The MeidasTouch Podcast - Mary Trump on GQP Psychology and Why We Need to GET ANGRY!

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers sit down with best-selling author and renowned psychologist, Mary Trump! During the interview, Mary covers everything from the latest updates around SB8 to how and why people have become so willing to accept the hateful rhetoric from GQP, anti-vax & QAnon circles. The brothers also discuss Merrick Garland’s announcement that the DOJ will protect women seeking abortions in Texas, Donald Trump’s latest grift and much, much more. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe. As always, thank YOU for listening! Thank you to Policygenius for making this episode possible! Policygenius makes it easy to compare quotes from over a dozen top insurers all in one place. Get started now by clicking here. Get Mary Trump's new book, The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, here. Get the latest Meidas Merch at https://store.meidastouch.com! Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Mary Trump. Let's go on the Midas Touch podcast. Mary Trump was one of our first guests when we started this little experiment back on our serious days. The nuts. S.E.R.I.O.U.S. But serious. Thanks for the clarification. We like to be serious, but also with some levity.

But Mary Trump, one of our all-time favorite guests, we know one of your favorite guests. We're happy to have her on the show for you. I just realized what happened to the family, the Trump family. I just realized this second what went down there. It's that Mary Trump received all the brains and all the intelligence, which really explains the lack thereof when the rest of the Trumps. Because when you hear Mary speak on TV, on our podcast in the past, she is just a brilliant, brilliant mind.

And you're like, where did this person come from? How is this possible? Jordy, you ready for your Mary Trump questions though when you have a run? I'm really excited. Yeah, I'm really excited about this. So as we know in the past, I've asked her which one is the dumbest Trump kid. She's knocked it out of the park both times. I've come prepared with a little bit of an evolution of that question this time. Deep tease, deep tease. And Ben, along the lines of shout out to the Midas Mighty, I want to give a big shout out because this weekend we got a few volunteers together here in California to send text messages

for the recall effort in California, encouraging all of our followers, supporters, and donors who live in California to vote no and tell as many of your friends and family members to vote no on the recall. And the response we got was through the roof. It really made my weekend, and a weekend where we're having a lot of really tough news, this really left me motivated and enthusiastic and excited for the future. And even we work with these technology companies and stuff all the time to do these text message efforts.

Their reaction every single time is like, holy shit. They're like, we've never seen such an engaged group of people in our lives. No, I'm not just blowing smoke or anything. This is legitimately what they tell us every single time. We have the most engaged follower base out of any group that these companies have ever dealt with. And they could see it because we get the enthusiastic responses, the thank you, I actually handed in my ballot last week, but great reminder, I'm going to now tell all my family members, remind them to vote. Or,

oh shit, I've left that on my desk, the ballot, and now I'm going to turn it in. And the enthusiasm and the gratitude that our volunteers received for doing this effort, it really warms my heart. So thank you. If you received the text, thank you for being so awesome to our volunteers and so friendly. And California, treat this election as if it is existential because it truly is. We have seen what the other side is doing. In my opinion, this is just a legal way of doing an insurrection. This is a government takeover. And we cannot let the GQP take over California because if they could take over California, they could literally take over the national power balance because Larry Elder, if anything happened to Feinstein, would be able to actually put in his own senator.

And then we would lose the Senate just like that. So the stakes cannot be higher. California, please vote no on the recall. A happy Labor Day to everybody out there. Hope you are enjoying your day off. I hope everybody understands the importance of this day aside from you getting the day off, if you're lucky enough to get the day off, and sales at mattress stores and things like that. Labor Day is, of course, celebrating our labor movement,

our labor history, the movement that brought us 40-hour work weeks, weekends, benefits, collective bargaining, the movement that took little kids out of factories. And so I just want everybody to think about today, the meaning of Labor Day and the values that we fight for as a democratic party. We usually come prepared with like a topic to talk about, like a good brother banter morning thing. We didn't have one of those today. And frankly, Brett, I don't know how you were managed to work in Labor Day in the opening, like a really great breakdown of it. Well, yeah, I get it.

Like it is Labor Day, but I just didn't see the opening of the podcast taking a very sharp turn. Well, you know what it is? Right before we went live, I saw Joe Manchin do a tweet, a happy Labor Day tweet. And it made me so angry. It made me so pissed off because seeing people who are fighting so much against progress for our workers, who are fighting against the minimum wage, who are preserving the filibuster, who are doing everything they can to keep our workers down, having the gall to go out there and wish people a happy Labor Day really drives me up the

wall. I think he doesn't know what the meaning of happy Labor Day is. I think to someone like Manchin, it's like, you're happy to be working for me day. He doesn't realize that we should be reflecting on labor. Yeah, Labor Day has taken on a lot of different meanings, I think. In Texas, it's happy forced Labor Day, I guess, because that's what they are doing to the woman in Texas right now. It's a forced labor day. We are seeing just a very disgusting movement kind of take over America, a fascist movement that is all about control, control of our workers, control over women's bodies. And so we just need to stay vigilant and fight for the values that make the Democratic Party special, fight for the values that will make our kids live better lives than we have. I mean, if you look past, I actually looked up these statistics, worker compensation since 1978 has risen by 12%. CEO compensation since 1978 has risen by 940%.

So when you see the issues of income inequality, when you see why we are experiencing such a stark divide in our society, I think nothing sums it up as good as that. It's that working people are constantly getting the shit end of the stick and working people are, you know, it's like Labor Day. Like I was talking about the sales. I made a joke about the sales. Somehow they find a way to corporatize and commercialize a holiday

that's supposed to be about protecting workers' rights, and they made it a day for people to go to businesses and a day for people to have to actually go to work for hours so that they have these sales and things. It's a very devious maneuver, but that's why I just want to shout out our workers of all kinds and our unions, which make this country strong and what it is. Getting into the news, some updates to report. I have to go back to my legal AF. Upd updates, updates. We've got updates, but some real

important breaking news to report. Merrick Garland just announced that the Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute anyone who interferes with the women's right to seek reproductive health services. Obviously, this is in response to the Texas handmaid's tale bounty hunter law attacking women, attacking all child bearing persons right to constitutional right to privacy, a constitutional right for women to choose. And therefore, what the federal government is saying is, yeah, your state law, if you're an individual who goes and wants to file one of these bounty lawsuits, or if you're interfering with the women's right to choose, the federal government is going to prosecute you. Notwithstanding what the Texas law says, federal law is supreme. There's something called a supremacy clause where federal law on issues like this Trump state law. Can we file civil rights litigations against individuals in Texas who avail themselves of the bounty laws, who then themselves try to interfere with a reproductive bearing person's right to choose, that you can file civil rights actions against them?

But I think this is a good step for the DOJ, Brett and Jordy. Yeah, I think it's a great step for the DOJ. I'm happy to see Merrick Garland understanding the severity of the situation that we're in. And not to steal your legal AF thunder, Ben, not to take the Pope Hockeyan point of view here and give you my deep dive into what's going on here. Merrick Garland here is invoking the FACE Act, which stands for the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act. And the FACE Act, which stands for the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act. And the FACE Act prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services.

And it also prohibits intentional property damage of a facility providing reproductive health services. And so Merrick Garland is committing to prosecute people to the fullest extent of the law should they decide to run afoul of it. And so personally, I think the statement here by DOJ is extremely important, but make no mistake of what I'm saying. It's only the beginning. The Texas law is still here. More copycat laws are already making their way around the country. But the fact that DOJ is taking this seriously and is promising to enforce these laws already on the books as a mean to protect the reproductive rights of people across the country, I think is an essential first step. And now we need this to be backed up with action. We need to stand up to these fascist policies, to these barbaric policies.

We cannot let this country turn into a real life version of The Handmaid's Tale and turn back the clocks to the 1700s. as he came out with his statement. And it's great that now he's coming out with his statement, but what does this say? Do you think this was in the works, Ben? Sort of behind the scenes, he was just trying to get the right language, make sure that his statement was clear and concise, or is this a reaction to people's reacting that he didn't say anything? Look, I think that the DOJ sometimes requires more than 12 hours or 24 hours to create a policy that's not just a statement. It's very easy to draft a press release, but the press release has to be backed up by action. You have to have enforcement divisions within the DOJ who are ready to have a protocol of how you go about prosecuting these. The DOJ is a very large entity. And so, if you just issue a press release, a la the way Trump would do things, executive order,

doing this, doing that, you just release a press release, you make a headline, but then you don't actually have the mechanisms of, well, who's going to make the call? Who's going to be the investigator? Who's going to be the investigator? Who's going to be the lawyers who are going to be responsible for prosecuting it within the DOJ? What does that task force look like? What are the other legal ramifications to start thinking about? Do we need to get an ethics opinion about what the federal rights are here vis-a-vis Texas state law rights? And so I think you have to go through those motions in kind of a capable and competent government. Of course, the politicians can be politicians.

They can do press releases. They could speak up. It's their job to do that. But ultimately, the DOJ is also not just like a figurehead. They have to actually prosecute this number one law enforcement officer in the United States of America. And so that's the best answer to their dream. I think this goes back to something that we've said time and time again on the show, which is the law, the legal process. And Jordy, I know you love this line, so I got to give it to you. It does not work at the pace of Twitter. And as Ben said, easy to draft a tweet, easy to draft a statement, much harder to craft a statement and get the laws on your side so that you are actually able to be effective

and not be struck down by a Supreme Court and things like that when you try to actually implement your enforcement mechanism. So I think Merrick Garland, listen, he's a smart guy. He's prosecuted domestic terrorism his entire life. He's prosecuted people for the most heinous of crimes. He is well aware of what is going on here. And we all want him to act quicker. I want him to act quicker on everything on January 6th on this. But he is, I know he is extremely aware of the issues. And this is just an example, just one example here that he is on top of his game.

So absolutely. Moving on. I want to talk about Donald Trump's PAC. I don't know if you saw this. Make America Great Again PAC, spending about $40,000 per month for basically empty office space on the 15th floor of Trump Tower. We've seen a lot of reporting recently. That doesn't sound like the Trump I know. That does not sound like the Donald Trump I know. We've seen a lot of reporting recently about the struggles of the Trump Hotel

in D.C., the Trump Tower in New York. You know, when you're not able to bribe him anymore, like when he's the president, by filling up his rooms when you're foreign governments or corporations to try to get him to give you kickbacks, and you do the same in the Trump Tower, you start having significant vacancies. So we've seen lots of stories about the Trump Tower being only 70%, 75% occupied. And even amongst the amount of people occupied, there's lots of litigation around people not being able to pay their bills. Including Ivanka Trump's shoemaker.

Right. But you have Trump's PAC basically paying for empty office space at a huge amount of about $37,000 to $40,000 per month. There's really no surprise there that Donald Trump would do that. It's just, it's so wild that you can, he doesn't deny it. He doesn't try to, you know, say he's not doing it, but the sheep, the sheep who are taking ivermectin, literally, who want to actually be, who envision themselves as sheep, they literally are okay with it. And I guess one of the things we should

probably ask Mary when we have her on the podcast in a little bit is like, what is to explain that kind of sheep behavior, what we're seeing at these school board meetings, that is literally, it's just baffling. It's baffling. It's against their interest. It's inhumane. It's disgusting. But Mary Trump, she's a clinical psychologist. I want to hear from her about that. Yeah. Excited to hear about Mary's views there. And let's call it what it is. This is a form of money laundering. He is taking money from his donors who are giving it to him, and he is just laundering it right into his bank account through Trump Tower, just about a half a million dollars a year. And these sheep that you speak about are okay with it.

They just want to keep giving him money and keep giving him money so he could keep funneling it into his properties. Because what he's done to that point is he's trained them not to believe these stories from the media. He's got them so ingrained that everything is fake news that when a story like this drops, they just don't believe it. Yeah. And the problem is the media has been so awful lately also that it all plays into this. This is why we need good journalism out there. This is why we need good journalism out there. This is why we need good journalists who are doing a good job, a careful job. And this is why when we see stories about, like from the New York Times, they had a story about Biden's grief and how no one cares about his dead son, Beau. I was so appalled by that. And I think everybody

should be disgusted by a story like that. When you see the fake story about people overdosing on ivermectin and gunshot victims not being able to go to the hospitals, we should all want to push back against these examples of actual fake news or just disgusting points of view being laundered in the media as real news. I think that's the most dangerous thing is the New York Times is not pretending to be Tucker Carlson's show. They're pretending to be a straight news source. And then they have this article that is just shaming Biden for the way that he expresses his grief. Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you to talk about how somebody should be expressing their grief out there and to give a voice to the people who are criticizing somebody for the way they express their grief?

It's just disgusting. And all this does is it contributes to this distrust of our media. And that's what's dangerous because we need good journalists. We need a thriving free press. Absolutely. Let's bring in after these messages, Mary Trump. And I'd love to raise all these issues with her. We'll be right back after these messages with Mary Trump. You're listening to the Midas Touch podcast. What's up, Midas Mighty? Summer is coming to an end and the leaves are about to fall. And while Mother Nature does her things to prepare for the new season,

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It makes your life easier. And in these chaotic times, I am all for ways to make your life easier. Make sure to go to policygenius.com. Policy Genius, when it comes to insurance, it's nice to get it right. There'll be a drop down in there. Why don't you let them know how you found out about Policy Genius. Let them know you heard us on the Midas Touch podcast. That's policygenius.com. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. We are joined by, I'm just going to say it, I'm just going to put it out there, our favorite guest, Mary Trump, Mary Trump's new book, The Reckoning, Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal. I guess it's the sequel in some real horrifying

stuff that you've helped expose, though, but we're grateful for you exposing it. Mary Trump, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. It's so good to be back. I've missed you guys. And there's I think there's some stuff going on. I think there is some stuff. Mary, you're one of our first guests when we were back in the serious days when we were on serious radio. We checked back in after the insurrection. Now we're, you know, here recording this right around Labor Day, moving into an election year coming up, a lot going on. I say this with a deep breath. How have you been? That was no reaction.

Well, you wrote the new book, The Reckoning, Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, which in many ways is, you know, takes off where your first book, you know, left off. How your family created this. I have something on my head. And a bird has just landed on Mary Trump's head. Mary, let me ask you this. Who's this? Who's this bird that just joined us? I have no idea.

That's not your bird? Just a bird? Just a random bird? This is a great metaphor for 2021. You never know what's going to happen in 2021. Birds might land on your heads. Mary, as we would say on the Midas Touch podcast, it stays in the pod. It stays in the pod.

So the reckoning, our nation's trauma and finding a way to heal takes off from too much and never enough. How my family created the world's most dangerous man. I think the central question, other than why a bird just landed on your head is, can we recover from the damage that Donald caused and how can we deal with the trauma he inflicted? Well, part of the problem is that, yes, he caused an enormous amount of damage and he should be in prison for the rest of his life. But it's that there were the circumstances that existed long before him that led to him. A journalist I spoke with, unfortunately,

I can't remember his name, said to me about a month ago, Donald was a man 250 years in the making. And that's kind of what my book is about. Like, how did we get to this point? The other really big problem is, yes, he did a lot of damage, but he was also enabled to. And whether or not we can get through this intact depends largely on two things, one of which I'm quite cynical about, the media and the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has proven itself to be perfectly willing to kill Americans by the millions in order to, and I'm not just talking about COVID, I'm talking about making abortion illegal. And, you know, we all know that that doesn't make abortions not happen. It just means that only rich people can get both sides are equal. The media need to be neutral when reporting the facts, but they also need to be pro-democracy.

And a lot of our mainstream media outlets seem not to be at the moment. They're still doing this horse race, just need to sell papers thing. And then I'm a little less cynical, although Manchin and Sinema are giving me a run for my money here about the Democratic Party. They need to. And I'm hoping that what SCOTUS just did and I'm hoping that what's going on with COVID will and the climate will help them. But the Democratic Party, one needs to stop pulling punches like we don't pull punches. They shouldn't either. They need to be really straight and blunt with the American people about what's going on. They need to be comfortable about using words like fascist and explaining why they're accurate and need to be used. And they also need to stop trying to make common cause with a party that hates democracy.

Like, you know, what is what's the point of that? So it's like Manchin is trying not probably not just him, but he's the face of it. He's trying to preserve these anti-democratic. I don't even look at the filibuster it's a mechanism that's not even in the constitution so we're sliding into being a fascist theocratic apartheid state because some democrats want to preserve these completely outmoded and inherently racist mechanisms to save democracy it's not it's maddening it's absolutely maddening so um we just need to keep pushing and not give up i know it's hard we're exhausted i'm exhausted i'm sure you guys are a lot of people are more exhausted than we are so

um i think that we just um we need to keep making the case and hope that the people in power are listening and decide that saving American democracy such as it is, is more important than conceding one more millimeter to the Republicans. One of the indicia of fascist apartheid states, and you've pulled no punches, that you've said that is what this Republican Party, that is what this GQP wants, but they have a court system in fascist apartheid states that rubber stamp under the guise of broader principles, but the aims and designs of the fascist apartheid state. And you see across the world shadow dockets of courts just making rulings without laws. And that's precisely what we've seen here with this Supreme Court. You've been very blunt about it, that the Supreme Court right now is really anti-democratic. Why do you feel that way? Well, first of all, it always has been. I mean, not every single court has been, but

generally speaking, starting with the Dred Scott decision, which pretty much pushed us into the Civil War, which basically said Black people aren't human beings so therefore they can't have any rights at all and Plessy versus Ferguson I mean just time after time after time they blocked legislation that would have opened this country up to for more people to participate in its democracy. And we're just seeing what happens when people take their eye off the ball and forget how important the court is. You know, the other problem is that it's not just anti-democratic, it's thoroughly corrupt. Gorsuch's seat shouldn't be his seat. And I don't care what kind of person he may be. I'm guessing he's a horrible person, but who knows? Anybody who was willing to accept that corrupt nomination is a corrupt human being. So we now have a Supreme Court with a 6-3

I don't even know what to call them anymore They're not conservative, that's for sure Yeah, we don't use that term conservative We just call them fascist, GQ And it's the same thing with the way this whole country The system of this country seems to be. The majority of the Supreme Court represents like 30% of the American people.

We have a 50-50 Senate. 50% of the 50 Democrats represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republicans and on and on and on. So the system is already rigged in their favor. And by handing down decisions like this, it's just another way to push through a political agenda.

And one of the things about this issue that drives me crazy is that the vast majority of arguments against choice have a religious basis. Last I checked, there was a separation between church and state, but apparently I'm deluded about that. So it's also the way in which the contempt with which they did it, which now mirrors the contempt Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party has always had for this country. They don't care. They're just going to shove it in our faces. They can do whatever they want. Who's going to stop them? Apparently nobody.

What do we do? I mean, the end of the day, you have these right wing fascists who aren't playing by any rules. They don't care if hundreds of thousands of people die. They don't care about women. They don't care about anyone other than their billionaire friends. And frankly, I don't even know if they care. I don't even know what they believe in. And it just seems that the Democrats, you know, just just let it, you know, play by the rules. You know, the filibuster has this long tradition. We can't, you know, increase the size of the courts. You kidding me?

This is exactly what the other side would do, you know, if if they were empowered and has done. And Mitch McConnell reduced the size of the Supreme Court to eight for a year. It's not in the Constitution. It's fluctuated throughout our history. So and the filibuster, again, is not it's a mechanism that was at I don't remember when, but it was at some time in the 19th century. And it's been used mostly to prevent civil rights legislation. So, yeah, it's mystifying. One of the things you wrote is that it's long past the time for a bill of responsibilities. When you talk about a bill of responsibilities, what do you mean by that?

We seem to have become a people who don't care how our actions affect others. It's, and you know, this to me was one of the most cruel things about the 2016 election, knowing Donald the way I know him. It's that he gave, not just gave people permission to be their worst selves. He also modeled this behavior that made kindness or that equated kindness with weakness. And it's amazing how many people like that, you know. So, it's a combination of that. It's also a combination of something that Ruth Ben-Yat pointed out to me, which I thought was really interesting because, you know, for a long time I've been trying to figure out not just with COVID, but also with climate. I mean, it affects them too. Like, so it affects their children too. Their children can die from COVID. Their children are going to be living in an inhabitable planet,

right? So what is going on? And she made this great point that gun culture, with the expansion of gun culture, we've seen the ease with which human life is devalued. I mean, there was a mass shooting yesterday. Who knows about it? Does anybody care? You know, I mean, there are several mass shootings every week. We've become so numb to it because it is, it's overwhelming. So, you know, you can't compartmentalize everything without totally cutting yourself off from your feelings, you know, from who you are. So it gets, it gets very challenging because there's so much going on.

And you have this very large minority of people in this country who really don't give a shit about other people. And in order to preserve their, in their minds, righteous anger about what, for Christ's sakes, I mean, why are they so angry anyway? They will put themselves at risk. They'll put their children at risk just to prove some stupid point that's, you know, going to end with all of us dying or something. No, no, we're going to be fine. For those listening, you should have seen Mary's face after she said, we're all going to be fine. It was not the face of somebody who necessarily thinks we are all going to be fine. I think I just need to put a poster of Edvard Munch's The Scream behind me and just do that whenever I can articulate what's going on.

Well, it's one of the challenges we're dealing with right now is not only are we in the midst of a historic pandemic, the likes of which we in our lifetimes have never seen. But we're also dealing with the challenge of the people who seem to be doing everything in their power to keep the pandemic going as long as possible. And I don't mean to excuse their actions in any way. And at the same time, I don't want to stigmatize mental illness in any way. But it's hard when you watch these people who are showing up at these school boards, these people I saw a video today of people showing up at a hospital to protest. When I look at that, I just kind of think like, are all these people kind of mentally ill? Like what is happening here? And as a psychologist, I'm sure you don't want to necessarily diagnose people in that

way. But what do you think is going on psychologically there? I think most of them probably aren't suffering from any kind of psychiatric disorder that would explain this behavior. I think if we pull back a little bit and just look at it as a group phenomenon, we have a lot of people in this country, well, in any society, but we're seeing it play out here in very vivid ways, have what's called authoritarian personality. And that doesn't mean that they're homogeneity.

They hate change. And it's pretty easy to, and again, like this isn't a purely Republican phenomenon either. Like it has nothing to do with politics at all. So the thing about these people, it's very easy to co-opt their insecurities and their fears. And that's what Republicans are really good at doing. And it's one of Donald's few real skills.

One, finding people weaker than he is. Who knew that was a thing that could happen? And two, keeping people afraid. Fear is a really important tool for them because, I mean, think about the many instances. There are caravans, there were hordes. We need to keep putting American soldiers in harm's way in Afghanistan to free the Afghan women, whatever, but we can't let them in the country because they're brown. You know, so there's always, they're always stoking fear. However, fear feels terrible. So what do you do in order to keep people motivated? You transform it into anger, which feels much better. And we are seeing now what happens when you take away the guardrails,

because let's face it, people need structure. Sometimes people need to be told what to do, like vaccine mandates, for example, that all of the rules, really. I mean, the Republicans burn the rule book, so I don't know what rules the Democrats think they're following. But in this instance, it's also about keeping the chaos going so they can get away with stuff behind the scenes. And that's something else Donald's quite good at. And I think the most diabolical thing, not the most, the most diabolical thing was putting kids in concentration camps and murdering hundreds of thousands of Americans.

But aside from those two things, one of the most diabolical things he did was divide us at a time we most needed to be united during COVID. And that's something, like that's one of the reasons we've gone so far down this path, because any sane person, anybody with the tiniest bit of empathy would have created a situation in which it was us versus COVID. So all of those people now who are picketing hospitals, who are just trying to save people's lives, and they're literally crowding into vaccine sites and

preventing people from getting vaccinated, all of those people would have been on our side against COVID. Because again, in the us versus them, they like to be us. And Donald made it us, the maggots versus Democrats, brown people, black people, et cetera. So this is just an extreme example of why we need to codify things that people need to do if they want to be part of, have a part in the commons, so to speak. If they want to participate in our democracy, they owe things to their fellow citizens, as do their fellow citizens owe to them. I mean, what happened to life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness? They're actively preventing the rest of us from those three things. Mary, I had the chills as you were just saying that. I think that was really one of the greatest explanations of what we're witnessing here in America that I've ever heard, bar none. I literally think you hit the nail on the head there. But my next question would be, okay, we've identified the problem. How do we snap these people out of it? Or is it as long as we have leaders who are still trying to get these Trump voters to their side, are we never going to be able to get these people to turn around? Unfortunately, most of the project is a long-term one. Because one thing that happened is that after the 2016 election,

the 22 to 28 percent of the population, that's the worst of us. Every society has that. You know, they're the KKK, the Proud Boys, the misogynists, whatever. And, you know, one of the points of liberal democracy is to contain those people. But from 2017 to 2019, they were represented by 100% of the federal government and championed by the guy in the Oval Office who espoused many of their same hatreds towards Black people, women, et cetera. So that disease was allowed to metastasize. That's one of the reasons we saw the increase in votes for Donald. 12 million vote increase from 2016 to 2020, which I swear to God, I'm never going to get over. So it's harder now because so much of that stuff has gotten allowed to sink its claws into more people.

In the short term, well, we can't do anything unless the Democrats decide to govern like the majority they are. I don't know what happens behind the scenes, but if I were in charge of things, I would make Joe Manchin president. I mean, king, emperor of West Virginia, whatever you want. I would pay him billions of dollars. I would do the same thing with Cinnamon. Then I'd primary her and, you know, export her somewhere because she's terrible. And she has less of an excuse to be terrible because she's in Arizona, not West Virginia. Yeah.

And you have Mark Kelly right there who won his race just fine. Exactly. won his race uh just fine exactly um so it's terrifying quite honestly because they seem either not to understand or maybe worse they seem to be they're pretending that they're democrats so um the idea that the future of this country and therefore the planet is in the hands of these two awful people is quite something. And if indeed nothing changes, it suggests to me that the people who could maybe do something aren't doing enough because they don't understand the horrible threats we're facing right now. So I totally forgot your question. My question was just, how do we snap these people out of it? Or do we have to snap people out of it? I mean, as you said yourself, those people represent probably somewhere around 28% of the

population. The people within that 28% who are actually going and protesting in front of hospitals, going to the school boards, et cetera, those represent an even slimmer bit of the population. In my opinion, it's not my opinion, it's the data shows that democracy-loving, freedom-loving, normal people are the majority in this country. but we are still being so heavily impacted by that minority rule. And so how do we snap at least a portion of those people out of these beliefs, or do we even need to? Do we just need to show up with the same passion? Do we just need to show up with the same urgency that they're showing? It's easy to get people angry. It's harder to get people on a positive message of we are

fighting for democracy you know what though we should be really angry i'm so fucking angry yeah that it's unbearable like i'm vibrating with rage half of the time because they're endangering my child yeah they're endangering my country they're endangering my child. They're endangering my country. They're endangering my planet. I'm- Your bird? Yes. Do you think this all leads to a collective PTSD within us?

We are right now, I just feel like every day we're just so in it, especially everybody listening to this podcast on Twitter. You are engaged in the news. You are engaged in the minutia of every little thing that is happening to this country. And one of my fears also is once we sort of are able and once we have the luxury to be able to back away from this, that all of it hits us at once in a way that we cannot even fathom. And as an expert on trauma, what do you think happens and how do we deal with that? Well, we're all traumatized, even those of us who refuse to accept reality. Just wait,

what happens when they realize how betrayed they've been or when somebody they love dies from COVID and they realize that it was completely unnecessary and avoidable. But first, I'd say I said this before the election as well. When people ask me, you know, do we try to talk to these people who say they're going to vote for? No, no. Don't waste your time. It's it. We need to focus on what matters, and that's changing the system, making sure we win what

is now, again, the most important of my lifetime in 2022. And 2024 will be another of the most, it's craziness. It's funny you say that, Mary, and sorry to interrupt you, but that was a question that we would be asked all the time. It was, well, how are you reaching Trump voters? How are you reaching that 28% with your ads? I said, we're not. We're not reaching them. You think we're trying to reach those people? No, we're trying to reach the 80% of normal people. Because if those people show up, we don't have to worry about the 28% of people. And that's the thing. You don't make common cause with people who want you to die, basically.

And it's not just COVID. It's also, you know, they're anti-woman. They're anti-LGBTQ. They're anti-humanity and planet and all that other stuff. I'm not conceding an inch to them. So what we need to do and I think where you were going is get out there, get people out there, because we also have to overcome all those voter suppression laws and the rig system, which is the electoral college and the rig system, which is gerrymandering and

blah, blah, blah. So we need to show up in forces greater than anything we've ever seen before, because we're overcoming all of these obstacles. And it's, it is very difficult to do that. As I, as I write, you cannot recover from your trauma while you're still being actively traumatized and we are still being actively traumatized. And why are we not out there? Because there's COVID going on. Some of us want to live and some of us also don't want to get other people sick. I mean, vaccinated or not. I mean, I wear a mask everywhere I go. I try not to be around people. I, you know, I think I've eaten indoors once because it was in New York and I trust New York City people. But, you know, how do you contain the fear and the anger and the exhaustion and the depression? Because that's the other thing. I mean, the the the incidents of all sorts of mental health problems are going to be through the roof, not just PTSD,

anxiety, depression, substance abuse disorders, domestic abuse situations, suicides, and then, you know, severe illnesses like schizophrenia, etc. So, I think figure out a way to help people understand the stakes. And Democrats aren't really good at doing that, especially since most of our elected Democrats don't seem to understand the stakes themselves. So maybe we can use some of the Republicans own techniques here. People should, people on our side should be afraid. Let's make them angry. Mary, let me come to your defense here. You didn't forget Brett's question. Brett has this habit of asking like seven questions at once and maybe sometimes not even asking a question,

just making a couple of like really good points and then hoping our guests will just add to it. So you didn't forget his question. He didn't ask one. That's so true. Jordy, that's so true. Let's see where Jordy goes with his question before he starts throwing stones. Let's see your question. Don't disappoint me. I won't. I won't. I have two for you today. So to this same conversation that we're having here, I live next to someone who's straight up QAnon. I live in Pennsylvania. My neighbor is QAnon. He has the science. He has the gear, the whole nine. And although it's a smaller percentage of people, the people who are Q and the people who are anti-vax, you really take note of. So I'm not sure-

You're writing a book here, Jordy? All right. Jordy's writing the third Mary Trump book. As long as I'm not sure. You're writing a book here, Jordy? Jordy's writing the third Mary Trump book. As long as I'm not writing it. What I'm getting at too is with Facebook and social media, I think a lot of people are realizing like, hey, there's a lot of wackos who were in my inner circle that are now Q, that are now anti-vax. And they probably were always like this. And I just didn't realize 10, 15 years from now, when things are quote unquote, back to normal, what's our role here? Is our role to men break? Relax, babe. I'm going to start this question over. It's a good question. Don't start it over. The podcast is only about an hour and you've already went for about 45 minutes. No, I got it. It's actually a good question.

Thanks, Mary. The first part of that answer is yes, Donnie is the dumbest. So if you're just listening, if you're a first time listener, Mary's been on the show twice and both times I got really nervous and I asked her which Trump kid is the dumbest kid. And both times, shocker, it was Don Jr. So I promised her this time around I'd come prepared with really good questions. That's also a good question. But anyway, I digress. Yeah. What do we do? It's fascinating because this is the first time in my life I lost friends over an election. Now, obviously, there was a personal side of that, too. But I don't associate with anybody who voted for him again, that's for sure. So where do we go from here?

And this is kind of where the long-term project comes in. Well, first, the short term. Biden and the Democrats need to govern in a way that makes the American people's lives better. The DOJ needs to do its job, hold some people accountable and be very transparent. If people's lives get better, a lot of them will kind of come back into the fold and they'll understand, oh, wow, you know, government is something that works. It is not a hostile foreign entity out to get me. It's actually us, you know. The long-term project, because there are so many people in this state of, I don't even know what to call it. It's frenzied. It's frenzied illogic. And think about how empty your world must be if you think that spending your time going to a school board meeting to scream your head off about the

fact that children are supposed to wear masks so they don't get sick and die and have zip ties to kidnap the prince. I mean, it's, you know, how empty your life must be. So maybe, you know, that's one reason to make people's lives better so they have other stuff to do. But the long-term project, and, you know, we need to start this 20 years ago, is teach civics again, but not just senior year in high school. From first grade on, teach civics in a way that helps kids understand why it's relevant to their lives, that it's not some separate thing. It's us being citizens in our country. And this is why we do things this way. And this is how our government works. And why does that matter to me in my life? So there's that. We need to teach critical thinking. Now that we're not teaching critical

race theory anymore, look at all the extra time schools are going to have. Just kidding. Nobody teaches critical race theory except in grad school. Jesus, craziness. We need to teach critical thinking and we need to teach media literacy because Facebook is not going to police itself ever. That's a really big one too. Yeah. I've never even thought about that one. The media literacy portion of it is huge. Being able to identify in this respect of what's fake news, what's real, and then sitting with that and analyzing it as a person, that seems to be lacking. Yeah. Listen, there's a serious problem when somebody is more willing to believe that Hillary Clinton

was running a child pornography ring in the basement of a pizza place that doesn't have a basement, then that wasn't happening. That's kind of, you know, terrifying. And it seems like the more people start to get sucked in, because again, I don't want to let anybody off the hook. We're all adult human beings. We need to take responsibility, which is also something that seems to have gone out of vogue in the last few years. But these are people who have been co-opted by their leaders. When you vote for somebody, you're putting your trust in them. So if your mayor, your governor, your representative, your senator, and the person in the Oval Office are all telling you, don't wear a mask. COVID's a hoax. It's a liberal thing. It's only killing Black people, than it is to take a free, safe and readily accessible vaccine.

It just makes it easier and easier to spread the breadth and depth of the insanity they'll accept. And that's kind of where we are. You're right. It's a scary, scary time. And I know we've run over your time. Thank you so much for hanging around with us. I have one more for you that I think you'll like. It's a little bit of a lighter one. It's an evolution actually of who's the dumbest Trump kid. So we had Laura Ingram's brother on the other day, Curtis. He was fantastic. We asked him, who's having the most awkward family reunion if push comes to shove? Is it Curtis, you and Laura? Is it the Gosars and their Looney Tunes brother? Or is it Mary Trump and Don Jr. and

that side of the family? So I pose the same question to you. I won't tell you what he said, but what do you think? Wait, do I have to be there? You absolutely have to. It's a family reunion. Who's having the most awkward one? It's me. Sorry, it's me. There you have it. Mary Trump, thank you so much as always for coming on the Midas Touch podcast. We truly value your time, your insight,

your analysis is just incredible. We have a little Slack chat where we talk during the show, but I'm just like, that was the greatest analysis of like group think I've ever heard is what I said. And so we appreciate you coming on the show. We hope you'll come back as a guest in the future.

Thank you so much. Definitely. Thank you, guys. This is fantastic as always. Mary Trump's new book, The Reckoning, Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal is in stores now. Make sure you get it.

We will be right back after these. The white chocolate macadamia cream cold brew from Starbucks is made just the way you like it. Handcrafted cold foam topped with toasted cookie crumble. It's a sweet summer twist on iced coffee. Your cold brew is ready at Starbucks. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Let's go. Mary Trump always has been like that. She's the best. She's the best. I think my theory has been proven true that she received all of the intelligence of the Trump family. There's no other way to, there's no other way to even think about it. You nailed it. You definitely nailed it, Brett.

And it was just so, you know, you have Mary Trump superstar, you know, Curtis Ingraham, who came on, was it, was it, I think there is something to your theory, Brett, about the knowledge and the, and the humanity just being diverted to, diverted to one person. Want to talk about a few topics as we wrap up the Midas Touch podcast. We wrap up with some rapid fire news. Let's do some wrap up rapid fire news. Georgia D.A. is interviewing witness about Trump calling on individuals to find votes. We all heard Trump's phone calls where he tried to reach out to the secretary of state of Georgia.

He tried reaching out to other Georgia officials, telling them to find votes, just completely interfering. But we now know that a criminal investigation is inching forward. Fulton County investigators are interviewing election officials and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger tells the Daily Beast that they've asked us for documents. They've talked to some of our folks and we will cooperate fully. You know, Brad Raffensperger wants to see Donald Trump in prison and wants those charges going forward. So let's not forget who here is the center of this investigation.

It is none other than Lindsey Graham. So we will see and keep you updated as to what's to come with this investigation. Ben, next. We see Greg Abbott's poll numbers are tanking. It turns out that people don't want to die and they don't want governors who try to kill them. We've seen and talked about on prior Midas Touch podcast, Governor Death Santas' poll numbers dropping precipitously in Florida as he supports policies that are killing children and killing Floridians. We see the same thing here. A survey from the Texas

Policy Project at University, Austin found that 41% of Texans approve of the job compared to 50% who disapprove of the job. And look, this is directly traceable to his policies of killing Texans. Yeah. And if you want to also understand why Texas especially is in such a panic to pass these voter suppression laws, it's because in 2012, Obama got 41% of the vote in Texas when he ran for president. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 43% of the vote. In 2020, Joe Biden got 46% of the vote. So Democrats are inching closer and closer and closer to winning the state of Texas. And Texas is petrified. They're petrified. And so with these draconian rules, though, I hope what they're going to do and what this disgusting way of handling COVID,

which is making sick people sick and is killing Texans will do. Hopefully, the one silver lining of this is that it will expedite a blue Texas in the near future. And we need to all be organizing and working as hard as we can to make that a reality. And look, the unconstitutional handmaid's tale law too is going to motivate Texans to push back against Governor Abbott and to get out to the polls. And we can't have people like that who so disgrace the rights of women, the rights to individuals who can bear children, the rights of all people. And Governor Abbott, his numbers are dropping. We need to we will continue to follow that.

And then finally, in the wrap up, rapid wrap up, we have Lauren Boebert's district has been redistricted by a nonpartisan redistricting commission. It's now a solidly democratic district, meaning that it is very unlikely, if not impossible, that Boebert will maintain the seat. Honestly, I think that regardless, even before the redistricting, she was so unpopular in that district that she wouldn't have won. But look, it's a nonpartisan redistricting commission that did this. But at the same time, Lauren Bobbert should never be anywhere near government. And I truly hope the chickens come home to roost here with everything that she's done.

And when she's not cloaked in any congressional immunities, all of the things we've talked about in past podcasts, the apparent kickbacks to her husband by defense contractors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars that were not disclosed and just overall her other conduct. I look forward to her being held accountable and frankly being imprisoned one day. Preston Pysh I got to say, I'm a little bit scared though with her back against the wall knowing that she's likely not going to win reelection. What's she going to do now? Is she going to just cause chaos? I'm a little nervous. Here's what she could do. These are proposed maps right now. They're not official just yet. Hopefully, we will

see them be codified and be made official, and we'll keep you updated as to when that happens, but it's looking like this is how the maps are going to end up. Lauren Boebert now has two options. She could either run in this district and will likely get pummeled in this district. She basically has no chance in this district.

Or she could try to get another Republican in the state to try to drop out and run for their seat. Or she could primary a Republican for their seat. So that's option two. She could run in a different district. Option three is she goes back to her restaurant and continues to give her customers food poisoning and diarrhea. So those are the three. That's Lauren Boebert's future. It's one of the three. I hope that it is option number one or three and to be determined. And we will see. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast.

Thank you to our guest, Mary Trump. Make sure to go out and buy her book. If you haven't, The Reckoning, Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal. I'm Ben. You know, Brett. You know, Jordy. We thank you for your support. Thank you to the Midas Mighty.

We'll see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.