The MeidasTouch Podcast - Guardians of the Democracy with Scaramucci and Rep. Gomez

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

What. A. Show. Today, the brothers kick things off by punching back at dumb fact checks, before talking about the GOP's complete capitulation to QAnon. Next, the Meidas Brothers welcome Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Democrat from CA's 34th district, who famously drafted the resolution to expel Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Rep. Gomez also gives his raw and harrowing recounting of his experience in the Capitol during the January 6th attack. The brothers then bring you the latest with the Biden administration, and Ben and Brett debate the merits of targeted stimulus checks. Are you #TeamBen or #TeamBrett? Later, the brothers have a raw and honest interview with former White House Communications Director and Founder of SkyBridge Capital Anthony 'The Mooch" Scaramucci Listen to Scaramucci's new podcast MoochFM anywhere you get podcasts If you like the show, remember to subscribe and give us a 5-star rating! As always, share your thoughts with us on social @Meidastouch. --- 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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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to the Midas Touch Podcast. Ben Micellis here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett Micellis and Jordy Micellis. We have an incredible episode for you, jam-packed with some amazing guests. Who do we got, Ben? Who do we got today? Oh, you know, just a little something. We got Congressman Jimmy Gomez, okay,

introducing some legislation to get rid of the Marjorie Taylor Greene QAnon. But you know who we also have? Who? The Mooch. Mooch! Anthony Scaramucci. Let's go. Scaramucci is from Long Island. So in my last Long Island interview with Michael Cohen, who's from Long Island, Cohen, as the elder Long Islander, really ripped into me hard, like really hard, really hard, talked about my looks. My girlfriend, Sochi, she was listening to the podcast when Cohen called me ugly. And so my girlfriend, as she was listening to it, I was in the same room. She looked at me and she

said, I don't think you're ugly, Ben. I have a mooch story that I can't wait to tell with them on it. And I'm not going to tell you two about it until we interview them later. It's a deep tease right there. It's a deep tease. And we've got some real action going on in the Midas Touch world that we'll get to. We'll get to the fact that Midas Touch filed a federal lawsuit against Marjorie Taylor Greene. We'll talk about that lawsuit.

But the very first thing I want to talk about is, you know, people are trying to take some shots at Midas Touch. People are trying to take some shots at Midas Touch under the cloak of fact checking when I think they are unfair and they are people who I respect. And so I want to get into it. I want to have an honest discussion about where we feel about it. But let me pass it over to Jordy. Say what's up. Let's pass it over to Brett. Well, I'm doing all right, man. I mean, there was a report that came out or a story, I should say, that basically fact checked our Marco Rubio ad. Brett, I'll let you get into the weeds of it. Yes. Daniel Dale wrote the story. And Daniel Dale is a well-respected CNN fact checker. I always love, I love, I think Daniel Dale does a fantastic, I think he does a fantastic job. I think he got, went a little, a little into the

weeds here to try to somehow defend Marco Rubio. And I'm not totally sure why he decided to dig in on this, but basically we did a Marco Rubio ad where we said, why isn't Marco Rubio coming out and condemning these attacks? Why is he supporting the domestic terrorism that took place on January 6th? trucks in Texas who were trying to run Joe Biden's campaign bus off the road, telling them we love it and we do that all the time. And Rubio said, we love it in Florida when people, when domestic terrorists ram people's vehicles off the road in acts of political violence. And so what what what Dale's argument was, is that because Rubio released a statement days after the attack where he said, yes, of course, I condemn the attacks on January 6th, that we're supposed to take Rubio at his word that he condemns the attacks. Now, when Rubio said this, he also said, yes, I condemn the attacks on January 6th, but we should also be condemning the Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer. He did

this both sides ism thing. And I don't know if you've ever received an apology for somebody that was that added a but. I'm sorry I did that, but you deserved it. But remember when you did X, Y and Z. But that's not really a condemnation of the thing. It's really both sides journalism at its worst to do it. And here's how politicians work. They give you a little bit so that they could have some political cover on each side of the issue. Trump was very effective in doing this. He would say one thing about an issue and then he'd say another thing about the issue. Now, what I think you as a fact checker should do is not say, oh, well, Trump said he's the least racist person on the planet. So he's the least racist person on the

planet. Oh, Trump condemned the attacks on January 6th. So he condemned it. Why is everyone saying that he supported it? Because you can't take these people at their word. You need to be able to look at the actions and see if the actions back up the sentiment. By Daniel Dale's logic here, Trump condemned the failed coup. So we should take him at his word there. Kevin McCarthy claims he doesn't know what QAnon is. I think it would be helpful if you could hear exactly what she told all of us, denouncing QAnon. I don't know if I say it right. I don't even know what it is. He said it. So according to Daniel Dale, once you say it, then you've condemned it. You have to be able to look at the full picture. I'll tell you this. If somebody says I hate eating hamburgers and they're shoveling

Big Macs in their mouth while they're saying it, you should not take them at their word that they say they don't like hamburgers. And this is what they're saying. So Rubio's spokesman, when asked by Daniel Dale, when Rubio said that he loved these domestic terrorists ramming the Biden tour bus off the road, this is what Rubio's press secretary or spokesperson said. He said that Rubio was, it's clear in the context that Rubio was applauding pro-Trump convoys and boat parades in general,

not applauding harassment of campaign buses. And so when Daniel Dale gives that a voice and fact checkers give that a voice, I think you're really doing a disservice to the nation. It's a 30 second ad that we did. And Daniel Dale says, our video, which got over 1.1 million views, doesn't offer this kind of nuanced criticism 32nd ad that we did. And Daniel Dale says, our video, which got over 1.1 million views,

doesn't offer this kind of nuanced criticism of the strengths of Rubio's responses to the attack. And I think this is a big flaw that just exists in the media. On the one hand, you have Fox News, you have Newsmax, you have OAN, who are not only not giving nuance, they're just giving blatant, direct lies. I think we as pro-democracy individuals, as progressives, we can look at the totality of circumstances of a given situation and we can call out anti-democratic people for what they are. I don't think that you have to give Rubio a nuanced platform when that nuance is nihilistic and when that nuance is not accurate. We could act as a jury. We could assess his actions. And when he calls impeachment stupid, when he takes no actions against Trump, when he says he loves it about domestic terrorist convoys ramming Biden's bus off the road, we can make an assessment and say that's not condemnation, period. And to be fact-checked only helps, I think, radicalize the right. Moving to the next topic, which is the GOP

fully embracing Marjorie Taylor Greene. They refuse to take any action against her. As Brett alluded to before, the minority leader of the GOP, Kevin McCarthy, says he doesn't even know what QAnon is. Again, under Daniel Dale's philosophy, we should just listen to Kevin McCarthy and just take his word for it that he doesn't know who QAnon is. But they refuse to take action. Today, the Democrats took action and voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from the Education Committee in Congress and the House of Representatives. It's absurd that she has that position for all reasons, but specifically because she believes that the Parkland shooting

is fake, that she harassed the victims of the Parkland shooting. There's videos of her harassing it. She believes that all of these school shootings are false flags, which she says, as part of her lies and conspiracy theories. So to put her on the education committee is just totally absurd. But let's talk about what Midas Touch did

and Midas Touch taking action. And so we talked about this on the past podcast that we were considering filing a federal action against her for blocking us on Twitter in violation of our First Amendment rights. Let's play the clip from the last Midas Touch podcast. So the question becomes, should we, Midas Touch, sue her? I am leaning yes. I am a lawyer. I haven't mentioned that on the show. So I have the ability to sue her. I'd like to maybe put this as a poll to the Midas Mighty. Should Midas Touch file a lawsuit against Marjorie Taylor Greene for blocking Midas Touch unconstitutionally?

Give us your feedback. And we got the feedback. We got the feedback. The vote was overwhelmingly yes. Ben, are you a lawyer? I am a lawyer. I just wanted to make sure we mentioned it this episode. We filed a federal lawsuit in the Central District of California under the First Amendment, when someone assumes a position of power within the government, for them to foreclose their social media to the public is akin to them foreclosing public forums in physical spaces where people can speak freely about issues. And so when Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to spew baseless

conspiracy theories on the public forum as a politician, as a government official on her Twitter account, she can't foreclose that criticism by groups like Midas Touch and many others. I mean, she's blocked thousands of people based on a lot of the responses that I've gotten since we filed the lawsuit and other responses that I've seen. So the next step is, is that the case goes on. She's been served. We served her yesterday in the House of Representatives, and we will keep the Midas Mighty updated on what the status of that lawsuit is. But yesterday in other news, I was also reading a bunch of polls that just quite frankly shocked me. The GOP is truly the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene now.

Yeah, I mean, so the House had a meeting yesterday and they were debating a few different things. They wanted to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene and debate if they would remove her from her committee positions. And they were going to do a vote on whether Liz Cheney should lose her committee assignments. The Republicans are mad at Liz Cheney because Liz Cheney refused to go along with the lies about election fraud. She's supporting the impeachment of Trump. She's supporting American democracy. And the Republican Party has established itself as an anti-democratic party. And a new Axios service monkey poll shows that Marjorie

Taylor Greene is far more popular than Liz Cheney in the party. And 70% of those people say they've lost faith in American democracy. For them, it's like democracy was great when white people outvoted the rest of the country. But now that the makeup of the country is different, that we're a much more diverse country, and suddenly white people are losing their power, all of a sudden democracy is no good. And they need authoritarianism to preserve white supremacy in America. That's what it means when the Republicans say that they've lost faith in the American democracy. And Donald Trump was a catalyst, but he was symptomatic of where the Republican Party was going anyway. Two observations. The first, you just mentioned that the poll was done by a group called Survey Monkey with Axios.

Let's just agree that that's a funny name for a... I've never heard of SurveyMonkey, but no? It kind of takes the sting out of the seriousness of like, so Axios and SurveyMonkey, Paul, you know, believes... I would agree with you on that one. I mean, I get the, in theory, you know... No, I don't even understand why... That's why they need to pair with Axios, though. It makes it all sound much more serious.

Yeah. In a poll over authoritarianism, a survey monkey, the survey donkeys, the survey donkeys. And so it's one observation. The other stat there, though, is is that 59% of people who are Republicans or identify as Republicans, so just 10%, 11% less than that, say they've lost faith in American democracy. Those are the stakes. And that's why when these Republicans are giving these half-hearted BS statements that are inconsistent with their anti-democratic conduct, it is vital that we call them out on it directly, blatantly, that we serve as judge and jury, that we assess the totality of the circumstances. And if someone's actions show that they're not condemning fascism, we can say clearly and unabashedly that that person has not condemned the conduct and that that person is anti-democratic. Amen. Do not give them the political cover that they want.

There is no reason to do it. And what was interesting though, Ben, Jordy. Jordy, just so everybody knows, Jordy's got his 1980s hip hop look going. He's got the full sweatsuit, Nike. He's got the hat kind of tilted upwards kind of uh you guys are just jealous that you don't have my fashion style no it's good i mean the fans uh you know disagree occasionally with your fashion choices but we'll move on so they held a a secret ballot guys a secret ballot. You know, the party of courage over here held a secret ballot to determine the fate of Liz Cheney's committee assignments. And to the shock of nut jobs like Matt Gaetz, her committee assignments were actually upheld by a hundred forty five to sixty one vote.

So what's interesting about that is what it tells us about the GQP. Let's call the GQP, the G. Yeah, Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi says in her recent press release when McCarthy refused to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments where they say the location of where a congressman was from, She had Minority Leader McCarthy as Q California instead of Republican California. It's so good. I give her an honorary sake bomb for that. Now she can't sake bomb, obviously,

because she's not Jen Psaki, but honorary sake bomb for that comment, Pelosi. What's interesting though, is what this tells us about the GOP and their relationship to Trump. Because apparently they might be actually in support of impeaching him and against this kooky wing of their party. But they are afraid to say it publicly. They're motivated by fear, fear of their lives, fear of their political futures.

So they hide behind this conspiracy theory garbage. They prop up these horrendous and dangerous candidates at the expense of America because they're scared. Yeah. And look, at the end of the day, when we talk about, though, domestic terrorism, when we talk about terrorism, the objective of terror is to cause fear. And what we're seeing is is that Trump's domestic terrorism, the domestic terrorism wing of the GOP, which has now occupied the leadership, has literally scared the GOP members from voting how they may otherwise really want to vote. They're so scared, in fact, that Kevin McCarthy had to hold a secret ballot. They are fearful of their lives because of the QAnon wing in the Republican Party. And to talk more about the QAnon wing of the Republican Party, a man who was trapped inside the gallery of the House of Representatives when the QAnon wing of the Republican Party inspired an insurrection, aided and abetted an insurrection, and led to terrorists bred in the United States to attack

the Capitol building. When we come back, we will hear from Congressman Jimmy Gomez, who will tell us about his experience being trapped in the United States Capitol building during the insurrection and his efforts to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene from the United States Congress. We'll be right back. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life, but you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans,

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Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. We have Congressman Jimmy Gomez here from California's 34th congressional district. On a personal note, that is my congressional district.

For all the haters out there, I'm not going to say specifically where I reside in that probably for the best, probably for that congressional district. But I am somewhere in that congressional district. Congressman Gomez, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me. So Congressman Gomez, before I get into a major topic of conversation today, which is the resolution you introduced to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon conspiracy theorist, anti-Semite, all around horrible person. I want to get into just your background first and

your particular story, which is quite inspirational from your roots to how you became a congressman in 2017. I'd love to hear that, Congressman Gomez. Oh, no, thank you. When we're offline, you have to tell me where you live and maybe I can give you some good spots to go eat and once the bars are open to go drink at, you know, I grew up in, I'm the youngest of six of immigrant parents. They came from Mexico before my siblings were born there. They came here and they started off in Orange County and eventually went to Riverside, California because our house was getting knocked down for a strip mall. So we got, we're displaced back in the day and we ended up in Riverside and they worked four or five, six jobs a week to make ends meet.

And when I was about seven years old, I ended up getting sick with pneumonia, spent a week in the hospital. And that week it almost bankrupt my family because we didn't have health insurance. A lot of from that, I kind of just started thinking about why are things so messed up, right? So fucked up in a lot of respects, right? Why is it like, why are my parents working four or five jobs to make ends meet? We don't have health insurance.

A friend of mine took me to sign up for a community college class. Took one class and then did well. And I got a B. For me, that was great. So I decided to go full time. First, I was a biochem major. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to take care of people who didn't have health insurance, like my parents.

But I went to a workshop on political activism. And this guy who was a labor guy taught us about how one person can make a big difference. It blew my mind. Something just clicked. And I ran for president of the Honor Society about a week later. Beat a Marine who was older. He was like 27. I was 20.

And ended up becoming president of the Honor Society by one vote. And then that following year, he actually told me, he's like, you know what, you should go into politics. And I said, well, I don't have any money. I ride a bike. I don't even have a car. My parents have zero connections. How am I going to get into politics? He's like, you'll figure it out. So I changed my major and a year I transferred to UCLA and got a master's in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government. In 2016, I ran for Congress and won in a 23-person primary. So it's been a hell of a ride, but always keep it in mind, personal experiences, what are people suffering, how can we make things

better, how can we give people opportunity, and then just throwing some punches here and there. What was it like the first time you walked in to the House of Representatives gallery when you were sworn in with the whole background that you just explained? Like what was going through your mind? When I went to the floor, it was overwhelming. It just felt special since my mother got to see it. My mother who cleaned houses for a living. Just having her in the gallery when I took the office on the floor with everybody, that was pretty, pretty unique.

And it shows that a kid of immigrants who, you know, parents were undocumented just got sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives. And that's now it's my job to fight for everybody who's in the same positions. So you're ready to fight, but I'm not sure you were ready to fight in the way that January 6th happened, where there was an actual insurrection led and encouraged by a president, a former president of the United States, Donald Trump. So you were actually inside the gallery, as I understand it. There's a group of Congress people

being called the Gallery Nine of people who were in there to vote. You were there. What was going through your mind at the time when you were literally there as the insurrectionists arrived? How are you processing that now? A lot of the stuff is just, some of it is just process, right? It just, you go through the motions, you know certain things are going to happen. If you have the votes, you have the votes, you don't have the votes. There's not a lot of suspense at times. I thought things would play out that way, that they would object to certain states.

We would have a debate. We would vote up and down. Democrats have more votes. That's it, right? I didn't think it was going to be a big issue. And I should have listened to my chief of staff. I was earlier in the week. She's like, I got sworn in on saturday was january 3rd and i think on monday she's like

oh this could be a hellish week and i said let's keep positive yeah there's gonna be protesters it's not gonna be that big of a deal yet and i and we we've seen it where protesters get really rough around here like they've spit on members of congress assaulted them throwing shit at them so getting rough is not something we haven't experienced here. So I wasn't expecting that. So I went up there to the gallery. And here's the thing. The only reason why Democrats were in the gallery and side, like half the chamber is Democrats, half the chamber is Republicans, and you stick to your side. Republicans were all on the floor. They didn't go in the gallery. I was up in the gallery with some people who were, it was supposed to be like 25 in the rotated South. We went through the first few states, they went through, and then we started on Arizona. And that's when we started getting text messages from my friends, my family, Eric, my comms

director. He goes, this is crazy. I've never seen anything like this. People are scaling the walls. And I'm like, what? OK. So I wasn't really thinking about it. And I remember I had to go and use the restroom.

So I went to use the restroom. The restroom's pretty big. And there's a window there. And I looked out. And the police were dragging away some individual without a shirt and a Confederate flag. I'm like, well, that's kind of strange. How did they get to this part of the Capitol? That's all I was thinking. So we get there and my phone just started blowing up. And that's when I see they take out Speaker Pelosi, the leadership, and then Steve Scalise,

he just finished speaking and objecting to Arizona bezona be counted for joe biden and then they grab him and take him away and i'm like thinking this this little fucker is like getting dragged out of here by his security and we're being left to like fend for ourselves and that's when insane like that's when it really got bad and they try to keep going even like this priest um she's not a she was a minister. She tried to like, get people to say a prayer like nobody's having it. We got to get out of here. We tried to keep going. And then the security came in and said, Okay, they, they breached the building. And they're in the rotunda. The rotunda is not that far from like the house floor. And I was just thinking, Okay, what are we gonna do? And the people on the floor, they got them out. And the Republicans were the first ones out. They

go like stick around. The Democrats were out and everybody in the gallery is like, hey, what about us? And they're like, you got to run to the far end of the gallery. Before I started running, I ended up with like, I don't want to be seen as a member. So we all wear these pins, right? These lapel pins right here. And I took my jacket off and I was like, okay, and put it in the ball. And then I took off my tie and put it in my pocket. And I was like, if they break in, I'm going to try to like blend in as quickly as possible into like, like the sea of people. I'm just like, okay. So you basically were trying to hide, literally trying to go incognito and hide from the attackers to blend in as one of them or just as not a congressperson. Yeah. But what you didn't realize is to blend in with them, you would have to wear horns and you'd have to actually take off your shirt.

That's how you would blend in. Yeah, I would have to wear, if I had a QAnon, like a t-shirt or something, then I would have blended in easily. But no, I like, so I was just thinking, because we didn't see him. We didn't have anything like our phones were jammed because there's too many people in the building we start running and the gallery is steep in order to run it's divided into like different sections and there's handrails between the sections of the stairs so the handrails are just at the perfect height where you can't jump over them and it's really hard to duck underneath them so it was like we had to like run and then slide underneath i bet when you

were sworn into congress you did not imagine a day where you had to be like jason bourne some of the people that were up in the gallery got out but the the insurrectionists ended up making it to the top to the third floor and they and they shut it down. And then they told us to get down since the FBI pulled guns. And there was like, there's flashbangs going on. You can hear banging on the door. And then we're trying to tell other members, yelling at other members to get down. And I was looking for stuff to fight with or to hide. And it was just, there was nothing up there. But then I thought to myself, well, shit, my wife might be watching this. And I haven't even sent her a text.

So I sent a text, oh, trying to get out of the Capitol with police. That's all I said. It was like, just not too worrier. And later I find out there's members that were calling their loved ones saying, I love you. That's what I did not want to do to my wife. Right. The minute you say, oh, I love you, that's when they freak out. Eric Swalwell, I heard, sent a text to his wife saying, kiss the babies for me.

And she's like, what? So that's not what you do. And praying, some members were praying. I didn't hear them because it was too much emotion. But we finally made it out. And I was, when we were getting out, like, yeah, I never thought we would be in a situation like that in the house. I grew up in Riverside. I went to backyard parties where people get in fights and somebody bust out a gun and everybody runs. Right. You jump the fence, you get out, you get away. Right.

When you can't get away, that's when it's terrible. That's when you're like you're just thinking to yourself, what the fuck is going on here? To me, one of the horrifying things about this attack is that the attack wasn't just an outsider event. It seems inspired and incited by your peers in Congress. And the attackers were parroting the same conspiracy theories as Republican members of the House. One of those members, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, you just introduced a resolution to expel her from Congress. What led you to introduce that resolution? What's the current status of it? And is it enough right now there? It looks like they're about to remove her from all of her committees. Is that enough? Or do you think we need to expel her and kick her out?

I think we need to expel her. I think she's an extremely dangerous individual because she's willing to use lies and propaganda to incite was stormed, and the only way they can protect their democracy was to overturn and stop the certification of electoral vote. She was part of it. I was livid. And I said from that, when I got asked by a reporter, I was coming out of the tunnel, and I was still kind of shaken, you know, asked my thoughts. And I said, Donald Trump should be brought up on treason. I said, this is how a coup starts and democracy dies. And I was emotional about it because it was just infuriating. A country that gave me so much, right? A kid of immigrant parents who got elected to Congress that has been fighting for his

community. I was like, wow, I can't believe. And I did have this thought when I was in the gallery. I was thinking, is this the end of our democracy when it when it was starting out and and i got a little emotional before like we started running because that's what was running through my head i'm like is this it she is part of it if donald trump is conspirator number one she's conspirator number two she believes in all these ideas but and this is the is the thing, you know, Donald Trump, I believe is just an opportunist,

like uses these ideas and what's out there to gain power, to gain money, to get his way. I believe Marjorie Taylor Greene believes in QAnon. She is a dangerous individual. Yeah, we're going to strip her from her committees.

I see that as just step one. Eventually, we have to expel her because she's going to still have a platform that she can use to incite more political violence. And if we don't take that step, there might be one of her followers that takes a gun and shoots somebody, right? Remember, right after, just in the last several weeks weeks there was a guy in dc he was arrested because he had a gun and a hundred hundreds of rounds of ammunition right still stop the steel uh literature um and then you had some guy in california with pipe bombs right

so this this is real this is serious because it is extremely dangerous um and i think that if we can remove her, we can send the message that this is not going to be tolerated. I've heard from certain sources that actually there are some GOP members that support your resolution, but that they're fearful of either Minority Leader McCarthy or they're fearful of death threats. Is there any truth to that that you've seen in your congressional office? Yeah, my office has been in touch with different staffers in Republican offices, and a few have expressed interest, and they're interested, but it's true.

A Democrat wanting to expel her is one thing. Another Republican, they attack relentlessly. There's a reason why that Liz Cheney was targeted to be taken out from her leadership position by the QAnon caucus, right? The same individuals, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Boebert, all of them trying to take her out. They get even worse, right? worse right and i have also heard that even though the the members from say georgia and the ones in the south are more more nervous about signing on as co-sponsors because it's not just about being in the building and feeling unsafe is when you go home right uh i i look out my window when i now after i decided to introduce this resolution i looked out my windows and see if anybody's outside. I look on my door camera to see if anybody's put anything down.

And then I leave. Yeah, it's serious. And that's why people are cautious about moving forward to expel. But I decided even thinking about that, thinking about the danger, it's the right thing to do. It's not about being a Democrat for me or being Republican. It's about our democracy, right? Can we keep it intact? Can we rebuild and restore people's faith in it? And we have a long ways to go, but we have to start by getting rid of her. Totally. And you brought up Liz Cheney, who by secret ballot was allowed to

stay in her leadership positions. So do you think that if the vote to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene was done by a secret ballot in the same way, do you think that you would reach that two-thirds threshold needed in the House to expel her? That's a good question. Probably. It would get close. It would get a lot closer than just Democrats voting for it. But yeah, the secret ballot, here's the thing. When the Republicans turned on Trump, and there was not a lot of them, a few of them, and when Mike Pence said he couldn't do anything to stop the certification of electoral college, the people who broke out, broke in, trying to look for Nancy Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez,

threatened all elected officials, they weren't just going after them. They were chanting, hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence. And they brought scaffolding, right? And a rope. So I think they know having her here and in politics puts them in danger as much as it does Democrats. I made the argument on the last podcast that the GOP really shouldn't be called a conservative party anymore. At the leadership level,

they're a party that supports authoritarianism, anti-democracy, and QAnon. I got attacked by Breitbart for it and a bunch of other radical right-wing media. Do you think that the Republican Party at this stage, at the leadership level, even supports democracy, Congressman? McCarthy, I don't think so. McConnell only does it when it serves his needs. And right now, if you actually look at it, there's states that are introducing that are controlled by Republicans legislation to disenfranchise voters because he knows that if they can't exercise QAnon from the party, that they're going to have a devastating election in 2022. Remember, there's more Senate seats that are Republicans that are up in 2022 than Democratic seats.

McCarthy, he's politics through and through. If his politics said, and he needed to maintain his position of leader, said we got to kick her to the curb, he would have done it. But he knows that he has to keep her on board unless, and if he doesn't, he'll be tossed out as the leader of the Republicans in the House. So the QAnon caucus and the right wing are controlling and pulling the strings of McCarthy and the Republicans. So the Fox News is the Newsmax is the OANs. They seemingly exist just to spew misinformation and lie, frankly, to the American people and rally them up. Is there anything that could be done about them? Any policies that could be put in place to just contain the spread of misinformation? I've been working on this

when the back in in 16, when the lies of hillary clinton were coming out and i tried to do a bill on how do you teaching kids how to you know point out fake news how to kind of be look at news and stuff online with more of a critical eye instead of just saying oh it's online it must be real i didn't get that bill passed but i think that's something we have to do is really kind of make people, hey, what you're finding online, you have to see what it sources, what's being backed. And this is across the political spectrum. You can't just assume what you're getting fed is actually true. That's one thing. And then a lot of these other news organizations, I had a debate with staff. It's like, is there anything we can do to require them to have so much news on it, right? From like, make it balanced. Like they used to do with the, you know, ABC, CBS and NBC.

The networks had certain requirements. Cable is a whole different ballgame. Maybe you could pass something where, you know, where you would say, okay, explicitly say this is an opinion show versus a news show. Newsmax, that seems like the whole program, the whole network is about news. No, it's mostly probably opinion. So I think that's a debate that definitely needs to happen because right now people are passing off opinion as real news, as reporting the fact, which oftentimes it's not. That's actually a great idea, Congressman, and playing it out with you from my legal background. I actually think that's obtainable, you know, to pass legislation that basically says, look, you want to say what you want to say.

I mean, you can be sued for defamation if you're out there lying. But an organization that is opinion based cannot use the title news in its name, you know, which I think would have the practical effect in a Newsmax area and a Fox News of removing the word news. And you could call yourselves Fox Entertainment, you know, go for it. But don't mislead from the initial outset. I think that would actually have a drastic effect. I think it's a gentle touch. And then we go from there. But Congressman, that's my suggestion. Congressman, we're getting breaking news right now. Can we get your response? The House has just removed Marjorie Taylor Greene from all of her committees? I think that's a great first step. She shouldn't be a determined education policy. She was on the education committee for the United States. So

first, good first step, but I still believe she has to be expelled. And I'm having conversations with leadership on the timing, but it's a privileged resolution. I can call it up whenever I want. It doesn't mean that they won't make a motion to send it to the Rules Committee or table it if we don't have the votes. But I made a commitment that I will introduce this resolution to Expeller, and that's what I plan on doing. Congressman Gomez, thank you so much for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We appreciate you joining us. No, thank you so much for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We appreciate you joining us. No, thank you, guys.

Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Great interview with Congressman Jimmy Gomez. Incredibly inspirational. That's what the American dream looks like. And it's what we need to be preserving. It's why Midas Touch was created. What the current Republican Party has become is an existential threat to stories like Jimmy Gomez and other members of Congress.

Ben, the thing that Representative Gomez is doing that I think is important is he's trying to hold people like Marjorie Taylor Greene accountable. These people, they don't react well to people saying, oh, Kevin McCarthy, oh, you know what? You shouldn't say those things. Will you come out and apologize? They need action to be taken against them. And Representative Gomez is actually taking that action

to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress. And now we're seeing for the first time the consequences for these bad actors across the spectrum. Today, Fox News and some of their hosts, including Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, and some of their guests who've been on the show and Trumpies, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, they're being sued by Smartmatic for $2.7 billion for their lies, with a B for their lies. So this comes after, of course, Dominion voting systems filed two lawsuits last month against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Rudy's just going to be living in a cardboard box by the end of this month after all these lawsuits. He's now being sued for what, like $4 billion? Yeah. And look, I mean, Smartmatic in many ways has an easier case than Dominion. I mean, both cases are very easy because the statements were

entirely false, but at least the Dominion product were in the states that were claimed that the lies were directed at, like at least the Dominion machines were there. With Smartmatic, they just provided services to the Los Angeles County. There were no other location. So literally these radical right-wing terrorist nutjobs like picked company out of a hat and just started making allegations against them. And, you know, the lawyer, this guy, Eric Connolly, who's handled major defamation case before, because this is the most straightforward case I've ever had. By being able to say that Smartmatic was in Los Angeles County and nowhere else, I've been able to prove lie after lie by essentially that one fact. There weren't any other locations and they have a very interesting, you know,

those numbers weren't pulled out of thin air. There was a close to $800 million drop in the value to its parent company and projected profits as a result of these vicious lies. And in addition, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in security fees that need to be paid to Smartmatic employees because of all of the death threats that they've received. But it's kind of a no-brainer lawsuit. And Fox News is very vulnerable here. And there's a very respected lawyer who's representing Smartmatic. So we'll keep following this case. But yes, words have consequences. Would you call this one a prosecutor's wet dream?

Well, I wouldn't call it a prosecutor because it's a civil case, but I would call it a plaintiff's lawyer's wet dream. I was trying to play with the peas there and I was leaning into penile, but I pulled it back because there was nowhere that was going to go. This is why it's good for a lawyer. But on the Biden front, on the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, we talked about it on the last podcast, that is moving forward right now through a reconciliation process. The reconciliation process, I believe it passed in the House. And let's remember, Ben, this is a bipartisan bill, maybe not with Republican politicians, but with Republican voters, with all voters. In fact, two thirds of Americans support this legislation, despite not having a single vote

from Republicans to bring this through via reconciliation. Joe Biden is leading with the support of the American people here. And while the GOP wants to claim, how dare you use reconciliation for this process? Let's remind everybody, in the past few years, the GOP used reconciliation to give massive tax breaks to the rich and corporations. They used reconciliation to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wilderness Reserves. So clearly, they don't have a problem with reconciliation. They only have a problem when it's being used to help working people and not the wealthy. And look, I broke down what reconciliation was on the past podcast. It's different than just

passing a law that Congress has the right to pass laws. Reconciliation focuses on Congress's powers to spend money. And so it has to fit into a very narrow definitional category. There's congressional parliamentarians who make sure it fits into this category. So reconciliation bills are not the easiest things to pass. And there has to be significant coordination between the House and the Senate. And if it's deemed to not fit into the specific definition of spending, sometimes refer to the Byrd rule, that certain major pieces within legislation could be gutted. So that's why you don't ideally want to go down a reconciliation path. But that's the path that has to be gone down because Republicans don't

support anything, despite America strongly leaning in favor of this. And one of the other debates is whether you can raise the minimum wage within a reconciliation package is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Is that within that narrow definitional section of what would constitute reconciliation? There's a lot of debate there. It may be risky to include that in this bill. Clearly, Americans support raising the minimum wage by overwhelming majorities. That's the wild thing. And that's what I want to talk to our next guest, Anthony Scaramucci, about is because two thirds, super majorities of Americans support Biden's initiatives. And the GOP just legislates not through ideas, not through actual legislation. So I shouldn't even say they legislate, but it's purely through fear and lies and then gaslighting where their actions do one thing, then their words say something, and then they just try to weasel into it and just create confusion to not let the American people get the help that they need. And Ben, this is the new push from the GOP and even from some conservative Democrats. What they want to do is they want to try to make this relief more targeted, meaning they want a lower cutoff in the income area for people who receive this money. Now, I asked on Twitter the other day, I asked people, what do you think? Is it controversial to say that I think these

should be less targeted? I think they are too targeted as is. I was wondering what your guys' thoughts were. And I'm wondering what you guys listening, what your thoughts are here, because I think it's completely unfair to judge who gets money right now in the middle of a pandemic based on their tax returns in 2019. Because so many people, their lives have been upended. And you could have been making 75 grand, which I believe is the cutoff in 2019. You could have lost your job earlier this year. You could be really struggling to get by. And you could be risking not getting a check because of that cutoff. And now Republicans want to make that cutoff 50 grand. And I think you're I think you're exactly right. It's impossible to tell how well someone is doing in 2021 based off a 2019 tax return. What happened over these

last two years has been absolutely insane, unprecedented events. People have lost jobs, had to have moved. Maybe you've had kids during this experience to even look at this in a targeted manner. You know, we're having enough trouble as is passing it as quickly as we can right now. So now we're going to try to go in and add more targets and more specifications on who gets what, when. Look, here's what I don't want. I don't want rich people getting the money and the Trump approach of basically giving carte blanche, what they were called PPP loans, where based on your relationships to bankers and banks, you essentially got priority to get millions, tens of millions, and in some case, hundreds of millions of dollars. That was

the Republicans approach at the heart of the pandemic was just to basically just give handouts to the rich. That's what they did. I don't want this time for that approach. So we need, you know, so if targeted means we're not doing that, I'm for that. But we need to make sure that the money is going to the right people and we need to make sure it's going to the right people now. Here's what you could do though, Ben, because I think this is an interesting point to make. I'm okay with a billionaire getting a $1,400 check if that means that hundreds of hardworking Americans don't fall through the cracks here, because I think there's a way that we could solve this down the road. People will be filing their taxes for the 2020 year. So I think there's a way

that you could get the people who got the checks to have to reimburse that money back if they are over this income limit. But what I am afraid about is these people falling through the cracks and not getting the money they needed based on some arbitrary limit tied to 2019 numbers, which also the cost of living adjustment state to state, it doesn't quite add up. Making 75K living in New York and California is very different than making 75K and living in Iowa. And I just want to make sure that everybody is able to pay their mortgage, pay their rent, pay for gas, pay for medication and get the help they need. A lot of what you said I get, the part I don't understand is why would we give billionaires

a $1,500 check? Because anytime you are, maybe the cutoff's just higher then, but anytime you're trying to target this stuff, it's taking too long to get the checks to people who need them. There are ways that you get that money back without sacrificing time and without leaving anybody who needs the money out. And I just don't want anybody to fall through the cracks. And that's my fear. This is a pretty iconic moment right now on the Midas Touch podcast. This is the first time we've had a brother to brother disagreement. To me, if you gave everybody the $1,400 or $1,500 checks, the billionaires aren't returning shit.

The billionaires will do everything that they can in their world to take money i don't want billionaires getting money i don't want 100 millionaires getting money i don't want millionaires getting money i think if you want to reduce the threshold you know slightly brett with their debates of harsh cutoffs of 50 000 versus 60 000 versus 70 000 i get that but just the part I don't understand is, is billionaires. Why would I give a $1,500 check to a billionaire? I'm going to agree with Ben on that one point. I think billionaire, I think that's a little bit. Well, I was saying if it's $1,500 checks to the billionaire, I was saying, well, if it so happens

that a billionaire gets a check, but that means that hundreds of people earning $70,000 a year who lost their jobs get checks. I'm okay with it. And we can figure out how to get that money back later. Tell us, are you team Brett or are you team Dan? You're going to get crushed. You're going to get crushed. I think you made a lot of great points. I don't think so. A lot of great points. I think you guys are going to be surprised with the response because there are a lot of people, there are a lot of people who were earning even decent money a couple of years ago who are now suffering and struggling because of these cutoffs. But not billionaires. If you want to vote for billionaire Brett, you can vote for billionaire Brett. Look at this twist. Or you can vote for

benign and kind Ben, your friend. Look at the twist here. I'm just letting the people vote. Billionaire Brett. When we come back, we will be talking to the man, the myth, the legend, Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. the Mooch. Mooch. Can't wait for that interview when we come back.

Midas Touch Podcast. No, that's not America. It's not America. Welcome back to the Midas Touch Podcast. Welcome back to the Midas Touch Podcast. We have someone we've been trying to get for many Scaramoochies. It's the man, the myth, the legend, Anthony Scaramoochie, former White House Communications Director, founder of SkyBridge Capital

and host of Mooch FM. There's a new episode tomorrow. So Anthony Scaramucci, welcome. But I want to say this, it was very Machiavellian of me to have you on our podcast as a guest to compete against your own podcast dropping tomorrow. Hey, look, I, I, hey man, I love it. I want to congratulate the three of you lunatics on moving the needle. Okay. As it relates to impressions. And, uh, as you three know better than anybody, the Proverbs or the cliche about a picture being a thousand words, those videos that you guys put up or were the million words because they were emotional. And, you know, you know, I don't know, maybe it was Maya Angelou. People don't remember what you

said, but they remember how you made them feel. And you were capturing literally the sinister nature of what was going on. Now we can talk about why I was involved with it or not happy to do that. But here's the lesson from my life. And this is what I would say to my kids. If you've got something wrong, you're going to make mistakes in life. So you got to forgive yourself when you get something wrong, but you can't stay wrong. Right? You ever said you guys are a lot younger than me, you got something wrong, you guys say, Okay, I'm wrong. And then you got to get out of the situation. Does that make sense? That makes sense. And look, you got out of the situation. And what you're

doing now, though, I think is more important than ever. I mean, right now, this strain of Trumpism in the GOP is an existential threat to democracy. So I know our work at Midas Touch isn't done. We're going to still make these videos. And so what are you going to be doing, Anthony Scaramucci? Are you continuing, you know, the path that you have? Yes. I mean, you know, it's an unfortunate thing, because let me just be totally candid with you. I'm not a politician. That's obvious. I did part of my podcast was a young guy that's the Washington Post journalist. And he said, yeah, you know, we were all surprised that you lasted even 11 days when you got out to the press podium. You were like, oh, my God, this guy's too honest. There's no way you can make it in Washington.

Boom. Eleven days later, I'm out of my ass. But honestly, I never wanted to be in politics. So weirdly, I'm like the Michael Corleone of politics. I'm trying to get the fuck out and they keep bringing me back in. And so here's the thing I will say, because you guys grew up on Long Island. And so, you know, the area I grew up in Port Washington, which is the North Shores and very nice community. My dad was the crane operator for the sand bank in Port Washington. And so if you remember Port Washington, if you guys have ever been there, we had this big sand bank. We mined sand there, Irish, Italian, and Welsh immigrants for 95 years. And then that sand got shipped over to Long Island City, mixed into concrete and built the skyscrapers in New York. So I grew up in a blue collar neighbor, even though it was an affluent town, I benefited from that school system. But I got into politics because I didn't have a network. So now I'm coming out of Harvard.

My parents, by the way, thought it was Hartford. I mean, you can't fucking make that up. My mother's going to Connecticut. I know we're not going to Connecticut. Why would they call it Hartford Law School if it's not in Hartford? Because it's Hartford Law School. It's not Hartford. OK, I mean, so, you know, Long Island Italians, you know what I'm saying is true. And so now I'm trying to build a network. I'm a young boy in an old boy's network. So I write my first check to Rudolph Giuliani. It's 1989. Some of you weren't even born back then. I'm writing the check because I need to meet people in New York City. He loses the mayor's race. I develop a friendship with him. We can talk about him if you want. I choose to remember him like he was, not what happened to

him, this ridiculous cartoonish distortion. But, you know, now we're working together. He wins the mayor's race. It's very good for me. I'm bringing clients into Goldman. He introduces me to Pataki. You guys probably don't remember him, but he was the governor. And then Rudy is Rudy. So he introduced me to Pataki. I'm working for Pataki. He goes and endorses Mario Cuomo, you know, Chris and Andrew's father. That's Rudy, right? So my point is I got into politics for business reasons. I'm not a politician and I'm 57 years old today, 57 years young. I'm in it now. I mean, what am I going to do? I'm now in it. I love the country. I'm a byproduct of the country. You know, I've lived a very good part of the American dream. You know, I went from a blue collar family to building a couple of reasonably

successful businesses. It could never happen, fellas, in any other country. So I absolutely love the country. I love the Constitution. I love our democracy. So we're going to fight for the democracy now. We got to fight on our hands for the democracy. So now it's not about policy to me now. It's about the democracy and it's about the institutions of America. And so for whatever reason, one party's decided, hey, let's flush that in the toilet. We've got an orange buffoon that wears high heels and a diaper, and we're going to worship at his altar. And so what we're going to do is we have a 244-year-old experiment that's going beautifully. Lots of people are being lifted out of poverty. Lincoln called it the last

best hope for mankind. Your families have an immigrant story. My family has an immigrant story. We're all here trying to make a go of it. Is it fucked up here? Yeah, we've got racism. We've got anti-Semitism. We got anti-Italianism.

Trust me on that. Everybody thinks I'm stolen the mafia when I go to the Midwest. You got anti-everythingism in the country. I'm not saying that you don't, but it's a country of social progress and it's a country moving towards the arc of moral justice. Okay. And so when you get an intercession like Donald Trump, who is stoking all of this fear, all of this nativism all of this locality if you will all of this xenophobia you're like okay you're wrecking it for everybody else what the hell are you doing so yeah we got to fight it and and what you're bringing up which is totally true which i'm super

worried about these younger motherfuckers we allowed a curse on this podcast we curse all the time all the time. All the time. I like cursing. By the way, Steve Bannon couldn't do what I said, right? Unless he was into hot yoga, which of course you can tell by how fat he is. There's no way he could do what I said. But we can get there too if you want. But let's just go back to this point that I'm trying to make. I mean, this fucking guy wants to destroy the democracy for what reason exactly?

And why? And now what do we know? We got a group of people in a country that are racist. We got a group of people that are nativists. There's a group of people that don't like the browning of America. They don't like the color transformation or this beautiful mosaic that we've created. So they want to stop you from voting. They want to impose their ideas on you. And let me tell you something, these sons of bitches like Hawley and Cruz, two traitors, by the way, I mean, traitors, seditionists, they're smart guys. You know, Cruz went to Harvard Law School. He had Larry Tribe as a con law professor. So we got to knock these guys' lights out. We have to put these guys away.

And I'm going to be there working tirelessly to do that over the next three or four years. Mooch, how do we put them away? Sorry, but you go ahead. I just wanted to say what you said about them being smart guys, if I'm being totally candid with you, is what worried me so much about you when you took over the role of communications director. I remember vividly the day that you replaced Sean Spicer in the press briefing room. And my reaction was,

shit, this is a guy who could speak, who could actually communicate. He's not a buffoon like Spicer was. And at the time I thought Trump was evil as I do now. And I was watching you and I thought you were scary because I thought you were scary, because I thought you were a very good messenger and very good at what you do. Thankfully, for us, you only lasted 11 days in the role. And now you're on the side of good. But I just remember being in the way you're complimenting me. So I'll say thank you. But here's the thing. When I was going forward with Trump, which I got wrong, and I got to try to explain this to you guys, and you have a great listenership. So I pray to God that your listeners are listening, okay?

My dad was an hourly worker. I would never dishonor him by telling you I grew up poor. I did not grow up poor. We had a nice middle-class lifestyle. We had one full bathroom, you know, air conditioners going in out of the windows. We shared a bicycle. My brother and I shared a room. We were fine, but we didn't have a lot of money. We were tight with expenses, you know, but we had a living wage. My father had a living wage. When I got on that campaign, remember, guys, I'm with the garden variety Republican. I was working for Bush. Now, my mistakes are ego based. So you got to really pay attention. You're young guys. Don'm like, okay, I'm with Jeb. He's out of the race. He dislikes Trump. I'm going to be open-minded. I have a good relationship with Trump dating back to NBC, you know, and I'm going to go work for Trump because I'm a loyal Republican. I start self

talking myself into it, even though I was railing on him when I was working for Jeb Bush. And now I'm there, but then I have this epiphany and you guys have to hear this. I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm in Flint, Michigan. I'm in Toledo, Ohio. And our society's wrecked, guys. Okay, it's wrecked. Okay, you have people that are economically desperate that could be my dad, but they're born 30 and 40 years after my dad. So my dad, born in 1935, he has a living wage in 65, 75, and 85. But by the time you get to 05, this working class aspiration is converting into working class desperation. You guys see that? Absolutely. So Brett, what drew me to Trump was he was there with those people.

And I was like, all right, he's a little bit buffoon. He's saying some things that are obnoxious. He's saying some things that I'm going to cognitively, dissidentially ignore, which is my fault. I have to own that. I'm 100% wrong to do that. But hopefully he's going to solve that problem and re-knit the society. And of course, he doesn't do that.

He's a narcissistic flamethrower, nihilist. Right. And he's gonna try to self-destruct the society alongside of his own self-destruction. So I got that wrong. But Brett, I would have never lasted on that job because once he got to Charlottesville, I was already denouncing that.

Yeah. And where I was going with that was I was gonna say that I think your voice is incredibly important. And I think that allowing the Scaramucis of the world back into the fold and allowing them to be voices against Trumpism, which is now just straight up fascism, I think is so important to our democracy. And I think we could do it in a way that doesn't sacrifice our own values as to what we believe, because I agree 100% with what you were saying, that this isn't about party anymore. This is a battle for democracy. Well, you obviously didn't see Tiffany Cross beating the shit out of me over the weekend, though, right? You missed that. You must have missed that. I saw the clip. And what's your response to that? You know, listen, I mean, she was coming at

me. She had an ax to grind. There's a group of people on the left that anybody that's worked for Trump has lost the litmus test. They failed the litmus test. And so they need to be tarred and feathered and they have to have an orange tattoo on their forehead forever. And, you know, so she came at me calling me radicalized and all this sort of stuff. But, you know, my response to her, again, I kept my cool. It's like, what do you want to do with the 74 million people, guys? Right. We want to do we want to hive off the country and float them out into the Atlantic

Ocean. I don't want to do that. I want to reach those people. Those people are with Trump for a reason. We have to understand why. And then we have to explain to them, okay, but we have a better solution than that nonsense. Okay. Yes. Trump is an avatar for your anger. Yes. You're not doing well. And Trump's railing on the media. He's railing on wall street. He's railing on people in Washington and he's bullying everybody on his Twitter feed. And yes, yes, I got all that. But if you're that anger based, if you're that hot, it's because you're missing something in your own life. You know, guys, in 1940, Franklin Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term.

And he was running against Wendell Willkie, who turned out to be a very good man, by the way, and helped him during the war. But he was also running against the America First movement, which was sponsored by the Nazi loving Charles Lindbergh. And he gave a speech in 1940. I can send you the clip. And it was a brilliant speech. And it's so appropriate to today, 81 years later, what Franklin Roosevelt said is, hey, these people are nativistic, they're nationalistic. Their populism is born from their anger and their economic anxiety. If we can solve that problem and give them opportunity and those four freedoms that he was writing about and speaking about, we can dial down the nonsense of nationalism and populism. And of course, it had to wait five years because we went to war. But just think about where America was 46 to 61.

It was prosperous and it was creating jobs and it was growing. You didn't have a lot of nationalism and a lot of populism and a lot of that vitriol. So, and it's, by the way, it's the same thing in Palestine. It's the same thing in Afghanistan. You give people a life and an aspirational hope for their children and you give them an iPhone and a girlfriend and a hot Hollywood t-shirt, they don't want to blow themselves up. I'm just giving you the heads up. They don't want to do it. So Tiffany Cross going off on me, that's fine. You can isolate me and turn me into a pariah if you want, or we can get together as a group of people and figure out what

our differences are and figure out a way to heal our society and create an off ramp for many of those people that down deep know that there's something off. You know, you're storming the Capitol because you believe that the election was stolen and you're going to kill a police officer. Three or four people are going to die. Five people in total when it's all over with the suicide. More than Benghazi, by the way, all these Republican nonsense stuff. I mean, this is an unmitigated tragedy, and we have to fix it. So guess what? You guys are part of that solution because good men and women who love the country have to activate to fix it. Now, we may not agree on every single thing.

And I made a mistake working with Donald Trump. I admit that. But there's 74 million people that voted for him, guys. And so, you know, one of the things I would love to have you guys do with some of your media touch and some of your marketing genius is get in their shoes, empathize with them, put a 60 second commercial out like, hey, is this how you're feeling? Is this why you were with Trump? You know, and then the last 15 seconds is like, well, you know, but this is what he's doing. Stop. You know right from wrong. What he's doing is classically un-American, what he is doing. He's the most un-American president that we've ever had. He's a domestic terrorist. He's a seditionist. He's an insurrectionist. So stop what you're doing. Think about your civic virtue,

your values as a human being, your family. You see what I mean? We have to reach those people. You guys murdered Trump in the videos and the stuff that you did, you know, mazel tov a million times. It was fabulous. And you helped to consolidate a group of people against him. So we had 81 million people that were influenced by you, Lincoln Project, the Democrats, et cetera. You. Me, maybe, knock on wood, et cetera. You. Me, maybe. Knock on wood, I hope so. And then you had 74 million people for him. That's fucking scary, by the way, that there were 74 million people for him,

given how nuts he is, okay? Yeah. By the way, you guys know this. President Biden only won by 73,000 votes in those key states. Right, yeah. It was slightly more than Trump won by last time, but we don't, we can't have that. The democracy, we were about to get an authoritarian, Hungarian, authoritarian style

government from Donald Trump. We almost had that in our own country, guys. You can't have that in the United States. That'll ruin the world. I don't think anybody quite realizes how close we were to really losing it all, to losing American democracy. I think we were extremely close. And I still think we're close. I realize it. Let me fucking tell you, man, I'm still sleeping with it. I mean, I'm still got sleepless nights thinking about it. And I still got sleepless nights thinking, oh, wait a minute. You got Hawley and Cruz and this Bozo McCarthy, which I could talk about forever because I used to give him money. I used to hang out with him. These guys have decided they're going full on, man. We're going to go full white, racist nativism. That's

going to be our mantra. We're going to consolidate this party. We got 74 million votes doing this. There's another 10 million votes that we can get out from voter participation. The Jews, the blacks, the progressives, the radical left, whatever the voting blocs are, that's 81 million. They all came out. But we got another 10 million lunatics that we can get out and we can go 84-81 and take back the country. And who cares? The ends justify the means. You see what they're doing? What was McCarthy like in private? So McCarthy has morphed into this principalist coward. Okay. But when he was a younger guy,

he was an acolyte of Jack Kemp. And I don't know if you remember Jack Kemp, but Jack Kemp was the conservative, but he was the garden variety, loved everybody conservative. He played in the NFL. He had a huge following in the African-American community. And he was an acolyte alongside of Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. He got caught doing something personally. He got knocked out of that job. So Paul Ryan reluctantly took it. But where Kevin is now in his life, he's my age, he's 57. It looks like shit because what happens is when you're working for Donald Trump, he's poisoning you from the inside. Okay. Now the good news is the good Lord saved my ass. I got ejected like an Austin Powers villain. And so I got saved from that shit, but he was putting the poison in these people. And that's why Kevin looks like he's fucking 200 years old, but he's my age.

And he is so ambitious. He is so ambitious. He's so he goes, Ted Cruz is like seven, eight years younger than me. I said, look at Ted Cruz. Cruz is like 35.

Fucking grandpa monster, the fucking guy, right? He's probably sleeping upside down in a fucking closet. Yeah, Cruz is like my age. Ted Cruz, to me, is everything that you don't want to be in life, okay? He's a coward. He's a moralizer, which is all bullshit. He's a hypocrite. And when Trump went after his wife, Ted Cruz,

you know, put knee pads on his elbows, OK, to try to give Trump a blowjob. I mean, I mean, the guy's a disgusting guy. And then he goes after Ted's father, says he helped commit the assassination of JFK. Are you fucking kidding me? When Trump went after my wife, I told Jonathan Swan, watch what I do to this guy. You're going after my wife on the presidential Twitter feed? Who the hell do you think you are? You're not allowed to do that to somebody like me. I'm a neighborhood guy from Long Island. You're not going after my wife.

Okay. So then we had to get the big guns out. We just started blasting and blasting them. Then he started hitting me back, and he's like an amateur with the trolling. He doesn't know how to troll properly. So I'm hitting him. She'd go back and look at the trolling and then I'm blasting. I'm saying she's like Trump noble. Then I called him the wicked witch of the West wing.

And then I got knocked off of Twitter. Cause I called him Fidel Adolf Trump. Cause I had to get the fat shaming in there. Cause it's a fat fuck. Right. And then I got knocked off for that. then i get knocked kicked off for that yeah i get kicked off for 12 hours i call it i got the dictatorship in there with the fatness and i got knocked off of twitter my point is you're not coming after a guy like me i'm gonna fucking fight to the death i don't give a fuck oh what about your business and i know i don't give a fuck don't come after my family okay so I want to frame this for you. These guys are moral cowards.

These guys are all about political expediency. These guys are all about the ends justifying the means. And these guys have figured out that there's a very large swath of white America that is buying catheters and my pillows from Fox News commercial interruptions. This is this aging group of white Americans that want to hold on to the old guard power structure. And so the Republican Party is going to try to suppress voting and the Republican Party is going to try to hold people back as opposed to changing and reinventing itself and opening itself up and making itself look like the more beautiful, colorful mosaic of America. That's the move that they're trying to make.

That is a disaster for the country. OK, and so Kevin McCarthy, this guy, Josh Hawley, I mean, is a disgrace. OK, Ted Cruz. I mean, we could name the people, the woman. What happened to your guy, Giuliani, though? I want to hear about that. What is his motivation now? Is he just drunk every day?

What's even going on there? I'm shutting my video off for one second. I'm going to do a moment of silence for Rudy. I'm going to say, all right, now I'm back on. I'm back on. I mean, you got to be fucking kidding me, Rudy, right? And you can't reach Rudy. All right. Now I'm back on. I'm back on. I mean, you got to be fucking kidding me, Rudy, right? And you can't reach Rudy. You know, I tried to reach out to him when he got the COVID, but he's in another zip code now. And so what happened with a guy like Rudy, he wants to be relevant, you know? And so Rudy wants to live in the bubble. He wants to be on Air Force One. He wants to fly on Marine One. He wants to be in the suburban behind the president's entourage, or maybe in the limo. He wants to be at the state

dinner. So Rudy has decided that he wants to be relevant. When you talk to Rudy, you say, hey, Mayor, what about your legacy? I mean, you helped rebuild the city. You were there for us in 9-11. Why are you doing this? Why are you creating this caricature and this distortion? I don't care about my legacy, he'll say. I'll be dead. What difference does it make? And so that's Rudy. And let me tell you what Trump does to people, OK? You want to talk about ugliness. He moves the goalposts on you because he's a narcissistic manipulator. So what happens is Michael Cohen's a friend of mine. I went to visit him twice in jail. So Michael, you're a good guy, right? Yes, Mr. Trump. Okay. Do this for me. Okay. Michael, you're a good guy. Yes, Mr. Trump,

do this for me. Oh, Michael, I need you to do this for me. And before you know it, you're in a fucking barrel going over Niagara Falls. You've lost all your personal integrity and you've lost all your principles. And so, and you're sitting there waking up from that fever that you were in saying, well, why did I do that? Why did I become a Donald Trump groupie and do that? Okay. And so, and then some people say to me, well, you know, you got fired, otherwise you would have been a Donald Trump groupie. And the answer to that is obviously no, because you guys don't know what was going on in that 11 days. If you think I got fired for what I said about Steve Bannon, you don't understand what happened. Get General Kelly to do the podcast and he'll tell you why I got fired.

OK, you're smart enough to figure it out. But my point is we have to defeat these people. Then we can worry about a two party system and we can worry about center right politics versus center left politics. But we have to defeat these people. We got the last question. Jordy, you've been awfully quiet. You got the cool hip hop outfit right there, man. You want to ask Aaron Mucci a question or are you just gonna hold not only do i want to ask him a question it's a good question but but mooch they do this to me all the time man they pick on me they wait for me to do the last question but this time it's a really great question so it's actually a story that the brothers don't know and it's about you and my expectations oh it's a good one so so it's 2018 maybe 2019 a year and a half ago whatever uh i'm'm at MSG for a Bill Maher standup event. And all of a sudden, you know, lights flicker on and off telling everybody to go to their seats. I just start to hear like a thunderous roar from the crowd. I'm like, what's going on? Bill's not

on stage yet. Like it gets louder and louder. And so I'm like, is LeBron James in the building? What is happening right now? I turn around. Do you remember this? I turn around. You wouldn't remember me, but you remember this. And everyone is just chanting Scaramucci and like just thunderous applause, mooch chants. It was crazy.

People were getting out of their seats to go and shake your hand and take pictures. It was wild. So with that, you clearly have the base behind you. I know earlier you said that, you know, you're not a politician, but if you ever wanted to run for something, I think you would win pretty much hands down against anybody. Are there any sort of, you know, political office runs in the future? You could be, cause you're from Long Island, you're from Plainview. You could be biased in the way you're thinking about it. And that, you know, you know, that was a very sweet thing that

happened to me. I walked in there. It was wild. And then Bill came out on stage. I remember he goes, by the way, that wasn't a boo, man. That was mooch. And I used to go Lou, Lou Piniella, Lou was like, I've just, you know, I mean, you know, I never heard that kind of commotion before I got started, you know. And then I went backstage with Bill afterwards. Him and I become very close friends. So that's the silver lining of the fiasco that happened to me. But, you know, I was almost divorced from my wife. I walked in with my wife, by the way, and I was almost divorced from her. We patched it up. She hates Trump almost as much as Melania hates him. I mean, I mean, I don't, I don't, you gotta give Melania her due. I mean, she's,

you know, you gotta put her at the number one spot, I think. Right. But you know, my, if she's like Michael Phelps, my wife is like Ryan Lochte of Trump. You know what I mean? And so I, I've been really trying to focus on my marriage and I've been trying to focus on my kids, but I also love the country. So I'm out there doing radio, podcast, television. I'm doing everything I can to explain what he is and what he's doing and how you have to break the fever. Okay. If you tell me that there's an opportunity someday to go into public service and it makes

sense for my family, Jordy, I'm open to it because I really do love the country and I've had a very good life and I want to give back to the country, but it's got to be the right thing. And it's got to be born from service, not from the narcissism of power and like, you know, the idlery of power. It's got to be born from an idea based on service. Okay. And that's not a politician talking. That's just how I really feel. Okay. It's not even a spin. And so it may never happen because who the hell knows what's going to happen in our society. But, you know, I'm not leaving New York. I can tell you that, you know, I was with Spike. Spike's doing a documentary on 9-11. He interviewed me last week.

He's like, are you like one of those fucking guys going down to Florida? I said, no fucking way. I'll fucking shut the lights out on New York. I'm not leaving New York. Hell yeah. So if there's an opportunity to be part of the process of fixing and rebuilding New York, I'm open to it, but it's got to be the right opportunity. And it's got to be good for my wife and my kids, Jordy. Otherwise I can't do it because I don't want to hurt the people that I love the most. You know what I'm saying? That's honest. But I got to say something to you guys. I know we got to go and other podcasts as any, but I got to say this to you guys. You're brilliant

guys. Please listen to me on this. Okay. There are 74 million people that voted for Donald Trump. Sure. Some of them are insurrection people that voted for Donald Trump. Sure, some of them are insurrectionists that will go to the Capitol, but I'm telling you, a lot of them are mainstream people that were misguided or they felt they were voting for policy. They didn't see the evil that Brett was discussing. I'm telling you, you guys have great creativity. You have a great sense for imagery. Just do some brainstorming. Let's figure out a way to move some of those people. Because if it's 10 or 15 million people, Ben, if we can move 10 or 15 million people, Jordy, Brett, you're going to end Trumpism. Okay. You're going to end Trumpism because right now McCarthy, Hawley and Cruz are saying, oh, that's great.

We just got to get another 10 million people out of their fucking outhouses, put in their false fucking teeth and get them over to the voting booth. And we're going to be people and then we're going to pervert our society and ruin our democracy. We can't let that happen. Okay. We have to overwhelm these people. You see that? And then we can debate about the policies and we can debate about what's right or wrong for America. But right now we have to defend the institutions of our democracy and the things that we know made our grandparents so proud to show up here. And Anthony, I hope that that's something that you and me and the brothers can work on together. I definitely would be open to collaborating on

videos. I would love that because this is the message I was trying to give Tiffany Cross. You know, I'm not mad at Tiffany Cross. I understand her anger. I'm going to say, we're probably in overtime, but you got to hear this, okay? I've never said this to anybody, but I want to say it on your podcast, okay, when I reflected on my conversation with Tiffany Cross, which wasn't going well, when it was over, I said to myself, you know. My work for Donald Trump and by the way, accidentally, I swear on everything, but my work for Donald Trump contributed to a lot of pain in our society. I have never said that to anybody. OK, it traumatized my family. It traumatized me. But by accident, when Brett saw me on the podium, he's like, OK, this guy's going to help Donald Trump. He's going to enable nativism and racism. That wasn't my goal. I swear on everything. My goal was to try to see if we

could heal the divide and close down the economic chasm. I didn't think we were going directionally where we are, but I'm letting you guys know, and I've never said this to anybody, that I'm smart enough to know that I caused a lot of pain by working for Donald Trump. I have to acknowledge that with people. The flip side is those people that voted for him, you have to find a way to get to them and help them get off the ramp that they're on right now, on that highway to destruction, democracy destruction.

Do you hear what I'm saying? Hear you loud and clear. Anthony Scaramucci, thank you so much for being on the Midas Touch podcast. We hope you'll come back and we look forward to collaborating with you. It's been great. We probably didn't give a long enough moment of silence for Rudy, but that's fine. We could all go right now. We can all go dark now and think about Rudy. Okay. That's for you, Rudy. All right. Hey, guys, thank you very much. Killer episode. Jimmy Gomez, Congressman Anthony Scaramucci, billionaire Brett, Jordy Micellas. Here's the thing. I like how there's about to be a poll without me,

just so one of you two can win. So I'm not going to vote. I'm going to abstain. I'm not going to vote. I'm really curious, though, where it landsain. I'm not going to vote. I'm really curious though, where it lands a billionaire bread or pull yourself up from your bootstraps. Ben, look, I, I want everyone to be, to be, you know, to have, to have American dream bread. But I think that if you made $70,000 in 2019, then you're fucked. You're on your own. And according to Brett's argument, if you've made $75,000, you're a billionaire. I'm going to look up in the Forbes magazine. Let's get Daniel Dale on the fact check. I'm going to look up on the Forbes magazine. I'm going to find out that all of my friends are billionaires.

I'm going to just discover apparently, Brett. Anyway, that was a my friends are billionaires. I'm going to just discover apparently, Brett. Anyway, that was a great Midas Touch podcast. We'll be back next week. Midas Touch podcasts drop every Tuesday morning, every Friday morning. We're now a top 20 podcast in the United States. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back next week with more Midas Touch Podcast. Shout out to the Midas

Mighty!