The MeidasTouch Podcast - Republican Strategist Mike Madrid EXPOSES the Right’s Disinformation Machine

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we sit down with Mike Madrid! Madrid is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project and a longtime Republican strategist. Most recently, Mike visited Ukraine to help provide Ukrainians with insight as to how they can use Lincoln Project-style videos and tactics to combat Russian disinformation and propaganda. Our conversation around digital & new media warfare is one of the most important discussions we have ever had on this show. The remainder of the show, we cover the Uvalde school massacre and the reaction, the RNC siding with Dr. OZ trying to stop the counting of votes in PA, bombshell reports of Trump supporting the hanging of Mike Pence and Trump’s big primary losses. If you enjoyed today’s episode please be sure to rate, review and subscribe! As always, thank YOU for listening! Get Meidas Merch today at store.meidastouch.com Check out the Daily Beans Podcast: https://www.dailybeanspod.com/ Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hot Honey McCrispy is so back at McDonald's! With juicy 100% Canadian-raised seasoned chicken, shredded lettuce, crispy jalapenos, and that completely craveable hot honey sauce, it's a sweet heat repeat you don't want to miss. Get your Hot Honey McCrispy today. Available for a limited time only at McDonald's. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue?

A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Discover the magic of BetMGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer.

From roulette to blackjack, watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them throughout your experience to feel like you're actually at the casino. The excitement doesn't stop there. With over 3,000 games to choose from, including fan favorites like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz, and more. Make deposits instantly to jump in on the fun and make same-day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions.

19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.

The Uvalde BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. the recount in Pennsylvania. There are reports emerging now as we start to head towards the January 6th committee hearings that Donald Trump was actively supporting the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence. We will discuss Trump's big losses in the primary candidates that he was supporting, particularly in Georgia. And we've got none other than Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and longtime Republican strategist here on the Mid disinformation campaigns that are out there by the right-wing fascists here and abroad. This is the Midas Touch podcast. Brett and Jordi on this very difficult day to record. I mean, I got out of bed this morning and as I scroll through my social media feeds, by the way, a very bad habit to have when you first wake up in the morning. Everyone tells you don't do that first. Same habit here. And it's very destructive to my mental health. So I'm right there with you. Everyone says, start your day off with

a glass of water, a workout before you even turn on that phone. But guilty as charged, I looked at the social media and it was, again, just so devastating as more and more facts emerge about the Evaldi school massacre. Innocent children slaughtered at the hands of a terrorist murderer holding an AR-15 on the heels of another massacre last week in Buffalo. And it just seems like every week passes with another mass shooting. But particularly what happened in Buffalo, happened in the school is just so hard to even fathom. Yeah. I mean, there have been now at least 212 mass shootings in 2022. That is more days than there have been in 2022. There is a real sickness in our country. And the sickness is guns.

It's not anything else. And I wish that we could sit here today and we could say even about Uvalde, Texas, that we could say, everybody, this is what happened. These are the facts. This is what went wrong. But we're simply unable to give you all the facts because something smells right now, something reeks. And we are not getting all the information from Texas, from government officials, from the Texas police departments about what truly happened on that day of the massacre. We are getting lies. We are getting stories that

are constantly changing, and we don't really know what the hell happened. What we do know is 19 children, 19 innocent children were gunned down in cold blood in an elementary school by an 18-year-old shooter. We know that he used an AR-15 that he had purchased two AR-15s legally, apparently on his 18th birthday. Two teachers were shot as well. And to add insult to these deaths, not only have they been killed, but one of the husbands of one of the teachers passed away of a heart attack today, just literally dying of heartbreak in the wake of these events. And I think it's important to note that these events are not singular events, that there is a butterfly effect. There is a ripple that these events cause,

and it is a generational trauma that is lasting. It is something that will affect our country. It is something that will affect the families. It is something that will affect the families of everybody involved. Think about all the future children, the futures of these kids, that they could have grown up, what they could have achieved, what they could have accomplished. We have a party right now who considers themselves to be pro-life, and they simply don't give a damn when innocent children are gunned down in elementary schools. And they try to use every excuse in the book except guns to talk about the problem. They talk about doors. You have Ted Cruz saying, oh, if only there were no open doors,

if only all the doors were locked, if only we had police at every single door, all these unfeasible solutions that will actually make things more dangerous. If we actually locked all the kids inside the school, even think about if there was a fire, if you locked all the kids in the school, having officers at every door, every single thing possible, except for guns is the excuses that they use. And let me just say, every single country deals with the same issues that we deal with. Every single country has mental health problems. Every single country has social media. Every single country has the same movies that we have, the same music that we have, the same video games that we have. Yet we are the only country in the

world that has to deal with this, not even on a daily basis, but multiple times a day. And it's sick. It's sick. It's sick. It's sick. And it's because our politicians, the Republican politicians are in the pockets of the NRA, and they would rather take a dollar rather than care for the lives of you and your kids. And they will lie and lie and lie about it every step of the way. And it is craven and it is cynical and it is disgusting. And there's blood on their hands. And I'm frankly sick of it. I'm sick of it. It's disgusting. You're right, Brad. I mean, there's an entire political party, the Republicans, who claim to be pro-life and they're not pro-life, they're pro-force birth

because they don't give two shits about you once you exit the womb. Once you're alive, they don't care. They don't want to make your life easier. They don't want two shits about you once you exit the womb. Once you're alive, they don't care. They don't want to make your life easier. They don't want to make your life safer. They don't care. And it leads to events that happened on Tuesday. They even lie within the lies, the Republicans. So when they try to pivot away from what's really happening here, which is unfettered access to assault weapons like the AR-15, they go, well, this is really a mental health issue.

So let's dive into the mental health issues. And this is one of the things that Texas Governor Abbott said that this was a mental health problem. The state needed to do a better job with mental health. Yet he was the one in April who slashed $211 million from the department that oversees mental health programs in Texas. And that is a consistent strain that we see with Republican governors and Republican leaders. So let's assume for the sake of argument that there is a mental health crisis, which I will accept that that absolutely does exist. Well, then we need to treat that. But allowing people with going through mental health crisis with unfettered access to AR-15s presents a extra enhanced risk. And that's what's taking place here. Because one of the facts that we do know is that this

individual's buying patterns of how he was buying the ammunition and buying the guns. If we just had some common sense way of analyzing people's purchasing behaviors, you would have seen red flags just based on the quantity, the individual, the location, you could have figured it out the same way, like in banking. If you make a deposit of over $10,000, right, it raises a red flag somewhere and someone goes, oh, maybe we need to check just to make sure that that's a legitimate transaction. And we don't have any of that when it comes to assault weapons. talk more about this on Legal AF this weekend, but one of the things as we get into these discussions that always, to me, shows both the legal and political failings in a nutshell in the United States is when you pull up the Second Amendment and you read the Second Amendment, which I don't think any of the individuals who support unfettered access to assault weapons ever read the Second Amendment or read its history, but the amendment's actually a fairly

clearly worded amendment. And it actually is the only place in the constitution really that like directly uses the word regulation as it relates to kind of a specific item. Like that doesn't really exist anywhere else. So it says a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state. I'm just going to really read the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. But even there, it doesn't say it's an unlimited, even if you deleted the first piece, it doesn't say unlimited. It doesn't say unfettered. It doesn't say anything how we would traditionally view constitutional amendments. And so that's the basis for people saying that people like this sick killer in the school shooting should have assault weapons. And then when you have the fallout, as Brett referenced, you have Ted Cruz blaming Doors. I think on Fox News, they had guest after

guest who literally blamed everything other than assault weapons. I think on Fox News they had guest after guest who literally blamed everything other than assault weapons. I think there was like 50 other things. Yeah, it's 50 excuses. I advocate always for an armed security guard. Armed school safety officer. Armed deputy. Arming teachers. Potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators. Armed school staffers. Bring in policemen. Training the students themselves. Retired military, retired law enforcement.

We can offer them tax breaks. If you give law enforcement the opportunity to impose martial law, we can guarantee safety. And then you play this clip right of Beto O'Rourke, who confronted, I think, in a respectful way. Although in this situation, when the leaders are killing children, like Greg Abbott and his band of terrorists out there, how could you even do it in such a respectful way without losing your cool? But Beto did.

And then Brett played the clip of Beto and the response from the Republican leadership on the stage. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Sit down. You're out of you're out of line and an embarrassment. Sit down and don't play this. Shooting is right now and you are doing nothing. No, you need son of a bitch that would come to a deal like this to make a political issue. The individual who yelled, you sick son of a bitch, is actually the Evaldi mayor, Don McLaughlin, who made that comment. And how you respond.

I mean, when I watch that, I was so disgusted. You sick son of a bitch. That's that's what they said. That's what they said. That's what they said at Beto. Who talks like that? These people on the stage looked like lawless terrorists up there, and they were blaming everything. I mean, what did Greg Abbott say? Greg Abbott's response is, well, it could have been worse. It could have been worse. That's actually what his response was. It could have been worse. on anything except guns, trying to just give their thoughts and prayers without backing it up with any action. And you have Beto O'Rourke, who's actually the one person in that room who is

offering solutions, who is saying, if you really care about these kids, do something about it. Do something. Do anything. Do something. But they don't want to do anything. And what you see up there, it's when you hear the phrase like the good old boys club, that is what that is up there. And they all protect each other. They all protect each other at all costs and they will lie. They will cheat. They will steal. They will do anything to hide the true information from the public in order to spread their propaganda and to keep power in Texas. That's what we saw up there. And it is shocking to actually see that mask be lifted in that sort of way, especially after this tragedy. You pull up this chart on the number of mass shootings in developed countries from 1998 to

2019. It doesn't even go through 2022, this chart, Brett. And United States has 101. And then the next highest country is France with eight, Germany with five, Canada with four, Finland with three, Belgium with two, Czech Republic with two, Italy with two, Netherlands two, Switzerland two, Australia one, and you go down, United Kingdom's one. And I mean, the United States numbers got to be significantly, significantly higher than this, than this number from 2019. But the point being, this is completely unprecedented in the world to Brett's point. This, this is not a normal situation. I mean, think about it. Would you go, if you were from another country, would you go to the United States and, and, and, and what do you drive past the school and you drive past the supermarket?

I mean, honestly, the way we viewed like some of these States that we would like label the access of evil back in the day, you know, and you'd go, Oh, you can't go to those countries. To some extent when there's lawlessness in the United States and there's mass shootings taking place all around, don't you think like another foreign country, like they look at this and they go, how can I, I could go there. These people, what's, what in the world is, is going on here.

And the solution is staring us in the face. And it is really just the most like the there's nobody I'm not against the second amendment. I believe strongly that people should be able to actually go hunting. And if you're at a gun range, you can use guns at a gun range. I believe in a well-regulated Second Amendment, like literally what the words of the Second Amendment actually say. I'm not trying to take anyone's guns away, but the very point of these assault weapons is to massacre people. I want to say that again. The point of the assault weapon is not to go hunting. It is literally a tool to massacre people and to massacre people who also themselves

may be armed with a handgun. So that is the essence of the tool, a killing tool of people. So why would you want the killing tool of the people to be unregulated? So to go back to the example, if you want to blame it on even mental health, so people with mental health issues can pick up these guns at will? That's a logical argument to these Republicans. So we need to, as Democrats, we need to be, again, putting for a vote constantly common sense gun regulation. The issue is that there, as you said, Brett, the Republicans are going to block it at every single turn. But we need universal background checks and we need common sense tools. And look, the Supreme Court will talk about this more in

Legal AF as well before we go into our next topic. The Supreme Court is further and further eroding any of the state rules and laws to try to regulate weapons. And, you know, you see a lot of the argument being made, well, Chicago has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, and we see lots of killings there. Well, number one, the numbers are always misrepresented in those, when people try to make that argument. But number two, the weapons that are going into Chicago are coming from the Republican states that provide unfettered access and sales to the firearms. They're not actually coming from Chicago. They're coming from the other states. So we'll follow up more on that illegal AF. And speaking of other states, I do want to talk about the Pennsylvania Senate primary,

what's going on there. On the Democratic side, it's a fairly normal process. Jordy, you're from Pennsylvania, so maybe you want to tell us there. On the Democratic side, it's like a normal election. Normal election. We have really normal candidates, like really top-notch quality, amazing candidates, whether it be Josh Shapiro for governor or John Fetterman for Senate. I mean, we couldn't ask for better candidates going into these midterms. Fetterman won. Fetterman, the candidates that lost congratulated him. Perfect. See you later. Perfect. We move on. See you again in two years.

But the Republicans are now in a complete state of disarray and internal civil war where you have David McCormick, whose wife worked for Trump, who did not get the endorsement of Trump. That still just is so crazy to me that even though his wife had worked for Trump, Trump decided not to back McCormick and instead backed Oz. I mean, that really stands out to me. When you know Trump's personality and he's a TV guy and the fake Republican, too. And, you know, and that struck a nice chord with with Trump. But anyway, it was going down to a recount and Oz and the Trump view is, hey, we don't stop the counting.

You know, if there's any way to stop votes from being counted, we don't stop the counting. If there's any way to stop votes from being counted, we don't believe in mail-in votes. And let's find every way to attack the mail, the votes that are coming in by mail. That's the typical Trump line. And McCormick is basically saying what Republicans used to say, which is count the mail votes. The ultimate irony about the whole mail vote dispute is that it was always the Republicans who wanted mail in votes because it was always older voters who would vote by mail who couldn't attend the day of. So Republicans were the ones who supported this until Donald Trump changed the whole concept and made the Republicans change their sides completely. And so now you have David McCormick filing lawsuits to count the votes. You have the Trump Act ultra MAGA GOP saying, don't count the votes.

Stop the count. And we'll ultimately we'll ultimately see a complete disarray here. The Republican Party is in complete disarray here in Pennsylvania. I haven't seen no articles, nothing, no coverage on this. This has been just completely washed over for the most part. Instead, the media will go after the Democrats and say the Democrats are in disarray. Democrats are not in any disarray. I mean, the Democrats are organized. They're trying to come up with solutions. They keep putting things up for votes in the House that are being voted on.

They're then being blocked by Republicans and being voted against. That's what the Democrats are doing. And Brett, talk to us about Georgia quickly, if you can. Yeah. I mean, the Trump candidates in Georgia just got completely just destroyed. I was going to say, do you know what I was going to say, Jordy? I was going to say whomped. Oh, which I have no idea. It's actually what's what's the what was the show on Nickelodeon that whomped us from? I don't think it was recess. It was the surfing or the skating one. Rocket Power. Rocket Power. It was total Rocket Power. Womps is recess. Is it? Okay. Maybe it was just the big thing in the 90s getting Womps. But let me say, Trump candidates, aside from Herschel Walker, who was already the clear favorite, all got Wped in Georgia. I mean, we had Kemp decimating David

Perdue, 74 to 22, 74 to 22, nearly 50 points of a difference there. David Perdue, when he saw the polls that predicted him losing by about 30, David Perdue said, I'm not going to lose by 30. Hell no. Well, I guess he was right because he lost by 50. Raffensperger held on for secretary of state. He is going to win Raffensperger, of course, Trump's mortal enemy because he wanted a free and fair election to continue. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of course, won in her district. No surprise there. But it really shows that Trump really doesn't have a real influence on how people vote in this party. They are going to use him. They're going to spit him out. They're going to do what

they want at the end of the day. But they will still take his Trumpist anti-democratic policies ahead with them. And I think, you know, when we speak about Republicans, we talk about them trying to inflict as much pain as possible onto the American people and then to blame Biden and the Democrats for that pain. And I saw Liz Smith, a Democratic strategist, sum up this strategy so perfectly that I actually pulled her quote aside. And I thought I'd read it on the show today because you could apply this to everything the Republicans do. And this is important messaging that I think we all need to be focused on. And I'll read it here. I have it up. She said, we need to be screaming from the rooftops about what the Republicans in Congress are doing.

They voted against the American Rescue Plan and took credit for the checks that went to American households. They voted against infrastructure and took credit for the projects in their districts, mostly voted against capping the price of insulin, voted against stopping oil companies from price gouging, mostly voted against a bill that would include importing baby formula. Why? Because they want to impose as much misery as possible on the American people and blame Biden so that people vote Republican in November. It's really cynical, dark stuff. And then when they win, they want to criminalize abortion and ensure that we never have free and fair elections again. And that is the Republican policy, whether it be guns, whether it be infrastructure, whether it be healthcare, they want to inflict as much pain as possible on the

American people and then turn around and say, look what the Democrats have done. How are you feeling? Do you think America's heading in the right direction? Whenever we hear that question, I think we also need to think, what are people actually saying when they say, no, we don't think America is heading in the right direction? Because I would answer that question. No, do. But my answer isn't because of President Biden and the Democrats. It's because of these right wingers that want to take us into the dark ages, are criminalizing abortion, are taking away our freedoms and our rights. And this is all a part of a Republican war on information, which is how we started the show. It's disinformation warfare. They want to flood the zone with fake news. They want to flood the zone with lies, lies about the second amendment,

lies about abortion, lies about inflation, lies about gas prices, lies about everything that Democrats are doing. And that's why it's so important that we have a robust response to their lies. And that's why that Beto O'Rourke moment was so important, because for too long, we've seen Republicans try to pull these stunts and get all the news coverage, and then they put Democrats on defense. But for that one moment, when Beto O'Rourke interrupted that speech, guess what? The microphones were put back on Ted Cruz to answer that question. The microphones were put back on Greg Abbott to answer those questions because Beto O'Rourke owned the conversation. And that's what all Democrats need to be doing. We need to be owning this information war. We need to be owning the conversation. And that's

why I am super excited now to speak to Mike Madrid. Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project. He actually went to Ukraine to teach them Lincoln Project style techniques to combat Russian disinformation in the war. Not only that, he also went to learn some things from the Ukrainian people who have been absolutely crushing it when it comes to this information war. We on this show have talked about in depth how impressed we are by their skills to own the social media landscape and shape public opinion and fight back against all these pooted lies about Nazis in Ukraine and all the like. All these lies that we're seeing in America about the Second Amendment, all these lies that we're seeing here from Fox News, from OAN, from the Breitbarts, from the Infowars, from all that

stuff. And so we need to fight back like Beto fought back. Excited to talk to Mike Madrid and get some advice on how we build a comprehensive media platform in order to push back against the lies and the disinfo. Any words before we go to Mike, Ben? Yeah, before you go back to Mike Madrid, I just want to quickly tell people the story about Donald Trump wanting to hang Mike Pence. Here's the story. Donald Trump wanted to hang Mike Pence. That's the story that the reports are that when everyone was saying hang Mike Pence, Donald Trump before that, Brett, I did go and look up the story of Womps. I don't know your Womps reference, but I was correct. Season two, episode 19 of Recess, the show that was a Disney show. Principal Prickly declares TJ's trademark dirty word substitute Womps as a dirty word. And Principal Prickly tries to punish

any kids who say it. So actually- No, 90s cartoons were outrageous. So I think- Hold on, hold on. The character's name was Principal Prickly. 90s cartoons had no chill. Well, it's clearly a 90s or early 2000s thing. Rocket Power was in 2002 from this episode. I'm reading a description. This gives the Rocket Kids free reign to provoke Lars without fear of being whomped. So whomped, I guess, is a phrase used in both. Whomped there, I think, was a phrase about them either being crushed by waves when they were surfing or falling off their skateboards or whatever kind of activities they were doing. But Donald Trump got whomped at the end of the day. And we hope he gets whomped in these January 6th hearings that come up, which by the way, we are planning on streaming live

on Midas Touch. More information on that to come. Without further ado. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before without further ado, the season two, episode 19 of Recess, which I just talked about, was September 12th of 1998. So precedent would favor me if we lived in a country where our Supreme Court cared about precedent anymore. Let's go and bring in Mike Madrid into this interview. A great interview with Mike Madrid. Let's play it. We are joined by Mike Madrid. You all know him as the co-founder of the Lincoln Project and longtime Republican strategist. Mike recently visited Ukraine to help Ukrainians with insight into how they can create Lincoln Project style videos and tactics to combat Russian disinformation and propaganda. Basically, how do we take down dictators and promote democracy? Mike Madrid, big fan of all the work you do and glad to call you a friend.

Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, guys. We were talking right before this intro here. It's great to talk to the Midas boys a little bit here and finally feel like I've made something of my life. My mother would be very proud. I'm proud of what you guys have built here. It's just amazing. We'll be talking a little bit about kind of moving information in the digital age and you guys are right at the tip of the spear and what you're doing and just galvanizing people. And it's just great. It's awesome to be with you. Great to talk to you guys in person, as it were, finally. Well, great having you here. The feeling's mutual. I feel like we've known each other

our whole lives because the last two years have felt like a lifetime compacted into two years. And I feel like I've aged significantly in the past two years, but I want to get into it because one of the things that have happened in the past two years, you know, one is all of the Russian aggression and disinfo promoted by the former guy in Trump emboldening Russia to take the action that they did, the unlawful invasion, almost feeling that they were invincible based on the coddling that they were given by Trump. And they met fierce resistance in Ukraine. And so you've just been out there helping the Ukrainian people, the government. Tell us a little bit about that trip, why you were out there and what you learned. It's really important, I think, for your listeners and followers to understand that this war in Ukraine, even though it started in 2014 when the Russians invaded

Crimea and expanded significantly in February, this war is truly a global conflict. And it's been going for the better part of 15 years. And the attacks on our democracy, and most of your listeners know all of these, but it's far deeper and far broader than I think most people understand. is emanates essentially from Russia. The tactics that are used in our own kind of right-wing media ecosystem are almost identical to what is happening with the Russian people themselves and what they're trying to export to different parts of the free world. And what we recognized in kind of working with groups like yours to bring Donald Trump down, was that the only thing that really beats authoritarian regimes and authoritarian misinformation campaigns is activist networks. We have to use our own networks to push back because they're a lot more flexible, they're a lot more versatile, and they're a hell of a lot more effective.

And the reason Ron and I went to Ukraine was to first learn from what they're a hell of a lot more effective. And the reason Ron and I went to Ukraine was to first learn from what they're doing, because Ukrainians and what they're doing with analytic work and digital information warfare, essentially hybrid warfare, is really amazing. These are extraordinarily advanced operatives. We went also to kind of offer our advice, share some of our successes, but most importantly, to come back outside of Ukraine after about a 10-day run and work to kind of expand the reach of democracy activists worldwide. And obviously, you guys are at the tip of the spear on that as well. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you guys very closely about how to build a more global network in the coming weeks, months, and days. democracy activists can inspire are far more flexible than the rigid top down authoritarianism from people like Putin. So when Putin puts out that piece of information that this is about

denazification, which is such an absurd big lie, it's reminiscent to go back to the point you said of the tactics used by the ultra MAGA authoritarian Trumpists where the lie is so absurd, but with the activist networks, Lincoln project can hit and we could hit, you start learning. Well, wait a minute. That is so absurd. And it could be debunked though, if you're nimble and you have lightning speed responses. So is that what you're nimble and you have lightning speed responses. So is that what you're talking about there? 100% right. And so take what you guys have done and what you have built, what the Lincoln Project was

involved with. Of course, we were doing a lot of communicating, too, and amplifying each other's voices and messages, recognizing that we needed to work together along with other people and other groups. And what we understood very quickly was the authoritarians, Putin specifically, have spent the past 10 or 15 years exploiting the weaknesses of free societies. And the way they've done that is they've recognized that, first of all, being free, we accept a heck of a lot of speech that isn't accepted anywhere else. And so they've manipulated that, right? They started all these lying campaigns.

There's huge amounts of money that we know have moved through the NRA to advocate for its issues from Russia directly. We know that the anti-vaccine movement in large part was funded by the Russians. We know that a lot of the racial strife and stuff that we see on a lot of these platforms are funded by Russia with the main intent of creating division and making sure that we are at war with each other and making sure that democracy comes to a grinding halt and we can't come to a governing consensus. That is the point. That is the groundwork that Putin was laying before he started rolling tanks into Ukraine and for his continued effort to build Russian empire. This is all part of a long-term goal to do that. What we recognized is that democracies have not played a really good role

in offensive strategies against authoritarian regimes. We've relied on our own state agencies to do that, as is appropriate, kind of in the Cold War. You had the CIA, or we would drop in pamphlets in World War II behind enemy lines to kind of communicate a message, Radio Free Europe. We're in a different world now, where groups like Midas Touch, Lincoln Project, all of these groups can actually organize their

constituencies. Ukraine has done an amazing job with thousands and thousands of Ukrainians around the world who are activated to take action against these state actors, against companies doing the wrong things. Germany was very slow, as you remember, to get involved in helping out Ukraine. Thousands of activists around the world started pushing the German states to say, where are you at? Get involved, help NATO out, help out Ukraine. That's the type of activism that we're talking about. So in the digital age, the conflicts are not going to be as bilateral as they have been. This is not the Cold War anymore. And activists and networks are replacing states and countries as a way of engaging in information warfare. It's a strong term,

but that's what it is. And the line between political campaigns and political advocacy and state warfare are beginning to converge. That's what the Russian story tells us in our country is the investment that Putin made in destabilizing our own country was far cheaper and far more effective than what he is doing with tanks and soldiers and missiles in Ukraine. So if we think he's not going to continue that and step it up, we're fooling ourselves. And the only way to combat that effectively is by having a network like you all have built, like other groups have built and expand that globally to fight back. Is there anything that particularly surprised you when you were there that really stood out? And I know there's

perhaps some things that you can share and have to keep confidential because of the interactions with the government there, but anything particularly surprised you and stand out and you had a aha or a holy shit moment out there? Yeah. Yeah. Great question. There were a lot of them. And again, I can be a little bit verbose, so I'm not going to spend too much time on all of them. But let me tell you the main thing that jumped out at me. The first is the analytic and data work, which is what I was doing for the Lincoln Project. It's what I do in my career as a political consultant, the targeting, the profiling voters to find those persuadable voters, match that on how to actually win the campaign. The work that the Ukrainians are doing is, I would say, 30, 40 years ahead of what we're doing in the United States. These are extremely advanced data and analytic experts. They

understand the practice of public opinion and how to move it. And they actually taught us quite a bit, I think, again, on how to build it structurally and from the data and research side of what's going on. I will also tell you a couple really kind of really some more grassroots techniques that were being used, which were kind of fun and fascinating. You know, Facebook has gone down in Russia, as has Instagram and Twitter, but a lot of the dating apps have not. So what they were doing was they were actually hiring. These are grassroots activists in California, actually. These were some of the first Ukrainians we met engaged in this effort.

They would actually hire Ukrainian models, women largely, but men too. And they would start engaging with Russians in Russia and swipe and write and connecting with as many people as they could and start building relationships and sneaking in there, and obviously a very receptive audience one-on-one. And while it's not a great way to move public opinion, I thought it was just, when I first heard these discussions, I was like, these are people I got to get to know better. I mean, this is like really guerrilla political tactics. And so we met with a number of researchers in Lviv, the westernmost city, largest westernmost city, who have done a ton of research on Russian disinformation and communicating to Russians on their own social networks. And what we also learned was while you hear a lot about 80%, 90% support for Putin, you can't really poll very well in Russia because you don't want to be answering anything non-Putin on the

phone to a pollster because soldiers will show up at your door. So what they have done is very advanced analytics on a series of other non-related questions that give us a profile of people who are probably not supportive of the regime and can be communicated to through other means in order to build opposition behind the Russian curtain, if you will. Do you think the media has missed the mark on the effectiveness and importance of these digital campaigns? To me, when you look at the impact of a group like the Lincoln Project, of Midas Touch, and the work that the Ukrainians are doing, the stuff that they were pumping out on social media is incredibly impressive and really swayed public opinion. To me, it's undeniable.

Brett, it's a great question. I would say not only is it undeniable, but it's also quantifiable, especially with the work that folks like yourself and us at the Lincoln Project were doing in 2020. You can show the math. You can see actually which voter groups were moving, who we were talking to, and quantify how we won those races. The question as to whether the media gets it or not or isn't reporting it right, what I will say is this, I'm not too sure they understand it because their medium is so different that they really aren't, you know, we are still very much as consumers, believers in this kind of pre-internet age. And people really don't understand, I think, the power of what networks do. The networks of activism are really going to be the future. And this war, as I'm mentioning, is a war of values. It's tanks and

missiles and bombs right now in Ukraine, in the Donbass region. But in the United States, we are very much engaged in a war, and that war is going to be fought with the allies, activists, and networks that people like you all are putting together. The goal is to try to expand it because what we're recognizing that as a threat to democracy anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere. And so the United States, I mean, let's be honest about it. We're struggling, right, in keeping and maintaining our own democracy here and protecting our own constitutional rights. We're going to need to have strong allies in Western Europe. We're going to need to have strong allies in Ukraine and in Southeast Asia to protect us as much as they seek us to protect them. We're going to need to rely on folks helping us in the coming currency wars, information wars, and fights between states. Mike, Newsweek just

did a great piece on your trip to Ukraine. It's called Ukraine May Use Lincoln Project's Anti-Trump Tactics Against Putin. Highly recommend that all of our listeners and viewers take a look. My face lit up when I read something that you said, because it aligned so perfectly with something that we've been pushing here at Midas Touch. And it's that when you want to take down dictators, it's important that you lampoon dictators and not hoist them up as strongmen. This is something that we've talked about a lot here, but I would love to get your philosophy and really have our listeners understand why that's so important and why we're approaching it wrong. I think this is a really important point, and it's something that you guys have done to really extraordinarily good effect.

The problem with making dictators strong men and buying into that concept is you start to introduce fear into activists, which can be paralyzing. That is the whole goal of the dictator. That's what Trump was trying to do was for four years, we were all really scared. And the country is frightened by what is going to happen every day when this guy would get on Twitter. And I think it's why groups like you might as touch and Lincoln Project really blew up. And it was because for the first time, people were saying, don't be afraid of this bully, punch him back, hit him in the nose, right? And we would clown the guy and we would humiliate the guy and we would make fun of the guy and he

would respond to it, right? And when you start to take fear out of it and you start to make these people clownish figures, you start to have people get more hopeful and more activated and they feel that the fight is winnable. So it's extremely important to remember that most dictators have very thin levels of support in their own constituencies and in their own home countries. Donald Trump was never getting high levels of support, right? It's why they have to attack institutions. It's why they undermine elections. It's why they lie. It's why they attack the media. It's why they use hatred. It's why they lie. It's why they attack the media. It's why they use hatred. It's because these ideologies are never going to enjoy 50% more support. We have to always remember, always remember that there are more of us than there

are of them. And if more of us engage, we're going to win the way we always have. The best tool that they have is fear. And the best way to dispel fear is by making a joke out of them. And what you also find out, kind of like Putin, right? This big strong man and everyone's afraid of Russia and nuclear threat. And this guy is going to do all this stuff. Look at his army. His army is basically a paper tiger. You've got the Ukrainians outnumbered five to one when evenly matched with with firepower they're taking the the damn red army out right the supposed second best second largest army in the world or third or whatever it is now is you know it's like the cinderella team losing in the in the ncaa you know tournament right in the first round these guys just got knocked down that's what that's what we need to be doing is showing that there's nothing to be afraid of.

There's nothing to fear but fear itself, right? And that's why, again, groups and leaders like you guys leading that. And I want to thank you. It takes a lot of courage. You guys get the hate mail. You guys get the threats. We sure do. You guys get the attacks.

We're all designed to intimidate you and intimidate us. And a lot of these attacks are very real. And you know that. And we don't need to go into those stories and engaging law enforcement and what they've done to our families and your families. It's not easy. But what happens is the more strength we show, it's easier for people to follow. And the chorus just gets louder and louder and louder.

And it becomes easier for the next person to join. And that's where we start to see change. And I think that that's why people like us need to be resilient and committed to this fight. It's important. It matters. And I think that resilience and that ability to lampoon and mock dictators was essential to the Lincoln Project strategy.

And I urge everybody listening to take that advice going forward as we face other threats to our democracy with people like even like a Ron DeSantis or something. Don't make any of these people out to be these insurmountable kind of evil dictator figures. Instead, lampoon them, mock them and tear them down. That's what they really hate the most. I want to move now to some more domestic policy issues, domestic political strategy, because you, Mike, are an expert on political strategy within the Latino community. And Democrats have been slipping with their support of the Latino community in recent years. What is going on there? Is there any way to put Democrats back on track?

Yeah, there certainly is. But first is, you know, it's kind of recognizing and believing that it's a problem is the first thing. And that's kind of the struggle I have with a lot of my friends in the Democratic Party and a lot of operatives talk to a lot of Latino operatives in the Democratic Party just saying, hey, here's my bit of advice. Here's what I've been doing for 30 years that was effective. Here's the best thing that they can do. Here's how you should counter that and work on that. And then, you know, they offer ideas. And it's, look, I view myself much more as an advocate of the Latino community than I do of any particular ideology. I just want to see our country, our people, a pluralistic society work well. Brett, is I'm not convinced right now that the Democratic leadership and the party really understand how significant this situation is. And I understand, again, having worked in Republican politics, the tendency for leaders to pretend like this isn't happening or to kind of paper over it and act like it's not happening. This is the most significant shift that we've seen

probably since the mid-1990s, and it's going to continue. Fundamentally, what it comes down to is this. Latinos are essentially the fastest growing segment of the blue-collar, non-college-educated workforce. And when you view it that way, you start to understand it's not about they're Catholic and they're pro-life. Yes, there's some of that, but that's not new. That's not new. It's not that they're more socially conservative or you can't talk about these issues or I get asked all the time, how can your people vote for somebody who wants to put put kids in cages or build a border wall, right? It's a human thing. It's not an ethnic or racial thing. So I really do believe that what has to happen is for the Democratic Party to become a sustainable majority party is it needs to become the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt again. It has to become the party of the working class.

And that takes people back, especially Democrats, like, well, how dare you? We do everything for the working class. Don't take Mike Madrid's word for it. Okay. Look at the, look at the working class voting patterns. Look which blue-collar folks work in. And that can be reconciled. It can be rectified. But it's going to have to be addressed as a policy problem and not just a small tactical problem by saying, well, we just invest more money earlier in these communities. Yes, you should do that. That's not going to solve the size and scope of the problem. Yeah. And it also goes back to what we've been speaking about, whether it was Ukraine or whether it was with Trump, it's that information warfare and you need to stay on the offensive and information warfare. And Republicans to their credit have been very effective with this, especially with the label of socialism, socialism, socialism, which they pump in using Spanish radio, TV.

They are getting this message to the right people. But why is that label resonating when arguably Republicans have devolved into a actual fascist party that much more resembles the authoritarian regimes that these people actually left their countries to get away from? Yeah, it's a fantastic question. What I will say is this, the importance of the right-wing media structure, and this is what we went to Ukraine really to kind of learn a lot more about, is absolutely critical. Once you get somebody into your bubble, you can tell them anything as long as you're telling it to them over and over and over and over again, right? That's why the big lie worked. You guys, we're in a lot of communication in the 72 hours after the election, right? When Donald Trump lost and 80% of Republicans

said, okay, the election's over. Our guy lost. let's move forward. He then starts into the big lie messaging, right? It becomes clear that he's lost and he's not going to concede. So once they ramp it up and start, within a week, within a week of them changing, that 80% support level of Republicans having confidence in the election erodes down to 40% that fast. So it's not really what is being communicated after a while. It's as long as you have the infrastructure and the capacity and the media bubble with people inside of it, you can convince them of anything as long as you are saying it over and over and over again. That's not a Republican Democrat thing. What we learned in Ukraine, what we have seen from the

Russians, what we've learned from 1930s Germany, what we've learned from history is that that type of an echo chamber is extraordinarily dangerous, and it alone is a threat to democracy. Because if you don't have competing ideas, what you've done is essentially inculcated people into believing whatever it is that the quote unquote leader wants you to believe. It's so spot on, Mike. I ask this question to a lot of folks who come on, but I'm really interested now in hearing your opinion on this one.

Who in the Republican party has disappointed you the most? Someone about 10 years ago, you're like, oh, this guy's coming in with some great energy. I think he's going to turn around the party. And now you look at them and you're like, or her. And now you look at them and you're just like, what was I thinking? How long do we have on the show? As long as he needs, as long as it takes. Look, I'm going to answer it a little bit differently. And then I'm gonna get your question. Where I was most disappointed is in the people and the activists that I have known for 30 years who told me we care about

a multicultural, pluralistic, healthy society. We believe in the American idea that America is for everybody. That free market ideas, which is what I believe in, lifting people up, that's genuinely a lot of Democrats are kind of like, how could you ever be a Republican? You've always been that way. I mean, I don't want to get into that. My genuine belief has always been to the poor and lifting people up through using the forces of the market. We can disagree on that, but that's what I believe. The challenge is at a personal level, the disappointment, the pain of seeing people stand with this ugliness, this hatredness, with this divisiveness after decades of working with and

talking to people who claimed to be brothers and sisters in arms was the most personally hurtful. That was where most of the disappointment has come from. Now, specifically, look, I supported Marco Rubio. I was a Marco Rubio guy in large part because he took at least that initial step on getting immigration reform done with a gang of eight. He knew it was going to cost him. He was doing it. All of his messaging up until the Republican primary was about broadening the American idea and allowing more people to be part of the American family. That's what my view of conservatism is. That's what it was for him. with themselves when they can see their own videos and saying this and have done this for 20 years is it's sociopathic. It really is. And a lot of politicians, right, they have this need to be liked and this need for validation and this need to get votes. And some of them have always made adjustments. But to see people make a complete turn, an entire turn, and go from these ideas of what America was to something that

America clearly is not is frightening, not just because they've done it, but because they have the capacity to do that on anything. And without that steeled character, you end up with the party that we end up fighting today, which is today's current Republican party. Jordy, I'm going to say the same thing that you're going to say right now. I know, I know Mike, we've been doing this podcast a year and a half going on two years. I've asked that question three times, all three times, Marco Rubio. That's exactly what I was going to say. He's been every answer. He's been everyone's biggest disappointment. Marco Rubio is the biggest disappointment to Republicans. And I'll tell you, I think we could spend another whole episode on this. The reason why is he built his whole career on being what the new America was going to be.

Right. He was saying, I'm the son of immigrants. We came here for freedom. You know, he speaks Spanish and he's Latino. And this is what the new country is going to be. This is what America is. And then to completely turn around and become everything that he stated he despised is phenomenal. But that's my biggest regret is publicly saying, this is somebody that I support and want to support and interacting with pollsters on his campaigns who are looking for help during the primary and saying, yeah, I want to help. This is the kind of optimism that I'm looking for in the country. And then in just a matter of weeks to watch that turnaround is just, yeah.

Yeah. Let me spend a little more time on this because maybe I'm just, maybe there's a personal confession here, but I've always known, right, you can't be Latino in the Republican Party and not see and recognize some of the ugliness and darkness and bad elements of human nature. But usually that has been relegated to these dark shadows of the convention. I'm not going to suggest it wasn't always there, but I never believed that it was as pervasive as it clearly is today. If you want to call me naive, that's fine. But what I will suggest is there are a lot of people who believe in conservatism as a way to help make lives better. That was the philosophy that was being articulated by Marco Rubio. He had a deep understanding of Jack Kemp style conservatism.

He had the resume of somebody whose family experience was about coming here and having opportunities and building a better country through character and what he has demonstrated, the hypocrisy, the just sheer hypocrisy, I think is probably why so many Republicans respond to this and say, it's Marco Rubio because he knows what this has meant. And most of those, most of us that believe that would rather kind of go down swinging or bringing the party down rather than allow it to become what it's become.

He chose to be a cheerleader for the cause and obviously the leader of it. It's beyond fascinating, Mike. I can't thank you enough for that answer right there. And I want to go back to the clown, the jester, the yellow-orange pumpkin that is Donald Trump. Does he run again, in your mind? Does he run again in 2024? I don't think so. And I hate to say this, but look, I pride myself on data and numbers and looking at trend lines. I really believe that if he did run again and Joe Biden ran, I think that he would get beaten pretty good.

I don't think it would be that close of a race. I think you're seeing the elections from Georgia last night. I mean, his hold on this party is more tenuous than people think it is at this point in time. And I've been saying that for six months is if you look at the trend line of his support numbers, they're not that strong. Can he reconstitute most of it? He can reconstitute most of it. The problem is, even if he reconstituted all of it, he still loses. Okay. So, you know, he's never been an expansive personality or an expansive politician. I don't think he'll run. I could absolutely be wrong. I tend to be one of those people, and I know this is probably not popular thought out there. I Really believe he is in very significant legal

Jeopardy, and I believe a lot of people around him are and I believe Merrick Garland is Prosecuting and pulling together not only the largest case in the history of the Department of Justice But damn it he's got to get it right by bringing down a former president, by bringing down a few senators and probably a dozen members of Congress, let alone 20 state party members and a couple hundred fake electors. That is an enormous job. And the fact that people are punching at the guy saying, get it done, get it done. We've got enough to prosecute him now. This was so expansive and so

deep. And every time they find something, they find three other trails to go down. I just, I have, I think a lot more hope in the system. Maybe I'm naive again, but I think justice will be done. I don't think that Trump will be eligible to run. And I think that he will probably use that as an excuse not to run. So that would be my opinion. But if he did, and again, I think we beat him. I think the forces of democracy beat him. All right. I like that confidence right there. And so my last one before I kick it back over to Ben. So we had former RNC chairman Michael Steele on the podcast a few weeks back, and we asked him this question, and I definitely want to pick your brain here. Why stay a Republican? Why do you think it's important to stay a Republican when you look at the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, the Ron DeSantis's, just making an absolute, the Marco Rubio's,

just making an absolute clown show of the party? Great question. The toughest part about this is being even on paper in coalition with people like that. Like it's just part of that. That's the ugliest, most difficult part for me. But I'm also keenly interested in the history of party and the way people work together, right? Like I'm an American. A lot of Americans have done really bad stuff. That doesn't mean I'm going to be like, OK, I'm not an American. Right. I'm going to fight for what I believe in and what that character needs to be. And to me, character is in the fight. It's actually in the process of fighting. So when I look back at people like Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass fought like, you know, tooth and nail with Abraham Lincoln on the question of abolition. And Frederick Douglass was a Republican, but he never really trusted the Republican Party because he knew it

was a human institution. And when I look at people like Thaddeus Stevens, that senator who finally put the last vote over to get slavery ended in this country and to drive the South out. The same thing. These are people, Jackie Robinson, baseball player, right? Famous Republican who finally said, you know what? I've had it with you at the 64th convention. He says, these are men of principle who believe in the orthodoxy of what the platform and the party says it is. And that is worth fighting for. Our American creed, our founding documents, which we have never lived up to, are worth fighting for. And in fighting, we build the character of a nation. Look, I'm Catholic too. Catholic church has done some bad stuff, right? There's been some bad stuff,

but that doesn't mean I'm just going to leave it because I believe in the words of what the church says and the orthodoxy. I know the human institutions are going to fail us. If you put your faith in human beings, you will be disappointed every time. We need to put our faith and belief in the words that matter and what you believe in. And that's why I'm still there. And I have seen other men throughout the history of this party, from Frederick Douglass to Thaddeus Stevens to Jackie Robinson to many of them standing up and saying, this is who we are.

And I think that there's value to be played in that. I mean, I never wanted to be this guy when I grew up, you know, trust me, you know, I never envisioned that. But at the same time, those things really, those principles really are very important to me. Question, do billionaires want democracy? No. I mean, yeah, there may be a couple, there may be a couple, but look, I don't, it's not that I think that they're nefarious, right? But they're protecting their interests and their worldview the way that they see it. But, Ben, look, that's a great question. The last time we saw this type of wealth inequity was the Gilded Age.

And the similarities between the Gilded Age and now are unmistakable. You saw very wealthy people, very wealthy people back then who were making largesse, these titans of industry, in shipping, in railroad, in oil, right, commanding more money than small countries. And the influence that they had over the country literally was a threat to democracy. It was a threat to the republic, which ushered in the progressive era, led incidentally by Teddy Roosevelt and Republicans who were saying, this is a threat to free markets. You're a threat to freedom. You're a threat to America. And we instituted all of these reforms to make sure that that kind of wealth disparity didn't happen. That's what we need to have happen right now. So billionaires, it's not like I think they're like the evil Batman villains going, I want to take over the world and amass money and become like this hegemonic dictator they are simply i think acting

in their their own interests right which is developing and moving the world in their way so the elon musks of the world i think are much more interested in disrupting systems than they are in building a better society and that doesn't mean he's intuitively a bad person, but his interests overwhelmingly, especially in the digital age, are not the interests of democracy. Democracy is a threat to that in many ways. And so it's a sweeping general statement to say billionaires don't like democracy, but there are far too many billionaires working with authoritarians right now to limit democracy? That concerns me very deeply. It's a really good question. And going to your point about self-interest,

somewhere along the free market continuum, as you get to the outer edges, the individual or individuals who amass this great deal of wealth say to themselves, well, wait a minute. If we just completely eliminate competition, if we use our wealth to restructure the system, we could just ask a Donald Trump, hey, can you just throw us a few billion bucks and then we don't even have to work? And so it mutates the free market system. And what it ends up looking a whole lot like is the oligarchies that you see in Russia, as opposed to a free market system. And so putting the conversations all the way back from where we started, this idea, this attack on democracy and free market, the Putin, the Trumpers, what the Rubios are seeing, what these Matt

Gates are seeing, they're like, well, in a Trump world, I could be an oligarch. I don't even have to work. I'm Matt Gates. I could go out. I could party. I could do what I want. And that gets rewarded in the Putin system, which then goes to the inefficiencies in the Putin system because they're lazy and not hardworking and not free market people. So when they hit real competition, it's like, bam, what do we do with real people out

there? Ben, that's extremely well put. One of the problems with the concentration of wealth in these numbers is corruption inevitably follows. That's just human history. When anybody has that much power and that much wealth, what we start to see is the design of essentially a crime family. We call them oligarchs, but they're really underbosses. And then under the underbosses are these couple regimes, right? It's like the mafia, right? Understood and built this structure hundreds of years ago. Putin is the top of, he's a mob boss and he made his friends wealthy, extraordinarily fabulously wealthy with the oligarchs by using the assets of his state to make them the laundromats for this money. And this money then, you know, it's like, again, it's a crime family. There's

an expectation, right? I'm not just giving you gazillions of dollars to be nice. What you are is you are now a functionary for me to go out and hire lobbyists in Germany, to hire media companies in Italy, to talk to people at Fox News, hypothetically, to make sure that we're getting our message out and advancing my interest and my interest is empire, right? That's what Putin's objectives are. So you can be rich and fabulously rich as a Russian oligarch, as long as you are being an underboss, as long as you're doing what Putin tells you to do. Once you don't, well, then you end up, you know, you and your family end up dead in your dacha somewhere outside of Moscow.

And that's what's happening. The billionaire in many ways is once you start to accumulate that kind of wealth, what we're starting to see is the interest of groups like Facebook, for example, who has clearly not benefited democracy, clearly not benefited free speech. This platform has done more to destabilize the American system than anything in our 250-year history. And that monetization, the amount of money moving through it is not in the best interests or health of our country. And so, yeah, anytime, basically, any institution, any organization that gets that wealthy becomes a threat to democracy. That's what happened with railroad. It's what happened with the Carnegies.

It's happened with the Vanderbilts. It happened with J.P. Morgan. The history is replete with that, and it's why the government needs to step in and break up these monopolies because they're a threat. That's the free market system going to run amok. And, Mike, I'll say this. you mentioned the railways, you mentioned steel, you mentioned those things of the past. But then what is it today? It's the media. So connecting this whole thing together, who owns the media? The billionaires. Are the billionaires interest in the interest of democracy? It's not.

So you made a point earlier in the interview when you said, what is the biggest issue with all the propaganda going on? And you said, well, if they have a network that's pounding this disinformation over and over and over again, we're now seeing the results of it, which is why Russia has been able to infiltrate and be effective. So here the landscape is this. We've got Fox News, which literally every day injects the propaganda into the veins methodically. They take positions. They're political. It's like it would be the equivalent of a billion dollar political action committee. That's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then what do you have to counterbalance that? CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, they try to play it. Oh, we're so fair and balanced that they actually go start looking a lot more like Fox.

So the landscape is an unfair game. And so the first question I asked you are, do billionaires support democracy? And your answer, no. The whole full circle of that is what I just said, I think is the fundamental problem. And what you're trying to fix, what we're trying to fix at Midas Touch, which is we need to create a media company. We need to build a new media framework because this media framework is bringing us down a road to totalitarianism. Again, very well spoken. That's exactly why we went to Ukraine. And the reason why is because most of your viewers are going to say, okay, it's Fox. Fox is the tip of the iceberg. There's an extremely complicated and sophisticated media network

on social media, quote-unquote news outlets, and various, the bright parts of the world. By the time it gets to Fox News, this stuff has usually been stewing in the sewer of the right-wing propaganda ecosystem for at least a few days or a few weeks, and it's already become popular thought. This is by design. This was structured. You're exactly right, Ben. You can't compete with that in an old media format. It has to become much more sophisticated. At the bottom level, at the main crux of this, however, I do believe, and again, this is what

we were researching in Ukraine and talking to them about their structure, is it begins at the activist level. It begins with groups like Midas Touch. It begins with groups like what Lincoln Project was trying to accomplish. And that is by building networks of people that can be mobilized to push back on that, whether they're states, whether they're companies, whether they're other media narratives, because that's the way the digital information age is going to unfold. Mike Madrid, thank you for walking us through it, why your trip to Ukraine was so pivotal, speaking about the issues that have led to this global problem and ultimately how we can fix it. I think as we, you and I, and the brothers just went through that process,

when you began and talked about networks, and as we proceeded with the interview, you then see on the backend why the networks is such a truly revolutionary concept, because it's our only way we can combat the disinfo top down. And when we do, we are going to win. Mike Madrid, co-founder of Lincoln Project. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, guys. Big, big fans. Keep up the great, great work. You're making a huge difference out there. Thank you. We appreciate it. The feeling's mutual. We'll be right back after these messages. For the most important news of the day. Massive news dump. Handwritten contemporaneous notes. Treasury needs to hand over Trump's taxes.

With the most compelling interviews. Please welcome Congressman Adam Schiff. Molly John Fast. Mike McFaul. Andrew Weissman. Barb McQuaid. Glenn Kirshner. Colonel Alexander Vindman.

Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. And all the appropriate profanity. Lawsuit to block that s**t. Captain Douche. Bulls**t. Immigration Executive Order. Anyone that's stupid should just not be in Congress. Renowned cowardly f**kface Kevin McCarthy. The leader of the the douche. Even Mary Trump agrees. Join this binder full of women curating the news from the left with appropriate f***ing profanity. Listen weekday

mornings to the Daily Beans. Left-leaning news from a woman's perspective. We make the news bearable by making it swearable. So put some beans on it with Dana Goldberg, Amy Carrero, and me, Alison Gill. And who doesn't like that? Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast, Ben, Brett, and Jordi. I mean, you get Mike Madrid, you talk about, it was such a critically important conversation tying in what was going on internationally with the domestic picture here as well, and why we need networks to combat disinformation hubs. And I really want to write a whole book on it. When Mike left the interview, I'm like the worst at keeping trade secrets. I told Mike, I said, that should be a book that we should write together or figure out a way to

write it because it's actually, there are books that come along, whether it's Francis Fukuyama's The World is Flat, that talks about the interconnectivity of countries that kind of shake the landscape of how we view the international order. And to me, this idea of democratized networks, like what Midas Touch has, Lincoln Project and other grassroots groups, against and trying to combat the disinformation coming from really a transnational oligarchy that doesn't truly care about democratic ideals and norms is such a fascinating dynamic. It is where we are headed. Maybe we don't even need to write the book, but just transcribe the interview. Mike's such a great dude, man. Oh my goodness. One of the funnier things was right before-

You look like Mike a little bit. I take that as a great compliment. He's a good looking dude. Before we had started that interview, all the brothers thought we had spoken to Mike previously. I still think I may have spoken to him. That was our first time speaking. We thought we had him on the podcast. We thought we've spoke to him on the phone before. I still do. Originally, I was like, welcome back to the show. And I was like, wait, you haven't been here. I haven't been here. No, I guess we just talked to him so much. We talked to him on a Zoom. We've talked to him at least in private.

There was other interactions where I was confident that he was on a podcast or something. It was probably at least over the phone or text message or something. I don't know. But that being said, we all need to fight this disinformation war. And it's going to take all of us because there is some really dark and cynical forces out there that are spreading lies. And these lies have real world consequences like what we've seen over the past few weeks with all these mass shootings, what we've seen with COVID. It's the same people in our country who are spreading these lies that have a body count

that mass murderers would blush at. I mean, that's what is happening. They are killing people, whether by telling people to take bleach or ivermectin instead of getting a vaccine or telling people that guns are the problem and trying to talk about mental health or telling people that Ukraine is full of Nazis. These are all connected. This is all a disinformation campaign and we need to do something about it because if we don't, then we are going to keep going down this rabbit hole and we are never going to be able to solve any of these issues. We need to push back. And now is the time. Everybody needs

to be a better work and start causing some good trouble and break through the noise because the old ways of doing things, the old ways of getting messaging across, the people who want to write about how messaging existed in the past, about how your commercials are supposed to look or how this is supposed to be, they don't know what the hell they are talking about. It's a new era. We need new techniques to break through the disinformation. Now that I know what they're talking about, their views are so wrong. That's how we got here, people. We got here because of there was one side that was effectively messaging hate and lies. And then the other side that was doing conference calls or critiquing others or criticizing others. And we need to change that. And we will keep fighting with you to do that. Will you please make sure you subscribe to our podcast channel, subscribe to our YouTube channel, both experience rapid, rapid growth. So no matter where you get it, subscribe to both. That helps us

leave a five-star review on the podcast. It's a little thing you can do after the pod that helps in our rankings and other against other podcasts. So please do that and go check out store.midastouch.com. Hey, check out store.midastouch.com. Oh, we got a new Texas Paul merch at store.midastouch.com. A new bestseller, Texas Paul merch. We got a space on some tees, ride or die Democrats. We got some mugs and it is selling quickly. I don't know how long we're going to even have those in stock. So check out store.mitastouch.com. A lot of really good things. And thanks for all your support. I know times are tough. I know it's hard to be this involved in watching the news. I know I feel it has been when he started the show saying scrolling Twitter is a curse in the morning. I know it's very hard to be this in tune with everything that's going on.

And sometimes you just want to turn it off and go away. And if you ever want to do that too, by the way, that's fine. But it means the world that you are spending this hour with us twice a week. It means the world that you watch all of our content. And it means the world that you're in this fight for our democracy. Because the second that we all leave this fight for a democracy, we leave the playing field for the bad guys and we can never do that. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you to Mike Madrid. Hope to see you back soon. Thank you to everybody who supported us, whether you're a day one or whether this is your first episode, we hope to see you again and Jordy, I will let you call it out.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty.