The MeidasTouch Podcast - Governor Josh Shapiro DESTROYS right wing governors with pitch-perfect takedown

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

MeidasTouch co-founders Ben and Brett Meiselas interview Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro about the recent extremist policies enacted by Republican governors across the country and discuss the true meaning of freedom in the United States of America. Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario i'm ben mycellus from the Midas touch network i am so excited to share with you this interview that my brother brett and i did with the governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. We had interviewed Josh Shapiro previously when he was a candidate for governor and he was the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro had also previously challenged Jordy, our younger brother, to a game of basketball where Governor Shapiro won the first game of Gov, kind of like horse, but they played G-O-V. And then Jordy did win the one-on-one game. But as Governor Shapiro talks about towards the end of the interview,

he is at least 20 years older than Jordy, so you got to give him credit there. But what was really important that we talked about is these red states with some of these Republican governors are really becoming laboratories of autocracy, and they're taking freedom away from the people of their states. It's dystopian, it is horrific, and it is, frankly, anti-American. So it was great to have this interview with a governor, like Governor Shapiro, in a state like Pennsylvania, where he is protecting people's freedoms,

and his policies are not these performative stunts that we are seeing in this right-wing MAGA echo chamber, but he's actually delivering results for the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So in this interview, we asked Governor Shapiro a lot of questions about, well, what do you think about these policies of people like DeSantis and Abbott and some of these really extreme right-wing court decisions recently. And we get into a lot more as well. So without further ado, let me play the interview that we did with Governor Josh Shapiro. Let's play it.

I'm Ben Micellis from the Midas Touch Network, joined by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Governor, welcome. Hey, it's great to see you. How you doing? Doing good. I keep replaying that video of you and Jordy playing basketball. We won't remind our viewers who won and what happened there. We'll save that for another day. But I want to get I want to get right into it. I want to compare what's going on in Pennsylvania to what's been happening in some of these red states with Republican governors? Right. In the very late hours of Thursday, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a near total six week abortion ban into law. What was your reaction to that, Governor?

Well, I think it's interesting that he did it at like 11 o'clock at night in the shadow of darkness by himself, because I think he realized, or should know, he's doing something wrong. And what he's doing wrong is restricting the freedoms of Floridians, taking away their fundamental right to make decisions over their own bodies. Here in Pennsylvania, we value real freedom, the kind of real freedom that allows women to make decisions over their own bodies, the kind of freedom that allows people to marry who they love, the kind of freedom that actually empowers parents to make decisions over their kids' education. And yet, what we're seeing in Florida, what we're seeing from some of these other extremist governors is they love to talk a good game about freedom and patriotism, but what they actually work on every day is restricting that freedom,

is actually not dealing with the fundamental underlying challenges that people have, whether it's hunger or homelessness, a lack of quality education, growing the economy. These are things that I work on every single day here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, things that actually matter to people, things that expand their freedom, not restricting it the way the governor of Florida has. And I think, you know, what he has done to women there is absolutely abhorrent. I want women here in Pennsylvania to know that we respect you and we respect your freedom and your ability to make decisions over your own body. And what do you think it says about the way Governor DeSantis put forward this policy, kind of doing it in the dead of night in a private ceremony? Why do you think he's trying to hide these actions as well, if he's so proud of signing

these bills into law? Because he knows it's wrong. And he knows it's really against where the vast majority of people are, where women clearly are across this country and presumably in Florida. And I think he's ashamed of what he did. That's why he did it in the dark night. I think it also speaks to just how, you know, profoundly weak of a person that he really is. The guy loves to get out there and beat his chest and make a lot of noise, but he's just a profoundly weak person and weak character. And I think that is why he decided in really the dark of night without any fanfare to sign that overly restrictive bill, a bill that takes away the freedom from millions of women in Florida. We will never do that here in Pennsylvania. I will always stand up for women here in the Commonwealth and protect their fundamental freedoms.

And Governor, we're seeing this kind of across the country right now, these laboratories of autocracy, so to speak, in a lot of these red states. And just the other day, we saw this Trump appointed judge from Texas, Matthew Kazmarek, who made a ruling suspending the FDA's approval of Mifepristone. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has since weighed in, partially stayed the order as it relates to suspending the 2000 approval. But it has created a lot of confusion right now. What's your reaction to that ruling? What should the people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania know about how this impacts them?

Well, look, this is the effect of Dobbs, right? What Dobbs says is we're going to leave these issues up to the states. And we've seen so many states restrict abortion rights or outright deny it. We're seeing it, for example, in our neighbor in West Virginia, just outside of southwestern Pennsylvania. And as a result, we've seen a 400% increase in the number of women coming from out of state to access reproductive health care in one of our two Pittsburgh clinics. Now, what we're seeing with Mifepristone is the next step in that process to restrict the freedom of women across this country.

There were really two decisions. One got a lot more attention than the other by lower courts. The one was from that judge in Texas, that extremist, who I think was just absolutely wrong on the law taking away access to Mifepristone. The other was actually in Washington state, the northwest corner of our country, which protected access to Mifepristone. And there were 17 states, including Pennsylvania, who were party to that suit. So when it comes to our rights here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, they're still protected. Women can still access legal and safe medicinal abortion and procedural abortion.

The problem we have, of course, is that this issue, because you have this split in the courts, is likely to end up in the United States Supreme Court. Given what they did with Dobbs, we just don't know. And I'm very worried about this. A lot of people look to you right now as not just a leader in Pennsylvania, but I think people also look to you as a national political force. You're a voice of reason in the sea of a ton of chaos out there. What's your message to kind of Americans just generally out there about all that's going on? Is there kind of hope for people for the future amid the chaos, amid this push towards autocracy that these red states are unleashing on the country? I think there is hope.

I think it matters who your governor is now. It matters what state you're in. No longer can we count on that sort of national standard, that uniformity that protects people's rights. You have this group of Republican governors led by the Florida governor who are hell-bent on restricting your freedom. And I think people should be worried about that, and that should motivate them to get to the polls. While we defeated a number of extremists in the last election cycle in 2022, certainly I did here in Pennsylvania, those people are still around. They're still accumulating power. They're running for office and they need to be defeated. Now, there are some bright spots. When Dobbs went into effect, trigger laws, you know, ultimately were put back in place. That is the laws that existed before

Roe. One of those trigger laws was in Michigan, as an example, that completely banned abortion, yet a Democratic governor there, Gretchen Whitmer, a good friend of mine, together with a new Democratic majority legislature, actually repealed that and gave women the right to choose again in Michigan. So we are seeing some bright spots, but it all comes back to voter participation. It all comes back to people recognizing the importance of these state elections for governor and state representative, state senator. These elections have real consequences. And let's not forget the reason why we are in this position is because Donald Trump got to appoint three members of the United States Supreme Court, because in 2016, people didn't show up the way they should have. And that is a, we now have seen a direct result of his appointments.

And so we have got to recognize the causal connection between our politics and our own level of civic engagement and the policies that we have in our individual states. I love that you brought up Governor Whitmer there because there is perhaps no better examples other than you and Governor Whitmer out there when you compare them to these Republican governors about just how much your vote actually matters. In Michigan, just so our listeners are aware, for the first time in 40 years, Democrats control all chambers of the government in Michigan, which is why Governor Whitmer was able to take out this trigger law, or as she called it, a zombie law, which rose up after the death of Roe v. Wade. And just imagine in Pennsylvania, if Governor Shapiro wasn't in there, a lot of freedoms would not be protected right now. And what I love to see, too, is you are bringing the information directly to the people. I just saw you launched a website in the Commonwealth for

women seeking abortion care. Can you tell us about that initiative and how it could help people figure out where they could get their health care? Yeah, look, I say all the time women should have the freedom to make decisions over their own bodies. A big part of that freedom is having access to information. And so what we did was we developed a website, pa.gov slash freedom to choose. If you're from Pennsylvania, go on there and you can find access to reproductive health care clinics in your region. And if you can't afford that health care, there's also helpful resources on where to get the dollars to be able to pay for it. If you're not from Pennsylvania, check out that website and ask your governor, ask your state

lawmakers, ask your cabinet secretaries to put something like that in place. Knowledge is power, and I want women here in Pennsylvania to have that knowledge and exercise their power. And these are things that really affects people's lives on an incredibly personal level. It's not these sort of intangible things that you consistently hear from these Republican governors, like from Ron DeSantis, for example. I know we keep bringing him up, but it feels like every other word of his mouth is woke, woke, woke, woke, woke, woke, woke this, woke that. What do you make of these Republican governors who are so focused on the woke thing? They are so full of shit. And don't bleep me on that because I'm serious. They're completely full of shit. These are the people that love to blame the woke left, love to have

these battles, yet they're the ones in their states who are leading the charge to restrict people's rights and freedoms i mean it's absolutely outrageous you know if you're a corporation in florida and you don't agree with the governor's freedom limiting policies then he's going to take away your your breaks. He's going to take away your ability to manufacture your product. He's going to take away your competitive advantage. That's anti-capitalism. It's anti-freedom. It's anti-democracy. It's things that we have fought against. And then to go around and couch it in those terms, they are full of shit. And I believe that the good people of Florida and Texas and Arkansas know better and they need to rise up they need to organize and they

need to defeat that type of extremism and we sure as hell need to defeat it nationally if any of them ever get on a national ballot. And to your point when they're doing that when they're so focused on these bullshit issues to borrow phrases from you on this. By the way, if you bleep me, you better bleep yourself. This is unfiltered. This is the Midas Touch Network. You go unfiltered, Governor, on this show. This is raw, unfiltered news and politics.

But you see what happened just now in Fort Lauderdale. You see the city underwater completely. And you saw Ron DeSantis completely in another state entirely in Ohio talking about the same things. Woke, woke, woke. So you see that those distractions are not only ridiculous, but they have real life consequences when your constituents actually need you to be doing the work of governing. Yeah. I mean, look, he's clearly not taking care of business in florida people are really struggling i was back and forth with a dear friend uh this morning in fort lauderdale fred gutenberg who's been one of the great leaders on uh combating gun violence in our communities and he's sending me photos of his son kayaking down the streets in you know

around the fort lauderdale area, people are really struggling and suffering right now. And he clearly doesn't have any plans to fix Florida or help Florida. And so he's running around with, you know, with his message of restricting freedom across this country. And I think he'll be rejected. He's, this is a guy without a particularly good political acumen. He went all in for my opponent in the last election who suffered. That worked great for him. Yeah. And I think he's also just a profoundly weak governor and he's glass jawed. And I think he is not going to survive this process well. And this will be my last question about him. But you saw that weakness really exposed in this whole Disney situation. I mean, what do you make of a governor attacking the biggest business in that governor's state and all the focus, you know, by Republicans on sort of trying to punish anybody who doesn't agree with their beliefs?

It goes back to what I said before. I mean, he is not someone and those like him are not people who really believe in freedom. They don't really believe in capitalism. I mean, the fact that you have a business as large and successful as Disney and you get ticked off by something that they said because they're not willing to go along with your agenda to, you know, to ostracize the LGBTQ community, which is what he wanted them to do. That's something that I think just shows a profound weakness on his part, but it's anti-competitive. It's something that is going to hurt business. And I think if you're any CEO out there, any business leader, you need to be very

fearful of what some of these governors on the far right are trying to do. They are creating an environment that is less competitive. They are driving out innovation from their states. They're making it less welcoming to innovative young employees who are going to help develop the next great technology, who are going to do the jobs that we need done today and tomorrow. They are driving them out. The good news is they have other states that they can come to, whether it's Pennsylvania or Michigan, other states where we value freedom and we value individuals no matter what they look like, where they come from, who they love or who they pray to.

We want you here and you are part of helping us be competitive. You're part of helping us gain an advantage. And I think that philosophy that the governor of Florida and others continue to embrace is only going to drive out competition, is only going to make it harder for economies to grow, and is really, really against freedom and patriotism and democracy, things that are critical to the future success of this great nation. I love that you use those terms that, you know, Republicans often try to use and cloak their anti-freedom actions in freedom, their anti-patriotic actions in patriotism. And one of these terms that they also use, which they seem to be just extremely against,

is the term law and order. And you yourself are the former attorney general of Pennsylvania. I assume the law and order is actually something that is quite important to you. What do you make of these Republican attacks of law and order on Donald Trump's threats directed at attorney generals, on prosecutors, these Republican House members' efforts to interfere with local criminal elections? What do you make as a former attorney general looking at all that? I mean, it's just extraordinary hypocrisy on their part. We are a nation of laws, a nation of laws where we need to respect our courts, respect our police and our prosecutors. It doesn't mean that they're above the law.

It doesn't mean that they have a right to violate other people's rights. But we have a responsibility to get back to respecting law and order, respecting the rule of law in this country. The former president has a presumption of innocence. He should now go through the same criminal process that others have had to go through, and we'll let that case play out based on the judge, the jury, and those who are participating in that process. Any effort to interfere with that for some short-term political gain to suck up to the former president because you think it might get you, you know, some financial support or some political support is something that really undermines our, you know, democracy. It underlines rule of law in this nation. And it's something

that is really dangerous for our democracy. And somebody else undermining the rule of law is another governor in this country, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who recently stated that he'll be pardoning Daniel Perry, who was just convicted of murder when he shot a Black Lives Matter protester and veteran. And these new texts and social media posts that we're seeing coming out show how premeditated this murder was. It showed him calling black people, quote, animals and saying he wants to hunt them, saying, quote, I am racist. Like it doesn't get much clearer than that. You see Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw. He said the murderer should not only be pardoned, but he

should actually be compensated. What do you make of a governor using their pardon powers in this sort of way? You know, Brett, I'm not as familiar with the specifics of that case. I'm only aware of what I've read about. So I want to be careful about opining on any specific case like that. I think it, you know, it's pretty pathetic that these guys are reacting to some monologue from Tucker Carlson, which is really, I think, the foundation of all this phony outrage by Greg Abbott and others. I'm a governor with pardon and commutation power. That is something that is to be reserved for extraordinary cases. It's something that you should take a careful and sober look at every case. The idea that they're reacting to stuff on Fox News and they're reacting in a way that

I think really diminishes the seriousness of issuing a commutation is very, very dangerous. And again, it goes back to their hypocrisy on law and order. It goes back to their hypocrisy over the rule of law. And so it's hard for me to opine on the specifics of this case, but it's part of a broader pattern here that they just fundamentally believe that the rule of law doesn't apply to them. Take January 6th as an example. We all saw with our own eyes not only multiple laws being broken but you know very serious threats to our democracy yet those same people that you just cited in your question to me they're the ones that want to dismiss it they're the ones that want to suggest it didn't happen

they're the ones that want to suggest people shouldn't be punished or sanctioned for that that is very very dangerous we are a nation laws, and those laws need to be enforced fairly and equally across the board, and they need to be respected. And we have, unfortunately, at least it sounds like a governor of Texas who refuses to respect the rule of law. Do you think that a lot of these actions by Republicans are simply to get a positive hit on Fox News? Do you that like is a lot of their motivation you know what i think is that they're willing to sell out our democracy our freedoms our justice system in order to get some sort of quick political hit whether it's airtime on fox

news or some other uh you know political hit it's really dangerous we should be putting country first not their own you know self or self-interest first well let's talk uh let's go back to you now um let's talk about somebody who is actually putting the country first what are some of the accomplishments that you're most proud of now um in your short time as short but very impactful time as governor of the common law yeah i've been in office three months and nearly every day we repeat the same refrain that here in pennsylvania you should have the freedom to chart your own course and the opportunity to succeed. And we're trying to live up to that in a number of different ways. As an example, on day one of my administration, I signed an executive order making clear that 92% of our state government jobs, and to put that in context,

that's over 65,000 state jobs, wouldn't require a college degree. Meaning we were gonna value people's skills and background and work experience over whether or not they had a college degree, giving people more freedom to chart their own course and more opportunity to succeed. That's one example of what we've done.

We're trying to tackle some of the big issues that are holding us back from mental health by putting a mental health counselor in every single school across this Commonwealth, to growing our economy and giving more people a shot, particularly from forgotten communities and communities of color. Making sure that we invest in public safety. Yes, I do believe

we need to hire more police in our communities, but they need to be properly trained. They need to be people from the community that they're sworn to serve and protect. We need to make sure that we're addressing gun violence in our communities, and we've put forth plans to do just that. So we're trying to tackle common sense solutions that actually make people's lives better. Things, by the way, that draw bipartisan support day in and day out. This is what I think public wants us to focus on, not some of this nonsense that some of these other governors across the country spend their time bloviating about. And I think the polling bears that out.

And I think when you ask people, they want action on gun safety reform. They want the freedom to choose. They want freedom over their own bodies. And time and time again, the polling bears that out. And Governor, I really like and respect you and respect the work you do because you do the work for the people. It's not because you have a D next to your name. It's not because Jordy may have beat you in basketball. No, no, no, no, no. Hold on. I beat him once and beat me once. This is true. You know what? Let me finish it off then with a hard-hitting question for you. You beat Jordy in a game of Gov, which is like horse for those who don't know, a GOV. Jordy beat you in the one-on-one. That's a pretty even tie right there. By one point. Well, technically by two because he had to win by two but yes. Are we going to see a tie

breaker in the near future, Governor, at the Governor's Mansion? I would love that. We put a hoop in at the Governor's residence. I'd love to have him there. I would like to also remind your viewers and your listeners, Jordy's like 20 years younger than me. So, the fact that he only won by a bucket and lost in Gov, I think, says more about his deficiencies as a basketball player. Oh, ending the interview with some hard hitting words from Governor Shapiro. But in all seriousness, Governor, I want to thank you for your work.

I want to thank you for taking the time to speak to us. I know the Midas Mighty out there appreciate hearing directly from you and what you're doing to help people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and to help Americans all throughout the country and to show everybody what real freedom actually means. It's such a delight to actually see that. So thank you, Governor Shapiro, for joining us today on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Awesome to be with you. And thanks for what you guys do. I mean, the way you not only inform folks, but you get them engaged and you get them to take action to protect our democracy. It really, really matters. And I just want to say thanks. Appreciate you and your brothers and look forward to seeing you guys soon. Thank you, Governor Shapiro. And shout out to the Midas Mighty.