The MeidasTouch Podcast - Fascist Echo Chamber Gatekeepers with Stuart Stevens

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers sit down with legendary ad maker, political consultant, veteran of 5 Republican Presidential Campaigns (including Mitt Romney in 2012) & now a member of The Lincoln Project, Stuart Stevens. Stevens and the team have an emotional conversation reflecting on how a party that Stevens spent his whole life supporting turned into a fascist cult essentially overnight. The episode is rounded out by the brothers dishing on the latest drama involving their Fox “News” ad buy, how the GQP continues to make mistake after mistake, the neverending frustration of a certain Senator from West Virginia, and it's all topped off by the fan-favorite segment, Hate Mail. Make sure you tune in every Tuesday & Friday for new episodes. If you have a moment today please rate the show 5 stars & leave a comment! Today's episode is made possible by our friends at Stamps.com! Hit the microphone on the top right of the site and use our promo code MEIDAS and get a free 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale – with no long-term commitments or contracts. Shop the latest Meidas Merch at store.meidastouch.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to the Midas Touch Podcast. Ben Micellis here, joined by Brett and Jordy Micellis, Midas brothers in the house. Thank you for listening to this new edition of the Midas Touch podcast. We have a very special guest for you today, Stuart Stevens. Of course, he's a legendary ad maker and political consultant. He is a veteran of five Republican presidential campaigns, including Mitt Romney's campaign in 2012. He came out extremely against Donald Trump

in 2016. He's since joined the Lincoln Project. Excited to hear from Stuart. I don't know if you guys know, but the way Stuart and I linked up originally is, so Stuart back in the day did an ad against John Kerry. And it was a super famous ad, an infamous ad. Which ad did he do? It was the one where he's windsurfing. There was the shots of Kerry windsurfing. And it was a very simple ad to a classical music song of John Kerry going left and going right. And going left and going right.

And the ad instilled in people the idea that Kerry was a flip-flopper. I remember the ad like very well. Do you remember it? It was like a very famous spot. Not only do we remember it, we paid homage to it, right, B? Yeah. We took that ad. I remembered the ad during the cycle. We discussed it. We made our own version with Donald Trump riding on a golf cart and going left and right and left and right and left and right and doing the same thing about Donald Trump flip-flopping on every various issue and released it. And it did well. We ran it in TV. I know we ran that one in Pennsylvania and Stuart Stevens messaged me and he was like, Hey, you stole my ad. It was basically the rest of his thing. And I got to speaking with

him and, uh, you know, I let him know that in fact, we were paying homage to his ad. It's not a coincidence that it resembled the ad. We were purposely so it made it to resemble the ad because, you know, one of Midas Touch's marquee things is using the Republicans moves against them. It's that Midas Touch jujitsu using their own energy against them. And so that's what we were doing. And when I explained it to him, he was actually incredibly appreciative of the homage that we paid to him. And he's become a huge Midas Touch fan, a huge supporter of us, shares all of our content. So grateful to have for the relationship we developed with Stuart and excited to get him on the show. Speaking of Midas Touch ads, we have been in the news recently in connection with our ad, GOP Betrayed America. The ad features law enforcement who were on the front lines defending the Capitol

from the insurrectionists on January 6th. And the very basic premise of the ad is that the insurrection is bad and insurrections are bad. And those GOP politicians who want to cover up for the insurrection or who support the insurrection have betrayed the United States of America. So Midas Touch took that ad. And we want to, of course, try to speak outside of a progressive, liberal, you know, democratic, pro-democracy echo chamber and start speaking and having these conversations in advance of 2022 midterms with people in the fascist Fox News echo chamber and our ad shockingly. And I say shockingly because I genuinely did not think this ad, I think a lot of things with respect to Fox would shock me, but I thought they were going to play the ad. Our ad buy was approximately $185,000, give or take. Substantial. Yeah, substantial ad buy on major Fox News shows. And we were just told the first day after we sent it, they ignored us, which was unusual. Then we were just told that they were rejecting it. Now,

usually when you speak with networks, they may ask you to tweak something or come back with certain changes. But here they just simply said they're not going to run it. L.A. Times did a piece on it. It was then featured in Newsweek, Insider, you know, and numerous other Washington Post and then recently featured on a bunch of TV shows. And Brett, what's going on here? It's funny you said that you never expected this, because I know a lot of people are going to be like, how could you not expect Fox to air an anti-Republican ad? But the fact is, we've run multiple ads on Fox News during the election cycle, and they've always taken the money. I've always figured that at the end of the day, despite their political leanings,

that at the bottom line, they're about the bottom line. And so I figured we're paying them almost $200,000. They're going to take this ad. And in my opinion, I mean, as the guy who makes the Midas Touch ads, this is probably the least controversial Midas Touch ad ever made, Ever made. Absolutely. This one was tame compared to what we had on there previously. So tame. And this one, I mean, we played during the election, we played Creepy Trump on Fox News. Creepy Trump. Creepy. That's the kind of ad featuring Trump and Epstein and Trump making inappropriate comments to Ivanka. That's an ad that I would expect would be rejected. But no, this ad that just features law enforcement speaking out about the treatment that they experienced, the moments, the horrors that they experienced on

January 6th. That's where Fox drew the line. They could not let that get through to their audience. And Ben, I think you described it best in the LA Times interview. What did you call them? A fascist echo chamber gatekeeper? Yeah, they were gatekeepers of the fascist echo chamber. And I think they realize what a potent force speaking the truth to people with this ad would show, would do. I mean, it just shocked me that the GQP Congress members, the GQP senators would not even meet with the families of victims and would not even meet with the families of victims and we're not even meet with the law enforcement victims themselves of the insurrection. And Fox News has become the mask is fully off. OK, you know, I know that you could say, well, it was all there. And Donald Trump, like we now know that the Republican Party is a purely 100 percent anti-democracy pro-fascist party.

It's what they are. But we said this, Brett, during the election. I guess it was viewed as a somewhat controversial and hyperbolic. The messages that we received when we began this and people started seeing our ads and when people actually embedded kind of in the party structure or in politics came to us and said, you can't call that. You can't call them fascist. You can't call them authoritarian. That's too extreme. That's too extreme. And I think if anything, what we've proven is that maybe we weren't going

far enough i mean even at that point we couldn't have predicted a january 6th and even after january 6th it's hard to imagine that everybody would act in this coordinated conspiracy and i don't mean conspiracy as in a theory i mean in an actual real conspiracy of the right-wing echo chamber to silence the voices and silence the events of what happened. And I think it's it's it's crazy. And I think Frank Fugliuzzi, who was on MSNBC, he was a FBI assistant director, now he's an NBC News national security contributor. I think he described it best. I have talked repeatedly about one of the antidotes to violent extremism and violent ideology being repeated exposure to the truth, right? Well,

on Fox News, at least, you can't even pay them to air the truth. You know, look, the more news that comes out about the fascist efforts that predate the insurrection, just go to show you how fortunate it is that Biden has been elected president. I want to talk about a tale of two European stories, if you will. And the first European story is in the final weeks of Donald Trump being in office in December. We've now learned that Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories, including this QAnon conspiracy theory that Italians, people in Italy, had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States and to switch the votes for from Mr. Trump to votes for

Joe Biden. And while the emails don't show that these investigations actually took place, they do show pressure from the White House to specifically explore this bizarre QAnon conspiracy that that the that individuals in Italy were using satellite technology to tamper with votes in New Mexico. That is what they were doing, Brett and Jordan. I think these people lost their calling to be like comic book writers or write fiction or fan fiction or stuff because the stuff that they come up with is truly just on its face. You see it, you hear it, and you go, that is insane. And you wonder, how could anybody believe something that is so incredibly insane?

But it shows you this, as you said, Ben, the fascist echo chamber gatekeepers, they are the ones who are keeping these kooky lies alive. And that's why Fox News was so terrified to run our ad. Because the second that truth comes in, which is also like the easiest, most logical, most easy to understand explanation for how things work. Once you hear the truth from the source, it shatters that whole house of cards, the whole house of cards falls. And so they need to do everything they can to get truth away from this. And the fact that this was coming from Mark Meadows within the White House is appalling. It's appalling. And this guy is now a voice on Fox News, of course, the disinformation bullshit network. And he is there every single day criticizing this administration

and still spreading lies and trying to rewrite history. It's absolute insanity. Nothing surprises me anymore. This one surprised me. I never even heard of this conspiracy theory out of Italy. The bamboo ones I heard of, and I thought it was ridiculous. The Italy one just came out of nowhere to me. And speaking of the tale of two Europes, President Biden has said that he is going to rally the world's democracies, particularly those in Europe Europe this week when he travels there in his first foreign trip of his presidency. And Biden published an op-ed this Saturday in The Washington Post where he said his trip will work to prove that democracies can,

quote, come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world. This is a defining question of our time, Biden states. Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it. Now, just think about this. We have a president in the United States who is out in Europe championing democracy and the idea of democracy being a force of good. I bet you if you were to ask the GQP what they think about Biden's trip to Europe to talk about democracy, I bet you they will all

unanimously oppose it and think that what he's doing out there is horrific and think that it's un-American while they storm the Capitol building. Don't you think? A hundred percent. I mean, we've already seen Hannity and Tucker Carlson and all these Fox news anchors and all these right wing politicians praise Putin and they're rooting for Putin. They are rooting for Putin over the president of the United States. Ronald Reagan was bad. But imagine what Ronald Reagan would think if he saw these Republicans. You know, one of the things, too, that we can never forget about this group of GQP members is not only are they just fascists and QAnon conspiracy theorists, like they are idiots. And I have a few examples. I have a few examples to

demonstrate my point of how much idiots they are. And this is just the snapshot of the past 48 hours. Actually, Ben, I just want to correct you for one for one second, please. Our chart of stupid moments actually calls them fucking idiots. So I just want to make sure that the title of the title of the segment is the Republican Party are just a bunch of fucking idiots. That's the technical title. That's a good technical title for for this. But let's start with the first one, which is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who sent a letter to Joe Biden demanding an investigation of Dr. Fauci, which by itself is idiotic and stupid. And as we discussed in the last podcast, the GQP reads literally the first word of one email that is sent in February or March of last year, and then tries to act like this is

the biggest gotcha moment, despite the fact that Fauci said everything in public and that the emails were not leaked. So setting aside the stupidity of the idea of this is where her priorities are right now, not getting vaccines into the arms of people, not focusing on infrastructure, but attacking Dr. Fauci. But she said that she demands an immediate answer by June 31st of 2021. But of course, there is no date, June 31. So either that her staff hates her option number one, her staff is just as dumb as her option number two i think it's probably a combination of the both hasn't you ever heard the song guys 30 days half september april june and november all the rest have 31 and then february somewhere in there

i liked your rendition of that but like to have the just weird conviction to then go out and tweet out the photos of it and put that statement out there for the world to see, and you can't even get the date right where you're threatening this man to respond. I mean, it's ridiculous. Yep. And that's not the worst of it. You have Mo Brooks, Congress member or GQP member who doxed himself. And I mean, that's exactly what I would call it. Congressman Brooks tweeted some I'm going to regurgitate it here. Just bullshit about Congressman Swalwell. And doxing in this context means that he exposed his own personal information.

Right. So he was served with a lawsuit. And obviously, it's never a good day when you're served with a lawsuit. But as we discussed on the Legal AF podcast, most litigants who are professionals, particularly here where you know a lawsuit has been filed or is coming, you have your lawyer agree to accept service of the lawsuit. So you don't have to have encounters with a process server. But Mo Brooks's strategy of getting the case dismissed against him. And just to remind you, the case was for him inciting the insurrection on January 6th, which threatened the lives of his fellow colleagues in Congress. But Congress, the Congress member Brooks idea was maybe if I just avoid and dodge the process server, the case is going to get dismissed because I will never get served the lawsuit.

Well, that didn't work. He got served. And then as soon as he got served, he whined and made up some bullshit story about how the process server snuck into the house and, you know, and how it horrified his wife. I mean, these are the biggest snowflake, whiny people in the world. They're so whiny. It's like the congresswoman the other day who said that her place was graffitied by Antifa artwork. Who was it? Nancy Mace. And then people quickly identified that the text had the same exact squiggles as her exact handwriting, which were very specific. And she said it was Antifa, but it had the anarchist logo. And then it said, pass the proact, as if anarchists who hate the government, their main thing is, we need to pass the proact, guys. That's our priority, pass the proact. These people are such performative clowns. And my favorite thing about the Merle Brooks thing, aside from the fact that he actually

doxed himself, we'll get into that in a second, is he takes screenshots like Ben takes screenshots. Like instead of there, there are screenshot options on, you know, on your computer. And guys, like if you do command shift four on an Apple computer, you could select an actual section of the image. So don't say you didn't learn anything this podcast, command shift and four computer, you could select an actual section of the image. So don't say you didn't learn anything in this podcast. Command shift and four, and you could select a specific part of your screen and you could screenshot it. What Mo Brooks and our buddy Ben, our brother Ben here does, is he took a picture of the screen, which is dangerous for a couple of reasons. First off, it doesn't prove anything to take a picture of a federal penal code. It doesn't make it any more or less accurate. I mean, you're still making up the story.

Okay, I get it. That's the law. Fine. But he takes a picture of his screen. And what he doesn't realize because the screen is so bright is that underneath the screen, he has a pin number for something and he has his Gmail password and they're both labeled. It's labeled Gmail password, pin number right there. And so he had this tweet up with a photo of his pin number. I don't know what it was for. If it was for a bank account, if it was for logging into his government system, I don't know what the pin number was for. And he had his Gmail account information right there. So also guys, this is a great time to talk to you about using a password manager. You know, don't put your passwords on your, on your, on your laptop, especially if you're going to take pictures and you can't take screenshots. The only context that

this photo would have made sense if it was like one of those TikToks where it's like POV of blah, blah, blah. This would be POV of Mo Brooks on his computer. And just for Ben's sake, the difference between Ben and Mo Brooks, other than Ben not being a fascist or want to overthrow the government type of deal. Ben's never incited an insurrection. Yeah. There are many differences. Another difference is Ben also not on the science, space, and technology committees. If Ben was on those committees, I'd hope he'd at least learn to do screenshots the proper way. Mo Brooks is on those committees. That's fucking terrifying. It's because all these people are incompetent.

I mean, think about who they were going to put on the education committee. They were going to put Marjorie Taylor Greene on the education committee because the way the GQP works is they figure out who is the absolute worst person to do this job. And that's the person who they put on. Oh, who lied about their military service and acted like they're a veteran? Oh, let's put Madison Cawthorn on the Veterans Affairs Committee. That's a great idea. Rudy Giuliani somehow runs a cybersecurity company. That guy, Rudy, runs a cybersecurity firm. The guy is terrible with cybersecurity and he's leaked his own stuff

a billion times. Worst person possible for the job, that is the person they will put in. The worst possible decision they could possibly make, that's what they could put in. There's got to be a name for it, like Murphy's Law or something that just says when there is a worse option, the GQP will go with that worse option. We got to figure out a name for this. I think it's just called the GQP. And speaking of which, you see Donald Trump, and we're speaking of all of the GQP stupidity. You see that Donald Trump, he gave this bizarre rambling speech. It looked incredibly sickly, but he wore his pants backwards.

And so there was no zipper because the zipper was in his behind area daniel dale's gonna come for you yeah somewhere daniel dale's ears are ringing yeah what would daniel dale do he wanted to fact check people that snopes fact checked it and basically said his pants were not in fact on backwards um that if you look at it from other angles you could see that there was indeed a fly this This is an actual article that Snopes wrote and Daniel Dale kind of took a holier than thou approach and was like, oh, glad you guys discussed this for 24 hours. That was a real good use of time. First off, it's like Twitter jokes. We're now fact-checking Twitter jokes. And the fact is those pants did look funny. I'm sorry, they look

funny. And then, so I think we should laugh at them. And the thing that those pants did look funny. I'm sorry, they look funny. And then so I think we should laugh at them. And the thing that ended up coming out of that speech, was it a message from Trump that he wanted to get out to his base or to get out there? Or was his message stepped on by the fact that everybody was merely talking about his funny pants, how sickly he looked, how sickly he sounded, him not being able to get through a sentence or make any sense at all. And I think that has power. I think being able to overcome his messaging and his attempted comeback by mocking him, I mean, that's actually how you take down dictators. I know, Ben, I know you studied Pinochet, and I know that mockery and humor were a way of destroying that dictator. And so I'm all for making fun of Trump as much as possible and mocking him and taking the energy out of his message. Brett does know that I study autocrats in history and I like to talk about that when we're not doing the podcast.

But I'd love to have Daniel Dale come on the podcast one day. And I'd love to just talk with him about like one of the most significant roles, though, I think as a fact checker is who and when you choose to fact check like a journalist. The biggest power you have of a journalist sometimes is what you choose to cover and what you choose not to cover. And rather than covering the fact on a consistent and relentless basis that there is one party every single day that is a fascist party, he likes to cover equally, you know, people on Twitter joking about, you know, whether Trump is wearing his pants, you know, in the wrong way, instead of talking about the messaging, which is what's truly horrific. And that's what he should ultimately be

fact. By the way, I, we, we tease Dale, but I, I like Dale. I think he does a great job, but I think sometimes without Trump in his face every day, I think him and a lot of pundits and a lot of people, I think don't know what to do. I mean, they turn their energy inward. They try to fight people. There's a lot of infighting online right now. People just trying to take each other down. And I don't like it. You know, we all need to be united in this mission. We all need to be working to get rid of fascism.

Because if we don't, if we're distracted by all these little other things and are trying to get at each other, guess what's going to happen? The Republicans are going to win the House. The Republicans are going to win the Senate. And we'll be controlled by a fascist government. So we got to stick together. We got to do this. Let me tell you, though, I hear you, but let me let me let me tell you that the danger of Daniel Day, he went after Midas touch and try to fact check us when we said that Marco Rubio supports the insurrection. And he gave cover to Marco Rubio and said,

absolutely not. Marco Rubio has specifically stated that he does not support the insurrection. So therefore, we must trust Marco Rubio's words. And our point is look at his actions. The problem with that improper fact check, though, is look what's happened. By giving Marco Rubio cover when people like us were trying to call him out, it enabled the GQP members in the Senate to filibuster the investigation into the insurrection on January 6th. And that's what I think is important that, you know, why I thought that fact check was dangerous, actually, because clearly what they say versus their actions needs to be analyzed in detail. I'm excited to bring in shortly Stuart Stevens. But before I do, I want to talk about something that is important to our business at Midas Touch. And you know that we are a upstart

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Stop wasting your time going to the post office and go to stamps.com instead. And here's what we got for you guys. There's no risk. So with our promo code Midas, that's M-E-I-D-A-S with stamps.com. Never go to the post office again. And I see Stuart Stevens in the lobby. Let's welcome Stuart Stevens to the Midas Touch podcast. Stuart Stevens is a legendary ad maker and political consultant, a veteran of five Republican presidential campaigns when Republicans were not outright fascists, including the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign and now a member of a Lincoln Project. He's also the author of eight books, including It Was All a Lie, How the Republican Party Became the Party of Donald Trump.

Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, Stuart Stevens. Great to be here, man. Long time fans. First time caller. Thank you, Stuart. And so, Stuart, back in 2016, I think you described watching the Republican Party was like watching a friend drink themselves to death. You couldn't believe that the Republican Party could possibly fall for this con man, Donald Trump. Well, if that's what you thought in 2016, what do you think in 2021? Well, you know, I was thinking about this. I finished this book almost exactly two years ago, and it's a pretty bleak portrait of the Republican Party. You know, as I said to a friend of mine, you know, it's short, but depressing. And he said, Stuart, so are suicide notes. So I that led me to write the party, it's very disturbing. strategist in 2012. We lost. Yeah. Yes. But you ran a dignified complaint. And I think it was a

closer election than many people give it credit for. It was actually a very close election. Mitt Romney today, though, I recall that image of him speaking at that conference in Utah and just getting booed. You know, when he says to the crowd, he goes, aren't you embarrassed? And kind of my question is the opposite one, which is like, aren't you embarrassed, Mitt? Like you're the one who's speaking to these people, like that's your crew now. And so why doesn't he leave? Do you think he still remains fatally optimistic? Look, a lot of things I wouldn't do in life, but at the top would be to speak for Mitt. My experience with Mitt is that his on the record and off the record are

pretty much the same. So, you know, whatever he's saying is what he's thinking now. This is one of these things where I think you can argue it round or flat. And there are a lot of people like Michael Steele is a good example. And Michael's spoken to this. You say, look, I've been in the Republican Party for 40 years. African-American wouldn't always like Michael's spoken to this. You say, look, I've been in the Republican Party for 40 years. African-American wouldn't always like the easiest path to follow. And I'm not going to let some, you know, asshole like Donald Trump run me out of the party, which I respect completely. I just can't do it.

I don't have it in me. You know, I have a view on this. It's not to say I'm right. I'm wrong all the time. And I've certainly been wrong about Donald Trump. But I think there is no redeeming this party I think the only way to deal with the Republican party is to defeat it on the federal level there's this weird phenomenon of these Republican governors including the state

I'm in which is like another universe of Republicans you talk about that sort of fascinating but to redeem someone or an institution, there has to be an assumption they want to be redeemed. The Republican Party is exactly what it wants to be now. There's no external forces drawing into this. A lot of us look at it and go like, how could this happen? And they go like, we'd like it. You know, it's like trying to convince someone not to be in love. Good luck. What do you think they like about it? What do you think they are in love with here? You know, with someone who clearly in the former guy doesn't respect him. And one of the funny comments you made is I'm looking forward to all Republicans who are now going to start wearing their pants backwards to prove their loyalty.

That's hilarious. But also, I could imagine a scenario, you know, where they all start actually doing it would not shock me. Yeah. Well, with the caveat that we're talking about 80 million people, so probably there's a little variance amongst that 80 million. Well, really, this is why I wrote this book. So I asked myself after Trump won, how could I have been so wrong? And in that sort of high school English teacher sense that if you can't write it, you don't understand it. I started this as a personal project. I wasn't intending to write a book. And I just was asking myself, how was I so wrong? I mean, I worked in the party for 30 years. And there's people, you know, there's a sort of trope of books in D.C. like if only they had listened to me.

Like I couldn't write that. They did listen to me. I mean, I helped elect Republican governors and senators in over half the country. What I do in the book, I think is accurate. I'd never really studied it before, but trace the history of the post-war Republican party. And I think there's always been these two strands. There was an Eisenhower element that was sane, boring, governing, and a McCarthy element, paranoid, non-governing, dysfunctional, racist, conspiratorial. And those two have been existing within the party. And there was a period in the 60s when they made a conscious effort to throw out the John Birchers. We now look at William Buckley as sort of a sainted intellectual voice that is missing.

We have Sean Hannity instead of William Buckley, which is a fair point. But at the same time, we forget that William Buckley started out as a Cold Stone racist. And the second book he wrote after God and Man and Yale, which his father basically paid to get published,

which is interesting, was The Defense of Joe McCarthy, which he wrote with his nutty brother-in-law who's still with us, Brent Bozell. Now later, Buckley recanted to his credit quite eloquently, and I think authentically. Those of us who were drawn to George Bush, both Bushes, but those of us who are of a generation who worked for George W. Bush, we always believed that our side of the party was the dominant side. And it was only a matter of time until that emerged,

the compassionate conservative side. And if you remember, you know, when Bush came out with compassionate conservatism, he got a lot of shit from the right. I said, are you trying to say that conservatism isn't seen as compassionate? And his basic answer to that was, yeah, that's right. That's what I'm saying.

So there's a little group of us, it occurred to me one day when I was watching television at the gym, we all used to work in the same room. Me, Nicole Wallace, Mark McKinnon, Michael Gerson, you know, who writes for the Post now, Pete Wehner, Matthew Dowd. Steve was sort of part of that in 2004, Steve Schmidt. I think that we thought that we were the dominant gene,

and I don't know any conclusion to reach now, but that we were wrong. I was wrong. And we were the recessive gene. And that the party became what the party wanted to be. And Stuart, as you look back now at those times, I know a lot of our listeners are probably going to be like, but we've been trying to tell you this about, you know, the right for all this time. This is exactly what we've been yelling and saying. But did you see the sort of seeds of this cancer start to metastasize in the Republican Party back then? We recently had Charlie Sykes on and you you shared this clip where he said he kind of is coming to terms with the fact that conservatism is actually this thin veneer covering up for these this horrific, I guess, as you're calling

it, a recessive gene underneath the surface. Do you agree with Charlie's take on this? And what's your opinion kind of looking back? I think it's a really fair point. And, you know, after I wrote this book and, you know, people said, you know, you should have seen this before. My general answer to that is, yeah, you're right. That's why I wrote the book. I asked myself why I didn't see it. I think my answer is different than Charlie's because, you know, Charlie was at a much more elevated level in a sense of he was actually talking about ideas a lot.

He was in that business. I was in the winning elections business. And I think it's complicated. I think we saw this dark side of the party, but like I said, we thought that it would die out or that we would win. And personally, I didn't think about it a lot. You know, I got into being a gunslinger. You're just in such of a mindset as I'm going to win. Like I need to win elections that you're not even thinking about these sort of external. It wasn't my job to think about. Right. Exactly. My job was how to win.

You know, I wrote about this after the Romney campaign in 2013. I grew up in Mississippi and a lot of how my dad and I bonded was going to college football games, particularly Ole Miss games. So he had just turned 95. So my dad and I, my mother, which gave it a kind of driving Miss Daisy, went to all the Ole Miss football games in the 2013 season. And I wrote a book about it called The Last Season. And I talk about this in that book. And this predates Trump, obviously, but how my life was to a large degree. I'm a very competitive person. And I define my life as successful or not successful based upon whether or not I was winning or losing. And I think when you work in campaigns, most people would say you quickly realize the pain of losing is greater than the pleasure of winning. I like to fight. And I just didn't think about it a lot. I didn't think about the consequences of it. Interesting. And which is not an excuse. I think I should have. I wish I had.

You know, there's people that go through their life without any regrets, seems to be. And then, you know, there's people like me. I have a lot of regrets. What are your biggest regrets? That I didn't see this and didn't do more to fight it. I'm not sure what I would have done. But now, you know, I was part of the party that was always fighting that side. I mean, I worked for Bill Well, for Christ's sake. Bill Well won the 1990 Massachusetts Republican primary for governor. We attacked the guy from the left for being not pro-choice.

You know, I worked for Tom Ridge. I worked for George Bush. None of these people would have a place in the party now. Right. So that was part of it. I was fighting these people. I mean, look at Romney. Who was he running against? Newt Gingrich.

You know, he's a fucking lunatic. Or Santorum, who's just a complete phony, total phony. If you ever want to amuse yourself, go on the Internet and Google. You can see the announcement of the Pennsylvania senator was running as a pro-choice candidate for Republican nomination of president. There's Santorum standing up there applauding. He's actually introduced by Roger Stone. Oh, my gosh. I recently did a watch of The Sopranos, a rewatch of The Sopranos series. And they mention Santorum in the series in one of Tony's therapy sessions and just showing how much of a scumbag he was and how everybody knew it even

back then. I was just nervous when you say go to the Internet when it goes to Rick Santorum. I don't Google Santorum because a lot of dangerous stuff is going to come up if you Google the meaning of Santorum. But Stuart, you're on our side now. You're working hard every single day to try to win elections and and do the right thing and elect Democrats. So as somebody who knows what it's like to win, who knows how to win, what do we do now to combat this strain of fascism as ad makers, as messengers? What should we be doing every single day? In the Lincoln Project, we have a very different role than the Democratic Party. A lot of people said in 2020, like, how can you guys make

these videos so fast? And that, you know, it's really not a fair comparison. Because if you're working for a candidate, you have a very different role and a very different responsibility. What I realized very quickly when I started working for Lincoln Project is it was fantastic not to have a client. You know, we never polled. We never focus grouped, not once. And we would just get up in the morning, talk, make these ads, put it up. I imagine you guys kind of do something the same. I don't know. Sounds like our process. You can't do that if you're working for a candidate. Because, you know, if you go out and you call Donald Trump a liar and your candidate gets asked, do you think Donald Trump is a liar? That candidate's got to say yes. So otherwise, you know, you're out there saying one thing and he's divorced or she's divorced

in their campaign. I think that the greatest danger we have now is not realizing the greatest danger. I see the moment that we're in now is like a pandemic, a political pandemic. And whatever you say at the beginning will seem alarmist and at the end inadequate. I think it is our role as people who worked in the party and know these people. I mean, Jason Miller was my intern to speak the truth that we know. And as bad as we think it is, it's worse. These are not people that have the same values. When I say that, you know, Trump didn't hijack the party. The party became Trump.

So I think our role is to talk about the fact that this is a fight for democracy. If I was a Democratic consultant and I was working for a senator or congressman, governor, I mean, this used to always happen to me in pitches. You know, candidates would always say for the high school, like, what do you think we ought to do? And almost universally, my answer was, I don't know, because I think that's the only authentic answer. Because if you're sitting a year and a half, two years out from an election, you're just a fraud to say, I know what you should do in this election. I know the process to determine what you should do. So I can't tell you what Tim Ryan ought to be talking about in Ohio. I mean, I did Rob

Bortman's races. Who's going to be the Democratic nominee in Missouri for the Roy Blunt seat? Who's going to win that? I hadn't really paid any attention, but, you know, I did Roy Blunt's races. But I couldn't speak to what they ought to be saying. The most important thing is to accept that this is not a normal time. And we have this great need for normalcy now. I mean, I understand it totally. And we have a very normal president

and a normal administration. But we can't be lured into that. A lot of stuff, you know, written about this and Applebaum's Twilight of Democracies, how democracies die, you know, written about this and Applebaum's Twilight of Democracies, how democracies die, you know. It doesn't happen with tanks and coups now, mostly. You know, it happens through the ballot box and in the courtroom. And that's the process for now. And I think what people really have to realize is this really isn't the beginning. This is the beginning of the beginning.

And the people on the other side are very, very dedicated. And they think they're going to win. And they're not entirely stupid. And they have a lot of resources. And they don't have any remote sense of ethics. So that's the seriousness of it. If I didn't believe this, I wouldn't be doing this now. I never thought I'd make another ad in my life.

I bet you never thought you'd be making an ad in support of Democrats either. Yeah, you know, I never was a hater in politics. And in all these presidential races I worked on, I never feared if the other person won. I wanted to win with the intensity of a thousand suns. But I didn't fear for the country if Barack Obama was president. I didn't fear for the country if Al Gore had been president. I feared for the country while Donald Trump was president. And that just changes everything. I mean, all this stuff, you know, all these ads I used to make, I mean, it seems quaint. Like we're going to fight about capital gains taxes. Really? We're going to fight about the estate tax? Really? I mean, it's like somebody

talking about the cholesterol count and a knife. Really, you want to do that? I don't think that's what's going to kill you. Or I think we all found ourselves in the Lincoln Project was, you know, we had three choices, be for Donald Trump, we're going to do that, or do nothing, which a lot of our friends have chosen to do, which, you know, I understand. I respect that. It's a very individual choice. Or to fight. So we decided to fight. And we have some odd skills that we've developed that can be useful. And that's it. I don't think you get in fights because you think you're going to win.

You get in fights because you want to fight. And I can't tell you who's going to win this. Let me rewind just a second, because I heard you say there that Jason Miller was your intern back in the day. And I just got to know, what was that like? Well, to be honest, I really don't remember Jason, but people who work with me when they want to give me shit, they would always say, but Stuart, you like Jason. I don't really know. That's the biggest insult anybody could ever say to you. I know. No, it's brutal. He later surfaced in a race I did for Mel Martinez when Mel was running for the Senate and totally screwed that up. But he's just a horrible person. So it's Stephen Miller. We were having a debate on the show.

Who was the worst Miller the other day? Stephen or Jason. All of these people didn't wake up in 2016 or 2020 or 19 and say, look, you know, I think it'd be interesting to work in Republican presidential politics. All of them have been trying to do that. Corey Lewandowski, Kellyanne Conway. Nobody would hire these people. I mean, Steve Bannon. Bannon's been trying to get inside of Republican presidential politics this entire century, but nobody let him in because they're not very good at this. And the fact that Trump won is not proof that

they are. And they're bad people. You know, take Corey Lewandowski. I mean, he was most famed for when he was, you know, executive director of the Republican Party in New Hampshire, he debated a cardboard cutout of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate. The general consensus was the cardboard won. That's who, you know, he was a part time Marine cop. That's who they are. This is, you know, it's been a management style of Trump. He takes people who could never operate at a high level and elevates them. And they know that if they weren't with Trump, they would not be able to operate at this level. So it creates a tremendous loyalty to it. Right. I mean, Michael Cohen has spoken about this and he's absolutely

right. It's how you run a gang. It's how Tony ran his gang. You're lucky to be working for me. Imagine what you'd be doing if I wasn't here. He pulls up just the worst, the D student, so to speak. He pulls them all up to run the country and then they're just indebted. Yeah, and it's been an effective management step. Hey, Stuart, who in the Republican Party has disappointed

you the most? Was there anyone at any point in time who you're like, hey, he or she, they make a pretty good president one day. And now you're looking at this in 2021, you're like, whoo, was I wrong on that one? Stuart just pulled out a long scroll of paper. It's deeply painful. I really don't want to use it.

I mean, some of these people I was really close friends with. I just don't imagine it. I mean, I'll never understand. I'm not asking myself how 1930s Germany happened. But it is on a personal level, deeply, deeply painful. And I don't know what to do. Nothing I can do about it. I just have to go forward.

As you go forward, Stuart, give us your take on how Biden's been handling his time in office so far. Listen, I think the Biden operation has been phenomenal. I think their campaign is going to go down as one of the great campaigns of our times. 1976, we started campaign finance reform so that every presidential candidate nominee got the same amount of money. You literally, when you walked off the stage of getting the nomination, there was someone there from the Treasury Department, they gave you a check. It was around 80, it went up every year with inflation and how the country was going, but around 80 to $84 million. And we were always like, can't you wire this? They go, no, we do checks. And then you took that money. And as agreement, you couldn't spend more

than that. This is why in 2004, we pushed the convention as late as possible, because you're going to get the same amount of money. It occurred to us you had to do it 60 days before the election by law. So to have less time to spend the same amount of money would be better. So Obama blew that system up in 2008 when he reversed himself and decided not to take federal funding, which I think is probably the worst of his legacy. So now we have candidates, both of whom are not in the federal funding system. Because the federal funding system, Carter lost, Bush lost, it leveled the playing field, as you would think. Both candidates had the same amount of money. So it's fair to ask,

who was the last incumbent president to lose when there wasn't a federal funding system? And the answer is Herbert Hoover. That's how hard it is to beat an incumbent president. You know, John Kerry didn't run a bad campaign, but that was, we had federal funding. And if we not had federal funding, it would have been much easier for Bush because an incumbent president can basically raise unlimited money. The greatest period of vulnerability that a nominee has against an incumbent president is right after you get the nomination. You're broke, you're exhausted. You have to put together a campaign largely composed of these people that you just spent months beating the fuck out of. And it's a great period of weakness. The only campaign in modern political history that went up in the two months after they won the nomination

was the Biden campaign. And you can say it's because of COVID and all of that, but Cuomo was going up at that same time because of COVID. I have tremendous respect for what they did. To reinvent, you know, I've done these conventions a lot. It's hard to have three good nights, four good nights. But to layer on top of that, reinventing what a convention was, it's extraordinary. I think they ran a brilliant campaign. There was a top of that, reinventing what a convention was, is extraordinary. I think they ran a brilliant campaign. There was a lot of debate, Democratic, to go back and look at these primary debates, about what 2020 should be about. I mean, Steve Smith talks about this a lot, and he's right.

So there was a very legitimate, coherent school of thought. Elizabeth Warren embodied that, that we should make this about issues. That there's nothing you can say about Donald Trump that's going to change one vote. It's baked in. 2018, we talked about healthcare. We won the House. That's what we should do in 2020. And the Lincoln Project, and I wasn't involved with them then, you know, they came out and said, no, that's absolutely wrong. It is about Donald Trump, 100%. And that was at a period when Joe Biden seemed to be busy losing the nomination. And then Biden won.

And Biden basically said the same thing, that it's about honor and dignity, the soul of the nation, which is a more eloquent way to say it's about Donald Trump. I think they absolutely nailed it. I think he's doing a great job as president. I mean, I know a lot of these people. I was on the debate commission with a lot of these people that work for Biden. And first of all, they want to be doing what they're doing. They want to be in government. And most of the people in the Trump world didn't want to be in

government. And they think the government can be a force for good. And they're smart and they're confident. So I think they're wildly successful. I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to hold a house in 2022. Incredibly difficult. It's doable. The last time this happened was 2002. And I did that race on the Republican side. And, you know, it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the war. The race has to be nationalized. It's very hard, very, very hard. But look, I don't know anything more extraordinary in my lifetime of politics than what happened on January 5th in Georgia. And people don't appreciate this enough. You know, I grew up in Mississippi. I'm a seventh generation Mississippian. And I've done races,

governor's interlaces all over the South. Governors Florida, Senators Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina. The reason that runoff primaries were invented was to stop blacks from winning statewide race. The idea being if a black couldn't get to 50% with multiple candidates, you didn't get in a runoff. You have a white, you have a black. That black might even lead to primary. Let's say 38%, 41%. They couldn't get to 50%.

That's why Louisiana invented it, so-called jungle primary. It's worked pretty much with 100% success. Scott was appointed. What happened in Georgia, I mean, it really was like watching somebody win the World Series with four% success. You know, Scott, Scott was appointed. What happened in Georgia, I mean, it really was like watching somebody win the World Series with four perfect games. I mean, I doubt we'll ever

see anything like it in our lives, too. And then, you know, the sixth happened and, you know, people have lives and they have better things to do and really think about politics a lot. But just as a piece

of political art, it was extraordinary. A lot of factors had to come together, but that's always true. The politics is all about probability and probability is usually about very small numbers. That's what people don't sort of grasp enough

that it is about the margin. So, you know, 25,000 people in the right place to exchange their votes and Donald Trump is still president. It can be done and you will never find anything more difficult than to do what they did successfully in Georgia to win two races. But it starts now. I mean, it's national level, but also at a deeply personal level to see this and experience, you know, has caused a great deal of heartache. I mean, it's obvious

in talking to you, just seeing it and being in it, how much it impacts you. And at the same time, there's also this great deal of hope still out of heartache. What happened in Georgia? Biden won. You look at Americans 15 years and under. Majority are non-white. Odds are really, really good. They're going to turn 18 and still be non-white.

You look at this census, one out of every 10 new American will be white. So that's the end of the Republican Party, as we know it. The question is, can we sit, hold on to the country until that happens? And I don't know the answer to that. No one will be nominated for president by the Republicans. I doubt anyone will win a competitive primary at all in the Republican Party. Maybe Liz will, But who will assert that 2020 was a legal election.

So that means that they don't believe they live in a democracy. They live in an occupied country. This has never happened before. Unimaginable in 2024 a Republican will win who thinks that we live in a democracy. I doubt it'll happen in 2028. It's a difficult thing to wrap your mind around.

But here you have a country with 300, 400 million guns, the history of violent revolution, and 100 million people, 80 million people don't believe we live in a democracy. They think they live in an occupied country. And that's what they're teaching their children. How's that end? I don't think we know. You know, there's a sort of conventional wisdom that a lot of these Republican senators and congressmen who, you know, didn't want to say who won when they all knew who won after November 3rd, that they were doing just kind of to humor Trump. What's it now? It's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is they were waiting to see who was going to win. And I think that's close to the truth. And I think the failure

to hold Trump responsible, the second impeachment, is going to go down like the Munich Accord of our time. It's an attempt to appease evil. You know, as Churchill said, I mean, Chamberlain was a much different species of human than Mitch McConnell. I mean, he truly wanted to avoid war. You know, Churchill said, you wanted peace with honor, you'll have war with dishonor. And that's what's happened. We've always had an element of hate in American politics. I think it's fascinating why America didn't become fascist in the 30s. It's a huge fascist movement in America, probably because Roosevelt was president and not Lindbergh or Henry Ford. So, you know, we used to have civics classes. One of the things you learned

was like leaders really matter. And the great failure of the Republican Party is that in our system, parties should be circuit breakers. And no one in the Republican Party pulled a circuit breaker on Donald Trump. And from that is everything that has unfolded. And it is completely antithetical to that thing that we always said as Republicans, you can't negotiate with terrorists. Character counts. All of these things we said would prove to be right. They just don't believe them. And if you compare it to say what happened when Macron was running against Le Pen in France. I mean, you know, five other parties were vying to oppose Le Pen. They lost to Macron. I mean, I've worked a good bit in France, you know.

The degree to which these people hated Macron, is 32-year-old punk married to a woman who's like the age of his mom, who started a party going against these people who've been working all their lives for that moment, and they lose to Macron. And what did they do? They backed Macron,

because the threat of Le Pen was so much greater. That's what you do when you care about a country. And that's what Republicans failed to do. And it all unwinds from there. History says that this takes a long time with an uncertain outcome. If there was one book, well, a couple of books, one is Twilight of Democracy, How Democracies Die. But there's an extraordinary memoir that Franz von Pappen wrote in 1953. Franz von Pappen was a Prussian aristocrat. He was probably more responsible than anybody else for ushering Hitler into power. So he writes this memoir in 1953.

Now, things have kind of gone sideways. A hundred million people did. He's still justified. And what he says is, you know, what you have to understand is we were facing the Bolsheviks. And we as aristocrats had no connection with the working class. To protect Germany, we had to embrace Hitler because he had a connection to the working class and was not Bolshevik. Now I got a little out of control of it. And that's exactly what Republicans are saying now. And it's very easy to imagine a lot of these Republicans 10 years from now, when democracy in

America no longer resembles anything that we have now, writing the similar justification. It's pretty predictable. And the only way to deal with it is to crush these people. You have to defeat them. You can't negotiate with them. You can't wait and expect that they might act in good faith. Look, take Mitch McConnell. He goes to bed January 5th, majority leader, wakes up January 6th, and he's running for his life in his office. And that's still not enough to get him to hold Trump accountable. So if people running through your office trying to kill you won't get you to do it, don't think anything of theoretical like democracy is going to get them to do it. They're lost. You just have to beat them.

Thank you so much for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We truly appreciate your time and hope you will come back. Thanks, guys. We'll be right back after these messages. What's up, Midas Mighty? Ben Micellus here joined by my younger brothers Brett and Jordy Micellus. Have you

got your Midas merch gear? If you haven't gotten your Midas merch gear, I don't know what's taking you so long. I got my gear. Most of the Midas Mighty got their gear. We have some incredible stuff. Isn't that right, Brett? That's right. And with the new CDC guidelines that say you no longer have to wear masks indoors or outdoors if you've been vaccinated, a lot of people have been asking us, how do you let people know you've been vaccinated? How do you know if you're around other vaccinated people? A lot of people are concerned. But, you know, we already thought about this, guys. We got our vaxxed and relaxed merch line. You could get it now if you still want to wear masks, if you still feel comfortable wearing masks around

indoors or outdoors, we got the masks, we got the tees, we got the shirts, we got it all, and we got more on the way. So let people know you've been vaccinated. Shop at store.midastouch.com to get yours. And that's not all we have. We got the club democracy gear. We got the shout out to the Midas Mighty gear. We got it all. Go check it out. That's store.midastouch.com. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. It was a great interview with Stuart Stevens. I don't know if anyone really could tell from listening to the podcast. he got really emotional. He did. When we asked him the question, it was Jordy's question about who's let him down the most. And, you know, the framing of the question could have went either way, you know, just in terms of how the question was received, but just seeing his reaction, it was hard to watch

because here's someone who devoted his entire life, his skill, his brilliance into this profession to fight for our democracy. He truly was and is a champion of democracy. He's a true patriot, an incredibly talented individual. And for him to see people he knew, people who he worked with, so destroy our country. And for me to see his visceral reaction about how painful that was, shows you what's at stake. Now, I hope that all of you were able to hear it in his voice, the way we were able to hear it in his voice and see it on his face. You could tell that he is carrying around with him a lot of, I would say, regrets, a lot of introspection about his past. And hey, I'm not looking to give anybody a pass who may have elevated Republicans in a way that led us to where we are today. That's not what we're here to do.

But I think you do gotta take into account that this guy dedicated his life towards this cause and that the Republican Party that he was fighting for, and he got into this a lot by talking about a lot of the governors that he worked with. These are pro-democracy Republicans. It's a different breed of the Republicans

that we're dealing with right now. And I am glad to have Stuart on our side and Stuart fighting for democratic values and understanding that country is more important than party. And we've had a few of these kind of characters on the show recently. I mean, we have Charlie Sykes on the show, the Rick Wilsons, the Fred Wellmans and Stuart. And it's, it's gotta be just a weird thing to dedicate your whole life to something and then see it kind of all taken away from you, I guess, you know, or, or, or see that what you were working for was maybe a lie this whole time. And I, I mean, I, there's a certain part of me that just has empathy for that.

But it's also deeply empowering though, that he can come and share his experience. That, as he mentioned during the interview, there are lots of people who are just remain silent, who are fearful. I mean, as we know, for example, Liz Cheney said this past week, I have had a number of members say to me we would have voted to impeach, but we were concerned about our security. That's a really significant thing to say about the current state of our politics. And as Stuart Stevens explained, you know, the Republicans were once the party of we don't negotiate with terrorists and literally now terroristic tactics employed by Trump and Trumpists instill such fear into otherwise good people to render them useless, to render them feckless in the ability to stand up to the fascist wing of their party, which has so enveloped and become what the GQP is. And what's not helping in any way, though,

are Democrats who have the opportunity, and I'm speaking of two, Sinema and Manchin, who have the ability to do something right now, who actually have the ability to save democracy. And I saw this great political cartoon, which I'll try to circulate it, Brett. And it's a mansion and mansion is standing by a glass encasement. And in it is a filibuster written on like an old scroll. And all around mansion are all of our institutions literally burned down. So you see the White House burned down and the Capitol burned down and our courts burned down and all, you know, and you see mass death and destruction. And he goes in the cartoon. But I saved the even after even after we had the litmus test.

And this is why the Democrats were smart to bring that vote, because it truly was the litmus test. Why bring infrastructure? Why bring for the People Act? Why bring bills that support the LGBTQ plus community? Why bring these other bills, which you know are going to be rejected by the GQP, if you first need to test whether or not they will even say we need to investigate terrorists in the United States? We need to investigate the insurrection, or would they filibuster that? And so I think the calculation among Schumer and Pelosi and Biden were, look, mansion, look, cinema, look what they're doing here. And I think Biden, I think Pelosi, I think Schumer thought that showing how crazy that would be would wake up a mansion. And you notice right around that time, if you guys remember, three weeks ago, Biden specifically met with Manchin. But despite all of that, Manchin says,

I am here to engage in bipartisan work. I believe my colleagues on the other side will do bipartisan legislation with us. Who? Who? Who are these people that he's referring to? And it is utterly absurd. And he said that he not only will he not support eliminating the filibuster, but he's not even going to support the for the people act. He's not even going to do it to stop the legislation that's designed to enable people to vote, to stop the voter intimidation and suppression tactics of the GQP. He doesn't support that bill. What does he support? At this point, I think what Manchin needs to realize is we will never have bipartisanship in the Senate.

It's just not going to happen. So he needs to look at bipartisanship through the same. It's just not going to happen. So he needs to look at bipartisanship through the same lens that President Biden looks at it. And it's what do the people want? Not what do politicians want? What do the people want? Because I think that cartoon was painted a very vivid picture, Ben. He is willing to throw away all of our institutions, willing to throw away our democracy, willing to throw away the right to vote, willing to throw away all of our institutions, willing to throw away our democracy, willing to throw away the right to vote, willing to throw away civil rights to uphold the filibuster. It just doesn't make any sense. And that's the greatest analysis. The point you made there, Brett, I think is the most important. When you look at the bills the Democrats want to pass,

whether it's the For the People Act, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's creating common sense reform when it comes to assault weapon bans. These, to name a few, have overwhelming bipartisan support of the people, which stands in stark contrast to what the GQP does when they're in charge, which is to put forward tax cuts for billionaires, which has very little support of the people. And so I tend to agree. Look, if you had a party that just happened to somehow get in power and we're pushing through legislation that only 20 percent of the population support, I think you give some credence to what Manchin may be saying, right? Like you need to actually preserve and protect

what the people want. But knowing that the people here specifically want this legislation passed and specifically that Mitch McConnell has stated that his sole goal, just like Obama right here, is to obstruct and prevent Biden from getting through any piece of legislation simply because it's from Biden. And you're willing to support that. Are you willing to think you can work with those people? It's truly problematic. And just look at what happened when we got through reconciliation process, the American Recovery Act. Think about how much that's helping the people. The only reason that was passed to remind our listeners is because it went through a process called budget reconciliation, which meant that the filibuster isn't in play

because it just relates to the spending power of Congress. And once the parliamentarian believes that something goes outside the scope limited to spending power, then you can't pass it with just a simple majority of votes. But look at this, like the American Recovery Act is working so well that we've talked about this in past podcasts. You got all the GQP governors wanting to take credit for it. I mean, you're talking about states that had these bleak economic forecasts are passing record budgets and they're taking credit for all the money that flowed from Biden's plan. I mean, it's multiple states all across the country that now have, in some cases, budget surpluses to come out of a pandemic and have your budgets balanced or be in budget surpluses is kind of a unheard of thing. But it was a crisis and the federal government stepped up

and gave aid to states that needed it. And now the economy is coming back faster than anybody could have imagined. My biggest issue with this whole mansion concept of bipartisanship, too, is the destruction to our democracy is not happening on a bipartisan basis. It's happening unilaterally and systematically by Republicans in states, whether you're talking about Texas, whether you're talking about Arizona, whether you're talking about Georgia. Republicans and Republicans alone are the ones who are destroying the Democratic system and are passing these voter suppression laws. Yet, when you have the Democrats pitch a cure, pitch the antidote to this voter suppression, suddenly for Joe Manchin, oh, that's too partisan. That's too partisan. So just let them unilaterally fuck up the voting system. Let them unilaterally suppress the vote.

But the second Democrats try to come in, nope, too partisan, too partisan. There's nothing partisan about protecting the right to vote. That's a bipartisan issue. And when you go point by point in the For the People Act, it's a widely popular bill that even Republicans support. So we're going to have to deal with this Joe Manchin problem for a long time. And it's tough because the guys in West Virginia and as Jason Kander said in our podcast last week when we had him on, it's very hard for a Democrat to win in West Virginia. And this is why I've said in the past that Joe Manchin should be viewed as a block on Mitch McConnell. And we shouldn't expect anything else from the guy

ever. We shouldn't even go ask him for anything. We should just treat him as like an irrelevant fake. Just treat him as irrelevant. Screw this guy. I'm tired of him acting like he is like the president, like the second president or something. Joe Manchin, make him irrelevant. This is why we need to elect good Democratic candidates going forward in 2022 so that we don't have to hear the names Manchin and Sinema every time we're bringing a bill to the floor to help Americans. Brother, should we talk about some hate mail? Hate mail?

Should we close the show with some hate mail? Yeah, let's do it. We haven't done hate mail in a while. And we got recently. Any time there is an article about Fox News blocking us from putting an ad on TV that says the insurrection is bad. We can, of course, count on countless QAnon crazies coming out and explaining to us that we are going to hell. That's the normal reaction for stories about us trying to get TV ads on that condemn and insurrection. Why not? So the typical one that I get from these QAnon stalker crazy people is they love sending it to my place of employment. They love sending

it to my work and they love sending it not just to my work, but to my entire law firm so that everybody in my law firm can read it. So I'll just read you one. And I get like dozens of these a day. It's not like I just get one, but let me just read you one. That is, I just got before coming on the podcast goes, Ben, my cell is Midas touch because truth is golden. What truth? What an absolute joke and no surprise that a little Marxist worm like you works at a law firm, the cornerstone of Satan's place of residence, a video of January 6th, but

not a peep about the thousands of violent BLM and Antifa riots, start preparing yourself for an eternity in hell. That wicked smile on your face is matched by Satan's gleeful anticipation. That's a colorful writer though. You know what? I'm impressed by the writing ability. It's better than we've gotten in the past. I think he actually has a way with words.

He could paint a picture with his words. And I'm actually... You think they're from Boston? Do you think it was like Wicked Smile or that was awful Boston? Let me just tell you, for all the prospective people who want to write to Ben's office, every email that comes into Ben's office is tracked with an IP address and a location and everything. So we could actually pinpoint the exact house that these people come from. Yeah, Ben, go check it out. He's from Boston. So keep, keep sending your, keep sending your emails to Ben, everybody. Brett, you got hate mail. Jordy, you got hate mail. I got hate mail. I feel like there was some collusion or coordination because mine actually sounds a little similar to yours.

These came to the Midas Touch main administrative account. And Ben, you get called out a lot. Like this wasn't even to you, but you get called out right in the subject. Ben M., January 6th, Fox News 8. And once again, we're approaching the same territory here. Joe Biden voters burn, looted, rioted, and injured law enforcement during 2020 protests.

30 deaths, $2 billion of damage, much of it without proper consequences legally. This infuriated many around the country, many of them personally impacted by these criminals. Combine this with the perceived stealing of the presidency by election fraud result, and this all caps, resulted in a wave of anger among many on the right. This equals January 6th. If Joe Biden voters continue this behavior again without legal action, January 6th is just the beginning. So that's an ominous, just a straight up threat. And so I am going to be submitting this one to the FBI. That was a straight threat. It straight up ends on a threat. And it's also very much like

an abuser mentality. Like this is happening because of you, because of what you did, because of what Joe Biden voters theoretically did in my head. We attacked you and we'll do it again. These are sick people. How does that person get through just everyday life? Like, are they just, I mean, I know we say this a lot, but are they just like angry all the time? And dude, we literally had a president of the United States who would draft letters like that. Okay. Yeah. There's nothing different than what that person said than what the fucking president of the United States said every day. It's the same thing you hear from, from all those people. And so, and yeah, and you know, they like to bring

up, you know, their, their go-tos are BLM Antifa, but you know, a couple rogue actors who in many cases, by the way, wasn't even people from those groups were actually right wing instigators who caused issue during these peaceful protests during the summer. They like to bring that up and bring like a smashed, put a smashed window at a convenience store up against a president instructed attempt to overthrow the government by having thousands of people attack the Capitol building to try to kill lawmakers. Those are just not equal things. Here's the only thing we got to end this, folks. We want to let you know, though, that we will not stop fighting for you. And every single day, we are working hours and hours and hours with barely any sleep to try to make sure that our messages aren't just resonating and that we aren't just speaking within a base of pro-democratic people. Of course, we need to energize and animate, but we are not going to be deterred based on what Fox News did to us. In fact, that only makes us more motivated.

You come after us like that. And now people across the country are talking about the Midas Touch ad. And we are hoping that we are going to get that in front of even more people as a result of Fox trying to silence us. This is not easy work, but we want to thank you all for your support of Midas Touch. We want to thank you for your generous donations to the Midas Touch pack that allows us to continue to make videos like that and go to MidasTouch.com. You can go to MidasTouch.com to make a donation to the pack and we appreciate that and that goes a long way. We also appreciate you going to store.midastouch.com,

which is separate and distinct from the pack and supporting us by getting the merchandise and the Vaxxed and Relaxed merchandise that's selling great and the bracelets. And it's so amazing when we see you out there wearing the merch. I know I've been around recently and I've actually seen like dozens of people

wearing Midas Touch merch, which was super cool. And so we thank you for that. And we will see you the end of this week and we will keep you updated on everything that's going on with this Fox News ad. And we hope to have updates about us getting this ad in more places across the country. Thank you so much again for your support.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty!