The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Beyer Responds to MAGA Mike’s Massive GOP Cover Up

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republican Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson getting caught in the latest scandal involving the GOP and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Don Beyer about his response and how the Democrats are fighting back during the shutdown. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact ConX Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BEDMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Maga Mike Johnson is fearful, I think, of losing his job if he doesn't dutifully follow the orders from Donald Trump. And the orders from Donald Trump are make sure you don't speak with Democrats, yet alone even negotiate with Democrats. It's an interesting development about what's going on in the United States Senate because there are some discussions actually taking place to extend the Affordable Care Act. subsidies and possibly push forward three of the 2026 appropriation bills. So there is some discussion taking place among senators to figure out how to protect Americans' health care, some bipartisan conversations taking place.

The issue, though, is that Maga Mike Johnson has said, under no circumstance, will he even entertain any bipartisan solutions in the Senate that protect the Affordable Care Act subsidies? and Maga Mike's told his members, do not even show up. Do not, if you see a Democrat, you don't talk to them at all because Donald Trump, Maga Mike's daddy says, you don't talk to them and you don't even negotiate with them. So that's the status. You have Democrats in the Senate trying to work. You have some Republicans in the Senate trying to figure out a solution right now.

You've got Democrats in the House saying, let's try to figure this out. Let's talk in the public. Remember fifth grade government? You know how the parties are supposed to talk to each other? That's the way government's supposed to work. No Kings. And then Maga Mike's like, nah, we've got a king.

Whatever Donald Trump says goes and Donald Trump says, we can't talk to you. So you have Maga Mike out there going in front of the press and just saying some of the weirdest stuff. So Maga Mike went out today. He starts talking about how he hates the no king's protests. And he goes, this is the Marxist, pro Hamas, pro-Antifa types,

whatever the hell that means like you just know how outrageous these statements are from these people like the most heinous statements while americans are suffering you have maga mike out there leading a press conference about health care being taken away from 20 million americans and what maga well by the way 20 billion dollars is going to bail out argentina and this is what maga mike saying it's ridiculous here play this club i mean the contrast between these parties could not be any more stark. And I encourage you to watch. We call it the hate America rally that will happen Saturday. Let's see who shows up for that. I bet you see pro Hamas supporters. I bet you see Antifa types. I bet you see the Marxist in full display, the people who don't want to stand and

defend the foundational truths of this republic. And we do. And that's what we're here doing every single day. If you're standing up for the foundational truths, you really don't need to go there. I'm standing up. Usually those are the people you worry about most. And it just looks at this like dystopian movie. I don't even know what I'm even watching there as he spews lie after lie. So then the press figures, okay, well, we've got Maga Mike up here. He's talking a bunch of nonsense. To their credit, the press today was like, let's ask him a real question. So Maga Mike, what do you think about one of the people in your caucus, Corey Mills, a Maga Republican, who was accused of beating his girlfriend and stolen valor? Does that make you in any way concerned to which

Maga Mike says, I don't want to talk about that? I don't want to. Let's talk about serious things. I don't think that's a serious thing. Here, play this clip. It's been reported for a while. Corey Mills was accused of beating a girlfriend in his DC apartment. He was accused of stolen valor by the people that he claimed to have saved on the battlefield that had been on the record said that he did not save

them. I mean, this has been happening since the beginning of the year. Are you concerned about these allegations against Corey Mills? Look, you have to ask Representative Mills about that. I mean, he's been a faithful colleague here. I know his work on the hill. I mean, I I mean, I don't know all the details of all the individual allegations and what he's doing in his outside of life.

You have to ask him about things that are really serious background. Thanks, Mr. Speaker. He said, I don't know the details. This follows yesterday where he said, I don't have a strategy regarding the strategy. Remember, they never have details about it. I don't know what Donald Trump wrote. I don't know what this person is. I don't know what this person did.

But I am going to go speak a bunch of nonsense about the peaceful no Kings protest coming up. I want to bring in Democratic Congress member, Don Beyer. Great to see a Congress member, Bayer, represents Virginia's eighth congressional district, the most federal employees in the country live in Congressman Byers District. I want you to first just respond to the distraction, deflection, destruction by Maga Mike. And then let's talk about what's going on here as it does seem that the Senate's trying now, at least they're talking. That's good.

Baby steps, talking. But Maga Mike's saying, we ain't talking. So what do you make of all of us? Well, thanks for playing those mega-mite clips. That was so disappointing. First of all, saying that the millions and millions, probably tens of millions of millions of Americans who show up on Saturday for the New King's rally, our leftist, Antifa, Marxist, Hamas supporters, is incredibly insulting and stupid. He needs to come out and see what happens in Washington, D.C., in the jurisdictions I represent, Arlington, Alexandria, and a false church. But the average age is probably 62. They are

overwhelmingly professional, they are moderate, they are really good people who love their country, and they're coming out to protest because they love their country. It's the opposite of what Mike Johnson suggests. And then to suggest that he doesn't know the details on Corey Mills, come on, everybody here knows the details of Cory Mills. It's been written about extensively. You know he's paid attention to that. He's just afraid to say anything because the margin is so thin. It's very, very disappointing. And just the notion that if the Senate Republicans are making progress with Democrats on finding a way out of this, to extending the Affordable Care Act tax incentives for a couple of years or longer, making them permanent. Mike Johnson says

he won't bring it back because he's afraid of his own people. I don't like to do it a hominem attacks. I've served with four different speakers. This is the fifth one. By far, the weakest speaker, I think, in American history. Well, you know, he's not even talking. You know, the strangest part about this whole thing, and I've talked to lots of people who have been with other government shutdown they're like look in the past you'd be trying to like work together come up with solutions like the way as i said at the outset like in your fifth grade government class you know your first time you learn it's like yes when the parties need each other's votes you have to talk to each other and have conversations and try to build consensus and but i remember with former

president Biden you know you would have McCarthy show up frequently and what do you need what do you need all right, let's do this, let's do that. Everybody take it. People are a little upset about this, a little happy, but deals are made. Right now, they're not even like, can you even explain like what it's like? They're not even talking these Republicans, they're not talking to Democrats, and Democrats are showing up to work. And Republicans, they do that press conference, and then they like leave for the day. Then they go out of Fox, they say their lies, and then it's like, all right, rinse and repeat.

Absolutely right. Yeah, I'm here in the Capitol right now, and I'm surrounded by lots and lots of my Democrats. friends. I haven't seen a single Republican here. The halls are largely empty. And, you know, what Hakeem Jeffries, Catherine Clark say again and again is we're here, we're willing to negotiate, we want to talk. There's nobody to talk to. They're just, they've shut down in conversation and discussion. And so, hey, they have the White House, the Senate, and the House, they think they can do anything they want. Open the government. You're in power. Talk to us about your congressional district. It's Arlington, Alexander, Falls Church. I went to school at GW, Georgetown. I know those

areas. I know those areas well. Go out there to restaurants, come back. Friends would go there, friends who lived in the areas and apartments in these areas, would travel to D.C. Being hit and impacted the most. I mean, I know that you're going to be going to food banks and clinics after. People are really being hit by this. Like, this isn't, Republicans are treating it like they've got their talking points. All right, we're going to say pro-hamas, pro-terrorists. And they almost are like, well, the Democrat talking point is we have to help Americans and just help people. So, and they're almost treating, you know, save people's health care. They're almost treating it because everything they do is phony. Like, these are like talking points for Democrats about like protecting people's

health care. And I think the thing is, it's not talking points. Like, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or an independent, if your ACA subsidies are extinguished, you're going to have to pay a lot more money. If you're being laid off by, you know, either because of what Trump's done to the economy or a government worker, you may have to go to a food clinic in order to get food. You don't have medical services. So talk about that. Well, Ben, first I represent the Congressional District that's the most federal employees. It's also the most politically sophisticated and the best educated. And so we've gotten hitting really, really hard by all the riffs, by the fork in the road. When they shut down USAID, it seemed like every U.S.-based USAID contractor lived near my home.

And yet, we did a quick survey yesterday. Of the last thousand incoming calls, 90% have been stick with the shutdown, stand up for America, stand up for health care for every American. So they're really brutalized by it. The food bank, our largest food. Bank and Arlington food assistance, whatever, their number of people they're serving is the largest ever, 50% higher than COVID, which had been the largest ever. So people are really hurting, but they're also willing to stand up because they love their country. So Congressman, where do you think this goes next? What happens after, you know, I mean, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight for this government shutdown, given the Mag and Mike position,

the Trump position, do not talk, do not have discussions. And I saw Congresswoman McLean. After Maga Mike goes, Congresswoman McLean, she does a thing where she just like kind of yells, where she like holds up. She goes, just sign the damn thing. Just sign. And it's like, let's not know how you actually deal with negotiations. So like what happens next?

You know, I go back to the Abraham Lincoln who said, you know, public sentiment drives everything. That's a paraphrase. He's more eloquent. And so we let's see how public sentiment evolves over the, the shutdown. So far, the public is very much on the side of avoiding the 100%, 200%, 3% increases in Affordable Care Act premiums. They're against the 20 million people whose health insurance is being stripped away through the big, ugly bill. As long as that happens and Donald

Trump's numbers continue to go down, eventually the Republicans are going to realize that they just need to do the right thing. And Ben, the amazing part is they're going to get creamed in the 2026 elections unless they fix health care. I mean, so it affects their people way more than it affects our voters. And so the chance for us to pick up 40 or 50 Republican seats is out there if they don't fix it. And that's not what they want. So we're offering a win-win situation. They just have shut their ears to it.

And then finally, I want to talk about this while I've got you on, because, you know, your career before getting into politics, running a successful business, having lots of employees and predictability, certainty, direction. It seems everything that we don't see right now, you know, with this current administration and not just mixed messages they're sending to the business community, but in many cases outright hostility. And frankly, you know, is the government going to say, we want to take over your business the way they have before and implemented, you know, those types of controls on certain businesses? And it just seems every day, you could wake up and Donald Trump could make a social media post about China one day and then the markets have a strong reaction and then the next day he says actually we're friends and it has

another reaction. You know, some people in that period of time are just getting completely wiped out as well though, you know, before he sends his next, you know, social media post. And I just wonder kind of your reaction, you know, wearing both your political hat and business hat at just what you're seeing every day here because these Republicans like to brand themselves as, you know, being, you know, oh, we're the ones who know about business. But like all of their actions to me seem as reckless as can be from business and political perspective. Yeah, and Ben, we've seen that from the beginning of the year. What business is love is certainty. If I'm going to go out and borrow some money or I'm going to convince, you know, some friend to invest money in my business, they need to know,

and I need to know that there's a future there, that the market will be there, that the regulations will be straightforward, that the terrorists aren't going to kill us. I saw an interesting thing this morning, the National Federation of Independent Business, all the small businesses across the country do a survey every month. And the number of people that responded was less than 8% of their memberships, the lowest ever. So what you're finding out is these businesses, they don't even know how to respond to a survey because they're so afraid and uncertain. appreciate you coming on congressman byer we'll keep on following you your work on committees your floor speeches and we hope you come back soon thank you ben very much good luck thanks for keeping

us informed absolutely congress member don buyer virginia's eighth congressional district everybody hit subscribe let's get to six million subscribers want to stay plugged in become a subscribers for our substack at midasplus dot com you'll get daily recaps from ron philipowski add free episodes of our podcasts and more exclusive content only available at midasplus.com.