The MeidasTouch Podcast - Loser-Palooza and the Arizona GQP with Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

On today’s episode, the brothers pull back the curtain and give the play-by-play behind the ‘Loser-Palooza’ plane that flew above Trump’s rally in Sarasota, which made headlines all across the nation. We discuss how the idea was formed and what was going on behind the scenes as the plane was in the air. The conversation later shifts to other losers in Trump’s orbit blatantly admitting to Allen Weisselberg’s tax fraud & the latest updates with the Giuliani/Trump family rift. Later on in the show, we welcome Grant Woods, former Attorney General of Arizona & long time friend and aide of John McCain. The episode is finally rounded out with our fan favorite “Hate Mail” recap. Please be sure to subscribe, rate & review if you enjoy our podcast and as always, thank YOU for listening! Today's episode is made possible by our friends at Stamps.com! Hit the microphone on the top right of the site and use our promo code MEIDAS and get a free 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale – with no long-term commitments or contracts. --- 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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all had an incredible Midas, mighty 4th of July weekend. And you knew that the Midas Touch Dutch brothers have been incredibly busy. I'm sure you've seen our loser Palooza plane fly over the Trump loser Palooza rally in Sarasota. And we've been busy with our flyover, with our billboard in Vegas, with we had a truck going around Wisconsin with Ron Johnson from Wisconsin talking about how Ron Johnson celebrates his fourth in Russia. We got ads playing in Colorado explaining how Bobbert and others support the insurrection. Brothers, we've been pretty busy. It's been a busy fourth. There are no days off in the world of Midas Touch. And that's how it's got to be when our democracy is on the line. When they go low, we put planes over their loser rallies, right? I mean, at the end of the day, talk to everyone, Brett, about Loserpalooza,

kind of its origins and the response that we received to it. It's a national news story. We're behind it. So I think we should probably talk about the news we're involved in at the top of our podcast. I think that's, I think that'd be smart. First off, I want to say, Jordy, how you doing, man? Coming off the birthday, you feeling older today? I'm sure he looks older today. I'm feeling good. I feel a whole year older. It was a great holiday weekend. Like you said, we take no days off here at Midas Touch. We were moving and grooving. One of the coolest things about this weekend was when we kept putting out different videos of different

things that we were doing each day and seeing people's reactions to it. That's what I love about this, man. Before jumping into Loserpalooza, I do want to talk about who out. What'd you say, JR? No, it's fine. No, I wasn't done. I clearly wasn't done finishing my thought, but go on. No, go. Please go. Please go on. I assumed you were done. Before talking about Loserpalooza or whatever Jordy was going to say right there, I do want to talk about who our guest is going to be on the pod. We have Grant Woods, Arizona's former attorney general from 1991 to 1999. One of the incredible things about Grant Woods is that he

used to be a Republican. He was a Republican attorney general. I've worked with Grant. He's a lawyer. And so I've worked with Grant on cases. He always, when he was a Republican, identified as a progressive Republican. I mean, as a progressive person pushing forward progressive ideas, which is just so wild to think that there's someone like that in Arizona who was the Arizona attorney general. He preceded Janet Napolitano. He was very close with John McCain. He was actually John McCain's chief of staff in Congress. But we are going to speak to Grant Woods about all the GQP-ing taking place in Arizona, whether there is hope.

And I think we'll find that there is hope in that state and what we're seeing with these frauds and these cyber ninjas. Arizona is so crazy right now. So crazy. We're going to get a firsthand. At the same time, like a place that, first off, Republicans are losing elections left and right. They've lost every Senate seat. They've lost the presidency there. Yet the Republicans are doubling down on the efforts that have made them lose the suburbs and lose voters just all over the place. So I'm excited to talk to Grant about his former party and see what the hell is going on. I want to give our listeners, I want to go behind the scenes. You don't hear this stuff when you're watching CNN or MSNBC or even when you're reading about it, whether you're reading about it on social media or in whatever online digital print you have.

We're going to really have a conversation with a former Republican, now a Democrat. It was Arizona's Attorney General. And we're going to really talk about what was going on in that state. And you are going to be having more knowledge than ever before. But let's talk about loser palooza, Jordy. Jordy. I really need to get my inhaler. I really can't breathe right now. I'll be right back. So Jordy's going to go get his inhaler right now. And for those who know,

you know, these shows are not live, but we like to give you the live feel about them. Jordy has his dog, Mello, Midas Mello. Jordy is allergic to his dog, Midas Mello. And Jordy. Jordy has his dog, Mello, Midas Mello. Jordy is allergic to his dog, Midas Mello. And Jordy...

Jordy, I think you've got to take the puff of the inhaler closer to the microphone so everybody can hear what's going on. People have got to hear it. My fucking asthma has been so bad. I don't know if it's because it's so hot where I am right now, but it's just been brutal over the last week and a half. So strange.

Jordy, it's a change of seasons. You have a gigantic dog that you're allergic to. It's probably an assortment of things, but let's talk Loserpalooza. I will get you up to speed while Jordy is suffering with breathing. So Loserpalooza, the idea, you probably even heard it if you're a listener to this podcast. A few weeks ago on the pod, we were talking about these Trump events. And I think Guy flippantly threw out the phrase, loser palooza. And we all laughed about the phrase. And as we kind of thought on that, I'm not sure if you remember, I forget where it was. I forget if it was Iowa or exactly what state, but Trump held a rally then last year. And somebody put a sign out front that said something like super spreader event here and had an arrow pointing to the Trump rally that

everybody was going to. And so our initial thought was, let's put up a billboard that says loser palooza tour. And the concept would be more like one of those, you know, now it's, you know, the 80s music videos, like a greatest hits album, you know? Like come to Loserpalooza and hear Trump whine about election fraud and talk about Hillary Clinton's emails and Hunter Biden, you know, all the greatest hits, Loserpalooza, you know, and then with like all the tour dates

the idea kind of started as that and then as we spoke with one one another and we spoke with um adam parkamenko who's a part of our team we're all just discussing ideas and going back and forth and i think it might have been adam who said what if we fly a plane over the event and we were just like you could do we could actually fly a plane over the event? And we were just like, you could do, we could actually fly a plane over the event as it's going on. We were like, yeah, the guy's not president anymore. There's no restricted airspace. You could fly a plane right over the Loserpalooza event. And we said, perfect. Let's do this. And the entire day we were just glued to our phones as we were in touch with the pilot because it was a, there wasn't great

weather in Florida that day. So we were getting all the reports. It looks like it's going to rain. We're not sure if it's going to be able to take off. And really until the plane took off, we weren't sure it was going to happen. And then the plane takes off. We get the first photos of the actual plane in the sky. The pilot was so incredible, so awesome, the team that we worked for to do this. And then he was able to fly like the entire time over the Trump rally as Trump was speaking. So as this guy is droning on and on, and then the reports start coming in that the plane is sighted. And then reports are coming in as people are watching it on Newsmax or whatever one network was playing it, that people throughout the speech kept looking up, looking away from Trump, were distracted, relieving the rally early because of the plane noise from the top. talked about publicly yet, but the Secret Service actually, because Trump still has Secret Service protection, actually contacted our pilot directly and basically informed him that although he has

the right to be in the airspace, that the people throwing the event, aka the Trump, whoever's in Trump's crew these days, were very upset about the plan. They were incredibly, incredibly upset by the plane. It was hurting their feelings. They wanted it to go away. And so the Secret Service agent was asking our pilot, telling him that he has to leave the airspace. The way our pilot took it was that he was being threatened by Secret Service to leave the airspace immediately. But Ben, you spoke to the Secret Service agent. And what did you find out? I'm going to do a further investigation to determine if it's truly the Secret Service.

I think it was. It was someone named Brian with the Baltimore Area Code who was very reluctant to tell me his last name. You could tell who owns these planes because of their tail number. They have a tail number that you could quickly find out who owns it, who it belongs to. And so likely someone on the ground found out who it belonged to. I don't know if it was, you know, it's definitely not a Secret Service, you know, approved effort to do this. I mean, it was probably someone in Trump's detail who was trying to flex and call the friend, you know, in the service in Baltimore,

who then called our pilot and threatened our pilot. They weren't as nice as you said, Brett. That's what he told me when I confronted him with it, that it was not restricted airspace, but that the people were being annoyed. He had told our pilot he must leave immediately, giving our pilot the application that it was, in fact, restricted airspace when it was not. A former president, especially a traitorous one, although that's not actually what has to do with it, but a former president who's giving rallies like that as part of his grifting political group that he's fucking running so that he could make millions of dollars for himself, which is where all that money is basically funneled, that doesn't get protection whatsoever at the end of the day,

zero protection from that. And so there were people who were basically saying like, there was this one person on the YouTube video that was circulating that says, it's absolutely unreal. The guy's name, first off, the guy who wrote this name is J-Dub. So take your source with a grain of salt. It's absolutely unreal that a plane can fly over a no-fly zone for almost an hour without being forced out of the sky. It seemed like people were leaving due to the continuous flyovers made by this plane. It even flew back to the airport to refuel and came back. I know this because the airport is within a few miles and I live across the street and watched it fly into the airport.

So it was allowed to take off again after landing with no repercussions. Unreal. Let me just be very clear. It's not restricted airspace. You know, former presidents retire in dignity. They have a Secret Service detail. They don't give rallies talking about how elections are rigged and undermining our democracy. Admitting to crimes.

Yeah, that was not Trump's airspace. And look, in the wake of that happening as well, Brett, you know, I'm not sure if you saw, but we have CNN obtaining additional recordings. We know about the recordings, obviously, in Georgia, which we heard. But these are now recordings in Arizona, which is also one of the reasons why we're talking to Grant Woods on the podcast. But these are, you know, Giuliani's like just the big fucking idiot. Like Giuliani, you know, would do these would would not just engage in election tampering for which he's now been has had his law license suspended in New York and he's likely going to be disbarred. But like when Giuliani would engage in this election tampering, he would like leave messages and,

you know, as did Trump, like you would hear them on the recordings. They just admit to crimes. That's their, they're like, yes, this is Rudy Giuliani calling. I hear to call on a crime.

No, but you're so right. And we'll talk about this like more later in the podcast. We get to some other subjects, but they literally do just that. They, they admit to the crime. It's look, it's still a crime if you do it out loud and you do it like it's not a crime. Leaving a voicemail as you're committing a crime just

because you're intentionally leaving evidence doesn't make it any less criminal. So this Rudy Giuliani message is a voicemail to GOP Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, no relation to Microsoft Bill Gates. But let's hear what Rudy had to say about the election. Bill, it's Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's lawyer. If you get a chance, would you please give me a call? I have a few things that I could talk over with you. Maybe we can get this thing fixed up. You know, I really think it's a shame that Republicans sort of were both in this kind of situation. I think there may be a nice way to resolve this for everybody.

Hey, Mr. Gates, this is Rudy Giuliani calling in to commit a crime here. So, like, I was wondering, so this whole election thing, this was done right after, you know, in the midst of all the election chaos with Trump. So, you know, I think there's a way that we could fix this. So why don't you talk to me? Once again, in case any prosecutors are listening to this, this is Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's lawyer calling in case there is any debate about who was. Did you see, Brad, the excerpt from the it's going to be the new Michael Wolff book. Michael Wolff wrote one of the kind of initial Trump exposes in the presidency. Do you remember that? Like literally, you know, Michael Wolff was like, you know, has written these like exposes on people before. And like, what was the first one called? Was it called? Was it Fire and Fury? I think it was called was inside the Trump White House, right? Fire and Fury. And Trump gave the guy complete access to everybody and just admitted to all of the crimes on the record. And Michael Wolff published a book. I read Michael Wolff's book on Rupert Murdoch also.

He did a good, he's actually a really, really good writer, Michael Wolff. But he has a new book coming out, Landslide, The Final Days of the Trump Presidency. We'll actually try to get Michael on this podcast. But the London, the Times of London released some excerpts about how annoyed, I'm sure you've seen this, Brett and Jordi, how annoyed Trump is that Giuliani has the audacity of trying to get paid for all of that work he was doing, like those voicemails. And Trump was under the impression that Giuliani was working for him for free. And Giuliani wants to get paid. The Trump family, according to the excerpts, has completely cast out and cut off Giuliani. The book doesn't say which members did that. But there's clearly now a rift between Giuliani and Trump because this is Trump's MO. He doesn't pay people, and then he cuts them off when they become legal liabilities for him. It's a one-way street with loyalty with Trump.

And that's why I don't understand why everyone thinks that they are going to be different. That, oh, yeah, literally everyone who's come into contact with this man has left on bad terms and has been screwed over, royally screwed over. But I'm going to be different. I'm part of the family. That's what these people think. And they get roped in. I think I just want to do a run now of basically everyone in the Trump orbit admitting to crimes. We already heard Rudy Giuliani admitting to crimes here at the Loserpalooza. Is Donald Trump admitting to the crimes that Allen Weisselberg and the Trump organization was charged with. And yet they go after good, hardworking people for not paying taxes on a company car. Company car. You didn't pay tax

on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is and didn't pay tax or education for your grandchildren. I don't even know. Do you have to? But does anybody know the answer to that stuff? OK, so there's Trump admitting to the crimes laid out in the indictment against Allen Weisselberg, just flat out admitting it and probably expanding the investigation by admitting that he was very much involved in this process what do you i mean weisselberg's gotta be just slamming his head on his desk just like what is going on just shut up it's the craziest thing and then didn't don jr do some shit this weekend too brett if that wasn't enough jordy you're exactly right here's Don Jr. They dressed up the indictment, obviously. They dress it up. They make it look really serious. They say he didn't pay taxes on $1.7 million worth of stuff over 16 years.

So that's to New York State, 8% of that, $136,000. Half of that was because my father paid for his grandchildren's school in New York City. So you take that out. It amounts to about five grand a month. That's what they promised. They brought in outside prosecutors. They teamed up with the attorney general of New York State to do this. OK, so now Don Jr. just implicated his grand his kids. And then to tie this all together, just because you say it in a condescending tone doesn't make it less criminal. You're still admitting to it. What is going on?

And then to tie this all together, people started quoting an article which now has resurfaced where Trump gave an impromptu interview to The New York Times in December of 2017, where he stated that he knows taxes, quote, better than the greatest CPA. Yeah, that's his hubris. That hubris is going to bite him in the fucking ass because I think what he was doing, and Ben, you might have another legal opinion on this, but I think what he was doing by saying that out loud in that speech was trying to kind of begin a defense of who knows this stuff. The tax code is so complicated. How are you even supposed to know? Do you know that you're supposed to pay taxes on this stuff? I mean, who even knows? And try to act like it wasn't a malicious attempt to defraud and to evade taxes. And, you know, Eric never wants to be, you know, left out of the mix here. He doesn't get enough attention as is. So Eric also decided to run his mouth. Stop putting to the Eric clip. Eric got in on this?

Dude, the whole family took to the news. The lawyers must have just been, in addition to Weisselberg, like, dude, you have the right to remain silent. You don't have to go on Newsmax. You don't have to go on Fox News. You don't have to go on newsmax you don't have to go on fox news you don't have to go admitting to all your crimes you could just shut the hell up which is usually your best legal option but let's hear whiny eric well these are employment perks these are you know these are um you know a corporate car which everybody has i guarantee you there's people on this network that has corporate cars i guarantee you there's people in every company in the country that have corporate vehicles. This is what they're going after. This isn't a criminal matter. This is, you know, it's really interesting, Raymond, after the financial crisis, right?

They didn't go after a single person on Wall Street, despite the fact that these people were literally, they took down the U.S. economy, but they'll go down, they'll go after somebody after fringe employment benefits. Is that really what the D.A. is focused on? As little girls are getting shot in the middle of Times Square, they'll go after a corporate vehicle and a corporate apartment. Give me a break. Guys, there are other crimes. So why are they coming after us when there are other crimes out there? Hey, this is a corporate crime, okay? This is a corporate crime. I don't know why they're going after somebody who's corporate. It has the word corporate in front of it, right? Look, this is all speculation, but hearing these clips back to back to back, it feels like Trump and his kids have the marching orders. Admit to the crime.

Pretend you don't know it's a crime out there into the world. Weisselberg, he was our CFO. He needs to know the tax law. But if we outwardly pretend that we don't know these are crimes and we say it with like hubris and and all these condescending tones, we might get off here. And Jordan, all speculation. But I think you're spot on. And where the plan falls flat is the quote that Ben read where he says Trump knows better than the CFO about taxes. We will follow up and see what happens there. I mean, as we talked about on Legal AF, this was the first 15 count indictment. And oftentimes, there are superseding indictments. And I predict there will be superseding indictments with

additional counts that are going to be added. These are the charges that are brought now, and they're often brought strategically. And so whether Cy Vance thought that Trump was going to give him that great material at Loserpalooza, I think Cy was smart in filing a 15-count indictment. But did Cy truly predict that he was going to get that? I don't know. But at the end of the day, it puts pressure on Weisselberg because, you know, Cy saying, look, we've got 50 to 100 other counts waiting for you. And you saw how Trump handled those first 15.

Wait until we do the next 15 at the next 15 in the next 15. You may as well be, you know, one of the things that I could be saying to is, look, we have a lot worse shit on you than these 15 counts, but we'll let you plead guilty to four or five of them right now. But you need to do X, Y and Z or we'll do a superseding indictment. We'll just keep tacking on 15 new counts every two months for you, Mr. Weisselberg. And that's what I actually think is going on behind the scenes here. Now, this weekend as well, we want to thank everybody who has been going out and getting the Midas Touch merch, the Vaxxed and Relaxed bracelets, the Midas Touch t-shirts. I don't know if you saw

Reality Winner was wearing the Midas Touch Truth is Golden shirt. Do you see that? I had the biggest smile on my face when they sent that to us and when they posted it. I mean, how incredible for a person who still is, but on home confinement, a political prisoner, persecuted for doing something that I think is something very noble. I know a lot of people could disagree about the methods and whistleblowers in general, but she exposed the Russian interference into our election and really is directly responsible for a lot of the upgraded security in our election system to prevent foreign actors from hacking into our systems and changing

votes and doing everything. She was the one who called attention to all that when Trump was denying it. Go back and listen to our reality winner special that we did with her family and some of her advocates that we did a few, you know, several months back. And so it was so great to see full circle her being released from prison, even if she's on home confinement, wearing a Midas Touch Truth is golden shirt. And you can get your Midas Touch Truth is golden shirts and Midas Touch merch by going to store.midastouch.com. But I want to tell you about how we run and operate our small business. And it wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for stamps.com. Are you really still going to the post office? Are you really still paying full price for postage?

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And there's no risk. And with our promo code Midas, M-E-I-D-A-S, you get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type Midas, that's stamps.com, promo code Midas, stamps.com. Never go to the post office again and hit us up on Twitter and confirm that you went to stamps.com and typed in the promo code Midas, and we will retweet and say thank you to you. That's stamps.com, promo code Midas. And now we have an extraordinary guest. Arizona has become the epicenter of Trump cult conspiracy theories, spewing election lies that the election was stolen, that ballots are being harvested from Bamboo and and and other crazy conspiracies of Hugo Chavez overturning the election. All of these crazy conspiracies were apparently blessed. And we know this and we talk about this on the podcast by the Arizona state legislature, who enabled a group of people called

these cyber ninjas from Florida to come in and basically tamper with the entire election to further Donald Trump's ego. How did this happen in Arizona, the state of great attorney generals like Janet Napolitano, who became the governor and then became a great leader within the Democratic Party and with great leaders as well, like Grant Woods, the former Arizona attorney general. And we have Grant Woods on the show. And Grant, I want to be very clear that none of this has to do with you whatsoever. Grant was the attorney general from 1991 to 1999 in Arizona. Grant was a former chief of staff to McCain and was very close to the late great Senator John McCain. And Grant formally identified as a Republican

before, of course, Donald Trump's invective and horrible form of politics. Grant called Trump out in 2016 and in 2020. And it is an honor to have Grant on the Midas Touch podcast today. And I'll say this about Grant. It is fortunate for me to have Grant as a colleague, as well as I work on cases with Grant. So with that introduction, Grant Woods, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Well, thank you. Thank you guys for all you're doing as well. It's very exciting. And you had some big victories over the weekend, which we all loved.

That's fantastic. That is the world's sorriest, tired vaude-type routine that Trump is doing now. I mean, it's a little bit like Sunset Boulevard and, you know, the stories of the aging, washed-up actor or person who just can't take it, you know. And they're ready for their close-up, and the crowds are d dwindling and they're doing the same old tired bit, even though the world has hopefully moved on. It's sad, but it was nice for you all to spotlight them with the loser label. Yeah, we thought Loserpalooza was the appropriate label. And when we see what's going on with these cyber ninjas in Arizona. I think Loser Palooza is the appropriate

label there. I mean, you have these, you know, Republican Senate legislatures who would probably be the people who would be buying VIP tickets, frankly, to show up in Sarasota, in Sarasota, bringing their kids and bringing their family and buying the QAnon shirts and the three percenter shirts. I mean, that's that's Republican legislatures in your state right now, too. So, yeah, did that happen? I believe for most of my lifetime and at least since the I would say since the 90s, from the 90s on, the legislature in Arizona has been very much out of touch with the general public. And that's a product, I think, of gerrymandering and the fact that if you don't have a general election, if you don't have real competition, then you only worry about the primary and you worry about that during the primary. But you also only worry about primary challenges while you're governing.

And that's yet another reason for to get rid of gerrymandering and to go to independent commissions. We've gone to an independent commission in Arizona. It doesn't it hasn't worked as well as we'd hoped. I was chair of that. We passed that by a vote of the people. We need competition is what we need. So back to the 90s, Arizona, by the way, was the first state, you can win a bar bet with this, was the first state to pass a comprehensive hate crimes law. You wouldn't pick Arizona probably, but it was Arizona. That was our bill, and we passed it in 1992. And it included sexual orientation, which was pretty amazing, looking back on it.

But after that, they were tough. My point, I guess, is I used to think it got so bad that by my last year, I told my office, I'm not going down there. I just refuse. They're too nutty. I don't want to. I'm wasting my time. Now, looking back on it, those are kind of the glory days. Those are the real, real leaders. I mean, we just disagreed on policy. We didn't disagree on facts.

So that's what's happened to the Republican Party, I think, in Arizona and and nationally. We always had to deal with a fringe in the Republican Party. There was a there was a segment of it, the Kelly Ward, who's now the chairman. That segment of it was around and they were nuts. They were conspiracy theorists. And, you know, I won twice as a Republican statewide on a civil rights environment consumer agenda. So I had to deal with these people. And, but they were, you could, they were marginalized. Now they've taken over. Now Callie Ward is the chairman. She was viewed as kind of a nut. She held hearings when she was in the legislature on chemtrails, that that was some sort of, you know, mass conspiracy harming people rather than just the natural trail that a jet

leaves behind when it flies over. So before she's laughed at, now she's in charge. So they did this gambit. And, you know, I think legally mistakes were made. We have a board of supervisors here in Arizona, which is a 4-1 Republican split, and they've been amazing in standing up to these people and standing up for what's right. It's easy for me. I'm not in office, haven't been in office in a long time. I shouldn't say it's easy. It's not. But it's easier because they are in office and they, you know, they have to face these people on a regular basis and yet they've stood up to them. However, they, I think the court case, when they went to court on whether they could do this so-called audit, and it's not even close to an audit,

I think they kind of botched it up, to be honest with you. And there's a federal law that says that they have to maintain possession of these ballots for 22 months. And that was not cited to the judge. I think the judge was looking for something like that. It wasn't cited. And then they chose not to appeal. And at that point in time, they could have raised it because they realized they hadn't raised it, but they kind of wanted to like, let's stop on this

and just let them go. How bad can it be? And little did they know, yeah, it's been horrific. The ballots, you know, the last we heard were in a cabin in Montana. That's not a joke. My ballot, I voted in Maricopa County, my ballot is in a cabin in Montana. That's not a joke. This is my ballot. I voted in Maricopa County. My ballot is in a cabin in Montana. And that sounds like the conspiracies that they spew, but it actually happens. You know,

there's people in a log cabin in Alaska. It's like, no, no, no. They actually put it in a log cabin. Yeah. And this is what they did. Was there a moment, Grant, and you previously were, you know, very close with and you always were very close with McCain until his passing. Was there a moment along the way, though, when you said, you know what, the wackos have fully taken over the Republican Party. I'm no longer a Republican anymore. And then did you say, you know what, as between a Republican and a Democrat, there's only one party that stands for democracy now. So I guess I'm a Democrat. When John McCain passed, there was really very few, if any, people stood up after him. I mean, they just went along with it. That was the problem. I endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 as a Republican. And I think I was the only I thought that Donald Trump was a, not only the

least qualified person to ever be nominated for president, running against a person, Hillary Clinton, who I thought was one of the most qualified people ever to run for president. But he was, and this is what was on the front page of the paper, I thought he was an existential threat to the democracy of the United States. I said that then, but he was a thousand times worse than I thought he would be. So that's how bad I think he is. And yet elected Republicans followed along then and now for the most part. And so the idea of fighting Trump, I was all for that. I, you know, I fought the religious right.

I fought the Tea Party. I mean, it's always been a battle. I've always been to the left of my party as a Republican. I needed them to move toward the center. But this is something different. This was all of a sudden, well, obviously, they don't believe in any of these principles. Trump is not a conservative. He's not a libertarian. Trump is all about Trump. He's a megalomaniac who does whatever he thinks will help him. He's, he is an autocrat. He's a very, very, very dangerous

person. And so the fact that they would go along with that, I said, well, that's it. Now, in Arizona, a third of the electorate is independent. So the natural place for me to be would be as an independent. So why did I go Democrat? who had lost her Senate race, back into the Senate. And she was a complete Trumper. And the Democrats really didn't have anyone that I thought could win. I was looking at that race. Fortunately, not that I wanted to run. I did not want to run. But I definitely didn't want McSally to stay in there. But then Mark Kelly came along, and's, you know, really a tremendous candidate. So that ended, that was perfect. But at the same time, Joe Biden came along

and as a, as a presidential candidate. And so that was a natural for me to be a Democrat supporting Biden. I've known Biden for a long time through McCain. I knew Beau Biden pretty well. I was a friend of Beau's. And I just think the world of the Bidens. And that was an easy one. I wanted to help Joe win. I also thought that and I bought the record from day one. I never wavered, by the way. He was my first choice. I thought that Joe Biden was the only one who would defeat Trump. And that was a minority view among Democrats, because Democrats made the mistake that Hillary made, which was Trump is so bad, there's no way he can win. I mean, it's preposterous how bad he is. And so, of course, we're going to win whoever we put up. I guess living in Arizona, I knew that wasn't true. Joe Biden could win. A moderate centrist could win. Someone to the left of Biden could not win Arizona. I was surprised it was as close as it was in Arizona. It's 11,000 votes. So that's why I switched over. And I'm very happy being in Joe Biden's Democratic Party. Where it goes beyond that. I don't like either party, to be honest with you. I think they're both. That's where a career of politics is taken. I don't really like any party. But as between Republican fascists and Joe Biden Democrats, I'm going to pick Joe Biden Democrats.

Where's Arizona right now? And I know, you know, tough to make sweeping generalizations. I mean, we hear, you know, these stories about cyber ninjas and a lot of the news out there is about voter suppression laws. And look, the Democrats did make significant gains there and have been making significant gains. And as they do,

the Republican legislature out there, as you allude to, just gets beyond the crazy of the crazy that they already were. Are there positive trends, though, as we approach 2022 and 2024? And maybe you can talk to that. Sure. And I do think I think it mirrors the country somewhat. I think in the long term, there's very little future for the Republican Party unless they

change. The demographics say that, and the demographics combined with the ideology, if there is one amongst Republicans. In other words, running based upon antiquated notions of the role of government and on hate and discrimination and suppression, there's no future in that in the long term. So that's why I think Republicans are focused on the short term, which is how do we win a year from now? And how do we win three years from now? Because we know we're not going to win unless we can somehow rig this system along the way. So I think that's where we're at here. In Arizona, yeah, tremendous. We're right there. Maricopa County is one of the largest counties in the country.

It's where Phoenix is. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the country. I don't know what exactly it is, but I'm going to say it's almost majority Latino right now. Now, again, you can't take that vote for granted. We learned that in Florida, but it's different here. It's pretty solid Democrat and should stay pretty solid Democrat if it's a Joe Biden type Democratic Party. So that's a great demographic. So we're getting younger, more Latino. I think, you know, you're going to see nationally for the first time that the baby boomer generation, which is my generation, is in the minority in the next presidential election. That hasn't been true for ever since we came in, since we could start voting, basically. And I think I think that change in yours to the Democratic Party,

for the reasons that I said. In Arizona, we've elected two Democratic senators. When John McCain passed, we had two Republican senators and had for some time. But one thing for everybody to keep in mind is, like I said, Arizona, I believe, has always been much more moderate than the legislature reflected. And Arizona has had some great leaders and some complete idiots. For a while there, I was calling for mediocrity now. You know, if we could just have some mediocrity, because they're either great, like a Mo Udall or John McCain, Barry Goldwater's people of this caliber, or they were awful. You know, the Joe Arpaio's and people like that. So I think I look back on it. You know, I was elected attorney general two out of two times on a on a very progressive agenda.

And not just. Yeah. and I carried out that agenda. I was succeeded as Attorney General by Janet Apolitano, a Democrat. She was succeeded by Terry Goddard, a Democrat, for the former mayor of Phoenix for two terms. Janet was elected and reelected governor as a Democrat. It's just so wild to hear you say that you were elected as a Republican

on a progressive agenda. Yeah, it's unheard of now, right? It's unheard of then, too. But, you know, I think I slipped in, basically. My Democratic opponent ran to the right of me, by the way, because it's even worse than that. I'll just throw a couple more things out there besides that agenda. I'm pro-choice. That was a big deal, at least when I was running on the other side in a Republican primary. Many times I would knock on doors, I would hand them my brochure and the person would say, I could only vote for someone who's pro-life. Are you pro-life? And I said, no, I'm pro-choice. And give me that brochure back because that costs money. And I mean, it was just the way it was. But also Martin Luther King holiday was on the ballot that year. I was for it. The party was against it. English only was on the ballot. I was against

that. They were for it. So how did you get an R next to your name then? I'm just saying. Well, because I believe the Republican Party needed to go that direction. And so my spiel was always civil rights. Well, first, Abe Lincoln was a Republican. To me, civil rights is about the Constitution. I was chairman of the Civil Rights Committee for all the attorneys general throughout the 90s as a Republican from Arizona. And we did great things. We really did. I think our record is unmatched in the history of attorneys general. But again, I view it as the Constitution. We're not talking about anything unusual. We're talking about treating people fairly and not discriminating against people based upon race or religion or disability or gender or

national origin or sexual orientation. That was true then. It's true now. It'll be true always. That's what our Constitution should require. Environment. Why can't a Republican be pro-business and pro-environment? I think that's good for the country.

Well, it goes out to this notion of conservative, which is what you mentioned earlier, and it's something that we speak about a lot on the Midas Touch podcast. There's nothing conservative about the current Republican Party. If you're conservative, conserving nature would be part of being conservative, right? I mean, to me, that's a no brainer. Eddie Roosevelt. Exactly. Eddie Roosevelt was amazing on most environmental issues. And he was a Republican last time I checked. So again, I think consumers, you know,

for example, I was the first Republican to sue Big Tobacco and was very involved in that. I was one of the negotiators of our settlement, which is the biggest settlement in history. Well, you're a Republican. Why would you sue Big Tobacco? Why wouldn't I? The law is the law. The law is a Republican or Democrat. The law is the law. And these people were the biggest tortfeasors in the history of the world, as I told them to their face.

And they needed to pay and they paid. So again, I think you can be pro-consumer and pro-business. Just as an example, I went to all the car dealers here in Arizona because consumer issues are very important to me, big or small. I said, we're going to start cracking down on car dealers who continually mislead people because it's the second biggest purchase that people make. Yeah. Not a Republican or Democrat issue. It's not bad. And I had to persuade them that this is in the interest of the honest car dealer, right?

It's hard for you to compete against people who are cheating people, who have false advertising, who lure people in and then switch to something else. And I'll tell you, the top dealers were supportive of that. And so you could persuade them. So I'm going on and on. But in civil rights, let me give you one example. I think you'll find this interesting. So I vowed to myself that as a candidate and as attorney general, I would mention and talk

about civil rights in every speech I gave. That's something because that's a lot. OK, but I didn't want to be one of these guys who goes in front of uh uh you know chicanos por la causa and uh it says one thing and then you go to the sun city republican club and you don't bring it up you know so how do you bring it up how do you talk about it in front of the republican club in sun city i'll tell you how how and i'm not saying i had massive breakthroughs but I had some breakthroughs. What I would say to them is what I said to you is that we're just talking about the Constitution.

We're talking about treating people fairly, treating people equally. And so I would say to them this, though, this is all retirees, old people. If I come back here in a couple of months, you're not going to be a different race. You probably won't be a different gender, probably won't be a different sexual orientation. But something may change. Maybe you'll have had a stroke. Maybe your wife or your husband will have had a stroke. Maybe you had a fall.

Now you're in a wheelchair. That happens. It happens. We know that. It happens to your neighbors. Now, I'm asking you this. Think about that now. Two months from now, three months from now, if that has happened to you, how would you want people to treat you?

Would you want them to treat you specially? I don't think so. But would you want them not to discriminate against you because of the fact that now you walk differently or you're physically impaired in some way? You would say, no, treat me the same. That's what we're talking about in civil rights, regardless of the category. And I'm telling you, these are people who were raised at a time when, you know, they're suspicious of civil rights, frankly. And, you know, we weren't too good on that in this country. So they're a tough crowd.

But when you put it in that context, they started saying, yeah, OK, I can see that. That's what we're talking about. So then when we when they we would announce it. Well, we went to an apartment complex and we sent in a white couple. We sent in a Hispanic couple. We sent in a mother, single mother with a bunch of kids. And we saw whether they were treated differently. And many, many times they were. And then we would prosecute those people. To me, that's important work. But again, it's not Republican or Democratic work. It's just we need people who are out there fighting for the little guy. And the attorney general is very, very well situated to do that. The rest is mostly bullshit when you hear people say that the attorney general can do it if you have the right. Grant, when I hear you speak, when I hear your beliefs, you know, I sort of see a bit of a paradox within yourself. You running as a Republican and having all these incredible progressive beliefs. The same way I look at Arizona, I see a paradox of a state that's becoming more and more blue. However, it also is the epicenter, as Ben and you were talking about, of just the most extreme, craziest factions of the

Republican Party out there. How do you explain that? Is it the last gasps of a dying Republican Party and they're doing everything they can to maintain power as they see a more diverse Arizona blossoming? Where is it coming from? Why is Arizona so polarized like that? Yeah, that's a good question. It's complicated. So let me give you just a few thoughts. One is, it's difficult to get people involved in politics, like really involved at the precinct level. So I was John's first chief of staff. We would go to these meetings and we would come out and he would be like, oh, I guess I shouldn't say this, but I mean, he'd be like, what a bunch of nuts. I mean, we got to take over this thing. Yeah.

And I said, well, how are we going to take over? And he goes, well, we get all of our friends, get all everyone. And they got to go to these meetings and they get elected and all that. I said, John, that's not going to work. If I get all my friends, I was 28 at the time. If I get all my friends to go to a meeting at Saturday morning at the Republican Club, that'll be the last meeting they go to. You know, they were singing songs that the lyrics were like Kissinger's a communist, stuff like that. Wow. No, no one's interested in that. So you get people who don't have anything better to do, frankly.

And the people who do have something better to do, have, you know, full lives, they will not go to those meetings. So that's always been a problem. That's number one. Number two, the country club Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce Republicans in Arizona, I would say, for the most part, not on every issue, but for the most part, and in the United States for the most part, have been willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of this for too long. They haven't been willing to step up as much as I believe they should and call bullshit on these people. They know they're nuts. They say they're nuts. They know this is wrong. They know this hurts democracy. But Arizona just passed, in essence, a flat tax over the will of the voters at the last election.

And so a lot of people at the top do very well with those sort of policies. So it's kind of like, you know, what's wrong with Kansas in that book? They're willing to put up with a lot if they get their economic breaks and their pocketbook breaks. And that's too bad. Then you have the phenomenon that in Arizona, many people have left the Republican Party and probably the majority that have left have gone to the independent ranks. So where that leads you is this, where do we go from here? I believe if you have two centrist candidates, it's always been true in Arizona in my lifetime. If you have a centrist candidate in one party and a more extreme candidate in the other party, the centrist will win every time. That's how you

got me. That's how you got Janet. That's how you got Terry Goddard. So you got people like this. And that's how you got Kyrsten Sinema. McSally was a, you know, Trumper. And that's how you got Terry gutter. So you got people like this. And that's how you got Kyrsten Sinema. McSally was a, you know, Trumper and that's how you got Mark Kelly. McSally was a Trumper. Save for Trump in 2016. Yeah. So, so the question is in my mind has always been, what if you have two centrists running? And I don't know the answer to that. I think in the past it would would be I would say the Republican could win, would win. It leans Republican. But now I'm going to say maybe not because this is

so embarrassing and so much chaos that the independent vote and the McCain Republican vote with a solid centrist Democrat will go that way. I think independents look at this right now as a clown show in the Republican Party, and they see this extremism out front. And it's very real. And then you look at the work of somebody like President Biden, who's incredibly steady in his leadership, who now physically, you know, you are feeling it by, oh, I'm going back to work. Look, I got this check in the mail. Those are real, tangible, positive things. People are seeing their families, et cetera. I mean, this is important stuff. Yeah, absolutely. You famously gave a eulogy to John McCain, with whom you've worked with and talked about. And

I'm just curious, knowing him, being close to him, what do you think he would think about the transformation of his friend, Lindsey Graham, with whom he was so close with and just where the Republican Party, how quickly it has fallen since he's passed? Yeah. Lindsey, in the final months there, John's life, you know, Lindsey was already he'd already done his move towards Trump. So I did get to talk to John about that. I was never a Lindsey Graham fan. John traveled with Graham and with Joe Lieberman. And so I got to know both of them a little bit.

And I love Lieberman. And I could see that connection for sure, because Lieberman's just one of the great people I've ever met. He's just super. And then Graham, I never saw that. I think John thought he was funny and I didn't. I thought he was corny. And I think the answer is, I don't think John, well, I'm pretty sure of this. I don't think he would have been surprised because I think what he saw was that Lindsay's life revolves around a perception of self-importance

and a perception that he's at the center of things, center of the action, and that he's a player. And so that was through McCain forever. And then he quickly jumped over and then it was through Trump. And so basically, I know which is the real Lindsey Graham. I don't think there is one. I think it's he's transactional, just like just like Trump. So he's a chameleon wherever he's a chameleon. Yeah.

Whoever he could latch on to and blend in with who he's going to get attention for. That's that's correct. That's what I see there. As far as now, what would he have done about it if he was still in the Senate and all that? I don't think that would have happened. I don't I think Graham would have had a much more difficult time in life because he everyone knows John McCain said exactly what he thought and behind closed doors and and elsewhere. And so that would have been a tough one for Graham. I don't think he would have sucked up to Trump like he did. And if he did, he would have been called out.

McCain and Trump, that's a very interesting dynamic. I watched that up close and personal. And I'll have to tell you, McCain really didn't spend hardly any time thinking about Trump or worrying about Trump or any of that. And he called it as he saw it. And he thought Trump was an asshole. And he thought he was an idiot. And if he spent any time on it, it was in trying not to say that publicly as much as he thought it. Because people ask me when Trump first called out McCain and said he wasn't a hero because he got shot down. Yep. I heard about that. I called John.

We talked about it. It did not bother him a bit. I mean, not a bit. He wasn't like pissed for five seconds and then got over it. It did not bother him a bit because he had such little respect. He had no respect for Donald Trump anyway. I talked to him two other times that afternoon. And then it started bugging him and pissing him off. And the reason was, I think he might have heard from a couple of his POW buddies. And these are all old guys. And it's one thing for John McCain, where he was, to go, yeah, who cares?

But for these guys, frankly, their identity, their life was wrapped up in being a POW. So then to have someone nationally say, hey, you're not a hero, that's all bogus. That wasn't right to put an 80-year-old guy through that at that point in time because they are heroes. And I'd never heard anyone say differently. So I guess to answer your question, I think McCain would have. He was a Republican. Like when I would I was famous for endorsing Democrats all the time. By the way, I endorsed a couple of Republicans in the last election locally. And the Democrats are like, why, wait a minute. What? You can't do that. Oh yeah. It was very popular with them for a long time.

I didn't, you know, who cared? I had this crazy idea. I'm going to support the best candidate, not just the guy in my own party. I know. What a concept, what a concept, you know? And I, I actually, I, I articulated in this national magazine printed at one time. It was like, OK, Thomas Jefferson is running against Kim Kardashian and I'm in the Kardashians party. I have to vote for Kim Kardashian. That's what you're telling me. No, I'm not. I'm not going to do that. I know when that was. That's when I. You think it was an absurd comparison, but you're literally seeing that in California right now. It sounds outrageous, but it's actually what's

going on in California. Totally. And I think I would prefer Kim Kardashian to, to Caitlyn Jenner because Caitlyn seems, I don't know what's going on there, but that's all, that's a conversation for, for another day. Hey Grant, switching gears slightly here in the last five to seven years. How would you say your news habits, your news consumption habits have maybe changed? I imagine, you know, being as close to McCain as you were being in the Republican party, you're a Fox news watcher, or at least you were. What are you watching now?

Where are you grabbing your news from? Am I wrong in my assumption? Should I apologize to you immediately? A big head shake as Jody asked the question. No, you got to remember where I was coming from. So, no, I mean, I endorsed Hillary. I voted for Kerry. So, yeah. And I and I love Barack Obama.

We just had the you know, I had the misfortune that my guy was you can imagine my all my civil rights work. And then Barack Obama runs like, oh, my God, you've got to be kidding me. This is not right. But, you know, one of my close friends was the Republican nominee. So, yeah, I had I respect all the Democrats who have been at the top for some time. No, I never watched Fox, period. I can't do it. And I try now just to, you know, see what they're talking about. I try. I say I'm going to watch for 10 minutes. I've never lasted 10 minutes. I can't do it. I cannot do it. Maybe one minute max. I really can't stand these people. So I guess my the difference has been, you know, I get most of my news either online from a variety of sources. I do listen to podcasts. I had my own podcast.

You know, I had my own radio show when I was attorney general for a long time. And it was, it was, it was great. I mean, we, it was an amazing show that we did. We did it weekly. And so then some guys came to me in the early two thousands with the idea of a podcast and we did it. And you know, it was fun. We had like 5,000 regular listeners, which doesn't sound like much, but I'm telling you, it was like, that was a lot because we spent our entire time telling people what a podcast was. And it's like, they're like, well, how do I listen to it? Remember this was like, I don't know when it was early two thousands. And I, that was a nightmare. So because people just didn't use it. And so we were ahead of our time there. But

podcasts, I think, are great there. It's a fantastic way to be more in depth on issues and to really hear what people have to say. I don't watch the evening news. You know, my wife was a TV anchor while I was attorney general. That was interesting. She was a main anchor, so she didn't read my stories. But that used to be a big deal in the 80s and 90s, who was the local news anchor and also who was the national news anchor. And now no one even cares. You know, they've gone in, in Arizona, a rating,

they might've had a rating of 12, 15, 16. Now the top one will have a rating of two. Yeah. You know, because people don't just, Hey, I got to turn into the six o'clock news. It doesn't happen anymore. So that's out the local newspaper. You know, I read it online. I don't have them deliver it. I just read it online. So I think things are changing for sure. I've changed with that. I tried to, I did watch that. I flipped over to the first time I'd ever seen Newsmax and I did it because I wanted to see Trump's tired act for as long as I could stand it. And I did see a few of those goobers looking up in the sky. So looking at the loser Palooza plane.

And I remember grant, we were in the courtroom about a few months ago and I think you had brought something up related about Midas touch. And I had said, you know, that's, that's me. That's what I didn't know. Yeah, I said I said that's me and my brothers. Funny. Oh, my gosh. I didn't know. No idea. No. And I've been following you guys forever. And I said, we're going to have to get you on the Midas Touch podcast. And as you said, Grant, the reason why we like this podcast format is because, you know, in the news, you have the 30 second sound bites and you have the journalists with agendas who asked the leading question and then hear themselves talk

more than the guests. And we love speaking to people like you can educate our audience about these issues where we could shut up and hear from people who have gone through these incredible experiences that you did. And so I thank you for coming on the Midas Touch podcast today on a holiday Monday. I thank you for being my colleague on that and other cases to come. And we appreciate all of your fight and activism here at Midas Touch. Can I just say, I know, I just say this to everybody. It's always been important to be involved. And I've stayed involved my whole life.

But I think things are different now as we speak here right after July 4th in 2021. I think this is the first look, whether you were for Bush or Gore, Bush or Kerry or McCain or Obama, the country is going to be in, the country is going to be okay. We, you know, we took control of the House and the Senate barely. We've got, I think, a fantastic president. And yet, I think for the first time, people are really challenging the basics of our democracy. And they're being successful at it in changing the rules and the laws. So it's going to take people like ourselves and people who listen to your podcast to say, no, we are busy people, as I said before, but we're going to have to find time in our lives to spend time on these issues so that we win and they lose.

And this will pass, this kind of virus going through the country of anti-democracy or win at all costs, basically fascism. It will pass if we're successful, if we just beat them. And so we've got to fight it. And, you know, I have Kyrsten Sinema in my state. Joe Manchin's in West Virginia. I think we should get rid of the filibuster. It's an archaic rule.

It makes no sense. It's anti-democratic in my view. But we certainly need to get rid of it for voting rights. Because that's the real challenge to our democracy right now. We win when people get a fair shot at it. But if they rig the system, it's hard to win. So I just urge people to I know we feel like we need it. We deserve a break, but it's not a time for a break.

It's a time to step it up. Grant Woods, former Arizona attorney general. Thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We will be right back after these messages. 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. Let's go. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Great interview with Grant Woods. I may be actually headed to Arizona soon and seeing Grant Woods. I may broadcast live. Can you apologize for like,

he was definitely offended when I called him a Fox News watcher. I was broadcast live. Can you apologize for like he was definitely offended when I called him a Fox News watcher. I was just curious. You know, he was a Republican, McCain. I thought at one point he was in that circle. He did. But Ben and Grant, if you're listening, I'm sorry if I offend you with my question. Sounds

good. But who's not offending anybody right now or just defending the GQP is President Biden, President Biden. Not sure if you saw the recent Washington Post ABC poll. Biden's handling of the coronavirus pandemic enjoys very strong support about where you would expect it to be. Sixty two percent approval, 31 percent disapproval. And I say exactly where you imagine it to be is because we've always talked about that 30 to 31% number. That's the GQP. That's the GQP quotient, we'll call it, that just exists in the United States.

That's the quotient that if Joe Biden cured cancer himself, they'd be against it. Like there's no real budging that 31%. You can't move that 31%. And it's actually when you go back to when Hillary Clinton was hot-miked and she referred to a certain percentage of people, she pretty much had the percentage nailed down. She really did have the percentage nailed down. She was right about everything, if you go back and listen to every single statement. Hillary was right about everything, and

calling them deplorables was not far enough. No, I don't. But, you know, now they've formed their own GQP cult, and, you know, so we pretty much know who they are. They're out of their basement. They're wearing Trump six-pack t-shirts and just being beyond.

They all look the same. When you see them at the rally, they all look like they're brothers, sisters, and cousins. They literally look like the same human being. They're all the same person. They're just different fonts. Exactly. They're different fonts of miserable white supremacist, angry human. So there's also good news, though, on the economic front.

The Congressional Budget Office just doubled its GDP projections for 2021 from, get this, from 3.7% to 7.4%. Now, 3.7% would be something to be happy about. 3.7 GDP growth is good, steady economic growth. 7.4 is, you know, I don't want to use the word boom, but it's pretty close to an economic boom is what I would say. The Biden economy added eight hundred and fifty thousand jobs in June, surpassing expectations. And Biden's created like literally in the first five months and Trump Biden had to deal with Trump's fuck ups. So Biden's numbers are even like multiples of what they even come out to. Trump was dealing with the Obama boom and the Obama growth.

And so literally Trump could just basically do nothing and he would have accrued the numbers that he did. Kind of like his whole life with his finances. He could have just done nothing and he would be financially in better shape. But instead, he got to had to inject himself and go bankrupt a million times and lose it. Yeah. And the first five months, Trump office, thanks to Obama, there was about eight hundred and ninety four new jobs created in Biden's five months. Three million, two hundred and thirty thousand or three million, twenty three thousand jobs created. So essentially more than close to two million, two and a half million more jobs were created. Here's everybody who speaks about, you know, all the Trumpers who go, oh, well, before the pandemic,

the Trump economy was roaring like you hear that often, you hear that argument before the pandemic. First of all, yeah, you can't negate an entire year of fucking up. Like that's a ridiculous cause. Yeah. Until like we totally ignored the crisis that was coming our way and destroyed the economy. Everything was going great, but that narrative isn't even accurate to begin with. I mean, Trump the whole time was promising 6% GDP growth a year. I think for those first few years, he was at 2% or less GDP growth per year when you got to 2019, 2020. By February of 2020, before the pandemic even hit the United States of America, experts

said that we had already entered a Trump recession. So we had entered a recession under Trump before his mishandling and malicious handling of the pandemic took down the economy. And Joe Biden deserves a lot of credit for bringing the economy back. It's not just about the virus disappearing. The virus just didn't disappear like a miracle, like Trump said it would. No at an incredibly rapid pace, would have brought our economy back to a standstill. It would have devastated our country. We'd probably be in the millions of deaths right now. We'd be looking like the worst countries out there. So we are lucky and I am thankful as hell that we have President Biden who came in and actually led on this issue and brought the economy back. We also have Republican senators now and Republican lawmakers urging Biden to end Trump's initiated trade war. Group of Republican lawmakers asked Biden to end the self-inflicted harm that his GOP

predecessor Donald Trump caused in starting a multi-front trade war with China and our European allies. Seven Republican senators sent a letter to the White House asking Biden to repeal the tariffs and other trade barriers that Trump implemented during his time in office, affecting a wide range of industries, including agriculture, agriculture, car makers and manufacturers. Quote, an important first step would be to reduce barriers to trade with our allies. By doing so, we can stop damaging actions and retaliation and men relationships while listening to businesses across the country that have suffered the negative economic consequences of this. I mean, Trump just fucked everything up. Let's just kind of summarize it like Trump did everything wrong.

And with him in power for four more years, there would have just been a type of economic depression that and sickness. and I think the destruction of our country. I mean, I think it's that simple. I think that America could not survive with Donald Trump and he's one of the most dangerous people, if not the most dangerous person walking around planet earth right now, period, full stop. I mean, you know, when he he wants what him and his minions want is a insurrection that works. They would want to overthrow the United States. They need to be taken seriously, but they need to be exposed and called out at every turn. I mean, we just see the the stakes out here. I mean, the Trump rallies, all of this just feeds into the Russian propaganda that's out there. And I'm not sure if you saw some of the reports this week, but it really talked about how the Russian strategy is really the same strategy as the GQP. In fact, it appears that the GQP takes its instructions from Russia at this point. And this whole idea of anti-woke and critical race theory, you know, and white supremacy at its core there, I mean, is kind of

Russia talking points festering into, you know, Fox News, festering into right wing TikTok and right wing social media. And, you know, Russia portraying itself as like the anti-woke capital of the world out of Moscow. This was one of the craziest reads. It's that not only are the messages of Russia and the Republican Party in sync, but Russia is using this whole anti-woke ideology of the right-wing ecosystem in America to try to get people to move to Russia. It's kind of their pitch. Like, do you want your freedom to be an asshole? Do you want freedom to hate other people? Come to Russia. Come to Russia. You could say crazy shit. You could do what you want. You could be racist. You could be homophobic. You

could be transphobic. Do it all in Russia. That is legitimately the Russian campaign right now to try to get right wing Americans to move to their country. I just keep thinking about that photo that was going around at some Trump rally with the two GQP Trumpians who they were wearing the shirt that said, I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat. And by the way, hat tip Ruth Van Gie out here. She was on the show like a couple episodes ago, and she kind of laid this all out like well before the story was even written, talking about how her family is overseas and how they kind of get sucked into Russian TV and all the propaganda and lined up how exactly the overlaps of Russian TV

and Fox News and, you know, sort of play hand in hand. And I want to give a big shout out here to Julia Davis from the Daily Beast, who wrote this article. The article is called Russia Targets Fox News Fans and Bid to Become the World's Anti-Woke capital. The Kremlin and its staunchest loyalists are touting Russia as a politically incorrect utopia, something they think Western conservatives can't resist. So after listening to the podcast, I'd tell everyone, read this article by Julia Davis and share it with your family, share it with your friends, share it with your colleagues. There was once a time where America stood up against our adversaries like Russia. Now we have a political party in the Republican Party and their allies who are inviting our enemies in and promoting our enemies over American democracy. And that's what's at stake here. And that's why when you heard the Grant Woods interview, like that's that's the way politics used to be in many ways. Like Grant was, yes, he was a Republican,

and I guess he may have had some business Republican views, but ultimately he would recognize there were still crazy people back then when he was the attorney general, but he was like, yo, these are crazy people. And he recognized, look, normal people don't want to go to all of these meetings every time and just deal with all these nutcases who literally talk about all these crazy stuff all the time. But at the end of the day, those voices were muted. Now those voices are elevated as who the Republican Party is. So I think it's good for this article to come out, but it's also good for this podcast to come full circle and tie in the Grant Woods interview, where we are as a country, why we are at Loserpalooza, why we are having our

plane fly over Loserpalooza and reminding them and the nation that these are losers. Go back to your basement, losers, and get out of our democracy. Go to Russia. I think we could start a GoFundMe for that. Everyone who Russia is targeting. Send the 31% to Russia. Send the 31% to Russia. Become a anti-woke utopia. Have fun. And we will do the hard work of getting things done and helping people and being a good society that cares for one another. The country's entire GDP is smaller than many of our states, many of our mid-sized states in the United States. So don't act like they've nailed it into Russia. They've got poverty.

They've got some incredible economic strife. But what they do have, what apparently attracts GQP members is white supremacy over there. And that's just unabashedly what they advocate to the world. Hate mail, fellas. Let's conclude the podcast with some hate mail. We knew when we flew over Loserpalooza with the Loserpalooza sign that we would get the hate mail. Jordi even tweeted, I can't wait to see our mail. We probably have gotten dozens, hundreds of crazy letters threatening to kill us. Some funny, some scary.

Brett, you want to share some of the, Brett and Jordi, why don't you share a sample of some of the ones? Sure. And I'll just say once again, this is email sent to us. We do not endorse any of the words used in these emails. They're all homophobic. Extremely homophobic. Yeah. They're all very homophobic and very sexualized. They always involve like sex acts and particularly homosexual sex acts are usually the criticisms directed at us, but they're always very sexual. Yeah, it is weird. It is weird. That is the one consistency kind of between all the emails that we get. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Here's one from Christopher Pierce. Subject is three of the stupidest pieces of shit on the face of the fucking planet. You know, that caught my attention this morning when I woke up and that was at the top of my inbox. And he's got a way with words, Christopher.

He said, you do know that Donald J. Trump is one of the richest motherfuckers in the United States, right? Without a thought or even a dent in his wallet, he could make the three of you vanished off the face of this fucking planet without a fucking trace laughing my ass off. Dot, dot, dot. You think Donald J.

Trump is not coming for the three of you motherfuckers and everything you love be in the ex president of the United States. I think he meant being the ex president, but he spelt it B E. Oh, I think you're right. Yeah. I N he meant being the ex-president, but he spelt it B-E space I-N space T-H-E. And then he wrote like the letter ex-president. Be in the ex-president of the United States. It comes with certain immunities. All he has to deem the three of you as a national security threat. The black sites your ass and no one will ever hear from you again. I look forward to seeing your missing person posters sent from my iPhone.

I don't think he typed this. I think he's spoken into his phone and that's why the spelling is the way it is on here. I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt here. Yeah, or it's from Russia. But yeah, because I read Christopher Knight's subject green party. Not sure why, but subject green party. Y'all are some bitches working for the NWO sucking these for fun

with like a surfboard emoji. Hang loose. Hang loose emoji. And I don't know why his subject was green party. I'm not sure why it was Green Party, but... NWO, I think, stands for New World Order. Maybe. Let me do Nancy.

Yeah, let me do Nancy Greedo's. So her subject line is disgusting. You just called thousands of people losers. Stereotyping people is horrible. Just because someone has different beliefs than you doesn't mean they're losers. Your organization should be ashamed of yourselves. Well, Nancy, you're losers simply because you're attending a GQP loser rally.

We're not stereotyping a mass group of people for the sake of stereotyping them. You're literally a loser nancy yeah you're at a rally by somebody who lost whining about the loss i mean just think about it like this way imagine like when you go to uh like the the world series uh the world series champion right like let's say the the baseball team that loses the world series if they were to go and have their own parade, that's hilarious. That would be called the loser. Yeah.

Right. You're a bunch of losers. Like there would be the winner. Championship parade. Yeah. The winner parade would be the team that won and the loser parade would be the team that lost. And if the team that lost spent the entire parade whining

about why they should have won and someone said, this is loser paradeville, I would think that was an apt name for the loser parade at the end of the day. So we don't throw the parades for the losers themselves don't throw their own parades for themselves. Like it's doubly loserish if that's the case. And it's funny, and I'll just close with this random thought. You know, it's always these GQP people who complain about like the participation trophies and all of that. But at the end of the day, this is like Trump just wants the biggest participation trophy in the world. I ran. I ran for it and I should have won. But, you know, it's the biggest whiny fest in the world. there is an intelligent, hardworking, nonpolitical, but very normal group of people in America who don't necessarily care whether they're which political party.

They just want results. They want normalcy and they want a better country. And the Democrats are the party that's delivering that right now. And I think the more they see this vaudeville crazy loser palooza act out there and everybody knowing that's loser palooza, no one wants to go to loser palooza, but losers at the end of the day. And that's important to highlight. It's important to show and it's important to expose that. Thank you very much to Grant Woods for joining us on a holiday as our guest. Thank you all for tuning in to the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you all for supporting us. There's been so much coverage about the Loser Palooza

plane and all our other efforts. And it's really thanks to you, our Midas Mighty listeners, our Midas Mighty followers. Thank you so much for buying the Midas Touch merch at store.midastouch.com. Remember to go to stamps.com with that promo code Midas. We appreciate you and we'll see you end of this week on the next episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty!