The MeidasTouch Podcast - Journalistic Malpractice of Seth Hettena Who Was Too Cowardly To Appear On This Episode

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

As part of our commitment to transparency, we detail the bizarre conduct directed at us and the Meidas Community by freelance "reporter" Seth Hettena who claims to be working with Rolling Stone. We ex...pose the attempted hatchet job by Rolling Stone and Hettena against us and dissect his libelous claims point-by-point. We will not be bullied. We will not be silenced. This is an episode you won't want to miss. If you like our show, please consider rating us 5-stars on the Apple Podcasts app! Thank you so much for your support! --- 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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Starting point is 00:01:37 Micellis. Brothers, I could not be more excited about this episode, but I am also incredibly excited for the episode that's going to drop on Friday. I think Friday's episode is going to be an instant classic. We have Gabriel Sterling, who's going to be joining us on the Midas Touch podcast. And for those who don't know, he is currently the chief operating officer within the Georgia Secretary of State office. Gabriel Sterling will be coming on to speak about the Georgia bill. In my view, it is clearly a voter suppression bill. In my view, it is clearly a voter suppression bill. Any bill that is passed
Starting point is 00:02:27 under color of the night that is rushed through without any hearings that takes water away from people and that basically tries to allow an election to be stolen a la everything that Trump wanted to happen the last time around. In my view, it's a voter suppression bill, but I'm going to come armed with the facts. I expect Gabriel Sterling to come armed with the facts. I'm not going to engage by automatically jumping to conclusions. I'd like to have a fair conversation with Gabriel. So we have Gabriel who will be joining. Are you going to wear a suit, Ben? I'm not going to wear a suit. I'm definitely not wearing a suit. I think it's going to be a really good discussion with Gabriel. Now, Gabriel, for
Starting point is 00:03:17 those of you who probably remember, Gabriel was the one who refuted Trump when Trump was spreading all of his election lies during that after the election, saying that, you know, it was rigged. Find me the votes, all that stuff. Gabriel was a big person. He's a Republican who spoke out against that. Like hamburgers, he likes hamburgers. He posts a lot of hamburger pictures and sunset and sunset photos on Twitter, we noticed. But something that Gabriel has done recently is, you know, he's a Republican and he's been a big proponent of a bill, which in my mind codifies Trump's big lie of the election into law. And now he's defending that. So he was, you know, pro-democracy when it came to taking on Trump's authoritarian attempt to take over the government. But now that he's found a legal maneuver to it, in my opinion, he is trying to implement what Trump wanted, but do it through
Starting point is 00:04:12 the Georgia state legislature. So I'm excited to have that discussion. I'm excited for a healthy debate. And hopefully we clarify a lot of the disinformation out there and get to the bottom of what the reason behind this bill is and what it actually is doing to voters in Georgia. And then we also have Mark Elias, who will be joining. Let's go. I'm really excited about that one. Yeah. What if we set up a debate between Elias and Sterling? I like it, but here's my thought. I would like to arrange that. And I guess we could technically moderate it. I want both of them to show up though. And so there's going to be a lot of logistical things
Starting point is 00:04:55 of just getting them to show, adding that variable. I would hope we could facilitate. But what I think we do in the format, and again, I like that we just talk about our ideas on the podcast as we develop them. But I think we either have Mark or Gabriel go first. We spend about a half hour, 40 minutes with one and probe their views about the bill and push back on certain issues where we think there may be additional clarification needed, and then go to the next person and then let the people ultimately decide. I'm not going to claim that I don't have a bias here. Okay. I believe, and I want to state it from the outset that this bill is a voter suppression
Starting point is 00:05:38 bill that is intentionally aimed at removing the franchise, specifically in black and brown communities, or to restrict it, or to make it more difficult, use any of the words that you want. That's what I believe the bill is meant to do. Now, you can tell me and you can frame it by claiming that there's a quote unquote bipartisan commission, but I can use words too that call things bipartisan. But at the end of the day, if they're controlled by a particular party, just because you call it one thing, does it make it so you have to probe it? But I do want to come with an open mind and, and address those conclusions. And I will not talk over Gabriel, assuming he shows,
Starting point is 00:06:20 which I think he will. And he's confirmed on Twitter that he will. I will not speak over Mark. And so we will have those conversations. So that's what was happening next Friday. So for today's show, we expected that we were going to have a guest, a freelance reporter named Seth Hatana, who's engaged in very bizarre, unusual, peculiar behavior directed at Midas Touch, the Midas community, and my brothers. Given that he recently reached out to us, we'll go explain the history here with a series of defamatory but easily disprovable statements about Midas Touch. My expectation is if Seth Atana was not a coward, that he would join the Midas Touch podcast and we could record it the same way we sat for a recorded interview with him back on December 10th of 2020. And we'd be able to play it
Starting point is 00:07:21 unedited the same way I intend to play Gabriel Sterling's and Mark Elias unedited. I think people who stand for transparency, who want the truth out there, would not be afraid to have a conversation that's recorded. That's just my own view about transparency. But it's obvious and evident that this Seth Hatana person, this freelance writer, intends to do a malicious and defamatory hit piece. I don't even want to call it journalism because it's absolutely disgusting. We've been very transparent with the Midas community about what he intends to write. We go through those statements. We've hired an attorney. Many of you know the attorney, Michael Popak of Zupano, Patricius, and Popak, who has helped us through a number of litigation
Starting point is 00:08:12 battles, all of which we prevailed in. But ultimately, despite the fact that I work for Midas Touch for free, and I shut down a significant portion of my law practice to dedicate my time free to help create this incredible movement. I am a litigator at heart, and I will not hesitate to bring legal action against those who seek to defame myself, my brother, and the organizations that I devote my time to. I got to say, Michael Popock has shown me something that I never really knew existed. And that's that a legal letter can be a work of art. He has taken legal writing to an art form. And it is all of his responses that he's done for us, whether it was the letter that we did to Marjorie Taylor Greene, whether it was when we had to fight Kelly Loeffler and fight Fox News who came after us because they were scared of our ads. And now the letter that we have sent to Rolling Stone and to their legal department, to Seth Hatena, the work that he is doing, he is at the top of his game and I'm honored to be working with him. Ben, you know, so grateful for all the work that you do. And I'm so grateful for the Midas community who's really gotten our back because at the end of the day, I really feel just totally blindsided and lied to by this Seth character. And he's just
Starting point is 00:09:33 a very odd, confusing kind of guy. I mean, when he reached out to us, it was what, December 10th? December 9th, he reached out. December 9th. This is December 9th, 2020. So we had just finished the 2020 election cycle, had great success, and we were just ramping up our efforts for Georgia. Hadn't really started. Hadn't even really started Georgia at the time. Maybe we were beginning to start reaching out to local community organizers. You know, one of the things with us where we go anywhere is we don't just go into locations and be so presumptuous that we expect that local organizers are going to welcome Midas Touch.
Starting point is 00:10:12 I mean, we spend diligent efforts reaching out to different local groups to make sure that our efforts are going to be complementary and in no way step on their toes. If in any case, our efforts would step on the toes of local groups that are deeply entrenched in communities, we don't go into those communities. And so this Rolling Stone reporter who is now threatening us with this hit piece, what he had sent us was on December 9th, he sent us an email, which I think I was the one who initially responded to. He said, I'm a reporter with Rolling Stone. I'm interested in learning more about Midas Touch for a possible story. I'm interested in finding out how Midas Touch came to be, what the inspiration was, how you generate your ads, how successful you've been, and where you go from here. So when we got that letter, we thought, oh, this is going to be an awesome story in Rolling
Starting point is 00:11:00 Stone. We've been profiled, ironically, by every other magazine that the company who owns Rolling Stone owns, which is Variety, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter have all done extensive profiles on us. They're all owned by this Penske Media Company. And so when Rolling Stone reached out, I'll say I have an emotional relationship with Rolling Stone. I grew up reading Rolling Stone. My favorite movie growing up was Almost Famous, which is about a Rolling Stone writer. And so when I saw the opportunity to discuss Midas Touch and our mission in Rolling Stone, I was eager to respond. Perhaps that was naive because I didn't realize that this was going to be a Project Veritas type
Starting point is 00:11:39 hit piece like I set up from the outset. Here's the thing. I'm not saying that if a project Veritas or somebody like that, you know, a Fox News, Daily Caller, a Breitbart. I mean, if they reached out to us under the appropriate pretext of what their story is about. Yeah, I would. We've never, I think, rejected an interview from anybody, you know, and so I'm happy to speak on the record about what Midas Touch has accomplished. I mean, when we very when we first started, you know, Midas Touch, I wanted to make this as efficient and the leanest and meanest it could possibly be. As I mentioned before,
Starting point is 00:12:25 I work for free for Midas Touch. I think that's pretty rare for the founder of a political organization to stop working or shutting down a significant portion of their other job where they're earning a very significant amount of money to work for something for free to fight for democracy and to shut down that portion of the firm to do that. So I'm incredibly proud of what our numbers is. Anyway, we were happy to sit down. We sat down the next day, sat down with Atana the next day. We spent about an hour on with him. I think he was the one who had to wrap up the conversation. But we sat there, he recorded the conversation. And by all accounts, Brett and Jordy were there. I mean, it was a good interview. I mean, there was no issues that were discussed that in any way seemed that
Starting point is 00:13:17 he had other intentions when he was interviewing. We answered every question very directly. And we didn't get any sense that this was going to be some sort of hatchet job on us. We left that interview and we were thought like, oh, super cool. Like they're going to do
Starting point is 00:13:31 an awesome profile on us. Like how awesome it's going to be when we're in Rolling Stone. Yeah, no, exactly. It was a really like good conversation. It was bizarre. You're right. It went an hour and change.
Starting point is 00:13:42 It was longer than an hour. It was just quality, you know, answering questions, you know, straightforward. It was longer than an hour. It was just quality, you know, answering questions, you know, straightforward. We didn't back away from anything. There's nothing that we didn't directly answer. And he recorded the whole thing. Give us the tape, Seth. Give us the tape. Yeah. And look, I deal with lots of reporters every day, you know, prior to Midas Touch. I mean, that was a significant part of my job as, you know, as a litigator. And so I'm very well-versed in appropriate journalistic protocol. And I've never seen anything in any dealing with any of my clients
Starting point is 00:14:14 in any situation, how despicable and disgusting the Seth Hatana person has dealt with the situation right here. I mean, this person, Hatana, should be ashamed of his self. So we don't even hear from Hatana for a few months after that. And we're like, why aren't we hearing from this individual when his information in the interview would be stale because Georgia finished obviously in early January turning the Senate blue and we barely discussed anything about Georgia with Seth because we interviewed with him in December you're all wondering like how could he even possibly write a story if he didn't interview us about Georgia or like all of the info and data we would have provided him. It was all outdated. It was all outdated by then. I remember we literally texted each other, hey, how's this guy writing the story, the information that we gave him, the view counts,
Starting point is 00:15:16 the totals, everything's outdated. Yeah, there started to be a lot of signs like this isn't what it appeared to be. And this isn't what he made it out to be from the outset. And one of them was the, you know, the Georgia election came and passed, then the article wasn't up, and we hadn't heard from him. And then months go months are going by, we still haven't heard from the guy. And it just became very peculiar, just very, very, and then we learned that he's reached out to an organization, where one of our consultants work and accused the consultant of a violation of the Hatch Act with no information. I mean, there's no facts supporting it. In fact, our consultant, who many of you know, Adam Parkamenko, specifically addressed the issue with this specific organization years back and cleared every, you know, his ability to involve himself in political
Starting point is 00:16:06 activity while he was not working for the organization. But for a reporter, just to even go to another organization and intentionally interfere with the economic relations of an individual without like a hard fact, I had never heard of that. So given that that took place, you know, and additional weeks had passed, I was like, what in the world is this guy doing? And so I started reaching out to him to try to like say, you know, hey, what's going on? What are you doing? You know, and then I finally speak to him. We get in touch with each other. And, you know, he tells me on the phone, he goes, I haven't written anything yet. I haven't written anything at all, but I'm concerned about your spending and I'm concerned that your vendors are ripping you
Starting point is 00:16:53 off. Like, what do you mean you're concerned that my vendors are ripping me off? He's like, well, the charges in Georgia were significantly high for your canvassing efforts. I said, I negotiated that deal. It was the cheapest rates available. What are you talking about? He goes, your videos were not effective. I said to him, who are you to tell me that my videos are not effective? What are you talking about? And I go, what are you writing this for? He goes, I haven't written anything yet. So that was the conversation that I had then. And then this last week, we get a email from Hatana saying that I want you to respond to a number of questions and you have 48 hours to respond, which coincided with Easter and Passover. This is what he said, though. He goes, these are the things that we have discovered in our findings
Starting point is 00:17:41 about Midas Touch. It was all things we told him. And things you can easily Google. And things that are all public. These things are Google, okay? It's not investigative journalism to Google the transparent disclosures that we are making online. McDonald's. I just investigated McDonald's. Have you heard about this thing called the Big Mac? I was just doing a deep investigation. Have you heard about it? There's an extra piece of bread in the middle. There are two buns, a lot of toppings. There's a Big Mac. We're like, yeah, everyone knows that. It's a public record. We share it. And by the way, none of the questions that he's that he
Starting point is 00:18:19 lists are anything that he said to us during the one hour interview, zero, none of those statements. And so it's like you, we give you an hour of our time to talk through each and every one of these issues where no questions are off limits. There's no PR person. Now you don't go and ask us these questions. And now you then cite them and demand a written response in 48 hours. It's beyond it's utterly absurd. The one topic that he says is he says there are no records on your FEC disclosure that the Midas Touch campaign split donations with the Biden campaign. Mr. Hurtada, do you know how ActBlue works? Because all of our donors know how ActBlue works. For that particular campaign, the donor makes the direct contribution to the Biden campaign. He then says, well, even if you made a donation to the Biden campaign, you can't as a political action committee,, you violated FEC law. It's like, Mr. Hatana, the individual donor is making the direct donation to the Biden campaign. And if you just know how ActBlue works.
Starting point is 00:19:46 Also, we have an FEC lawyer who we clear every single program for. So the implication by Hatana, not the implication, the defamatory statement that there was anything not being split, he's just throwing and hurling mud against the wall and it's despicable. So that was one of his things that could just boom. So easy to disprove. He then says in your Georgia canvassing efforts, these are his words. You grossly overcharged for canvassing by charging $5 per knock on door. Okay. That is not, oh, and then he says, that is based on financial documents we received regarding your vendor, crossroads campaigns involving another political campaign that they had previously involved in. Well, Mr. Rotana, I wonder what's changed in the past few years to the current that may cost, may canvassing cost a little more money.
Starting point is 00:20:50 Could it be called a global pandemic? The Midas Touch canvassers were given a living wage of at a minimum $15 per hour and full PPE. And we disclosed to donors that it was going to, specifically what it was going to cost before the donations were made. And by the way, you want to actually get the data? Why, Mr. Hatana, have you not reached out at all to the canvassing company to ask them how much did you charge them? And is that consistent with what it costs to charge to knock on doors rather than find some incomplete information from multiple years ago, which, by the way, were Democrats lost. So you want to compare a failed election to a successful canvassing effort and not speak to our vendor at all, not even reach out to them. To me, that is the very
Starting point is 00:21:47 definition of scummy and disgusting journalism by a time. It's journalistic malpractice. And I think the thing that is so perplexing to me is from the outset, everything we do with outside vendors like that. It was an essential thing when we started that everybody we were hiring is paid a living wage. Those are our values. We're loud and we're proud of wanting everybody to make a living wage. So when we hired canvassers, it was one of the things that we were very set on. Everybody who's doing this job needs to be getting paid. They need to be getting paid a minimum wage. And we were very clear with our donors that we were paying. We were very proud of it. I'm still very proud of it that we paid all of those canvassers who were really putting their lives at risk by doing this during a global pandemic. We gave those canvassers a living wage. We provided them with PPE so that they could safely canvas. And one of the things that a lot of political analysts attribute to the Democrats losing
Starting point is 00:22:49 seats in the House and losing past races was because the Democrats weren't canvassing. So canvassing this year was a big thing that Democrats were missing, and we filled in the gaps with our canvassing efforts. Not only that, we specifically targeted areas that other groups weren't hitting, which were suburban areas that frequently were more spread out homes. So I don't know what unidentifiable document that he's talking about, but once again, it wasn't during the global pandemic. I don't know what they paid their canvassers during that time. And I don't know if they were in a city or a suburban area where homes are more
Starting point is 00:23:25 spread out. And it's obviously going to cost more per door if the houses are more spread out than if you're in an apartment going literally door to door knocking. So his facts, once again, are just totally wrong. And by the way, this is the second thing where we had given him this answer in the past when he had reached out to me, I think via text message or something like that. And we were happy to give him the answers, but he doesn't seem to want to accept the answers. I think that's one of the things that's been most frustrating. I don't think it's journalism when you start with a conclusion, and then you try to fill in the information to get you to that conclusion. And that's really his failure as a journalist. And it's why he's really not a real journalist. He's a tabloid writer.
Starting point is 00:24:05 And that's why I want to cover this here, because I know that we're not the last article that Hatana is going to try to defame the reputations of people. And so I want this podcast to be a living and breathing recording document for the rest of history posted on the internet to forewarn everybody of Mr. Hatana's conduct point by point. Jordan. The last thing I'm going to say about canvassing is that we provided updates every step of the way with our canvassers. We had meetings with our canvassers. We did a great recap video with them. They couldn't have been more excited and more motivated to do what they were doing. It was so inspiring. And if you're listening to this podcast, I have no doubt that you've seen that video. Well, like with everything we did, and we discussed this on the last podcast, actually, everything we do, I don't know how you could be more transparent about things.
Starting point is 00:24:53 When we're going to run a TV ad, we say we're running a TV ad in X, Y, and Z. It's going to cost $100,000. And, you know, it's going to start going up on such and such date. And then we say, you know, if you want to start going up on such and such date. And then we say, you know, if you want to help us fund that effort, because we are grassroots funded by the people, not by billionaires, not by dark money, not by shadowy groups. But if you want to help us fund it, you have the option to fund it. And that goes for our canvassing, our TV, our billboards, every single thing we do, our mailing campaigns, our text message campaigns, where we uniquely flip
Starting point is 00:25:25 the whole concept of a political action committee to be a grassroots funded thing. It's actually a pretty revolutionary concept. And we're taking the power away from the billionaires and from the dark money groups that are typically creating these organizations. And that's why, you know, I think that's why they want the Midas touches of the world to fail. And that's what's made me so angry about this, because when I was trying to decide what structure we should be, I knew that PACs in general, political action committees have a reputation about them. And I wanted to be so different from every other PAC, starting with the fact that me who works for this every day doesn't get paid, but two, to have the most ridiculous amount of
Starting point is 00:26:10 transparency possible so that everybody can see in real time, as you just mentioned, Brett, how the ads are working, what the programs are. And then in addition, we held basically monthly meetings for all donors where we would stay on as long as they'd want us to stay on, where we would answer every single question. And we would ask them, how would you prefer we direct the money? And so every one of the donors who Mr. Hatana claims to speak for right now, they were all involved in, which is why the support today has been incredible, which we'll get to in a second. Mr. Hatana also says you spent $1.4 million on TV ads, which don't meet the minimal threshold under the Nielsen ratings of efficacy. Therefore, you have not made TV ads to
Starting point is 00:26:59 help Democratic candidates. It's like, Hatana, our ads objectively were the most viral of any of the ads. The old model of looking at ads from the 1980s, which doesn't work anymore, which turns voters off, is taking one of these ads. So-and-so is running for Congress. If you would like to have a family man who cares about his family and cares about the church, vote for so-and-so or the rote, stupid attack ads. So-and-so is a horrible human being. Do not vote for so-and-so. People tune out those ads, especially where they reach oversaturation. We did strategic buys that received earned media. And so for strategic buys of 75,000 here, 100,000 here, when the cable news networks covered it, when the magazines covered it,
Starting point is 00:27:52 by the way, guess what? Rolling Stones covered one of our ads, hashtag pathetic Trump. And if we would have made that ad a full page ad in the Rolling Stones magazine, we probably would have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, which was just another example of earned media. Our videos got millions of views, some tens of millions of views on Twitter, on other social media, which would be the envy of any advertising
Starting point is 00:28:18 and marketing agency to pull it off once and might as touch sometimes multiple days, but mostly every single day, sometimes multiple times in a day, and sometimes multiple times in a day released viral videos with millions of views that other marketing companies would have paid hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for. So for him to say your videos were not efficient or didn't help democratic candidates, that's the biggest amount of bullshit ever. Mr. Hatana, what are you doing on a day-to-day basis?
Starting point is 00:28:50 I think that just the one tweet alone that Rolling Stones covered of our pathetic Trump video had more engagement than any Rolling Stones tweet in its history. And we did that every single day, period. I worked with brands like this is my back. I worked with brands for seven years in New history. And we did that every single day, period. I worked with brands, like this is my back. I worked with brands for seven years in New York. They would kill, kill to get something trending once, let alone a hundred, 200, 300 times that we did during the cycle. Brands would literally kill to get million view on one video, 2 million views on one video. They would pay upwards of, at the minimum, I think it's 75K to get something trending on Twitter if you're a brand. That's minimum. 150 if you don't have a sweetheart deal. We were doing that all
Starting point is 00:29:34 earned media. And I'm not saying us, us three specifically, but the Midas Mighty helped rally those hashtags to the top. Brands would kill for that engagement. Yeah, Jordy, as you said, I've worked for other organizations that have purchased. If you see on the top of your Twitter feed, sometimes you see it says promoted and you see a hashtag that's there on the top of the trending hashtags for 24 hours. Well, those cost a lot of money to brands. Why? Because they're influential and they're persuasive. And so as Jordy mentioned, they start at 75K if it's a discounted rate, as in if Twitter literally has nothing else that day and you get them within the last week or so, and they still have nothing planned for that day, you could sneak in and you could grab it for a
Starting point is 00:30:16 discounted rate of 75K. The most recent rates though that I know about are 200K if you want to plan it. So if you see Disney has a thing about Mandalorian or whatever it is in the promoted hashtag trend, they're spending $200,000 per day for it to be there. And we consistently had the number one hashtags organically for free, sometimes multiple times per day. And Brett, I want to brag about you a little bit because you are a two-time Emmy award winner. I don't think there's really anybody with those level of qualifications that are doing political ads. If you were to start a consulting firm and charge a market rate for a single Midas touch video. When we, you did over 500 of those videos, probably even closer to it. As people know, I don't leave the room. I literally
Starting point is 00:31:13 made over 500 videos. The lowest for a non Emmy award winning winner would probably be $7,500, which would be the lowest you would buy if you engaged an outside firm. Probably closer to your market rate, Brett, would probably be $25,000, $50,000, potentially even more for some of the videos that you made. You made 500 of them. That would be in the lowest end, about three and a half million dollars. On the high end, 15 to 20 million dollars. And the fact that all of those videos went viral and had the impact that it did for, as we said in the statement that we released publicly today, for fractions of pennies on the dollar and to have this Hatana guy come in and say, oh, your ads were not effective. By the way, Hatana, you've liked our ads. I've seen you like the ads and I've taken screenshots of the ads that you've liked of our receipts. Trust me,
Starting point is 00:32:18 I come with receipts as a litigator because I'm gearing the fuck upright because I am so livid over this. I can't even begin to tell you. During the term, Midas Touch raised $5 which I'll explain how we structure it. And we explain this to Hatana. We're the one who volunteered this information to Hatana. And once again, it's all publicly available. And it's all publicly available. We post and we brag about this information because I'm so ecstatic. So remember 5.1 million raised, 4.4 million expenditures, and the entire overhead
Starting point is 00:33:08 of operating costs of Midas Touch is $385,000. Yes. Me, Ben Micellis, I can work for free. I'm very fortunate that I've had incredible clients. I've done work as a lawyer that led me spend the year basically working on Midas Touch for free. But other people who, especially as a progressive organization, I pay people who do work. I'm not Donald Trump who stiffs people on bills. You work, you get paid, and I think you should get paid a living wage for the work that you've done. Now, I want you to go back to the number I previously told you, because if Brett alone did the video editing as a consultant, as a consulting firm, and we outsourced this, it'd probably be 10, $15 million, okay? Which means Midas Touch couldn't even exist.
Starting point is 00:34:03 So what Hatton is basically saying is we should take dark money from billionaires and deca millionaires and not even exist. That's basically his premise. And that's what's outraging me. And it outrages me so much because I work for free for this organization. I've kept everything so efficient to this organization. And to have someone like that come in and defame me and my younger brothers, I am just not going to let that happen ever, period, full stop. And so what we explained to Hatana is that we have a outside consultant and the consultant is Prestige WW, Adam Parkamenko, who gave us the cheapest rate of any consultant who wanted to work with us from the outset. It was hard to get a consultant to want to work with us. But all the consultants, 15, 20% of donations without even providing services, just getting
Starting point is 00:34:55 the donations. So had we not hired Prestige WW, which is a great name, by the way, for those who watch Step Brothers, the cost just to raise would have been in excess of a million dollars. Now that 385 includes Brett and includes Jordy and includes several other employees, a compliance officer, a graphic designer, the consulting fee for the fundraising, the video production costs of over 500 videos, the cost to operate all of our social media accounts, which are the top accounts, communications costs. All of that is in the number that Hatana has cites that he takes issue with, 385. And he goes, it appears that you are trying to conceal the payment to consultants
Starting point is 00:35:39 under the 385. Dude, we told you specifically when we interviewed, we're the ones who volunteered the way it works and explained to you why it had that level of efficiency. And we've told it to you over and over again. Listen to when we talk to you. Here's the thing that I realized. You said, Ben, before that, what Hatena prefers is for us to just be funded entirely by dark money or billionaires. Allegedly, that seems to be what he wants. I think the other option- And to lose, and to do what Democrats did in the past, that lose. And to lose elections.
Starting point is 00:36:11 I think the other option of what he seems to have preferred that we did was instead of making 500 plus videos, instead of doing a Midas University program, instead of doing all the various projects that we did, he would rather us have made one single ad and then saved up all of our money to run that on TV. Now you tell me, do you think Midas Touch would have been more effective if throughout the entire cycle we did one ad that we put a ton of money behind on TV, or the cumulative effect on all of our ads, of our canvassing, of our mailing programs, of our phone calls, of our text messaging,
Starting point is 00:36:53 of our university programs, of our digital billboards, of our truck billboards, of every single thing that we do. I defy you to find a single other organization that has ever in the history of politics or really anything beyond anything generally that's been more efficient and more effective than what we have done here. Let's look at the numbers. Four hundred and seventy million dollars in TV ads were spent in the Georgia elections. Which ads were the most talked about? The Midas Touch ads. We did a strategic buy of our Grinches of Georgia. Again, all this is public for $100,000 approximately on CNN right before the debates. And when anybody talked about the Georgia TV ads, the main ad they would talk
Starting point is 00:37:46 about is the Grinches of Georgia ad, as though that was the big money spent that was going on in Georgia. That was actually probably the smallest money spent in all of the Georgia campaign. And we did a strategic buy on CNN right before the debates so that we could get that viral attention. And it worked. And then we built a mailing program around it that was in multiple languages. We built a billboard campaign around it. We had a vote your raise bus tour that was built around it. And we had more penetration there than any other ad. And so to have somebody second guess an approach that was successful, I can't even tell you how grateful I am right now to see what Biden has accomplished with a Democratic Congress. And I think we played a role in it. Most of the credit should indeed go to the
Starting point is 00:38:39 local organizers and the people of the states for standing up, the Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and people like that in other states who stood up 100%, but Midas Touch for sure came in and played a significant role in complementing those efforts that were going on in the different states, and we succeeded. And so to have this just disgusting and despicable defamatory hit piece that just misrepresents all of the actual valid data is just beyond and beyond upsetting. And then the final point that Hatana states is that Midas Touch consistently says there's an 80-20 split of an 80-20 burn rate, meaning 80% spent over 20% raising the additional money. It's more like 50-50. Okay, Mr. Atana, that's not the case. It's not like 50-50. Atana goes, your Facebook ads don't count because in the Facebook ads,
Starting point is 00:39:39 you raise money from them. It's like, okay, you're claiming that because we're efficient and try to recoup the cost of the underlying ad. You take issue with that. We should just waste, you know, we should just not be wasteful with the money and try to recoup the ad. So the ad can actually stay on longer. We're being as fiscally responsible as it can, but in any event, it is, it is 80, 20, by the way, if it was a 50, 50, as a startup, those ask startup of a nonprofit, charity, of a super PAC, a 50-50 burn rate would be a home run. And people are like, oh, shit, how do you do 50-50? The fact that we are 80-20 is beyond incredible.
Starting point is 00:40:18 Yeah, and you can look at it like even if you don't know a political organization, you could look at it like a business. It's known in the first X amount of years of a new business, of a startup, that most of the time these businesses aren't profitable. And Midas Touch had the unique scenario of always having enough money to do our buys and always spending a majority of our buys, in our case, 80%, being able to get that straight into the field, straight into TV, straight into digital. And I think it's one of the things about reinventing the space and not doing it the way that these billionaires and this dark money did it, is people hadn't seen it done the way we did it before. So you have this Seth who's like this dinosaur of media, and Rolling
Starting point is 00:41:02 Stone likes to say that they're some sort of digital behemoth. They get like two likes on a tweet. You know, they would kill, they would pay. I would say that Rolling Stone would pay millions and millions of dollars for a fraction of the reach that Midas Touch gets. Well, as we said, it would cost, we looked up the ad buy rates for Rolling Stones magazine. And to buy two full page ads is more money than the entire Midas Touch overhead operating budget. I think it's $230,000 to pay for a full page ad in Rolling Stone. So rather than running this incredibly efficient operation, perhaps Satana would have liked that we just spent all our money on two ads in Rolling Stone versus the work that we've accomplished. And let me just, as I conclude, give a list of the work that we accomplished. We produced over 500 videos, which were the most viral of the election cycle. We led canvassing
Starting point is 00:42:01 efforts. We made local and strategic national TV buys for our ads. We partnered with living music legends like Stevie Wonder, Bette Midler, Nine Inch Nails, Patty Austin. We executive produced and host the podcast that you're listening to now. And we also executive produced the Michael Cohen podcast, both top political podcasts in America. We led cutting edge billboard campaigns, ran digital billboard campaigns. We operated a digital billboard bus tour, which was run by a minority owned veteran in Georgia. We funded porta potties at voting sites. We defended against legal claims by Fox News and the Loeffler campaign. And we prevailed in a First Amendment federal lawsuit against Marjorie Taylor Greene. We ran targeted mailer campaigns in multiple language. We ran targeted radio campaigns in key swing states. We sent over 5 million text messages to voters with the support of the Midas community. We created and operated multiple social media accounts that have had the most engagement of any political group basically out there,
Starting point is 00:43:01 or most media companies. We founded Midas University, a college and university program to educate the youth on political activism with about 18 active chapters, including a high school chapter called Midas Varsity Blue. We led successful boycotts against corporations that have anti-democratic agendas. We published investigative journalist pieces. We developed and amplified dozens of other content creators who fight for democracy and helped build their platforms. We originated top trending hashtags on an almost daily basis. And we built the Midas community movement with your support, where our core group of thousands of individuals are politically active
Starting point is 00:43:43 each day. And one of the things we told Atana is why don't you speak to the Midas community about how the work we've done have impacted their lives? Why don't you actually get statements from real people who were never politically active before Midas Touch, who have used the Midas Touch videos to help educate their family members who have turned Republicans to Democrats or turned Trumpers to vote for Biden in this election. We said, look, if you don't want to talk to him, just do a hashtag. Look up Midas Mighty. Look up the thousands of people on Twitter who have Midas in their name, who have changed their whole Twitter and social media identity
Starting point is 00:44:19 to rally around the Midas community. Of course, he didn't do that. But I am so grateful as we posted today what Hatana and Rolling Stone was trying to do to us, the overwhelming support, the number of Midas mighty community members who've came out, political insiders who have posted that basically have looked at our numbers and said, these numbers are the most impressive numbers I think that exist out there. Literally everything you named, which I think was half of our episode at this point, you listing off all of our initiatives, I believe was half of this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Every single thing that you listed off was all for an overhead cost of 385K out of a five. That a ton of sites at the end of that,
Starting point is 00:45:02 that he takes issue with that number. And you can see now after going through this anatomy of a hit job, I think that as Midas Touch has developed this platform to become one of the most well-known names in politics. Look, I expect that people are going to come for us. I fully expect that. And in fact, I welcome valid criticism. If at the end of the day, you don't like a specific video, you think our activism is too brash, you want to criticize. I like to think of what we build as almost having this artificial intelligence where your feedback helps us adjust. I want to know how
Starting point is 00:45:45 I could be better. I welcome that. But what I'm not going to welcome ever, and what I will make sure I zealously defend against is anybody who seeks to defame myself, my brothers, my organization, and the Midas community, you know, because you've all become family to us. So we appreciate all of your support. I wanted to break down all of the issues and I apologize that it's taken this long of this podcast episode to get through it. I would have liked to discuss these issues with Atana. I invited him on the podcast today. Of course, he's too cowardly to come on this podcast and have this discussion with us. But I think it was helpful to explain the anatomy of our organization, what we've been able to accomplish, to thank you for your donations, and to make sure that everybody
Starting point is 00:46:36 knows in the future that when they are dealing with Hatana, that he is not going to heed any ethical journalism. And this is a man to be avoided at all costs. We will be right back after these messages. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. I am still fuming, although it was cathartic, though. I got I got to say, and you know what, like one of the things that really bothers me about it, above all, and is that he's taken us away from our mission. You know, he's distracted us from the important issues. There's voter suppression going
Starting point is 00:47:16 on. There's civil rights are at stake. There's a lot that we need to be focusing on a lot of videos that we need to do a lot of activism that we need to be doing. And for reasons unknown to us, I don't know where this is coming from. He's taken us away from those issues, but we will not be deterred and we will not be bullied. And we will still fill you in on all the news that you need to know what's going on. And so let's get started. What's happening in the news, fellas? Well, Brett, one of the interesting pieces of news, it's just so funny. It seems like going from that segment to even talking about the news is a hard transition, but we need to educate the people. We need to talk about what is going on. And so someone who infuriated me during in real time, and it was probably one of the reasons that mice took off, to no fault of their own at first, were hoisted into an anti-science Trump administration. These are people who were working for the government
Starting point is 00:48:37 who expected, I think, that the president would follow science. But these are people who also take oaths as medical professionals who need to stand up in the face of lies and in the face of genocide. To do no harm. Yeah, to do no harm and especially not allow a genocide to take place. So when Dr. Birx was up there, the frustration was she's such a brilliant person. She's such an accomplished person. It's because of her talent that I was so upset because she stood up there and basically covered for Donald Trump. She was willing to throw away her entire career and reputation to cost Americans lives, hundreds of thousands of lives in her own words.
Starting point is 00:49:29 I'm not sure she fully realizes how significant the admission she's making on this CNN special by Dr. Sandra Gupta. And it is unfathomable what she did. And so Brad, if you can play the clip from the Dr. Gupta interview that will be airing on CNN. The first time we have an excuse, there were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially. We're not talking about Skittles. We're not talking about baseballs. We're talking about
Starting point is 00:50:09 deaths. Deaths of Americans is what we're talking about. And what she's saying in that clip is that about 100,000 deaths would have been hard to prevent in any country, just based on the size of the United States. I don't know if I fully believe that. I think if Biden was in charge, we would expect greatness from the United States of America, like we're seeing now with the vaccine distributions, 3.3 million a day, basically, or more. But she's saying that other than the initial 100,000, we're over significantly over 500,000 deaths now, that these other deaths could have been avoided or significant portion. So again, hundreds of thousands of deaths. If Americans weren't lied to. Very simply, if Americans were told the truth, that's criminal. That is criminal murder on a mass scale. And her in those admissions stating that as someone who sat there,
Starting point is 00:51:19 who knew the facts, is basically admitting that she hated and abetted the genocide. And I'm not confident, unfortunately. Glenn Kushner was more optimistic than me in the last podcast that Trump can be tried for criminal homicide. I'd love to share his optimism on this, but I don't expect that's going to happen at least anytime soon. But we're going to look back on what happened as just that, the darkest, most horrifying days in the country's history, where the president, aided by people like Dr. Birx, allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to die and caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die and caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die. It's death. And I don't think we talk about death in the way that it should be. We talk about death. And I gave the example to Skittles or baseballs, but the way she said it, you could have replaced her
Starting point is 00:52:27 tone. You could have replaced Skittles, baseballs, hard hats, hammers, you name it. And you would have thought that that's what she was talking about. Deaths. A human being never will work, will walk on this earth again. They're alone in hospital beds. They're buried six feet under. They've been cremated. Their families will never see them again. They're done with their life. And we talk about that like fucking Skittles or baseballs or deaths. We need to really adjust our moral compass of what it means to be a government and what it means to govern people and to be a politician. The first and foremost goal of government is to not let people die. Let's basically start with, let's start with that premise. And this cavalier allowing death to occur, whether it's through horrific
Starting point is 00:53:33 lies that lead to mass genocide, like what took place with COVID, or bragging about open carrying AR fucking 15s and guns, you know, military grade guns, not handguns, military grade guns in public where there are shootings where 16 people die, eight people die, 25 people die, 50 people die. Die. Death. That needs to mean something to us as human beings on this planet together. It's not a political issue. It's a human being issue. And in a world of gotcha fucking journalism by the Hatanas and the Dr. Birx's and the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, this is why Midas Touch started, because we were sick and tired of the bullshit. I'm glad of what we fought for. I'm glad of what we accomplished. we're pushing back against bullshit like what Dr. Birx is saying here and holding people accountable, which is why big institutions are getting scared of how big we are getting. We thank you for your support in helping us to get to this place, but we need to call out shit.
Starting point is 00:54:57 Yeah, everybody needs to be called out. And the media is no exception. Our public officials are no exception. We need to be calling everybody out across the board who's looking to subvert democracy. Dr. Birx here, you wonder, what could she have done? Had she spoken out, maybe she would have been fired. Well, what she decided to do instead was just follow the orders of a madman that was hell bent on killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. And I'm sorry, we've heard this throughout history and it's been litigated throughout history. I'm following orders is not an excuse. And if Dr. Birx had even come out and gone to the podium one day and said, you know what? This is really bad. And if we don't change our
Starting point is 00:55:47 strategy now, a lot of people are going to die. She would have gotten fired, but the public would have heard the information they needed to know. Instead, what did she do? Not only did she not speak out against the lies, but she would go on the news and she would praise Donald Trump, praise his response, say that he was a genius with data and that his business experience was helping to guide him through this process. All things now that she's openly admitting were lies. She was lying to the American people then at a pivotal time in our history when lives were on the line and we were we were in the middle of a pandemic the likes of which we have never seen before so and that's the biggest thing brett right there would you hit on i saw people on twitter today hey you know why isn't pence getting enough heat
Starting point is 00:56:36 why isn't this person getting enough heat well sure yeah pence is an asshole and everyone knew he was going to fumble the ball on on on coronafully so. He should get heat. And I think he does get heat. But what we can't let as a society happen is Dr. Briggs have this apology tour and then her fall back into favor with the American people. We have to remember early on in the pandemic, just what a pivotal role she played in leading to the 500,000 plus deaths. She never spoke out. She nodded along and she just would not help the American people when we needed her most. No doubt, Jordian. I'll watch that CNN special when it airs. I'll probably break my TV screen watching it. But at least Dr. Sanjay Gupta is getting her to make those
Starting point is 00:57:21 statements so that they live in history and they live in infamy. Turning to some other news, I don't just want to leave you on the Rolling Stone situation and Dr. Burke. We've got some good news coming up. Yeah, come on. What's the good news, B? Okay. The good news is vaccine updates. President Biden announced that by April 19th, about 90% of Americans are going to be eligible for the vaccine. And that's like 33 million vaccines available in the coming week. Let's listen to what Biden has to say about that. I'm pleased to announce that at least 90% of all adults in this country will be eligible to be vaccinated by April the 19th, just three weeks from now, because we have the vaccines. For the vast, vast majority of adults,
Starting point is 00:58:14 you won't have to wait till May 1. You'll be eligible for your shot on April 19th. Finally. Vaccine news. I'm very happy about that. And I have no doubt. I tweeted about this yesterday with how horrible things are going in Brazil. We need to be vigilant in the U.S. because a lot of these GQP governors want to open everything, I think, intentionally to try to sabotage Biden's success. I have no doubt that that's actually why they want to do it. I know that sounds fucked up, but I have no doubt that they actually want their people to die so that Biden is not as successful as he is. I have no doubt that that's what the death of Santas was trying to do. And I have no doubt that's what they were trying to do in Texas and other places. But if this was Trump still in power or a former guy still in power, we would look like Brazil right now. We'd have every variant here. We'd have every surge in the world and nothing would be open. And he would still be doing those post-traumatic stress disorder inducing press conferences like he did,
Starting point is 00:59:20 like he consistent with when he's doing bar mitzvahs and weddings now at Mar-a-Lago where he's literally interrupting people's weddings to give speeches about how jealousy is abided. That's not, I'm not making that up. He literally did that this weekend. He interrupted a couple's wedding dressed up in a suit that he wasn't invited to. I just got, I turned off the news. I get all these flash reports and they're telling me about the border. They're telling me about China, dealing with the United States. They don't want to deal with us. So what happened a few days ago was terrible.
Starting point is 00:59:55 This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen, I think. Could you imagine? First off, if you're having your wedding at Mar-a-Lago, I guess you like this sort of thing. But you can imagine if you're having a wedding and this guy comes in to talk about himself for two minutes, the clip goes on and on and on. I don't know if any of you listen to it. It's a little hard to hear in the clip, but he just go. He crashes a wedding. This is the worst sequel to Wedding Crashers. It's the worst Wedding Crashers sequel of all time. Donald Trump crashes the wedding. He gets in there. He stands up there like Elvis passed his prime, grabs the microphone, and he starts going and doing like a weird, I don't know, stand up back slash campaign speech. And the border, the border doesn't look too good. And China, ooh not so good not so good and it goes on for
Starting point is 01:00:47 just minutes and minutes and i just could not imagine being somebody who paid for a wedding to then be interrupted to hear this oaf talk about the fucking border on and on here's the thing it didn't remind me of wedding crashers it reminded me of wedding singer with adam sandler towards the end of the movie when he was really sad and drunk and just showed up to the wedding and went on this crazy rant. That's what it really reminded me. It was pathetic. It was just so weird. Just in other news, positive news, Dominion sued Fox News, a $1.6 billion defamation. Let's go. Fuck you, Fox. I told you there'd be good news coming your way. Yeah, the Fox lawsuit's good news. I like what Dominion's doing.
Starting point is 01:01:30 They're suing everybody. It kind of reminds me of, what's the Keanu Reeves movie where he goes and avenges the deaths by going after each person who's- John Wick. Yeah, Dominion's like the john wick of litigants like they're good like first they go take on um the crank in whatever her fucking name is and then they go to paul rudy crack and sydney powell and then they go juliani then they go fox news they're not ruling out going after trump but that you got to build up like in
Starting point is 01:02:02 john wick you gotta you can't just go boss mode first you got to build up like in John Wick. You got to you can't just go boss mode first. You got to build up to boss mode. And so that's basically what they're doing. And it's enjoyable to talked about how by August the election is going to be overthrown based on new information that he has. The guy is the craziest motherfucker in the world. It's really, you know, you know, the craziest thing before I knew he was crazy. Five years ago, I got my I actually got a my pillow. You did five years ago. You never told me this. I tell you where I got the my pillow I actually got a MyPillow. You did? Five years ago, yeah. You never told me this. I tell you where I got the MyPillow. I got it at the county fair, the LA County Fair,
Starting point is 01:02:51 like inside the like stadiums they have, like where they have like, it's almost like a flea market. There was like a person who sold the MyPillows. And so I actually purchased the MyPillow and I've been on their email list there, which of course I have gotten off of since then. And, but I purchased the MyPillows. And so I actually purchased the MyPillow and I've been on their email list there, which of course I have gotten off of since then. But I purchased the MyPillow five years ago. It was actually not a comfortable pillow. Oh, shocking. That guy didn't make a fine product, a fine quality product, you're telling me? It wasn't him though, but I got totally sucked
Starting point is 01:03:20 into it because I still remember it now to this day, the person selling it has like the microphone and they like pitch it to you, like in the, like in the flea market and like made it. I've been to those fairs, man. And those fairs are, I'm not surprised they sold the MyPillow or giving away the MyPillow or wherever you got it because those fairs are oddly conservative. There is a weird conservative bent to them. I remember, I think I went to, I don't know if it was the LA fair or the Orange County fair. It might've been Orange County, which explains why it was even to the next level of conservative. People don't realize there are red areas in California. And I think the first thing I saw as we're pulling up and I knew that I was not in a welcoming territory. This is probably before the election of 2016. There were a lot of very negative anti-Hillary signs with every conspiracy theory you could ever possibly imagine as you entered the fair.
Starting point is 01:04:15 So those are what these state fairs are. So I'm not surprised one bit that they had my pillow there. And, you know, but now- I got to say, B, sorry to interrupt. But you saying that county fairs are conservative is like the least surprising statement of all time. Who's B? Is Brett B? Yeah, Brett's B. What am I?
Starting point is 01:04:36 You're Ben. You don't know that? Oh, I thought I was B too. People call me B. Well, I call you B sometimes too. Why is it not surprising? Well, it's the county fair be yeah i mean they got you know the worst fried food for you ever like deep fried everything you
Starting point is 01:04:50 could imagine uh like you could literally buy animals to kill on the spot or it's really everything that you could possibly think of with can you do that? It freaked me the F out when I went there because they had, okay. Oh my God. Okay. We're getting off topic here, but they had like pigs, they had chickens, they had all these sorts of animals. And not only that, they named the animals, they named them all. And they were one of like, the pig's name was like, one of them was named bacon. One of them was named Porky and you would buy them and they would kill them there. And then you would take them home. Yeah. It's a county fair. I guess I'm, I went to County fairs when I was in Ohio. See, I'm not used to it. So it was such a shock to my system when I saw this is the LA County fair.
Starting point is 01:05:33 Yes. Or it might've been orange County, but it was one of these. I'm so naive. I just thought the pets were there. It was like a petting zoo. No, they slaughter them and you cook them. You guys are wild. You're saying those animals that they show at the County fairs, they slaughter them and you cook them. You guys are wild. Oh my God. I know. You're saying those animals that they show at the county fairs, they show them. So you kill them and it's not a petting zoo? Yeah, you eat them. All right. I got to end this Midas Touch podcast and just take some sleep. And I need to go to sleep, I think, at the end of the day.
Starting point is 01:05:55 It's a cruel world, man. After the Seth, after that revelation, after my MyPillow revelation. Hold up. I just want to say one thing before we log off. Are we logging off? I want to say something. I don't know. I'm not sure if we need to.
Starting point is 01:06:04 I need to know more. My whole life has just been turned upside down but i thought it was a petting zoo and you're telling me it's a slaughterhouse oh my god yeah no you are you're so naive if you think it's a if it's a petting zoo sochi i'm calling sochi i'm going live with ben's girlfriend who he went to the fair with and so was it a petting zoo or was it a slaughter girlfriend who he went to the fair with. Was it a petting zoo or was it a slaughterhouse where we went to the county fair? Were those animals killed? Yeah. Petting zoo.
Starting point is 01:06:38 Sochi and I will be naive. We both believe it's a petting zoo. Believe in fairy tales and rainbows and butterflies. Brett and Jordy. Yeah, we're live on the air right now. Brett and Jordy claim that it's a slaughterhouse and that those animals that they show us there, you pick out and then they kill them. And then you eat. Oh yes. They wouldn't even name them like bacon and things. Like I was so, I was left so disturbed and I've never been back.
Starting point is 01:06:58 I left so disturbed from that event. I may become a vegan now just because of that. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. But listen, at the end of the day, though, you know, fairs aside, you know, once again, we just got to thank you guys for all your support with everything. And for standing up for smooth transition. For standing up for what's right for standing up for the truth. Jordy, I know you wanted to say say a little something. Yeah, the last thing I want to say is, look, we don't care at the end of the day if you're a fucking blue checkmark or if you're a Twitter egg profile user. Like if you come after the Midas touch, if you come after
Starting point is 01:07:33 my brothers, if you come after the Midas community, we're going to hit you back a thousand times harder. Like it's not even a question. You're going to come after Ben, right? That's your plan. You're going to come after Ben, who's literally had to give up parts of his law practice, shut him down completely in order to make Midas touch what it is today, in order to dedicate any spare moment of his free time, weekends, after his 20-hour workdays, I mean holidays, whatever. Ben was always there building for free, free of charge. You're going to come after Brett.
Starting point is 01:08:03 You're going to come after my brother Brett, who's been working in a six by six closet. You guys see the closet that we put out there. He's working in a six by six closet. He's cutting videos for 23 hours a day. He's made over 500 videos like we talked about. And then worst of all, you're going to come after the Midas community, the Midas mighty folks who in their free time dedicate themselves to to hash hagging, to phone banking, to text banking, to retweeting, whatever we ask them to do just to save democracy. These are the people you're going to come after, Seth Atana and all you fucks out there. I don't fucking think so. No.
Starting point is 01:08:39 I am amped up. You know what? Really? I release your fucking article set, because if you don't know by now, we have really, really good lawyers. And the last thing I'm going to say, my brothers and I, the Midas community, we're going to be able to sleep easy at night, real easy, because at the end of the day, we are so fucking proud of what we've built. It's never been done before. Just an unapologetic pro-democracy movement. Get fucked, Seth Hatana. Okay, Jordy. Okay. That was very intense. At the end of the day, like I said earlier, the thing that upsets me the most about this whole thing is that it's momentarily taken our eye off the ball on doing the important work that we need to do. We'd rather be talking about how to overcome voter suppression.
Starting point is 01:09:23 We'd rather be talking about how to implement voter suppression. We'd rather be talking about how to implement gun reforms. We'd rather be talking about how to elect Democrats in 2022. We'd rather not be talking about this douchebag from Rolling Stone, but here we are. But it is to be determined what Rolling Stone will do with this article. Maybe they will move ahead and publish a false article, but they have been put on notice that everything that they have said is false and malicious. So they could do so at their own peril. And we're not going to, you know, totally tell you our full legal strategy that would happen after that. We'll let things play out, see where the pieces land, but who knows, maybe the Midas Media Network, maybe Rolling Stone will be under the Midas Media Network, maybe Rolling Stone will be under the Midas Media Network.
Starting point is 01:10:06 We will see. It has been incredible to lead this fight with you. It's been incredible to spend today's podcast with you. And it is going to be incredible. I just hope after this podcast about how intense my breakdown was of Seth Atana. I hope that doesn't scare away Gabriel Sterling. And he's like, I don't want to talk to that guy. That's my only one hope that when we released this tape and the video busy fucking taking photos of Gabriel's not going to listen to this podcast. He's going to, he's probably cooking another burger,
Starting point is 01:10:43 taking sunset photos. I do hope though he doesn't look at my background and doesn't realize that I take depositions for a living and the level of detail that I'm going to come into this interview with. But if he's well prepared, we'll see where it goes. So thank you so much to all of you. It's been an honor and we will see you on Friday as we speak to Gabriel Sterling and Mark Elias. Shout out to the Midas Midas!

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