The MeidasTouch Podcast - GOP Leaders Crack on Live TV as Pressure Grows

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republican leaders facing the heat as they try to defend Trump and Musk’s disastrous policies. Head to https://zbiotics.com/MEIDAS to get 15% off your first order when you use MEIDAS at checkout. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario republicans making complete fools of themselves on the weekend shows like MAGA republican senator mark wayne mullen from ok Oklahoma, who was asked on Meet the Press by Kristen Welker. So tell the people in Oklahoma what your message is when they keep losing their jobs because Donald Trump is laying them off. He's taking away their Medicaid. What do you say to them, Mullen? Here's what MAGA Republican Mark Wayne Mullen says. Play this clip. To the people in Oklahoma who've lost their jobs, who say they are hurting, they don't know how they're going to pay their mortgage. They don't know how they're going to

make ends meet. Talk to those people. What's your message to them? They say enough of these cuts. Well, I would tell you that the majority of the American people want to make sure that their taxpayers are being used correctly. I don't want anybody to lose their job. That's the last thing we want. But at the same time, anytime you're trying to secure this country, which a national security risk we have right now is our national debt, we have to make changes and we have to make it quickly. Unfortunately, when we have bureaucrats and politicians that have wastefully spent the American taxpayer dollars. And we have

to look any further than USAID to see the wasteful billions of dollars that were spent. Cuts had to take place. And every business owner understands this. Every business owner understands that you have to get your house in order before you can advance. That's exactly what Doge is doing. Think about this. Every successful business owner. Yeah. So as this commentator says, he basically told them good night and good luck. Go F yourselves. I'm just going to do what Elon Musk and Donald Trump tell me to do. Then you've got MAGA Republican Congress member Jim Jordan says the following on firing federal workers. Play this clip.

I grabbed this headline, national parks in chaos after says Washington Post story. Here's the first paragraph, California National Park, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff. Next sentence, he was fired, he was the sole employee with keys and institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms. Now if that is, I mean, that's the best you can do. The real question is, how do visitors get locked in restrooms? I mean, this is how ridiculous some of this thing is. So maybe there have been some mistakes made, but I think the intensity and the focus on getting rid of the wasteful spending, the one guy who can unlock people who somehow get locked in a

restroom at a national park, this is ridiculous. So the arguments I think you're seeing from the left are pretty darn crazy when you think about, oh, we're spending money for the crazy things of trans comic opera and wherever. I mean, come on. But do you worry that people – Did you hear what he said, the level of arrogance? Maybe there were some mistakes that were made. And then he goes on to demean federal workers again and say, these jobs are just ridiculous. Who needs someone to be doing this? Who needs someone to be doing that? Who needs someone to

be doing this? It's not, by the way, just that they're firing these people, which is reprehensible. It's also how they're stripping away people's dignity. And we're not just talking about liberals. I would say that's probably in the minority. I mean, these are red state people. These are federal workers who may not even be political. We're talking about veterans, disabled veterans, spouses of veterans combined. They all make up like 30% of the federal workforce who are getting disproportionately laid off. And get this as well, these terminations are being done for cause and they're blaming the federal workers for the terminations for poor performance. So then the federal workers can't

even get like unemployment because they're just being thrown to the curb. There's a nastiness, there's a cruelty. There's an evilness right here in these MAGA Republicans. And as we've always said, when it comes to Elon Musk and Donald Trump, cruelty is the point. These are vicious, horrible people inflicting pain on we, the people and hardworking federal workers. Here is the former Fox News host turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsgseth he's asked a very simple question on fox they're like hey can you just say that russia launched the attack on ukraine unprovoked just say that and hegseth is like it's very complicated here play this clip polinsky

should come to the table because this economic partnership is an important thing for the future of his country uh and we hope that he will very soon. But fair to say Russia attacked unprovoked into Ukraine three years ago tomorrow. Fair to say it's a very complicated situation. OK, we'll leave it there. So utterly pathetic. Now, back to MAGA Republican Congress member Mark Wayne Mullen. Here's what he has to say on Trump's refusal to criticize Putin.

He goes, it's up to the Russian people, huh? As our editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski, says, yeah, Russian people who criticize Putin end up falling out of windows in a gulag or poison. And let's be clear, that's what these MAGAs want to do to us. And right now we're rising up we're standing up i see people across the country at these town halls taking to the streets and people are saying do not turn america into russia we're already in an authoritarian regime here in the united states the issue is is will the authoritarian regime fully trample on all of our rights. And we're standing up against it. Back to, here, let me show you this one. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, who downplays

Doge, mass government firings, saying that what we're really trying to do here is we're going to reprivatize, what we're really trying to do here is reprivatize the economy like Trump promised. Ha ha ha. This is what we're doing. We're reprivatizing it. Here, play the clip. Private sector will not be crowded out anymore. All the jobs created by the Biden, not all, but the 70, 85% of the jobs created by the Biden administration were government jobs, government adjacent.

They crowded out the private sector. The government interest rates spiked. You know, I would just point out interest rates are down five weeks in a row on the tenure since President Trump took office and mortgage rates are down. We're going to get that down. I was sitting next to I noticed you're going to have Governor Youngkin later. I was sitting next to him on Friday, and I said, Governor, how do you feel about these layoffs in northern Virginia? And he said, Scott, I think you told me there's something like 350,000 private sector job openings in Virginia. The state of Virginia has a portal. So there are plenty of private sector jobs, and those are good paying, And we're going to reprivatize this economy like President Trump promised.

I think you will appreciate that impression of Besson. I mean, the most arrogant guy who's like, oh, I mean, this guy's worth like nearly a billion dollars. And he's there. We're just trying to reprivatize it. That's why we're doing all this. Just like ridiculous stuff. Here is Mike Lawler, who tries to pretend that he's a moderate, but let's just say what he is.

He's really a MAGA, basically, and he's from New York. He ain't moderate at all. Mike Lawler here, soft pedals doge, claiming that what Musk is doing is actually not firing people. This is actually a comprehensive forensic audit. That's what's going on. Here, play this clip. All right, let me show you some Democrats right here. Democratic Senator Von Hollen.

Let's play it. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency at the direction of President Trump is to find efficiencies and savings and make sure that our federal workforce is doing their jobs and doing it effectively. We have many, many, many people who do a phenomenal job on behalf of the American people. But I think ultimately in any government, when a new administration comes in, whether it's a state government, whether it's a local government, and I've served at every level of government, you know, a new administration is always going to do a review and try to find efficiencies across the board. When you're staring down $36 trillion in debt and counting, you know, obviously something has to give. And

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Look, we've always stood with the good guys. We stood with Churchill against Hitler in World War One. We stood with the good guys. Even when we've gotten it wrong in Vietnam, we were standing with the good guys against the Viet Cong in Iraq. We were going after Saddam Hussein. Now this president is standing with the bad guy. He's saying Zelensky is the problem when Zelensky with very few resources is trying to stand up for democracy against a totalitarian butcher. What really worries me, Shannon, though, is what do you think President Xi is thinking? Cuz President Xi wakes up every single morning thinking is today they go, the day I go into Taiwan. Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, let's play it.

Are House Democrats going to vote to keep the government open, or are you just going to let the Republicans be in charge of all of it? First of all, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, because as we've been discussing, we have to stop this reckless Republican budget from going forward, and that's going to be on the floor on Tuesday. Now, there are ongoing discussions being led by Rosa DeLauro, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, to see if an enlightened agreement can be reached in advance of March 14th,

and we'll see what takes place. What we do know is that the Republicans have the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It is their responsibility to fund the government. Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, let's play it. But the leader is absolutely correct. And I hate the headlines that keep saying the Democrats may shut the government down. This isn't up to the Democrats, right? We're not the ones that are going to shut the government down. The question is, if we will do everything to keep the government open. But right now they have a Trump trifecta. So when and if the government shuts down, it is going to be on Trump and his minions.

It is not going to be on us as Democrats because we weren't elected to gut Social Security, to gut Medicaid and Medicare, to gut USAID, to gut any of these programs that they're going after. We didn't. That's not what we campaigned on. So that's not what we're going to. So that's not what we gonna do. We'll let them to do that by themselves. Do you see the difference there? Do you see the difference there? No wonder that in the recent polls, I think that Democrats,

even Trump's pollster has Democrats up plus five in a generic. And I've seen other polls from Ipsos and CNN others showing that like Democrats would be up like almost like 15 if there were to be an election. I mean, this Trump train is crashing very, very, very quickly. Here is Donald Trump's special envoy on with CNN, again, saying that Putin didn't provoke the war in Ukraine. Play the clip. That the war, irrespective of who started it, needs to end. Too many people's lives have been expunged as a result of it. And it just doesn't make sense to the president. He wants to be the peacemaking president, peace through strength. And I don't blame him. I actually

concur right down the line with his thought process around this. That's one. Two, the war didn't need to happen. It was provoked. It doesn't necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians. There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO. The president has spoken about this. That didn't need to happen. It basically became a threat to the Russians. And so we have to deal with that fact. And those are real facts on the ground here. But be that as it may, the Russians have indicated that they are responsive to an end to this. Here is Secretary of Defense, previously a Fox host, Pete Hegseth, saying that the firing of

top military lawyers was making sure there didn't exist roadblocks to everything that's about to happen. Play this clip. Branches for people who may not know. I mean, they they give advice to the military about what is lawful and what isn't. Not surprisingly, there's been some backlash to those who are worried about their removal. One Georgetown law professor says this. Trump also firing the Army, Navy and Air Force Jags in some ways. That's even more chilling than firing the four stars.

It's what you do when you're planning to break the law. You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down. Your response to her. I don't know who Rosa is and what her hyperbole is all about. Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don't exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens in their spots. What we know about these TJAGs, they're called TJAGs inside the military. Traditionally, they've been elected by each other or chosen by each other, which is exactly how it works often with the chairman as well.

Small group of insulated officers who perpetuate the status quo. Well, guess what? Status quo hasn't worked very well at the Pentagon. It's time for fresh blood. So we're gonna open. And finally, let me share with you this clip of Democratic Senator Cory Booker. Let's play it. Democrats just lost an election largely with a closing argument accusing Trump of being a threat to the democracy. Is that the most effective messaging right now? I think the most effective messaging is talking about the crisis that's happening to Americans.

So they shouldn't be talking about a constitutional crisis. I'm saying we should be talking about what's happening to Americans. I had one of the biggest hospital leaders in my state call me up and talk about the cancer research that's now in crisis, literally ruining years of research, literally having to take cancer treatments away from people, cutting-edge breakthrough treatments. What's crazy is crisis when you have planes falling from the sky and you're cutting FAA folks. It is a crisis when nuclear regulators who are keeping our safe regulators are being cut. I could go through this. I have farmers calling me up who put out tens of thousands of dollars on the understanding and the deal that they would get certain resources

from the federal government, now threatening to lose their farms. Everywhere in America, red state to blue states, we are seeing real crises that Elon Musk, who's a billionaire, who never has to think about where his next meal is coming from, where his medical treatment and how that will be paid for. Americans are feeling a crisis right now. And they're feeling pain that to them was unimaginable in a president they put their trust in

that would lower their prices and make their lives more easily, not do things that make us so much less safe. Look, all this talk about USAID, I have visited people on the front line stopping infectious diseases from coming here. To have scientists in dangerous areas like Kampala suddenly not be able to get their access to their cell phone, their emails, and be cut off by a president and Elon Musk who are in a ham-handed, incompetent way, cutting funding that makes no

sense and ultimately won't make a difference on our deficit because the president wants to rack it up to give tax cuts to the wealthiest and create even bigger deficits in our country. Let me ask you, man, these magas are ultra pathetic, ultra maga pathetic. Tell me what you think. Hit subscribe. Help us get to 5 million subscribers. We appreciate you. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.