The MeidasTouch Podcast - Senator Brian Schatz on GOP Chaos & Trump Disasters

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republican Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson getting thrown under the bus by GOP Senators who ripped his budget bill to shreds and Meiselas interviews Democratic Senator Brian Schatz about the ability of this disastrous budget bill to be killed. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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 for your charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. on not a very good day for maga mike johnson but then again how can you have a good day when you sell your soul to donald trump the way he did the disastrous budget bill is facing some major alterations in the senate right now. And then MAGA Republicans in the House seem to be indicating on Fox that they're not going to be supporting what's in the current form in the Senate.

Maria Bartiroma announced some of the changes with what the Senate Finance Committee is unveiling. And she made it very clear that there will be steeper Medicaid cuts than what the House Finance Committee is unveiling. And she made it very clear that there will be steeper Medicaid cuts than what the House called for, although Donald Trump and Mike Johnson claim that the bill doesn't cut Medicaid. But here's what they're saying on Fox, let's play it.

Congressman, let me move on to the big, beautiful bill and the Senate Finance Committee unveiling the text of President Trump's bill yesterday. It includes major tax reforms and even steeper Medicaid cuts than the House called for. Other differences included an increase in the trial tax credit and a lower cap

on the state and local tax deduction, back down to $10,000 after the House voted to lift it to the $40,000 cap. Then you had a MAGA Republican Senator Ron Johnson. Here's what he had to say, let's play it. Maybe, just maybe, and I don't even wanna contemplate this, but just maybe we oughta try and pay for it. Maybe we shouldn't keep cutting taxes.

Yeah, maybe we've got to increase taxes, everybody. I think it's a stupid thing to do. I would just vote to extend current tax law, but if we're not really willing to address spending and the projected now with the OB BB, that one big, beautiful bill projected $24 trillion in additional deficit spending on the next 10 years. Something's got to give. And again, I'd rather control it. I'd rather have it managed as opposed to a acute debt crisis. We've been living in a chronic debt crisis. Twenty four trillion dollars. And notice how since it got from the House to the Senate,

it was like two trillion, ten trillion, fifteen trillion, twenty four trillion. I just think it could be fifty trillion dollars added to the deficit when all is said and done. I think the American people are getting it here. Even Harry Enton on CNN is jumping up and down to talk about how disastrous this bill is from a polling perspective here, play this clip. Where is support for this mega bill? You know, I'm rarely really surprised

when I look at polling data, I look at it every day, but the amount of disapproval for this bill, holy cow, my goodness gracious. And you know, you mentioned the KFF poll, we're talking about 29 points underwater on the net favorable rating. But that matches the Quinnipiac University poll from last week when it was 26 points underwater. Oh, my God. You need Greg Louganis to get that far underwater. And I mean, we're talking about a negative 41 net favorability rating among independents

in the center of the electorate. You rarely ever see pieces of legislation or proposed pieces of legislation as unpopular as this. Greg Louganis reference right there and finally here's what we're hearing in the House, MAGA Republican Congress member representative Davidson saying he ain't supporting what he's seeing in the Senate here play this clip. I mean even the most optimistic pro-growth tax models not CBO not even Wharton which is normally a decent model. Everyone says that this increases deficits in this Congress and in this presidency. So even if you say, yeah, we're going to take into account high growth and tariffs, it still hurts deficits

now and it's because you take forever to turn off the Green New Deal or don't ever in some cases and you give these gifts to blue states and a couple other quirks like that. I think the Senate's moving in the right direction so I hope everyone can get on board with the final product. I understand congressman but are you willing to take this so far as to blow up the president's agenda? What is your problem with this bill? Is it debt and deficits? Are you gonna vote yes on it? Well, I didn't vote on it the last time. The problem is, as I said,

there's only one Congress we control. It's the one we're in. And frankly, we control this presidential term and it never spends less money. Let's bring in Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz. Senator, what's going on? What's going on with this disastrous budget bill in the Senate, what's happening?

First of all, I love the Harry Antin new vibe, like it's like sports talk radio kind of thing. In all seriousness, that was kind of fun to watch, but he's exactly right. There is no bill that's been more unpopular, not the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, not the last round of tax cuts, both of which were super unpopular,

but this stuff is like underwater in a very, very politically deadly way. And I think the reason is because it is people are starting to register two things. One, all of the terrible policy and what's going to happen to communities everywhere, in particular the Medicaid cuts and the nutritional assistance cuts and the, you know, attempt to basically constrain energy supply and raise the cost of electricity for most Americans. So that you got that basket of things that they do to quote unquote save money. But I think people didn't quite understand that the reason that they're trying to quote unquote save money is to generate enough revenue to provide extraordinary tax cuts for people making more than four million dollars a year. So usually, you know, those policies are super unpopular in the first place, but when you combine them, they get sort of exponentially more unpopular because they just have no constituency

except people making more than four million million a year. So I actually think the main thing for us to remember is that we can still kill this bill. It is true that they have control over the Congress. It is also true that some of them are getting quite scared of the prospect of electricity prices going up, of people who receive six bucks a day for nutritional assistance getting that cut, and all for people who are not their constituents getting the biggest tax cut in the history of the United States. So there are a lot of scary things happening right now.

This is something I'm quite optimistic about. I think we can kill this bill. How do we do it? How do we kill it? Look, it is a peaceful, pluralistic, nonviolent, but still aggressive movement to stand up for our collective values. And I gotta say, you know,

there has been a lot of good consternation and then a lot of unproductive consternation about the sort of state of the left. Sorry, that's a buzz from the vote. And we spent a good amount of time doing our introspection, but now it's time to fight. We spent a fair amount of time talking our introspection, but now it's time to fight. We spent a fair amount of time talking about whether the center left or the hard left

or the middle of the left should lead the party. I don't care about that fight anymore because we are all united in killing this bill and we have to stay united in killing this bill. And one of the things that made me the most excited and hopeful for the future is that this last Saturday, there was a four to 6 million person demonstration across the country for our collective values and for our country. And we were all united and we were all peaceful and we were all hopeful. And so let's take

that vibe into this fight because this one we can win. You know, it seems like the timing also right now, I think people just have had enough of Donald Trump and the magas like Mike Johnson saying, trust me, just trust me, it's big, it's beautiful, it's lovely, you're never going to see anything more beautiful than this before. You know, and I think even though I'm not sure why, there were certain people who were willing to, after seeing him the first time, screw everything up. They were like, okay, you know, you know, and I think that they at least thought that

maybe, you know, he was talking to the issues that he was defrauding them, but he was saying the words housing and prices and things like that. But I think they're saying now you are a total absolute fraud. And here we are June 17, 2025. Not only has everything you've said been a lie, but my life is significantly worse than it was the last four years. I'm definitely not better off. I think that's part of it too. Oh yeah. I think, I think that's actually the main thing is that, you know, he lost some popularity when he proposed things or did things

But that was all pre-impact now people are starting to feel the impact of his policies and they realize it sucks It's terrible for people. Um, but I also agree that there's a cohort of the electorate Pretty much always that roots for their president, right? even if you didn't vote for the person, you kind of just root for their success because the president's success in a lot of instances is the country's success. And so people sort of lay down their political arms and say, let's give this guy a chance,

even if we did give this guy a chance, you know, five or six years ago. Look, I just think results, right? I think prices are going up in every direction. And to the extent that people had concerns about, what they perceive to be chaos on the border or chaos internationally under Biden's leadership, now people are seeing what chaos really looks like.

We are on the brink of some very dangerous stuff in the Middle East, and we have chaos inside of the United States because of the federal government. Not chaos that the federal government can't get under control, but chaos that the federal government, in some instances, is precipitating or at least making worse. There's that expression now, Trump is a taco.

Trump always chickens out. He does a trade war against the world. Then he pauses the deadlines and puts the deadlines on and pauses the deadline. But now there's people saying he's taco in his tacos. And it's just like the chaos of the policies. He announces we're not going after migrants who were in the restaurants and the factories and the farms and the Home Depot parking lots. We realize that they are contributing.

We're just gonna go after the criminals. We're reversing what we were previously doing. And then he goes and says, actually, I didn't mean that. I'm now going after everybody there. So psych, gotcha. And that is everything he does every day. And to me, it's not a Democrat or Republican thing. It's a competence thing.

And people talk about this, the disastrous dictator parade that he held in DC. It was clearly incredibly embarrassing, low turnout, low energy. But also I think about that in terms of what we're discussing, it's just low competence. It was just a poorly as an event planner.

It was a horrible, it looked bad. The troops look bad and everything he does just doesn't have it seems basic planning basic discipline thinking it out strategizing like the basics. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm a little worried about the the sort of trolling exercise of taco or any of this other stuff because I think that doesn't really build our movement. It may be satisfying to sort of personally try to tweak the guy, but I think the best thing to do

is what was done over the weekend, which is to show that we are the mainstream of the United States of America, both in numbers and also in conduct and in terms of policy. When I first ran for the state house in 1998, lots of other stuff was happening, but the best advice I got was like, just keep knocking on doors, just keep knocking on doors.

It doesn't matter what your opponent is doing, just keep knocking on doors. And then the election results will vindicate that approach. And I think that our approach has to be, certainly when he does a horrific thing, we have to push back in every way. I'm not saying that we don't, but I'm saying the most effective thing we can do is kill his terrible bill and continue to build this movement and in a way that doesn't require people to like

admit they were wrong, right, or feel bad about joining this movement. We don't even have to talk about the last election or that they were tricked or that he's been, you know, he's betrayed his voters. We can just move on to how do you think it's going? And I think if you ask people, how do you think it's going, most people are going to say not well at all. Now, some people will continue to blame Democrats or try to blame, you know, the Biden administration, and that's fine. There's a smaller and smaller cohort of people who find

that credible, but I think we really need to focus on how do you think it's going rather than either relitigating with Republicans or people who voted for Trump, you know, whether or not they were correct or relitigating the election in the context of, you know, a family fight among Democrats. None of that shit matters anymore. He's unpopular, and the reason he's unpopular is because things are getting worse in the United States of America. And the less we talk political strategy and tactics, and more we talk about the impact that he's having on American communities, I think the better off will be. that you think is not getting enough attention that you don't get asked in interviews in terms of how his policies may be impacting people in your state or across the country? I think we're going to see

electricity shortages. And the thing, you know, I've been involved in the climate fight for all of my adult life. It's really the reason that I got involved in politics. But you know, there were, to be fair, over many decades, there were times where we had to make a trade-off between the priority of protecting the planet and reducing the impact of climate change and energy abundance. And that has flipped. Since we passed that big climate bill, we have embraced energy abundance. We have embraced the idea that we can solve the planetary crisis and reduce people's prices. And the funky thing about what they're doing right now in this terrible bill is that they're going to create shortages. It's true that

we're going to need a lot more electricity because over time the economy grows, but also because of AI and some other requirements. It's also true that nuclear and geothermal have some real potential over the many, many years. We cannot get nuclear energy online in the next five to eight years, even in the most optimistic scenario. Likewise, geothermal with some notable exceptions. If we are going to meet the energy demands of the next probably three to eight years Wind and solar are the things that you can basically just lay down and plug into any grid Anywhere and that's the way we're going to meet our energy demands If we don't do that, there will literally be a shortage of electrons and prices will go up everywhere

So we don't have to argue that we should sacrifice to save the planet. Right now, energy abundance, cheaper energy is consistent with saving the planet. And I think people need to start thinking about it in those terms. Glad I asked you that question because sometimes the things that are most important are the questions that are least asked

and things that are talked about. And that's gonna be impacting all Americans. Senator Brian Schatz, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers today. The truth is more important than ever. Check out our new Truth Over Lies collection at store.mitustouch.com. All 100% USA Union made.