The MeidasTouch Podcast - The End of the GOP with Joe Walsh

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

The Meidas Brothers kick off the show by discussing a fan-suggested 'Men of Meidas' calendar before heading into the more serious news of the week: the acquittal of Donald Trump in the Senate impeachment trial. The brothers recount that stressful day and debate the merits of the Democrats' decision not to call witnesses. They then answer the question: where do we go from here? The brothers then welcome former Republican Joe Walsh to the show to discuss the future of the Republican Party. The Meidas Brothers then break down the latest with the Biden agenda before welcoming Adrianne and Aaron Kautz, the founders of One Fresh Pillow, for a special new segment called Citizen Change. You can listen to Joe Walsh's radio show on the Gab Radio Network by clicking here. Buy your own One Fresh Pillow here and make sure to follow their Twitter account for some of the best content on social media. Thank you for making this show one of the top shows in North America! Share it with a friend and be sure to give us a 5-star rating! --- 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

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welcome to the Midas Touch podcast and Ben Micellis here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett Micellis and Jordy Micellis. And let me start by introducing something about Jordy. We all know that, you know, Jordy has probably the most popular Midas Touch fan base. And don't worry, everybody out there. I know you want us to get into impeachment. We're going to take the deep dive.

But first, I need to talk about Jordi Mycelis and the fans wanting Jordi to do a Men of Midas Touch calendar. Well, to be fair, I think that's all three of us, guys. That's not just me. I think I think the calendar call is for all three of us to do this. And I kind of accidentally, by replying here, backed myself into a diet that I wasn't really planning on doing. I was like 50% serious, but this post has taken off a little bit. Yeah. Jordy's commented back, started my diet today, follow up in 30 days. So what you're

saying now, Jordy, just to get this straight, is after you saw this concept that there may be a fake men of Midas touch calendar, you decided, okay, now I need, is after you saw this concept that there may be a fake men of Midas touch calendar, you decided, okay, now I need to start getting in shape. Is that accurate? Are you Ben? Are you playing Ben's role here? I'm just wondering. I'm just trying to get a sense of when you decided to do this diet, if that means this calendar is real and the fans want to know if they could expect this men of Midas calendar or if it's not going to happen. Well, look, I'm down. Are you guys in? Let me flip it back to both of you. No, I'm going to stick to doing the political commentary. For everybody who knows me, I am a long distance runner, although I've injured my

leg recently, which has made my runs that normally are six miles, 10 miles, some days 15 miles. Really, the most I can do based on the pain in my right leg is about three and a half miles right now. And so it's a difficult thing to grapple with. But your brother's getting a little old there, boys. A few months ago, though, Ben was literally sending us screenshots from his phone after he would run just marathons for fun. He would run marathon distances from around Los Angeles to Malibu and back. So Ben, Ben's got that going for him. I, you know, I got the bike behind me here for all you who see the clips. I I'm, I'm, I'm in shape, but I'm not quite calendar ready there, Jordy. I'm ready to rock, man. Jordy is ready to rock. And it's probably those long

runs to Malibu up those hills that busted my knee in the first place. So all the runners out there, be careful. But still, when I'm doing my shorter runs, my three and a half mile runs, I'm listening to the news. Most recently, I was listening to the impeachment hearings. I'm listening to, you know, not just Democratic media. I want to know what's going on in the other on the right wing, the radical right echo chamber and all the gaslighting that's taking place so I could save you, our listeners, from having to endure that pain. And let me be very clear. There is an existential threat to democracy right now. We have people on the radical right who are basically

saying everything we know to be true on the videos of the insurrection are false. Don't believe your eyes. They're saying that it's Antifa who did it. And they're being echoed by Republicans in the House and Republicans in the Senate. We have Senator John Cornyn of Texas recently saying that we demand answers from Nancy Pelosi about why there wasn't appropriate security measures, even though one, that's handled by the Capitol Police. And two, you don't blame the victim for what we know to be the case, which is Trump inciting the riot. It is the ultimate in gaslighting. It's victim blaming at its most obvious.

It's disgusting. It's a gross tactic. And these aren't the fringe voices of, you know, even OAN or Newsmax or the deep, you know, Parler or any of these channels. This is Fox News, who bills itself, at least not in court, as a news station. They are beamed into the homes of millions and millions of Americans. They're one of the most watched stations, and this is on their primetime show. I'm not sure if you saw that Tucker Carlson clip where he just totally invented these lies about the insurrection, talked about Antifa, like you said, while

pitting all this stuff on Black Lives Matter. We play that clip, Brett, the Tucker Carlson clip. We do know for certain that the known facts of what happened on January 6th deviate in very important ways from the story they are now telling us, including the story they told us today in the impeachment hearings. And in many places, the known facts bear no resemblance to the story they're telling. They're just flat out lying. There's no question about that.

The question is, why would they lie about this? For an answer, think back to last spring. Beginning of Memorial Day, BLM and their sponsors in corporate America completely changed this country. They changed it. All right, we can stop it. And we can stop it right there. You know, you get the point of where it gets grosser and grosser. He ends up saying that the whole George Floyd death was a hoax and a lie that he didn't really die by police violence and

that the impeachment proceedings, he says, are a way that Democrats are trying to cover up for protests that occurred in the summer in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, which is the most absurd thing in the world. But Brett and Jordy, this is what bugs me from from Noah. When we have people who are calling themselves, again, fact checkers who are making these decisions to go after Democrats for appropriately evaluating the conduct, not just the dumb words that occasionally the GOP spits out to gaslight, but that observes the actual conduct of individuals and that this particular fact checker, it's Daniel Dale, who I've always thought was a good fact checker. But as as you recall, Daniel Dale went after Midas Touch for blaming appropriately so Marco Rubio for the insurrection. And it ended up being a cornerstone of the impeachment trial, them talking about those trucks and Marco Rubio's statements. Yeah. Us linking the insurrection to Marco Rubio saying, we love it in Florida to see what you're

doing when the terrorists and the Trump terrorists were trying to drive Biden's tour bus off the road in Texas. And Daniel Dale said, well, Rubio said a few times that he condemned the insurrection after it took place on January 6th. So therefore, it is false to say that Rubio didn't condemn it when his actions speak louder than those silly idle words. And one of the examples that we gave is that's like Daniel Dale saying, well, Trump's condemned violence and Trump's condemned insurrection. And we were saying that mocking the hypothetical of that's where these types of fact checks go. And sure enough, this is an actual Daniel Dale fact check, where he says, Democratic Representative Dean, he's referring to Madeline Dean, is right that Trump has a pattern

of praising and encouraging supporters of violence. But she's wrong that he never condemned violence. Trump mixed in various condemnations. Now, this to me is absurd on every level. And let me just break down again what this Daniel DelFacto said. He starts off by saying Democratic Representative Dean is right that Trump has a pattern of praising and encouraging supporters of violence. Let's just stop there and evaluate what that means. The freaking president of the United States has a pattern of encouraging violence against Americans. So why the hell are you fact checking Madeline Dean for calling him out for doing it? Why is there even a dot, dot, dot after it? If

you're the president encouraging violence, what is your job as a fact checker to then say, oh, well, he's mixed in various condemnations, like mixed in, like you get fucking credit for that? There's no but here. It's not. Yeah, he incited violence, but he also said a couple of times that, you know what? Violence isn't that great because, like you said, they're the biggest cliches in the book because they're true. Actions speak louder than words. Watch what they do, not what they say. We need to judge people based on their actions, based on their conduct, because this is what politicians do. They'll play every side of the

issue. And it's up to a journalist, it's up to a fact checker to call them out as to what they're actually saying with their actions and not to give them the political cover that they're trying to get from you by playing every side of the issue. You are giving them exactly what they hope for by doing that kind of fact check. And you're making those selections, Daniel Dale, of who to go after. Madeline Dean going after Trump or inciting violence. If you have that discretion of who you're going to go after, you know who you should be going after? Go after the 43 senators, the 43 traitors in the Republican Party who stood up there and voted to acquit Donald J. Trump when they themselves were the targeted victims of his attempts to overthrow the American government. This is not the days 20 years ago where we could be debating nuances of what Mitt Romney said in a debate versus what Obama said in a debate. We have 43 senators who want to overthrow democracy and stop giving them cover.

Stop. Daniel Dell, what are you doing, man? Look, the brothers put it perfectly, but you've got to look at the whole picture. You can't piggyback one line here and there that you want to say and report on. Look, you have this platform. Use it for good. Use it for the right reasons. You know what you're doing is wrong.

Anyway, back to impeachment. Americans are angry today, guys, because like you said, Trump was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial 57 to 43. There were seven Republicans, which is actually historic, who actually joined the Democrats in voting to convict Trump. And this was Richard Burr of North Carolina. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was a little bit of a surprise. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania all voted to convict. I'll tell you why, though, while it was a kind of surprise, Richard Burr, North Carolina, will not be running for reelection. Bill Cassidy of

Louisiana will not be running for reelection. Toomey of Pennsylvania will not be running for reelection. Apparently, in the Republican Party, that's one of the only ways you could actually be courageous and not support the overthrow of democracy is if you've made a decision not to run for reelection. So Trump, again, lost the popular vote, but somehow but somehow wins because there's a two third criteria in order to actually get convicted in this. believe that he should have been convicted of that 58 percent. Only 14 percent of Republicans believe that inciting an insurrection against the United States is worthy of conviction. And I think one of the things that bothered me most was watching Mitch McConnell, who voted to acquit Trump, but then gave a speech directly after that was a condemnation of Trump's actions and seemed like a speech after somebody voted to convict. In the harshest language possible, McConnell said there is no question that Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the Capitol riot. He explained his

vote by saying he decided the former president is constitutionally not eligible for conviction. So he was saying that he can't be convicted because of some dumb process argument. Yeah. And the dumb process argument is that he's no longer the president of the United States, so we can't convict him in an impeachment trial. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell intentionally delayed the proceeding so that the trial itself couldn't take place after. So here he's he's the reason why he's now claiming it's constitutionally infirm because he moved the date. He moved the date. He moved the date. And Nancy Pelosi, rightfully, was furious at this line of attack. And like I said, it's because it doesn't even matter to begin with. You can impeach a president after the fact. You can impeach, you can convict an elected official

after the fact. Like the Democratic House manager said, there is no January exemption for committing crimes. You can't in your last few weeks do whatever the hell you want to try to retain power. And I like Pelosi's response. I think it's worth hearing just a little bit of it. So for him to get up there and make this indictment against the president and then say, but I can't, I can't vote for it because it's after the fact, the fact that he established, the fact that he established that it could not be delivered. It's so infuriating and so true. And as we were watching this, you know, there was a lot of drama in Congress that day because we saw Friday night, Representative

Jamie Herrera-Boitler, she released a shocking and damning statement saying that while the attack was ongoing, Trump repeated the falsehood that it was Antifa, which is now being echoed on Fox News as we spoke about. And McCarthy refuted him, told the president, no, these are your supporters from your rally. And that's when Trump said to McCarthy, well, Kevin, I guess these people must be a lot more upset about the election than you are. That's where Trump's mind was at while he was gloating

and enjoying and delighting in the fact that his supporters were attacking the Capitol. And so Saturday morning, there was this whole drama because the Democrats sought to bring your testimony onto the record. They wanted to get witnesses. They wanted to get her to say that in front of the impeachment trial. So they held a vote and even five Republicans voted for them to call witnesses to the stand. And then basically what happened was all the members of the Senate reconvened. They met. They made some sort of backroom agreement

that after all this, there would be no witnesses. And instead, they would simply enter the representatives' written statements into the record. Meanwhile, Democrats were very riled up in the break. They were thinking, oh, this is great. We could subpoena McCarthy. We could subpoena Pence. We could get Trump here. This is our time to strike. They finally felt like somebody was fighting for them. And so it set off this whole debate and this whole frustration and anger when Democrats seemingly folded on witnesses. So guys, where do you stand on this? Do you think Democrats made the right move here? What concerned me is that the Democrats look disorganized and they look disorganized because they took the vote Saturday morning to call witnesses. They succeeded in the vote and then they backed out after succeeding in the vote. I understand the argument why you would not want witnesses.

And it's very simple. You have 43 Senate Republicans who want to overthrow the United States government. And you could put on witnesses for the next week, which could end up taking many weeks as President Biden tries to pass his agenda. And for the next foreseeable weeks or months, we could be talking about Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump. And we have to, as a nation, move past just talking about him every single day. We still need to hold him accountable. But what we really need to do and what's incredibly important is that we pursue and champion Biden's agenda. But don't go and look so completely disorganized. Take a vote to call witnesses and then not call the witnesses thereafter. Secondly, there's an overall issue on messaging that I just think the Democrats in the House and the Senate didn't get right. I think that the Democrats in the House and the Senate needed to do a better job making very clear that Trump was going to get acquitted from the outset because the Republicans don't give a shit about the United States

democracy. People shouldn't have felt like there was actually any chance of Donald Trump actually being found guilty in this thing because there was zero chance of that happening in the Senate because you have to clear a two thirds vote and there's just not enough Republicans in there. Therefore, when the Democrats got seven Republicans, they should have basically used that as a moral victory and then basically said, look, we did everything we can, but we are now passing the evidence off to the prosecutors. That's how I would have messaged it. The prosecutors in the criminal setting, which can hold Trump. And that's how I would have messaged

this just a little bit differently. Well, I agree, because the whole case, when you break it down, is a case of public relations, right? It's a case of messaging. The trial really wasn't to convict Trump in impeachment, per se, because no one who really knows the process thought that we would get the amount of Republicans needed to do that. But what the trial was doing is it was putting Trump on trial for the public. So all this was for the public to see. So they laid out the evidence, which was overwhelming. And that's why really the witness thing was, I think what you're getting at is it was a communications failure because it looked like the Democrats were playing hardball and then it looked like they bluffed when they backed down. And so people got their

hopes up and people thought something was coming and then it never quite happened. And I think that's why people were so furious by it. Does it change the outcome of the trial? No. I mean, it would have been the same and the testimony was so damning anyway, but you know, I understand why people are upset. And I think at the end of the day, though, it was, it was an optics issue. Yeah. And look, I think both of your reasonings and rationale makes sense. You know, I understand why people are upset. And I think at the end of the day, though, it was an optics issue. Yeah. And look, I think both of your reasonings and rationale makes sense. You know, someone who doesn't know the legal proceedings, you know, might not understand that you have to then take that deposition and just really know the process of how long and extended this thing would get.

But frankly, I'm pretty disappointed. The court of public opinion right now. I totally agree with that. The court of public opinion. But I wanted McCarthy to take this. I wanted his words because I just think you need that evidence and that context for future generations. I think from a procedural, though, and legal standpoint, it is not as easy as people think to get depositions of sitting Congress members. Congress members have a lot of legal immunities. They're represented by

the House General Counsel. There's a lot of privileges that they can invoke not to testify. And what would actually happen is several weeks, if not months, of renewing the trial ultimately for the same result. We've all seen the reaction on social media from what happened over the weekend, but I think it's time for a little bit of tough love for the Democrats out there. I'm not talking about the politicians. I'm talking about for our followers, for everyone out there. First, I think it's important to know that not everybody's on Twitter all day like we are. So they're not following all the minutia of, oh, they voted on witnesses and all that. But everybody did see the clips of

what happened on January 6th. And that's very important. And I just want to say to everybody who's listening, everybody who follows us, you have every right to be upset. You have every right to be frustrated and annoyed. We are. We certainly are. But you should be proud that we're on the side of democracy. You should be proud of the work of the Democratic House managers who made the case, an overwhelming and undeniable case that showed the American people that Trump's guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Be upset, but that doesn't mean you just give up now. It doesn't mean that both sides are the same and that you disappear from politics. I got emails over the weekend, guys.

Some of them said, oh, I'm done with the Democrats. I'm done with politics. I'm checking out after that display. This is not the time to do that. We lost one battle. We lost one battle of a battle that wouldn't have had an impact on the trial anyway. But you got to remember our victories because we won the House. We won the Senate. We won the presidency. We won two historic seats in Georgia. We're about to pass a COVID relief bill that will save lives. Vaccinations have more than doubled. Evictions are paused.

DACA is protected. We're back in the World Health Organization and the climate accords. So we just need everybody out there. Stop acting like we lost. Progress is never going to be a straight line. We're going to have setbacks along the way. That doesn't mean we quit. That doesn't mean we let the GOP make us cynical. Does it, Jordy? No, absolutely not. Do we let them make us want to sit the next election out

because we're upset about one loss? Absolutely not. Do we let them take power because we're upset that we couldn't call witnesses in the trial? Absolutely not. That's what they're counting on, Jordy. That's what they're counting on. We got to double down on our efforts. We got to commit ourselves to eradicating the GOP, to passing legislation like H.R. 1, which is also known as the For the People Act, which would expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws and limit gerrymandering, to passing this COVID relief bill, to raising the minimum wage, to ensuring the survival of democracy in America. You could be upset.

You could be angry, and you should be. But direct that anger in the right place. Let's lose this one with grace. Let's dust ourselves off. And let's prepare for the next battle because you know we got one ahead of us. So let's talk about what options now exist. A lot of senators are talking about setting up a 9-11 style commission about what took place on January 6th, 2021. Who knew and when? I mean, look, I think that a commission that is nonpartisan, that investigates it, that can call witnesses could be helpful. I think that we all know what took place. And I think that 57 percent of America is horrified with it.

And 43 percent of America is sadly and sickly OK with it. So you can have a commission. You know, we can delve into it, but it was all on camera. We saw what happened. You know, we saw the tweets. All of the evidence was there. So I guess the commission would really just bring out everything that happened around the event that we saw. Right. The pre-planning in the days before, what was Roger Stone's involvement? What was Steve Bannon's involvement? What was Rudy Giuliani's involvement? Who was Trump calling in those preceding days? Who were the Trump family calling? And I think all these details are important to build the full picture as to how this was pre-planned and to how this thing was incited. So we then also have the invocation of section three of the 14th Amendment, the use of the word officer.

It doesn't specifically reference president of the United States, but offices of the United States. So people say there's a legal question out there if the president was intended or not to be intended to be included. I think clearly the president was intended to be included. I think clearly the president was intended to be included. But basically through Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, by a majority vote, the Senate and the House can move to prohibit an officer from holding an office again if they basically lead an insurrection against the United States. The practical effect, though, would then go back to the states and the states could choose then whether or not to include or not include Trump if he ever runs again on the ballot, at which time it then gets thrown

to the courts and there would be litigation over whether or not you can or cannot be included on the ballot. So that's the Section 3 of 14th Amendment when people talk about that. And then finally, the Department of Justice and state prosecutors, you know, may still file charges about the insurrection. But of course, there are numerous other investigations involving tax fraud, involving election fraud, involving other criminal conduct that Trump took place in connection with the inauguration committee. And so let's not forget that there is criminal processes moving forward that will just take the normal course for these criminal investigations. And I want to say two things about that. One, you know, one of the most common things we see are people who just feel defeated, who say, oh, he's Teflon Don. Nothing could touch

him. He's got no accountability whatsoever in these past few years. Here's the thing. Trump's been immune to this sort of prosecution for the last four years. So really, our window where this could have even been possible has only been now a few weeks. So remember that this is very new. Also, Trump got the ultimate consequence in being voted out of office. So he's not Teflon done. He's already defeated once and we could defeat him again. The second thing I want to say about this also is, and it might be a little contradictory towards what I just said, is let's not always hang our hat on, okay, what's the next way to get Trump? Because we got shit to do at the end of the day. We got stuff to do.

And you're just going to keep finding yourself frustrated and annoyed if you keep relying on things to save you that are out of your control. I mean, we saw this with the Mueller investigation. And don't let this be another thing of that, that this is going to be the thing that gets him. And it might, and it's very likely that he will get state charges or be charged federally. But let's not ride everything with that expectation. Let's move on. Let's push our agenda forward. Let's not forget, Brett, that for the past four years, we've had a political party in the

Republicans that have supported everything essentially that Donald Trump's done. That's let him become an authoritarian. That's that's given him the immunities to go about doing these things. You know, there was a time in the you know, with Nixon, where the Republican Party looked at the crimes and they were not supporting it, which were forced him to resign. Imagine back then if the Republicans said, oh, Watergate, Watergate, that's supposed to be a crime. No, that's just some that's just some anti Vietnam, you know, protesters that are trying to make Watergate sound like something. That's the arguments that modern day version of what would have happened to Watergate if the Republicans are like that. I heard these clips, Brett, of Lindsey Graham talking about impeaching Kamala Harris and that at the end of the day, he doesn't give a shit about what Trump does as long as it's about winning.

Let's play the Kamala Harris clip first. We've opened Pandora's box to future presidents. And if you use this model, I don't know how Kamala Harris doesn't get impeached if the Republicans take over the House because she actually bailed out rioters. I mean, I can't don't even play anymore. I mean, that's absurd. Let's play the other Lindsey Graham clip, though, about whether or not Republicans should or can moderate Trump's ridiculousness. I've been asked by a lot of people, Chris, calm President Trump down, talk to him, get him to calm down. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. We need to work with President Trump. We can't do it without him. And to you, President Trump, you need to build a Republican Party stronger. I'm into winning. And if you want to get something off your chest,

fine, but I'm into winning. Well, like Lindsey Graham is like sweaty. It looks like a hostage tape. He looks just like a disgusting human being. And he is a disgusting human being supporting this other disgusting human being. He had said in the same interview that he was going to golf with Trump like next week at Mar-a-Lago. This is a guy who's totally lost his spine. There's clearly some sort of compromising material against them or something going on here where he's just totally folded his entire moral compass. I mean, John McCain, who was his best friend, is probably rolling in his grave right now at the statements that Lindsey Graham is making on a daily basis. I think, though, at the end of the day, yeah, you know, could there be things on Lindsey Graham? Yeah, I like it's salacious. And yeah, you know, it could be interesting. But

I think what he said in that clip, Brett, really tells you their entire ethos, which is that the Republican Party doesn't give a damn about Americans. They don't give a damn about our health. They don't give a damn about our safety, our security. They don't care about cops. They don't care about our troops. What they care about is purely winning elections. And that's all they care about, period. And their calculation right now still is that in order to win, we should turn America into the most racist and hateful place possible rather than make hope we should make fear and scare Americans into voting against people as opposed to for a profound democracy. And what we also see is in this GOP party, the GOP censoring anybody who voted to confit,

who actually did the right legal thing. So we see in Louisiana, the executive GOP committee censoring Senator Bill Cassidy. We see in Utah Utah this ridiculous decree being circulated right now, which says, whereas Senator Williard Mitt Romney appears to be an agent for the establishment deep state. I mean, it's just QAnon. It's just QAnon and an official statement. We have in North Carolina censoring Senator Richard Burr. Recently in the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus did this opinion piece. She calls all of this deranged syndrome, the Mar-a-Lago syndrome, which she says is a force stronger than Stockholm syndrome. person who literally said people to kill you, not guilty because you think that you need them for your political survival, not caring about the democracy. I know someone, Brett and Jordy, who I think will have profound views on this. I want to speak to Joe Walsh, a former congressman,

a man currently without a political party who used to be a Republican, voted for Trump, voted for Trump, and now an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. And I want to probe him on what the hell is going on in the Republican Party. And just generally, what does he consider himself right now if he's not a Democrat? Let's bring Joe Walsh on after this break. 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. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. We have Joe Walsh, former Republican congressman,

current host at Gab Radio Network, spelled G-A-B, radionetwork.com. His shows Monday and Fridays from 3 to 5 p.m. Catch it live. Joe, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. How are you doing? Hey, guys, it's good to be with you. Thanks. Thanks for the invite. All right, Joe. So I got to get into it. So, Joe, when we were saying that you're a former Republican congressman, I mean, you were really you were really in it. You are not just Republican. You were identified. Come on, say it. You're identified with the Tea Party. How did you get there and how did you get out? How did I go from I'm going to grab my musket if Trump doesn't win to this? Hey, look, here's the here's the and I don't know. Do I have to watch my language at all? Not at all. No, no. Your language. This is what's so fucking bizarre politically about the times we're living in right now.

I'm still the same Tea Party conservative. If we were having this conversation seven years ago before Trump, we'd probably you guys would be on me. We'd be disagreeing about a lot of shit. I didn't change. Trump came along. Now, I voted for him in 2016. Fair enough, man. And I've spent the last three years apologizing for that vote. I didn't love the guy. In fact, he blocked me on Twitter back in 2016 because I would criticize him. He wasn't Hillary. I thought like our politics is really fucked up. We need some disruption. But you know what? I dropped the ball. I didn't pay enough attention five years ago to what a bad, bad person this was. Once he got elected, I started to pay attention

to him. And eventually I just said, there's no fucking way I can support that. But that's not me, guys. I screwed up. One of the things we say on the show repeatedly, though, is that this group of Republicans now in power are not conservatives. There's nothing conservative about following QAnon. There's nothing conservative about not conserving our democracy and overthrowing democracy. Do you agree with this, that these Republicans led by the McConnells of the world and the Ted Cruz's of the world, are these people Republican or are they just Trump puppets? It's a cult and they're fascists. Guys, this is the most disappointing thing in the world to me because I am a conservative. I fear big government.

I fear kings and dictators. My guys, Jim Jordan, who I know well, I know a lot of these guys well. I never would have guessed that they would have given up everything they believe in to fall in line behind a dictator. It's not conservative. And what do you think the reason why is? Are they afraid of him? Are they just degenerates who now have proximity to power and they like being in Air Force One and they like the accoutrements of just, you know, tickling the sky's balls, for lack of better words. What what was it at the end of the day that made people who you were friends with just

totally go off the fucking deep end and sacrifice their legacies, their histories and our very fucking democracy? So I'm in a unique spot because I served with those guys in Congress. And believe it or not, I was kind of a pretty big deal in the conservative media world. And then I fucking lost everything. So Jim Jordan and these guys, why did they all sell out? Because they're afraid of Trump's voters. They're afraid of Republican Party voters. It's a great gig. You like being a congressman. You like being a senator. They don't want to lose that power. So they can't cross his voters or they're not going to get reelected.

It's the same reason why dumbasses like Sean Hannity and all these other guys in the conservative media world suck Trump's toes. They don't want to lose the money in the ratings. So putting party before country and putting ratings before country, they just don't want to lose what they've got. And look, there are certain people who are affiliated with Trump who are so in the cult that they can never, there's nothing you can do to get them out of the cult. But I do genuinely believe there is a contingent of people who fear certain things. They've projected their fear in the wrong places and they've been misled. But how do we get those people to wake up? We see it happening a little bit now after a bunch of the lies were exposed and everything Trump said.

But how do we get them out of that bubble, that echo chamber, back to at least the side where we're talking about Democratic norms, small d Democratic norms? Look, as long as Trump controls Republican Party voters, these guys will always fall in line. And you're right. If most of them privately can't stand Trump, if I had a dollar for every Republican congressman over the last three years, who's told me, Joe, you're right. He's a son of a bitch. He's a fucking moron. He's bad for the party in the country. If i had a buck for every one of those conversations i'd be a wealthy guy so most of them are not true believers they're just as you say afraid but here's the deal guys today i mean trump controls these voters the base is devoted to him because i come from trump's world i hear from thousands of Trump supporters

every single day. They are still devoted to him. It's not going to change unless that changes. And what do you think needs to be done to help make that change? At the end of the day, a lot of the policies on the Democratic side, I mean, policies like let's get more vaccines for people. We don't even have to get into a nuanced debate about deficit spending or things like that. But, you know, getting vaccines out, calling Russia out for putting the bounties on the heads of American soldiers, truly projecting a coherent foreign policy that protects our troops and maintains the integrity of our country, a home and abroad? Are we helpless? Can we not reach them at all? Or is there any way for any of those people to peel off? No, they're not going to pay

attention to any of that because they tune in every night to Hannity at eight o'clock or nine o'clock and Hannity tells them Joe Biden is a socialist and big tech's trying to shut you down. Look, 74 million people voted for Trump. 40 to 50 million of them are either cult members or they're like just about there. The only thing that's going to pull them from Trump is if Trump's no longer with us, or I mean, you can you can peel off enough of them by putting the truth in front of them. There's nothing Joe Biden can do. And there's nothing the Democrats can do to these people. Does that make sense? It does. It's a little it's disheartening, but maybe from that perspective, though, you know, I feel like a lot of these Republican politicians, they're frightened of what Trump could do with his voters. And they've had this fear of what if he starts his own patriot party, which polls say that if Trump started his own party, much of the Republican Party would happily join him in that party. Now, I think one of the other threats that might leave these people in the dust would be if there is a Republican, a conservative party that actually believes in democracy that forms.

Where do you see that? Do you see that as being effective? Do you think the addition of a third party, you know, it might break up the party initially and cause issues, but, you know, for long-term hanging on as a viable political party, do you think that's what needs to be done? I'm of the mind that that's what has to be done. I don't think there's any other option. Guys, and I've been public about this, and I'm a lifelong Republican. I left the party a year ago. The Republican Party is fucked. It's done. I think it's a dying political party. I think it's done as the national political party. It's a regional party. It's like one of those far-right European parties. And I think people who think like me, they just got to suck it up and accept

that. And as you say, begin the hard work now of just saying, fuck it. We're going to plant our flag. Here's the center, right? Centrist common sense. Let's get some shit done. Kind of a party. And if it takes eight to 10 years to be viable, so be it. I think that's got to start now. Is that something you're planning? That's something I am a part of conversations right now. Right now, you basically have a lot of Republican never Trumpers and strategists and consultants talking about it. And there's a lot of initial fear, because you guys know, look, it's hard to start a third party. The two parties have done a great job of making it difficult. But a lot of them don't want to give up on the Republican Party yet. I think it's done.

Time to give up. Start now. Now, it's interesting that you mentioned Fox News just being this huge channel for disinformation, just like the OANs, just like the Newsmaxes. Where are you and sort of folks like-minded of you receiving their news day in and day out? That's such a great question, because it's such a great question, because I used to be in that world. I was in Fox, the Fox News world. I don't go there. I generally now go to, I mean, a bunch of different sites, but I go CNN. I go to a bunch of sites on the left. There are a few principled sites on the right.

But everything else is propaganda. Fox News, Ben Shapiro, and The Daily Wire. It's just all propaganda. But they're doing the same thing that my buddies in Congress are doing. They're afraid of losing their audience. They know most of their audience are up question, but I don't want to overshadow Jordy's best question of the interview. As the older brother, you know, I just I want to give it to Jordy this time. But I got it. I just got to say the fact that growing up as a Democrat and knowing what in 2010, I remember vividly your platform. But the fact that here we are today having a discussion about democracy, small d democracy and preserving it, I probably couldn't predict that. But in many ways, you know, that makes us much more similar. And I think that this is to the, you know, to this radical QAnon right that exists now. Well, and to that point, we got Trump to thank for this. And here's the deal, guys.

I mounted, you're right, back in 2010, you probably would have despised me. You probably did despise me. But remember, before Trump, it was all about the issues. And yeah, I fucked up a lot. And I said things that were stupid. And I stepped in a bunch. But generally, it was because I was trying to advance issues. Here's the deal. I primary Trump this last time around. I didn't have a shot, but I thought it was important for a Republican to do it. Man, during that primary, I had to publicly apologize every day for what I did to lead to

Trump. And yeah, I was part of the angry Tea Party movement, and we engaged in some ugly politics sometimes, no doubt about it. And that ugly politics led to Trump. But always remember this, guys, and then I'll shut up. The average Republican voter is a middle-aged, older white person. And they've been scared to death for years because the country's changing really fast. And the fucking Republican Party establishment ignored these people. And then along came along came people like Joe Walsh, who riled them up. And then the demagogue Donald Trump came along in 2016. And he lied to them and radicalized them. And now that

is the Republican Party base. Joe Walsh, thank you for joining the Midas Touch podcast. We hope to have you back. You can catch Joe Walsh on GAVradionetwork.com, Mondays through Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. Catch him live. Joe, it's great to have you. I look forward to having you back and continuing our conversations offline and following what you're building. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. You know, Brett and Jordy, I think it is critical to speak to people like Joe Walsh so that we give our listeners an understanding of where the Republican Party is going. You know, just thinking back,

I probably disagree with Joe politically on most issues, other than I think we both support the existence of democracy. Yeah, which I think is why it's important, I think, to bring people like Joe, no matter how fringe he may have been in the past, he's a guy who believes in democracy now. And we need to take people in the fold who have looked at their past and said, hey, that's not right. Me then, that is not OK. And to step up and say, I'm going to stand with democracy and do

everything in my power to get rid of authoritarianism in America. I agree. And look, the most important thing, I think that we could rehash, relitigate and talk a lot about what Trump did and why he needs to be held accountable. But I also believe we should walk and chew gum at the same time and we should focus on that. But what we should really be focused on is the Biden agenda and the important work that the Democrats can be accomplishing and in a very short period of time have accomplished with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Yeah. And the Biden agenda is moving forward. The Biden administration has now officially purchased enough vaccines for all Americans. I mean, they've doubled their vaccine output week to week, which is just incredible. And it's really starting to feel real.

I know Ben's like, oh, vaccine, schmaccine. What are you talking about? I'm not vaccine, schmaccine. I am all for. What an unnecessary shot at Ben. No pun intended on the shot. I'm all for vaccine distributions. And I think it's an incredible accomplishment that vaccines have ramped up. Vaccine distributions have ramped up

such that we have about two million shots per day. One in nine Americans now have their first shot. And Dr. Fauci says that in April, it will be open season for all Americans to start getting vaccinated. Where in the world do you make me an anti-vaxxer, Brett? You're not anti-vaxxer. Where it came from was when I said a few weeks ago when I said that I was emotional about the vaccine, Ben made fun of me for saying when I saw the first person get the vaccine that I wanted to cry and that I was emotional. And Ben was like – No, let me tell you why.

Yeah, your baby. Wait, before you get into that, Brett, your logic with this joke, just to be clear, was to call back a very particular moment from like seven or eight podcasts ago and think anyone, okay, sorry, Ben, go ahead. And yeah, let me finish your thought journey and think that I can recall whatever it was

that you're talking about. It must be harboring a lot of pain about this. But my point to you then is the same point I'm making now, though, which is that under the Trump administration, we were so beaten. We were such losers as a country that having a vaccine to a pandemic seemed like, oh, my God, what a massive accomplishment, despite the fact that the what a massive accomplishment, despite the fact that the vaccine distribution was shit, despite the fact that it was not being distributed. So where I was mocking you was I was like, we're the motherfucking United States of America. But yeah, we should have a vaccine. Why are we crying? Why are we taking that as though it's a

major accomplishment that we're going to a vaccine? I'm on a roll right now. Don't get defensive, Ben. But now the point that I made many weeks ago is actually very consistent with the point I'm making now, because the competence of doing vaccines the right way is what we should have as Americans. You know, in World War Two, we weren't like accepting the fact that we got through a battle and not every soldier was killed. We won World War Two. We didn't set our standards of, well, you know, there was this one of 100 battles that we did. OK, let's take that as a as a victory. That's not what America is. And Donald Trump has made America over time, made us all just accept his own victim mentality, his own loser mentality. He's projected that psyche on us. But we as Americans, we are winners.

And under Joe Biden, we're showing what American ingenuity can do. Two million shots per day, truly leading the world now in a vaccination. That's America. As of now, one in nine Americans have had their first shot, which is really exciting. Like you said, Fauci said in April, it's going to be open season. I'm just awaiting my notification that says I could get mine. And by summer, they should be able to vaccinate everybody in America who wants to get a vaccination, which is pretty freaking awesome and exciting.

You kind of see this glimmer of hope. And that's why elections matter. That's why leadership matters. That's why if anybody, like I said earlier in the show, if you saw, if you're upset about witnesses and you're like, I'm going to sit out of the process now because I'm upset about witnesses. These are people's lives who are at stake, who you're playing with here. We need to be in this fight because look at the positive change that's happening right now in this country. This is what's going to win votes because this is what's helping people. This is actually- And it's all about unlocking American ingenuity. Americans are ready to go to work. Americans are ready to lead the world again, which brings us to a new segment that we will be having occasionally on the podcast, which we call Citizen Change, where we highlight Americans,

individuals with small businesses, people who have used their resources to make a difference. And I can think of no one better to highlight than Adrian and Aaron Kautz, the husband and wife duo who created One Fresh Pillow. Everybody saw that shortly after the insurrection when there were National Guard troops that were called. And as Mike Lindell, the pillowed Nazi, was out there trying to further plot overthrowing the United States government, Adrian and Aaron, whose business was built on principles of loving our country, supporting democracy when they created their company in 2016, they viewed it as a call to action. They delivered pillows to the troops, to the National Guardsmen, who many said it was the most comfortable pillow they've ever had. I want to go and ask them questions about that because it's not just giving pillows.

The National Guardsmen people love these pillows. So let's call on to the show, Adrian and Aaron Kautz of One Fresh Pillow. Welcome to Midas Touch Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having us. So we have the Kautz husband-wife duo that started One Fresh Pillow back in 2016 and answered the call when the National Guardsmen came to defend after the insurrection and needed pillows. You all saw the viral moment, of course, of the pillows. Those were delivered by One Fresh Pillow. Adrienne, how did that come to be? And what led you to donate the pillows to the National Guard?

Well, as all things in our life these days, it started on Twitter. Of course, where else? Does anything happen outside of the bird site? I don't think so. No. does anything happen outside of the bird site? I don't think so. Um, you know, just was kind of in a cycle of, of doom scrolling and wondering what was happening in our country. And we have amazing followers that tagged us in some of the images of the national guards members sleeping on the floor in the Capitol building. And they said, Hey, could you guys do

something? And so I thought, you know, why not worth a shot tweeted asking if we could find anyone in the DC national guard and literally within an hour. And at this point we have like 6,000 followers, maybe within an hour, we had someone who is in the National Guard in D.C. and he was DMing me like, hey, what's up? Like, let's do this. And it's nothing to shy away from that, you know, 6,000 followers as of then for a pillow company, you know, using that account is a significant achievement at that period of time. And y'all didn't shy away, though, from politics even before the insurrection. I mean, that account was authentically speaking your views. And so, yeah, when the insurrection happened and there was a need for you to react to it,

you just were acting based on the principles that you had had, you know, your entire lives and that you've always been speaking this way, correct? Yeah. And it was very much a thing of, I said, oh honey, by the way, I'm giving away $4,000 worth of pillows. Love you. Aaron is very much like the science behind our pillow. He was the driving force behind our company. We never would have started it without him, but he's amazing in letting me have certain parts of the business that I run with. And so being really vocal about our beliefs on Twitter is definitely one of those things. We decided early on, you know, we may alienate some people, but at the same time, the people were alienating. We don't really want their money in the first place. We don't want your money. So we were fine with that. We we'd

rather be people who, you know, tried to start a pillow company and failed and be able to sleep at night than people who, you know, sold our souls for a dollar. So yeah, we just have always been very vocal about our beliefs. And one of my love languages is gifts. And so we give pillows away all the time. So this was just a natural extension of things that we already do. And it made us feel, I keep saying it was really selfish of us because it made us feel good to give the pillows to these men and women. So it was selfish of us. Like it just was a no brainer. It was something that we felt like we had to do. It's funny how that has become political, how giving pillows to the National Guard during a time of crisis and during an insurrection, how that could possibly even be considered a political thing. We weren't looking for that though. We were just doing it from our heart. We were just like, there's this moment that's happening and we wanted to do something, you know, like a lot of people

watched what went down and we're just like, we want to do something. Something is obviously wrong here. So we weren't looking to be like, Hey, let's be viral. Let's go. We didn't want to do all that. But it is weird when the lefty pillow company, we're the ones that are supporting troops. It's very up is down, left is right. I don't know, man. We're just doing what feels right in the moment. So I think that that speaking from the heart really shines through the Twitter account. It's when you're following one fresh pillow, it's not like you're following, you know, an account that's like, all right, 20% off, you know, if you enter this code, it's like, it's like you're following like a friend. Yeah. And it's, it's genius. Where did that come from? Because I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Sometimes that's the best way to do it. That's what it came from, Brett. A little over a year ago, this business associate of ours told Aaron, you guys have got to get on Twitter. Like you, you have no presence on Twitter. You need to be there. And so Aaron said, all right, like you, I don't get it. You're already on Twitter personally. So you go forth and be the Twitter person and nobody gives a crap. Nobody wants to hear 50 tweets a week about a pillow. Like it's a white, it's a white bag of fluffy, like who cares that you can't fill up a Twitter thread with that. So I just kind of, it's been very much like me on Twitter.

So we have some followers that legitimately were like, if I tweet about pillows, they're like, holy shit, you sell pillows. It's so incredible because I because my background's in marketing and it really goes against every almost principle that people would give their clients about how to own and operate a page. But what you see from that is just, and what really shines through is the authenticity of the two folks really leading the charge behind it. It's authentic. Yeah. Yeah. One of my best friends, she has like a big deal PR job. And she's like, my God, she's like,

I would never ever tell anyone to do what you do on Twitter, but don't stop doing what you do on Twitter. And the one thing though, I see Adrian, Aaron's the pillow fanatic here. And so I see Aaron kind of cringing though a little bit when we're saying, don't talk about the pillows. Cause I know Aaron does want to actually talk about the pillows and how you've made these pillows. They're not just any pillows though. Can we agree with that, Aaron?

Can you explain what they're not just any pillow? They're not the run of the mill, you know, a mom massage therapist. And so kind of came up with this idea. A lot of my clients were having head and neck issues, even lower back issues from sleeping on shitty pillows. And so the two of us just kind of sat down and we're like, let's look and see if we can find pillows that fit or we'll work with our, my clients. And then we really didn't find any. So we're like, you know what? I think we can do this. We bought like every pillow on the market, like reverse engineered them and then kind of like figured out what was working and what wasn't. Then did a beta test. And then three years later, here we are. Right. And so Adrian and Aaron, what's next? Any other plans with the troops

or any other plans in terms of philanthropic work in connection with the company? Last week, we organized with some local friends of ours to send up 180 cases of local beer to our same National Guard contact in D.C. So we found out they like good craft beer and we have a great connection for that. But from a personal perspective, Aaron's been working on creating a partnership with the Trevor Project.

We feel really strongly about LGBTQ rights, especially for teens. And as it relates to homelessness and then the suicide prevention work that the Trevor Project does. So once our pillows are back in stock, we're going to have the option for everyone to make a donation to Trevor Project every time they buy a pillow from us. That's awesome. So check out Adrian and Aaron Kautz. Check out One Fresh Pillow at www.onefreshpillow.com. That's why I'm not a millennial. Find us on the interwebs. Not a millennial. But go to OneFreshPillow.com, at Twitter, at OneFreshPillow.com.

Adrian and Aaron Kautz, thank you for joining the Midas Touch Podcast. That is all the time we have today at the Midas Touch Podcast. Thank you to all of our guests. Thank you for listening. You can catch us every Tuesday morning and Friday morning for new episodes. Catch us at Midas Touch across all socials. Thank you very much for listening to this edition of Midas Touch podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty!