The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rick Wilson on How We Save Democracy

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

On this episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers sit down with political strategist, author and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson. To begin the episode, the brothers chat about the recent CDC update relating to masks and which brother is known as the family “mask sniffer” (spoiler alert: it's Brett). During the interview with Rick, the brothers discuss the current state of the GQP, how everyday folks can fight to save democracy and who is the biggest coward in the modern day Republican Party. Tune in every Tuesday & Friday wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes of The MeidasTouch Podcast! Get your MeidasTouch ‘Vaxxed and Relaxed’ merch at store.meidastouch.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side, or B-side, or Bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. 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 Bad MGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. We'll be right back. 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. Welcome to the Midas Touch Podcast. Ben Micell is here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett and Jordy Micellas.

We have an incredible show for you today. Political strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson, will be joining the MidTouch podcast today. We got Rick Wilson on. We got Rick Wilson on the podcast. Good guests lately, man. I mean, this show is really taken off. I think there's an extra magic right now because Jordy and I are recording right at you live from the same house, but a couple of rooms over from one another because we didn't want our mics to be messed up and to interrupt the experience for you. But Jordi and I are about 10 steps away from one another.

It's very exciting. Everybody get your vaccine so that you could see your family. Get out there. Get into the world. has just announced a change in its guidance saying that you could now be indoors or outdoors without a mask if you've been vaccinated. So go get vaccinated. Go get back to normal. This is a testament to the leadership of President Biden. And this is huge news and shows how far that we've come. Here's the thing. Other than Brett, Brett loves to wear his mask when he showers. Brett loves

to wear his mask when he sleeps. Don't be mask shaming, man. You're going to get a world of hate for mask shaming, but proceed if you want to go down this route. Proceed. I do want to go down this route, Brett. Brett loves to wear his mask in the shower. You got to say route funny. It's route.

You got to say route, not root. That's weird. What are you going to gotta say root funny. It's route. Route, not root. That's weird. What are you gonna say, Jordy? It's route. That's an Ohio thing. Alright, let me just explain to you where I'm going with this. Other than Brett, Brett likes to shower with his mask. Brett likes to make food alone with his mask.

Brett is Mr. Mask. Here's what I genuinely think. I think most people, Brett loves wearing. Mask. Here's what I genuinely think. I think most people, Brett loves wearing his mask. He sniffs the mask after he wears it. Brett is a whole weird... Ben just decides to make things up on the podcast because we have a big audience

and he thinks he could just totally just fabricate things and then I'm not going to say that what he's saying are complete lies. In Ben's defense, I have heard that you do smell your masks after you wear them confirm or deny i mean this is a ridiculous line of question did not deny i just want to let the record show that it's like all right it's like one of those things if you ask like something outrageous to a politician then the headline becomes like

brett micellar says no he does not sniff his mask why would you just deny it our friend's getting so offended because I already died the one thing that is nice though I will say is after a nice wash you know you should wash your masks because you don't want to be a disgusting person but after you wash your masks it does kind of smell like you're living in a laundry room and I'm not too upset about smelling

that I think that's a good smell okay so I guess where you draw the line Brad is Jordy and I have caught you on many occasions this think that's a good smell. Okay, so I guess where you draw the line, Brad, is Jordy and I have caught you on many occasions. This is not even a true statement. This is not even a true statement. This isn't on the outline. What's going on?

What you're saying, though, Brad, is that you're just, you're claiming, so I understand it. I'm not claiming anything. You sniff the mask. I just want to understand your claim. Is that you sniff the masks after it comes out of the dryer? No, I'm saying when you wear a mask on your nose, if you have scent, if you have the ability to smell, then you're bound to smell whatever's on the mask. And if you have your little smelly masks because you don't shower or you don't wash your masks. I guess your masks smell like poop and my masks smell like

nice linen closets full of laundry and flowers. All right. Let me bring this podcast back on track, Brad. I know you're trying to derail it. So the point here is that... What's the point? I don't know the point. Okay. What's the point? That's a big point here, is that at the end of the day, we wear masks not because we love masks. We wear masks because we want to keep others safe at the end of the day. And this whole entire mask debate is no debate at all, because at the end of the day, we would all love to transition so that there is zero mask wearing. OK, we don't love walking around wearing masks. And at every step of the way, when Trump was in power, he and the GQP,

continuing to this day with the GQP, do everything to prevent the outcome which they profess to want in the first place, which is why they are a death cult. At the end of the day, if we did the right things, if we had a true leader who would deal with COVID from the outset and have the appropriate intervention and not tell us to drink bleach and like a miracle, it was all going to go away, the likelihood there wouldn't be half a million deaths, number one. And number two, less important, but nonetheless significant, all of the things that GQP claims to want to do to have large gatherings, even though most of them are basement dwellers anyway, you know, most of the things they profess to want to do, not wearing masks. They hate, you know, they hate masks with the passion. It's great. You can hate masks with the passion.

People don't like wearing things on their face, but let's just solve the fucking problem. And now we have a president and leadership that is solving the problem. And in the face of leadership that is solving the problem, the GQP just goes crazy, crazy, crazier each fucking day. We have the outcome. We talked about this vote with Liz Cheney to oust her. That vote has now taken place. If you want to even call it a vote, the GQP members of Congress met privately and they did what's called a voice vote. Real profile encourage here. Okay. And what a voice vote is, is they don't actually count the vote.

There's no counting. You go into a room and you go, all in favor of ousting Liz Cheney, say aye. All in favor, say nay. And then at the same time, they go, aye, nay, aye, nay. All right, the ayes have it. Liz Cheney is out. That was the vote that they took. and the irony of this all is that for the past few months the whole gqp thing especially marjorie

taylor green her whole thing is we need to get everybody on the record with every bill with every everything she's been clogging up congress on things that are are basic that everybody agrees on unanimous voice votes, just to get everybody on the record and to just cause chaos since she was kicked off all of her committees and has nothing else to do. But this, this important issue where you're kicking off Liz Cheney from a committee, this goes straight to a voice vote. These people are such cowards.

I mean, that's the thing. It's just the cowardness of the Republican Party. The cowardice of the Republican Party shows no bounds, and they are still kowtowing. They are still showing fealty to a blogger in exile in Florida. That's who they are afraid of. Aren't there any parameters around a voice vote? You would think for something as serious as what they had voted on, that would be a mandatory record vote, like, well, I guess, you know, it's it's it's their party.

So I guess they could, you know, run run their ship how they want to run their ship. But then I liked your idea that you posted the other day, which was if you have a Republican representative, what you should do is you should reach out and you try to get them on the record because they will respond to you. And I think you should say, you know what? I don't want to form response where you explain, you know, in four paragraphs, your thoughts on election integrity or whatever terms of bullshit you want to use. I just want a yes or no answer. Did you vote aye or did you vote nay on that vote? Get your Congress people on the record. Are they standing with democracy or are they standing against it? People are like, why would I go and ask that question? They're not going

to respond to me. Look, members of Congress do oftentimes respond to constituents. And frankly, even if they don't respond, I think that is a productive answer. Yeah. People share letters that they get from their Congress people all the time with us, especially around January 6th, the insurrection. People are sharing letters with us all the time of these congresspeople who are choosing to believe the big lie and are putting it in writing. And I think it's important that we get all these people on the record and in writing in an issue as important as this, because this was an act of domestic terrorism against the U.S. And it seems like as the days go by, as the weeks go by, instead of acknowledging fault, instead of even acknowledging that this was a problem,

that insurrectionists attacked the Capitol, they just seemed to be doubling down and tripling down. I mean, the response after the Liz Cheney vote was probably even more disheartening than the fact that she was kicked off of the committee to begin with. And while this was going on, there was also this whole January 6th hearing happening where the people in the party, in the Republican Party, were saying some of the most batshit, insane things that I have heard to date. Do we have the clip of representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who is a representative of GQP batshit crazy? Let me be clear. There was no insurrection. And to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bold faced lie. Watching the TV footage of those who entered the capitol and

walked through statuary hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures you know if you didn't know the tv footage was a video from january the 6th you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit a normal tourist visit i, by the way, I gave Capitol tours when I was an intern on the Hill. The on a day to day basis, there are not thousands of individuals who break into and smash through the doors of the Capitol building dressed as barbarians at the gate, storming into the House and Senate chambers, yelling that they want to kill Congress members and senators. That just doesn't jive with my experience. But this is what we're confronting. I mean, just think if this is what Representative Andrew Clyde is saying about January 6th, something that is where police officers were

murdered, which we all saw on tape. This is an individual who was elected to Congress. He has a distinguished title. He is an honorable person based on the designations, not based on how he's acting. And this is what he says about something we all saw. Now, think about what this person is doing on any other issues. Just think about any other issues, whether it's climate change, whether it's tax policy, whether it's anything. You know, it's like in a baseball game where literally a pitcher would throw the ball in the wrong direction and not even throw the ball at the catcher.

He would take the ball. He would throw it around and just throw it randomly in the outfield. And the umpire would go strike one. He would take the ball and he would throw it in the stands. Strike two. And then he would take the ball. He would lick it. He would spit on it. If you were Brett, he would sniff it, throw it on the ground, and he would go, strike three. And, you know, it bears no resemblance to the reality of what is taking place.

And ultimately, that is what is problematic. Brett is looking at me with a death stare. What's more problematic in your guys' mind? If this Andrew Clyde GQP actually believes this, or if he's knowingly lying about what happened? We all know, obviously, what happened. We've all seen the footage. But at his heart of hearts, does he believe this or is he actively lying? I think for him, because it involves white people as one of the major things, I think that in his mind, I think he's such a disturbed white supremacist kind of racist style politician that his views are all informed that that is how people act we should

do like a sketch or something that's like gqp goggles and it's like you put on the goggles and you see a bunch of white people storming the capitol with pitchforks and crazy garb and attacking cops and things and then when they put on the goggles it's just them like barbecuing and being like hey how you doing over there what's's going on? And then you see a bunch of peaceful black protesters going and then they put the goggles on and just chaos and looting and rioting. That's what these people see. They are operating through the lens of white supremacy, whether they know it or not. And I don't care if they know it or not at the end of the day. This is why these people are so dangerous. I mean, I don't say it lightly. When you have somebody like Andrew Clyde, when you have somebody like

Rep. Jody Heiss, who said the real victims of January 6th were the Trump supporters. That's what Jody Heiss said. The real victims of January 6th were the Trump supporters. When you have people like this on these committees and involved in these investigations, to me, and I don't say this lightly at all, it's like if after 9-11 during the 9-11 commission, we were like, oh, Osama bin Laden, why don't you tell us your thoughts on 9-11 and what was your perspective here and giving them a platform. These are the same people that orchestrated the attack. And I think we're at a point where it's harrowing and it's difficult

to say this, that a major political party has been co-opted by domestic terrorism and domestic terrorist sympathizers. And what's wild, too, is at the end of the day, they actually are going to bin Laden for advice. The main one of the main people the GQP call upon is bin Laden. Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's no difference in what Trump did with January 6th in orchestrating the attack than what bin Laden did on 9-11. There's really no fundamental difference between what they did. Bin Laden didn't fly the planes. Trump didn't storm the Capitol himself. But the result is, at the end of the day, the same. It's chaos, it's destruction, it's terrorist attack against America. And the fact that this one was from within is extremely disturbing. And we need to start seeing some action. I mean, we need to start

seeing indictments. I see we're starting to see people get locked up for this who are participants in this. That's exciting to see. A lot of people being held without bail, without parole. And speaking of people being indicted, we are coming closer, I think, to an indictment of Donald Trump. What do you think? I think it's extremely possible. I think it's more likely than not that this happens at this point. You saw today Politico was reporting that Palm Beach, and I hate Politico, by the way, I just want to say, but the Politico playbook was reporting that Palm Beach is actually preparing for a New York indictment and what that would actually mean if Trump is in Florida. Would they have to extradite him to New York, for example? Does Ron DeSantis have an ability to intervene and prevent Donald Trump from being surrendered to law enforcement officials in another state?

I mean, these are all questions, and there are debates, I think, on both sides of this. But Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is apparently getting extremely close. And I know people are like, oh, but when's it going to happen? I keep hearing this. Stop teasing me. The fact of the matter is, is that for the last four years, Trump was immune to prosecution. Not only that, he controlled the Department of Justice with an iron fist. Bill Barr was not going to indict Donald Trump. That was not going to happen. Donald Trump controlled that department like no other president has in history. And now for the first time, it's been four months

since Donald Trump has left office. And the wheels of justice, Ben, as you know, turn extremely slowly. You got to build your case. But it seems like they're building their case, and it seems like all indicators from extremely seasoned prosecutors, from people like Preet Baraha to people like Glenn Kirshner, everybody seems to be reading the tea leaves right now. And they seem to be heading in the logical direction that Donald Trump will, in fact, be indicted. So, I mean, stay tuned there. Yeah, I have no doubt he's going to be indicted soon. I mean, I don't want to overstate it. I don't have any special secret knowledge about it, but all directions of what I'm seeing is that I think in the next three to six months, six months being the latest, he will be indicted. Maybe

just, I don't want to step on my Legal AF podcast where I break down the legal news with Michael Popock. Are you saving the good stuff for Legal AF now? No, no, no. I'm saying I don't want to, I said, but I'm going to break down some just of the legal issue that you basically said is that when somebody is charged in one state because of our federalist system that we have, they usually get extradited from one state to another state where they're basically charged. And that usually happens as a matter of course. It would be rare. And you can almost think about it like a country, right? We have treaties with other countries also, where if somebody commits a crime in another country, you could extradite. But with states, it's much easier and almost in most cases, like pro forma, like basically done automatically. Issue here being if because GQP governors and GQP generally no longer abide by laws and democracy. The idea being that if Donald Trump remained in Florida while he was charged in New York, would it be likely that Governor Death Santas, GQP Florida, would not would step in and use his governor authorities, which governors have

significant authorities over things in the state, to basically try to block an extradition of Donald Trump. Now, at some point, it doesn't stop the criminal case from happening, and it would look incredibly foolish and silly. um one of the things that the articles in this area discussed though would be donald trump would basically have to never leave florida because he would then basically be a fugitive on the run and anytime he entered another state he would be like immediately arrested the moment he so one of the things they were saying what a lie is if he were to go to administer in new jersey where he likes to spend his summers there's a democratic governor who would likely

follow the law and in fact in many other states where there's almost any other governor they follow the law it's just so crazy that we even like are talking about this about the former president of the united states and governors who might protect his criminal liability. That's the damage. That's the damage that Donald has done. With that said, I want to speak about the damage Donald has done. I want to talk more about what we can do at Midas Touch, what we can do as political activists, accidental activists or not accidental activists, how we can unite, what strategies we can take, how do we fight for the House of Representatives, how do we make sure that we don't give GQP any power. I'm excited after these messages to have Rick Wilson join the podcast.

What's up, Midas Mighty? Ben Mycelis here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett and Jordy Mycelis. Have you got your Midas merch gear? If you haven't gotten your Midas merch gear, I don't know what's taking you so long. I got my gear. Most of the Midas Mighty got their gear. We have some incredible stuff. Isn't that right, Brett? That's right. And with the new CDC guidelines that say you no longer have to wear masks indoors or outdoors

if you've been vaccinated, a lot of people have been asking us, how do you let people know you've been vaccinated? How do you know if you're around other vaccinated people? A lot of people are concerned. But we already thought about this, guys. We got our Vaxxed and Relaxed merch line. You could get it now if you still want to wear masks, if you still feel comfortable wearing masks around indoors or outdoors. We got the masks.

We got the tees. We got the shirts. We got it all, and we got more on the way. So let people know you've been vaccinated. Shop at store.midastouch.com to get yours. And That's not all we have. We got the club democracy gear. We got the shout out to the Midas Mighty gear. We got it all. Go Wilson, political strategist, author, and of course, you know him as the co-founder of the Lincoln Project. Rick, thank you. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Hey, guys, it's fantastic to be with you. And thank you so much for your support and the Lincoln Project's support of Midas Touch.

You know, when we were coming up, we were, you know, three brothers sitting around in our couch in March. We saw what you were doing. We saw what the Lincoln Project was doing. We all had a skill set. Me from a legal background, Brett as an editor, Jordy as a marketer. You know, when we said, look, let's just try to do a video and see what happens, you know, through the support actually of many people in the Lincoln Project retweeting our videos,

it caught on, grew into an incredible movement. And so just want to thank you for all the work Lincoln Project has done and continues to do. And thank you for your support of Midas Touch. Well, it's absolutely some of the best and most fun creative that from the cycle came out from you guys. We always enjoyed it. And we approach this maybe slightly differently than some people. We believe that the problem is so big, was then is now so big. It takes a lot of different skill sets. It takes a lot of different people. Many hands make light

loads, as they say. And so it was a real pleasure to see some of the stuff you guys did that was really cutting and really pushed out there. And I loved your work. I think it was fantastic. And I'm just glad to be on the glad to all be pulling the boat in the same direction. And so as we talk about pulling the boat in the same direction, that boat right now is floating against a tide of orange fascism, of stupidity, of idiocracy in the form of the current Republican Party, which doesn't even deserve that name anymore, Republican. You know, we call them the GQP. You know, frankly, they are a fascist authoritarian party of just crazy cultists. How do we collectively, the universal we, the Lincoln Projects, the Midas, what can we do now to fight that tide of those questions that took, I think, a lot of people a very long time to get their head around. A group of Republicans yesterday or today announced that they are forming this new group, saying they'll leave the party if the party doesn't change. Well, a lot of these people are my friends.

A lot of them are colleagues. I have bad news for them. It's not going to change. The party would sooner adopt conspiracy theories and this authoritarian statism and this modern day fascism than it would be inclined to try to clean its act up, try to get back to something that looked like the guy I started in this world working for, George Herbert Walker Bush. And in this day and age, he's spat on by Trumpists because he was a person who believed in America and the Constitution and bipartisanship and human decency. None of those things now apply in the world of contemporary Trumpism there are no incentives for it there's no incentive to be better or do better or be different or do something different than you know being this the transgressive you know asshole of the minute you know own the libs you know scream fest all the time and and those people are now rewarded for shitty behavior, so they'll get more shitty

behavior, which is why I think this reform movement that's launching in the GOP, they're trying to put the paddles on a zombie. It's not going to bring it back to life. I think the response today by those 100 Republicans kind of is the problem with the Republican Party. You know, them saying, look, we are going to leave if it doesn't make certain changes. Like, at its core there, there's this hedging. There's this level of kind of weakness of basically saying, is it not bad enough as it is? Your party was overtaken by a fascist. Your party was overtaken by people like Bobbert, by Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like Congressman Cawthorne, who's saying, no, no, no, no. Hey, hey, hey, goodbye to Liz Cheney. And that's not enough for you to leave right now. It's that to me, it's that hedging. It's like appeasement. And it's like World War Two appeasement, you know, to Hitler in a way, just letting him come in and and conquer and still watching it and saying, well, you know, if you don't make changes, We may leave. You know, I was just reading William Shire, who was a reporter in

Berlin during World War II, before and during World War II, a book called The Nightmare Years. And he talked about how people just sort of slowly slid into it. It was bad. It was crappy. They didn't like what was happening. But it was always like, yeah, but I got to keep working. I don't want to lose my job. I don't want to lose my friends. I don't want to do this and that, you know, that would upset my own personal, you know, day-to-day routine. Well, we are in a moment, not unlike that. We're in a moment where people, you know, in Washington, particularly, and I mean this by the way of Democrats also, they still think there's some rational counterpart in the Republican party they can do business with. They cannot. At the end of

the day, if Donald Trump calls up Kevin McCarthy and says, hey, tomorrow I want you to propose human sacrifice as the center of policy of the party, there'll be a fucking human sacrifice bill introduced by the Republicans that afternoon because he controls everything. You know, we stoked a war between McConnell and Trump in the last few weeks that is rising and rising in, in, in bitterness. And we've been pushing very hard on that because Mitch McConnell realizes that Donald Trump has a gun to his head every day. Mitch McConnell is not going to be able to go out and recruit the candidates he needs unless Donald Trump approves them. And we're going to do our best to make sure that Donald Trump finds all the flaws and

deficits in McConnell's candidates going forward. Because, I mean, real talk here, because of redistricting and because of the way the country has shifted in population, Republicans will gain about five seats just by people have moved from blue states to red states. That's not cheating or redistricting or gerrymandering. That's just like demographic shifting. So Texas and Florida gain seats. New York and California lose them. So they're going to gain about five seats in the House with that. Off-year elections, there's only three times in the last 120 years where the party in power in the White House gained

seats in Congress. 2002, 1928, and 1902, I think. So the Republicans are going to gain back the House almost certainly if the Democrats don't understand they are fighting an immediate action drill. This is an immediate war that is being fought in real time that is going to doing their version of Benghazi with the Capitol attack and the insurrection. I mean, if I were king, there would be a 24-hour line of witnesses being dragged out from the Trump administration every fucking day to testify. All these people that have been indicted, they would be dragged there to have their testimony heard. The Republicans know how to do this shit. And I'm sorry, my Democratic friends just do not understand the raw exercise of pure malicious political power. And that's the other side of the scale there. We talked about this Republican appeasement of someone with dictatorial

intentions, but that person also comes into being because of kind of democratic weakness. You know, one of the things that we've seen firsthand as political outsiders kind of walking into this space is there really wasn't another democratic group out there that was doing what we were doing. And we would always say like, why is it us? We're just, we're just three random dudes who are, who are on a cell phone text message chat, making a video. Like, look, we're supposed to, if we're supposed to have Hollywood

and this and that, like where are all these other people like come out and start making movies? It's, it's Brett Mycelis from his little five foot five closet editing videos. That's, that's it. It's so true. And I got to say, you know, normalization bias works throughout history when bad people do terrible shit. So many people try to say, well, we can reason with them. We can talk with them. You know, when I know the LP guys, I know we're a bunch of notorious like history nerds, but when Neville Chamberlain came back, you know, and everyone told him, don't negotiate with Hitler. Don't make this deal with Hitler. He came back and Churchill said, you know, you can have war or honor. Well, you left without honor and now you will have war. And you just, people compromise and compromise and compromise. And by the time this shit gets really bad, very few people stand up.

And very few people will be bold enough. You know, when Hitler was taking control of Germany and the Nazis were taking control of Germany, they had these things called the Enabling Acts. And they were basically to allow the Nazi Party to take over every aspect of German life from religion to business to society to politics to media. One guy stood up in the German parliament at that time in the Bundesrepresentative and said, no, because it was Otto Wells. And by the end of it, there was one guy who was willing to stand up and say, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. And right now, there are still way too many people in our society, in our governing system, in our elected offices, and in the press, who are unwilling to say, no, this is crazy. You can't deal with these people.

You can't accept this kind of slide down into authoritarianism. There aren't many Otto Wellses around there. And honestly, you know, for all that Republicans scream about the liberal media, the reality is the press in Washington is transactional. They are institutional. And the Republicans know how to play that. They know how to play that game. They fuck with, look, I'm a fucking pro at it. I used to do it for years. They relentlessly play them over and over and over again and say things like, well, you know, behind the scenes, we know Trump's a silly, silly man. And we're just, everything's normal. Don't worry.

We're not going to invade the Capitol at his orders and kill people. And the press falls for that shit over and over. You know why Mitch McConnell comes across as like with these weirdly glowing press coverage about how sensible he is. It's because his guys control access to Mitch McConnell in the press. If you don't write nice things about him, you don't get access. And this is a world where where normalcy bias and the belief that we're not in a different kind of political space now is going to be incredibly dangerous in the future. What do you think a Republican takeover of the House in 2022 would mean for America? To me, I'm terrified at that prospect, given all the shit they tried to pull this past election. And to me, I'm looking forward to, you know, it's not just 2022, but

let's look at, you know, what that means for 2024. If a Democrat wins a presidential election, then are they going to certify the election? In my opinion, no fricking way. But what do you think? And like, I just want you to really tell people, like, what are the stakes of this fight right now? Whether you want to live in a free country or not, those are the stakes. And I don't mean that sarcastically. I mean that seriously. If the Republicans take over the House, they will impeach Joe Biden. They will run show trial Benghazi hearings every day that will never end. They will drag the administration into a constant stream of having to defend itself in front of yahoos like Cawthorn and Green and Gosar and Jim Jordan and all these and Gates all these other morons they will constantly grind away

at the administration's ability to do work and to do business and to get things done and again they will impeach Joe Biden they will impeach Vice President Harris they will impeach vice president harris they will go after with all the brutality that the republicans bring to bear and you know as stewart and i always joke we've been around this thing a long time we help build a lot of these systems we know what they can do yep and democrats who think they're going to easily keep the house are out of their damn minds i mean that with tough love and i say that just on my knowledge of knowledge of the electoral map in the country, in the shifts in the population, in redistricting, in population increases. And the most important thing they can do right now is forget about policy. You know, you guys and we made this election in 2020 about a referendum, a referendum on Donald Trump. That referendum was it's America or Trump. What's it going to be, well, we're going to go into the 2022 elections and our,

our policies will save the day. Elections are about personalities. They are about broad directional feeling and movement in the country. And, and it is important to make this race a referendum on this new Republican party. It's not going to be about the green new deal or climate change or gun control or, or, or, or daycare or anything else. It's needs to be a referendum on whether you're going to choose a party that is on the long, the long slide into fascism and authoritarianism and statism and an engineered cruelty. Or if you're going to choose a party that you may not agree

with it on everything, you may not love everything it's doing, it may not be far enough left for you, it may not be far enough in the center for you, but you've got to decide if you're going to choose that imperfect party or you're going to embrace a party that will essentially mean the end of free and fair elections in this country and the beginning of an authoritarian nightmare from which it is difficult when you start on that downhill slope, from which it is very difficult to emerge, traditionally speaking. So I'll ask you the billion- know, the billion dollar question here. How do we keep the house? I mean, with all that in mind, you have the Republican playbook right now

being a purely emotional one, in my opinion, it's Democrats are taking away your gas, Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, cancel culture, they're trying to throw all these things out there. So how do Democrats who, in my opinion kind of intellectualize things more like you said with with policy well look at the look at the you know the deficit and look at the what we're doing with the infrastructure bill how do we combat that just 24-7 shit storm from fox and oan that's just pumping into these people's veins well and that is that is the billion dollar question question. That is the existential question. One of the things you've got to do is recognize that the country is not politically

homogenous. There is not a single flavor of Democrat that wins everywhere. If you give me 50 AOCs, I can maybe grab two or three more seats for you. You give me 50 Katie Porters, I got 35, 40 seats for you. Because the country is largely not as blue and as progressive as many Democrats believe it to be, nor by the way, is it as red and as conservative and many Republicans believe it to be. But you've got to pick the right candidates for the right districts and states. That's a really hard assignment, politically speaking, but it is a absolutely vital operation going forward. If you don't manage to select high-quality candidates

who can get through a general election, then you're going to find yourself holding the bag. I mean, the Republicans have gotten very good at this about finding candidates they can pretend are either more centrist or more diverse than they are, and then slot them into seats and races where they can win. We used to do this trick a lot. I mean, I'm a guy who helped elect a Republican in Vermont four times as governor. So when you ponder that willingness on their part to be tricky and to select the right people, it's not something people should shake their heads and go, how dare they? It's we should be doing that shit too, man. Yeah, no doubt. So are there

certain house races that you're looking at right now that you're like, okay, this is what we need to focus on these districts, these States, this is where our energy needs to be. I think what you should be looking at, and we're going to actually say some more about this in the next couple of weeks. Uh, we should be looking at races where the Democrats had pickups. Anything they picked up in 18 and lost in 20 is still in play. Okay. And there are about a dozen of those seats we should be going back at, I think, pretty hard. I think they need to work the suburban Republican voters that we proved at Lincoln Project. You could nudge. People who are critics of the Lincoln Project say like, well, you didn't change the minds of a single Trump voter i'm like no fucking shit and i didn't try

i want to slap those people across the face right it's like yeah i didn't try you know i didn't try to i didn't try to you know change their minds because their minds are not either changeable or extant. So, you know, we went after a game of small numbers in places like suburban Detroit and in places like suburban Atlanta and in places like Philadelphia, the counties around Philadelphia. Those things are where the Democrats are going to have a lot of contested house races, those areas, the suburban areas, which are, again, not as progressive. A lot of those people are now former Republicans or independent leaning toward Republicans. They are not about a 700-page climate change plan. They are about, can my kid go to school? Am I going to be financially secure? Is the country going to be what I thought it was when I was growing up?

So, and again, I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's progressive philosophies. I'm just a purely practical political guy. I just believe in the risk that we face going forward is that the bad guys only have to win one big election. And look, if you have the nightmare scenario where you have the House in the hands of the Republicans again, and by the way, folks, one thing you should be thinking about, the speaker might not be Kevin McCarthy. The speaker might not be, you know, back slapper Kevin from California. The speaker might be someone more amenable and more comfortable with the Trump world. So it used to be that there were about a quarter of the caucus in the House in 2018. About a quarter of them were actual Trumpers. The rest were eye-rolling or terrified. So they didn't really have a core. Right now, about 80% of the House caucus are Trumpers. And about 50% of that 80%

are what I call Trump hotties. They'd strap on a bomb vest if Donald Trump told them to. They'd do anything. So, you know, he might end up, McCarthy might end up not being House Speaker. You might end up with a Jim Jordan or a Matt Gaetz or a Marjorie Taylor Greene or someone truly batshit fucking crazy in that job. I mean, say what you will about Kevin McCarthy, and I will. He was a mainstream California Republican. He was a Bush guy. He was not some far-right extremist. He was a moderate by any standard in the old world. But now, what is the scorekeeping mechanism? It's not whether you win. It's not whether you produce good policy. It's not whether you produce good electoral results. It's does the dear leader love me enough? And do I show my love

for the dear leader every day? Eric, I have a bit of a loaded question for you here. In 2021, who do you think is the biggest coward in the GQP? It's not great question. There's an astounding transition from a guy I used to really admire, and it's Marco Rubio. And Marco is a smart guy and was a guy who believed in effective government. He wrote a great book called 100 Great Ideas for Florida way back in the day. And it was very smart and it was all practical nuts and bolts stuff. And he had this optimistic, forward-looking, inclusive message about where the party could go. And right now, the minute Trump broke him in the 16 campaigns, something went wrong in Marco's brain. And he spent the last year kissing Trump's ass because he was terrified ivanka would run against him for senate and she would have won she still might run against him for senate you never

know what's going to happen but i it's it the guys like holly and cruz and cotton and ron johnson those guys aren't cowards they're just fucks yeah i mean I mean, those guys are just, I mean, Ron Johnson is a, in a world where I have met some real pieces of shit, Ron Johnson is like the frozen fecal tip of a Mount Everest-sized pile of shit. He is a truly bad person. And the morons in the party, you know, have taken over. But most of the cowards have either like been broken or they've left. I knew a member of Congress who hated Trump. He hated, hated him with the fire of a million suns. In early 17, he goes back to his district, does the town hall.

And someone says, red hat guy stands up and goes, are you going to be with Mr. Trump 100%? And he gave the right answer. He said, you know what? I endorsed the president. I was with somebody else before. I was with Cruz before. I endorsed the president. I look forward to supporting his legislative agenda.

We agree on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the guy goes, no, I ask you, are you going to support Mr. Trump 100%? And he says, well, you know, as long as it's good for the district. If it's not good for you, I'm not going to support him. By the time he got off stage, it had gone viral. It was in Facebook, his Twitter feed, his email. They called his wife's business and tried to get her fired. They went absolutely apeshit ham on this guy, right?

And it broke him mentally. It broke him. And he's like, oh, I, and he lost in 18 after running a campaign where he basically just dialed it in. It broke him. So those guys who were cowards and wouldn't oppose him when they would privately tell me and others how much they hated him and they were afraid of trolls, they're pretty much gone now. The few that remain, guys like McConnell are actually delusional. They're not cowards. McConnell thinks, I'm a crafty, wily-ass Republican insider.

I've beaten everybody in my path before. I can take this guy, Trump. Well, my grandmother, who is a classic Southern eccentric, used to tell that thing. She said, son, you can sit on the dock and throw that alligator fried chicken all day but eventually the alligator is going to come up on the dock when you're out of fried chicken and eat you and you know that's what mcconnell thinks they thought they could send rick scott down there with a little bowl to give donald trump and a plaque

and that'll that'll make him that'll make him like me it's crazy rick did you see this come in though as as a republican i mean were there times yeah whether it was you know george hw whether when you were just like even privately not not not with not with not with not with 41 i'll tell you i mean people look back now here's how great i was telling this crazy story the other day i was an appointee in the Bush administration, in the first administration. I was a young guy, right? I was 24 years old. And I'm working for this guy named Dick Cheney.

You may have heard of him. He's Secretary of Defense at the time. And David Duke gets in the governor's race in Louisiana. So the White House political office, they are like, we need a bunch of guys who can swing lead pipes to go down to Louisiana because we're going to go beat the republican nominee on the orders of the president david duke would have been governor if george bush had not said go kill that motherfucker jeez and so they deployed a whole bunch of us down there to go run you know the the operations and grassroots and everything else for the campaign and it was i was a moment of pride i was like let me just be the fucking klansman that's awesome you know what

if david duke had been on the ballot they would have roy moored it they would know well you know he may not be perfect but he's better than the socialist antifa unbelievable un-fucking-believable yeah and then and then you got you got w do start looking, though, at the Tea Party and a flirtation with some of the – It's interesting because we forget about how W ran because of 9-11 and the war, okay? Not to litigate all that shit. But the 2000 campaign with W was about education, compassionate conservatism, increasing homeownership among minorities around the country. I look back on that campaign and we're like, what world was that? I liked that world. But I think where it went off the rails, and I look at this, a friend of mine has a great theory

of the case. In 2010, as the Tea Party was rising, you started getting people like Sharon Engel in Nevada. You started getting these people who were performatively crazy. And I worked for a lot of them. We did 35 or 36 super PAC and candidate races in 2010 all over the country. And man, we elected some fucking stinkers. And these people were, they were the, they were the, the prototypes for what happened under Trumpism because you just by themselves, they weren't a sufficient force to alter American politics. But three confluences came together to produce where we're at now. One, the rise of what I call oppositional defiant sort of republicanism. Everything's wrong. Fuck you. Burn it all down.

Two, the rise of Fox, the most powerful normative force in Republican politics by an order of magnitude. There's nothing even close to being like Fox, especially in the 2010 to 2020 window. That decade of the machine that Roger Ailes built for Rupert Murdoch demonstrated more power to shape a political party and a movement than anything else we've ever seen. And once you get on the crack pipe of crazy, you need more crazy. So it got darker and darker. And it wasn't like, you know, if you looked at Fox in 2010, the arguments would be about, you know, debating about healthcare and tax rates, not about whether Antifa lizard super soldiers are invading our cities to burn down our villages and rape our women and dogs. And, you know, they've become adjacent to all this conspiracy crazy.

But the third force that rose in the same window was the power of social media to help people segregate and select out what they wanted to see and hear. And it's particularly effective among people on the right. They wanted to be told that there were lizard super soldier Antifa, you know, murderers in their neighborhoods. They wanted to hear that, you know, creeping Sharia law was going to destroy America. They wanted that because it let them be shitty people. You know, if you give somebody something that lets them be the worst iteration of themselves without consequence, they're going to do it. This is an observable fact, not just in politics, but in life itself. Let someone be shitty, they'll be shitty. And so Fox and Facebook let those people be shitty. And I put them in, you know, be shitty and i put them in you know in facebook

put them in a group where they would say well i don't need to watch the news or talk to my friends or talk to my neighbors or talk to people at work about what i believe i'm going to go on patriotic eagle patriot super maga flag you know uh death to infidel forum dotru on, on Facebook. And I'm going to talk to my friends there and that's what we're going to do. That's where, that's where it's real. That's the real news. And so you combine those three factors and you're in this political moment

that we're in right now. I mean, people forget Adolf Hitler had the world's first cable TV channel being built in Berlin during the war. He had radio networks that used people who spoke English or French or any other set of languages where they were targeting their propaganda, telling them things that were simply not true. But many people picked up those things and believed them. And you look at the toolbox that exists today between a propaganda network exclusively dedicated to A, enriching Rupert Murdoch, and B, controlling a large mass of people who are who are deeply committed to it as a cultural signifier

the power of facebook and other social media platforms to allow bad people to organize and discuss and plan and plot things like the insurrection on january 6th um and and this post-political, post-policy, post-philosophy Republican Party, which believes in nothing but the retention of power, owning the libs, and hating the media. And you've got a very dangerous moment in the country. And that's why we need the Lincoln Project. That's why the Lincoln Project came in at the perfect time, because nothing like that existed. And we hope that we've done you proud project came in at the perfect time because nothing like that existed and we hope that we've done you proud rick at the lincoln project and what we've built at midas touch and we love fighting shoulder to shoulder with you absolutely guys you you guys

are fantastic look forward to many more many more battles ahead unfortunately but but it's good to have good to have uh some warriors on our side like you guys as well. Rick Wilson, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We'll be right back after this message. What's up, Midas Mighty? One of the things I am most proud about over the recent weeks is the new, improved, and revamped Midas merch store. And the Midas merch is absolutely crushing it from hats to t-shirts to mugs to masks. You name it. We have it at the Midas merch shop and we appreciate the support. I mean, we're selling out of most of that gear almost instantaneous. We got Saki Bomb designs. We got Vaxxed and Relaxed, the fan favorite.

We got Be Mighty. We got Club Democracy. You know what's funny about Club Democracy, guys? That one really set off Republicans. Probably because democracy is a dirty word to them. So when they say, hey, democracy, they get really angry. But that's why I like to say, and it's half jokingly, honestly, Midas merch might be the best GQP repellent out there.

Talk about not wanting anybody to think you're a Republican. You rock the club democracy shirt. You wear a Vaxxed and relaxed mask. No one's going to think you watch Tucker Carlson. That's all I'm saying. Absolutely. And you left out my favorite design too, the shout out to the Midas Mighty. That's become a fan favorite catchphrase.

So hey, if you're interested, if you want to get some merch, help support us, help support the brothers, please check out store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com. And get your Midas Touch gear today. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast great having Rick Wilson on the show would love to have him back as a guest want to briefly conclude the show by talking about this it seems that every week now the gqp wants to blame biden and blame democrats for everything for everything and the grains there's like biden is causing the rain how dare biden add to the lead investigations we need investigations it's it's it's lightning. We need investigations. Well, y'all let 600,000 Americans die. So what? They were old, is what the GQP says. They were old people.

Legitimately, not even an exaggeration what they said. They were old anyway, and they had underlying conditions. So it's not our fault. Or you go, well, you led an insurrection against the United States of America. There wasn't an insurrection that looked like any other group of people walking into the Capitol building. I mean, to what Rick said, Democrats need to truly just wake the fuck up right now. OK, we do need to be having hearings every single day, publicized hearings. We need people to get out there being aggressive and letting this country know how fucking despicable and disgusting and seditionist this GQP party is. OK, let's do a fucking hearing every

fucking day on Donald Trump. Let's do a hearing every day on McConnell and McCarthy and Ted Cruz. Let's do hearings on Ted Cruz fleeing to Cancun. Let's put Ted Cruz under oath and just talk to him about that all day. Let's put McCarthy under oath. Let's have him talk about what Donald Trump said to him during the insurrection. Let's just have hearings the same way the GQP did. And by the way, if this was the other way around and the GQP controlled the House, I guarantee you we would have hearings every single day, 15-hour days, about this gas shortage issue, which, by the way, was caused by a Russian hack of a private company called the Colonial Pipeline that as part of Biden's infrastructure bill, as part of what the Democrats want to pass,

want to prevent companies from operating the way Colonial Pipeline was operating, allowing their infrastructure to be so vulnerable to the Russians. Once again, these GQ peers are playing into Putin's hands. This is a Russian attack. And so what should you do when Russia attacks you? Should you confront the problem and figure it out? Or should you panic and get everybody in a tizzy and go crazy? Of course, the GQP chose the latter, which is why you started seeing in a lot of these red states, you started seeing these ridiculous lines and these ridiculous images that we've now all seen. I mean, you see the people with the plastic bags at the gas station, giant barrels, or the giant coolers and everything. First of all, these aren't

even ways to like carry gas, the gas is going to go bad, like almost instantaneously, you're just wasting it, you look like an idiot and you're taking away from people who actually are going to need this supply to do things on a daily basis. It's just a ridiculous look, not to mention now the issue is solved. The hack has been dealt with and now these people are just stuck with barrels of unusable gasoline. Who's the idiot now? Who looks like a dumb fuck? How do you leave the house? Honey, where are you going with all the plastic bags? I got to fill up for gas. What do you mean? What are you going to do? I'm going to fill, get the gas into the plastic bag and tie it and take it back home. You're going to do what? Oh, okay. That sounds like a great idea.

The interesting thing that the Colonial Pipeline Company did was they actually paid the ransom. They paid like $5 million to these hackers, which is typically not recommended by the FBI. But they paid the ransom. The government, I don't think, is super happy that they paid the ransom because you're not really supposed to negotiate with terrorists. But they went ahead and did that. But anyway, the problem seems to be solved now. Everybody who was in this area of the pipeline that was a little short on gas is now getting gas. And as I said, now they're just going to be random people just stuck with barrels. There

were people buying these barrels of gas in places where this pipeline did not even go near, which just shows you that when Fox News tells their people to do stuff, when they cause their own issue, people listen to them. And that, to me, is them destroying America. I mean, if you're telling your people, rush out, get gas, this is a crisis, and it's all Joe Biden's fault, you are, I mean, it's like calling fire in a crowded theater, you know? You're causing a panic where there shouldn't be a panic. And then you're creating the problem. And then you have the nerve to go, it's Joe Biden's fault. You're spot on. And I think that's a very important point that we should chat about for just a quick sec, is that the crisis didn't exist. There was no actual crisis. Fox News made a fake crisis, got people scared. And then because of them and what they had said to

their own viewers, there was potentially a shortage on our hands because of their misinformation. It's a prime example of why there has to be some regulations on a network called the Fox news. It's crazy. And it's why we need real leaders who are pushing forth plans that look to solve issues and don't look to just make noise and go from one battle to the next battle in this Fox News, OAN, fake news bullshit way. I mean, the infrastructure plan explicitly creates a department to secure supply chains. There is a plan in there to do this. So all these people on Fox News, all these people like Steve Scalise and Ted Cruz

and all these people who are the first to go out there and say, Joe Biden this, Joe Biden that. Okay, so do you support the infrastructure plan that would solve these sort of issues? No. So do you support green energy then, which would make it so we wouldn't even have to rely on these outdated pipelines as is? If we had green energy, if people were driving electric cars, this wouldn't even be an issue. No, I don't support that. Okay, so what do you do? What do you do? Why are you even in Congress? Why even in the Senate? What are you there for? And Jordy, where I only slightly disagree with you is when you say that there wasn't a crisis. I'll agree with you that I don't think this was a existential crisis, but it was a problem that exists. And as a nation, as a nation that has the largest economy in the world, as a nation like the United States, you're going to be confronted with problems. But the GQP wants, it's almost like

when the problem happens under the democratic watch, when the Democrats are trying to find solutions, the GQP is like celebrating the problem and thinking, how can I blame this on them? How can I blame it on Biden? How can I blame this on the Dems? How could I own the how could I own the libs right now? And the Dems are thinking, how do we solve a problem? How do we solve a crisis? And then you kind of look at that example again. You know, you at the end of the day, you have Biden immediately declaring a state of emergency on May 9th, immediately addressing it and putting people to intervene. And you compare

and contrast that with the failed and zero leadership of Donald Trump, who just lied to the American people every single day about COVID, a true existential crisis, and just lied, just made shit up. Oh, we're good. We're good. We're good. Yeah. And the same people who are filling up plastic bags with gasoline were taking hydroxychloroquine or celebrating hydroxychloroquine. They were just, just think about that. They were celebrating something called hydroxychloroquine with no actual benefits and actually causing harm simply because rather than go through the scientific process, they wanted to make. The weirdest sequence. And it's still weird when people today try to push hydroxychloroquine on people. It's like, what are you doing?

It's like a proven thing thing like there are actual vaccines and things out there now that help and you're just going to push this like they hate the vaccine anti-vax but they're somehow anti-vax but pro-hydroxychloroquine is is is i mean it's literally that's the thing with them literally everything that is the wrong thing. And the more on the spectrum you go from wrong to just totally batshit crazy to pure 5150 needing to be involuntarily taken in to a mental hospital, the further you get on that spectrum to this person really needs to go into a mental hospital. That is where these people believe anything logical to them is what most logical people go, oh, my God, like these people need to be institutionalized. Like they literally have something in their mind that makes them, you know, that draws them to destruction, to self-destruction.

And thankfully, we have a leader in charge who believes in logic and believes in an actual intervening like a leader. And so we're glad about that. But the moral of the story and the moral of this podcast and mom for it was Mother's Day and also surprised her because it was her birthday. Happy birthday, mom. Happy birthday, mom. So happy birthday to our mom. This is my test to see if she's listening. Happy birthday, mom. Let me know if you hear this.

We'll see if she listens to the podcast. We'll see if she listens to the podcast. We'll see if she listens. We'll test her. We'll go, the password, mom, is 3333. And so if you've listened to the podcast, text us 3333. We'll let you know the results of this. We'll let you know if you listen to the podcast. Exactly.

And we should we should bury little uh codes in all of our podcasts if people who claim they're listening are truly listening to the podcast now we also want to take this time as we conclude to thank all the mothers out there and wish you all a very happy mother's Day weekend. Happy Mother's Day week. We hope you spent it with people who you loved, with colleagues, with friends, with family. And we hope you had an incredible day. The Midas Touch movement is supported by so many great people from so many diverse backgrounds, but definitely would want to shout out the Midas moms out there.

Definitely a force to be reckoned with. A lot of our OGs are Midas moms. A lot of the current supporters who I see across the world, frankly, not just the United States, are Midas moms, as we like to call them. And we thank you for inviting us into your homes and being on this journey with you. This is Ben Mycelis, Brett Mycelis, and Jordy Mycelis telling you, stay vigilant, fight for democracy. And I just want to add one thing. Dog moms and cat moms also count as moms for Mother's Day week. Shout out to the Midas Mighty!