The MeidasTouch Podcast - It’s Jack Smith’s Turn as January 6 Committee Refers Trump to DOJ

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

On this episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast, Ben and Brett cover the most important stories to start the week, including: The final public January 6 committee hearing and the committee’s vote on criminal referrals for Donald Trump and others, the upcoming vote concerning the public release of Donald Trump’s tax returns, the unbeilievable-yet-true story of Republican Congressman-Elect Georgia Santos, who conned his way into a seat in the House, the GOP’s strange fixation on porn and sex toys, Elon Musk’s public meltdown, President Biden’s historic deal to refill our Strategic Petroleum Reserve and much more.  DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: AG1 by Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas Hover: Get 10% off your first purchase at https://hover.com/meidas Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Happy Criminal Referral Day. The January 6th committee met one last time. The band is back and referred Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution on at least four felony counts. Let's recap what took place during the historic committee hearing on Monday. Former Vice President Mike Pence supports Donald Trump and others who want to kill him and asks the Department of Justice not to prosecute Trump. So weird and just so cowardly.

And while the January 6th committee has released an executive summary on its findings on Monday and will release its full report this week, on Tuesday, another congressional committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, will vote on releasing Trump's tax records to the public. Trump is not handling this well at all. Did you hear the story about the MAGA Republican congressman-elect George Santos from Long Island, who just won in the congressional district where Brett and I were born and grew up? life story and biography and resume, I'm talking everything. His college, his jobs, his charity, the properties he owns, or should I say doesn't own, everything has now been exposed as a complete lie. This is the Republican Party. And yes, this is the Republican Party that has spent this past week focused on butt plugs and sex toys and porn. This is their new green M&M meets Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss on steroids. We're not making this up. This is like the main issue that Republican leaders

are out there talking about in their speeches, on their tweets, everything. We will, I guess, talk about it on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. And meanwhile, in normal land, American taxpayers are profiting from President Biden, who cut a brilliant deal to refill our strategic petroleum reserves when oil prices are now down after selling some portion of the reserve when oil was at its highest. Buy low, sell high, and never listen to a Republican's advice on anything. This is the Midas Touch Podcast. I'm Ben Micellus, joined by the one and only Brett Micellus. Jordy Micellus is still on a honeymoon. He's not on the honeymoon, but Jordy is out tonight. But it feels like he's on a perpetual honeymoon, which is great.

But oh my gosh, it's such a wave of news. Great to be here with you, Ben. But oh my gosh, it's such a wave of news. Great to be here with you, Ben. We have so much to discuss. Somebody said that you look like a more put together version of Rick Santorum on this show, but meant that as a compliment that you look good. Who said that? When did they say that? Like in the comments, I just saw it scrolled by and I was like, yeah. And I was like, I think that sounds like a diss, but I think they meant it in a nice way. I think they were just referring to your outfit with the vest, which I think is quite sharp there, Ben. But, uh, you know, you just, you're starting to see it moving on from that. Uh, you're starting to see, um, just this stark difference, not starting, but it's just becoming, it's reaching a boiling point right now of the difference between people who are living in, let's call it reality, and people who have gaslit, who are trying to gaslit the world and have maybe even gaslit

themselves into believing in alternate reality. And those lies are finally catching up to them. I think the January 6th committee today did a great job of laying out those lies, of laying out the truth, the actual facts of what happened on January 6th, wrapping it up with a nice little bow and delivering it in a box, just in time for the holidays, to Jack Smith at the Department of Justice. So let's recap. The January 6th committee held its final public hearing today. The committee recapped many of its findings from the previous hearings and emphasized that all roads lead back to Donald Trump setting the foundation for

criminal indictments. They played a nearly 12-minute video summarizing key evidence and testimony from its investigation. Don't worry, we're not going to play you the full 12 minutes here, but let's break down some of the key portions. For example, where Chair Benny Thompson described how accountability now must come in the criminal justice system. Play the clip. We've never had a president of the United States stir up a violent attempt to block the transfer of power. I believe nearly two years later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning.

If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again. How do we stop it? This committee will lay out a number of recommendations in this final report, but beyond any specific details and recommendations we present, will lay out a number of recommendations in this final report. But beyond any specific details and recommendations we present, there's one factor I believe is most important in preventing another January 6th, accountability.

So today, beyond our findings, we will also show that evidence we've gathered points to further action beyond the power of this committee or the Congress to help ensure accountability on the law. Accountability that can only be TV in the dining room of the General Donahue refused to take. Play the clip. On several occasions, Clark met with the president, apparently along with Representative Scott Perry, without without authorization promising to take the actions that barr rosen and donahue had refused to take in particular mr clark intended to send a letter that he had drafted with the help of a political appointee that the white house installed at doj with just weeks left in the administration. Mr. Clark intended to send the letter to officials in numerous states, informing them falsely, of course, that the

department had identified significant concerns about the election results in their state and encouraging their state legislatures to come into special session to consider appointing Trump rather than Biden electors. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren emphasized how Trump raised hundreds of millions of dollars on the big lie amongst his online donors, showing that the January 6th committee and I think the Department of Justice are going to be heavily focused on these financial frauds. Play the clip. Ex-President Trump's decision to declare victory falsely on election night wasn't a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated. The committee has evidence that ex-President Trump planned to declare victory and unlawfully to call for the vote counting to stop and that he told numerous allies about his intent in the weeks before the election. The committee found that Mr. Trump raised hundreds of millions of

dollars with false representations made to his online donors. The proceeds from this fundraising, we have learned, have been used in ways that we believe are concerning. And then we have Representative Lofgren also talk about witness tampering. I think that was a very important thing to mention here that Donald Trump continued to try to engage in obstruction of the January 6th committee's ability to obtain evidence and in fact efforts to provide or offer employment even to witnesses who gave favorable testimony. Play the clip. Some of those funds were used to hire lawyers. We've also obtained evidence of efforts to provide or offer employment to witnesses. For example, one lawyer told a witness the witness could, in certain circumstances, tell the committee that she didn't recall facts when she actually did recall them. That lawyer

also did not disclose who was paying for the lawyer's representation, despite questions from the client seeking that information. He told her, quote, we're not telling people where funding is coming from right now. We've learned that a client was offered potential employment that would make her, quote, financially very comfortable as the date of her testimony approached by entities that were apparently linked to Donald Trump and his associates. These offers were withdrawn or didn't materialize as reports of the content of her testimony circulated. The witness believed this was an effort to affect her testimony, and we are concerned that these efforts may have been a strategy

to prevent the committee from finding the truth. And this is the first... Such criminals, sorry. They're such criminals. They have to commit the crime. They got to commit more crimes to try to cover up the past crimes. And you know, Jack Smith is no nonsense and Jack Smith is not going to accept all that stuff. I think the witness tampering and the witness intimidation and including Donald Trump's attacks on Jack Smith via social media is ultimately going to end up playing a large role in the ultimate indictment and prosecution of Donald Trump. I absolutely agree with you. And on Legal AF this weekend,

I explained, I said, you can't give Donald Trump and people like that an inch. Because if you give them an inch, they take your throat off. And people like that, they deploy a number of methodologies to try to get what they want. They try to do fear. Then they try to beg. It doesn't matter to them because they're so morally and ethically detached from humanity that anything they say, their words don't matter. What they're just trying to, they don't care. They don't care how it looks. All they want to do is wear you down, manipulate you to destroy you because everything they view is through a zero sum game. Their authoritarianism needs to exist and you need to be destroyed. There's no compromise. There's no nothing. And you saw that with the Mueller investigation.

And frankly, the example I gave this weekend, which is not as serious as the Mueller investigation, it was that ridiculous lawsuit that Donald Trump filed against the Pulitzer group. But what happened is the Pulitzer board was like, all right, let's do an internal investigation and let's go back and we'll check to determine if the reporting was, you know, sound reporting and met our standards in 2018. And all Trump used that was to extend the statute of limitations and sue them. Now, the case is utterly frivolous. It's going to get dismissed. But you have to treat the individual like they're a traitor. You have to treat Trump like he's an absolute traitor,

criminal, and threat because that is what he is. And you don't treat him like he has any good faith intentions at all. Zero good faith intentions. The only intention is to destroy our country. And this is a great example of it from today's hearing as well, because this was the first time we've heard from the White House communications director under the Trump administration, Hope Hicks. And in her video testimony, she said that she warned Trump that his legacy was being damaged. You think his legacy wasn't damaged before, but you think that his legacy was being damaged. You think his legacy wasn't damaged before, but you think that his legacy was being damaged? He has no legacy at all. Trump told her no one would care about his legacy if he lost. And then she also stated that Trump

refused a request to ask his supporters to be peaceful. Let's play this clip. The first time we've seen Hope Hicks thus far. And what was Mr. Hirschman's response? Mr. Hirschman said that he had made the same recommendation directly to the president and that he had refused. Just so I understand, Mr. Hirschman said that he had already recommended to the president that the president convey a message that people should be peaceful on January 6th and the president had refused to do that? Yes. Refused to encourage people to be peaceful on January 6th. Here's the text message from the White House deputy press secretary at the time,

Hogan Gidley, two hopeicks. This is in real time. Hogan writes to Hope, hey, I know you're seeing this, but he really should tweet something. He really should tweet something about being nonviolent. And then Hope Hicks responds, I'm not there. I suggested it several times Monday and Tuesday, and he refused. Those were the text messages that time. That was a bit of a blockbuster new piece of information, Brett, don't you think? Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's funny because the tweets that Donald Trump ultimately did send, which were sometime after 2 p.m. that day, possibly a little later, where he basically reluctantly told people that you must behave peacefully, that you should leave.

Those are what his most ardent supporters point to and go, look, he didn't incite an insurrection at all. Look, he's telling them to respect the police. Look, he is telling them to be nice. Yeah, after he incited the insurrection, after the police were already being killed, beaten, having their eyes gouged out after the Capitol was ransacked, after they smeared feces across the walls and broke into Speaker Pelosi's office and went on the floor of the house, after all that happened and after he got all this pressure from anybody, he sent

one tweet or two tweets and you are trying to act like that's your evidence that absolves him of guilt. It is gaslighting at its worst. It's absolutely sick. The guilt is just so obvious. Everybody knows it. Hope Hicks, not a Democrat. Let me tell you, Hope Hicks, one of the closest people to Donald Trump during that administration. And she saying flat out right there that they tried everything in their power to get Donald Trump to call it off, to say, to be peaceful, to say, to be nonviolent. And instead, what did Trump do? Nothing. He watched it on TV with glee because he loved every single second of it. By the way, in the executive summary, it was 161 page executive summary. About 120 of those were actual pages. The rest were footnotes, but like big, long

footnotes that like really analyze the things. But one of the things that they talked about is a number of individuals who provided evasive testimony. Hope Hicks was one of them, but that was one soundbite. They were able to get other individuals who they said were either not forthcoming or were evasive, included Ivanka Trump, Hope Hicks, Kayleigh McEnany, and a few others. But that was in the report there. And then we get to the time where we finally get the referrals in the hearing. And Jamie Raskin, who was on the subcommittee that made the recommendations for criminal referrals against Trump, these would be referred to the Department of Justice. And these criminal referrals against Trump and John Eastman for now, the vote to refer was unanimous. And let's play the video of the

announcement of the first referral. In the context of resolving evidentiary privilege issues related to the crime fraud doctrine in the Eastman case, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter examined just a small subset of our evidence to determine whether it showed the likely commission of a federal offense. The judge concluded that both former President Donald Trump and John Eastman likely violated two federal criminal statutes. This is the starting point for our analysis today. The first criminal statute we invoke for referral, therefore, is Title 18, Section 1512C, which makes it unlawful for anyone to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding of the United States government. We believe that

the evidence described by my colleagues today and assembled throughout our hearings warrants a criminal referral of former President Donald J. Trump, John Eastman, and others for violations of this statute. The whole purpose and obvious effect of Trump's scheme were to obstruct, influence and impede this official proceeding, the central moment for the lawful transfer of power in the United States. The January 6th committee went on to make four referrals, four separate criminal charges referred to the Department of Justice based on Donald Trump's conduct that included obstruction of an official proceeding, which you just heard, 18 U.S.C. 1512 C.2 to be specific, conspiracy to defraud the United States, 18 U.S.C. Section 371, conspiracy to make false statements, 18 U.S.C. Section 1001, and inciting, assisting, or aiding and comforting an insurrection,

18 U.S.C. Section 2383. And in addition to those crimes that were referred today, the committee left open, there are other potential charges that they may refer and other charges that they will let the Department of Justice take the evidence that wants to do regardless. The Department of Justice is not bound by this. The Department of Justice, if it doesn't want to, doesn't even have to read it. But I think Jack Smith, in his thoughtful, deliberative way, will undoubtedly take a look at this. It is a big deal. This is the first time this has ever happened in our nation's history. I can't emphasize that enough, the historic nature of this. And I think Jack Smith will view this as important and persuasive, but Jack Smith's going to do what Jack Smith does on his own. In addition to the criminal referrals, four Republicans were referred to the House Ethics Committee, an ethical for ethical violations for failure to comply with congressional subpoenas. These Republican members of Congress include Kevin McCarthy, Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, and Andy Biggs. Brett, your overall thought about today's proceeding? I think it's twofold when you got the proceedings. I think

you have, first, you have the research, which is then going to be turned over to the Department of Justice. And I hope that they turn over as much as they can. I hope they turn over all of it personally, but it seemed like they were going to be turning over specific portions of their research that were specific to the crimes that they were referring. I wish they would just give everything over, but that's one play. But I think the biggest thing about this committee is that this is a committee for public consumption. This is the public TV show, if you will, that's breaking this down to people. And so it's funny when you go online and you see some people criticizing Merrick Garland, some people criticizing Jack Smith, some people criticizing the January 6th committee.

And sometimes they pit one another against each other and they go, Jack Smith and Garland, they're working way too slow. Look at all the stuff the January 6th committee's doing. Look, I saw it. You saw the hearing, you saw what they released. They released that video. And it's just the nature of what it is. You have the January 6th committee who is purposefully putting on a public show for the American people. And then you have Jack Smith and the Department of Justice who are quietly building their case, having private grand juries established and evidence go through the proper channels. And so it's just the nature of how the law works. One of the things that I was also curious in watching that is we've seen a lot of these seditious conspiracy charges of late. So I was wondering why wouldn't they refer seditious

conspiracy? I still, I don't know if you have any thoughts on it. I still don't know a hundred percent why they didn't, but I noticed in the report, thanks to a flag from Kyle Cheney of Politico, that they did mention seditious conspiracy in that 161-page report. They said, the Department of Justice, through its investigative tools that exceed those of this committee, may have evidence sufficient to prosecute Trump under Sections 372 and 2384. Accordingly, we believe sufficient evidence exists for a criminal referral of Trump under those two statutes. So it seems like they basically said, hey, Department of Justice, we think that you have enough evidence to proceed here. We're not

necessarily going to put our finger on the scale there, but balls in your court, I think you guys could take it from here. What do you think about that one? I agree. And I think that they didn't do this seditious conspiracy because I think they went for the more direct one, which was on insurrection, because it simply has just the giving aid and comfort to one, which doesn't actually require the declaration of war against the United States, which is, you know, or rebellion against the United States. It doesn't require that intent element per se, but it's like, did you provide safe harbor to those people? And that is the insurrection charge that I referenced above, which is the 18 USC 2383 charge. It's a little bit of an oversimplification, but I think that they're saying, look, Brett, to your point, they laid out the evidence. They're saying, here are the ones that we feel very confident about, and Department of Justice. It's really a compromise, if you will,

Brett, right? Because I think they want to give the Department of Justice its autonomy as well, if the DOJ wants to bring those charges and not just kind of step on it as well. Because a lot of people were saying, well, if they make all of these charges, is it going to be overly political? So rather than I think list and showboat, they probably could have listed 50 charges. Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because there was such a debate over, should they do charges? Should they not do charges? Of course they should. They should absolutely not.

It's going to politicize it. And at the end of the day, I'm not sure there is a right decision there. But in my mind, you've gone through all these steps. You've had 10 plus hearings, 11 if you count the original one that was way back when the officer spoke. You want to ultimately deliver something, I think. You want to ultimately deliver something, I think. You want to have a conclusion. And I think the crimes here are so clear that I think it was the right decision to make these criminal referrals. But if I'm being totally candid and honest,

if they didn't make criminal referrals, I wouldn't have cared either. I strongly disagree with you there. I would have cared a lot. And I think you would have cared a lot. Let me explain to you why. It goes back to what I said before. If you give Donald Trump an inch, he takes your throat. So the moment you don't make the criminal referral, what does he say? Exactly what he said in the Mueller report.

He goes, they went through this whole process. I'm vindicated. They made no criminal referrals at all. I'm innocent. And you and most rational people would say, that's not what they did. And he would say, they had all the evidence. They went through 10 weeks. They wasted all the taxpayer money and they found nothing. I'm 100% innocent. He would have said that right away. You've convinced me. You've convinced me. I'm with you 100% because that's absolutely 100% how that would have played out. Would have done that. And that's why I think ultimately the January 6th committee, when you weigh it and ultimately

someone makes the argument in the room that I just made, you can't counter that argument. It's impossible. And you have to do it because he's such a thug criminal traitor. You're so right. You're so right, by the way. You're so right. You're so right. You're so right. I take that. I convinced you like that. Okay. So let's talk about Mike Pence. So before today's January 6th committee hearing, Mike Pence goes on Fox. And let's just play the video of Mike Pence before I just say specifically what he said. Play it. You don't want to tease it up here? I don't want to tease it up. I just want to show it. I'm purposely delaying so I could find it.

Well, it's that pathetic that I just want to show it. But one of the things that Penn says is he hopes that the Department of Justice will not bring charges against Trump. And he said is that while I think what Trump did was reckless, he goes, you know, I don't think it's a crime. I don't think it's a crime to get bad advice from lawyers. I don't think it's a crime. I don't think it's a crime to get bad advice from lawyers. I don't think it's a crime. So I think it would be doing a big mis-service. I love the impression. All right, I got the clip. Let's play it. But when it comes to the Justice Department's decision about bringing charges in the future, I would hope that they would not bring charges against the former president. I don't look, as I wrote in my book, I think the president's actions and words on January 6th were reckless.

But I don't know that it's criminal to take bad advice from lawyers. Lawyer here, it is criminal. It is criminal. What are you talking about if a lawyer told you go murder someone and then you murdered someone you can't get to go my lawyer told me to my lawyer told me to do it it's it's it's it's the it's my lawyer who said murder the person and i just i did it i killed the. Now the lawyer should be charged also, but the lawyer does it make you innocent? And this is like whole, this is like Pence's whole thing too. Like where he's promoting the book. I mean, he's like, and he does that weird, like breath thing

that he does where it's like, you know, as I said in my book that you could buy for 1999, wherever he advertised the book, he used it as an opportunity to advertise his book. Now, as I said in my book, the conduct at issue is reckless. It's definitely reckless. But is it criminal? What I mean by that, telling someone to murder me, and then the person tries to murder me and hang me are you asking me is a criminal let me ask you this question did his lawyer tell him to do it because if his lawyer told him to do it i don't know i don't know you know i'm a conservative first. I'm a Christian second. You know, Jake, I'm a Republican third. And so were they Republicans who wanted to kill me? Because if they were Republicans and their lawyer told him it was okay, I'm going to give him a pass on this one, Jake. Do we have the clip where he actually did? So I think there

was a town hall, and I hope we have the clip this time, Brett, where Jake Tapper was holding this town hall and seen it. But I could have showed you, this was his whole line that he did on all of his interviews. So this one just happened to be on Jake Tapper, where whenever he's asked, so why'd you support the election deniers who wanted to kill you? Like these people called for you to die and then they like tried to kill you. Why do you support him? And he goes, well, I'm a Christian and I'm a conservative and I'm a Republican. So even if you don't do things that are Christian-like or conservative or Republican, if you tell me they are, I'm going to give you a pass. Brett, play the clip.

Well, you know, I've often said I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order. But I'm a Republican. And once Republican primary voters had chosen their nominees. Okay, okay. Who does Mike Pence appeal to? I, I, I still do not understand who is his audience. The Trump people hate him. The Democrats hate him. Independents hate him. I don't know who he's buying for. I don't know who his book is for, who is the target audience when he runs his presidential campaign that he's trying to run,

who is voting for him other than mother or maybe maybe the fly? And now the fly doesn't like him. I guess he's got maybe mother in his corner. But so Republican and that's just a complete pass to do whatever you want, including trying to murder you. You got the R next to your name. You're all in. That's what I'm hearing. He does.

He does the finger play it back one more time so i want to show people like he makes like when he says the line he like speaks in his head to himself he's like you nailed it nailed it fucking nailed it mike well well just like you know by the way you know he's the kind of guy who like sits in front of the mirror and rehearses every little facial expression every kind of way he speaks the way he emphasizes certain consonants and vowels like you know he sits there practicing and he gets up there he goes fucking nailed it well jake i've said it before i'm a conservative i'm a christian i'm a conservative. I'm a Christian. I'm a conservative. And I'm a Republican.

Play the clip one more time, Brett. Well, you know, I've often said I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order. But I'm a Republican. And once Republican primary voters had chosen their nominees. Who talks like that? If someone talked like that to me like dude get away what are you doing ben's point ben is vigorously pointing his finger at him do it he's doing a pence that's good who communicates like these people are like fascist zombie weirdos like there's no

and dangerous like there's no other way like if person believes that, how do you have a normal conversation with him on literally any topic if that's where his mind is going Donald Trump is worrying about this week. He's also worried about the fact that the House Ways and Means Committee is voting to release Trump's tax returns. They will be meeting behind closed doors on Tuesday regarding the release of six years of returns, Donald Trump's personal tax returns, and the tax returns for all of his businesses, 2015 to 2020. Now, this is good, right? This is accountability. Every single president has been releasing their tax returns. I think it is incredibly important to release tax returns. But I have to say this, I have to say this. I really like, in many respects, the reporting here of Jennifer Rubin. So I don't want to totally be like, Jennifer Rubin, what are you doing? But on this one take, I'm a little confused.

And let's put the take up here. I mean, she identifies as conservative, but anti-Trump political commentator. And she's done good reporting, good investigative pieces on Trump. But I think she really misses the point here. And this is what her article was about. Can we pull up, Brett, the statement that she makes where she says, releasing Trump's tax returns now has all the appearance of petty payback. She goes, I'm hard pressed to think of any legislative proposal that might come from the returns, let alone from their public release, and saying that Democrats

no longer have a reason to release Trump's tax returns. I could think of about 10,000 reasons why we would, what type of, one, how about just the legislative proposal that people who run for the highest office should have to turn over their returns? How about to determine if he was a complete and total trader, which we know he is, but how about that as a legitimate legislative purpose? How about a legitimate legislative purpose to make sure that individuals who run for the office of presidency don't engage in tax fraud, aren't tax cheats? How about that legitimate legislative purpose? I could keep going on and on and fill up the entire show, but why? There's nothing petty about it. In fact, it's the opposite of petty. What is petty is Trump also lying. Trump said he was going to release his tax return. He was just waiting for

the never-ending audit to be complete, which of course is more gaslighting of it. The pettiness is on the Republican side. It's not petty for us to want transparency at the highest office, nor does it set any bad precedent at all, because what's the precedent? We should hope in the future that if you want to run for the highest office, you're not afraid to show your tax returns. There should be certain things that are disqualifying. Brett pulled up the tweet from Jennifer Rubin. And again, I want to emphasize there's a lot of reporting over the years that I think is really, really good. I just think this one misses the mark and it misses the mark going back to the theme, Brett, that I said earlier, which is you can't

give someone like Trump an inch. You can't give a fascist an inch. You can't appease these people at all. You can't. You have to recognize they pose a mortal and existential danger to our democracy and to your life, to your family's life, to members of your community's life. And that should matter. That should mean something. I know that the MAGA Republicans, when it comes to COVID, don't care that a million people die of COVID. To them,

that's just a rounding error. But to us, this is life or death. It's not an exaggeration. And here's the fatal flaw in the argument also. If your whole thing is, this is just in the past. Trump is not president anymore. Why would Democrats do this? Oh, this just feels like petty revenge. The guy's announced his candidacy. He's running right now.

We're going through the same issue right now. And if you don't have accountability for him, then you're certainly not going to be able to get accountability for him now. And these sort of slippery slope arguments that people have been making over the past few years drive me up the wall. It's like the, uh, the Pence statement on the show. And when anybody, whenever anybody, and it's not just Republicans, it's a lot of people in the media.

You occasionally see a Democrat say it. They say something like, well, what kind of precedent will it set if we indict a former president of the United States? Well, I think it sets a precedent that if you incite an insurrection against the United States of America, guess what? You get prosecuted and something will happen to you rather than, oh, if you lose an election, let's look at the opposite precedent that you want to set here. The precedent that you want to set is if you lose an election, you have between election day and inauguration to do whatever you want in order to overturn the results. And if you are successful leading up to inauguration day, guess what? You get to be king.

You get to be dictator. If you're not, American democracy proceeds. That's the precedent that you want to set by having these ridiculous arguments. It's absolutely insane. Insane. You know, the ability to hold Trump accountable would actually be made very easy if the essentially entire Republican Party didn't become complete traitors, right? What separates this from Watergate, a few things, but one of the things, at least there, you had a bipartisan consensus that the break-in at the Watergate was unlawful and illegal. Compared to Trump's crimes, that would just be like something that took place on a random Thursday at 4.30 p.m.

Wouldn't even register. Wouldn't even register as a thing. But right now you have the Democrats with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. That's it. The Democrats and you got Kinzinger and Cheney who are saying, look, this is criminal and wrong. And then you have an entire major political party. That's what makes it different. An entire major political party that's like, no, we're cool with this. Those January 6th insurrectionists, they're political prisoners. They're being persecuted by a deep state cabal. And no, no, no, Donald Trump, we'd elect him again. That's what is very different and what actually

makes the job of someone like a Jack Smith and the January 6th committee very difficult. What they have to contend with as well is that when Kevin McCarthy or whoever it's going to be takes over, their focus is going to be holding a hearing to make criminal prosecutions against the January 6th committee panel. That's not an exaggeration. That is what they said that they want to do. They're going to be focused on impeaching people because drugs were confiscated at the border, which would normally be a sign that the border security is working if you confiscate things. But that's what they cite as, wow, all of this fentanyl was stopped from crossing the border. We're going to need to impeach that, impeach them. And so we're not dealing with a democracy, a pro-democracy political

party in the Republicans. It's what makes this a very different thing, which is why you have to applaud the really, the work with the January 6th committee did against all of the resistance. And frankly, what Jack Smith's going to have to go through. Stick with us here because we've got a lot to discuss. We got to talk about Republicans' new main issue, which is butt plugs, sex toys, and porn. That's what they've been talking about. We got to talk about the curious case of George Santos, the new Republican, MAGA Republican congressman-elect from Long Island, who's literally lied about his entire life story, where he worked, where he lived, things he owns, being a financier. The guy's entire background appears to be just a complete and utter fraud. You're not going to want to miss

our breakdown there. And we got to talk about some good Biden news and refilling our strategic petroleum reserves. Before going there, I want to talk about our next partner. It's Athletic Greens. I take AG1 by Athletic Greens literally every day. I gave AG1 a try because I hated taking different pills and vitamins and gummies. I wanted a supplement that actually tastes great, gives me all of the energy I need. I could take it in the morning. It's cheaper than my cold brew habit,

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and I took particular interest in this because one, MAGA Republican fraud con artist, I always take interest in and I want to cover. But I saw this is the new Congress member. This is the Congress member elect from the third congressional district. And after some redistricting, this is the district where Brett and I grew up in. This is in Nassau County. This would have been Brett and our congressman growing up. This is the congressional district. When I was in college, it was the second congressional district and the congress member was Steve Israel. But that's who I interned for when I went to GW. Basically, this is the successor to Steve Israel, who left his job. He was replaced by Tom Suozzi.

Suozzi was the New York, Nassau County supervisor who took that seat, which then became New York's third congressional district. Suozzi left to run against Kathy Hochul for reelection, which was like, so the Democrat left to run against a very strong Democratic candidate forlection, which was like, so the Democrat left to run against a very strong Democratic candidate for governor, which was a completely pathetic and horrible move to make. Shout out to Kathy Hochul, who's been on the Midas Touch podcast. You do not challenge Kathy Hochul, who's a superstar. It's the most ridiculous thing on the planet. It's honestly so frustrating. It's such an example of Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. This should have been a House seat that we won.

Instead, you had Swazi, whose name I mainly remember because every time we would go to the park, he was the town supervisor. His name was literally all over all the parks that we went to growing up. It was really the main reason. The beaches, like everywhere. But he decides instead of running and having the incumbency that he's going to give that seat up to run the primary against Hochul. And the result is we lost the seat. And not only did we lose a seat, but we lost a seat to one of these deranged MAGA Republicans. And as with all things MAGA and all things far right extremism, MAGA don't exist without a huge heaping of fraud brushed right on the top because all these people are absolute frauds.

It's actually like the number one thing I think in order to be MAGA, you need to be totally full of it, 100%. And so recently we spoke about this Young Republicans Gala in New York. We mentioned that there were some of these Congress people elect that were at this event. So one of the people at this event was George Santos there with all the MAGA extremists. This was the event, right? This was the butt plug event, right? So look at these stories tied together. Look at all this. And so the story comes out now that George Santos, and I recommend you read, by the way, the articles in the New York Times. You can check it out online. I did a good hot take on it on YouTube too. Yeah, yeah. And you can check out Ben's hot take. Who is representative elect George Santos?

His resume may be largely fiction. Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, says he's, quote, the embodiment of the American dream, but he seems to have misrepresented a number of career highlights. New York Times in the headline going for the understatement of the century, misrepresented. The guy lied about his entire life. So he said he went to Baruch College. Never happened. He said he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and that he was an investor. Never happened. He said he owned an animal rescue charity with a bunch of dogs and animals and had this whole nonprofit. Does not exist. He lied.

It did not exist. The one event that he apparently was involved in with an actual animal rescue group, he never actually, according to the person who threw the event, who actually ran the charity, the money that was raised, he never actually gave them the money who he said where the money was going to. So just also in kind of the Trump action. But Brett, it does get worse. So he's also a wanted criminal in Brazil, apparently, too. He's an international fugitive. You legitimately can't make this up. He's a wanted international criminal who has been on the run

from Brazilian authorities for check fraud. Guy has faced multiple evictions for failing to pay rent, including in a rent stabilized apartment that he had in Sunnyside, Queens. He was fined over $12,000 for that in a civil judgment. And he would make these statements throughout the pandemic also. He would say, complaining about the pandemic, Eric, eviction moratorium. He said, and it's horrible English, so excuse me. These are Santos' words. He said, will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property? Guy wasn't a landlord. He was not a landlord. He claimed to be a landlord of 13 properties. Not only was he not a landlord of 13 properties, when you go back and you look at the eviction orders in New York, he was evicted not once, but twice as a tenant. The first time in Queens for not paying

$2,200. Then he was fined over $12,000 for not paying $10,000 in rent. So he was a tenant who was evicted by landlord for not paying rent. Then he pretends to be a landlord and goes after tenants in the speeches that he's making. So make that make sense. But Brett, he never held up until like 2021, as far as we know from the reporting, he never held a job that made any real money. There was something called LinkBridge Investors in 2020, which he listed on his... He ran in 2020 and lost to Swazi for that same congressional seat. And he listed on that disclosure that he was making $50,000 a year. And then he worked for this other entity that was like Highland Investment or something from Florida that was determined to be a Ponzi scheme and it was sued by the SEC. He was never sued personally, but that entity was sued by the SEC for running a $17 million Ponzi scheme, but no money until there's this entity called Devolder

that comes into the picture like in 2021. And now he's reported in his congressional disclosures that Devolder paid him a salary of $750,000 a year. So he went from making like nothing to $750,000. And get this, he then lent himself from that $750,000 salary. Remember, he was previously making $50,000. So now he gets $750,000. And a billion in dividends. And so what does he lend his campaign? He lends his campaign $700,000. And then when you ask what Devolder does, it has this like, they make capital introductions. They're a consulting company and a liaison between investment funds and investors, just word salad and gibberish. But ostensibly, that means it has clients to do that. Yet on his disclosures, he lists not one client. And you have to list clients who pay you over $5,000. So the real question here, which I think the story pivots to next, is who's funding Devolder?

And is that funding to Devolder a way around campaign financing rules which limit contributions? Is that basically serving as a straw person entity conduit? Absolutely. Yes. How could it not be? And I wouldn't be surprised also, it could be something nefarious like a GOP far right just don't know. Like the whole Brazil angle of it all, him being this Brazilian fugitive who moved here to escape his criminal past,

but then all of his kind of branding was that he was in America and he was living the American dream. And it's like the whole thing is a fraud. And every single sentence of this New York Times piece is more shocking than the next. Like my mouth was agape while I was reading this thing today, line by line by line. I kept sending it to people. I was like, could you freaking believe this? Could you freak? And how is it coming out now after the elections, after all of this happened. That's a great point. It's absolutely

crazy. One thing we can say is why the New York Times hold the story until now. And I think it's a fair point to raise, but also we got to give some criticism. I think where criticism is also due on the democratic party in Long Island, particularly, you know, and why wasn't this of the Democratic Party in general, or more specifically, the opponent, like, you know, he's running against the guy named Zimmerman. Why wasn't this opposition research done when it seems to be fairly rudimentary? Like, these are public records that were found in Queens. You could go call up Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and that's what New York Times did there, and then find that out. Why wasn't there any digging done? Specifically, this would have been the red flag right away.

He reported $50,000 a year in income in 2020, and now he just lent himself $700,000. So why wouldn't that, even if you were too lazy to do the research, which to me you could do in five minutes, but why wouldn't you just say this if you were running against him? And where'd the $700,000 come from, people? He used to be making $50,000. Now there's, why don't you do that? And Ben, I want to specify also, it's not just the $750,000 also. It's $750,000 plus over $1 million in dividends for the country. So that's in the course of a year, at least $1.75 million that he's taking in from this company that apparently has no clients because it's illegal for him not to list the clients on

the disclosure document or he's just hiding them. This company that nobody knows what the heck they do, that has a description that doesn't quite make any sense as to what they do. Nobody's ever heard of it. The whole story, everything that he does is sketchy. Is his name even George Santos? I don't know. Legitimately, who is this person? Nobody really knows, I guess. I think that there's got to be a lot more exploration done here. Look, we don't have, other than the reporting and the red flags, and as a litigator who's litigated in this issue of schemes like

this, I could just say what the red flags are. That's all we know now, but we should definitely look more into this. Hopefully New York Times is looking more into this. Hopefully Democrats are looking more into this. And I'm hoping that this gets exposed and we will of course be right on this story here on the Midas touch network. Let's go to Republicans focus on dildos, butt plugs, porn right now, Brett. So I,

so it's a rough transition. I was thinking you'd never ask. It's a rough, there's really no other smooth way to, to make that transition. So we'll just get right in'll just there is ben if you get the lube from the aisle that marjorie taylor green was hanging out with in walmart i mean i was going to insertion i you know i mean i'm not gonna go there i mean because ben likes to keep it clean

i could have so went there because i said let's get to the bottom of it and then i i had the just so you know i had the. So I want to just let everybody know that he didn't get the joke. I knew I didn't know how to do it in a smooth way, but I did have, I did say, let's get to the bottom of it. Speaking of let's get to the bottom of it. Let's talk about that's where let's talk about butt plugs. So I just didn't do it because I wasn't sure how appropriate it would be or not appropriate. But anyway, I just said it anyway. So, okay. So Marjorie Taylor Greene floated this in front of the New York Young Republican. So she picked the venue where she would speak in front of children to test this. So I'm joking. So like the teenager Republicans

and like the young adult Republicans who gather at the New York City Young Republican event, she talked about a few things. One, how her and Bannon would have led an armed insurrection and they would have won. That was one of her points. And the other point that she made was that she was so upset about them selling sex toys at the Walmart next to, you know, near her district or Walmarts in general. Do we have that clip of her breath? I don't have that one.

No, that's from last show. You know, the issues that American people are talking about at the dining room table when they go, you know what, mom, dad, you know, everything's my biggest problems in life. I just want to talk about. So I thought it was a one and done. Like I thought it was like, okay, this is what they're going to be really focused on,

but they really are. And so just on her own again, the same way in her speech, she just brought it up. This is what she tweets out to the public. She goes at Walmart. Many of your customers in my district are reaching out to me about sex toys being, at Walmart, many of your customers in my district are reaching out to

me about sex toys being sold in your Dalton store. They're extremely upset and horrified that sex toys are being sold openly next to children's toothbrushes. This is grooming. Then she shows the photo of it. And let's assume for, oh, she added this. The district I represent, George's 14th, is firmly opposed, firmly opposed to any at all grooming and sexualization of children.

It is largely Christian and conservative. We believe in protecting our kids from perversions and raising them with good moral family values. They're taking a real hard stance. To the best of our abilities.

Now, here's the thing though. Like, let's be's be rational. So let's assume that this is a valid, let's assume it's a valid photograph, right? And that really is the photo and that exists. So first off, children don't shop for their toothbrushes. Let's just put that aside. It's their, the parents are shopping for the kids. It's not four-year-olds and five-year-olds in the aisle. I don't know if she knows how shopping works. And so assume that Walmart believes that placing that to adults who are going to buy that, they then look at that and go, you know what, I'm buying this, and maybe their market testing shows that that sells. So let's just assume that's what took place. Let's say you don't like the placement of it there. And you think that, you know what, if you want to make that placement in the back or put the placement somewhere else, I think it's a fair point. I don't want to discount the point that when you walk into a family store, should sex toys be in a location where it's like

the first thing that you see or even just open to everybody? Could there be a discrete area where it's sold? We can have a conversation about it. I think it'll be a weird conversation because if that's really bothering you, just ask the manager, like write a letter to the store, like your powers as a legislator and your time should be very important to you and scarce. And you spending all of your legislative time and your power and your emphasis focused on this issue. And then when you tie this issue though to grooming and it's not grooming, it's not Walmart grooming and making it a Christian and a conservative thing and then taking it in that direction. It's like, again, as I mentioned from the outset, I'm okay to have a rational conversation if someone said to me, hey, do you think that that's

good placement of it by the toothbrush? And I'm like, where is it? Like, where is it in the store? And they're like, well, lots of kids go buy it. I'd be like, you know what? Let's not put it there. Can we put it in a back aisle or an area or somewhere where a parent may not have to have a conversation with the kid? I'm okay with that conversation. Again, why are you talking about it all the freaking time? Why are you bringing this up everywhere and posting about it as a lawmaker? As a lawmaker, just write him a letter. I don't know, call him up, call the manager. Yeah, it's funny. And then turning into the grooming issue is just something that – that's not what it's about.

Why making it all – why would you make it about that issue? You're calling Walmart groomers. You're saying that Walmart is engaged in the sexualization of children? It's corporate communism, Ben. It's corporate communism. It's what she always says nonstop. I mean the whole thing is just absolutely ridiculous. And ironically, whenever they make those claims of it's corporate communism, which isn't a thing that exists or makes any sense.

Whenever they use the word communism, I mean, they don't know. They legitimately don't know what it means. But the irony of it all is that they behave far more like communists than anybody who they ever accuse of being communists. It's a private company. It's a private company. So you have an issue with that company. You want the government to do something about it? Is this really an issue of national importance, Marge? Or could you walk up to the manager and say, hey, excuse me, I think maybe perhaps you should redesign the store. I don't understand why this is a national issue. And then she also tries to take the moral high ground here,

the moral high ground that she is this Christian conservative woman of moral values. Let's just start with the base level stuff here, which is the fact that this is the same woman who's currently getting divorced from her husband because she cheated on him twice, had two affairs at least, including one with a polyamorous tantric sex guru and a manager of the gym which she attends. Those are at least two that we know about, which resulted in her husband filing for divorce against her. But that is far and away not the most despicable thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, is inciting insurrections and being part of insurrections, is that a moral Christian conservative thing to do? Absolutely not. Is chasing the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, chasing them down the street, harassing them, screaming at them.

Is that something that a conservative Christian person of moral upstanding values would do? Absolutely not. So once again, it is utter projection. And she is the last person who should ever be speaking about morality, the teachings of religion and Christianity, the last person to tell you how to live your lives. I mean, it's absolutely the very last person that you want you or your kids to emulate is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then you have Utah Senator Mike Lee, total weirdo, just introduced a bill, a total ban on porn nationwide. It should also be noted that studies have shown that the redder the state, the more porn is watched. And have you ever seen those studies too, where it talks about the search results as well from those states. It kind of further highlights the hypocritical nature

of what's going on in those states as well, to put it lightly. But porn viewing is at its highest levels in the Bible Belt. But that's their focus right now. They're focused on all of the issues. This is what we talk about in the My Disg Business Podcast. I'm not bringing it up just to talk about, hey, look, Republicans, they want to ban porn. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's talking about sex toys. There's a bigger point that always needs to be made when we do these segments. And it's that the pro-democracy, pro-normal party, which right now is the Democrats, are out there fighting for things like jobs and improving working conditions and access to education and healthcare access and lowering the cost of prescription drug prices and improving our infrastructure, bringing manufacturing jobs here.

How do we make sure we help our veterans with the best health care imaginable? How do we protect a woman's freedom over her body? How do we make sure that all human beings are treated with dignity and can marry the person who they want to marry without big government stepping in and saying, you can't marry that person in the LGBTQ plus community. We're talking about these critical issues that impact America. And do I agree with Democrats on every issue? No, but I do know that my differences are usually regarding the degree versus the fact that they want to overturn the government, And so while Republicans are talking about all of these issues

and then talking about pro-insurrection, Democrats are fighting for issues that all Americans should care about. And that's the key highlight point here when we bring these comparisons up. And then you look at like Charlie Kirk kirk's turning points event it's another like wwe style conference where they all say the same things they all come out of this uh of the on this stage and it looks literally looks like a wwe stage and like someone comes out and they have like the pyrotechnics and smoke and the rock music and it's like like, yeah, it's, it's wild. And then they go out there and they don't talk about what they never talk about what they're going to do. They just go on with the same things about trying to divide the country. The Democrats want to shove the pronouns

down your throat. They're trying to throw pronouns at you. Do you like pronouns? Like that's literally the issues that they talk about there. I mean, you have Charlie Kirk talking about parents. Get your kids out of public schools right now and put them in my turning points academy. By the way, Charlie Kirk not only dropped out of college, he tried going a second time and dropped out again because he just couldn't handle it. And by the way, no – that's fine though. I want to be clear. 100%. You don't have to go to college to be successful at all.

I don't want to make you think that that's – I don't feel that way. But Charlie Kirk is now endorsing his own academy. He's trashing education, trashing colleges, and created his own college, his own education, where the end point is no education, and they describe it as a rescue mission. It's a rescue commission of stopping the woke and stopping the CRT.

And just play the clip of what he says. It's just that. Not to mention the newly launched Turning Point Academy, which we're actually having the Educators Summit right now. And if any of you want to homeschool your kids, or if you want to get your kids at a government school, you should do that yesterday and talk to us at Turning Point Academy, how we can supply curriculum, training,

and have you execute a rescue mission for your kid or grandkid out of the government schools and into Turning Point Academy and say, well, Charlie, you know, what do you stand for at Turning Point Academy? Super simple. We believe there is a God and you are not him. We believe in the natural law, no CRT, no wokeism queer theory no lgbtq nonsense no post-modernism no post-structuralism pro-american pro-freedom pro pro-liberty ideas and curriculum for the next generation unapologetically educating the next generation around truth he literally just said a bunch of word salad. Yeah. Made up terms that they're against. Insane.

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make deposits instantly to jump in on the fun and make same-day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. If they are having trouble with pronouns, BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. speaking, but he's also selling, what is it, his book called The College Scam. The guy who dropped out of college twice is selling a book called The College Scam to try to get people into his new academy. And I think it's always revealing too, they're very specific with their language and they're very devious with their language. And if you notice there, he didn't call it public school on purpose. He called it government school. Get your kids out of government school,

which is a real intentional thing to try to scare people who are naturally fearful about the government to pull their kids from the school and homeschool them with Charlie Kirk. I cannot think of a worse idea than that. And if you want to speak about grooming, that right there is actual grooming. That is actual grooming your ideology, taking these kids, making them, basically trying to brainwash them into your ideology, taking them out of the real world, taking them out of real world interactions, and instead indoctrinating them with this far right extremist train of thought. Then you have Carrie Lake, who just goes around filing them up one more

embarrassing lawsuit after the other. She speaks at that event. And she talks about her pronouns. This is like because they have one line. Yeah, one. Play the clip. Play the clip. Know that right now we can identify as anything we want to identify as. But I want you to know that I identify as a proud, election-denying, deplorable... Are you with me? And my pronouns are... I just saw another red light go off, by the way. And my pronouns are I won. All right, let me skip past the lame joke for a second and just say, she's doing the Trump thing where she goes,

oh, look, the red lights are turning off. Look, the cameras are going off. You're at a Turning Point USA event, dude. There are no CNN cameras there. There are only radical right extremist cameras at the Turning Point USA event. And you are sitting there going, oh, there goes another light. Oops, the cameras are flipping off. They're too controversial for you. No, nobody's doing that.

Nobody did that for Trump. Even every time Trump said that, I'm watching it on CNN. They're playing you, dude. They're playing it. She's trying to emulate him, and it is just sad, and it is pathetic. She doesn't have any of the power that Donald Trump even had when he attempted all this BS. Do the one, Brett, where she goes – where she then yells at the media in the back who she thinks – it's like the only media that's in the back are the cameras for turning point that are broadcasting it like like like that's it like another red light would be like it'd be like it'd be it'd be like if you go to a bar mitzvah and you give a speech

and the bar mitzvah in the cameraman you hire the one cameraman in the back you go let me tell you in the media out there right now, who's watching this. F off media here, but play the clip of Carrie Lake. And these bastards of the media want to drag him through the mud. And she lifted up her arm at the end as if she was giving the finger to the media cameras. Once again, the media cameras are Charlie Kirk's cameras. Like there's no one else there. It's the bar mitzvah videographer.

Yeah. Charlie Kirk hired these people. You hate them? What's your message here? I don't even get it. Okay. Then go to in Mar-a-Lago where she speaks to, there's only one clip I want to play of her. The Log Cabin Republicans event at Mar-a-Lago where she speaks to, this is the only one clip I want to play of her, the Log Cabin Republicans event at Mar-a-Lago. And so she, again, she could speak about anything.

And this is the two things that she says to the Log Cabin Republicans. First play the one where she told him that 80 to 100% of men in the media are gay and that the conservative politics is full of gay men. Play that one. How many of you are in media in some way, shape, or form? Raise your hand. Just a few of you. This is no secret. 80, 90, 100% of the men in media are gay.

Okay? And so all of my friends, when I worked in media for 30 years, were the most amazing, fun, smart, savvy people in the world. Gay men. And then play the one where she says that it's harder to be a conservative and come out as conservative than it is to be gay and come out. But the people in this room had to come out twice.

Right? And how many of you would say it's harder to be a conservative and come out as a... than it was to be gay and come out? I actually had to come out as a then it was to be gay. I actually had to come out as well. Okay now the media is like, oh my god, Carrie Lake is gay? What? No, but when you work in the media and if there's fair and honest in the media,

you don't put your politics front and center, you keep it in. And so when I walked away from the media and I was unshackled from that restriction of speaking my mind and jumped into politics and could finally speak my mind, it was the most free, liberating thing ever. What are their political beliefs? I genuinely, other than being part of the cult of Trump, supporting the insurrection, supporting the QAnon cult, coming up with things that they make up that they're against, where they say we're against the woke and we're against CRT and we're against government school.

I know they're against everything. There is no political ideology that they have other than hate. They're not talking to Americans about issues that matter to Americans, but who is President Biden just like doing the work. President Biden is doing the work, right? Head down each and every day doing things for the country. Brett, talk to us about these strategic petroleum reserves and why it's so important. Yeah, I wanted to talk about this because I thought it was absolutely a brilliant move. And it was something that a few months ago when President Biden decided to sell the strategic petroleum reserves, the SPR, in order to get oil out there into the market to bring down prices.

When that happened, there was so much criticism from the right and honestly, just from the media at large here. There are a lot of people saying, how could he do that? What are you going to do here? This is ridiculous. How dare you drain the oil reserves right now? Meanwhile, you look back now, it was an absolute no-brainer and President Biden turned a profit on this deal for the American taxpayer. And I'll explain how. So earlier this year, the administration sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at $96 a barrel. So that was at a key time. Ukraine had been invaded. Gas prices were going up. We didn't want to be as reliant on foreign sources. We needed to bring down prices as they were rising. So President Biden made this decision. Now, at this moment in time, President Biden bought back even more oil for the reservoir

at $72 a barrel. So he sold it at $96, and now he's buying it back at $72. For anybody who's ever traded stocks or has taken third grade math class, you probably know that that's a good thing to sell something at a higher price than buy it back at a lower price. You know that that means you have made a profit. And so despite the criticism, this is a huge win for the American taxpayer. This is a huge win for the administration. literally nothing bad about this whatsoever. But if you are not all that bright, or if you were just looking to try to make everything an issue, then perhaps it is a problem for you. And so we saw this happen with Lauren Boebert, who probably didn't even know what she was reading, but she saw a Newsmax report about Biden buying back the reserves and she immediately went on the attack. And let me pull up her comment

here. Her comment says, so let's go over this. Trump stocked up our reserves at record low prices. Then Biden emptied it out to get through the midterms. Now he's going to stock it back up at a much higher price. Pathetic as usual. Once again, she gets just about every single fact here wrong. Actually, the complete opposite of that happened. Biden, like I said, emptied it out, aka sold it at $96 and bought it back at $72. But let's not get facts get in the way of Boebert's narrative here. Anyway, that is a huge one for the American people. I think it's important that we revisit that story because of how much Biden was criticized. But now you look back and you go, that was absolutely brilliant. I think to bring this episode full circle, Ben, when we were talking earlier about the Pulitzer

Prize and how, why would the Pulitzer Prize and how, like, why would the Pulitzer Prize, why would they even give him that string? Like, why would they even say, oh, you know what? Well, we looked it up, we investigated, and in fact, we came to the conclusion now, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I like about what the Biden administration's doing now is they are just like no nonsense. They are just shutting people down as they should and treating the people who are fools like the fools they are. So Fox News had asked the White House apparently for a comment. It was this like trolly kind of story that they were doing about Biden appointing queer activists

to an HIV advisory council. And they asked the White House for a comment. The White House at first didn't respond immediately because what all these media organizations do, and it doesn't matter if this is a so-called left organization or right organization, they'll say, we're writing the story, the deadline's at 2 p.m., we need your response. And it might be like 1 p.m. And that's how they get, oh, well, we asked them

and there was no comment, so I guess it's what it is, right? So Fox probably pulls something like that to them. Well, the White House actually gets back to them, and they respond with this. Their official comment was a picture of a T-shirt that said, Uncle Sam doesn't care snowflakes. That was a comment to Fox Digital that the Biden administration made in regards to this story. You've got to treat these people kind of like the fools they are right then. I mean, this is just absolutely,

when I saw this, I was like, just fight fire with fire. That's what I like to see. And you, it's so smart too, using the symbolism as well that the right has tried to co-opt and then use that symbolism back at them in front of their audience, it's really a brilliant move. And so when a Fox viewer sees that and they see Biden's

calling them snowflakes and they go, wait a minute, what's going on here? And honestly, that's how you have to treat Fox. That's how you have to treat that right wing media. They're not good faith actors. I mean, that's putting it as mildly as you can. They are not just bad faith actors. They are the worst faith actors who are trying to take away our faith in democracy. And so you got to push back, you got to punch back, and you got to not just hit him with the truth, but hit him hard. And I like that we have gloves off Biden, that we have someone who's fighting for the American people, who's laser focused on the issues. And by the way, who I think has done an incredible job already, the Democrats' new leader, Akeem Jeffries. I mean, he's been crushing it, coming out with strong statement after strong statement. You see Democrats testing how to deal with the MAGA Republicans as well. So you see Eric Swalwell, for example, going to someone like a Jim Jordan and saying things

like, well, you supported the insurrection and your Twitter handle said this, and then they don't know what to say. They don't know what to say when they're confronted. So when you could get them in front of the cameras in these high profile moments and confront them with the truth, you could really make some great points. And I think it's going to resonate with the American people. But this episode comes full circle, Brett, because just like you said at the outset, the contrast is so stark between Democrats doing things and Republicans talking about all of these bizarre and deranged and dangerous issues. And I think we're going to see that in the coming weeks,

months, years, as we approach 2024. And Brett, as you showed out, the House Republicans say that their top priority is going to be to probe the Biden family. And on a list of things that were polled that the American people care about, anything related to Biden, is that like the lowest of the low percentage of what they want to do? But when you party like the Republicans, you have no political things that you stand for. You don't care about the people. That's all you have. That's all you have. I want to thank everybody for watching this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Hey, please, please, please, before we go, make sure you hit the subscribe button right now. It's free to subscribe. Make sure you subscribe on all platforms where the Midas Touch podcast is available. For our audio listeners, check us out on YouTube. Search Midas Touch and hit the subscribe button.

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store.midastouch.com for the best pro-democracy merch and gear. We've got great t-shirts and sweatshirts, things for the winter, things for the spring. We got I Read Ban Book Sweater, which is one of my favorites. We've got the Convict or Convict 45 shirt, Person, Woman, Man, Camera, Prison shirt with an emphasis on prison, and so much more at store. Midas touch.com. Again, remember to subscribe right now on our YouTube channel, subscribe wherever you get the Midas touch podcast, Brett.

It's so great spending this time with you. We'll keep fighting for democracy with you. The might is mighty, but we are so grateful for none of this is possible without you. Now go on and spread the message of democracy. Until next time, I'm Ben Micellis, joined by Brett Micellis. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.