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast incredible interview with miles i forget when he went into on that interview just how crazy it was and the things that he observed is unbelievable.

I mean, my jaw was dropped as I was just rewatching that when he was talking about like how these suggestions of just these destructive, horrific, racist, just awful things that were being discussed during these meetings and how really there was nobody in the room to say, hey, like, maybe let's not do that. We're the adults. Yeah. Maybe let's not say yes to this total maniac. And so what happened throughout the years was Trump ended up just surrounding himself with, you know, just cowards. Honestly, these people were just total cowards who just, you know, bent down to every single move that

he made. And that's what made him so dangerous. I mean, a guy like Trump isn't dangerous on his own. He's only dangerous if there are people around him who enable that behavior. And what we're seeing with today's Republican Party, with today's GQP, is a party that still isn't, they still don't have the confidence, they still don't have the moral courage to speak out against the man who they know is a maniac. They are trying to weaponize him and hold him close in order to try to keep his base, who are another group of maniacs, with them. And it just is the epitome of cowardice. It's the epitome of just fascism. And it's why these people are just so horrible, just so morally corrupt, so morally bankrupt.

But thank you so much, Miles, for sharing those stories with us and excited to share those with you again. Doing this is such a trip. Do you guys think we look younger or like we had more sleep back then when we were doing those interviews? Because again, that was coming off the heels of the election and everything. Or do we look older now? I don't know, Jordan. It's a very philosophical, deep question. We'll leave that to the listeners. We'll leave that to the listeners. But look,

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And with our promo code, MIDAS, M-E-I-D-A-S, you get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type Midas, that's stamps.com, promo code Midas, stamps.com. Never go to the post office again. Brett and Jordy, what another incredible podcast. I want to thank the Midas Mighty. I want to thank all the Midas Mighty OGs, the group of Midas Mighty that were there from day one. It was so awesome when we started Midas Touch though. And I think that's really when we knew

we were connecting, when there was a core group of individuals. And Jordi, I know you're close with the Midas Mighty. I don't want to leave anybody out with the short amount of time we have on this podcast. So you all know who you are. You know who you are if you are a Midas OG and all the new Midas Mighty. But we knew that it was important to build that sense of community, to respond and to reach out as much as possible to everybody and never forget where we started from because the secret sauce of the Midas Mighty, and Brett may be a little bit offended by this, but he won't be, the videos are incredible. Brett is the number one editor and I would say really number one editor and really number one producer in this

space in the world. He's like a Beethoven. I don't even know how he does. Brett was born for this. Brett really was. But at the end of the day, the secret sauce is the Midas Mighty. It is the community that fuels this movement. It is everybody listening to this, everybody watching this. You are the reason there is a Midas Mighty today. You are the reason there is a Midas Touch today. You are the reason that we collectively have the power and numbers and the strength to stand up to authoritarianism and fascism encroaching on our democracy. So thank you. Thank you so much. We're so honored. We're so blessed to have you on our team. Brett, any final words before we kick it to Jordy? I'm just going to say that we got a big election

coming up November 2nd, governor's race. Vote for Terry McAuliffe for governor. Do not vote for Youngkill, as we like to call him here at Midas Touch, who wants to peel back all of the progress made on COVID, who wants to eliminate all the mask mandates, all the vax mandates. And meanwhile, that guy is sending his own kids to private schools and doesn't see the irony of protecting his own kids while leaving your kids out to die. So please, let's treat every election like it's existential. I know I say that every single time, but it's because it is.

Let's get the vote out. I am so excited every time I see all the photos that you guys send us, everybody knocking on doors, everybody sending text messages, all the hard work that everybody is doing. Thank you so much. Let's keep it up. Let's turn this blue wave into a blue tsunami as we head into 2022. Thank you all for listening to another extra special episode, the goldmine episode of Midas Touch Podcast. And

Jordy, why don't you take us out? Shout out to the Midas Midas!