The MeidasTouch Podcast - The GQP... Sheesh!!! with Guest Bill Kristol

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Sheesh!!! The Meidas Brothers are back and are covering it all on today’s episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast. First, the brothers discuss the latest trend taking TikTok by storm – one “sheesh” at a time. Then, they move on to everyone’s least favorite social network, Facebook, and discuss the Facebook Oversight Board’s decision to kick the can down the road on the Trump decision for another 6 months – and the ludicrous (but expected) reaction from GQP circles. Next, the brothers talk about Trump’s fake social media network and the tangible benefits of de-platforming. Then, they dig into the latest in GQP’s legislatures including their support of – and this is true – child abuse, fines for Americans who get vaccines and other insane policies. Next, the brothers welcome lifelong conservative, editor-at-large of The Bulwark, and chairman of the board for the Republican Accountability Project, Bill Kristol. Kristol tells us his take on the current Republican Party and whether he still considers himself to be a member. The brothers wrap up the episode with a chat about Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, Caitlyn Jenner and the responsibility of those who wield privilege. Buy the latest MeidasTouch merch here! --- 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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What is this sheesh? What is this? What is sheesh? Aside from the thing that the GQP makes you want to say on a near daily basis, Ben the other day starts going to me every time I post things online. Ben goes, she spread. And I go, what is what are you talking about? What is she? I have no clue what you're saying. And Ben's like, oh, you never heard she she. And I was like, that doesn't't help me i still have no clue what you're talking about and ben's like get with the tiktok trends bro and then i posted the image of how you doing fellow kids hello fellow kids are you busing out there young ones no oh every and just like that all of our listeners just cringe just cringe at, anyway, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Ben Micellis here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett and Jordy Micellis. And look, I did give you that sheesh because we have a lot of sheesh moments.

If that made you feel cringy, it's not because of me. Okay. It's because of the GQP. Now, explain what sheesh is, though though. Like I still can't totally wrap my mind around that. I've started watching some videos. I've taken to TikTok. I'm trying to just understand what the kids are into these days. You know, Ben, I genuinely have no clue what it means. So I just see the kids doing it. Jordy's the youngest in the group. Jordy, have you heard of sheesh? Well, I've heard of it, but only from a basketball NBA context, specifically LeBron James. And

LeBron James is famous for his hashtag sheesh. So this almost feels like an evolution now that I guess took off on TikTok, but it's not the same sheesh, right? How does he say sheesh? Yeah, it's like sheesh. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Play the clip. Play the clip how the kids are doing it these days man i gotta say gen z gen z is so fucking weird don't don't offend gen z jordy that's your base man that's right how are you gonna run for office? But if you're making fun of your, you're Jen, you're basically Gen Z, Jordy. I want to let you, I think you're basically Jen. We're not getting into this right now. Here's what I think she shes. This is how I've seen the videos. You know, one of the things you do, you kind of, you put your kind of two fingers by

your bicep and then you basically want to show that you have ice in your veins although i'm not sure why that would be your bicep so maybe you put your two fingers by your veins and you like you like show that you've got ice like ice cold veins and then you go sheesh it's when something good happens right like i'm looking at all these things and it's like when you win the lottery scratch off sheesh like that's like that's what all these videos are like. I don't understand it at all. Okay. If there's a sheesh expert out there, please let the brothers know.

Let's get into the cringy GQP. Let's start talking about what the Facebook oversight board did or did not do, or maybe did something or maybe just punted a decision with respect to whether Donald Trump should ever go back on the platform. The headline is that the Facebook oversight board upholds Donald Trump's suspension from the platform digging deeper. It doesn't go that far by any means. Basically, it was a six-month stay,

basically keeping the status quo in place for another six months to then determine whether or not Donald Trump should be suspended. And the board basically said that Facebook needs to come up with more clear and concise guidelines as to the time frame of suspensions or whether suspensions will be permanent. But for now, it is a six month extension of the existing ban. And Donald Trump is not. And the right and the GQP are not taking that anyway. Before we get into their reaction, I just want to say there was a very weird reaction to this.

And it just goes to show that more people, especially on our side, on this on the pro democracy side, read into the stories. Don't just look at the dumb fucking clickbait headline that CNN puts out saying Facebook oversight board upholds Donald Trump's suspension. Because you know what? At the end of the day, that's not what they did. They punted it over and they didn't just punt it to anyone. They punted it back to Zuckerberg, right? So now you trust Zuckerberg to make the right decision with this in six months? Are you kidding me? I saw people celebrating this on Twitter the other day. And I'm like, just read into this a little bit more. It doesn't say what you think it says. Jordy was very upset about this. Yeah, Jordy was texting me about this all day. Like, I don't understand. Why are people so happy? Why are people so happy? And I totally understand what you're saying there. I mean, at the end of

the day, they didn't do anything except they delayed the decision process by another six months. And Trump is still an ever present threat. And I mean, he proves why he should not have any access to social media on a daily basis with his statements spreading the big lie. But as Ben said, the GQP's reaction to this was insane on all measures. I mean, consistent with how insane they are. So it should come as no surprise. And they each basically pick their lanes. Right. Like Lauren Bobbert basically threatens to kill Facebook as though it was a person. She goes, Facebook will pay the price. Mark my words. I mean, that's that's Bob. And she actually even after like 11 minutes of that tweet being up or 13 minutes of that tweet being up, she deleted it. Even she knew, OK, a little too much. And also she lied in her tweet saying up. She deleted it. Even she knew, okay, I'm a little too much for it.

And also she lied in her tweet saying that Facebook banned Trump permanently. They did not. And said, yeah, Facebook would pay the price. You had Charlie Kirk Mederc saying that at the next level that this should be taken to the Supreme Court as if the Facebook oversight board is like a district court in the United States, and it needs to be taken to the next level, which is the U.S. Supreme Court. Like, for people who pretend to love the Constitution and America, these people have zero idea about the way government works. They have zero idea about the way the First Amendment works. And let me just say this. The Facebook terms of service is not a part of the U.S. Constitution, despite what Charlie Kirk, Madirk, Burke,

the jerk might believe. No doubt about that. And by the way, there are legitimate complaints that we have about Facebook. I mean, if you look at what is mostly promoted on Facebook, they tend to all be horrible sources of news from the GQP tends to be the top stories all resonating from them. But we could have arguments. We could basically demand that Facebook put out their correct and accurate information. But we don't say that that needs to be appealed to the Supreme Court at this stage. That's not the way it works. We have the ability to use our First Amendment right to criticize it, but you need to criticize it accurately. You don't say Trump has been banned permanently when he has it. You don't make up that there's the right to appeal to the Supreme Court when this has nothing to do with a judicial decision. Dude, Fox's original chyron was Facebook Oversight

Board bans Trump for life. That was one of the chyrons in their programs. Yeah, well, they're a fake news network. And absolutely your point, Ben, I just pulled up the Facebook top 10 and this is hot off the presses from today. So this is the Facebook top 10 in the last 24 hours. And let's look into this censorship, this canceling of conservatives. Number one, Franklin Graham. Number two, Ben Shapiro. Number three, Ben Shapiro. Number four, Dan Bagina. Number five, Dan Bagina. Number five, Dan Pagina. Number six, NPR. Number seven, Ben Shapiro. Number eight, Ben Shapiro. Number nine, Ben Shapiro. Number 10, Ted Cruz.

Ironically, or maybe not so much, but the people on this list, they're also the same people complaining about cancel culture every single day. Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz. You can't look at that list and say by any stretch of the imagination that Facebook is censoring conservatives when Facebook is the epicenter of conservative disinformation. I have a lot of problems with Facebook, but let's be real about what the problems are here. No doubt about it. And Donald Trump's reaction, he's not taking this well. He's at Mar-a-Lago. He's kind of sitting in a hotel playing weddings and giving wedding speeches and basically playing the wedding. One of the funniest reactions I saw was like, what a weird existence to like constantly

be living at your like uncle's wedding. His whole life is just living at a wedding you don't want to even be at, at a shitty country club. And the big announcement this week was that Donald Trump was creating a new social media platform. He unveils it. It's called From the Desk of Donald Trump, which it turns out is a blog. Donald Trump's view of creating a new social network is actually just a blog. It is a website that basically posts text in the format of Twitter to appease the senile, deposed authoritarian of the United States. And it looks like it has, it looks like it's a Twitter format, but it's just basically a blog where he just spits and spits invectives and stupid lies after stupid lies, calling people losers. And I'm not even going to amplify a bunch of the other stupid

shit that he said. But the weirdest part about it too, is like, he's so desperate to like be on Twitter like he is addicted to just like the format that they have to make a blog that looks like Twitter. And then even then he thought that he was too smart by half and he was going to do an end run around the Twitter ban by basically posting the statements and then allowing people to basically retweet the statements from the desk of Donald Trump. So they're not statements coming directly from him, but lets him spread his lies. And so they even created a Twitter account from the desk of Donald Trump. How desperate he is. Let's just take a step back from one second. This is supposed to be the leader, a former leader of the free world who can't even have his shit together enough to stay on social media. And not just one platform for every single social media platform to ban the man.

And this is a person who had access to the nuclear codes of the United States of America, who can't even handle himself like a fucking raging animal who can't even handle himself on social media decorum as the president who now lives in a hotel, plays weddings and creates fake Twitter templates on a blog and starts writing crazy things and gets banned from Twitter again. This is a sick, senile man who deserves to be in a fucking mental ward. And the fact that people on the GQP like look up to this guy just tells you how sick fucks these people are. The numbers I saw were staggering on the number of engagements that Donald Trump had on his posts on this platform. So someone ran an analysis and this just shows you the effectiveness of deplatforming somebody like Donald Trump who spreads disinformation. Because when he had his

Twitter account, obviously he was able to reach hundreds of millions of people every time he tweeted, spreading horrific disinformation that led to massive death and chaos in this country. But when Trump posted on his desk of Donald Trump only fans or whatever you want to call it, he had a total amount of engagements of 13,000 engagements per post about 13,000 engagements might sound like a big number. It's an extremely small number and just shows how isolated he is and how little people really care about what this guy has to say. I will say deplatforming works. I think the proof is in the pudding. And I think this should be held up as an example to the Facebook board going six months down the road and to all social media platforms

that this is a man that needs to be kept off social media because he is a threat to American society and a threat to the world. Yeah. At the end of the day, Donald Trump is pro-death. He's pro-destruction of the United States of America, and he leads a GQP death cult. We're going to have Bill Kristol on in a little bit, and I want to ask him if he, one, still considers himself a Republican. too. We should ask him whether or not he considers himself to even be conservative anymore. I don't know how he could consider himself to be either one. And so I look forward to hearing what he says about that. But before that, just talking about this GQP death cult, as the Democrats are passing legislation to help

Americans, as the Democrats are passing relief bills focused on infrastructure, as Joe Biden, Democratic president, has created a situation where any American can get a vaccine now. And the only people who are not getting vaccinated are anti-vaccine, you know, you know, crazy people who want to get sick or just don't give a fuck. And mostly those are GQP people based on their own sick views or based on the disinfo spread by by them. But as Democrats are just trying to find solutions, there was once a day where someone like Bill Kristol and me would disagree on the issues. I would go, I think we should do health care subsidies like this. And he would go, I think health care should be delivered like this. Those were the debates. Now we have Democrats who want infrastructure. Democrats want to help

the working class. Democrats want to give vaccines. Democrats want to raise a minimum wage so that it is a living wage. Democrats want jobs. Democrats want racial justice, build bridges amongst people, bring people together. things that you may have disagreements how you do it, but fundamentally, all of those things are how do we make the world better and avoid death, okay? Because that's ultimately what this is all about. But let's talk about three pieces of legislation recently, or a few pieces of legislation recently that the GQP, this is the work that they're doing now. Look, we could talk about three. The first one is voter suppression bills. We've talked about this already, so I'm not going to belabor the point. From Georgia to Florida, behind closed doors, we learn about that Santas doing a Georgia-style voter suppression bill, these fake audits in Arizona with cyber ninjas, which we'll talk about.

So that's one of their major agendas right now. How do we create voter suppression and spread the big lie? So that's one of the first areas that GQP is focused on. Number two, how do we execute people? How do we change death penalty measures? In South Carolina, the House voted Wednesday to add firing squad to the state's execution method, citing some shortages of the lethal injection drugs so that they could execute people quicker. OK, we know that there are, you know, look, I think the debate over the death penalty is a controversial one. Generally, I think civilized societies should be executing humans where we know that data shows that there is a non-insignificant percentage of people who are wrongfully accused, who are

frequently non-white. Okay. So in that system, even if you execute one wrong person, I think we do a disservice as a civilized society. That's just my own view that I'm sharing. But setting aside where you stand on this debate, the top priorities right now during a global pandemic should not be introducing firing squads as a method of state execution. That is what the South Carolina GQP legislature is introducing. So we've got voter suppression, number one. We got firing squads, number two. Here comes the Louisiana GQP legislature, which strikes down an effort to stop hitting and abusing children through corporal punishment at schools. Democrats tried to introduce a bill saying, look, we don't allow hitting individuals

as a form of punishment in prisons. We don't allow it in work. We don't allow it in any other form. And so corporal punishment is not effective. Yet the legislature voted that down. The GQP said we need to hit kids. Our priority is hitting children during this time period. And then we move over to Michigan and the Michigan House Republicans, you know, say, if you have a CDC vaccine card, if you've gotten vaccinated and you want to show your card to people to show that you've been vaccinated. The fact that you've been vaccinated and are showing people with your card should get you a one thousand dollar fine because of being vaccinated. Let me say that means everybody who gets vaccinated, they are basically saying if this

bill were to pass and I'm sure it's unlikely to pass, hopefully, but the House Republicans have moved it ahead and keep moving the ball forward on this. But if unlikely to pass, hopefully, but the House Republicans have moved it ahead and keep moving the ball forward on this. But if it does pass, think about it. Every time you get your vaccine, everyone who gets a vaccine gets a vaccine card. So that would make Michiganders able to be targeted with $1,000 fines for simply following public health guidance, for being good citizens, for caring about their health and the health of others. That's what Republicans are looking to penalize.

So let me just recap where we stand. So the GQP is pro-voter suppression, pro-firing squads, pro-hitting kids, and anti-vax. Is that where we just landed on all four of these? Yeah. And you didn't even cover it all. They're also pro allowing drivers to run over protesters. You can't hang out with these people. They're fucking weirdos, man. It's absolutely insane. Here's the thing. I really wish that when you said that list, that I could be like, you know what, Jay? You're exaggerating it a little bit. That's crazy. That's a fringe, whatever part of the party that does not represent the party. But the terrifying truth is that this is the mainstream Republican Party, that what everybody wants to do in this

party, they don't want to be more like the Liz Cheney's of the world who are supporting democracy. It seems like everybody in the Republican Party right now is looking for how they could best imitate Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's a party of Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Donald Trump's. The kooks are the Republican Party. And it's something I'm excited to dig in with Bill Kristol, because Bill Kristol has always considered himself to be a principled conservative his whole life. And I don't think that he could genuinely look at this party and see any sort of semblance of conservatism there. And this is what they rally against as well. So you have that's what the legislatures are doing. You know what we're fighting for on the Midas Touch podcast, but we fight for it. Midas Touch. What I think we fight

for at Democrats is how do we make the world better? How do we make people happier? We're not trying to scare people or threaten people or demean people. The moment the Democrats start saying they hate vaccines, the moment the Democrats start saying is how do we execute people quicker? The moment the Democrats start saying we hate kissing and we hate flowers, I'll be like, my party's fucking weird. And you heard that last part right that I just said, hating flowers and hating kissing. It seems like over the past two weeks, too, one of the big GQP controversies, if you recall, was as Joe Biden was walking to the helicopter to get on and leave, he picked up a dandelion and he gave it to the first lady. And that threw the GQP and Fox News into total chaos.

How dare Joe Biden give his wife a flower? How despicable in that moment. So that happened, I think, last week. Now, this week, as Vice President Kamala Harris is leaving and she's going on an airplane, she gives her husband, the second gentleman, a kiss. And that threw the GQP go into crazy. It was a whole segment on the Tucker Carlson show that Vice President Kamala Harris kissed her husband wearing a mask. Play this clip. Just today, Kamala Harris and her husband made a point of kissing each other in front of photographers while wearing masks. They did that despite the fact that they are married, that they live together, that they live together,

that they were standing outside at the time, and despite the fact that both have been vaccinated. Now, a number of crude jokes come to mind, but for once, we're going to pass on that. What exactly are we watching here? We're watching the crudest kind of propaganda designed by the cynical for the benefit of a population they consider stupid

and weak and malleable. And Brett, you said it best in your tweet. You said sounds like Tucker Carlson just described Fox News. Remember, it is all projection when it comes to the GQP. So look at the words that Tucker Carlson just used. It is the crudest kind of propaganda designed by the cynical for the benefit of a population they consider stupid and weak and malleable. That is exactly and precisely what Tucker Carlson, Fox News and the GQP leaders do every single day. Yeah. Now, Tucker, every single night is going on TV when we need a unified effort to mask up, to get vaccinated. When we see the light at the end of this tunnel of darkness that we've all lived through these past 14 months or so with COVID-19. What Tucker does is he goes on TV every night and he's spouting anti-vax garbage. He's

telling people, question the vax, don't get vaccinated. He asks questions that have easy, simple answers that he knows the answers to. But he puts innuendo out there and questions to scare his viewers into not getting the vaccine. And that's why in recent weeks, we've seen not a plateau, but we've seen a slight slowdown of the rate of vaccine distribution because of disinformation sources that I think could be almost entirely traced to Tucker Carlson and Fox News. Now, Joe Biden's not letting this get in the way. Joe Biden came out the other day and said that he plans to have more than 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July. Now, look at that number. Look at that number. 70 percent. I mean, that's kind of,

you know, when you look at the demographics, I mean, there are 30 percent that is the Fox News GQP full blown cult members who are living in this alternative reality fed to them by bullshit factories, to use the words of Acosta, Fox News. And now I want to bring in after these messages, I want to talk to Bill Crystal. Now, one, Bill Crystal and Midas Touch and the brothers, you know, we formed an unlikely friendship during this past campaign. You know, it's just is so it's so fascinating to me to have the opportunity to speak with Bill, someone who I now genuinely admire, someone who I now appreciate his convictions, appreciate his intellectualism. That doesn't mean I agree with him on a lot of issues. I like that he's at least a thoughtful and intelligent and cares about our democracy. But thinking about

being in college and I would see Bill Kristol, you know, supporting policies that I hated, you know, when I was in college, but ultimately, fundamentally, someone who supports democracy, who supports the Constitution, and I'm proud to have him on the Midas Touch show. After these messages, we'll speak with Bill Kershner. What's up, Midas Mighty? Ben Mycelis here, joined by my brothers. 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 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 sake 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? 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, joined by Bill Kristol, political analyst, editor-at-large of The Bulwark, chairman of the board of the Republican Accountability

Project, previously known as Republican Voters Against Trump. And I may be dating myself here, Bill, and I may be dating you a bit, but chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the George H.W. Bush administration administration conservative analyst during the bush years i remember watching you when i was a student at gw you were identified as a neoconservative i was probably protesting against a lot of your views back this is how he pretends he pretends he's dating himself and me then he makes clear that he was just a student 15 years ago. I was in middle school at the time. I don't know how I was already an advanced middle age.

You know, that's OK. Don't don't feel bad about it. It's the most backhanded intro in the world. But welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, Bill. We appreciate you for coming on. Good to be with you guys. So, Bill, starting with your recent article in The Bulwark, The Learned Helplessness of the Republican Elites. The one way you start that article

is you say, I always get this question, Bill, can you believe what's happening? So let me ask you the question when you get that from your friends who are, quote unquote, conservatives, Republicans, and they say, Bill, can you believe what's happening? What do you tell them? Yeah, it's a limited number of friends I still have or, you know, active conservatives or current. You're our friends now, Bill. Welcome to the crew. I know. I mean, God, what an idea. You know, it's like I would have thought it would have ended up this way. But now I'm honored to be with you guys. We were all part of the, I think, an honorable effort, a coalition against Trump, which was important. And we did at least lost.

But Trumpism didn't lose. Right. And that's the big disaster of the last few months. I mean, I saw this on election night when it was as close as it was and when the Republicans picked up House seats and ended up losing the Senate on January 5th, of course, picked up a couple of state legislative chambers and we had a bulwark live stream and I was, people, we were kind of morose. I was a little, you know, and people said, what are you, you know, it looks like Trump's lost. You should be happy. And I was happy and I am happy, but we didn't, it wasn't a decisive defeat for Trumpism. I didn't expect it to be this bad though for the Republican Party after November 3rd, after January 6th, to not only fail to repudiate Trump as someone like me would like, but not even to be willing to kind of move on from Trump and sort of acknowledge the election and just leave Trump alone, so to speak. They are still at his beck and call.

Anyway, so I've just been exasperated the last few days with the Liz Cheney, you know, fight, because people are upset. They know Liz well. If you're a big lobbyist in town, a big Republican over the years, a conservative opinion writer, you know Liz Cheney, you respect Liz Cheney, mostly. I think you like Liz Cheney. And you sort of see this happening, you know, this is ridiculous. And then you say, it's terrible what's happening. These people have a lot of influence, a lot of power. They could speak up up and they could speak up more than in a kind of lament, which is kind of the conservative elite tone of voice these days, or in a grumbling, which is the Republican, National Republican Congressional Committee or to any member of Congress who doesn't speak up for Liz Cheney at this moment. If they're conservatives, they can denounce Kevin McCarthy instead of just counseling him that maybe this can be handled a little better, you know. So I'm sick of the conservative elites. I'm sick of the Republican elites. And I think I'll just make one broader point. I've gone on too long.

But the I mean, people talk a lot about the Trump base and the voters, and that's a big problem. And it's worth thinking about how that has happened and what can be done about it. But none of it happens without the elites enabling and rationalizing what the voters in some cases have persuaded themselves they want or have been persuaded that they want. You know, that I think the role of the elites in making Trump possible, making him effective in a sense as president, enabling him to be president, enabling him still is underrated. And that's, I guess, what I was a little exasperated about that piece. In your article, you say how the party is enthralled by a demagogue and dedicated to a proposition that is a big lie. I think these are references to even someone like Kevin McCarthy. You posted the video of Kevin McCarthy immediately post-insurrection. He gets on there and says, we need to censure Donald Trump. We need to have a commission that will investigate what took place in the insurrection. A week passes. He's standing next to the fake tan orange

man in Mar-a-Lago making a fool out of himself, degrading the whole party and just looking like a total fool. Why is it? I want to get to the elite second, but first, why is it that this party, you're, I'll ask you in a second too, if you're still consider yourself a Republican, but this former party that you had a deep attachment to were an intellectual leader, and why are they enthralled by an idiot? You know, there are a bunch of reasons ranging. Some of them were, he pushed a lot of buttons that spoke to them. Some of them, a few of them kind of legitimate concerns and an awful lot of prejudices and anxieties. He won in 2016. He won kind of a fluke election inside straight in the electoral college, but still he won. And that made them feel like he was a winner and Romney and McCain were losers. You might've thought losing in 2020 would have changed

that dynamic, but actually that's one reason why he so insists that he didn't lose. I think it's very important to the Trump narrative that he really won because a lot of that narrative depends, a lot of that appeal depends on him being a winner. But I mean, it is, people have studied this in other countries, demagogues, authoritarians, once they get their hooks in, it's hard to con men, it's hard to get them out, right? People always write these histories, these articles 20 years after some or two years after some con. And it's sort of amazing. You can't believe this thing went on this long, right? And you can't believe how many people, including well-educated people, fell for it. And you can't

believe how much evidence was ignored. And that's very much the case today, I think. But the elites, again, I think they would still be bad. But if every Republican senator had stood up from November 3rd, or even December 14th, which is, I think, when the Electoral College met, or January 6th, certainly, and said, Joe Biden won. It was a fair and free election. There was no election fraud to speak of.

This is a big lie. We need to repudiate it. It's unhealthy for the system. We're not going to pursue voter suppression based on a lie. We're going to move on and we're going to have arguments about tax rates and economic policy and so forth. If every Republican senator, every Republican member of Congress, every Republican governor had said that, if the Wall Street Journal editorial page had said that unequivocally, if National Review had said it. I think it would have had some effect. Again, that's why I'm sort of, I don't know how to speak to 50, 74 million Americans. I don't know the cultural, sociological, economic, you know, forces at work, social media, what do you do at Facebook? These are all deep questions, you know, which require thought and effort. But the one thing you can kind of control is what

a few hundred people who have some influence, some clout are saying. And what's most disappointing to me, and I think really damaging to the country, is what tiny percentage of those few hundred are saying anything responsible. Yeah, and you got, I mean, we're talking about this on the podcast today. You got a Republican-sp Republican sponsored fake audit taking place in Arizona where these individuals are having like magnifying glasses and UV lights looking for non-human Martian interventions and looking for traces of bamboo leaves because they believe that, you know, in Asia, they switched votes with bamboo. I mean, you know, these elites, I mean, I think are complicit in many ways. You're out there saying this is wrong. And these elites are letting these, you know, QAnon conspiracy theorists just take control of their movement. But the Arizona thing is interesting because I think it's, from their point of view, it's

smart. I mean, they went to a lot of trouble to have this fake audit you know they could the arizona legislature i guess authorized it provided the ballots probably illegally the justice department is saying to this crackpot you know group who are busy going over it with magnifying glasses but the way conspiracy theories do work and there's been a lot of you know like studies of this actually they're more powerful when they have a lot of fake data and argumentation i mean if, if you talk to Trump supporters, it's not that they're, if someone's ignorant, just doesn't know anything, he read some headline somewhere,

it's false. You can explain to that person, hey, that headline was misleading. Here's really what happened. There were this many votes here, this way. But that's not the character of these conspiracy theories, right? There's a ton of documentation. It's all fake. But I mean, there's a ton of documentation, a ton of, quote, evidence. And so it's very hard to dislodge people. And that's why I think the Trump people are, I mean, this is where it's so pernicious, really. It's more than just, you know, kind of a flighty.

This was, I think, liberal media. And maybe I was wrong about this, too. But especially some of the media, they had such contempt for Trump. They didn't see the power of his demagoguery and of the people around him. Some of whom were just lunatics and ridiculous and, you know, self-contradictory every two days and clearly grifters, but altogether, they were able to, with social media, with Facebook, with everything else, they were able to create an alternate universe in which people lived in terms of their, you know,

their intellectual universe, I guess you'd call it, their information universe. And it's hard to snap people out of it, it turns out. Do you consider yourself a Republican still? No, not really. I mean, it's, you know, no, I haven't voted for one in a couple of years, and I don't expect to vote for one this year or next. And the truth is, even the Republicans I like. I mean, there are some members of the House, some younger members, some of the Ted who voted for impeachment, people who are close to Liz Cheney types, let's call it. A little ideologically conservative for you guys, but people, decent people and honorable people. But, you know, if you had to vote, I hope they beat

back the Trumpy challengers in primaries, you know, the one tentative voter for impeachment and a few others. I think that'd be healthy for the country if they were around. And if they're in Republican seats, you know, then they should hold those seats. But in a swing district, very hard to justify, in my opinion, voting even for a Republican that you respect, because if it helps make Kevin McCarthy speaker, Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and Elise Stefanik, that's going to be the leadership of the House, and you're voting for that. I couldn't do that. So in my district here in Northern Virginia, which is a kind of swing district, it's gone Democratic, but we had a Republican congresswoman who I know quite well, I've known her over the years, I like, I respect,

she was pretty anti-Trump too, Barbara Comstock. And in 2018, and I told you this, I did not vote for her because I just thought it was too dangerous to have her, even though she herself opposed Trump on some things, too dangerous to have a Republican Congress that would continue to enable Trump much healthier to have a Democratic House for all of my doubts about various Democratic policies.

And now it's a little different. Trump's not president. So I guess it's less disastrous if there's a Republican House. But still, I mean, the party has shown no signs of coming to grips with what's happened and fixing itself. If it had, I would be open to saying, OK, maybe some good Republicans should get elected. But very hard to justify, I think, electing a Republican today. Do you think the Republican Party at this point is path saving? Do you think there's any mechanism by which the rational people in the party are able to take it back? I mean, I would say so the qualification to my previous comment, which gets to this one is, you know, at the state and local level, it could be pretty different, right? I mean,

federal office, you're voting in a way for control of the Senate or the House. Obviously, governors can be good if they're Republicans and mayors and so forth. There are some good ones. There's some good young candidates. And again, there are a lot of young people. Michael Wood, who ran for Texas in that congressional race, that special election just outside Dallas-Fort Worth, really an impressive guy. He ran as a Republican. It was an all-candidate primary, everyone in the same primary. He ran as a Republican.

That's kind of what he is ideologically and what he always expected to be if he got into politics. He criticized Trump. He didn't do very well, but he didn't have any name ID either, but he certainly didn't break through. So I think it's worth trying to support people like that. And I did a little bit because it's healthy for the country to have two sound parties

or to have one and two thirds of sensible parties instead of one and one tenth, you know. And so that is important. So I don't think you should give up. People should give up on the Republican Party. I have friends who are much more invested in saving the Republican Party. I have other friends who just left it and become moderate Democrats. I'm sort of in between, I feel like. I'd like to help decent Republicans, but I also think it's very important to have sensible and strong Democrats,

actually, because they're hopefully will be governing for a while and can govern better or worse, depending on their policies. So anyway, yeah. But I hate to give up on one of our two major parties. Maybe there'll be a third party, maybe things will change. But it's risky to have one of the two parties be basically authoritarian, nativist, xenophobic, sort of anti-democratic. It's not a healthy thing for the country. And we saw that in Utah the other day. I'm sure you saw the video of Mitt Romney being ruthlessly booed up there on stage. And then he asked the crowd, he said, aren't you guys embarrassed?

Aren't you embarrassed? But isn't Mitt embarrassed also to be a part of this party? Well, that's a good point. Yeah, that's a fair point. Were they embarrassed? I didn't actually watch. I mean, that was an interesting question. I wondered what he said that that's so kind of old fashioned of of him to assume they would be in these guidance of his qualifications and all

that i mean that's another thing that trump has unleashed and that's hard to put back it's a little it could affect both parties unfortunately but it's wildly overwhelmingly affected republicans which is just the the mean-spiritedness the kind of you know hatred really the feeling that it's legitimate to indulge the most you know savage kind of personal attacks and mean-spirited attacks on people in ways that sometimes popped out in the past but were on the whole repressed i think you can say by the establishments of both parties and you know maybe they were said quietly at 11 at night somewhere and you know but but uh where people got out of control a little bit after a couple of drinks. But mostly it was kind of kept at least civil on the surface.

Well, surface civility is an important thing for society to function well. And that's just gone with Trump. I mean, literally, you know, Trump was the guy who did that, right? I mean, just the attacks, the personal attacks, the denigration, you know, and that's a bad, that's hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. And you've seen it just penetrate people who before Marco Rubio and, and even ideological conservatives. I mean, people who went to Yale law school and stuff, Josh Hawley and all these guys, you know, suddenly you're just attacking political opponents as enemies,

calling other people traitors, just kind of vulgar personal attacks, I mean, and denigration. And again, that does real damage to our politics, because again, it's one line I bought five, six, seven, eight years ago, the political scientists would put, sometimes some of them argued, was D.C. is broken, our politics is highly partisan and polarized, but the country is healthier. And I think that was true. And I think it's still true. Basically people are getting along with each other. You go to the little league games around here.

You don't ask, you don't ask someone why you were Republican or Democrat, you don't yell at someone. If you have the sense that maybe you have somewhat different views, you just, you know, yell at the umpire or something. If they're,

if they're calling, if they're calling a ball a strike on your grandson or whatever. But that does penetrate down. That's what worries me a lot. I mean, look at those rallies. Look at people who I think are probably decent people, you know, live lives, normal family lives and so forth, suddenly screaming things and having things on their t-shirts that are, some of it's just silly kind of vulgarity and it doesn't matter. But I really do think the damage Trump and Trumpism has done to the country, not just to our politics, is underrated. One of the things we talk about a lot is that he has radicalized people the same way, you know, terrorist leaders radicalize people around an agenda of hate.

You know, when talking about surface civility, you know, it's hard when you have one party with Trumpism that is supporting authoritarianism and hating democratic institutions. I, as a pro-democracy lover, I hate authoritarians. I look at Mussolini's, Hitler's, Stalin's, Gaddafi's, and I hate them. I look at Saddam Hussein's and I hate them. And he's right out of their playbook. But then it's hard to be like both sides, like, well, you feel hate. He feels hate. No, I think I'm I think I'm right to hate that. I just think thinking about this current Republican Party, I think honestly that if a Stalin or a Mussolini were to run for election of the Republican Party, knowing their track record, I think you'd have 35 percent of the Americans vote for him. I genuinely do. I think you'd have the Trump supporters vote for these people.

You're a little more pessimistic. I think Trump benefited. I will say this, though. The kind of demagogue he was, he's an American. He's a classic American type in a way. People recognized him. He was make America great again. I mean, it's a lot of it is bunkum and a lot of it is pernicious even, but it is American in its character, including some of the racism and so forth and nativism. So, I mean, I think it doesn't necessarily mean you vote for some European style dictator, but look, I don't at all disagree. And I think it's a mistake to minimize the damage and the danger. And I think one problem was after Trump lost, a lot of people, and I don't at all disagree. And I think it's a mistake to minimize the damage and the danger. And I think one problem was after Trump lost, a lot of people, and I don't blame them, wanted to say that was a close call. And I remember having many arguments in November, December, January, saying we can't talk about Trump and Trumpism in the past tense.

We can say we've had a reprieve. We can say we had a better outcome in November 2020 than the alternative. We can take some pleasure in that. But it's a present, clear and present danger. And we see that very clearly today, I think. This notion of conservative elites and the influence that they have on their base. I think when you mentioned surface civility, the first thing that popped into my head was the image of John McCain telling at the town hall that woman who said, Barack Obama, he's not from here. And him standing up for Barack Obama and saying, no, you're wrong. Barack Obama

is a good man. We disagree on issues, but Barack Obama is an American. He is a good person. And that used to be the leadership. But now, you know, I know that you're calling it conservative elites, and I know what you're getting at with it. But what does even the word conservative mean to you today? And what do you think it means to the Republican Party? No, I had conservative elites, it's just kind of a shorthand, I mean, in a way for the conservative movement. I'm just thinking they're more precisely of, you know, people who have not, in my view, stepped up as they might have and tried to, at least they couldn't persuade tens of millions of people, maybe to chop off some of the support and limit it and be a, you know, teach a lesson. I mean, do what leaders are supposed to do, which is to lead, not simply to follow the crowd. But what is conservatism today? No, I think it's a big question. Look, I think certain weaknesses in American conservatism were exposed by Trump,

certain, you know, certain tendencies that were mostly, I would say, repressed or under the surface, really brought to the surface. Probably some of us underestimated how strong they were all along, or we fought them and thought we had defeated them, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul and those people. But, you know, it turns out we didn't defeat them at least forever. And, you know, I guess you can never count on defeating anything forever.

So Trump kind of got lucky in 2015, 16 when he won the nomination, kind of got lucky when he beat Hillary Clinton. We'd all be having a different conversation today if Hillary had won in 2016. And then, I don't know, you know, Mark Rubio would have been the nominee in 2020 and he would have won. And, you know, it would be like a normal politics, basically, for better or worse. So one shouldn't be overly deterministic about these things. But what's happened has happened. And I think you can't rewind history,

obviously. And so I don't know. I mean, you asked me whether I call myself a Republican anymore, and I think the answer is no. And I'm not so sure I call myself a conservative. I mean, American conservatism was always in large part about conserving liberalism, a liberal democracy, a liberal world order, free markets, mostly with a welfare state, but free markets, free, we thought of ourselves at least as the free world, free speech, you know, all these things that conservatives claim to, and I think to some degree did care about and fight for in some cases. So maybe we need to try to recover the word liberal. I've toyed with that and occasionally started writing something on that, something kind of long, something kind of longer and more serious on that. Because really what we're for is a kind of liberal democracy, a liberal society. But, you know, these terms get all mixed up, obviously, and have their own kind of dynamics. I'm not sure that one works either.

Or a center, a new center that sort of is neither the illiberalism of the left or the illiberalism of the right. Obviously, that's been a huge theme for the last century. And the center kind of did hold, you know, after World War I and World War II, obviously. And you could argue that was kind of an achievement of both the left and the right. And improvements were made, and there was a civil rights revolution and so forth. And maybe that spirit of a kind of healthy centrism also could be reborn. But whatever's going to have to happen is going to be new. Can't go looking back to things that happened when I was young or before I was young,

God knows. You know, it's a different world and different challenges. So I do think it's an interesting time. It's good that young people like you. So I do think it's an interesting time. It's good that young people like you, well, young people, are involved in politics and public life because really it is, I think everything's up in the air. In the past, sometimes I've been in politics a while, you kind of know where things are going. You don't know exactly what's going to happen,

but you kind of know what the range of options is. So I think of it as what's going to happen, but you kind of know what the range of options is. You know, so I think of it as, you know, it's two trains, trains going along tracks and the tracks are kind of late already. And there's one party, another party, one of them is going to win, the other won't. But the variance isn't going to be very great to mix metaphors a little bit. That's not the case now. I do not know what American politics will look like 10 years from now. So I think it's a very important time for people to really tell us, the young people thinking of running for office in either party. You know, it may look kind of bleak right now,

and it is bleak in some ways if you're an anti-Trump Republican, for example, or maybe even if you're not a woke Democrat, but it's really important to be involved at this point, I think. And sort of to that point, actually, and I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say this,

but we live in the age right now of misinformation. People are getting their information moderate, moderate, moderate and toned. And the bulwark, that's it. You know, basically, Midas touch and bulwark, maybe one or two other things occasionally. You don't really need to go to do too much. I don't know. I mean, there are so many different sources, obviously. And, you know, one cruises around on the internet or on Twitter

and sees links and follows them. I actually find, I think Twitter gets a bad rap in this respect, maybe because I've been on it for a few, just five, six years, but I kind of like it in the sense that you do see a lot of things

you might not otherwise see and get linked to articles all over the place, left, right, center, historical, current, you know, economics, society, and can actually learn

quite a lot. But, you know, I guess I read the conventional, you know, sources of opinion, though opinion though also in terms of newspapers and magazines but it is i mean i don't know how much do you i mean you all are how much of a problem is the siloing of information i think that's something i underestimated 10 years 5 10 years ago and i think it is more of a facebook problem than anything else that is i don't think twitter or google really you know side I was talking to Jonathan last,

and you guys maybe know a little bit who edits the bulwark. And he was reminding me that 10 years ago, when things really got going on the internet, so to speak, and social media, a lot of people, I remember this, were terrible. What were they most worried about, probably?

What are the things they were most worried about? Not Facebook, where people were beginning to share, you know, stories about their grandchildren and stuff and high school reunions. It was Wikipedia. Can you believe it? People, young students are going to go to this source that's not edited by anyone. And God knows who's putting all this stuff in. There were stories of people, obviously monkeying with other people's Wikipedia pages. And all it was like, oh my God the wikipedia crisis so it turns out in the way these things always work which is things never turn out the way you think wikipedia turns out to be perfectly basically well a good source of information where you all use it a million times a day it's totally reliable it

gets checked if there's something wrong it's fixed a little bit um and it's the it's the siloing on social media that's really damaging and the algorithms that are damaging. And that I think is primarily a Facebook situation. And there I'm very open-minded about what kind of regulation or policies might be needed to change that. There's something a little nuts about just sitting around accepting it as a fact of life. It's kind of the way, state of nature, phenomenon of nature that we're going to have a fact of life. It's kind of the way, you know, state of nature, you know, phenomenon of nature that we're going to have a kind of insane situation where the most extreme stuff gets promulgated and people share that and get into their silos and the rest and just absorb a ton of misinformation and disinformation. I couldn't agree more with that. And on a little

bit of a lighter note here, now, in your opinion, who do you think is the most spineless member of the modern day Republican Party out of Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell? Who's rising to the top there? Yeah, or anybody else? Spinelessness, that's a pretty competitive category. I mean, that's like, you know, I don't know. Does one have more contempt for the people who know better or who knew better?

You know, Lindsey Graham denounced Trump in 2015, 2016. He was very close to John McCain. He's an intelligent person. He's cynical. He's opportunistic. He rationalizes to himself that what he's doing ultimately is going to pay off, help somehow. Does one have more contempt for the person who knows better or just kind of foolish people or the true believers?

I guess that's Marjorie Taylor Greene or something like that. Or the opportunists, the Elise Stefaniks who were, you know, worked at the Bush White House, actually worked with me for a couple of years after that, and then others, and then worked for Paul Ryan, and now is a, you know, running as the Trump loyalist, and on Steve Bannon's show, repeating the Arizona, you know, election thing. She was, even in January 6th, she'd already gone very bad, in my opinion, January 6th, 2021, she did not vote to certify Arizona. I mean, she voted to certify Arizona. She didn't vote to object to the Arizona electors. She voted to object to Pennsylvania, because even she knew the Arizona thing was ridiculous, that that was a Republican governor. It had been

totally vetted that those votes were legit. And now she's on Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon, a convicted, I guess he was pardoned, but a grifter and a fan of, genuine fan and promoter of authoritarians in a way, much more direct in Europe and so forth than a lot of these others. She's on his radio show endorsing this farcical, but also dangerous Arizona recount, because it's not as if it's not going to have any effect when they say, if they say that, you know, these votes were stolen or we never we can't do a good recount because the they damage what was you know we don't we can't re-establish what really happened i mean all this stuff really damages our democracy legitimates

various forms of voter suppression legitimizes letting the legislature overturn the voters decision in 2024 so um anyway, I think in a way that's worse, isn't it? I think that maybe just being a foolish person who never reads anything that's not in your Facebook feed and believes all this idiocy. What makes you optimistic about American democracy, if anything? Yeah, today I was in such a state that i've got to say i mean i explained on my most optimistic day um with with the cheney stuff and the failure of people to rally to or people who work closely with her not sticking their heads up you know but i taught a little study group at harvard in history of politics this this spring and it was just it was not for credit and it was on zoom so

i don't want to pretend i had a huge number of interactions. There were five or six sessions, but, you know, sessions, but I mean, it was Zoom level interactions. They were terrific, these kids, I've got to say, and from all over and, you know, diverse, genuinely diverse in all kinds of ways. And public spirited, I think there's a reaction maybe against Trump and against Trumpism and a sense of the worth and value of democracy, the worth of liberal democracy. Not everyone who's lived in the world has had the advantages and privileges we have and other people in other nations have. And whether you feel how aggressively we should try to help other nations achieve it and stuff like

that, that's an interesting foreign policy debate debate but i do have the sense that maybe in that respect there's been kind of an awakening on both among liberals and sensible conservatives to the uh stuff we sort of took for granted i would say 30 years ago there were a lot of fights you know 20 years ago i mean liberal democracy well that was set so let's just have a bitter fight about obamacare now that looks a little ridiculous and what was Obamacare about? You know, extending insurance, subsidizing insurance basically for 20 million people. That's really what it came down to and guaranteeing it to them.

And I'm not saying it was a bad thing. I think it could have been done better, but I don't want to minimize how important health insurance is to people who might not have had it. But we had this bitter, bitter fight for 18 months about this. And that's really a question

of sort of health insurance policy and how best to subsidize premiums and so forth and how to regulate insurance companies. And I think maybe things have come into perspective a little bit. generation below, really will have a kind of appreciation of the fragility and the importance of liberal democracy that older people weren't forced to have or to confront. Bill, I want to thank you. I want to thank you, one, for being on the podcast, but also really early on in our development as a group. Like me and my brothers aren't political people. You know, we just started this a year ago because we were scared. We were scared of what we were seeing on the TV every day during a global pandemic. Supposedly the leader of the free world trying to kill us.

We didn't come out saying, how do we make these videos and influence an election? We just made a video that resonated and we did another one. And before we knew it, it got over a billion views and we built this, you know, organization up to be one of the largest on the democratic side. But we appreciate you because you shared, you know, those videos. We didn't, you know, ask you to share them right away. You know, we developed a kind of a, a virtual friendship online and, and we're grateful though, that you helped in the early stages.

I admired what you did. And I remember telling one of my colleagues that, like, maybe one of you ended up DMing me or something. We had brief exchanges. And I, you know, I looked up your background a little bit and remember saying, you know, I don't think these guys, I mean, they're not actually political professionals. Like one or two of you may be your media professionals. But, you know, they really got into this because they cared about the country and stuff. And I remember my Washington colleague scoffing, you know, are you kidding? You're falling for that? Come on.

They're probably just, you know, deep work to the DCCC and, you know, worked on a bunch of campaigns that have now decided, hey, we're just citizens. But since you guys really were and are, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for being on the Midas Touch podcast, Bill Kristol. We thank you again. We will be right back after these messages. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. Great interview with Bill Kristol. How about that? Bill Kristol stating on the record that he does not consider himself to be a Republican anymore. That was an easy one. He goes, nope, not a Republican. No hesitation at all.

I thought, though, I thought he was going to say, though, that he was still a conservative. And I mean, not that he agrees with where the conservative movement is. Right. But that he felt that at least the label of what a conservative was or could be is salvageable. Yeah. But he said no. Yeah. That was that was really surprising to me. He goes, no, no, no. He goes, we've kind of tainted. That is the one funny part. He was like, we kind of tainted the liberal word. OK, Bill, that was you who kind of tainted. That is the one funny part. He was like, we kind of tainted the liberal word. Okay, Bill, that was you who kind of tainted the liberal word, buddy. That was like kind of your fault on that one. So I didn't call him out on that, but I forgot when, you know, that I'm like, wait a minute. That was because you, you know, you'd kind of tainted that word. But I like that

he realizes though, that, that at the end of the day, conservatism in the Donald Trump model doesn't exist anymore. It's not conservative. Conservatism at its very basic essence is about preserving democratic institutions, and this current party is against it in favor of you know, a orange authoritarian living in a hotel and playing weddings. We see this lack of conservatism and the death of conservatism. We've talked about it in the legislature, state legislatures. And, you know, let's talk about it as well in the United States House of Representatives, of course, in the Senate. But basically, Liz Cheney is persona non grata. Her last name is Cheney. She is Dick Cheney's daughter. And the GQP hates her specifically because she said anyone promoting

the big lie in the 2020 election is turning their back on the rule of law and poisoning our democratic system. Let's take a step back. Take a step back. This is what she said. This is what annoys the GQP. Anyone promoting the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump is turning their back on the rule of law and poisoning our democratic system. See you later, Liz Cheney. We can't take those views in the GQP no more. Well, what it says is to be in the modern day Republican Party, you need to be able to disabuse yourself of reality itself. If you believe in reality, you are unfit for the Republican Party because Liz Cheney, for all of her praise, and I am happy

that she is taking the pro-democracy side, Liz Cheney is a staunch Republican. Liz Cheney voted with Donald Trump more than 90% of the time on issues. But because she refuses to believe in fairy tales that the election was stolen. Bamboo ballots, aliens, UFOs. Aliens, ballots shipped in from China. Because she refuses to believe in kooky, crazy things, she is persona non grata in the party. Play the clip, Brett, of the person who's searching for bamboo ballots, a GQP member in Arizona. And I think they think that because they believe that groups in Asia were basically manipulating the were manipulating the votes in favor of Biden and using bamboo that they harvested in Asia. And so they it's also like the world's most racist premise on the planet.

The balance came from Asia, so they must be made out of bamboo. We're going to look for the bamboo. It's like if this guy was like, oh, like- Don't do it. Don't do it. Just play the clip. Just play the clip. I don't know what you're going to say. Just don't do it. Play the clip. Play the clip. There's accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in. To Arizona? To Arizona. And it was stuffed into the box.

Okay. And it came from the southeast part of the world, Asia. Okay. And what they're doing is to find out if there's bamboo in the paper. That camera right there that they take a picture of the ballot, if you, they can really look at depth and find out, is it a hand-marked paper ballot? Because it's a 5K camera.

You can see the folds in the ballot, because 92% of all the ballots here should have been folded because they came in through an envelope, okay? And so they're doing all sorts of testing to prove if it was or wasn't. And that's very important because the only way you can persuade people on changing is having facts. And we're on a mission for facts. Looking for bamboo.

As somebody with a video production background, I just want to also say that there's no technology in 5K cameras that lets you see the depth of paper to uncover whether a piece of paper has bamboo fibers in it. That's just that's just not not a thing doesn't exist. I just want to clear that up from the start. And this is the stuff that the entire Republican Party has centered themselves around. And, you know, the way I was explaining before how Liz Cheney voted with Trump over 90 percent of the time, we have this Elise Stefanik from New York who voted with Trump something like 70 something percent of the time. And she came in trying to act like she was a more moderate Republican. But as we all know,

there's no such thing as a moderate Republican anymore, not in this party. So Elise Stefanik, because she, despite the voting record, decided to say that the election was stolen, decided to spread the big lie, decided as recently as Thursday, the day we are recording this podcast, to go on Steve Bannon's podcast to spread the big lie. She is being rewarded by this party, and she will likely end up taking Liz Cheney's position, her leadership position, and Liz Cheney will be kicked out. I think history will be kind to Liz Cheney for standing up to democracy. And I think these Republicans will be forever looked at as cowards and traitors to this country.

Hear me out. These people are monsters. These people, as I've always said, are despicable, horrid, horrible people who hate the United States of America. These people are the same thing as foreign enemies. I see no distinction when it comes to this GQP. And I wish that weren't true. I really wish it weren't true because in America, our political adversaries, they should just be opponents. They shouldn't be enemies. That's America. But unfortunately, the Republican Party has taken this aggressive stance to actually just be enemies of the country and traitors to the state. What's going on in the House and the Senate and in our national politics with these GQP weirdos, it's just an embarrassment to our country, to what we stand for. It literally

makes me feel gross to know that there are people like that who are just so fucking hateful, despicable. And again, that's like the feelings that I'm sharing with you, you know, and I apologize if I'm like just cursing a lot, but like when me and the brothers were thinking about like when we were watching this stuff unfold, you know, during the pandemic, this is why it got to the point where we needed to start doing something about it. Like it's these feelings that I'm expressing now. We're like, all right, all right, Brett, like we need to do a video on this because if I just keep saying these things over and over again to myself and to you in the room, I just need to get it out. I need to tell

people, I need to speak to the people. And that's how Midas Touch started. And when you're listening to me talk like this, I know you share this. I know you, you're walking right now, you're in the car, you're at home, you're working out, you're having a breakfast, you're listening to this with a group of others. You have the ability to do something. You can really do something to change this dynamic if me, Brett, and Jordy can do it. I just can't imagine being in a position of power where you have the capability to do so much good. You work hard your whole life. You go to the top schools. You get in a position of power where you could help people. You could make people's lives substantially better. But instead, you choose to go down this road. And what Kevin McCarthy

said the other day, I think just once again, saying the quiet part out loud, he said the reason why they want to get rid of Liz Cheney is because she isn't, quote, isn't carrying out the message. The message is clear. The message is the big lie. The message is voter suppression. That's the message that Liz Cheney isn't carrying out. Sedition. Because Liz Cheney won't engage in sedition, they view her as a traitor to their cause. And Mitch McConnell summed it up too. And his statement echoed the statement that he had made in 2010. So in 2010, McConnell said the single most important thing to him, not to help Americans, not to make Americans more prosperous, safer, healthier. In 2010, Mitch McConnell said his number one priority was for Obama to be a one-term president.

And we heard echoes of that just the other day, when Mitch McConnell says that 100% of his focus is standing up to the Biden administration. And what's really just despicable about that is we're in a moment of crisis, which exacerbates the whole thing. This makes it so much worse, because what Joe Biden is trying to do right now and is doing and is accomplishing is getting people vaccines. So 200 million vaccines for Americans, 100% of Mitch McConnell's focus is standing up to that. Getting Americans infrastructure so their roads are better, so their sidewalks are better, so they get high-speed broadband in rural areas, 100% of Mitch McConnell's efforts is standing up to that, standing up to infrastructure. Getting Americans jobs, getting Americans working again, 100% of Mitch McConnell's

focus is standing up to that. So when Mitch McConnell says that he's standing up to the Biden administration, these are the policies that he is, quote unquote, standing up to. And when he's standing up to that, he's standing against America. Did you see even at the when Biden addressed the nation, they panned to McConnell when they talked about clean water and McConnell like a gasp, like he was so angry at the prospect of delivering clean water in the United States of America. These people are just so completely out of touch and they have to lead by disinfo. These people don't care at all about working class people. And that's why, Ben, Jordi, that's why they are, the only things that they could lead on are these bizarre cultural issues. That's why they talk so

much about the Dr. Seusses and Facebook this and this, and Mr. Potato had that, because they don't have any policies that resonate. So they try to rile people up with this stuff. And they can't even express their opinions of the working class and about the economy without appearing to just be incredibly out of touch with the people. I mean, they just don't even understand what people do, how people live their lives, how people struggle. They're in these great positions of privilege. They don't know the first thing about struggling Americans and they don't care to even find out. And I don't know if you saw this ridiculous interview that Caitlyn Jenner had on Hannity. Caitlyn Jenner, of course, is running in the recall election against Governor Gavin Newsom. And she said that my friends are leaving California. My hanger, the guy right

across, he was packing up his hanger. And I said, where are you going? And he said, I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona. I can't take it anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless. So there is Caitlyn Jenner complaining that people are deciding to pack up their private airplane hangers as if that's a relatable policy with working class people. Everywhere I go, everyone's packing up their hanger, packing up their bag. Yeah, when I was going in my private jet, all I see is other people on their private jet talking about packing up and moving to, you know, Sedona or Maui.

You know, very problematic to think about what, you know, what all the people I hang out with who have their G5s and G6s. That's just not what the most, what most American people, people do. One of the funny thing about the California recall election though, too, is first off the threshold for like a recall in California. I think at the end of the day, it's like, you have to have the signatures Brett that are the equivalent of like 12% of the overall vote.

It's like one and a half million signatures or something. All you need is. Yeah, all you need is one. Exactly. Yeah. You need like one and a half million signatures, which unfortunately, there are more than one and a half million GQP members but like at the end of the day, when all these people are polling, whether it's Caitlyn Jenner or whether it's, you know, a whole group of other, you know, out of touch GQ peers, they're all polling at like 1%, 3%. There was a list of like 4%. There's no one, I think, even breaking 5% of support out there. And it just so just bizarre to promote these views of, we support the private jet bearing class that wants to move to fucking Sedona. And Jordy,

did you see Steven Miller and what Steven Miller said about, he thinks that high schoolers, the majority of high schoolers, they're basically working on golf courses and the fear of having like, like their ultimate fear is the idea that high schoolers who are working at golf courses are going to lose their job working on golf courses. These people are so out of touch with reality, what people actually do for jobs for summer jobs. I don't know about you guys, but I wasn't working on a golf course when I was in high school. It's like, what's going on, man? They have no grasp of reality. They have no grasp of what life is like for just a regular person.

It is strange. And I just want to say one more thing about the Caitlyn Jenner moment. When you go on and you play that full clip, she says, I want to stay here and fight. But the way she said it, and it kind of was underplayed, it sounded like she wanted to fight the homeless. And there's a big difference between fighting against homelessness and fighting the homeless. And I don't think that got enough play on Twitter. Well, there's something about in the first sentence of your statement saying that, you know, all your friends with private airplane hangers are having to pack it up and move to Sedona, Arizona. And then to be like, oh, because they walk down the street and they can't stand to look at all these poor people.

It's bizarre. And by the way, she also mentioned her plane and her piloting skills like multiple times. Does she think everybody knows how to fly a plane? I'll say this. I will never discount the privilege that we all had growing up. At know, at that, I will say I would never, I could never imagine using privilege that you have to negatively impact other people or to try to hurt other people. I think if you are in a position of privilege, it is your duty to try to put down a ladder and pull people up and help people and fight for causes that help people, fight for universal health care, fight for higher wages, fight for jobs. I think it is your duty to do that. And what Caitlyn Jenner does is she does the opposite. The ladder that she has, that she walked up with, she pulls it away

from the people trying to follow in her footsteps. And this is summed up greatly by the fact that she is opposed to transgender girls playing sports against other girls. And then in the next breath, she says that she wants to be a role model for transgender girls, but she does not want equality for the transgender community. So this is no activist. This is somebody who was able to get somewhere because of their privilege and because of people who fought for civil rights their entire life to make it so that Caitlyn Jenner could live the way she does as herself. don't really even want to acknowledge her existence. But when she gets to this place of wealth and privilege and power, when she has the ability to say, hey, let me help you out, she takes that ladder and she kicks it down. She goes, good luck, find your own way. And I think that's disgusting. I would say it's even one step worse than removing the latter. It is a GQP policy of affirmatively weaponizing their privilege to destroy others. It is to take their privilege and to try to expand upon their privilege and to

create endless bounds of immunity such that their privilege can be enjoyed without any consequence or repercussion while others suffer. At the end of the day, their GQP doesn't care if they kill, maim, and destroy people in the United States of America so long as they preserve their small island of privilege. It's disgusting. It's despicable. But ultimately, it's why we're here at the Midas Touch doing what we're doing. Ultimately, it's why people who used to consider themselves, quote unquote, conservative or Republicans are leaving in droves. And we heard from one of them today, Bill Kristolou says, the analogy we gave, like, you're going to really hang out with that crew, with thatves. And we heard from one of them today, Bill Crystal, who says the analogy we gave, like, you're going to really hang out with that crew, with that party. And Bill Crystal's like,

nah, nah. He's like, sheesh, I'm not hanging with that crew. That's a good callback, B. Yeah. He's like, I'm not hanging with that crew. Sheesh. And so that's really if I were to summarize today's Midas Touch podcast in a word, I would say sheesh. The Democratic's on this death grip, because it's a death cult. We all have to unite together in this common fight for our democracy each and every day, each and every hour. And we thank you for sharing this past hour with us. This has been my cell is joined by my brothers, Brett and Jordy Mycelis. You've been listening to the Midas Touch Podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.