The MeidasTouch Podcast - Joe Trippi has the MeidasTouch

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers sit down with Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic political consultant who ran both Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and Doug Jones’ 2017 upset Senate win in Alabama. During the interview, Trippi dissects the power of true grassroots movements and what it takes to break through the clutter in 2021. Trippi holds no punches as he talks about how too many political consultants do a disservice to the cause by relying too heavily on outdated political messaging methods.. The brothers round out the podcast discussing the latest on Rudy Giuliani no longer being allowed to practice law in New York, the latest with the infrastructure deal and the opening of a January 6th select committee to investigate the insurrection. Please make sure to rate & review this podcast and as always - thank YOU for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Ben Micellus joined by Brett and Jordy Micellus. We have, as always, an incredible podcast episode for you today with our guest, veteran Democratic political consultant, Joe Trippi. Of course, Joe Trippi ran the Howard Dean presidential campaign. We're going Yahoo! Yahoo! We're going to, Jordy, you're designated, Jordy, to ask Joe Trippi about the Yahoo! Oh, my God, I cannot wait to ask him about that. And Joe Trippi ran the gubernatorial candidacy of Jerry Brown in California. He ran Doug Jones

improbable victory in Alabama in 2017, longtime political consultant. We will ask Joe Trippi about the political landscape, what we all collectively can be doing better and what Democrats can learn from the lessons of 2020 and the 2021 runoffs. Excited to have those conversations. Want to talk briefly before we get into a number of breaking news pieces, one being the fact that Judy Giuliani is going to have his or has had his legal license suspended in New York, which I want to talk about. I want to talk about the infrastructure plan, which there was a deal reached that I want to talk about. But I guess personal news, you know, in my non Midas touch world as a lawyer, I am representing a secret Service member. I'm not going to say his name because the right wing

media has done a good enough job horribly, horrifically, you know, defaming him. And I say that obviously, you know, sarcastically a good enough job. It's horrible to see what they're doing. This is a retired Secret Service member and get this brothers who was assigned to Republican presidential details. He's one of the few African-American Secret Service members who rose to the top leadership positions. He retired in April of 2018. And through all of this kind of crazy Russian disinfo Hunter Biden reporting after my client was retired. You have all of this right wing media saying that my client sent text messages to Hunter Biden. Fox News called my client the Ray Donovan to Hunter Biden. Here's the one thing. My client never met Hunter Biden, never talked to him, never communicated him, never text messaged him,

never met Hunter Biden, number one. And Ben, correct me if I'm wrong here. The time frame that Fox News and the New York Post, all of Murdoch's various entities say that this guy was tasked with Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden or President Biden at that time didn't even have Secret Service protection, right? No Secret Service detail. My client was retired. My client never even heard of the Chateau Marmont. I was like, really? Never even heard of the Chateau Marmont? Never heard of the Chateau Marmont. Never stepped inside of the Chateau Marmont. But here is yet another example, Brett. We have someone from law enforcement who rose through the ranks to be a leader within the Secret Service who served in the only presidential details he served was Bush, McCain and Romney. This guy, he served Republicans. And here you have Republicans

trashing him, tarnishing his name, saying that he helped Hunter Biden get rid of prostitutes in the Chateau Marmont. And, you know, my client has received multiple death threats like he gets death threats every day now because of this false reporting. Fox News took the defamatory reporting from New York Post, all owned by News Corp, and basically said, reportedly, yeah, reportedly, you're reporting on your own stories from your sister company. And they put my guy's face, my client's face all over these TV shows, you know, and basically, and again, on one of the shows, they said he was Hunter's Ray Donovan. And again, it is a direct attack, intentional attack on Secret Service as well. And in addition to Hunter, I'd go further than that, Ben.

I think it's a I think it's an act of stochastic terrorism, which is that they are hoping that other people launch attacks on this person. It seems like it's what Fox News does these days is they pick a target. They put their face on TV. News Corp puts their face in the New York Post and they hope that those people get attacked. Now, on one end, you could get attacked on digital media. But on the other end, when you put someone's face out like that and when you like the other day, Tucker Carlson was giving out Don Lemon's address on the air. They are implicitly telling their viewers to attack these people. This is where this person lives. This is what this person looks like. They are a bad person and you should do something about it. To me, that's incitement.

I completely agree with you, Brett. Absolutely. I mean, it's ridiculous. But wait, Brett, can I go back to that Don Lemon clip that you're referring to? Because during that clip, did you hear how he was pronouncing Don Lemon's name? He kept calling him Don Lamone. And it is like- Who was saying that? Yeah, you can't even make this shit up because like, I guess that's his like zinger.

I'm going to mispronounce your name. He kept referring to him as Don Lamone. And it was the weirdest 35, 60 second clip I've ever- Let's listen to it. Don Lamont is a cable news host on our competitor over at CNN. And most of the time he talks about cable news host type things. What the Royals are up to. How a commercial airliner might have flown into a black hole.

You know, the news. But Don Lamont is, most importantly, more than that. Don Lamont is a civil rights leader. That's enough. Don Lamont is a civil rights leader. All right. That's that's enough. It's so utterly it's so utterly absurd. I've only seen it in print. I haven't actually watched the clip. That's the. Oh, my God. And brother, it's beyond bizarre. And here's the thing with my client, Breitbart and Washington Examiner, both right wing media papers already issued retractions. I saw that. That was awesome. Breitbart issued a full page retraction and acknowledged that my client never met Hunter

Biden, acknowledged that my client wasn't even a secret. Hunter Bidane, Bidot, Hunter Bidot. There's no doubt. And Washington Examiner did as well. And I sent those retractions to Fox News. And I think what happened was they weren't anticipating, you know, this whole kind of right wing echo chamber was not anticipating that this Secret Service member was going to fight back, have a lawyer, shut it down. And they're like, we need to get this story out there. New York Post, in the face of two other

retractions, wrote the same story and then gave it to Fox News to broadcast to further defame as part of this kind of cyclical echo chamber. You know, and it comes also on the heels, this attack of the Secret Service member. Did you guys see the attack on General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday? I mean, when he went and said, look, I read lots of different books. I think we should teach critical race theory. If you are asking me if we should learn why white rage exists, we should read lots of books.

We should read books on communism. I read books on Karl Marx. It doesn't mean I'm a communist. It means I read to try to understand other perspectives because as the American military and as someone who oversees American military universities, we want our people not to be just indoctrinated. We want them to be educated. That's what separates America apart. And of course, that signaled for the right wing. They're like, let's defund the military. Swear to God, that's what they said, right, Brett? Literally, Laura Ingraham, of course, we're back to Fox News, which is the biggest disinformation echo chamber on the planet, who's causing a lot of chaos and damage and destruction to this country.

Their first move was to go on TV, criticize not the accused child sex trafficker, Matt Gates, for asking this question, but instead turn their ire on to General Mark Milley and the military at large, saying that this is why we need to completely defund the military, that the military is too woke and we need to stop them. So this is really the official position of the right wing now. They're anti-US military. They are anti-police law enforcement. They are anti-secret service. They are anti really everybody trying to protect the country. Anti-science, anti-teacher unions. The list goes on and on. Anti-health, anti-infrastructure, anti-basically everything. This is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He's sitting up there decorated in patches that fill his entire military uniform for his experience in war zones, giving a perspective as a wartime general to a sex offender like Matt Gaetz. And Gaetz basically tweets out with generals like this. It's no wonder we fought considerably more wars than we've won. It's both immature and just disturbing to attack the military like that. And that goes on and on and on. We have Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who's the Republican leader in the House, making up, just lying that he's meeting with Officer Fanon. I mean, that's not happening.

No, not happening at all. I mean, let's go back to Matt Gaetz for a second. And let's just be clear here. Matt Gaetz has never fought for anything except for a good seat and a Chuck E. Cheese. That's the here. Matt Gaetz has never fought for anything except for a good seed and a Chuck E. Cheese. That's the only thing Matt Gaetz has ever fought for. And the fact that this guy who shouldn't even have the opportunity to be speaking with these people, who shouldn't even be on these committees, who shouldn't even be in Congress, it's just so appalling.

And McCarthy is just another level of this just disgraceful GQP. McCarthy pretending that he reached out to Officer Fanone, saying that he reached out and that he was waiting to hear back. His scheduler reached out and he hasn't heard anything from Officer Fanone. So that's that. And McCarthy also saying, how do you have the nerve to say this, that we need to do, everyone agrees that we need to do, everyone agrees that we need to do everything we can to get to the bottom of January 6th. How do you say that after leading the opposition to the investigation into January 6th? Here's the problem with what McCarthy says is there are receipts. There are receipts because Officer Fanone refuses to be a pawn in this political game of the right.

And he's been incredibly outspoken and he refuses to relent. And so he has been speaking with Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell. And Swalwell has shared their text message conversations where Swalwell just asks, hey, you hear from McCarthy today? And he goes, nope. Swalwell sent Officer Fanone the clip of McCarthy saying, my team reached out to him. He didn't respond. Officer Fanone says, that's bullshit. That's bullshit. He has my phone number. I have not heard once from the guy. So here you have the Republican minority leader of the house lying, just completely lying about reaching out to a law enforcement officer who was attacked

and defended us on January 6th. Even if what he's saying was true, he's sending his scheduler to reach out so they could have a conversation about this. You're supposed to be a leader of the country. You pick up the phone. You call the man who was defending the Capitol that day. Don't pawn it off to one of your assistant schedulers to make something happen, which obviously we've established is a lie in its own right. If you want to investigate what happened in January 6th, first off, it doesn't necessarily require a massive investigation because most of it's out there of what happened. But if you want to do that, you know what you do? You investigate. And that's precisely after the House Republicans that Kevin McCarthy leads,

including Kevin McCarthy and the Senate, blocked any investigation into the January 6th insurrection. We're not even talking findings. We're just talking about just let's investigate this and let's try to investigate it on a bipartisan basis. They refused to do that. They blocked it. So U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of a new House committee to probe January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. With great solemnity and sadness, I'm announcing that the House will be establishing a select committee on the January 6th insurrection. Again, January 6th was one of the darkest days in our nation's history. I've said it now three times. It is imperative that we establish the truth of that day

and ensure that an attack of that kind cannot happen and that we root out the causes of it all. I'm not going into what the committee will do. That's up to the committee to make their determination. But it is clear that the Republicans are afraid of the truth. That is why the House of Representatives and the Democratic control of the House of Representatives is so important. They have subpoena power. The Democrats can hold hearings. And frankly, it's the Senate's 50 50. But for all the people out there who are viciously attacking the mansions of the world, like we still need to have control over the Senate. You don't want to lose control because there are powers that come with control over the Senate and control over the House. Unfortunately, the Senate's 50-50, and we hope to expand that. But going back to the House, that's why it's vital and critical that Democrats

hold the House so that they can have these committees that probe insurrections. The Democrats are the pro-democracy party. This should be done on a bipartisan basis. It's not being done on a bipartisan basis. So the Democrats are investigating the January 6th insurrection. It would be like, should we investigate 9-11? You know, should we investigate, you know, terrorist attacks that happened in Yemen? Should we like these are bipartisan issues that should always be investigated. The fact that this is controversial and is being done by one party and being politicized by the Republicans is absolutely crazy.

And select committees, you know, for those who remember the relentless and endless Benghazi investigations that Republicans did, those were done via select committee, if I'm not mistaken. And so they had broad subpoena power. And that's why they subpoenaed Hillary Clinton. And guess what Hillary Clinton did when she was subpoenaed? She actually showed up and she spoke and answered questions for over 10 hours. So I would like to see GOP officials put under the same level of scrutiny and see what information that we find here. No, they're chicken shit. They're chicken shit. When they were called, they invoked every privilege. They object. They refuse to be seen publicly. You know, Hillary Clinton arguably could have objected.

She could have claimed an executive privilege. She didn't have to show up. She could have fought it. But she goes, you know what? I'm going to show you how ridiculous these Republicans look. I'm going to go up there. I'm going to say keep asking questions. And that's exactly what she did. And she shut down that stupidity. And the Republican, the Republican leaders in the Trump administration are afraid to do this. And here's what Fox News is going to do and all the right wing echo chamber. They're going to paint this as a partisan witch hunt investigation against Republicans when that could not be further

from the truth. In fact, this is the only way for us to get the truth at this point. And I think Speaker Pelosi is going to be smart about this. I think she will probably pull together a bipartisan team of Republicans who would be willing to be a part of this investigation. If you remember, there were 35 Republicans who voted for the investigation into January 6th. I would not be surprised if representatives like Adam Kinzinger were pulled on board to help take place to make this a bipartisan effort. Now, will that change the messaging on Fox News? No, absolutely not. But something about Fox News to note also is anytime they're in attack mode like that, like when they're attacking

General Milley for his statements, that means they are afraid of the power of his statements. So they are trying to flip it on its head. So that's why their framing of General Milley was General Milley embarrasses himself in front of the House committee when actually it was Matt Gaetz who made a fool out of himself in the committee. But they are so terrified that they are trying to flip the situation because if that message pierces through to their viewers, they are done. Just think about how dangerous this is, Jordi and Brett, that you have a news network that's supposed to be in America and supposed to be an American corporation that is attacking our number one military leader, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That's who they're attacking so viciously. There's no bottom for these people. Absolutely. And look, I got to check you on something real quick. They're not a news network. They're an entertainment network. But the problem with this type of entertainment network is that it's beamed into every single household in America. That's so funny you

mentioned that, Jordy, and that's a great correction. But also in the story about my client, the Secret Service member, which was a story purporting to tell facts, this is how cowardly and chicken shit they are. They labeled it opinion, which only the trained eye would see that they labeled it opinion. So they're already, when they're defaming human beings, plotting their defense by writing opinion so they can argue, what are you talking about? That's not an opinion when you're writing and making defamatory factual allegations that a retired Secret Service member who's now the CEO of a major private security firm is using his privileges as a Secret Service member to help Hunter Biden get rid of prostitutes at the Chateau Mormont. That is not an opinion piece, but they're chicken shit. They put that as opinion because they know they're lying and they try to hide behind those labels. So that's a great point you raised there, Jordi. Just switching gears for a second, too, there is kind of positive news. We need to hear more details about it. But as we're recording this episode, there is an announcement that our Biden announced we have a deal on infrastructure. It's infrastructure week, y'all. Let's go. But Biden is doing precisely, you know, while we don't know the details about

this infrastructure bill. And obviously, I think we're all going to be somewhat disappointed that this infrastructure bill is going to be significantly watered down if there is a compromise with the GQP members. That's just the nature of what they seek to literally remove benefits for the American people. Biden is doing what a president's supposed to do, supposed to use his position at the White House to bring political parties together to make deals. Donald Trump never did that once. If you recall the Donald Trump meetings, it was always him with, you know, a scripted kind of press moment where he would literally just say ridiculously disgusting and disturbing things to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and like put his finger at them. And

then the meetings would end after like five minutes, like the few times Trump did that. What Biden did here, bringing together Republicans and Democrats, you know, to build and champion this infrastructure deal, you know, is significant. The initial the initial bill that was proposed by Biden was a $2.25 trillion plan. What appears to be the new deal is a $1.2 trillion plan over eight years with $559 billion in new spending, which multiple sources have told CNN and other media outlets. You know, nonetheless, I suppose it's an important step, though, that there's going to be a deal that $559 billion will be spent to enhance our infrastructure. What do you guys think about this news? Well, you know, I'm always cautiously optimistic because, you know, I think I've said this before, but the Republicans are often like Lucy and the Peanuts holding the football.

They put out a little thing right there for the Democrats to go kick and then they pull it away. And so I'm hoping that's not the case this time. I'm hoping that they've reached a deal and they're going to honor this deal and that if they draft this deal up and it passes through the House and pass through the Senate, that they will be able to pass this with at least 10 Republican votes. And if not, I'm sure there'll be a way via reconciliation whereby Democrats could pass this bill. But I am happy that they are working towards this. We desperately need this. Literally on Wednesday, a bridge collapsed in Washington, D.C. If that is not a sign that the United States needs new infrastructure, I don't know what is. And I don't know if this ties into it, but there's that building in Florida that collapsed today. I don't know what is. And I don't know if this ties into it, but there's that building in Florida that had collapsed today. I don't know if that directly ties into this sort of infrastructure, but it just goes to show, I mean, we got to figure this stuff out. It's important. People's lives are at stake. And I think it was, and correct me if I'm misattributing this to either Bernie Sanders. It was someone who tweeted or said

this. I thought it was great. They said, whether you drive a Mercedes or a Hyundai, when the bridge collapses, both cars fall the same distance and the same result follows. And I thought that was... Whether you drive a Hyundai or a Mercedes... Hey, we got a red Bernie!

So anytime you drive a Hyundai or a Mercedes on a bridge and it drops, both cars drop with it. Quick tangent. I was going through some old podcasts, just listening to how we've grown as brothers throughout this process. And I came across the podcast where you first unleashed your Bernie. And I mean, bravo. You do a great Bernie, Brett. Brett does a great Bernie. And look, I want to thank all of the Midas Mighty for supporting Brett's Bernie impressions and letting Brett continue to do his Bernie impressions. Thank you for your support.

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They're using that Midas Touch promo code, Midas, M-E-I-D-A-S, when they go to stamps.com. And the feedback from the Midas Mighty using that stamps.com is incredible. So stop wasting your time going to the post office and go to stamps.com instead. There's no risk. And with our promo code Midas, you get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. There's no long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Midas, that's stamps.com. Promo code is MidasStamps.com. Never go to the post office again. And with that, I want to bring in our guest, veteran Democratic political consultant, Joe Trippi.

Joe, when people say veteran Democratic political consultant, is that offensive or is that apt and accurate, the word veteran? I mean, it's a bad experience, but I think it's... Well, when I do my own podcast, that Tripp show, I always one of the things I talk about is is boiling 40 years of experience into 30 minutes, you know, into a 30 minute podcast. But but, you know, I think I think basically just says I'm really old, you know. No, no, it's kind of code, but battle tested. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ran Howard Dean's presidential campaign, Doug Jones' improbable victory in 2017. We're based in California.

Brett and I, you ran Jerry Brown's gubernatorial victory out here in California. Welcome to the show, Joe. Great to be with you guys. Really is. Joe, before the show started, we learned that Joe, President Joe, announced we have a deal on infrastructure. What's your immediate reaction to this bipartisan, supposedly, infrastructure deal? I mean, look, it's good that they've got a deal. I think that's a good thing. But I think, unfortunately, part of that is it continues to mask the problem that there really is no such thing as bipartisanship. I mean, there was like the sense of that we've got to stop thinking of this as Republicans versus Democrats or right versus left.

It's an authoritarian movement that's just taken over the Republic, what used to be the Republican Party. You can't negotiate with them. And so, you know, everybody likes to spend money. It's no shock to me that there might be bipartisanship, quote, bipartisanship, to agree to spend some money on something. Regardless of what party politicians are in, they can usually come to some kind of agreement about that, but they're not going to. But when it comes to protecting our democracy, no, you're negotiating with people who are owned by an authoritarian movement. That's not going to happen. So, Joe, why don't Democrats say that? I mean, at our group, Midas Touch, I mean, we like to we've been calling Trump an authoritarian from day one. But why does it seem

that the professional class of politicians are either fearful or reluctant or just don't call a spade a spade and say, look, this Republican Party is not a political party anymore. They're an authoritarian, anti-democratic movement. I just don't see that in the messaging. So what's going on there? All of us as Americans have lived in this two-party world for all our lives. It's the only way the media knows how to talk about it, you know, reaching across party lines, reaching across the aisle, trying to find common ground. That's what the institution of the Senate's always been about. It's what Joe Biden, a creature of the Senate, is always, that's how they think. And it's unfathomable to a lot of them,

unbelievable to a lot of them. I mean, to even think that, let alone that January 6th was possible in America, in the United States, and it did, but a lot of people thought that would never happen. There's still a lot of people who cannot perceive the danger and how fragile democracy is in right now, that it could be rolled over by an authoritarian movement. So I think part of it is, people want to see it as normal, want to see the temperature being lowered, want, in an office, you still have to govern. So they're trying, you know, they're still seeing that they need it's the facts of life. You've got to have votes to get an infrastructure bill passed.

You're not going to do that in a 50-50 Senate without either compromise within the Democratic Party, which is happening and has to happen between the moderate and progressive wings just to get agreement so that we're solidified and then still bring some Republicans over to get something passed. So in that world, you're still trying to be bipartisan. And by the way, there's still a lot of Republican women in the suburbs and younger Republicans and college-educated Republicans that the more they hear Democrats speaking in terms of finding common ground and reaching across the aisle, the more willing they are to depart this authoritarian movement. So it actually makes sense that a lot of the electeds would be still trying to talk in those terms. On the other hand, I think it's important for Midas Touch and for me and others to call what's going on an authoritarian movement. In other words, to draw the tough

line that says you cannot straddle these two parties. If you're a corporation, you can't keep giving to both of them, you know, straddling it. You're either funding that authoritarian movement that wants to take power by, you know, straddling it, you're either funding that authoritarian movement that wants to take power by any means possible, including violence, including a growing number of Americans who feel, you know, the polls show now 20% think they may have to resort to violence to restore the rightful leaders of their country. I mean, when you see that happening and you're contributing to people in the House and Senate that enable it, that voted against the certification and then voted against a bipartisan commission on January 6th, what happened? You can't do that. You're either with

them or you're with the rest of us, a pro-democracy coalition of Republicans, independents, Democrats who pledged to stop the authoritarian movement, you know, kill it before it kills our democracy. Now, one of the things, Joe, that we all saw, me and my brothers, have no political background. We were just pissed off people who wanted to connect to other people because we saw a fascist president. We actually modeled Midas Touch in many ways on the grassroots movement you built. You know, I want to remind all the listeners out there, and I'm sure most of them know what you built in 2004 with Howard Dean was really one of the first grassroots movements bringing the messaging not about gross ratings points or what the political class was talking about, but really to the people.

And that was our model. I think that the Democratic political hierarchy being so focused on gross ratings points versus we need to deliver our message actually into the suburbs and getting there. And that was our messaging. Do you think Democrats are doing a good enough job with that? No, I mean, I think you're right. And you were right to do what you guys did in the way you did it and in the way we did it in the Dean campaign. But unfortunately, I think most sort of Washington Democrats, I put it that way. And consultants, what they learned from the Dean campaign was you could raise money on the Internet. They didn't get that, you know, there was an empowering thing to bring people to get messaging out there and make people and empower people to make change and join and join a movement. A lot of cases, they were afraid of creating a movement. And so

actually, I keep saying this, the first campaign where there was actually like sort of the Dean for America blog, where you had direct interaction between the candidate and the people who supported him, the campaign team and the people that were part of it and empowered them and took their ideas. The first campaign that actually did that since Howard Dean was Donald Trump. Twitter was his blog for America. I mean, Twitter was his personal blog, and he weaponized it. And we all sat and watched. And I was watching what we had done in the Dean campaign happening before my eyes,

not from Democrats, but from a fascist Republican candidate, and would go on as president. So no, I think that's what I'm saying. I think from the grassroots, we have to give our political leaders as Democrats, and including some of the Republicans, who I think really do want to cooperate and try to, and not many of them, two or three, but we have to give them the room to find the compromise that can get things done between now and the next election. But for us to go into that election, we have to build a pro-democracy coalition to defeat not a party, but an authoritarian movement that's taken over that party. And look, I think, you know, the TV ad is important,

but I just don't think people are watching television the way they used to. And so one of the right. So it's almost like people talk about gross ratings points and it's like, well, people aren't watching TV like that. So the things that we would do sometimes is like, how do you do a structured by in a location location realizing that at the end of the day, the audience is going to be motivating the grassroots people to truly kind of knock on the doors and send the text messages and meet people on the battlefield? I think where politics is really being discussed today. And I just didn't see any other groups like we were shocked when we would do that. That why is Midas touch? Why is me and my brothers who have no clue about what we're doing why are we the only people doing this no and then and then it's of course well you guys weren't buying enough rating points

to get through right I mean you know then it was part of the negative attacks were like I can't you know no one could possibly have spent their money well because look at the meager rating points when they were doing these other things. No, the rating. Yeah, look, I came up in the late 80s in a big media firm, probably the biggest in the Democratic Party at the time, Doak and Shrum. And, you know, we did television for, I mean, gosh, a whole bunch of senators. Barbara Mikulski's first race for the U.S. Senate. I mean, tons of different people around the country, multiple senators, multiple governors. And then I had the, you know, was able to develop and pioneer a lot of digital stuff in the Dean campaign. Digital clearly, particularly after 2007, when the iPhone got

launched, Twitter came out in 2006. It's been gaining an impact, both mobile and digital. And throughout that time from the 80s on till now, television has become way more fragmented. You know, you got people watching Netflix and Hulu. And I mean, just they're not even consuming television the way that now I should say this. What's fascinating is like we've done because we're, you know, I've been in campaigns where we can pull. We've literally in the Doug Jones campaign pulled every single night and in the 2017 campaign, we pulled every single evening except Thanksgiving evening. And we would see over 45 year olds, a muted reaction to the television ads that we were running, but it was still kind of the one

you would be used to, particularly as you got older, 65-year-olds. You know, you'd see that 10-point move once you went on TV with a really good ad, stuff like that. Nothing under 45 was moving on TV, nothing. As soon as we started our digital campaign, particularly with African-Americans, we saw that young cohort really lift with what we were doing to reach them online and at the doors, obviously. But it was, again, even text messages, things like that. But so you can see a big differential. And what you also see is that that age differential is increasing. In other words, it'll probably by 2022, it'll be 50 year olds and under

that are really moving much more dramatically, not by any TV gross rating points. You know, obviously, like in the New York mayor's race, the electorate, I think, was older than people thought it was going to be. So there, it may make more sense to run a little bit more gross ratings points. I mean, it's aimed at those older voters. That's what I'm trying to say. So there it may make more sense to run a little bit more gross ratings points. I mean, it's aimed at those older voters. That's what I'm trying to say. It's a much more complicated thing. But there's by no means is TV. And by the way, you're right about gross rating points. One of the things we know is, you know, back in the 80s, like a thousand points of TV really moved over a week, really moved the electorate. You know, that's like ridiculous now. If you run a thousand points, nothing happens.

You know, it's because there's not it's not being viewed the same way. It's not people even when they're watching are not paying that kind of attention to political ads or tuning them out. The old way of budgeting a campaign, believing that gross rating points was where to put all your money, it's insane. And yet we still have a lot in the consultant class that, by the way, that's how there's a lot of money to be made chasing gross rating points. And so there's not a lot of incentive for some media firms to do anything but recommend more rating points. And so there's not a lot of incentive for some media firms to do anything but recommend more rating points. Totally. And today, Zara, it's, you know, it's how do you break through that noise when that's a reality, right? It's how do you break

through this issue? We're in this transformative time period. And so you got to find creative ways to break through. Yeah, no, I was going to say in the Dean campaign, I don't know if anybody remembers, but we ran like, we created a spot to run while he was on vacation in Crawford, Texas, in this little itty bitty market that cost us like, like ridiculously nothing to run because it was this tiny market, you know, and we put that thing up for a week while he was on vacation on his ranch, and it raised us a million dollars. Wow. You know, because it went viral. People started passing it around saying, look at this. We got to keep funding this campaign, which gave us the money to do a lot of the other stuff that we were doing.

So I think that's right. It's like, you know, you have to run sort of we have to run it sort of insurgent guerrilla campaign against an authoritarian movement, which, by the way, they're very good at. I mean, that is how that movement communicates. It doesn't it's it's not buying a whole lot of television ads. Totally. And on that note, so how do we then communicate? How do we fight back, so to speak? What should the Democratic messaging be? Every day we are seeing Republicans get up there and it's the crisis of the day. It's critical race theory, critical race theory. It's the border. Why isn't Kamala Harris going to the border? It's something new every single day. And then Democrats try to fight back with policy

saying, hey, well, we're trying to pass infrastructure. We're trying to get the For the People Act passed. We're trying to get you stimulus checks and COVID relief. Is that enough to run on messaging? Do Democrats need to be more emotional in their messaging? How do we connect with voters? We have to be a lot simpler in our messaging. I mean, I think one of the things we try to, you know, I've got a plan for that. Well, yeah, I got a plan for that. Like it or not, make America great again, pretty quick, easy for people to get. And so I think part of it is, yeah, we try to respond without dealing with what is the fear that they're trying to instill in people. That's, I mean, that's what Trump and QAnon, all of it is about, is just instilling fear.

And too many times our reaction is that's crazy without dealing with the fear. In other words, without addressing it and then offering the path back to thinking about how we really need to take on the border, etc. Right. And it's in that sort of rejecting it as crazy or, you know, sort of pushing it back actually reinforces them back into that into their tribe instead of getting them to come back. And look, there's a lot of people who are pretty far gone. You know, they've been lied to. They believe those lies. I actually try to run people through a thought experiment. If on November of 2016, the night of the election, President Barack Obama had gone to the microphone and said, I'm telling the American people this election was

stolen. Hillary Clinton is the rightful president of the United States, Donald Trump and the Republican Party has stolen this election. There would have been a very similar number of people who, and by the way, if he kept saying that over and over again, a hell of a lot of Democrats would have bought it, believed it, and I think would be reacting the same way as we see a lot of people who follow Trump are reacting to that message. The difference is Obama never would have done that, didn't do it. We never nominated or elected somebody who would. Yeah. We've always had leaders that spoke to the

best in us, not to our worst instincts. And now all of a sudden we have this Canadian. My point is, if you can put yourself in that mindset for a second, are you really telling me you wouldn't have been at a rally or marching? No, you would have. Everybody on this, everybody listening listening this would have been out there right now following barack obama in this crazy lie and what i mean by that is so we need to understand that these people are like you and they bought the lies and now it's their elected officials in washington that helped create this damn thing that are held hostage by that crowd. I mean, that's what's going on right now.

That's why Manchin, you know, I'm glad we got some kind of deal, hopefully on infrastructure. But, you know, basically, I keep saying this, you know, Manchin and Biden, they're negotiating with hostages. Not even the hostage takers, right? They can't, they're negotiating with hostages, not even the hostage takers, right? They're negotiating with hostages. What we need to understand is we owe those people who've been lied to the truth, and we got to make sure they hear it. And then some of them won't buy it, and some will reject it. But the other thing is, here's my bigger fear, is that there are a lot of Americans right now who see two parties fighting about everything. And by the way,

that's why when you say that one day it's the border and Wednesday it's this, they just want, if everybody, if it's just two parties fighting about everything and nothing getting done, that's how everybody just sort of a whole lot of Americans glaze over and say, oh man, politics sucks. I'm not getting involved. And even when we're arguing over, hey, our democracy is at risk, right? No, it's our borders at risk. No, our democracy is at risk. Well, the average American is just sitting there going, you know, seeing this constant fight. And I'm thinking, do they really understand how big the threat really is to our democracy it's easy to understand

the threat of they're going to defund the police there's not going to be cops on the street your towns can be overrun by these people coming out of the cities to get you and we're saying but but democracy and so what i'm trying to say which is way more dire trouble so what I'm trying to say, which is way more dire trouble. So what I'm saying is I think what we need to do is make, the first thing is to make sure every single family member, friend, co-worker, we need to get the message out. There is a big threat. It's an authoritarian movement. You have to become a citizen and become part of a pro-democracy coalition to fight it. We have to give our leaders, our elected leaders, I think, a little bit of room. In my own, this is my thinking, you guys may not agree, but room,

because the only way to govern is going to be, we're not going to find bipartisanship with Republicans. We better find it within the Democratic Party from moderates and progressives in the party being able to find some way to agree on stuff. Well, Joe, this is what I'm seeing, you know, like, cause after the, for the people act, for example, after the, for the people act, couldn't get to a debate on the floor. It was a 50, 50 split in the Senate mansion ended up coming around and voting for it. Not a single Republican voted for it. There was a lot of like kind of soul crushing posts on social media, you know, oh, this is it. It's all over. 2022, we're gone. Come on, Democrats. Can't you do anything right? And to me, that's almost like the wrong attitude,

you know, because governing is hard. Like you could win an election, but the actual process of governing is hard. And when the numbers aren't there, honestly, at the end of the day, what could you do? So how do we keep people engaged with that nuance that, hey, governing is difficult to do, but we got to keep pushing forward. We can't get bummed out and defeatist every time we lose a battle. The war is much more important. Well, no, I mean, that's true. But the other side of this is the war that we're in right now, we cannot lose. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, that's what I'm saying.

We have to get that word out that this is a mortal threat to our democracy. This is what I'm saying. Even like corporations, I think there's a whole bunch of companies out there who for years and years and years have covered their butts by giving to politicians on both parties, right? Well, we're trying to, we just want to be nonpartisan. And we gave some to this guy who sits on these, and we gave some over that committee person who sits over there. No, we have got to make it clear to them.

That's not the world we're in. You cannot do that. We won't let you do it. Or you're going to face some problems here. We're not going to stay silently and watch you do that. You have to decide, are you giving to the authoritarian movement? Are you becoming part of the pro-democracy coalition to kill it and its crib? And the same thing with, that's what I'm saying, with Republicans like Romney or Collins or Murkowski, who, yeah, maybe they'll find a way to vote with us on infrastructure.

Fine. Where are you on voting rights? I mean, okay, we're not going to buy the crap. I mean, we want you there and we need your four votes on that bill. And so thank you very much. But wait, wait, when democracy is at stake, oh, not so much. No, I can't. I can't vote for a commission.

No, that's where we have to draw the line. It's when you've enabled or supported this authoritarian movement, we will draw the line. We will call you out. And I think that may force some of them to start to move more towards, no, I don't want to be part of going down as part of the authoritarian movement. I want to be, you know, the pro-democracy side of this. I think that's really critical to get that. In other words, if we go into these elections, it's Republicans versus Democrats. It's the left versus the right. At the old division, it's easy for them to get some of the voters who continue to see the world that way and think it's still.

That's why this infrastructure bill is kind of scary. Oh, hey, the world's still Republicans, Democrats, and they can come to. Right. OK. No, that's not the world we're in, guys. We're in a world where there's an authoritarian movement growing every day, getting more violent. Even the FBI is now listing, and you're seeing it in polling, where a number of people who think that we need to put our rightful leaders in through violent, maybe resort by violent means, you start seeing that stuff. That's the fight we're in. It's not left, right. It's not Democrats versus Republicans. It's like I said, it's a pro-democracy coalition, all out battle to stop an authoritarian movement that is and will resort to violence. I think I could speak on behalf of my brothers here, but Joe, you just made me want to run

through a brick wall right now to fight for pro-democracy and pro-democracy causes. So thank you. That really pumped me up right there. I think I'll use the door and not the brick wall, but you could go through the brick wall, Joe. I mean, I'm pumped right now. Well, we got to be. Absolutely. You're 100% right. We have to be willing to show up to the fight every single day. Let me caveat this question just by saying that we really admire Howard Dean. He's been on the podcast before. We truly respect him. We truly admire you.

Knowing that, obviously, when we were talking earlier, you were on Howard Dean's staff when the infamous Dean scream, what it's called, was heard around the world. It went viral and was weaponized against you in many ways. It was actually one of the first political viral videos that I could recall watching growing up. Can you take us back to that moment? How soon after the clip went viral on the internet, did you think it was going to be a problem?

And at any point, did you and Howard look at each other and ask like, hey, what's going on here? Why are people clinging to this? Why are comedians like Dave Chappelle making parodies of this? What's going on? In the room, you couldn't hear him. The room was so loud and the crowd was so really loud in terms of the applause and cheering and chanting and stuff that you couldn't hear Howard Dean speak. You couldn't hear what he was saying. So, you know, most of us who were in the room at the back

with the press corps and the press who were in the room at the back with the press corps and the press who were in the room never, I mean, walked out of there not having a clue. The mic he used that the advanced guy, you know, gave him, so we all throw the advanced guy under the bus. The mic that he was using was unidirectional. It only sucked in the noise coming from him and killed all the noise coming from the other direction from the crowd. So he's screaming because they can't hear the crowd. So that's essentially what happened. So yeah, so to answer your first question, left there, went back to the hotel, went to the bar in the hotel with some reporters and other people on the staff. And there's a no sound TV running

of, you know, CNN or MSNBC or whatever. I can't remember what the channel was, but every five seconds I'm looking up and there's this, and there's Howard's speech. So we asked him to turn it up. Hey, can you turn that up? And it's the loop over and over and over again of, yeah. So it would probably be hours later, you know, a couple hours after the event that any of us, again, I'm sure everybody at home was saying, what the hell was that? Who were watching it in the moment on TV. But for those of us that were actually there and in the room, no clue for several hours until you did get in front of a television and see what they were doing. Look, I think the press corps had given us a pass back when we were, you know, when you're kind of cute and cuddly, and you're at 3% in the polls, and you're never going to be president

of the United States, and no one's ever going to hear your name. Yeah, they look the other way when you say something, you know, when you mess up. And we got more than our fair share of passes. But once we became the front runner, you cannot give anybody any ammo to shoot you with. And we did. It was so innocent. It was such an innocent moment in the scheme of things. And now you fast forward to 2015 and you hear the craziness, the crazy tapes, the Trump tapes that come out that are just absolutely appalling, you know, the grab them by them, not going to say it. Why do you think that wasn't used against him in a way, you know, a simple, cheerful moment from Howard Dean was used against him? Because the one thing you find out in politics is that it actually takes somebody, an incident like the screen, inoculates everybody else going forward. So

like when Gary Hart gets caught on the monkey business with Donna Rice or gets staked out, it makes it possible for Bill Clinton several years later, that if he had been the first one, in other words, if Jennifer Flowers had been the first time America had to deal with, oh my gosh, you mean, some of these guys running for president, you know, had affairs? You know, what I'm trying to say is, like, it makes it far less likely, I'll put it that way, that that's ever a reason that we're going to like knock somebody out. So by the time you get to Donald Trump, you got affairs, you got, you got, you know, that's you got screaming.

Just everything. It's a good point. Good point. It's just something I'm over because we're getting we're getting about how old I am. It's been something I've watched now, you know, over 40 years. And the one thing that I keep seeing is that that first time it is, it's like a vaccination or something that kind of happens and kind of knocks down the power of it. And particularly the more kind of innocent the first one was. So, you know, like now you look back and go like,

we blew Howard Dean out of the race over one, you know, 30 seconds of his speech. That's why he got knocked out of the race. So once the press has sort of processed that after they've done it, and all of us have processed it after we've either cheered it on or sat there trying to figure out how the hell to get out of it. The next time it happens, people are less likely to jump all over it. You know, I'm not saying it won't have a big impact, but it's less likely to get the same thing. guy in 1987 running around the country, giving speeches that said the greatest threat to the United States is going to be failed states and terrorist organizations, and that what we need to do is form kind of quick response SWAT kind of military teams that could go in, knock them out, and then get out of there safely. You got to wonder, had he been elected president, whether we would have

dealt with terrorism a lot differently, whether we would have been hell a lot more better prepared in terms of thinking about how you put down those kind of movements. He actually was thinking and talking like that in 1987. Gone. By the way, no one wants to hear from you. It took a long time before his thinking got back into the system. So having learned that, I think that's what I'm saying. Now, here's what happened. Here's what the country lost. Actually, people start to realize that over time, even if it's not sort of frontal, you know, sort of centered in their thinking. And the next time something similar happens, it doesn't have the same impact for good reasons, I think, except for Trump, hopefully, you would have hoped that all that combined problems would have prevented it. But no. And again, I think because we didn't, a lot of us

didn't understand that it was a movement, not a party, and that movement was so strong, it destroyed the party, it consumed the party that once was the Republican Party. And Joe, I'll make this analogy just using the example of vaccinations. One of the things we see with vaccinations is that the virus will mutate to the vaccination and become more virulent over time. And so, yes, you get the woohoo, but then you end up with a fascist, you know, horrible, like the most disgusting human being in the world, Donald Trump. And where we have to do in hearing this interview, what we have to do is we have to expose that. We have to go back to the times where, you know, at the end of the day, a woohoo is controversial because we're focused on real stuff. And I'm sure, Joe, this is some of the things you talk about on the podcast. Can you let our listeners know about your

podcast and how they can listen to you? Sure. It's That Trippy Show. You can get it wherever you get this podcast, wherever you get the Midas Touch podcast, you can get it, you know, Apple, Spotify, et cetera. But it's That Trippy Show. We've been really talking a lot about this divide in terms of the thinking between it not being two parties anymore and the authoritarian movement and what we all need to do. And I, you know, I, I'm really proud actually of the, a lot of the shows we had in May and June in particular, I think really are binge worthy. I mean,

in terms of like getting it from different perspectives from Steve Schmidt, the Lincoln project, Matthew Dowd, who, who coined it. And I think he's right, that the Republican Party is now black mold, and that you can't negotiate with black mold. A lot of my thinking has been developed as we did these last five, six, seven episodes in terms I finally got, I mean, I was somebody out there saying, hey, guys, we have to we have to find common ground. And by the way, this is important to get. There are going to be a hell of a lot of Democrats who will be running in places where they damn well better be common ground Democrats to have any chance to pull those Republican enough Republican women, younger Republicans-educated Republicans over to win a seat.

We all need to win. I mean, everybody gets on Manchin. Manchin's the only, you know, Ezra Klein says he's a unicorn. He's the only person who could win a seat in West Virginia. Get rid of him. You have no Schumer as majority leader right now. Kamala is not breaking ties. You know, we have to realize as a party that we've got to give those folks some room to win as common ground Democrats. At the same time, we've got to point out that they're running against an authoritarian movement that is just obstructing and is trying to take our democracy by any means. And that's our voices. There'll be plenty of leaders in the Democratic Party saying that, I think. But I think we've got to give enough room for,

we only have the House by a few votes, a handful of votes. We're going to have to win in some places that are going to be very tough if they're seen as just angry Democrats out to fight the Republicans. It's not that's not what we're about. We're about fighting for our democracy and getting things done. Kitchen table issues, et cetera. It's got to be some kind of a combination of those two messages. And Joe, also, before we go, just thank you from the bottom of all of our hearts for your support of Midas Touch. You know, we've known from mutual friends, you've said positive things about us out there and thanks for sharing the videos and, and liking from time to time. And, you know, look, your model inspired us. So we just wanted to thank you for being a big Midas Touch supporter. Well, no, thank you guys. It's always great for an old guy like me to hear that at some level I inspired a bunch of young,

energetic guys like you. Thank you, Joe. Joe Trippi, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We'll be right back. What's up, Midas Mighty? We've got new merch in the merch store. Brett, tell them about it. New merch line. This is in addition to the hit lines Club Democracy, Vaxxed and Relaxed. We now have two amazing new designs in case you haven't seen them yet. We got the It Wasn't Rigged, You're Just a

Loser shirt. Fan favorite. Totally a fan favorite. I am loving it and it's just my favorite graphic to see all the time. It just makes me smile to see that phrase because it is so true. And today we are announcing the Midas Touch for the people line. We got a for the people tea. We got for the people mugs. We got for the people totes. So get yours today at store.midastouch.com and keep sending pictures of you rocking your Midas Touch pro-democracy gear. We love to see it. Thank you so much for all your support. That's store.midastouch.com and keep sending pictures of you rocking your Midas touch pro democracy gear. We love to see it.

Thank you so much for all your support. That's store. That Midas touch.com. Let's go. Welcome back to the Midas touch podcast. It was great to hear Joe trippy on the podcast. And I meant what I said. I thought that Joe's grassroots movement philosophy and his actual rejection of conventional political consultant orthodoxy on these gross ratings points and just buying TV ads for the sake of buying TV

ads is a salient point and a motivating factor for the Midas-Tud strategy. I want to mention one point. I'll be brief that I want to speak about Judy Giuliani. And what I want to talk about is I want to explain to everybody why, though, we were so aggressive in our pushback to that Rolling Stones article. I hate giving it attention, but as we mentioned, rolling stones gave this entirely fabricated bullshit piece written by this hack reporter, you know, who's got horrible credentials. He calls himself award winning, but he's not even won any awards. He won like an no joking with you. He won an employee of the month award once in his old former job. And he goes around saying that he was award winning. This guy is like a troll. He's a pathetic human being from time to time. Some people show me like you guys realize that this guy just spends all his days, like liking anti-Midas stuff. Like how do you call

yourself an objective journalist? The guy's lost all credibility. He's swirling the drain as a reporter right now, probably can't find any work ever again. But I want to point out why this man is just so disgusting and so disturbing. And that's if you look into this Rolling Stones piece, he quotes Joe Trippi in the piece as being for gross ratings points, as basically saying Midas Touch should have gotten more gross ratings points. And he obviously, you know, had we all knew he had an agenda going into it, but that Joe Trippi interview just proved what a despicable human being this reporter truly is. Because the way the Rolling Stones article was framed was Joe Trippi talking about how Midas Touch needed more gross ratings points on the specific ads that we had purchased. And you just heard Joe Trippi basically

saying to us that the Midas Touch strategy of not going for gross ratings points was the better strategy. And this is how he quotes Joe Trippi in the article. They talk about Midas Touch buys, where we, exactly what we asked Joe Trippi, where we bought specific surgical buys to build around grassroots canvassing efforts, text messaging efforts, and actually get people to do the work of getting people to the polls. And this is what they quote Joe Trippi as saying. There's no way any message was getting across with these buys. None. Zero zip. It's not possible, says Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic political consultant who ran Howard Dean's presidential campaign and Doug Jones 2017 upset Senate win. Quote, we already know voters don't remember anything at 300 points a week. You could buy 300 points a week, day in, day out,

for 52 weeks. And at the end of it, no one would know what you're talking about, Trippi adds. That was how Joe Trippi was quoted in the Rolling Stones article. And the article says this though, which is the initial premise. Subsequent ad campaigns didn't have a much greater reach. A few were even smaller and all were below the 1,000 gross rating point industry standard, according to CounterPoint's analysis. You would think that he would ask Joe Trippie about his view on gross ratings points generally. Joe Trippi's view is that gross ratings points don't matter whatsoever. And a thousand gross ratings points

are not industry standard. And Democrats should not even be focusing on this. The entire hit piece was based on gross ratings points. And you heard Joe Trippi who's quoted in it saying that those types of attacks are ridiculous. So I just want to be very clear how disingenuous that attack was. Such a fraud.

I mean, I just wonder the way he even framed the questions to Joe. I mean, like it really, I almost feel bad for Joe. Joe got duped. He got the short end of the stick. When you read it too, it's funny because, you know, it goes through the whole gross rating points conversation, which I think Joe Trippi, as you all know, because you all heard it with your own ears just now on our show, disagrees

with the entire premise of that conversation. Joe Trippi disagrees with the entire premise of the article for which he was quoted and thinks it's ridiculous and stupid and absolutely the what the Democrats do wrong. And this and they quote Joe Trippi in the article. Shame on you, Seth Hatana, you disgusting, filthy, evil man. Shame on you. Animal, animal, animal, crazy human, like a crazy human being. And you were just exposed again, exposed, exposed as a hack. All right, moving on to Rudy. Let's talk about another hack and another disgusting human being.

Probably on equal par with Seth Atana. They kind of look alike, actually. Yeah, Giuliani and Seth Atana are basically twins of each other. I think they're twins ethically. I think they're twins morally. Giuliani has just been suspended from his practice, as I think Katana should be suspended from his practice of journalism after that. But Giuliani

has been suspended from his practice of being a lawyer by the New York Bar. The New York Bar issued a statement basically saying that Giuliani's false statements was a scar on the legal profession. It was unethical. They suspended his license. Giuliani has 20 days to respond. It's not a full-fledged disbarment, but Giuliani can no longer practice law in the state of New York. And what a fall! I was just reading a book by a real investigative journalist called The Den of Thieves, which was written in the early 90s. And it was about all of the 1980s kind of free for all where all of these hedge funds then and all of these acquirers of distressed debt and sellers of distressed debt just went for a free for all and destroyed our markets during the Reagan administration. And Giuliani was the aid, was the U.S. attorney

at the time in New York who prosecuted Milken, who just got the pardon from Donald Trump for manipulating the markets in the 80s. Giuliani was the main prosecutor. And you know, the book was written in the early 90s as he's running for mayor. And you look at it and you think to yourself, you think to yourself, wow, like was Giuliani normal then? Or was things just in sound bits then that Giuliani only had 20 seconds to speak? So people didn't want to just unleash his true weirdness. That's a possibility. Like we weren't seeing as much. I think George Conway today put it best. George Conway today put it best. George Conway, who is an attorney, said, given the first department's opinion, it's hard to imagine that Rudy won't be disbarred after a full hearing. It's now almost inconceivable

that he will ever set foot in a courtroom again as anything other than a defendant. And I think that is likely the next step. I am ready for indictment summer, y'all. Indictment summer. Let's take down Giuliani. Let's take down Matt Gaetz. We know it's all in the works right now. I'm just happy that we're finally seeing the consequences of people's actions. This is a real tangible consequence, and hopefully this is the first of many dominoes to fall. As I mentioned on the Midas Touch Legal AF podcast, mixing my analogies. I said the scales of justice move slow. And that's, you know, the scales of justice don't necessarily move.

But justice itself is a methodical animal. We all want these prosecutions and these indictments to take place right away. But I'm telling you, what we're seeing with Giuliani, what we're seeing with the insurrectionists, what we're seeing with the timeline of the criminal grand jury now looking into Donald Trump, that was a six-month process which commenced about three weeks ago to a month ago. I believe those Donald Trump indictments are going to hit in 2021 around that November timeframe. As I said, Cy Vance is going to be retiring soon. They had the new AG election in New York. Trust me, Cy Vance also wants as a legacy his investigation of Trump to

reach fruition. He wants to file and then pass the baton on to the next district attorney in New York to to complete those prosecutions. I just want to say thank you to all of the Midas mighty. I appreciated Joe Trippi's honesty. And look, we did that podcast, you know, when we said it was the journalistic malpractice of Seth Atana, I would tell all of you to go and listen to that because we pride ourselves on transparency. That's why we became a PAC. In a world where people take donations, where they don't show where the money comes from, I don't know what Seth Atana's salary is. I don't know who's paying him to write these articles. But guess what? You know who's paying us. Why? Because we list it in our pack filings,

which when we decided to go this route, the idea was utmost transparency. And then you have fake journalists like Seth Atana who go through our own filings that we put out there and then go, aha, it's not aha. We put it out there so that we can have these honest discussions with everybody out there. And the Midas Mighty is loyal. The Midas Mighty is supportive. And as Joe Trippi showed, we proved also one of the important points that we need to be innovative. We need to be innovative as Democrats. you know, the old, you know, gross ratings points, TV way of looking at things when people aren't watching TV is suicide. We need to be online. We need to be in digital. We need to be knocking on doors. We need to have our mobile billboards going all around the country like we did last time. We need to have a text message campaign and we need to be supportive of other Democrats. So cut the bullshit of all of this infighting. Let's get together and let's save the House in 2022

and let's make sure we have Joe Biden in 2024. I'm out of here. This is Ben Micellas. This is Brett Micellas. This is the Midas Mighty. And Jordy Micellas, you know how to leave us with Jordy. Shout out to the Midas Mighty!