The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Casar Responds to Trump Wrecking Economy

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s top economic advisor Scott Bessent continue to arrogantly mock American’s on TV appearances and Meiselas speaks with Democratic Congressman Greg Casar on what Democrats are doing to fight back against Trump and the oligarchy. 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

Donald Trump's uber-rich Treasury Secretary, who's worth about half a billion dollars, he's saying we're on a roll right now, America. Sure, there may be a recession looming, and sure, you may be suffering, but isn't it all great? Don't you all love the vision? I mean, let me just show you what the oligarchy looks like. I mean, this is his $22 million mansion. As he says, yeah, you could deal with a little bit of suffering. I think we have the dollhouse photo if we haven't.

No, no, that's actually Barbie's. This is the one he lives in, a $22 million mansion. And he's lecturing people. People don't want cheaper prices. That's not what people are looking for. It's not like Donald Trump promised he was going to lower prices on day one. Earlier in the morning, he was asked about the probability of a recession. Watch the arrogance as he answers this question. Let's play it. Story. The other day you were asked a question by another outlet. Can you guarantee that we're

not going to have a recession? And you wanted to address that this morning. Yeah, well, look, it was a silly question. Can you guarantee there's not going to be a recession? I can't guarantee anything. I can't guarantee that the journalist who asked me the question, that her news program is going to be on it. I recall someone campaigning saying, I guarantee you on day one I'm going to lower this. On day one there's going to be peace.

I guarantee you all of these things. And by the way, here Scott Beston says, We're on a roll right now. Don't you the momentum things are great huh here play it back right these tariffs uh no no no no is maria what's going to happen on april 2nd each country will receive a number that we believe it represents their tariffs so for some countries, it could be quite low. For some countries, it could be quite high. So there's not an automatic 25 plus 25 that's going to happen. And when the poll you just read, I think that that's a source of a lot of the consternation that's happening. And what we can see here in the administration is President Trump is on what is seemingly an unstoppable role since January 20th.

It would be funny if it wasn't so outrageous. Let me call in Democratic Congress member from Texas, Greg Cazard. Greg, so as I see it, all of the countries, they're going to get an envelope on April 2nd, which Trump calls Liberation Day, all of our allies and everyone abroad. And they open it up. Then they get a number of what they're going to be tariffed because Trump's on a roll. What do you make of all of this? Look, on a roll, what I know is that when the ultra rich and special interests were on a roll in the 1920s and they started controlling the government, they crashed the economy and caused the Great Depression. When the ultra rich and the big banks were controlling the government, they were, quote unquote, on a roll and caused the Great Recession in 2008.

And we've got to stop that. We can't let them do something like that again. And the only cure, the only solution to oligarchy is the actual power of working people. The only solution to want to be autocrats is more democracy. So we need more and more people to show up and speak out against Trump and Musk's abuses. And when people speak out, we start to recognize we actually still do live in a democracy where we can have a real check and balance on these billionaires. But it takes people being willing to organize and it takes elected officials of conscience being willing to stand up and fight.

You're joining Bernie Sanders, AOC and others on the Fight the Oligarchy tour, where you're going into red and purplish states and districts and speaking to working class folks, and probably a lot of people there who actually even voted for Trump. Look, you're someone who says, I'm unapologetically progressive. You think progressive ideas are going to be well received in these red and purple areas? That's actually what I've always found. I don't think that as progressives or as Democrats, that we have to throw any vulnerable people under the bus or have to give up our ideas of equality. We could actually say, look, we may disagree on some social issues here or there, but on the core economic issues. Think about who you would rather have on your side, a person that cares about raising your wages, cutting your taxes,

lowering costs, and taking on these big corporate oligarchs, or do you want the Elon Musks of the world on your side? And so I'm going on this fight oligarchy tour with Senator Sanders and with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez because we can expose what Elon Musk is doing to the everyday person. Look, here's how I put it to people. Elon Musk and Trump want to share all these lies about Doge, but you can quickly explain Doge with just two numbers. First, $8 million a day. $8 million a day is how much Elon Musk collects in federal government contracts. And the second number you need to know is $65 a day. That's how much money your average senior that's worked their entire life gets from social security. Elon Musk isn't looking to cut actual waste, fraud, and abuse

from big pharma or from big tech or from his own $8 million a day. He's looking to cut your parents $65 a day they get in social security. Elon Musk has called social security a Ponzi scheme and billions of dollars that he wants to quote unquote unquote, eliminate. If you take that message out to working people, folks seem less like they're on the left or on the right and more than it's people that believe that we should be protecting social security. We shouldn't be protecting Elon Musk's $8 million a day. You know, folks that have been working their entire life, they're not the parasites and the moochers. Elon Musk is the moochers. That's the guy that's collecting $8 million a day. And it's in a corrupt way, trying to gather even more money from the government for himself. No, I love having you on the program because you make it so simple.

And it's like, which person in the red state is voting to hand their Social Security over to Musk so Musk can make $8 million every single day off of his own government contracts? Who's voting to gut their Medicaid and destroy veterans to pay for Donald Trump's, what, every weekend now he does more vacations in Mar-a-Lago, he plays in his own golf tournaments. Did you see at Mar-a-Lago they were doing a Hermes, I think I'm saying it the right way, Birkin bag show where they were displaying $447,000 crock Birkin bags at Mar-a-Lago and they were just talking about how rich they are. If you're making it so simple, what's the disconnect?

What's going on? Why isn't that? And I appreciate you, AOC, Bernie Sanders, people like, in my view, Governor Beshear in Kentucky, someone, a blue governor in a red state. I mean, there are others, I could go on. But why is it hard for the message to be getting out when it think, you know, you can, another key two numbers are that over 80% of Republican voters oppose these enormous cuts to Medicaid, but over 100%, not over 100%, but I'll say that again, over 80% of Republican voters oppose these massive cuts to Medicaid, but 100% of Republican members of Congress are trying to cut Medicaid right now. That's the enormous disconnect. The enormous disconnect is that Republican officials aren't acting as Congress people representing their constituents.

They're acting like Trump-Musk employees. And that's the space that Democrats and activists really need to step into and go and tell folks that voted for Donald Trump that they were sold a lie and that they need to hear the real truth and be a part of a big tent that includes all different sorts of people. And when you ask the question of why aren't people getting the message, why aren't they hearing the message, is that, sure, Democrats I think do need to improve our policies and improve our messaging. But there's another big question that Democrats need to grapple with,

which is what if people aren't even hearing the words coming out of our mouth because we aren't being willing to pick a fight? What if we're not making politics interesting enough for people? We have to actually show people that we're willing to stand up and fight for them. We should be willing to name a villain, to say that Musk is corrupt, to say that Trump is breaking the law, to not just act as business as usual, because then are people even going to notice what we have to say? So I think Democrats have to recognize that we need to be willing to be confrontational and not do things business as usual. Otherwise, is anybody going to hear us? So I want to talk some about being part of the stand and fight wing of the Democratic Party, not the play dead part of the Democratic Party, because a corpse is not

very inspirational and many folks don't hear its message. We're going to be covering the Fight the Oligarchy tour. I've been covering all of Bernie Sanders' speeches. I cover the full speeches, even though corporate media gives it no attention. We give it attention. I assume people are going to tune in on the Midas Touch Network, watch your speech, watch AOC's speech, watch Bernie Sanders' speech. But if they're unable to make it, just talk to our audience. I mean, we do 350 million YouTube views every month here. We're beating Fox in the digital views, big audience here. So why should we be fighting the oligarchy? What's your message that you're bringing on tour in case our viewers aren't able to catch you when you're in Denver and Vegas and

some of the other places you're going to? Yeah. What I want people at home to know is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk want you to feel powerless in this moment. Because if you decide there's just nothing we can do, this is just too much of a lost cause, then they win and they get to control everything. And so it was people like you that after the ultra rich took over the economy in the 1920s, people like just like you watching at home, organized, elected FDR, the president Voting Rights Act, won the Civil Rights Act, but actually at the same time, that same term under a Texas president, we won the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and Head Start. So many of these things we're trying to create. So right now in this moment of real despair, we cannot just give up. And I think it's an actual moment for us to say, look, this fight against oligarchy, which we've been fighting as a country since the inception of the country.

This is an exceptional moment because the billionaires aren't trying to run the government behind a curtain hiding anymore. They're bragging about it in public. They're playing golf at Mar-a-Lago. They are doing the corruption when the lights and cameras are on and when they're off. So this is a real time to expose that corruption and build the kind of movement, not just to stop Trump and Musk's abuses, but to win a big enough majority to make things really better in the country and start turning things around. We'll be following the Fight the Oligarchy tour. Thank you for fighting, speaking truth to power, power to the people. We appreciate everything you do, Congressmember Kassar.

Thanks so much for having me on. Everybody hit subscribe and let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.