The MeidasTouch Podcast - Protecting Democracy with Rep. Eric Swalwell

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA-15) joins the show to discuss QPAC AKA the January 6th Reunion, the need to abolish the filibuster to deliver for the American people and fight GQP voter suppression and the Democrats' priorities for the next couple of years. The brothers also break down the new Georgia voter suppression bill HB 351, the complicity of the Hyatt in hosting a neo-nazi conference at one of their properties, updates with President Biden's work to reunite families who were separated by cruel Trump-era policies and the latest on the confirmation of Merrick Garland.  Thank you for making The MeidasTouch Podcast a huge success! Please continue to share this podcast with a friend and rate us 5 stars on the Apple Podcasts app! --- 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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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit,

but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Ben Micell is here joined by my brothers Brett and Jordy. How you doing, fellas? Doing good. Busy weekend. Busy weekend. How are you? Real busy weekend.

I know we had to sit through, I guess what's the best name for it? It's, I guess, technically called CPAC, but there's nothing conservative, big C or little C about this group. We know it doesn't stand for conservative. So what could it stand for? Criminal PAC, cult PAC. I mean, there are a lot of other C words that it could be, but conservative is not one of them. We were calling it QPAC, which I think is the correct name for it,

the QAnon political gathering. Also, C-Crack. It seemed like everybody there was on crack cocaine. Have you heard that one yet? No, I haven't heard that one. One of the ones I liked was, though, if you shorten it and instead of it being in the conservative political action conference, make it just the ComPAC, C-O-N. Wow.

I like it. I like QPAC. Let's stick with QPAC. QPAC gets to the point because, I mean, this event was a mess filled with conspiracy theories and craziness. And that's why we wanted to be there on the ground to be calling it out every step of the way.

I know everybody can't see me right now. I got some deep, dark circles under my eyes because we were up all day, all night, all weekend working all of our action on the ground in Orlando. Ben, what were some of the things that we had? Before we go there, one of the funny things when we release some of these videos, people try to wonder what's going on in Brett's life. And they try to come up with these deep tales of what Brett's going through. Brett must have been through a really bad fight or I feel like Brett's heart is yearning for love.

It's like, no, Brett's in that same room that he's in a closet. We don't let Brett out, Jordy and me. Brett's our editor. Brett's the golden goose of Midas Touch. Brett keeps it going. And so we keep Brett there. You can see his arms. He's actually chained into the chair right now. Can't see him. His legs are chained. His arms are chained enough that he can type and he can press enter and he can edit, but he will not be able to leave the room. Jordy, am I lying or is that- No, not at all. Not at all. And you know what? That's why when people often refer to us, sometimes we hear we're the Jonas Brothers of politics. Not my words, but people have said it to us. And then some people call me the Nick Jonas.

Now, that is not true at all, because Nick Jonas is actually the most talented one of the brothers. That would have to, from a skill set, purely go to Brett. To me, and the reason why is that there's an overall strategy that needs to be implemented. And so the way I think it would be is kind of me and Jordy. And then we come up with the ideas, the creative. And Brett's kind of locked in there, kind of chained. Oh, my goodness. And Brett kind of produces these gold.

This is such fake news being broadcast. I do not endorse any of the previous statements. The room stuff is true, though. You are in like a five by seven just with your laptop. The room stuff is true. And that's why, you know, we see all the comments we see. Sometimes people say, hey, you know, like when we were originally releasing this podcast clips, could you guys do some clips that have subtitles and could you do X and could you do Y, could you do Z? We want to do all of it. But, you know, at some point people don't realize that we are actually three brothers doing all this stuff. And the problem with doing subtitles on a podcast

is that the podcast is like a radio. And so if we did subtitles because you're listening to it, you wouldn't be able to actually still see the subtitles as far as I know the current state of technology. But let's get into what we did at CPAC or QPAC. We had a motorcade of billboard trucks that played different messages. One of the messages was welcome back to the January 6th reunion. And on the back of it, it said Trump 22, 24, the amount of years we hope and believe Donald Trump. And that was my idea, Mr. I come up with everything for this pack. So thank you very much for the record. Oh, I wasn't criticizing you,

Brett. I was just basically saying that we lock you in the room and that you lay these golden nuggets. Sure, you lay them. But ultimately, if it wasn't for me and Geordie locking you and chaining you in the room, you wouldn't even be able to lay the golden nuggets. Okay, sure. That's true. The next, Brett's getting very, very upset. He's genuinely upset right now. We're going to have to walk some of this back, Beth.

I'm going to walk, definitely got to walk it back. Brett does everything, everybody. It's Brett. Brett's the greatest brother. Okay, The trucks, we did an addition to that other message about the insurrection reunion of January 6th. The trucks read GQP. Hypothetically, there were projections on or around the hotel that invited people to the GQP and played video footage of the insurrection. We laid out 500 body bags across the street from the hotel where QPAC was being held as a somber memory of the 500,000 Americans who died of COVID based on Trump's utter mishandling. We produced two videos. One, Can Cruise, that showed Ted Cruz's awful, absurd speech at QPAC,

where he made light and literally made jokes about going to Cancun. In fact, why don't we play that video for you, the Can Cruise video that we made? Orlando is awesome. It's not as nice as Cancun. The winter blast has now left millions with unprecedented storm damage, massive electricity bills. More than 8 million are still without safe drinking water. How many leftists does it take to screw in a light bulb? That's not funny. Today at an emergency meeting, a frightening admission from ERCOT, which runs the state power grid. They were four minutes and 37 seconds from a total statewide blackout.

AOC is telling us she was murdered. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez volunteered at the Houston Food Bank this morning. Ocasio-Cortez organized a fundraiser to benefit five million relief organizations. You got to put your mask on. Sadly, I've got two. This is just dumb. Chuck Pryor is the director of this small Houston funeral home. And ever since the global pandemic came to Texas, the state hit hard by COVID-19.

The phone has not stopped ringing. Freedom! What do you think about that video, fellas? Not the video. What do you think about that video, fellas? Not the video. What do you think about? I know what the video is. The video is fucking hilarious, but it's frightening. What do you think about what Ted Cruz did there?

Just a total fucking troll and how he looks and acts now. There's just no seriousness now. We just basically mock the deaths of people in your state. If you're a Republican, you just say throw in the towel. I don't give a shit. I mean, I think what we realized is that Texas was merely a layover for Ted Cruz to get out and chuck a thing of water inside somebody's car and then head on over to CPAC and joke about the suffering citizens out in Texas. I mean, it's really just disgraceful what he's saying about his own citizens. And then he has the nerve to joke about it while people are

now being stiffed with bills like $17,000 and up for electricity. People still don't have clean water, even if they do have electricity. I mean, it seems like everybody on that stage, and Ted Cruz was one of the early examples of it, is just trying to figure out a way to out Trump Trump. Nobody has the same sort of presence as Trump on the stage. They think that they could channel that douchey energy in a good way, but the only thing they end up looking like is just assholes. Ted Cruz is the ultimate asshole. He's the most unlikable dude on the planet. Totally. I'm so frustrated by that too, just like everyone else should be. They're radical, right? The Ted Cruz's, the Josh Hawley's, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, they act this way because they think they could get away with it.

They think we're dumb. So when Ted Cruz is on stage at CPAC pretending to be, you know, in on the Cancun joke, and I use joke, you know, with quotes here because it's not actually funny, Ted. It's social commentary on you abandoning your constituents during a statewide disaster. While you were flying first class to Cancun, Ted, Texans were dying. An 11-year-old boy froze to death in his motorhome while you, Ted Cruz, were on the beach. You're not in on the joke, Ted. You are the joke. I love that. I'm going to fact check you on one thing. He wasn't first class. He tried to get first class and leave his family, but he didn't get the upgrade. Daniel Dale Micellus over there. Fact checker Brett. Talking about CPAC, it was held at the Hyatt Hotel. Interesting fact about the Hyatt.

The Hyatt was actually founded by a prominent Jewish family, the Pritzker family, in 1957. The Hyatt as a brand prior to QPAC being held there, I always viewed the Hyatt as a very socially responsible brand, as a brand that delivered for vacationers. I associated it with cleanliness, hospitality, first-class service. And in one weekend, the Hyatt managed to tarnish entirely their reputation by hosting QPAC there. Let's begin with the fact that the QPAC stage was a Nazi symbol, a disgraceful Nazi symbol in the ballroom of the Hyatt Hotel. And to some extent, when you own property and you invite somebody in and they turn your property into a safe haven for fascism, anti-democracy, anti-Semitism, and hate, and you do nothing about it, you're complicit. Now, I get that it's hard financially

sometimes to turn away people and to turn away business. But ultimately, when you run an organization, Hyatt and places like that have to decide where they are as a corporation domestically in America and internationally. And when you side with a group that hates America, that's anti-democratic and that uses Nazi symbolism, you're not going to get away with it. Certainly, Midas Touch was holding the Hyatt accountable for that. We made a video called Hashtag by Hyatt that's gotten a ton of views. We could play that video. Imagine a destination where conspiracy thrives. Immerse yourself in Nazi symbolism,

Putin propaganda. I will confidently say that President Trump from his desk at Mar-a-Lago, will accomplish more for America in the next four years than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris could ever dream of. The 80 million that voted for Joe Biden. They decided they were going to fact-check him, the leader of the free world. And a QAnon paradise paradise where plastic statues painted gold of a failed president and a parade of insurrectionists greet you as you enter. Relax with Roger Stone massages and make lifelong memories with Proud Boys.

Say hello. Enrique Tarrio. How's it going, guys? I love you guys. Keep supporting us. Welcome to the Hyatt Hotel, a Paradise Force edition. Can we talk about their reaction to it, the Hyatt's reaction. While the event was going on, they put out a statement and they were touting the company's responsibility to provide an inclusive environment. So they said allowing these people to use their facilities was them being inclusive to all beliefs. And to that,

I'll say, okay, okay, I get it. You could have people from different political beliefs. That's not the problem. The second you see a Nazi symbol adorned in the main area of your event space, that's when you got to say, hey, you could either get rid of that stage or you could get off of my property. And they just enabled this literal Nazism. We've been to a lot of concerts in our life. Have you ever seen a stage shaped like that in your entire life? No, I haven't is the direct answer. And legally, owners of those events are responsible for what happens inside their premises. You can't just turn a blind eye and let that take place. And nor can you, afterwards take the money, allow that to happen, and then, you know, try to walk back what you did? I mean, look, at the end of the day, the Hyatt and those who made that decision need to be

held accountable for it. Midas Touch certainly isn't going to forget. And then just, you know, seeing, I didn't watch any of the CPAC or the QPAC live, but seeing what took place from news articles, it was a, as we said in our received fake votes, the big lie that Donald Trump still somehow is going to come back and be the president through QAnon ideology. They still think in three days Trump is going to be inaugurated. The big lie over and over again was repeated. On the last podcast, we literally talked about the agenda, but the agenda was how the election was stolen. And that's what they talked about. And the other main item that they talked about is they come up with this concept of cancel culture, even though it is the people who

are really doing the arbitrary canceling and using government power is the GQP and the GQP under Donald Trump, who would target private citizens with their huge megaphone as government leaders and as the president and literally cancel people. This whole thing was a wine fest over Americans using their First Amendment rights to criticize GQP members for their anti-democratic views. And while they're up there trying to cancel the votes of more than 80 million Americans, and you had Josh Hawley out there bragging and getting applause by bragging as being one of the people who objected to the election. The election lies were so bad at CPAC that even Right Side Broadcasting Network, which is one of these crazy, I think they're online only, conservative right wing networks, had to cut away and said, hey, I just want to make sure that everybody knows that the views being presented on the stage here at CPAC are not the

views of Right Side Broadcasting Company, because they know now that they're going to get sued. I mean, it's part of the accountability of Dominion and Smartmatic and all these companies suing all these other networks. Absolutely. And so the big lie just continuously being spread the entire time. And one of the most striking statements that I saw about this event was in the USA Today. It was by a former Republican strategist turned Democrat, Kurt Bardella. He said, what I saw this weekend wasn't a party in the midst of an internal civil war. What I saw was a political party getting ready to instigate a civil war against the rest of us. That to me is spot on. And it's chilling because they are really attacking America and everything that this country is based on and all the ideals of America that we're trying to move closer to, that we're trying to become. And cancel culture from the Democrat perspective, from what we do at Midas Touch, we're not in cancel culture. Brett, what you hinted at is so spot on. We're in accountability culture. If you're going to condone hate and push hate

and push the big lies, we're going to hold you accountable every step of the way. And you look at what happened on January 6th. There should be not a single American who doesn't condemn what took place in the strongest of terms and condemn what led to it, the big lie. Instead, we have a Republican Party, a political party whose sole objective, let's be clear, is to create an authoritarian, anti-democratic regime in the United States to exalt white supremacy as the demographics of America shift. That is solely and exclusively what the Republicans and the GQP want to do. It should frighten you because it is frightening. But that's why, as I look to these voices, some of them voices of reason all of a sudden, who I never thought would be voices of reason from the GQP, people like Liz Cheney. stand there idly, they're going to have to break away and be loud and be impassioned wherever they

can, because this current GQP, they legitimately want to destroy America. Look at these vaccination numbers right now under Biden. Biden has handled this so competently. The amount of vaccinations a day, we're talking two and a half million. You know, if you're listening to this, people who have been vaccinated, if you yourself haven't been vaccinated, we all know people now. We're hearing the stories about people very close to us. Under Trump, none of that was happening. In fact, we hear a report today as we're recording this that Donald Trump was himself secretly vaccinated, as was the first lady at the time, Melania Trump. And they didn't want to talk about the vaccine because they were trying to always pretend that COVID didn't exist and that you didn't need vaccines. And they were

anti-science. Just think about that. The president of the United States at the time, the former president of the United States. Now, he concealed that he received a vaccine because he thought that that would be politically harmful based on his prior comments of being anti-science and allowing a mass genocide of American people. While going around the country at his super spreader events, running around saying, oh, I got COVID, so I'm immune. Let me give you all hugs and kisses. I'm immune. I'm immune. I'm immune. Meanwhile, it turns out he actually did have immunity, not because he had it and he was spreading disinformation about whether you could get it once or twice or about the dangers of the virus, but because he was actually secretly vaccinated. So this is where we need leaders who could actually tell the public, yes, vaccinations are good. Yes, we all need to be vaccinated, have a really public display of the vaccination if you're going to do it. And what I thought was

ironic, I guess, or just maybe obvious was the one thing that people didn't like in the GQP about Trump's speech yesterday, his rambling three hour nonsensical, same old bullshit speech was that he told people to get the vaccine because he wanted to take credit for Biden's success of the vaccine. That was the one thing that made the QAnon people be like, I don't know if I could trust this guy because he's telling me to get vaccinated. And that just shows you how just far gone these people are and the base that they keep riling up and that support this party. Speaking of the base, only 68 percent of QPAC attendees want Trump to run again, which is an interesting number because QPAC is the crazy of the crazies, and only 68% of them want him to run again. Whereas you previously saw those crazy of the crazy polls of support for Trump in the 90%

when Trump was president. So that's an interesting indicator of declining support. On the QPAC poll for the pick of the next presidential nominee. 55% of Trump, 22% to DeSantis, and 4% to the next person. The QPAC straw poll notoriously picks the loser. We know from the past QPACs from Rand Paul to Ted Cruz. Y'all remember President Rand Paul and President Ted Cruz? It's interesting. We should do a video of this or just explore it, whether it leads to a video or not. It'd be interesting both in words and physical look.

Ted Cruz in 2016 to Ted Cruz in 2020, as his evolution happens to both a literal and figurative troll. You gotta pay the troll toll. Do you remember the study? It's always study in Philadelphia. What is that? I don't think we could study in Philadelphia. I don't think we should finish the sentence on here

because people might not get it. But I mean, here's the thing. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley put so much of their political capital on the line in order to try to make this Hail Mary effort to become a top contender for president. And neither, neither of them even like top two or 3% in the CPAC straw poll. These should be their people. These are still the people who were applauding Josh Hawley for saying, that's right,

I raised my fist and objected to the election. Guy polled like 2%. It's beyond embarrassing. So that is your QPAC by Hyatt update. We will continue to hold the Hyatt accountable. And it was a bizarre, bizarre weekend to say. I just can't get over it. I didn't watch also. But these are just the weirdest human beings on the planet when you're watching this event it's really like i mean i i you even want to don't want to repeat some of the things that these uh tupac attendees have written

on their flags because they're just so disgusting and misogynistic and anti-Semitic. It's just the group of the the group of that one person or two people in your family who you're just like, fuck, what happened to so and so? And they all come and unite at QPAC together and they go from their basements to this convention and they could be there. You convention and they could be there, you know, they could be themselves. But we need to hold them accountable. And one person who's holding them accountable, who we will get to after this break is none other than Congressman Eric Swalwell, who we have on the Midas Touch podcast. Thrilled to bring him on the podcast. That's so awesome that he's coming on. We'll be right back with Congressman Eric Swalwell. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. We are joined by

Congressman Eric Swalwell from California's 15th Congressional District. Congressman, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. Of course, of course. Big fans of what you guys are doing. We so much appreciate it. And we do notice from time to time when you share the video. So it's definitely been greatly appreciated. I think early on, Brennan, correct me if I'm wrong, the congressman was on a podcast when we released the Trump snake video.

Do you remember? That was our first video and he had mentioned it. What a call. That just brought me way back. Yes. Representative Swalwell was one of the first people to mention us off the internet. Basically, we heard him talk about Midas Touch and the snake. I'm drawing a total blank on what the podcast was. It was Molly Jungfast's podcast. Was it the new abnormal? Yeah. I remember recording it and sending it to all the brothers, sending it to my mom, sending it to my dad. I was like, we're big time now guys. We appreciate it. Congressman. Yeah. And we've tried to dabble ourselves in digital content and, you know,

I've been fortunate to work with 11 films. You know, they're just one of the best in the business and friends of ours and the videos that they made with you are, fantastic the video and we found uh tracy falco i don't know if you know her she was a documentarian a director producer and uh they've kind of been our um our team so we've got something coming soon i'll tease it out a little bit yeah i'm excited we've been working but congressman you had tay Taylor Swift in the last video. That was very much a bucket list. Like, how do you get to Taylor Swift?

And it was true. I know no one in Swift land. How did you get that? We made the video first with Eleven and Tracy. And we just cold pitched her team on it. And Tracy was just so determined. She went all the way up the chain and it got put in front of Taylor and she signed off on it. And we were like the dog that caught the car.

We're like, oh, what do we do now? How do we get this out there and make sure everyone sees it? So I'm a big, I'm a big Swifty, by the way. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Good, good. You got all the new re-recordings and all that. Fantastic. We have with our three year old and two year old. We do like when I get out of the bath and we dry them off. We do, you know, Taylor Swift dance night. I love it. Instead of take it off, dry it off. I think that's the lyrics. All right.

Congressman, I don't know truly what took place this weekend. I know that it was called CPAC. It looked to be from what we saw, in my view, destroy American democracy. As you were, I don't doubt you were watching it, but as you were seeing what was taking place and given your role on the Intelligence Committee and you're seeing them spreading this lies, what was going through your mind? So it reminded me of, you know, at the end of every housewives season, Andy Cohen does like to sit down with everyone. It was kind of like the sit down after insurrection day for these guys, right? Like you have everyone that was at the insurrection responsible for the insurrection. And now like a month later, you know, they're on stage, showing no remorse, you know, doubling down, reminding us all why, you know, the country chose Joe Biden, a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. So no lessons learned, no remorse. And I think you're going to see the party continue to,

you know, contract. along those lines of the contraction insurrection reunion is what i would call that yeah insurrection reunion that's funny it's funny you called it that because we actually had a billboard truck circling the venue that called it the january 6th reunion was i saw those on twitter that was you guys yeah that's great. And then the back of them said Trump 2024 to life. And I think some of the MAGA people in front didn't totally know that it was like a troll at first. And they were honking at it. And then the truck passes and they see the back Trump 2024 to life and reality. I think one of, one of the interesting things about being a Congress person is some of your colleagues though, right now,

I'm trying to think how I can put this probably want to kill you and kill others who are there or they're out there saying things to do that, you know, and I won't mention them specifically by name. Congresswoman Bobbert, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I said I wasn't going to mention them by name and others. That was a quick turn around. I wasn't going to do that. But I guess, look, I get that there was a time when political parties disagree.

But how do you deal with colleagues? Don't get me wrong. I got some people at work who I love, some people at work who I don't love, but I don't have people at work who want to kill me. How do you go through the day with that type of not opposition, but outright hostility and violence towards you and our democracy? Yeah. And, you know, I joked, Ben, about the insurrection reunion. And I guess the gallows humor has kind of gotten a lot of us, you know, me and my colleagues through, you know, what's happened since January 6th. But the reality is we serve in a body where many of my colleagues in one way

or another were accomplices for what happened on the 6th. They either propagated the big lie, went to the rally. Mo Brooks said, you know, let's kick ass and take names. Boebert was tweeting 1776 in the location of the Speaker of the House. This woman from Illinois, her husband had a three percenters sticker on his car and she had made a, you know, a comment about, you know, praising Hitler. So yeah, it is disturbing. And we have to have magnometers, metal detectors, like you're going into a courthouse or a prison or a airport because our colleagues have brought guns onto the house floor despite it not being allowed

and threatened to continue to do that. Yeah, that's an unfortunate workplace environment. But we're there to get things done. And, you know, I am a big believer of not making people more significant than they are. So if I have to walk through a magnometer, you know, to get the voting rights bill passed, or the background check bill passed, or the COVID relief bill passed, you know, I'll walk through 10 of them to do that. You know, we're still in the majority. And the goal now is to, you know, keep the majority so we can keep the progress coming. Let's talk about that agenda with those three bills that you mentioned. The COVID relief bill has been passed. And now that is heading to the Senate. There was an issue over the minimum wage. I know the House was able to pass the minimum wage, but then the parliamentarian in the Senate had issues with it and said it didn't meet the Byrd rule.

What's going to happen with the minimum wage in your mind? Well, I wish the Senate would break the filibuster to pass the minimum wage, to pass the Voting Rights Act, to pass the Voting Rights Act, you know, to pass background checks. Look, I get the argument that if you break the filibuster, you set a precedent when Democrats are not in control, that they could use it to, you know, ban abortions. And that would be awful if that happened. However, I would suggest that if you're breaking the filibuster to pass something that an overwhelming majority of Americans want, you're not going to pay a political price for it. Banning abortions, you would pay a steep, steep political price, probably extinction forever, you know, as a political party. Enacting the Voting Rights Act, enacting COVID relief, you know, putting background checks in

place, that is what the majority of Americans want. Passing the DREAM Act, acting on climate, you know, those are all, you know, wildly popular. And for the minority to hold those up, you know, because they have this institutional parliamentary trick, I don't think reflects the will of the people. That's what I think they should do. If they don't do that, then we will pass our own bill and hope that we can find 10 Republican senators. But newsflash, they're not going to do that, then we will pass our own bill and hope that we can find 10 Republican senators. But newsflash, they're not they're not going to do that. As far as the COVID relief bill is concerned, as you mentioned, it's a very popular piece of legislation. And I think one of the things that disappointed me the most is that not a single Republican voted for this bill.

I mean, it polls great. It's relief that Americans need desperately. Why do you think that despite the popularity of the bill, why won't a single Republican back it? I think they're so entrenched in red team versus blue team now. They've got this inner party struggle going on with the Liz Cheney crowd who has, you know, continued to rebuke Trump, and that is starting to fracture the party. So I think in a misguided effort to show unity, they figure, well, let's show the world, the country, we're unified at the expense of hungry Americans, unemployed Americans, hurting small businesses. But for them, it's some show of unity that they can block the Biden agenda. Again, I think they're going to pay a real steep price for it because it covers cross sector of, you know, the COVID damage from unemployment to what's happening with small businesses, to families who need the stimulus. And of course,

you know, to teachers and, you know, families who want to get vaccinated as soon as possible. So two years from now, there's going to be another election as the Democratic Party looks to its constituents across the country and says, this is what we delivered for you. Granted, it's only a two-year period, but what would you like to say, here's what we accomplished in these two years since we had the majority in both houses? Yeah. We vaccinated everyone who wanted a vaccine.

Your kids went back to school. You could eat indoors at a restaurant again. You went to a wedding. You were able to hug your friends, family, and neighbors. And we started to connect the disconnected. And you're safer in your community because of what we did about gun violence. We can do all of that. But I also recognize that, you know, George H.W. Bush won the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and then was thrown out of office in the fall of 1992. He had an 80 plus percent, you know, approval rating,

and then the economy dipped. And so I think we have to make sure that, you know, we are always focused not just on COVID recovery, but really reaching people who have been disconnected by this economy, whether it's through infrastructure spending, broadband connectivity, education and healthcare relief through hospitals in rural areas. That's really where we have to focus. And if we do that, I think we'll grow our majority because we'll have stood with people who need it the most and the Republicans will have continued to have stood with Q.

You mentioned gun violence. You recently introduced or reintroduced the No Guns for Abusers Act. Shocking that that's an act that has to be introduced in the first place, that abusers can have military grade weapons. What's the status of that bill? And generally, what's that trying to accomplish? Really honored that every town is behind it. You know, they're one of the largest anti-gun violence organizations out there. And so every town for

gun safety, they're behind it. They're helping me, you know, get co-sponsors in the house. Essentially, this is from working as a prosecutor where I saw that defendants are really on the honor system, especially in domestic abuse cases. They are supposed to turn over or relinquish their firearms. We know that if you're in a domestic abuse, abusive relationship, you're five times more likely to be a victim of gun violence. But it's the honor system because we don't have a national firearm registry. And so you're counting on somebody who is in court because they have, you know, allegedly abused their spouse or their partner. You're counting on that person to be truthful with you about how many firearms they have. So I'd like to have a nationwide approach to making sure that domestic abuse victims are better protected from gun violence.

You were famously an impeachment manager. Obviously, while it was bipartisan in the Senate, still there wasn't enough Republicans to have the spine to actually convict. Impeachment is a political process. Of course, there's the other side of it, which is a criminal process outside of the political process. We know about these various investigations that are taking place from Washington, D.C. to New York to Georgia. What do you think is going to happen, Congressman? We learned today, for example, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president in France, was criminally convicted. So we have a internationally we see other countries holding their leaders accountable. Are we going to hold someone accountable here, even if they were a former president who violated the law? Churchill in the impeachment trial that as far as accountability goes for Donald Trump, I'll quote him again, you know, this is not the end of the process. It's not even the beginning

of the end. You know, we may with impeachment be at the end of the beginning, but because of what he's done in the past, because of what he did as president, I believe Donald Trump is going to be living in civil and criminal courtrooms going forward. And just to go back to impeachment, I'm proud of the work that we did. And you're right. We had 57 senators, we were, you know, 10 short of what you needed to convict Donald Trump. It's the largest bipartisan impeachment vote ever. To me, 57 out of 100 feels a hell of a lot more like you came close to convicting him than he was acquitted, right? But technically, he was acquitted. But in the minds of most Americans, I believe that Donald Trump functionally, functionally will be disqualified from holding office again, that

voters now know exactly who he was. That's why they didn't elect him and reelect him in the first place. And now what we've learned from the impeachment trial, I don't think anyone wants to see our country put through that again. White nationalism seems to be on the rise in this country. It's probably one of the biggest problems that we face. So how do we combat this when the Newsmaxes, the OANs, the Fox News are given this platform to spew garbage, misinformation, and just rile up the American people. It's frustrating. And, you know, we started the trial with one of the first impeachment managers, Joaquin Castro, said, you know, a lie travels all the way around the world before, you know, the truth can even put its shoes on. And that was a

quote attributed to Mark Twain before the internet was even around. And that's what we're up against right now with white nationalism, which is absolute denial by my Republican counterparts, and, you know, a refusal to hold them accountable. I think what we can do now, with Merrick Garland on his way to being appointed as Attorney General this week is, you know, really put pressure on and give resources to the Department of Justice to set up a white nationalism task force so that we can understand how they recruit, how they train, how they target their victims, and make sure we treat that just as we did is post-September 11th and, you know, do all we can to root it out. This January 6th commission that the speaker is advocating for

would also look at how this happened through subpoena power to understand, you know, how white nationalism has grown to the point where they were so emboldened that they could attack the Capitol. And they did so, right, maskless, with their cell phones, recording the footage, promoting the footage, believing that they were in this permissive operating environment that because the president said it was okay, they could do it. So we have to really, I would say, aggressively root them out. Being on the Homeland Security Committee, I feel like that's going to be a big priority. That's why I asked to go back to that committee, in addition to being on intelligence and judiciary. So I'm on three committees that'll be, you know, in the fight here to root out white nationalism.

Yeah. And then they basically, as we discussed at the beginning of the interview after January 6th, held the after party this weekend where they just openly bragged and talked about it. We jokingly called it the reunion, but that's what it was. It was the insurrection reunion. They are out there on stages in the Hyatt Regency Hotel bragging about what they did. That's where the nation is right now. And Ben, was that stage for real? You know, I saw the pictures and I saw the, I think it's called a rune. Yeah, the Odell rune. The Odell rune. And I thought, I mean, surely this is just, you know, someone posted,

like sometimes they'll dunk on someone with a fake tweet and we all get fired up about it. And they're like, okay, that's real i'm that picture looked pretty real no one has said that that stage was not designed that way and even if you give them the benefit of the doubt which they are not worthy of wouldn't you think that if that was not your intent that you would change the stage design after everyone said hey this is a nazi. You guys just engaged in Nazi-like behavior a month ago. Maybe you don't want to project that to the world. Yeah, a little on the nose, but that's who they are. I believe there are coincidences in this world. I do not believe that was one of them. And I think if they really cared about it, like you said, they would have done

something or the high at the hotel, they would have gave them an ultimatum and said, change the stage or leave the hotel, instead of releasing a half-assed statement after the event saying, oh, the symbol was so abhorrent and we were so upset by it. Well, you had three days to do something about it. And it's right there in our faces. And it's scary. Before you go, Congressman, the one piece of legislation I really want to discuss with you is H.R.1, the For the People Act, which I think really, on paper, seems like it's the solution to a lot of the problems that we're discussing here. And for those who don't know, the For the People Act, it's a sweeping set of reforms to basically protect democracy, to kill gerrymandering, to protect voting rights.

Where are we with the For the People Act? Do you think it's going to be something we're able to get across the finish line? Yeah, we're going to pass it in the House. You know, we passed it last Congress, and now we have a fighting chance in the Senate. And yes, it would put back in place some of the preclearance requirements that the Supreme Court gutted back in, you know, 2014, you know, to require, you know, more standards to be put in place if you were to move a polling place or remove voters from, you know, the voting rolls. Also, and this is really important, it would have federal independent redistricting because we've seen Republicans across the country, you know, rig and gerrymander maps for their friends and to keep, you know, their party in

power. And that will threaten us when you hear my two-year-old. He's upset that they're trying to take voting. Yeah, she's pissed off and you should be too. But, you know, dirty maps and dirty money. We really get at both of them in this bill. California has independent redistricting. Democrats have picked over picked up over 10 seats since we passed that and enacted it. And so I do believe nationwide, if the lines are fair, we can compete. We can win in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, where you're going to see efforts to do this again. And then of course, you know, stripping down to the studs, the Citizens United ruling and putting in place, you know, what I think will be the beginning of a publicly

financed system so that we can ultimately, you know, see all sorts of private money, you know, out of politics. So we have to pass it. But again, I don't want to get people's hopes up too much, because while we can pass it in the House, if the Senate does not find 10 Republicans, you have to break the filibuster to pass it. And, and what we are seeing right now is that Republican legislatures are learning the wrong lessons from January 6. They're not, you know, they certify the electoral college results, mostly because legally they had to. But instead of saying, like, let's continue to make sure that we hold up the integrity of our elections and make sure that elections are more, you know, transparent, they are learning the wrong lesson in that they are trying,

the extreme members of the Republican Party in these states are now trying to disenfranchise voters so that they are never put in a position again of having to certify a Democratic winner for the presidency. And so that's what we're really up against is that they are going to just learn how to cheat better. They're not going to try and, you know, hold up that integrity that they showed as the model for going forward, or an invitation to try and reform the long lines that they had in Georgia or issues with, you know, excluding, you know, African American voters. No, they're going to try and, you know, exclude them further, but just make sure it's legal in their states. How do we deal with that? If they're cheaters, we're not cheaters. And we try to be the good guys. We try

to do what's right. They're out there cheating every day and and celebrating their cheating. How do we beat that? Yeah. Until someone finds a way to clone one million Stacey Abrams, we're not going to beat that. And so that's why H.R. 1 is so important. And that's why I really hope the Senate, if they cannot find 10 Republicans, recognize that, you know, what the Republicans are doing right now is an existential threat to democracy. If they're able to get away with that. And we do nothing with respect to the For the People Act. Congressman Eric Swalwell, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. Big Taylor Swift fan. We'll let you get back to your day.

Have a good one. See you guys. Thanks. Have a great day. You too. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Great interview with Congressman Eric Swalwell. I totally forgot he posted.

He talked about our video that time. Yeah. We totally fanboyed out, I remember too. When you send that to the group chat, we send that literally to everybody we knew. It was funny because I don't really have notes before I do those interviews, but I didn't even have the thought in my mind until I was literally introducing him. And it triggered when I said he shared the videos that he had did that. I had done that. I had no clue.

So good. Anyway, but as Congressman Eric Swalwell discussed, the tactic of the GQP, what the GQP has learned from the insurrection, though, is cheat harder, cheat better, suppress people's votes. And that's what the GQP is doing. So in areas that have GQP controlled legislatures, they're passing laws that are essentially discriminatory on their face, will have to be challenged through, excuse me, through court peers. You just hear me like just burp as I'm talking. Yeah, people love when you burp in I'm talking. Yeah. People love when you burp in their ears on a podcast. Yeah. I apologize for that. I've been eating a lot of carrots recently, so I'm going to blame it on my

Are you still doing your diet? I've had that oatmeal diet, but I've been eating a shit ton of carrots, so I'm going to just like eating carrots throughout the day. Rabbit Ben over here. Bugs Bunny. Bugs Betty. Bugs here. Bugs Bunny. Bugs Benny. Bugs Bunny. Bugs Benny. Bugs Benny.

Bugs Benny. You do a little meme of me and I'm like, what's up, doc? Who's going to do it? Send it to us. It's me with a carrot. Instant retweet. Here's what the gif is. It's me with a carrot.

And then I'm eating the carrot and I'm like, what's up, Dems? Instead of what's up, Doc? This is why Ben's the Nick, guys. You see where this comes from now. That's some creativity. So going back to the news, as I mentioned,

the GQP and everywhere they control legislatures are completely trying to invoke legislation, great legislation to make it harder to vote. controlled House passed a new voter suppression bill, HB 531, cutting weekend voting, restricting mail ballot drop boxes, adding voter ID for mail ballots, giving voters less time to return ballots and dramatically limiting runoff time after the Dems won. I mean, so basically every way to make voting easy and accessible, even though there's been zero instances of voter fraud on the Democratic side. The only side where there's been voter fraud has been on the GQP side. They just basically want to take that all away. And that's going to be mimicked, by the way, not in Georgia, but in any states where the GQP control. All over the country. And let's be clear as to what these bills are aimed to do.

They're not designed to suppress any votes. They're designed to suppress Black votes specifically, with almost pinpoint precision of the days that they block off from people voting because African-Americans do these souls to the pole drives from church. They take away mail-in ballots. They add all these alternate requirements. This is specifically designed to counteract the activism happening all around the country by so many incredible people. And if your party, if your aim is to make people vote less, you need some introspection because what we need is we need people to vote more. We need more people active in this process. And if you're scared of that, maybe your ideas just suck. And Brett and Jordy, what do you think the Democratic Party should do?

I asked Congressman Eric Swalwell what he thought. I was concerned by his response. Yeah. I mean, my question was they're cheating. We're not cheating. And if they're allowing themselves to cheat like, you know, I look, I don't think we should cheat. But for us, getting more people to vote is not cheating, like allowing Americans to vote and giving the franchise rights to people and having another party want to suppress that is utterly, you know, is utterly fucked up. Here's my solution to it. We need to be on constant red alert. We need to, as the Democratic Party, not just jump into this every two years. We need to continue with what we've been doing at Midas Touch. Like, y'all need to keep educating other people about why the GQP is so bad. If you're listening to this, and we have a very large audience, one of the largest audiences of podcast listeners in the world, we need you who are listening to this to do something. Every day, do something in talking to a friend, in talking to people, in getting this message out.

You are necessary. The Midas Touch, me and the brothers, we'll do everything we can do, but we need you to get motivated and to keep letting people to know when to vote, where to vote, why voting is so important, giving them the facts. We need to work for this. Otherwise, you're going to wake up one day and you're going to be living in a fascist state run by the likes of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley's. And you're going to be looking, how did it get here? How did I get here? I wish I would have done something. Right now, you have the chance to do something. Right now, you have the chance to do something. Do not wake up two years from now, four years from now, and be in a Cruz Howley dystopia and say, I wish I did something more. Do something. The bottom line is the elections in 2022 and the elections in 2024 are going to be decided by the actions we all take today, by everything that's happening right now.

And I agree with Congressman Swalwell's idea that the Senate needs to get rid of the filibuster. I do think it's an archaic process. And I do understand the risks of that, that like he said, that the GOP, if they gain power again, that they could then push forth all this other legislation. But the fact is, is that we're in an existential crisis of our country right now. We have extremely popular legislation across the board that we need to pass. It shouldn't be held up because of Republicans who refuse to get behind stuff that was better for the people. The filibuster has been used in recent history far more than it was ever used in the past. In fact, the GOP started using it and wielding it as a weapon to prevent civil rights legislation

from being passed. That really was like the initial function of the legislation. And since then, it's been used to block the Democratic agendas, including ramping way up during President Obama's administration. And now during all these efforts to expand the vote and give people more access. All right. This is so fucked up, guys. So let me see. I'll just ask you the question to see if you know the answer. So Joe Manchin, who's the U.S. senator from West Virginia, who's been the one blocking all of the our ability to prevent the filibuster. Brett and Jordy, when do you think Joe Manchin is up for reelection? I'll answer it for you. I won't put you on the spot. Let me let me let me let me guess. I'm going to guess 2024. I'm going to go 26. So his term ends. He won in a general election on November 6, 2018. His current term would end

in January 3, 2025. So he's up for reelection in 2024. I said, holy shit, because I get generally if he's afraid of reelection, you know, and there's some political pressure on him. But it's like, what is your end game? You are a senator. You have the ability to do shit as a senator. You have the ability to do things. And so for the next four years, you could do nothing and just sit there and just veto each other's legislation and get zero done. Or if you got rid of the filibuster in four years, whatever your objectives were in being a Democrat in the Senate in over a four year period, all of those things could get done. We can get them all done in two years. So how old is Joe Manchin?

I want to see when Joe Manchin was was born. Let's see if I could even figure out. I challenge you. I challenge you while you look that up, find me a single voter in this country. Find me a single citizen in this country who would get their fourteen hundred dollar covid relief check, who would get expanded civil rights, voting rights, all the good stuff that we're trying to get accomplished and say, oh, yeah, I really like all this relief and all these checks, but I'm really upset because the Senate got rid of the archaic filibuster. So I really don't want to. Joe Manchin is 73 years old. OK, like really? Like you want to be you want to be doing this job while you're in your fucking 90s? I mean, dude, by the time you're 73 to 77, you you've had this incredible career. You're in your seventies now at the end of your

career. Don't you want to, as like the last things you do as you head towards retirement, like get legislation done. Like you just want to be in this job in the seventies to do nothing. Like it's just so shocking to me. Yeah. Do you want, do you want your legacy to be, yes, I protected the filibuster or do you want your legacy to be, yes, I protected the filibuster? Or do you want your legacy to be, yes, I protected people and I made life better for Americans? That's the choice that you have right now at your fingertips. It's so wild. Just on some final news of the day. By the way, he looks very good for 70. He looks incredible. I'm going to say, I will give him props for that.

So I thought Manchin was in his late 50s, early 60s. Look at the photo. It's unbelievable. Joe Manchin, you look very great, but you got to have your have your actions match the way you look now. Let's do it. Please. Please. Judge Merrick Garland, who sits on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, who notoriously or infamously by the Republicans had his nomination held up when he was nominated for the Supreme Court by the Biden administration, was now nominated by by the Biden administration as the next attorney general. committee voted to advance Judge Garland's nomination with the vote of 15 to 7, setting up his confirmation for the full Senate. The no votes included Ben Sasse, Senator Lee, Holly, Kennedy, Cruz, Blackburn, Grassley, Cornyn, Tillis, Graham joined the Dems voting. Yes, Ted Cruz is just absurd. I think just Ted Cruz and Holly, they're just like, first off, Holly has not voted for a single one of Biden's cabinet nominees. The guy's just a traitor through and through. And Cruz and Hawley and Kennedy, I mean, Blackburn, all these people, you think they're afraid of the AG because

they're like, oh, yeah, well, we're kind of criminals. So we don't want somebody in there to fuck with us. The one that surprised me there was Ben Sasse, who tries to play like he's more of a moderate and an independent. And Ben Sasse voted against Merrick Garland. I'm not sure if we receivedrick Garland's answers to his questions on this podcast, too. And so whatever. You can't expect any, you know, just assume that Ted Cruz will tell you the opposite of what's true. Whatever. I wish Ted Cruz played the I was going to say played the stock market because I would

bet against him, but he'd probably have insider information. So that's not that's not the best barometer. Going to the Biden administration, some good news. The Biden administration is going to allow families separated under the Trump administration to remain in the U.S. It's just shocking that would even took place, that that actually has to exist. The Homeland Security Secretary said at a press briefing, we're hoping to reunite families either here or in their country of Oregon. We hope to be in a position to give them what they deserve and reunite them with their family. The administration thus far, this is a good fact, has thus far reunited 105 families in two months.

Think about that. Think about that. In two months. in two months, they were able to reunite these families. It's ridiculous that they have to do it, but it's amazing that they're doing it. And it's amazing that it only took two months for them to do it. And so literally the Trump administration just they're like, hey, Donald, there's there's families that we know exist that we could reunite, like mothers with their children so that they could see their child. You want to do that? No.

What do you want to do? Go golfing. And speaking about horrible, horrible things and horrible, horrible policies, we see that this anti-Asian, anti-Chinese rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration has had real consequences. There's no doubt from the very beginning when Trump called it the Kung flu and started mocking Asian reporters and scapegoating the Asian community for the Trump administration's failures to appropriately handle this pandemic. And so I know, Jordy, you have, you know, have, uh, you're spot on. Yeah. We've been talking about as brothers, but I don't think we've until this point really addressed it publicly. I mean, what's happening, you know, to our Asian brothers and sisters is appalling. You know, according to a recent report, NYPD data show that there's been a 1900% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York City in the past 12 months. That's just in New York City. So now you have people who are well known either in

sports or the political sector speaking up about instances of hate against them. So Jeremy Lin, professional basketball player, the first Asian American to win an NBA championship, he was called the coronavirus on the court during a game the other night. The NBA is looking into that. Lindy Lee, a dear friend of ours, was called a Chinese bitch while on her run the other day just because she was running. And then you have lesser known folks who are like in their 80s and 90s, literally being targeted, assaulted and murdered in the streets because they're Asian. I mean, you guys have seen the footage. It's appalling and just disgusting to see. Now, that's what we see. Imagine what's not being reported. And then, Ben, to your point, Trump goes on stage at CPAC, continues to call the coronavirus the Chinese virus. And it's that. It's that consistent rhetoric that he did when

he was president that he continues to do that's encouraging the behavior. And the GQP sits back like it's not a problem. You know why? Because they're the party of Trump. It's pathetic. It needs to be called out. And most importantly, it needs to fucking stop. They're the party of Trump and the party of fear because they have, and those are the same things, but because they have no ideas, because their sole goal is to uphold white supremacy, their view is just scare the shit out of people and while not delivering anything whatsoever. And it's a sad indictment on on where Trump brought the country. But I am hopeful. I am optimistic. Congressman Eric Swalwell was optimistic. I like when I asked Eric Swalwell of the direction the country needs to go and what do you want to tell voters in two years? I could probably summarize what Congressman Swalwell said as I want to tell him that we competently stood for the people and we delivered actual results and we actually did

things. What do you think Ted Cruz's response to that question would be? He'd probably do some stupid Seinfeld stand-up routine and yell, freedom, like he did at QPAC. Totally absurd. But anyway, the Midas Touch brothers, we have videos to make. Ben Micellus has carrots to eat. I really enjoyed this recent edition of the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Jordy, if you don't give the shout out to Midas Mighty,

dad's going to get angry at you again. You did not do it on the last special edition. And if you haven't watched the last edition with the family of reality winner, please listen to that podcast now. I said watch it because you could also watch it on our youtube channel in its entirety it's the first time that we released one of our podcasts in its entirety on youtube so check it out it's a really emotional really special episode that we're all very proud of and without further ado mr jordy it would wait hold on hold on it would have been really cut up if I did, during that interview, while we were signing off with Reality's Winter Family,

if I go, shout out to the Mightiest Mighty, as the first things I say all interview. Could you imagine what they would look like? So no, I'm glad I didn't say it last time. I will happily say it here. Shout out to the Mightiest Mighty!