The MeidasTouch Podcast - The January 6th Hearings Day 8 (Full Hearing): Trump Outtakes EXPOSED, Hawley FLEES the Capitol + MORE!

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Today, we are bringing you a special edition of the MeidasTouch Podcast — the entire replay of our live broadcast of Day 8 of the January 6th Insurrection Hearings, featuring witness testimony from former Trump administration officials Former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews and Former Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States Matthew Pottinger. Hosted by Tony Michaels and Gabe Sanchez, this podcast features commentary from your favorite Meidas Media Network superstars, including Texas Paul, Michael Popok, Adam Parkhomenko, Jessica Denson, PoliticsGirl, as well as David Bender, Hydee Feldstein Soto, Suzy Shuster and others. Tony and Gabe also bring in Ben, Brett and Jordy to get their analysis on this historic night. You can watch this broadcast on our YouTube channel, here. Subscribe to the Tony Michaels Podcast on YouTube, here. Follow the Tony Michaels Podcast on audio, here. Get 10% OFF Meidas Merch at store.meidastouch.com using code 'JUSTICE' at checkout! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to the Midas Touch Network's coverage of Day 8 of the January 6th Select Hearing here on the Midas Touch Network. Thank you for joining us. Make sure to hit the subscribe button down below as you join us here on the Midas Touch Network. You do not want to miss the August hearings. This is the season finale of the hearings. Tonight, we are going to hear the TikTok of the 187 minutes. I'm your host, Tony Michaels from the Tony Michaels podcast.

We will be joined by the Midas Touch Network's panel today, just like we have in all the other hearings. And I appreciate all the audience members coming back time and time again through these hearings. It is a very important civic duty to watch these hearings and make sure you know exactly what happened. The January 6th Select Committee has done such a good job of actually delivering us the story of January 6th, not just the day, but the lead up to January 6th, rather it be the White House meeting on December 18th, where Donald Trump pressured the DOJ, or rather it be the the illegal pressuring of Vice President Mike Pence as well. And we know the day of January 6. That Donald Trump, with the information that he was given, knew his supporters were armed and ready to commit violence, and he still encouraged them to go to the Capitol. And tonight.

We will find out what he did. In the 187 minutes. But more importantly. What he did not do. In that 187 minutes. To stop the violent mob. The armed violent mob. To go to our Capitol.

In aim of an insurrection. In overturning our vote. We, the people who participated in one of the, if not the most secure election in our country's history because of the pandemic in 2020 and the precautions that were taken because of that pandemic, we participated in that election election and he, the president of the United States at the time, Donald Trump, tried to steal the election away with his violent mob by releasing them on our government and our capital and doing nothing for 187 minutes. And I think that is exactly what the select committee is going to get to tonight. This is the second prime time hearing. Again, this is the season finale,

as it were, in this series of hearings because of the evidence that has piled up since the very first hearing. They are giving the signal that there are going to be more hearings in August. So I encourage you, I encourage you to follow the Midas Touch Network right here on YouTube to make sure you don't miss those hearings as well. Make sure to follow the Midas Touch Network for all those hearings that are coming. And also, if you're in the chat on YouTube tonight, know that this is independent journalism at its best. Midas Touch Networks with the Mizellus Brothers have licensed these cameras that you will see on this production

and the production of all the other hearings before and after. We have licensed those cameras. It is quite the expense. So make sure you're supporting independent journalism by giving what you can where you can. Rather it be your support or something in the chat there. You will find that in the chat on YouTube. So thank you for joining us. I want to get to my first guest, Susie Schuster. She's the head of Magnetic Media Group, but you will also know her as the person who helped create the ads

with Rick Wilson from the Lincoln Project. Susie, how are you this evening? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me tonight. Absolutely. Absolutely. So as someone who has created the political ads in this climate and you helped Lincoln Project in 2020, what do you see as the landscape here as this series of hearings comes to a close? What's the importance? What's the significance? This is nothing more than the most important civics lesson that we've seen in our lifetime. This is a chance for people to see in real time what exactly happened on January 6th. Our job as ad creators is to take the facts and boil them down to 30 seconds, 60 seconds, a minute 30, so that the American public can digest what's happening. But this is a chance to actually see it laid out. You've got two military veterans in Elaine Luria and Adam Kinzinger who are going

to be out front asking these questions to people who have put their lives on the line for this country. And they watched as a mob took over our Capitol. I thought it was really important how you said our Capitol. I think it's also important to point out from a civics perspective that this is a civilian led military. We were on the brink of a military overtake, which means nothing short of a democracy turning into a dictatorship. When a military is in control of the military, not a civilian-led military, that's when you see governments collapse. And we were moments from that. I think that we are all very clear on that. So as we point out this lesson in civics, the most important thing you can do is

vote. And the second most important thing that you can do is watch this and absorb it. You might even say this is the closest thing to The Running Man. Remember that movie from the 70s with Richard Dawson when we're actually seeing things happen in front of your eyes that you can't believe? We're seeing our democracy working, and we're seeing firsthand how it could have failed in the most spectacular of ways. So it seems like these select hearings are also moving the needle, because there are a lot of ads out there, since you took the ads perspective. There are a lot of ads out there that are starting to hit the airwaves to let people know. Because it seems as if people are changing their minds. And I was chatting with some folks beforehand in a text thread.

And I said, I don't actually know if people are changing their minds. I think some Americans didn't even know what happened on January 6th. And I think that's why it is so important. And how do we get that message out there coming from someone who has done messaging and ads before? How do we get that messaging out there to those Americans who may be changing their mind, but may not have even had any clue

of what exactly happened on January 6th? All right, so two things. And the first thing is what you said in the very beginning, independent journalism, things like this, things like a podcast like yours, things like the MT Network, to be able to come straight to viewers and talk to you guys as you're watching this about what we're seeing happening and not filtered through a network and not filtered through a whole bunch of producers or people at the top. We're telling you exactly what's happening. And that is perhaps the most

important thing that you could even think about is that these independent news divisions are telling you what happened. But as somebody whose job it is to try to convince you to vote a certain way, nothing is more realistic and frightening and more impactful to teach you how to vote the right way or to ask you to vote the right way than the news. I mean, Uvalde, how many people are changing their minds because they see more children pulverized, more organs liquefied by AR-15s, more people are asking for sensible gun laws. From the January 6th, we're seeing people's reaction to seeing a government basically taking over in a way in which that the president sat by and watched as an angry mob went after his vice president. We've never seen that before in the history of our country. And then on top of that, as you look at what we're to teach you and what we're asking you to absorb through these ads, there's nothing that's more stark than the truth. And so I can take this January 6th committee and I can take the next two hours and boil them down to 30 seconds. And so I can take this January 6th committee and I can take the next

two hours and boil them down to 30 seconds. And oftentimes in this digital age, that's most impactful. Sometimes people just can't handle the enormity of the hour and a half or two hours. So our job as ad writers are number one, to reach you in your heart, to reach you in your gut, and to number two, disseminate that news in a way in which you can absorb it. Because this digital age has basically fried people's ability to comprehend anything that goes on longer than two to five minutes. I couldn't agree more that I think that that is what has actually changed some of the perspective from Americans about these hearings. Even some of the trivial things that seem like, well, what does that have to do with

it? Like the ketchup on the wall and the secret service in the van. But you start to see this picture unfold with those little tidbits that Americans will actually cling onto and go, oh yes, now I remember that. I remember that. Here's this little tidbit. Here's this little tidbit. And they start to put this picture together. And I think that is most important. But tonight, you brought up Vice President Mike Pence, the former vice president. There were photos of him in what appeared to be a parking garage or a loading dock, where it appeared that he was trying to hold the government together, as it were, in those

moments. Do you think, before I go on to my next ask, do you think that we're going to hear not just what the president wasn't doing, but maybe on the opposite side of the spectrum, what Mike Pence was doing in that moment? I think 100%. Look, we all know what President Trump was doing. He fell in love with watching the mob. He sat there watching it on TV. People around him implored to do something. Even his own wife implored him to do something and his daughter. And he sat there in love with watching his followers. And it took hours and hours before he would send out that tweet saying, I love you.

People who are desecrating our Capitol, who are defecating in the hallways, who would have possibly killed Nancy Pelosi, AOC, any of these people, Mike Pence. And by the way, let me remind you all watching that that mob couldn't tell the difference between a Republican senator and a Democratic senator. They would have seen a politician and been enraged and act upon it. And that's the thing that really, really kills me is that we have 435 representatives and you're telling me that they could have said, don't attack me. I'm a Republican. They should have all been in fear for their lives. And I think that's what we're going to see play out tonight.

I think we all know that Mike Pence tried to tell him to call off the mob. We all know that Mike Pence was fearful for his own life. And we all know as well that the vice president-elect Kamala Harris, we're talking about people across the board were fearful for their lives. And it didn't matter to him because Donald Trump was in love with watching these terrorists desecrate our Capitol. That was more important to him than being president. I think that's what we're going to see tonight. Thank you, Susie, for joining us. I appreciate your insight into some of those tidbits that Americans need to take away from this and how that story can develop in the narrative. Thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it. You have a good one, Susie. My pleasure. So I want to bring in a legal perspective here. And you know, one of our favorite to go to this morning, I had a little snafu on my show. I actually accidentally pressed

the Popok pop in button. And it just, people were confused. They were like, oh, is there a Popok moment? Well, if anyone out there who was watching the like, oh, is there a Popak moment? Well, if anyone out there who was watching the show this morning, here is your Popak moment. I want to welcome Michael Popak from Legal AF. Michael Popak, how are you? I'm doing great. You had a inadvertent Popak pop in?

It was a little snafu. I clicked the wrong button, you know, and, you know, there's a lot of things going on over here at my command center. And they were like, whoa, are we having a Popak pop in today? Well, here is their Popak pop in. So, Popak, give us the rundown, not just on the legal aspect, but because you've always done a really good job of breaking down some of these witnesses for us. We're supposed to see from a former National Security Council advisor to the White

House and also the former deputy White House press secretary, Sarah Matthews. So give us from a legal perspective, what do you think about tonight's hearings? Tony, at least you did something. You pushed a button today. This eighth session of the Jan 6th hearings all about Trump not doing a darn thing. Nero at least fiddled while Rome burned. Trump did nothing while the Capitol burned. In fact, he did worse than that. There's a tweet that was the straw that broke the cabal's back that led to Matt Pottinger and Sarah Matthews resigning almost on the spot. We're going to talk about that. First thing tonight that our followers and listeners should look for is there's going to be a whole

lot of military brass on display tonight. We're going to start with Lieutenant Colonels on the Air Force of Adam Kinzinger, who's actually going to be hosting tonight, along with former Commander of the Navy, Elaine Luria. They're leading tonight's examination. They're leading tonight's prosecution of the case against Trump. We're going to hear from Major Matt Pottinger, who was the Deputy Secretary for Security, the highest level person in the West Wing who resigned on Jan. 6th. We're going to hear from Lieutenant General Keith Kelly, who at the time was Pence's

National Security Advisor. And we're going to hear from Sarah Matthews, who was Kayleigh McEnany's second-in-command deputy press secretary, who also resigned on 1-6, for the same reason that Pattinger resigned, because of the tweet that Trump finally got around to sending at 2-24 while the Capitol burned, throwing gasoline on the fire and attacking Mike Pence again, instead of doing what he should have done, which is send in the National Guard and also try to quell the disturbance and send them all home by taking to the airwaves, which of course we know he didn't do because he was absent for 187 minutes, which tonight is going to be framed as a dereliction of duty as the commander in chief.

And there's no better people to prosecute that issue than people who serve this country with distinction, including in wartime in Afghanistan. And I think it's going to be as riveting, if not more so, if that's possible, than Cassidy Hutchinson. Sarah Matthews is going to reinforce and corroborate all of what Cassidy Hutchinson said and try to rehabilitate her reputation, which took a hit by the right wing media and right wingers who a lie, that Cassidy Hutchinson had a very important role, that everybody knew her, she was respected at the White House, and you need to listen to her testimony. And that's what Sarah Matthews is going to say. She's also going to testify, I believe today, about what happened to the dining room with Trump sitting watching television instead of doing something to put down the disturbance that he started.

We're going to hear from, I believe, we're going to hear from former Lieutenant General Keith Kelly, Pence's National Security Advisor, who's going to testify about Ivanka Trump, Don Jr., Sean Hannity, and others, Meadows, imploring the president to put down the riot, put down the insurrection, do something, say something, and he refused all of that. We're going to see a video of outtakes, a blooper reel of Trump trying to put together an appropriate day after video denouncing the insurrection, talking about a peaceful transfer of power, and why it took him so many takes in order to come up with what we finally saw on television, because he never really wanted to

say that. He did not want to declare victory for Joe Biden. He did not want to support a peaceful transfer. And he did not want to attack in any way the insurrectionists. Finally, all of the people around him made him do it. But we're going to see the outtakes of how he really wanted to do it. And then we're going to see, I think, finally Pat Cipollone again talking about, along with Pottinger, why was there such a delay in launching the National Guard? Why were they not sent to the Capitol until 4.32 in the afternoon when everybody knew that they should have been sent in earlier? Why were they delayed? And is it the president responsible for that? That's a rhetorical question. Pottinger, military, took an oath of office, saw what happened with his commander in chief, and decided to resign

on the spot given the delay in the National Guard, given the tweet attacking Pence at the exact wrong moment when the riot was going on at the Capitol. That's tonight. So you bring up a lot of strong points. And I think when you talk about a legal perspective, because there was a memo that was leaked earlier in the week, and I think there was some confusion around that memo from the Department of Justice, and it had Merrick Garland's signature on it. Yesterday, I believe it was, a journalist asked Merrick Garland, will you prosecute a former president of the United States?

And Merrick Garland had to repeat himself several times that no one, no one person is above the law. So having looking through that prism of maybe even a criminal court where Donald Trump could face criminal prosecution for what has happened on January 6th or some of the witness tampering that has been alluded to after the fact, just in the last several weeks. How do you view this through that lens? Is Merrick Garland going, and I know the audience is dying to know this answer, is he going to use some of this evidence that the select committee has gathered up as they hand it over to DOJ to prosecute, indict Donald Trump for January 6th? Let me answer it simply and then I'll go back.

It's a complicated answer. Yes, Merrick Garland's Department of Justice is going to take the evidence wherever it leads, including that which has been developed at the January 6th level. Whatever the January 6th committee has, the Department of Justice has or will get ultimately, and they're doing their own parallel investigation about the Department of Justice has, or will get ultimately, and they're doing their own parallel

investigation about the role of Trump. I know a lot of people who are not inside of the Department of Justice, me included, you included, are wondering what is going on? Why aren't they moving faster? The decision to indict a president of the United States, first time in our entire history, is not one that's taken lightly. And you have to have all of the United States, first time in our entire history, is not one that's taken lightly. And you have to have all of the evidence, starting from the bottom to the top, developed in order to bring that kind of indictment. He has time. It may not be at our timetable, because we're all frustrated, because we're all anxious, because we're all depressed. We want it to be tomorrow. But it will be if it's going to be.

If that's what the evidence suggests, Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice will pull the trigger on it. The memo was, I mean, I love Rachel Maddow, but the memo was not a scoop. That policy of you can't go after a candidate for office or somebody at the highest level in the executive branch until you get approval from the attorney general, or if it's a lower level person from your U.S. attorney, if you're a line prosecutor, that's been in existence forever. Every attorney general,

from Holder to Lynch, the Democrats, all the way through to now, I don't know why she framed it. I don't know if ratings were low that week. She framed it as, oh, we just got bombshell memo. It's not a bombshell memo. And it does not indicate what Merrick Garland is going to do at the Department of Justice or not.

Those that attack him, where were they attacking him when he was almost on the Supreme Court, when he prosecuted the bombing in Oklahoma City? I mean, he's got a body of work that says he's deliberate, he's methodical, but he prosecutes. Let him do his job. It's not on our timetable. We love these hearings, but everybody wanted them six months ago. Well, I think that's a good point, Michael. And I'm going to go to my next guest for the politics of it all. But I think that's a good point about where do we try Donald Trump? And

everyone wants him tried in criminal court. But tonight, tonight, the January 6th Select Committee and the American people are going to indict Donald J. Trump in the court of public opinion. I think you put it exactly right. I don't, we, you talked earlier with Susie about what is the audience for that? Is the weather changing in the right rooms? You know what? The drip, drip, drip, the death of a thousand paper cuts of eight hearings and all of these witnesses is having an impact on Donald Trump and peeling away voters and supporters. You were seeing for the first time a Republican saying in right-wing media, I don't think we want to do another replay and have Donald Trump be. We want at least to have a primary, a contested primary, and see what that... That was unthinkable a year ago.

So this is giving people the fig leaf that they need to go and say, isn't there an alternative to Trump? I think you're right. Michael Popock from Legal AF. Remember, and I think also Susie made a good point when we were talking about independent journalism. Independent journalism is definitely what is going to get this word out, just like the Legal AF podcast. So go to the Mindest Touch Network, follow the YouTube channel here to see Legal AF every single Wednesday and Saturday with Michael Poc, Karen and Nibolo and Ben Mizellas. And go download it too. Go download that thing. Right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Thank you, Michael Poc. Thank you very much. So I want to bring in someone for the politics. Before that, I want to mention, again, the independent journalism here that is happening right before your eyes.

We have a great panel here tonight with the Midas Touch Network. I'm going to bring on Lee McGowan, politics girl, another Midas Touch Network contributor. And she's got a great podcast, fantastic podcast, more independent journalism, just like what we're talking about. So don't forget to contribute. Rather you go and download those episodes, you watch those episodes, but more than anything, I mean, practice these episodes, right, Lee? Right, Lee? We have to practice these episodes. How are you? Absolutely. I'm good. I'm good. I'm trying to stay out of this beam of sunlight. I feel like a vampire. I'm like, vampire i'm like you know oh okay yeah there's just so much sun here um yeah but absolutely we have to practice it every day i always say you know democracy is absolutely a participation sport right you can't watch it

you got to do it and and you do it every single week with your show and you're trying to guide people of of these kitchen table issues and how to look at them through a kitchen table perspective not necessarily this this high brow thing but more of a kitchen table perspective, not necessarily this high brow thing, but more of a kitchen table approach to it. So tell us what you think the kitchen table approach is to tonight's hearing, because I think that's really going to be important when you're out there engaging with your family, your friends about these hearings, because they really have to know this stuff. What do you think is going to be important? Well, listen, I think these entire hearings, that's the key about them, right?

It's giving us the words to talk to our people. A lot of people aren't watching them or didn't watch them or weren't going to watch them. Fox wasn't going to play them. Then they did. So I'm actually really curious as what to expect from this, because like you said, from my sense of the previous hearings is they have done a masterful job at this. You know, I think they've really laid it out perfectly and they really took it step by step, quietly, succinctly, perfectly. So I'm curious about what to expect from tonight, because I find it interesting that they're planning to do an entire hearing on the 187 minutes.

Right. Because when I look at it, I think, okay, well, Trump sicked his mad crowd on the Capitol. He wanted to go and hang out with them because he was drunk with his own power, as Susie said, in love with himself and his own importance. And he wanted to be there and get off on the destruction that was happening in his name. But the Secret Service, who we all now know probably had something to do with it. Something was involved. They knew better and they took him back to the White House against his wishes. So he could only end up watching it on TV like the rest of us. Right.

Except what he was watching thrilled him and what we were watching horrified us. Right. But I think it's so telling that things got out of hand at the Capitol as it got more violent, as it got bigger. They didn't whisk Trump off to some bunker, right? Because they knew he wasn't in any danger. No one called for backup. No one called for the National Guard. No one called for the military. I remember watching it and thinking, where is the military, right? He didn't take any calls from the people that were begging for help from the Capitol. He didn't take calls from right-wing media voices begging him to stop because it was making them

look bad, right? He didn't take calls from his own children. He didn't listen to his chief of staff. He just watched. And I'm wondering what else there is to say about that, but maybe they just want to walk us through the opportunities he had to do something and didn't take. As Popak said, a total dereliction of duty, right? So I'm curious as to why this committee felt these hours were worthy of a primetime hearing. And I find that fascinating. I'm looking forward to seeing what they've uncovered. I think you make a good point. Like, what is it about that we're going to see tonight? Right, that we don't, we're not like, yeah, he was into it and watched it. But we've seen this through the hearings, right? Like, we knew some of this stuff. And then here's

the evidence going, oh my gosh, it's even more effective now that we see. Because some of these stuff is drip, drip, drip, like you said before, through the media. And it's always, well, we have this source and we have this source. And here's this anonymous source. But no longer are these anonymous sources. No, they're not. And that's why I find it interesting when I read people online. They'll say things like, oh, well, you know, these are these are just show hearings. It's just a horse and pony show. And I think, no, these are mostly Republican

witnesses testifying under oath at a congressional hearing. And I think people have forgotten what good government looks like. And I think that this committee, if we learn anything from any of this, is that this is what it looks like when government works, right? We have spent so many years watching Republicans obstruct everything the Democrats do, right? All through the Obama years, Mitch McConnell said his entire job to make Obama one-term president. And then that didn't happen. So his entire job was to stop any piece of legislation the Democrats wanted to pass. He called himself the Grim Reaper because his desk was where bills came to die, right? He didn't let Obama have a Supreme Court seat. And we saw what happened because of that. So we watched these Senate hearings and these congressional hearings,

basically over the past 10 years, but definitely in the past four years. And they've just devolved into these useless plays for soundbites on Fox News. And Republicans no longer go to these committee hearings looking for answers or solutions. They don't write legislation to address the needs of the American people. They don't vote for the bills that are written to address the needs of the American people. Their whole job has become obstruction. And they say government is the problem, that it doesn't work. And then they work to make sure that that statement is true, right? So they act like these fools. They throw out gotcha questions like, what is a woman? Define a woman, right? And all these winks and nods to the far right. But looking at the one, six hearings,

right, it's been such a departure. Like here are Republicans and Democrats working together to get to the bottom of an issue, right? Using procedure, using the rule of law. Nothing is all showboating. Nothing is dramatic. No one's trying to get their five minutes in, right? Everyone's like, today this person will talk, I defer to you, I regard my time. You know, they're doing the way government is supposed to work, and look how efficient they're being, right? This is what government could look like. There's no Matt Gaetz marching to the doors and complaining he's not a part of it, or like Lindsey Graham freaking out, or you know, Senator Kennedy pretending he's from the country when he really went to Oxford.

There's no screaming Jim Jordan in this. And literally the Republicans could have had more of their members there. They could have, but they blew it, right? They could have just thrown sand in the gears, but they blew it. They thought the whole thing would go away. And now we're seeing what it looks like

when government works and what it looks like when you put the American people and truth first and it is something wonderful to watch i agree with you i think sometimes we forget the government is supposed to be boring it's not you know because i say so many times i mean i don't think it's boring i think government's supposed to be stayed it's not there for a show it's not a freaking reality show they are they are making our laws to run our nation. It shouldn't be, oh, I got this great sick burn and I got it on TV. That is not what politics is for.

Well, right. They're trying to play politics for that five minutes on Fox News. And I say this so many times. It feels like we are at the intersection of WrestleMania and real life, right? And it's this intersection and politics has become this entertainment, this showboat thing, as you said. Yeah. But tonight, you bring up a good point. Benny Thompson has tested positive for COVID. And it's going to be a Republican who is going to throw down the gavel, I believe. Liz Cheney is going to, who was, who was

third in leadership. People forget she is an absolute lifer Republican, who her father is, who she was. She was number three in the line of succession in the Republican party until she was removed for not playing ball, for not being a team player, right? But she is a Republican through and through. There's not a single thing that she and I agree on except democracy matters and you follow the rule of law. And that's where she is. So I'm excited to see her run this committee. I think she's handled herself beautifully

through all of this. And yet again, I say that not as a personal fan, but as a fan of her, I guess, love of the country. Just in that hint of pro-democracy, we can get along, right? If we all agree that it does matter if the people have a say in a government by the people, for the people, then yeah, I can get along. I think you make great points. And everyone, go watch Politics Girl podcast. Oh, yeah, please.

We're doing an entire podcast on this. I'm taping it tomorrow on the One Six Hearings. We're going to break it all down with David Bender. It's going to be just great. So that'll drop next Tuesday. Listen to that. I think people will love it. Awesome.

So subscribe to the Minus Touch Network right now and go download that as well on all the directories. Apple, Spotify, Google, your favorite directory. It'll be there. Thank you. Thank you, Lee, for joining us again. I really do appreciate you joining us here. I really do. Thank you very much. You have a great one. And stick around. I want to bring you back at the end. You're coming back. Are you coming back? I can come back. I've got to go watch it first and see what's happening in those 187 minutes. I want to get your insight, as the next guest would say. I want to get your insight on what you hear in this hearing afterwards.

So thank you, Lee, for joining us. Of course, Tony. Thank you. Thank you. I want to bring in our next guest. You know her here on the Midas Touch Network as the Trump NDA killer, Jessica Denson. Jessica, how are you this evening? Are you ready for this hearing? I know you are. We talked earlier this week and you, you were excited about this. I am ready. I'm ready. And I'm so, uh, you know, great lead in. We just had from Lee McGowan from Popak, um, from Susie. Uh, they, they all had that theme of dereliction of duty, which is what the theme of tonight's

hearing is going to be. And as a couple of them said, don't forget that the ones leading this hearing tonight are Elaine Luria and Adam Kinzinger themselves, veterans, veterans who understand what the real meaning of courage and sacrifice and duty are in sharp, sharp contrast to the man Donald Trump, who in 70 plus years on this planet has never lived a day for anybody but himself. So that contrast is going to be very, very clear tonight. As far as what to expect or why this hearing, what could possibly be shown tonight, as Lee was talking about, I'm really, really excited to see because I will never forget that first primetime hearing and how visceral and evocative of our memories of that day it was. And what have they done in the time between that

first primetime hearing and tonight? They have told us the background of the big lie. They have totally debunked the fiction that the election was ever stolen, that there was ever a legitimate reason for Donald Trump to carry forward this attempted overthrow, the fake elector scheme, the pressuring of the Georgia Secretary of State, all of these efforts to overthrow the election. They have laid the groundwork for why they are illegitimate. And now we've returned. We come full circle to that day. And we're talking a lot about how this committee and their phenomenal, flawless presentation has brought so many people into the light. But as one of our commentators said previously, not only changing people's minds, but just showing them

these facts for the first time. I mean, literally for the first time, you have to understand this is a gaslit nation that we live in. And because of the rhetoric of Donald Trump and his sycophants and supporters in right-wing media, there are many people that went in to the date, January 6th, 2021, with the notion and belief that the election had in fact been stolen, that it was rigged in Joe Biden's favor for any number of the conspiracy, unfounded conspiracy theories that they were furthering. So just put yourself in that distorted box for a moment and then arrive at January 6th and see people, we all know they were rioters and terrorists, but seeing that from a perspective of thinking that an election actually was stolen is quite different than now what we are going to see tonight with this educated background that the

whole country has been given so exquisitely and excellently by this January 6th committee that they had no legitimate reason to be there. They were led there by a treasonous traitor named Donald Trump. And it's really, I think, this could not be a more significant moment that we are witnessing. Donald Trump, as we know, had foreign help to get into the position that he got into. He makes his followers believe that he's a patriot, that he's a defender of freedom, a lover of this country. It is the complete opposite of what he demonstrates and what his history has been. He has been supported and backed by foreign governments. They have bailed him out of bankruptcy and saved his businesses. There is credible evidence that he is a foreign asset. And what did he do on January 6th? He led,

he was an enemy from within. He led an enemy army, believing, some of them, that they were acting in the furtherance of American freedom and patriotism, but they were his gaslit enemy army. This is something we have never seen, and it's something that we absolutely have to handle moving forward. We cannot move forward with any credibility as the leader of the free world if we do not take care of the situation. I think you're spot on about moving forward and making sure that all the truth is out there, whether it's even after tonight, they plan on having more hearings in August even. So again, I stress that independent journalism because Jessica, independently,

you took down the Trump campaigns in the A by yourself. So this independent journalism thing is so crucial. I think that's why so many people are watching because normal average people are out here paying attention, wanting to know exactly what's happening. And I appreciate you joining us. And I know, I know you're a favorite here on the Minds Touch Network. So I want you, if you can, to join us during the break, if there is one, and join us afterwards. But tell us, tell me before you, before we go, this 187 minutes of what Trump didn't do, because you've been in the room. You've been in the room when there wasn't things being done. So tell us what you think is going to be the number one thing to pay attention to when the committee is trying to get, paint us the picture of him doing nothing

about what you just described of him rotting on our country. You just have to remember that this is a man that lives for himself and for himself alone. And the lack of, what is the title, one of the titles of the president, commander in chief, nobody forced his hand on that Bible to take that oath. He took that oath. He violated that oath, I would argue, many times before January 6th. But he betrayed this country and allowed a terrorist attack on our capital, the citadel of democracy, on the most symbolic day in what we do every election. Bring forward the will of the people, certify the votes of the will of the people. And this man has nothing to do with America. He does not care about our Constitution, our democracy. He was living for one man. And if it meant burning down the Capitol

and it served his purposes, he was quite satisfied with that. Well, thank you, Jessica. And please join us if you can in the break. And afterwards, I'd love to keep you on the panel and have your insight into the hearings and what we get out of the hearings tonight and the things that we hear. So I appreciate your insight into everything. Thank you, Jessica. We'll talk to you very soon. I want to bring in my next guest. Actually, I got two guys here in the wings. And I can't tell which one is which here. I can't really tell which one is which because they both got hats on.

So I think I'm just going to bring them both in here. We have Texas Paul joining us. Hey, Texas Paul. And then I have, oh, this is Ben Mazzella. So we got Texas Ben here. Texas Paul and Texas Ben. How are you? How are you, fellas?

Doing great, Tony. Doing great. How are you how are you fellas doing great tony doing great how are you i'm i'm doing fantastic i'm very excited texas paul i'll go to you first and then and then i'll let i'll let uh ben give some shameless plug for the mind is touch network here because i know he's he's probably wanting to do that here i know he always wants to give that but texas paul what do you what do you expect to hear from tonight about what Trump did, but more importantly, what he didn't do? Well, this is going to be Cassidy Hutchinson plus. You've got Matt Pottinger and Sarah Matthews.

These are two MAGA people. These were not people that were just pros brought in. These are people that were you know just pros brought in these are people that were absolutely devoted to trump uh you know matt pottinger being the deputy deputy uh secretary for uh um that tongue-tied deputy national security advisor and then you know your deputy press secretary that worked with kaylee mckinney These were not people that were just outside people that were just, you know, anybody. They saw enough that day that they were so sick and possibly worried for their own legal futures that they dropped resignations on the desk. I mean, they were done. So we're not just going to see, you know, Mango Mussolini sitting in the dining room, having a good chuckle at what he's seeing. There's going to be a lot more to this. There's going to be, you have to imagine the kind of

chaos that was going on in the background where these discussions were happening, because these, like I said, these resignations didn't happen in a vacuum. You know, they didn't just decide on their own. There's going to be, we're going to get these conversations back and forth. I talked to this person. I talked to Tony Leonardo. I talked to this person and this is what was happening. And this is why I couldn't take it anymore.

This is going to be Cassidy Hutchinson on steroids. Do you agree with that, Ben? Do you think that's where the direction of this goes, where we get inside the room where Trump was? And again, more importantly, probably what, I mean, he was sipping on Diet Coke and probably cheering at the TV like it was a football game almost. But maybe we'll get a sense of that inside the room. Do you think more importantly, we're going to get to the bottom of what he wasn't doing? I think we are. 187 minutes. We're going to see a step-by-step of what Trump didn't do during those 187 minutes, which has been phrased appropriately as a dereliction of duty.

And, you know, the term dereliction of duty for Marines, for the Navy, for our armed forces is a crime. And he is the commander in chief. And though there could be dispute and debate whether military law applies to him in that setting. You know, clearly the DOJ is going to be looking at our federal statutes that they can charge him with. But, you know, we've always heard the expression, right, Tony, Texas Paul, about how Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned in year 64 as the circus Maximus was on fire. Nero, the emperor of Rome, literally did nothing but play his fiddle. Well, the version of that is Trump actually lighting the flame that led to the insurrection, drinking his Diet Coke and cheering on the insurrection, which was an attempt to

destroy our democracy. And in addition to 187 minutes, in addition to what Texas Paul says about Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, I do want to talk also about which members of Congress are going to be leading this hearing. And that's Adam Kinzinger and Elaine Luria, both military vets. Elaine Luria, Congresswoman Luria, was a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer with two decades of experience in the Navy. And so to have these two vets and that contrast that will be put on is something I would definitely look out for as well. And then I'll tell everybody just watching this as well, here's the shameless plug part of it. Thank you all for supporting the independent media free from all of the corporate BS. That's how we have these incredible panelists, people like Texas Paul, people like Tony.

We license this footage in a proprietary way. We don't give you the streams that are coming from other networks like you see out there. Thank you to everybody who's contributed and thank you to everybody who can contribute on the YouTube page. And just thank you for everyone who supports it, who spreads the word. Make sure right now, in addition to contributing, you can tell all of your friends, family, colleagues. Watch this right now. Send this link to everybody. And we so appreciate all of your support.

And make sure to subscribe. I am so proud of this Midas Media Network fighting for pro-democracy and making sure we call fascists out. Well, I agree. And so let's do this. Let's bring in someone else who has a lot to do with the Midas Touch Network. And I got another person in the wings here who has a hat on. It's like we're going to have hat row again. Brett Maizelos and David Bender. How are you, fellas? How are you? I'm doing great. It's great to see a panel. It's great to see you, David. I got to say, I feel a little left out. Everybody in the hat except me and you, Tony. I didn't get the memo. I didn't get the memo. I don't have it. And apparently my circle. So to Ben's point a

minute ago about fiddling while Rome burned, here's the thing. Donald Trump has no talent. He couldn't play a fiddle. All he can do is watch television. I think he can use a remote. That's it. He's pretty good at that. He's pretty good at watching TV.

That's not all we can do. And what we know today, and this just in, I don't know if you guys even saw this as I was coming into the studio, the Secret Service has been advised that there may be criminal charges brought against them for these, what was it, an upgrade in their cell phones? It may be a criminal upgrade. Yeah, quote unquote upgrade, upgrade. So that's some breaking news. And the other thing I'm really glad that Ben mentioned a minute ago is that this is dereliction of duty tonight. That's what if we were titling this episode, that's what it's called. And Elaine Luria and Adam Kinzinger, both having served, they've taken the oath twice. They took it when they were in the service, they took it for their jobs today as members of Congress. And the contrast couldn't be more stark. Donald Trump had to hold his hand on a Bible upside down, right side up, whatever it was, but he has not

honored his oath. And that is what this is going to be about tonight now something else i saw only just coming here was that adam kinzinger has apparently given us a little teaser of what we're going to see tonight that some of the uh some of the witnesses that were watching him watch tv which is always fun uh include kaylee mcinerney include General Kellogg, the one who Ivanka spoke to, and they both agreed that Mike Pence was doing the right thing. Maybe they didn't get the memo either. So we're going to see that tonight, but we're going to see something that I think is probably going to tie everything together. Let's go back to the beginning. When they set this up and said that there, Liz Cheney said there were seven points to this, seven points to this conspiracy.

It's now getting even bigger than that because this is not this is the end of season one for these hearings. Be clear. This is not the end of the hearings. There could be some as early as next week, depending on what breaks, maybe in August, certainly in September. Definitely they will release a report with more live witnesses or live discussion on the part of the panel. But this moment tonight, gentlemen, and everyone watching, and I'm glad you're watching it here on the Midas Touch Network. I can do it too. Let me be clear, you're gonna see something, you will never forget where you were tonight. Because this is the night where they will tie Donald Trump to crime.

And there is no other answer to that. I will tell you that, how can I say this right without tipping it? When they call Batman, there's a light that goes into the sky. When these hearings are over tonight, look to the sky. And not for Batman. There's going to be a message here. And that's as much, after it's over, you'll see it.

If I could add to that just a little bit, you're absolutely right. This is season one, the White House version. They haven't even touched what was going on in the campaign. We had breaking news today that Christina Bob over at OAN was ingrained in this whole fake electors scam. She was actually sending memos out to Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Bernie Carrick, Boris Epstein, Joe DiGenova, and Victoria Tonsing. And she was in touch with Matt Stroia, that is Mike Kelly's, he's Mike Kelly's chief of staff. You remember him because he's the guy that was bringing the fake electors to Pence and Pence wouldn't take them.

We haven't even heard the campaign side of the crime yet is my point. You know, they were all being counseled and coordinated by a guy by the name of Mike Roman out of the campaign. And so far, we've just talked White House criming. We still have a whole lot more to go. Well, I want to do this. Someone's late. He's always late. Now, I don't know if you'll be able to run the microphone, but I'm going to go to Brett.

But what I'm going to do is bring Jordy on and mute his microphone. Jordy has like a glass of wine yes he is yeah i think i he texas paul brings him cookies the last time and now he brings his drink but i'm muting him because he's late but brett wow wow yeah we're gonna put jordy on a performance improvement plan. Jordy, you're officially on a pip. Okay, good. You got pipped. Mike doesn't even work. I muted him. So, Brett, tell us why Jordy figures out that I muted him,

what you think of tonight's hearing, and the commentary that you've heard so far from the Midas Touch Network. What do you expect this to be? I think what Texas Paul said earlier rings true. These are deep MAGA people who are speaking tonight. What do you expect this to be? traitor Mike Flynn, if you want to know where these people come from. So the fact that it's these people speaking out, I think is going to mean something. And they're going to corroborate a lot of the testimony, I believe. And I think that corroboration now is important, especially with everybody on the right trying to pick at any hole whatsoever. You saw that with the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony, how immediately after they tried to find little holes, which were all proven false, by the way. But what you have to understand is the right wing and the right wing media all operate

in this disinformation echo chamber. Their whole entire goal is to inject disinformation into the conversation. So I think it's really great to have actually true professionals, especially tonight, Ben said, people with military experience leading the charge here, honorable people leading the charge here on our side. And going back to what Lee, aka Politics Girl, had said earlier, imagine the circus this would have been if Kevin McCarthy actually put people on this panel. And think about the people who he wanted to put on this panel to inject that disinformation early on. I mean, Jim Jordan. Imagine Jim Jordan being on this panel.

We should be very thankful for the way the January 6th committee has conducted this investigation. We should be very thankful for the way they presented these witnesses. And we should be paying attention to the witnesses that they are bringing and the reason why they are bringing these witnesses. You notice basically every single witness has been a Republican. They try to claim this as them sort of partisan witch hunt. Well, if it's a partisan in any way whatsoever, it's partisan leaning towards Republicans. And so I think it's important to note that. And I think it really is kind of kryptonite to those arguments. I'm excited to see what we got tonight. I kind

of go into every one of these hearings saying, you know, we know the guy did it. We know the guy is guilty. The guy tried to install himself as dictator and overthrow our democracy. I don't know what else we could learn. And then by 10 minutes in, I'm like, holy shit. The evidence is there, right? It's there. And there's more and more that comes out every day. And I think it also shows you why these investigations take so long. I mean, think about what we've even just learned in the past few days, past 24 hours even, that if we tried taking this thing to trial even last week, we wouldn't have had that evidence. So I think day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, we are uncovering the truth of

what happened that day. Everybody knows that Trump is guilty, who is not in that disinformation chamber. So it's on all of us to continue to spread the word and to be unapologetically pro-democracy and to not give that side any air and to just speak the truth to you, to your family, to your social media followers, to everybody, and keep spreading the word. And share this link around right now so that everybody watches these hearings tonight. One quick point before the favorite brother, well, while he's drinking, actually. Let me speak to what Brett just said. There is dereliction of duty on display tonight, and you just pointed it out, and we're grateful for it. Kevin McCarthy exhibited a

dereliction of duty to his party. It's political malpractice not to have taken a deal when Jordan and the other were rejected to put three on. This all would have been a circus. Everyone would have tuned out on night one because it would have been a clown car. But he took all of his people and went home because he couldn't get jim jordan one other on that is dereliction of duty that has worked for the country so i want to i want to tip my hat to kevin mccarthy thank you i'll never do that again but well i i i don't i don't like to do the mccarthy plug but i want to give jordy that's one plug, but I want to give Jordy – That's one plug right there.

I want to give Jordy a second to plug because Brett mentioned unapologetically – First off, I'm going to come in hot right now. I was waiting in the studio for 15 minutes. So, one, I was not late. Two, performance – I'm under a performance improvement plan, Ben. I think more people need to show up doing these hits with wine in their hand. First off, it's an immediate tone center. Tonight is going to be a big night for the rule of law. I'm stoked, man. And I can't be more thankful for everyone. I can't be more thankful for everybody tuning in right now, getting ready to watch alongside us, man. This

is independent media at its finest and we can't do this without y'all without the Midas Mighty who day in and day out help us help make us better oh we're throwing up pitch it pitch it pitch it I love that yeah go check out store.midastouch.com right now get 10% off uh all your gear but specifically go grab this pin unapologetically pro-democracy all right I just want to say thank you all so much for rocking with us. Seriously, from day one to now, the movement just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And we're nowhere without y'all. And you guys motivate us every day.

Let me ask you, Ben. He's got the title, Favorite Brother. Is that his official title? Or is that something that's just... If the screen says it, it must be true. Yeah, it must be true. I was going to say, it feels a little forced. It feels a little performative. But let me tell you, I'm talking about talking about performative, Tony.

One of the things I'm looking forward to today, though, are these Trump outtakes where he didn't even get himself to. You know, they wrote the words for him to try to condemn the insurrectionists. And apparently we got the outtakes of Trump just refusing to say the words that were written. Another thing I'm looking forward to as well is when this was brought to the attention of Melania Trump, she was doing a photo shoot for a new rug that she had purchased. And she basically told people, stop bugging her. She doesn't want to do anything because she was focused on getting these photos taken of her at the rug. But as we see our panelists for today, as we see Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger taking the stand, remember, today's hearing about one hundred and eighty seven minutes of dereliction of duty of Donald Trump not taking any action when he inspired this

insurrection. And I couldn't be more excited for seeing democracy work tonight for this panel, for all of the support of the Midas Mighty. Thank you so much, spreading the link, contributing money for these feeds. Whatever it is, we appreciate all of your support to allow this independent journalism and reporting to take place. And again, these cameras are independent. So they are, they are independent of the other news networks. The images that you see on the screen are Midas touch image, Midas touch network images. So make sure from Jordy's pay. Well, that's what, that's what, that's what happens when you,

when you're the favorite brother. I want to know. Okay. I want to know. There's an asterisk next to it. There is. Is that like pink rose or something? Bender,

bender, bender. I see where your allegiances lie. Don't worry. Don't worry. I think you woke up a sleeping beast in the team Jordy's out there. That's all I'll say. I'm on team Jordy. I'm just a little upset. I'm not there where the wine is. Ah, there you go. Funny. Well, if you do want to support our cameras and this independent media company, you could chip in using the super chat feature on YouTube. All that money helps us to continue these hearings, to make sure that we're able to keep them going and keep getting

our cameras in all these hearings and that we're back for, I guess I'll call it season two when season two of the January 6th hearings inevitably begins. So thank you for everybody, genuinely, for all your support. Well, it looks like the witnesses have taken their seats, but we're still waiting on the committee here. So I want to bring in Mike. Well, I just want to witnesses have taken their seats, but we're still waiting on the committee here. So I want to bring in Mike. Well, I just want to say that my wife has made Geordie cookies, but she has never made Brett or Ben cookies. Oh, here we go. This is true.

Here we go. All right. All right. What is this, a Geordie commercial here or something? I don't know. Now I don't know why you didn't let me in earlier, Tony. Yeah, mute Geordie's mic again. Mute Geordie's mic. He's done. Cut him Tony. Yeah, mute Jordy's mic again. Mute Jordy's mic.

He's done. Cut him out. I might mute Paul since he's pushing Jordy. No, I'm just kidding. I want to bring in Gabe Sanchez, my co-host and executive producer. He's been waiting in the wing the whole time, Jordy. Yeah, I've been patiently waiting back here, you know, small hands and all. Just, you know, just waiting.

Just waiting for Tony. Are those an actual replica of Donald Trump's hands that you're holding up? Yeah, I had these molded. These are actually Trump hands. So I figured why not, if we're going to go through the 187 minutes, I should have them in my breast pocket here, you know? A little applause. Always thinking ahead.

That's what I love about you. Always, always, always with the funny stuff. This Gabe Sanchez. Always with the funny stuff. As we watch the room start to convene here. I'll make a point, Tony, is that we're seeing Liz Cheney come in now, but we're going to see the chairman, Benny Thompson, who has COVID. He will be here, but he will be here remotely.

So when they take their seats, I think the first thing we'll see on our screen will be chairman Thompson, uh, remotely gaveling this in. Well, I appreciate everyone joining us. Um, please stick around for the, the panel and we're going to go to the, we're going to go to the hearing here.

Um, so everyone hang tight. As Liz Cheney is going to chair, we know there she gabbled. Committee will be in order. Good evening. Earlier this week, I received a positive COVID diagnosis. Per CDC guidelines, I've received the initial two shots and all of the boosters. Thus far, I've been blessed to experience very minimal symptoms. Because I'm still quarantined, I cannot participate in person with my colleagues. I've asked our vice chair, Ms. Cheney, to preside over this evening's hearing, including maintaining order in the room and swearing in our witnesses.

Over the last month and a half, the Select Committee has told the story of a president who did everything in his power to overturn an election. He lied. He bullied. He betrayed his oath. He tried to destroy our democratic institutions. He summoned a mob to Washington. After war on January 6th, when he knew that the assembled mob was heavily armed and angry, he commanded the mob to go to the Capitol, and he emphatically commanded the heavily armed mob to fight like hell. For the weeks between November election and January 6th, Donald Trump was a force to be reckoned with. He shrugged off the factuality and legality, correct, sober advice of his knowledgeable and sensible advisors. Instead, he recklessly blazed a path of lawlessness and corruption, the cost of which democracy be damned. And then he stopped. For 187 minutes on January 6, this man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved, not by his aides, not by his allies,

not by the violent chants of rioters or the desperate pleas of those facing down the riot. And more tellingly, Donald Trump ignored and disregarded the desperate pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don Jr. Even though he was the only person in the world who could call off the mob. He sent to the Capitol. He could not be moved to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the White House hallway into the press briefing room where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob, savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers, revenging the Capitol, and hunting down the Vice President and various members of Congress. He could not be moved.

This evening, my colleagues, Mr. Kingsinger of Illinois and Ms. Luria of Virginia, will take you inside the White House during those 187 minutes. We also remind you of what was happening at the Capitol minute by minute as the final violent, tragic part of Donald Trump's scheme to cling to power unraveled while he ignored his advisors, stood by, and watched it unfold on television. Let me offer a final thought about the Select Committee's work so far. As we've made clear throughout these hearings, our investigation goes forward. We continue to receive new information every day. We continue to hear from witnesses. We will reconvene in September to continue laying out our findings to the American people. But as that work goes forward, a number of facts are clear. There can be no doubt that there was a coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn an election overseen and directed by Donald Trump.

There can be no doubt that he commanded a mob, a mob he knew was heavily armed, violent, and angry, to march on the Capitol to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power. And he made targets out of his own vice president and the lawmakers gathered to do the people's work. These facts have gone undisputed. And so there needs to be accountability. Accountability under the law. Accountability to the American people, accountability at every level from the local precincts in many states where Donald Trump and his allies attacked election workers for just doing their jobs, all the way up to the Oval Office where Donald Trump embraced a legal advice of insurrectionists that a federal judge has already said was a coup in search of a legal theory. Our democracy withstood the attack on January 6th.

If there is no accountability for January 6th for every part of this scheme, I fear that we will not overcome the ongoing threat to our democracy. There must be stiff consequences for those responsible. Now I'll turn things over to our Vice Chair to start telling this story. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Without objection, the presiding officer is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point. Pursuant to House Deposition Authority

Regulation 10, I announce that the committee has approved the release of the deposition material presented during today's hearing. And let me begin tonight by wishing Chairman Thompson a rapid recovery from COVID. He has expertly led us through eight hearings so far, and he has brought us to the point we are today. In our initial hearing, the Chairman and I described what ultimately became Donald Trump's seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a plan stretching from before Election Day through January 6th. At the close of today's hearing, our ninth, we will have

addressed each element of that plan. But in the course of these hearings, we have received new evidence and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break. And now, even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we have considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather. So our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings this September. Today, we know far more about the president's plans and actions to overturn the election than almost all members of Congress did when President Trump was that time, and more than 20 others said

they were voting against conviction because the president's term had already expired. At the time, the Republican leader of the United States Senate said this about Donald Trump. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. He was the only one.

Leader McConnell reached those conclusions based on what he knew then, without any of the much more detailed evidence you will see today. Lawlessness and violence began at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, before 1 p.m., and continued until well after darkness fell. What exactly was our Commander-in-Chief doing during the hours of violence? Today, we address precisely that issue. Everything you've heard in these hearings thus far will help you understand President Trump's motives during the violence. You already know Donald Trump's goal to halt or delay Congress's official proceedings to count certified electoral votes. You know that Donald Trump tried to pressure his vice president to illegally reject votes and delay the proceedings. You know he tried to convince state officials and state legislators to flip their electoral votes from Biden to Trump.

And you know Donald Trump tried to corrupt our Department of Justice to aid his scheme. But by January 6th, none of that had worked. Only one thing was succeeding on the afternoon of January 6th. Only one thing was achieving President Trump's goal. The angry, armed mob President Trump sent to the Capitol broke through security, invaded the Capitol, and forced the vote counting to stop. That mob was violent and destructive, and many came armed. As you will hear, Secret Service agents protecting

the Vice President were exceptionally concerned about his safety and their own. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was scared, as were others in Congress, even those who themselves helped to provoke the violence. And as you will see today, Donald Trump's own White House counsel, his own White House staff, members of his own family, all implored him to immediately intervene to condemn the violence and instruct his supporters to stand down, leave the Capitol, and disperse. For multiple hours, he would not. Donald Trump would not get on the phone and order the military or law enforcement agencies to help. And for hours,

Donald Trump chose not to answer the pleas from Congress, from his own party, and from all across our nation to do what his oath required. He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution. He refused to do what every American president must. In the days after January 6th, almost no one of any political party would defend President Trump's conduct, and no one should do so today. Thank you, and I now recognize the gentlewoman from Virginia. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Article 2 of our Constitution requires that the President swear a very specific oath every four years.

Every President swears or affirms to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and to the best of their ability preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States. The president also assumes the constitutional duty to take care that our nation's laws be faithfully executed and is the commander-in-chief of our military. Our hearings have shown the many ways in which President Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to January 6th. With each step of his plan, he betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty. Tonight, we will further examine President Trump's actions

on the day of the attack on the Capitol. Early that afternoon, President Trump instructed tens of thousands of supporters at and near the Ellipse rally, a number of whom he knew were armed with various types of weapons, to march to the Capitol. After telling the crowd to march multiple times, he promised he would be with them and finished his remarks at 1.10 p.m. like this. We're going to walk down and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down. We're going to walk down. Anyone you want. But I think right here, we're going to walk down, anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. By this time, the vice president was in the Capitol.

The joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden's victory was underway, and the Proud Boys and other rioters had stormed through the first barriers and begun the attack. Radio communications from law enforcement informed Secret Service and those in the White House Situation Room of these developments in real time. At the direction of President Trump, thousands more rioters marched from the ellipse to the Capitol, and they joined the attack. As you will see in great detail tonight, President Trump was being advised by nearly everyone to immediately instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol, disperse, and halt the violence. Virtually everyone told President Trump to condemn the violence in clear and unmistakable terms. And those on Capitol Hill and across the nation begged President Trump to

help. But the former president chose not to do what all of those people begged. He refused to tell the mob to leave until 4-17 when he tweeted out a video statement filmed in the Rose Garden, ending with this. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace. By that time, two pipe bombs had been found at locations near the Capitol, including where the vice president-elect was conducting a meeting. Hours of hand-to-hand combat had seriously injured scores of law enforcement officers.

The Capitol had been invaded, the electoral count had been halted as members were evacuated. Rioters took the floor of the Senate, they rifled through desks and broke into offices, and they nearly caught up to Vice President Pence. Guns were drawn on the House floor, and a rioter was shot,

attempting to infiltrate the chamber. We know that a number of rioters intended acts of physical violence against specific elected officials. We know virtually all the rioters were motivated by President Trump's rhetoric that the election had been stolen, and they felt they needed to take their country back. This hearing is principally about what happened inside of the White House that afternoon. From the time when President Trump ended his speech until the moment when he finally told the mob to go home, a span of 187 minutes, more than three hours. What you will learn is that President Trump

sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television while his senior most staff, closest advisors, learned is that President Trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television, while his senior most staff, closest advisors, and family members begged him to do what is expected of any American president. I served proudly for 20 years as an officer in the United States Navy. Veterans of our armed forces know firsthand the leadership that's required in a time of crisis, urgent and decisive action that puts duty and country first. But on January 6th, when lives and our democracy hung in the balance, President Trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to stay in power. And I yield to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kensinger.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Luria. One week after the attack, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy acknowledged the simple truth. President Trump should have acted immediately to stop the violence. During our investigation, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also remarked on the president's failure to act. Let's hear what they had to say. The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action of President Trump.

Yeah. You know, Commander-in-Chief, you got an assault going on on the capital of the United States of America. There's nothing. No call. Nothing. Zero. Like my colleague from Virginia, I'm a veteran. I served in the Air Force,

and I serve currently in the Air National Guard. I can tell you that General Milley's reaction to President Trump's conduct is 100% correct. And so was Leader McCarthy's. What explains President Trump's behavior? Why did he not take immediate action in a time of crisis? Because President Trump's plan for January 6th was to halt or delay Congress's official proceeding to count the votes. The mob attacking the Capitol quickly caused the evacuation of both the House and the Senate. The count ground to an absolute halt and was ultimately delayed for hours. The mob was accomplishing President Trump's purpose, so of course he didn't intervene.

Here's what will be clear by the end of this hearing. President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home, he chose not to act. But there were hundreds that day who honored their oaths and put their lives on the line to protect the people inside the Capitol and to safeguard our democracy. Many of them are here tonight with us, and many more are watching from home. As you already know, and we'll see again tonight, their service and sacrifice shines a bright light on President Trump's dishonor and dereliction of duty. I yield to the Vice Chair. Thank you very much, Mr. Kinzinger. I'd like to begin by welcoming our witnesses this evening. Tonight we're joined by Mr. Matthew

Pottinger. Mr. Pottinger is a decorated former Marine intelligence officer who served this nation on tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. He served in the Trump White House from the first day of the administration through the early morning hours of January 7th, 2021. The last role in which he served in the White House was as Deputy National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. We're also joined by Sarah Matthews. Ms. Matthews started her career in communications working on Capitol Hill, serving on the Republican staffs of several House committees. She then worked as Deputy Press Secretary for President Trump's re-election campaign before joining the Trump White House in June of 2020. She served there

as Deputy Press Secretary and Special Assistant to the President until the evening of January 6, 2021. I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will please stand and raise their right hands. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you God. Thank you. You may be seated.

And let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. Thank you both again for being here tonight. Mr. Pottinger, thank you for your service to the nation as well as for joining us this evening. Can you please briefly explain what your responsibilities were as Deputy National Security Advisor to the President? Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. When I started at the White House, I was a Senior Director for Asia on the National Security Council staff. So that was a job that involved helping coordinate the President's Asia policy.

I supported the President when he met or interacted with Asian leaders. Later, 2019, I was promoted to the job of Deputy National Security Advisor. In that role, I was the chairman of the Deputies Committee. That's an NSC meeting of all the deputy cabinet secretaries. We would settle important matters of national policy related to our national security. And we would also tee up options for the president and for his cabinet members. It was, I felt then as I do now, that it was a privilege to serve in the White House.

I'm also very proud of President Trump's foreign policy accomplishments. We were able to finally compete with China. We were also able to broker peace agreements between Israel and three Arab states. Those are some examples of the types of policies that I think made our country safer. Thank you, Ms. Pottinger. And were you in the White House during the attack on the Capitol on January 6th? For most of the day, I was in the White House, although when the president was speaking at the rally, I was actually off site at a security for what was a domestic event, the rally. But I did return to the White House at roughly 2.30 p.m. Thank you.

And I know my colleagues will have additional questions for you about that afternoon. Let me turn now to you, Ms. Matthews. How did you come to join President Trump's White House staff? Thank you, Madam. Matthews, how did you come to join President Trump's White House staff? Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. As you outlined, I am a lifelong Republican, and I joined the Trump re-election campaign in June of 2019. I was one of the first communications staffers actually on board for his re-election campaign. And during that time, I traveled all around the country and met Kayleigh McEnany, who was also working on his reelection campaign. I worked there for a year and I formed a close relationship with Ms. McEnany. And she moved over to the White House in April of 2020 to start as White House press secretary.

And she brought over a group of campaign staff with her. And so I joined her over at the White House in June of 2020 to start as her deputy. And were you, Ms. Matthews, at work in the White House on January 6th? Yes, I was working out of the West Wing that day. Thank you. And now I'd like to recognize the gentlewoman from Virginia and the gentleman from Illinois. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. As you've seen in our prior hearings, President Trump summoned the mob to D.C. on January 6. Before he went on stage, he knew some of them were armed and prepared for combat. During his speech, he implored them to march to the Capitol, as he had always planned to do.

By the time he walked off the stage, his supporters had already breached the outer perimeter of the Capitol at the foot of Capitol Hill. Since our last hearings, we've received new testimony from a security professional working in the White House complex on January 6th with access to relevant information and responsibility to report to national security officials. This security official told us that the White House was aware of multiple reports of weapons in the crowd that morning. We as a committee are cognizant of the fear of retribution expressed by certain national security witnesses who have come forward to tell the truth. We've therefore taken steps to protect this national security individual's identity.

Listen to this clip from their testimony. What was the consistent message from the people about this idea of the presidential law for the Capitol? To be completely honest, we were all in a state of shock. Because why? Because it just... One, I think the actual physical feasibility of doing it, and then also we all knew what that indicated and what that meant,

that this was no longer a rally, that this was going to move to something else if you physically walked to the Capitol. I don't know if you want to use the word insurrection, coup, whatever. We all knew that this would move from a normal, democratic, you know, public event into something else. What was driving that sentiment, considering this part of it,

the actual breach of the Capitol, hadn't happened yet? Why were we alarmed? Right. The president wanted to lead tens of thousands of people to the Capitol. I think that was enough grounds for us to be alarmed. Even though he understood many of his supporters were armed, the president was still adamant to go to the Capitol when he got off the stage at the Ellipse. But his Secret Service detail was equally determined to not let him go. That led to a heated argument with the detail that delayed the departure of the motorcade to the White House. We have evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential SUV, including testimony we will disclose today from two witnesses who confirmed

that a confrontation occurred. The first witness is a former White House employee with national security responsibilities. After seeing the initial violence at the Capitol on TV, the individual went to see Tony Ornato, the deputy chief of staff in his office. Mr. Ornato was there with Bobby Engel, the president's lead Secret Service agent. This employee told us that Mr. Ornato said that the president was, quote,

irate when Mr. Engel refused to drive him to the Capitol. Mr. Engel did not refute what Mr. Ornato said. The second witness is retired Sergeant Mark Robinson of the D.C. Police Department, who was assigned to the president's motorcade that day. He sat in the lead vehicle with a Secret Service agent responsible for the motorcade, also called the T.S. agent. Here's how Sergeant Robinson remembered the exchange. Was there any description of what was occurring in the car? No, the only description I received was that the president was upset and that he was adamant about going to the Capitol, and there was a heated discussion about that.

And when you say heated, is that your word or is that the word that was described by the TSA? No, the word described by the TSA, meaning that the president was upset and he was saying there was a heated argument or discussion about going to the Capitol. About how many times would you say you've been part of that motorcade with the president? Probably over 100 times. And in that 100 times, have you ever witnessed another discussion

of an argument or heated discussion with the president where the president was contradicting where he was supposed to go or what the Secret Service believed was safe? No. Like other witnesses, Sergeant Robinson also testified that he was aware that individuals in the crowd were armed. Yes, I believe he was on special events events channel, and I was monitoring the traffic, and so I can hear some of the units pointing out to individuals that there were individuals

along Constitution Avenue that were armed, that were up in the trees, and I can hear the units responding to those individuals. So there's always a concern when there's a police in the area. And like other witnesses, Sergeant Robinson told us that the president still wanted to travel to the Capitol, even after returning to the White House. So at the end of the speech, what was the plan supposed to be? So at the end of the speech, we do know that while inside the limo, the president was still adamant about going to the Capitol. That's been relayed to me by the TS agent. And so

we did park the Ellipse and we responded back to the White House. However, the modicate, the protist modicate, was placed on standby. And so we were told to stand by on West Exec until they confirmed whether or not the president was going to go to the Capitol. may have waited, I would just estimate maybe 45 minutes to an hour, waiting for Secret Service to make that decision. The motorcade waited at the White House for more than 45 minutes before being released. The committee is also aware that accounts of the angry confrontation in the presidential SUV have circulated widely among the Secret Service since January 6. Recent disclosures have also caused the committee to subpoena yet further information from the Secret Service, which we've begun to receive and will continue to assess.

The committee is also aware that certain Secret Service witnesses have now retained new private counsel. We anticipate further testimony under oath and other new information in the coming weeks. After the Secret Service refused to take President Trump to the Capitol, he returned to the White House. What you see on the screen is a photo of him inside the Oval Office immediately after he returned from the rally, still wearing his overcoat. A White House employee informed the president as soon as he returned to the Oval about the riot at the Capitol. Let me repeat that. Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack. At 1.25, President Trump went to the private dining room

off the Oval Office. From 1.25 until 4 o'clock, the president stayed in his dining room. Just to give you a sense of where the dining room is situated in the West Wing, let's take a look at this floor plan. The dining room is connected to the Oval Office by a short hallway. Witnesses told us that on January 6, President Trump sat in his usual spot at the head of the table facing a television

hanging on the wall. We know from the employee the TV was tuned to Fox News all afternoon. Here you can see Fox News on the TV showing coverage of the joint session that was airing that day at 125. Other witnesses confirmed that President Trump was in the dining room with the TV on for more than two and a half hours. There was no official record of what President Trump did while in the dining room. On the screen is the presidential call log from January 6th. As you can see, there's no official record of President Trump receiving or placing a call between 11.06 and 6.54 p.m. As to what the president was doing that afternoon, the presidential daily diary is also silent. It contains no information from the period between 1.21 p.m. and 4.03 p.m.

There are also no photos of President Trump during this critical period between 1.21 in the Oval Office and when he went outside to the Rose Garden after 4 o'clock. The chief White House photographer wanted to take pictures because it was, in her words, very important for his archives and for history. But she was told, quote, no photographs. Despite the lack of photos or an official record, we've learned what President Trump was doing while he was watching TV in the dining room. But before we get into that, it's important to understand what he never did that day. Let's watch. So are you aware of any phone call by the President of the United States to the Secretary of Defense that day?

Not that I'm aware of, no. Are you aware of any phone call by the President of the United States to the Attorney General of the United States that day? No. Are you aware of any phone call by the President of the United States to the Secretary of Homeland Security that day? I'm not aware of that, no. Did you ever hear the President ask for the National Security Council? Did you ever hear the President ask for law enforcement response? No. So as somebody who works in the National security space and with the National Security Council, if there were going to be troops present or called up for a rally in Washington, D.C., for example, is that something that you would have been aware of?

Yeah, I would. to any of those that we just listed off? National Guard, DOD, FBI, Homeland Security, Secret Service, Mayor Bowser, the Capitol Police about the situation in the Capitol? I'm not aware of any of those requests. No, sir. We have confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Pence's staff

and D.C. government officials. None of them, not one, heard from President Trump that day. He did not call to issue orders. He did not call to offer assistance. This week, we received a additional testimony from yet another witness about why the president didn't make any efforts to quell the attack. The former White House employee with national security responsibilities told us about a conversation with senior advisor Eric Hirschman and Pat Cipollone, the top White House lawyer. This conversation was about a pending call from the Pentagon seeking to coordinate on the response to the attack.

Mr. Hirschman turned to Mr. Cipollone and said, the president didn't want to do anything. And so Mr. Cipollone had to take the call himself. So if President Trump wasn't calling law enforcement or military leaders, what did President Trump spend his time doing that afternoon while he first settled into the dining room. He was calling senators to encourage them to delay or object to the certification. Here's Kayleigh McEnany, his press secretary, to explain. All right, that says back there and he wants list of senators and then he's calling them one by one. Do you know which ones he called? To the best of my recollection, no. As I say in my notes, he wanted a list of the senators and I left him at that point. Because the presidential call log is empty, we do not yet know precisely

which senators President Trump was calling. But we do know from Rudy Giuliani's phone records that President Trump also called him at 1.39 after he had been told that the riot was underway at the Capitol. Mr. Giuliani was President Trump's lead election attorney. According to the phone records, the president's call with him lasted approximately four minutes. Recall that Fox News was on in the dining room. Let's take a look at what was airing as this call was ending.

The president, as we all saw, fired this crowd up. They've all, tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 or more, have gone down to the Capitol or elsewhere in the city, and they're very upset. Now, I jumped down as soon as we heard the news that Brett gave you about Mike Pence. I started talking to these people. I said, what do you think? One woman, an Air Force veteran from Missouri, said she was, quote,

disgusted to hear that news and that it was his duty to do something. And I told her, I said, there's nothing in the Constitution unilaterally that Vice President Pence could do. She said, that doesn't matter. He should have fought for Trump. At 1.49, here's what was happening at the Capitol with President Trump's fired up supporters. We're going to give a riot warning. We're going to try and get compliance, but this is now effectively a riot. 1349 hours declaring it a riot. Hold the line! Hold the line!

Hold the line! What did President Trump do at 149 as as the D.C. police at the same time were declaring a riot at the Capitol? As you can see on the screen, he tweeted out a link to the recording of his Ellipse speech. This was the same speech in which he knowingly sent an armed mob to the Capitol. But President Trump made no comment about the lawlessness and the violence. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois. The next action President Trump took was to tweet at 2.24 p.m. What happened during the 35 minutes between his last tweet at 149 and 224, his staff repeatedly came into the room to see him and plead that he make a strong public statement condemning the violence and instructing the mob to leave the

Capitol. He did not relent until after four o'clock when he went out to go to the Rose Garden to film his now infamous go-home message. Pat Cipollone was a top White House lawyer. Here's what he told us about his reaction to seeing the violence and his advice throughout the afternoon. When did you first realize that there was actual violence? I first realized that it may have been on television or it may have been Tony or it may have been Bill, but I found out that people weren't in the Capitol yet, and then I started watching it, and then I was aware. What specifically did you think needed to be done? I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol now.

My question is exactly that. It sounds like you, from the very onset of violence at the Capitol, right around 2 o'clock. They're pushing for a strong statement that people should leave the Capitol. Is that right? I would have said other sort of stuff. Pat, you said that you expressed your opinion forcefully. Could you

tell us exactly how you did that? Yeah, I can't. I'm going to have, you know, I have to, on the privilege issue, I can't talk about conversations with the President, but I can generically say that I said, you know, people need to be told. There needs to be a public announcement asked that they need to leave the Capitol. And Pat, could you let us know approximately when you said that? Approximately when? Almost immediately after I found out people were getting into the Capitol or approaching the Capitol in a way that was violent. with respect to his view that the president didn't want to do anything, was somehow resistant to wanting to say something along the lines that you suggested?

Just to be clear, many people suggested it. Not just me. Many people felt the same way. I'm sure I had conversations with Mark about this during the course of the day and expressed my opinion very forcefully that this needs to be done. So your advice was tell people to leave the Capitol and it took over two hours. When there were subsequent statements made, tweets put forth, that in your view were insufficient. Did you continue, Mr. Polanyi, throughout the period of time up until 4-17, continue, you and others, to push for a stronger statement? Yes.

Were you joined in that effort by Ivanka Trump? Yes. Eric Hershey? Yes. Mark Meadow? Yes. White House Counsel's Office wanted there to be a strong statement out to condemn the rioters. I'm confident in that.

I'm confident that Ivanka Trump wanted there to be a strong statement to condemn the rioters. I don't know the private conversation she had with Mr. Trump, but I remember when she came to the office one time with White House Counsel's Office. When she came to the Chief of Staff's time with White House Counsel's Office. When she came to the Chief of Staff's office with White House Counsel's Office. She was talking about the speech later that day and trying to get her dad on board with saying something

that was more direct than he had wanted to at the time and throughout the afternoon. I think Mark also wanted to, I remember him getting Ivaka involved because he was like, get Ivaka down here because he thought that would be important.

I don't think Jared was there in the morning, but I think he came later. I remember thinking it was important to get him in there too. And of course, Pat Philbin, you know, was expressing the same things. I mean, Pat Philbin, you know, was very, as I said, I don't think there was one of these meetings where there might have been, but for the most part, I remember the both of us going down together, going back, getting on phone calls. He was also very clearly expressing this view. Pat Cipollone and Cassidy Hutchinson,

an aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also told us about the hang Mike Pence chants. As you will see, Mr. Cipollone recalled conversations about those chants in the West Wing, but he relied on executive privilege to maintain confidentiality over his and others' direct communications with the president. Although Mr. Cipollone was unwilling to provide more detail, Ms. Hutchison provided more explicit information, filling in those blanks. See that for yourself. It wasn't until Mark hung up the phone, handed it back to me. I went back to my desk. A couple minutes later, him and Pat came back, possibly Eric Hirschman too. I'm pretty sure Eric Hirschman was there,

but I'm confident it was Pat that was there. I remember Pat saying something to the effect of mark we need to do something more they're literally calling for the vice president to be effing hung and mark had responded something to the effect of you heard him pat he thinks mike deserves it he doesn't think they're doing anything wrong to which pat said something this is effing crazy we need to be doing something more briefly stepped into mark's office do you remember any discussion at any point during the day about rioters at the capitol chanting hang my pants yes i remember i remember hearing that about that.

I don't know if I observed that myself on TV. I'm just curious, I understand the provost line you've drawn, but do you remember what you can share with us about the discussion about those chance to hang Mike Pence chance? I can tell you my view. My view of that is outrageous. And for anyone to suggest such a thing as the Vice President of the United States, for people in that crowd to be chanting that, I thought it was terrible. I thought it was outrageous and wrong.

And I express that very clearly. With respect to your conversations with Mr. Meadows, though, did you specifically raise some concern over the vice president with him, and how did he respond? I believe I raised a concern about the vice president, and I, again, the the nature of his response without recalling exactly what seemed, you know, people were doing all that they could. And what about the President? Did he indicate whether or not the President was doing what needed to be done to protect the Vice President? Gotcha, sir. That question. That testified that it would have been feasible, as commentators on television were suggesting, for President Trump to immediately appear at the podium in the press room to address the nation. Would it have been possible at any moment for the president to walk down to the podium in the briefing room and talk to the nation at any time between when you first gave him

the advice at 2 o'clock and 417 on the video statement? Would that have been possible? Would that have been possible? Would it have been possible? Yes. Yes, it would have been possible. We just heard Mr. Cipollone say that President Trump could have gone to the press briefing room to issue a statement at any moment. To give you a sense of just how easy that would have been, let's take a look at a map of the West Wing. As we saw earlier, the president's private dining room is at the bottom

of the map. The press briefing room is at the top, highlighted in blue, and the Rose Garden, where the president ultimately filmed his go-home video, is on the right next to the Oval Office, and that's highlighted in green. Ms. Matthews, how quickly could the president have gotten on camera in the press briefing room to deliver a statement to the nation? So as you outlined, it would take probably less than 60 seconds from the Oval Office dining room over to the press briefing room. And for folks that might not know, the briefing room is the room that you see the White House press secretary do briefings from with the podium and the blue backdrop. And there's a camera that is on in there at all times. And so if the president had wanted to make a statement and address the American people, he could have been on camera almost instantly. And conversely, the White House

press corps has offices that are located directly behind the briefing room and so if he had wanted to make an address from the Oval Office we could have assembled the White House press corps probably in a matter of minutes to get them into the Oval for him to do an on-camera address. Thank you. Other witnesses have given us their views on that question. For example, General Keith Kellogg told us that some staff were concerned that a live appearance by the president at the microphones at that moment could actually make matters worse. He told us he recommended against doing a press conference because during his four years in the Trump administration, quote, there wasn't a single clean press conference we had had. President Trump's advisors knew his state of mind at that moment, and they were worried about what he would say in unscripted comments. I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia.

Thank you. As you've heard, by two o'clock, multiple staff members in the White House recognized that a serious situation was underway at the Capitol. Personally, I recall being evacuated from the House office building where we're sitting before this time. It was due to the discovery of two pipe bombs in nearby buildings. Ms. Matthews, around the same time you were watching the violence unfold on television and social media with colleagues, including with Ben Williamson, a senior aide to Mark Meadows and the acting director of communications. You told us that before President Trump sent his next tweet at 2.24, Mr. Williamson got up to go see Mr. Meadows, and you got up to go see Kayleigh McEnany. Why did you both do that?

So Ben and I were watching the coverage unfold from one of the offices in the West Wing, and we both recognized that the situation was escalating, and it was escalating quickly, and that the president needed to be out there immediately to tell these people to go home and condemn the violence that we were seeing. So I told him that I was gonna make that recommendation to Kaylee and he said he was gonna make the same recommendation to the chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Thank you. And one of your colleagues in the press office, Judd Deer,

told us he also went to see Ms. McEnany at that time. Let's hear what he said about this critical period of time, right as the Ryers were getting into the Capitol. And why did you think he was necessarily decisive? Well, I mean, it appears that individuals are storming the U.S. Capitol building. They also appear to be supporters of Donald Trump who may have been in attendance at the rally. We're going to need to say something. And did you have a view as to what should be said by the White House? If I recall, I told Kaylee that I thought that we needed to encourage individuals to stop, to respect law enforcement, and to go home. Although President Trump was aware of the ongoing riot,

he did not take any immediate action to address the lawlessness. Instead, at 2.03, he called Rudy Giuliani again, and that call lasted for over eight minutes. Moments later, at 2.13, rioters broke into the Capitol itself. One of the Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy, Dominic Pozzola, used an officer's shield to smash a window and rioters flooded entering the building, the Secret Service held Vice President Pence

in his office right off the Senate chamber for 13 minutes as they worked to clear a safe path to a secure location. Now listen to some of that radio traffic and see what they were seeing as the protesters got just feet away from where the vice president was holding. They can't leave the building. Hold. If we're moving, we need to move now.

If we lose any more time, we may lose the ability to leave. So if we're going to leave, we need to do it now. They've gained access to the second floor, and I've got public about five feet from me down here below. Copy. They are on the second floor moving in now. We may want to consider getting out and leaving now. Copy.

Will we encounter the people once we make our way? Repeat? Counter any individuals if we made our way to the... There's six officers between us and the people that are five to ten feet away from me. Stand by. I'm going down to evaluate. Go ahead. We have a clear shot if we move quickly. We got smoke downstairs set by unknown smoke set downstairs by the protesters.

Is that route compromised? We have this. It's secure. However, we will bypass some protesters that are being contained. There is smoke unknown. What kind of smoke it is. Copy that. Clear. We're coming out now all right make a way the president's national security council staff was listening to these developments and tracking them in real time on the screen you can see excerpts from the chat logs among the president's

National Security Council staff. At 2.13, the staff learned that the rioters were kicking in the windows at the Capitol. Three minutes later, the staff said the vice president was being pulled, which meant agents evacuated him from the Senate floor. At 2.24, the staff noted that the Secret Service agents at the Capitol did not, quote, sound good right now. Earlier, you heard from a security professional who had been working in the White House complex on January 6th with access to relevant information and a responsibility to report to national security officials. We asked this person, what was meant by the comment that the Secret Service agents did not, quote, sound good right now?

In the following clip of that testimony, which has been modified to protect the individual's identity, the professional discusses what they heard from listening to the incoming radio traffic that day. Okay. That last entry in this page of service, the capitol does not sound good right now. Correct. What does that mean? The members of the BPT tell at this time we're starting to fear for their own lives. There was a lot of yelling,

a lot of very personal calls over the radio. So it was disturbing. I don't like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth. It was getting, for whatever the reason was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get very ugly. And did you hear that over the radio? What was the response by the agents, Secret Service agents

who were there? Everybody kept saying, you know, at that point it was just reassurances or I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it was just chaos. They were just yelling. Obviously, it can be disturbing, but what prompted you to put it into an entry as it states there are services accountable? If they're running out of options and they're getting nervous, it sounds like we came very close to either service having to use legal options

or worse. At that point, I don't know. Is the VP compromised? Is the detail... I don't know. We didn't have visibility, but if they're screaming and saying things like say goodbye to the family,

the floor needs to know this is going to on a whole nother level soon. As this next video shows, the rioters anger was focused primarily on Vice President Mike Pence. This woman came up to the side of us and she says, Pence folded. So it was kind of like, okay, well, in my mind, I was thinking, well, that's it.

Well, my son-in-law looks at me and he says, I want to go in. What percentage of the crowd is going to the Capitol? 100%. It is spread like wildfire that Pence has betrayed us and everybody's marching on the Capitol, all million of us. It's insane. I'm not sticking up for Donald Trump. My kids can't hear me. saying. Did people appear angry as you were walking to the Capitol? Yeah, a lot of people. A lot of people seem like they're very upset.

Tell us some of the things they were saying, if you recall. Oh, there was they were saying all people were screaming all types of stuff. They are mad that. Vice President Pence was going to accept the electorals i mean it was i mean it was a lot of you could if you could think it up that's you were hearing it i believe the uh vice president pence was going to certify the electoral votes and or not certify them but i guess that's just changed correct and it's a very big. I think there's several hundred thousand people here that are very disappointed. President Trump did not try to calm his thousands of disappointed supporters. Instead, at almost the same moment violence was getting completely out of hand, Donald Trump sent his 224 tweet. The president said,

Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution. Despite knowing the Capitol had been breached and the mob was in the building, President Trump called Mike Pence a coward and placed all the blame on him for not stopping the certification. He put a target on his own vice president's back. Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Matthews, when we ask you about your reaction to seeing the 224 tweet in real time, you both use the same imagery to describe it. President Trump was adding fuel to the fire. Mr. Pottinger, you made the decision to resign after seeing this tweet. Can you please tell us why? Yes. So that was pretty soon after I did, or shortly before I'd gotten back to the White House, I'd come from off-site. I began to see for the first time those images on TV of the chaos that was unfolding at the Capitol.

One of my aides handed me a sheet of paper that contained the tweet that you just read. I read it and was quite disturbed by it. I was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking, uh, vice president Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what, what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. and, uh,

that's why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire. So that was the moment that I decided, uh, that I was going to resign, that that would be my last day at the White House. I simply didn't want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol. Thank you. And Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to the president's tweet about Vice President Pence?

So it was obvious that the situation at the Capitol was violent and escalating quickly. And so I thought that the tweet about the vice president was the last thing that was needed in that moment. And I remember thinking that this was going to be bad for him to tweet this because it was essentially him giving the green light to these people, telling them that what they were doing at the steps of the Capitol and entering the Capitol was okay, that they were justified in their anger. And he shouldn't have been doing that. He should have been telling these people to go home and to leave and to condemn the violence that we were seeing. And I'm someone who has worked with him. You know, I worked on the campaign, traveled all

around the country, going to countless rallies with him. And I've seen the impact that his words have on his supporters. They truly latch on to every word and every tweet that he says. And so I think that in that moment for him to tweet out the message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire and making it much worse. Thank you both. And let's watch what others also told us about their reactions to this tweet. I don't remember when exactly I heard about that tweet, but my reaction to it is that's a terrible tweet. And I disagreed with the sentiment. And I thought it was wrong. What was your reaction when you saw that tweet?

Extremely unhelpful. Why? It wasn't the message that we needed at that time. It wasn't going to... The scenes at the U.S. Capitol were only getting worse at that point. This was not going to help that. It's already getting worse. Certainly. Ms. Hutchinson, what was your going to help that. Certainly. Ms. Hutchinson, what was your reaction when you saw this tweet?

As a staffer that works to always represent the administration to the best of my ability and to showcase the good things that he had done for the country. I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, and really, it felt personal. It was really sad. As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie. As you will see, at 2.26, the vice president had to be evacuated to safety a second time and came within 40 feet of the rioters. The attack escalated quickly right after the tweet. During this chaos, what did President Trump do at that point? He went back to calling senators to try to further delay the electoral count. While the vice president was being evacuated from the Senate,

President Trump called Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of his strongest supporters in the Senate. As Senator Tuberville later recalled, he had to end the call so that he could evacuate the Senate chamber himself. Let's listen. He didn't call my phone, he called somebody else, and they handed it to me, and I basically told him, I said, Mr. President, we're not doing much work here right now because they just took our vice president out, and matter of fact, I'm going to have to hang up on you. I've got to leave.

Senator Josh Hawley also had to flee. Earlier that afternoon, before the joint session started, he walked across the east front of the Capitol. As you can see in this photo, he raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters already amassing at the security gates. We spoke with a Capitol Police officer who was out there at the time. She told us that Senator Hawley's gesture riled up the crowd,

and it bothered her greatly because he was doing it in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers. Later that day, Senator Hawley fled after those protesters he helped to rile up stormed the barriers. Later that day, Senator Hawley fled. After those protesters he helped to rile up, stormed the Capitol. See for yourself. Think about what we've seen. Undeniable violence at the Capitol. The vice president being evacuated to safety by the Secret Service. Senators running through the hallways of the Senate to get away from the mob. As the commander-in-chief, President Trump was oath and duty get away from the mob. As the Commander-in-Chief, President Trump was

oath and duty bound to protect the Capitol. His senior staff understood that. Do you believe, Jared, that the President has an obligation to ensure a peaceful transfer of power? Yes. And do you think the president has an obligation to defend uh all three branches of our government uh i believe so and i assume you also would agree the president has a particular obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed That is one of the president's obligations, correct? No, I mean, I asked what his duty is. Well, I mean, there's a constitutional duty. What he has, he's the commander in chief.

That was my biggest issue with him as national security advisor. Rather than uphold his duty to the constitution, President Trump allowed the mob to achieve the delay that he hoped would keep him in power. I reserve. The gentleman reserves. I request that those in the hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted members and witnesses from the room. I now declare the committee in recess for a period of approximately 10 minutes. The committee is going to go to recess for about 10 minutes. Now we will bring in part of our panel to

react to the evidence that just happened. I'd like to bring on my co-host, Gabe Sanchez. Gabe, it really seems like they were laughing at Josh Hawley in the room. They should have been. I mean, Josh Hawley goes, you know goes you know fist out you know trying to pump up the crowd and then the next thing is you have like what looks like a bigfoot sighting he's running across trying to get out of the building like this is the macho man that they all they all rile up behind it is it is um uh i don't i don't know if words can describe it, but I've got someone that might be able to help us.

Texas Paul. Texas Paul, what do you make of Josh Hawley's little exit there to run from the mob that he incited? God's a jerk, man. I mean, he's always been a jerk. He's weak. He's, you know, they didn't. I talk about this all the time with the Christian nationalist stuff. They have no idea how to control these animals that they keep cutting loose. They don't, they don't think past the next five minutes. It seems like they're completely reactionary.

You know, this guy sitting there pumping this mob up, and if you paid attention to any of the evidence out there, he knew what was going on. He was one of the senators that were in the know. For him to go out there and do that just shows you how completely clueless he was to what happens when you get a group of people that angry and out of control. He has, the guy's a moron, he's a jerk, and he's a coward. Well, I mean, that's the, I mean, the whole group, the Republican Party, you know, they love to act or rather enact in this case on January 6th, but the lack of, well, you know, remorse or concern for what happens once they do those things, right? So you rile up this group, you create this monster, and then you walk away and say,

not my problem. And that's exactly the Republican Party. They walk away and just kind of, well, I made a mess, but I don't have to clean it up, right? And all of these examples, these people, I mean, the fact that Trump is trying to call the very senators to sway them to delay are like, oh, look, we can't we can't talk right now. We have to get out of the building. Like he made a mess and he couldn't even deal with it. It's astonishing. I want to bring in two hosts of Legal AF, Ben Mizellus and Karen Agnipolo. Karen, Ben, how are you?

Hey, how's it going? Well, what is your, I guess if there is one that isn't but stunned by some of the things that we just saw, what is your reaction first, Karen? So I think they're doing a really excellent job at piecing together the timeline of those 187 minutes and what Donald Trump was doing and what he knew at the time. And I think the more that they can overlay in this timeline, the fact that at 2.24, the Capitol was just starting to be breached and there was explosions in the Capitol, in the rotunda. And this was what was playing on Fox News. And Donald Trump chose to tweet that horrible tweet calling Pence a coward and then showing that that actually added fuel to the fire and got the mob up. And then they talk about how then this person went in and spoke to him and that person went in,

the more they do that timeline that focuses on Trump and really kind of pieces all of this together, I think it's extremely effective. And I really applaud their kind of methodical chronology that they're painting for everybody. And I think you really, you know, when you see it the way they're painting it like that, I just, it's just stunning to me, just how, what was happening when and what he knew and what he chose to do. And look, you know, he had a duty and they put, they said that, Cheney said that up front, you know, in the very beginning is he had a duty and this is a dereliction of his duty. And so I think he's I think that's extremely, extremely effective in what they're doing. Cassidy Hutchinson, when she said that there was this heated argument or confrontation in the car, you know, that he wanted to go to the Capitol. And then there was some doubt called on that.

They were like, no, no, no, this did happen. And let's show you all the ways this did happen. So I like that they're reacting and that they're fluid and that they're, you know, really, what it shows is if they say something happened or something's true, it's true. It did happen. And I think it's extremely effective. And this is a really this is just a really good, good hearing so far. So, Ben, dereliction of duty. Karen just brought it up again. It seems to be the main theme here, as you predicted in the beginning of the show and so many others said dereliction of duty. Popock said that that's what this is going to be about. Correct. Adam Kinzinger said it best. Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act. And I think that was one of the most powerful statements that I wrote down in my notes. Also, Representative Luria saying

within 15 minutes of Trump leaving the stage at the Ellipse, he knew the Capitol was besieged and under attack. And as Capitol Police officers were calling their family to say goodbye to their loved ones because they thought they were going to die, Donald Trump was calling senators to obstruct and overthrow the election from the White House. Those were the moments that really stood out to me. Well, and I think those are significant moments, the moment where they're calling families. But we know the NSC, the National Securities Council, inside the White House was hearing those calls. So they were hearing that fodder on the radio inside the building where Trump decided to do nothing. And frankly, like you said, he chose to actually send out a tweet to incite the mob on Mike Pence, the vice president, who they were chanting, hang Mike Pence. He was watching it on TV.

As we know, he was sitting in the dining room with his remote control. I want to bring in Jessica Denson here for just one second. Jessica, what did you make of, and I know you'll connect here with Sarah Matthews and some of her testimony that she gave live here. What did you make of her effectiveness to describe not just the moments, but Trump himself and how he reacts in a room and in situations? Give us your take on that. Yeah, well, one of the last things she talked about was being at rallies with him, which I unfortunately have been at several of his rallies as well, and how instantly and how much his supporters pick up on his words. They take his words as directive. When he issued that tweet at 224 in the midst of the Capitol siege, he poured gasoline on the fire. Instead of taking action to quell the violence, doing what any patriotic, oath-keeping American president would do.

What did Donald Trump do? He poured gasoline on the fire and doing exactly what he knew would do to his supporters, and that's rile them up and get them to be more aggressive and violent. At a time when we heard that staff members of Vice President Pence were literally afraid for their lives. They were calling their families to basically say their last goodbyes. I mean, that is the level of danger that they felt they were in. And I just wanted to, Karen was talking about how talented this committee is, and I wanted to point out how they really peppered and colored this hearing with shading of the cowardice of certain individuals. Like, first of all, Pat Cipollone, in contrast to Cassidy Hutchinson, making his privilege claims. And then we just saw running

Josh Hawley through no more raised fist Josh Hawley, running Josh Hawley for his life, the cowardice of these individuals. I was reading this article that I love to read. I always share these things with you. And there's this quote from a poet playwright who born for the universe, narrowed his mind, and to party gave up what was meant for mankind. That kind of describes everybody, everybody who stood by Donald Trump and has not come forward for this country, everybody in the Republican Party other than Adam Kinzinger and Representative Liz Cheney and a handful of others who have been outspoken and for for party have given up what was meant for mankind, what is needed in this moment in history to to save our democracy. So kudos to them again for their excellent work. Now, we have two lawyers, but I want to bring in another lawyer here, Heidi Feldstein Soto.

Heidi, give us your take. I know you have a take a little bit on the subpoena power. So give us your take on what you heard from the committee here and your reaction, your first reaction. Well, you all were thanking Kevin McCarthy for not turning this into a circus and sort of giving him kudos. I actually admire Liz Cheney and Ed Kinsinger because by making it a bipartisan committee, the committee has subpoena power. Even though the phone logs of the White House weren't there, they could subpoena Rudy Giuliani's phone records and get those and show that the president was in fact making calls that weren't reflected in the White House logs. I mean, that to me also shows an intentional concealment. Everybody knew that what was going on with President Trump in that moment was wrong. And by wiping out the evidence on the side of the White House, the way they're able to piece it together, yes, pieces of it are public footage from Fox News and otherwise. But some of it is the fact that this committee

has the ability to subpoena records and witnesses. And for that, I applaud Cheney and Kissinger. It took tremendous courage for them to do what they did. I am running for office in L.A. and I've actually been dragged on Twitter for making a small donation to Liz Cheney last year. And I think to myself, you know, that woman has courage and she stood up. And as I think someone said at the top of the hour with you, I don't agree with her on just about anything in terms of policy. I'm a lifelong registered Democrat since 1976. But we can agree on the importance of our democracy in our country. And for that, I thank the both of them as Republicans.

Thank you, Heidi. Ben, I want to go back to you for a second because you talked about these two witnesses in our first hour. Did they disappoint? Did this testimony disappoint what you were looking for for these witnesses to give the American people to lay out this picture of what was going

on? No, it exceeded my expectations. I mean, here you have lifelong Republicans. They made that clear at the beginning. And when Trump sent out that tweet, it was the last straw, you know, for them that broke the camel's back. And they just said, you know, what that was, was a dereliction of duty. He violated his oath. And so the credibility that emanates from that, that this is, you know, completely bipartisan, if anything, it's partisan in favor of Republicans. Every witness is a Republican, and these are very senior Republicans. You add that with the clips. This has exceeded my expectation. And in terms of shade, what I am hoping for is that we get to see some of those Trump outtakes in the second half,

just to see how cowardly, and I could say this because this is my media network, with the help of all of the Midas Mighty, what a chicken shit. No sensors whatsoever. And I want to thank all the Might as Mighty out there watching this for supporting independent media. Make sure you subscribe to the Might as Touch network right now. We appreciate you can help out by subscribing, spreading the word about this great channel. And of course, if you want to contribute to independent journalism, there is the super whatever button on the bottom of YouTube where you can actually contribute. Well, I hate that. I hate the cut in, but the panel's about to come back. So thank you to all the panelists. Stick around with us after we will we will go back to the panel here in just a second.

Get my sound back going here. There we go. So we will go back to the panel, readjourning. The committee will be in order. I now recognize the gentleman from Illinois. We left at the recess just after President Trump's 224 tweet attacking the vice president. By this time, the president had been in his dining room for an hour. I want you to just think of what you would have done if you were in his shoes and had the power to end the violence. You would have immediately and forcefully told the rioters to stop and leave. Like, stop and leave. Done. As you heard, that's exactly what his senior staff had been urging him to do. But he resisted, and he kept resisting for another almost two hours. In the meantime,

all the president did was post two tweets, one at 2.38 and the other at 3.13. One said, quote, stay peaceful. The other said, quote, remain peaceful. But the president already knew that the mob was attacking the police and had invaded the Capitol. Neither tweet condemned the violence or told the mob to leave the Capitol and disperse. To appreciate how obvious it was that President Trump was not meeting this moment, it's helpful to look at the real-time reactions of his own son, Don Jr., to the first tweet captured in a series of text messages with Mark Meadows. I'll warn the audience that these messages contain some strong language. As you can see, Don Jr. first texted Mr. Meadows at 2.53. He wrote, he's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough. Mr. Meadows replied,

I am pushing it hard. I agree. Don Jr. responded, this is one you go to the mattresses on. They will try to fuck his entire legacy on this if it gets worse. Here's what Don Jr. told us he meant by go to the mattresses. It's 258 when you say that Mr. Meadows needs to go to the mattresses on this issue. When you say go to the mattresses, what does that mean? It's just a reference for going all in. I think it's a godfather reference. Sean Hannity agreed, and he also turned to Mark Meadows for help

after the president's second tweet. As you can see, Mr. Hannity texted at 3.31 to say Trump needed to deliver a statement to the nation telling the rioters to leave the Capitol. Mr. Meadows responded that he was, quote, on it. Don Jr. and Sean Hannity were not the only ones who implored Mr. Meadows to get the president to speak to the nation and tell the mob to leave, to go home, go home. Throughout the attack, Mr. Meadows received texts from Republican members of Congress, from current and former Trump administration officials, from media personalities, and from friends. Like President Trump's staff, they knew President Trump had to speak publicly to get the mob to stop. Let's look at just a few of these text messages.

Fox News personality Laura Ingram said, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home. Former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney urged Mark, he needs to stop this now. Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade said, please get him on TV, destroying everything that you guys have accomplished. When we interviewed White House counsel Pat Cipollone,

he told us that he knew the president's two tweets were not enough. Let's listen to what he said. I think the question is, did you believe that the tweets were not anything about your advice to the president? No, I believe more needed to be done. I believed that a public statement needed to be made. others on the staff thinking more should be done or thinking that the president needed to tell people to go home, who would you put in that category? Well, I would put Pat Philbin, Eric Hirschman, hershman um overall mark meadows um ivanka once jared got there jared um general kellogg i'm probably missing some but hope it was kay I think, was there, but I don't... Dan Scavino.

And who on the staff did not want people to leave the Capitol? On the staff? In the White House, about. I can't think of anybody, you know, on that day who didn't want people to get out of the Capitol once the violence started. No. I mean. What about the president? Yeah. She said the staff.

So I answered. No, I said in the White House. Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. I thought you said who else on the staff? I can't reveal communications, but obviously I think. Yeah. Let's pause on that last statement. Although Pat Cipollone is being careful about executive privilege,

there really is no ambiguity about what he said. Almost everybody wanted President Trump to instruct the mob to disperse. President Trump to instruct the mob to disperse. President Trump refused. To understand how inadequate the president's tweets were, let's examine his 238 tweet in more detail. For context, here's what was happening at that time. They broke the glass? Everybody stay down! Get down!

Lord's Barricade. There's people plundered the hallways outside. We have no way out. We were just told that there has been tear gas in the rotunda, and we're being instructed to each of us get gas masks. We went from a peaceful protest, and this is a very dangerous situation right now, that there are, I'm being told, these protesters on the inside are around both chambers and there is now tear gas inside the Capitol Rotunda. In fact, members locked in the House are being instructed to put on masks. Ms. Matthews, after President Trump's tweet about Vice President Pence, you told us you spoke to, immediately you spoke to Kayleigh McEnany.

What did you tell her, and where did she go afterwards? After the tweet about the vice president, I found Kaylee and told her that I thought the president needed to immediately send out a tweet that condemned the violence that we were seeing and that there needed to be a call to action to tell these people to leave the Capitol. And she agreed and walked over to the Oval Dining Room to find the president. We interviewed Ms. McEnany and others who were in the dining room with the president,

urging them to put out a statement. Ms. Matthews, Ms. McEnany told us she came right back to the press office after meeting with the president about this particular tweet. What did she tell you about what happened in that dining room? When she got back, she told me that a tweet had been sent out. And I told her that I thought the tweet did not go far enough, that I thought there needed to be a call to action and he needed to condemn the violence. And we were in a room full of people, but people weren't paying attention.

And so she looked directly at me and in a hushed tone, shared with me that the president did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet, and that it took some convincing on their part, those who were in the room. And she said that there was a back and forth, going over different phrases to find something that he was comfortable with. And it wasn't until Ivanka Trump suggested the phrase stay peaceful that he finally agreed to include it. The president resisted writing stay peaceful in a tweet. He told Mark Meadows that the rioters were doing what they should be doing and the rioters understood they were doing what

President Trump wanted them to do. President Trump's message was heard clearly by Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander. At 2.38, he told another organizer, quote, POTUS is not ignorant of what his words would do. Rioters storming the Capitol also heard President Trump's message. In this video, you'll see surveillance footage from the rotunda that shows a group of Oath Keepers, including Jessica Watkins, who's been charged with seditious conspiracy. You'll hear her walkie-talkie communications with others as they share intelligence and communicate about President Trump's 238 tweet in real time. Again, we warn the audience that this clip also contains strong language.

CNN just said that they evacuated all members of Congress into a safety room. There's no safe place in the United States for any of these motherfuckers right now let me tell you i hope they understand that we are not joking around military principle 105 military principle 105 cave means grave trump just tweeted please support our Capitol Police. They are on our side. Do not harm them. That's saying a lot by what he didn't say. He didn't say not to do anything to the congressman. Well, he did not ask them to stand down.

He just said, stand by the Capitol Police. They are on our side and they are good people. So it's getting real down there. I got it on TV and it's looking pretty friggin' radical to me. CNN said that Trump has egged this on,

that he is egging it on, and that he is watching the country burn two weeks before he leaves office. He is not leaving office. I don't give a shit what they say. We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it. They're throwing grenades.

They're freaking shooting people with paintballs, but we're in here. Be safe. Be safe. God bless and Godspeed and keep going. Get it, Jess. Do your shit. This is what we fucking lived up for.

Everything we fucking trained for we've now seen how president trump's supporters reacted to his tweets mr pottinger you told us that you consider the tweets sent to this point to be, quote, wholly inadequate given the urgency of the crisis, what, in your view, would have been needed? Yeah, it was insufficient. I think what you could count me among those who was hoping to see an unequivocal, strong statement, clearing out the Capitol, telling people to stand down, leave, go home. I think that's what we were hoping for. So something a lot more kind of definitive and not ambiguous, because he has that power over his folks. Ms. Matthews, you told us about a colleague who said during the attack that the president should not condemn the violence. Can you please tell us about that moment and your reaction?

Yes, so a conversation started in the press office after the president sent out those two tweets that I deemed were insufficient, and a colleague suggested that the president shouldn't condemn the violence because they thought it would be, quote, handing a win to the media if he were to condemn his supporters. And I disagreed. I thought that we should condemn the violence and condemn it unequivocally. And I thought that he needed to include a call to action and to tell these people to go home. And a debate ensued over it. And I became visibly frustrated. And my colleagues were well aware of that. And I couldn't believe that we were arguing over this in the middle of the West Wing, talking about the politics of a tweet,

being concerned with handing the media a win when we had just watched all of that violence unfold at the Capitol. And so I motioned up at the TV, and I said, do you think it looks like we're effing winning? Because I don't think it does. And I again reiterated that I thought that the president needed to condemn the violence, because it didn't matter if it was coming from the left or the right, that you should condemn violence 100% of the time. We've heard this evening how everyone in the president's orbit was pushing him to do more, to tell the mob to leave the Capitol. One of these people, one of those people was Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. He managed to get the president on the

phone and told him to call off his supporters. As you will hear, the president refused, and so leader McCarthy reached out for help to Ivanka Trump, who was at the White House, and Jared Kushner, who that afternoon had just arrived back on a flight from the Middle East. So at some point in the afternoon, Mr. McCarthy placed a phone call to Mr. Scovino's desk line, and it was transferred to the president. Is that correct? That's generally what I recall. Okay. Were you involved in making that, transferring that call? I, yes.

Okay. Where was the president at the time that he took that call? He was in the dining room. Would you personally reach out to the president for more support? I've already talked to the president. I called him. I think we need to make a statement, make sure that we can calm individuals down. Did Mr. McCarthy indicate that he had been in touch with President Trump? He indicated that he had had some conversation. I don't recall whether it was with the president or with somebody at the White House, but I think he expressed frustration that not taking the circumstances seriously as they should in that moment.

You know, I asked Kevin McCarthy, who's the Republican leader about this, and he said, he called Donald, he finally got through to Donald Trump, and he said, you have got to get on TV, you've got to get on Twitter, you've got to call these people off. You know what the president said to him? This is as it's happening. He said, well, Kevin, these aren't my people. You know, these are Antifa. And Kevin responded and said, no, they're your people. They literally just came through my office windows, and my staff are running for cover I mean they're running for their lives you need to call them off and the president's response to Kevin to me was chilling he said well Kevin I guess they're just more upset about the election uh you know best than you are and that's you know you've seen widespread reports of Kevin McCarthy and the president having basically a swearing conversation.

That's when the swearing commenced, because the president was basically saying, no, I'm OK with this. Leader McCarthy, the president of the United States has a briefing room, steps from the Oval Office. It is the cameras are hot 24-7, as you know. Why hasn't he walked down and said that now? I conveyed to the president what I think is best to do, and I'm hopeful the president will do it. And have you spoken with his chief of staff? I've spoken to the president. I've spoken to other people in there and to the White House as well. Who else reached out to Ms. Trump that you know of that afternoon about the attack on the Capitol? I believe at one point McCarthy did. So I heard my phone ringing, turned the shower off, saw it was Leader McCarthy, who I had a good

relationship with. He told me he was getting really ugly over at the Capitol and said, please, you know, anything you could do to help, I would appreciate it. I don't recall specific asks, just anything you could do. Again, I got the sense that, you know, they were, they were, you know, they were scared. They meaning Mr. McCarthy and people on the Hill because of the violence? He was scared, yes. Think about that. Leader McCarthy, who was one of the president's strongest supporters, was scared and begging for help. President Trump turned him down. So he tried to call the president's children. Republican House member Mike Gallagher also implored the president to call off the attack. Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is over. Call it off.

President-elect Joe Biden also went live on TV to demand that President Trump tell the mob to leave. I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege. There was a desperate scramble for everyone to get President Trump to do anything. All this occurred, and the president still did not act. I yield to my friend from Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Kinzinger. President Trump finally relented to the pleas from his staff, his family, and from Capitol Hill for him to do something more at 4.17, 187 minutes, more than three hours after he stopped speaking at the Ellipse, after he stopped speaking to a mob that he had sent armed to the Capitol. That's when he tweeted a video telling

the rioters to go home, while also telling them that they were special and that he loved them. By that time, although, the violence was far from over. Law enforcement had started to turn the tide. Reinforcements were on the way, and elected officials were in secure locations. The writing was already on the wall. The rioters would not succeed. Here's what was showing on Fox News, the channel the president was watching all afternoon. Back to Brett Baer with more information now. Brett, what do you have?

Our Pentagon team, Jen Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson, confirming the Defense Department has now mobilized the entire D.C. National Guard, 1,800 troops. Takes several hours, as I was mentioning before, to get them up and running. The Army Secretary, Ron McCarthy, is setting up a headquarters at the FBI. You just heard from David Spunt that the FBI is also sending troops to the Capitol.

It's no coincidence, then, that President Trump finally gave in and went out to the Rose Garden at 4.03. His staff had prepared a script for him to read, but he refused to use it. As you can see on the screen, you can see the script a stamped president has seen. The script said, quote, I'm asking you to leave the capital region now and go home in a peaceful way. The president was urged to stick to this script, but he spoke off the cuff. Eric Hirschman and Nick Luna went with the president to film the message in the Rose Garden. Let's hear what they had to say and see the never before seen raw footage of the president recording this video message.

Ultimately, these remarks that we're looking at here in exhibit 25 were not the remarks that the president delivered in the Rose Garden. Do you know why the president decided not to use these? I don't know, sir, No, I do not know why. Did the president use any written remarks to your knowledge

or did he just go off the cuff? To my knowledge, it was off the cuff, sir. Chase? When you're ready, sir. You tell me when you're ready, sir. Who's behind me?

He's gone. He's gone around. We're all clear now. I know you're pain. I know you're pained. I know you're hurt. We had a election. Let me see. I know you're pained. I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt. It's a very

tough period of time. There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace. When I got there, basically the president just had finished filming the video. And I think he was basically retiring for the day. Was there any discussion about the president releasing a second video that day? Not that I recall. When he finished his video, I think everyone was like, day's over. People were pretty drained.

Were pretty what? Drained. When we say day over, there were still people in the Capitol at that point, weren't there? There were people in the Capitol, but I believe by this stage, law enforcement, and I'd have to go back and look, but I believe law enforcement was either there or moving in or going to take charge. I just say people were emotionally drained by the time that videotape was done. Emotionally drained? At the White House? Here's what was happening at the same time at the Capitol.

We warned the audience that this clip also contained strong language and violence. Oh, keep pushing. Don't lose the momentum. audience that this clip also contains strong language and violence. Another officer unconscious at the terrace. Everybody, we need gas masks. We need weapons. We need strong, angry patriots to help our boys. They don't want to leave. Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up!

While President Trump refused to even lift another finger to help, other leaders honored their oaths and acted to clear the Capitol and resume the joint session. For instance, here are never-before-seen photos and video of congressional leaders in action during the attack. The video is a portion of a call they had at approximately 4 45 with Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller. We're not going to let these people keep us from finishing our business. So we need you to get the building cleared, give us the okay, so we can go back in session and finish up the people's business as soon as possible. Any statement, sir?

Mr. Secretary and Senator Schumer, some people here in the Capitol Police believe it would take several days to secure the building. Do you agree with that analysis? I'm not. I agree to secure the building do you agree with that analysis uh i'm not on the ground but i do not agree with that in general so what is the earliest that we could safely resume uh our proceedings in the senate and house chambers the earliest we could safely resume uh here's my assessment uh but I prefer to be on the ground, which I personally would prefer to be right now, but I need to be here. I would say, in that case, we're looking at four to five hours. The vice president also worked the phones from his own secure evacuation location, including conversations with acting Secretary of Defense Miller and

other military leaders. Well past President Trump's 417 video, let's look at some never-before-seen photographs of the Vice President during this critical time and hear about the Vice President's conversation with military leaders to secure the Capitol and ensure everyone was safe. Vice President Pence, there were two or three calls with Vice President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that. And I can get you the exact quotes, I guess, from some of our records somewhere. But he was very animated, very direct, very firm to Secretary Miller.

Get the military down here. Get the guard down here. Put down this situation, et cetera. As you heard earlier in the hearing, the president did not call the vice president or anyone in the military, federal law enforcement, or D.C. government, not a single person. But General Milley did hear from Mark Meadows the contrast between that call and his calls with Vice President Pence tell you everything you need to know about President Trump's dereliction of duty. Let's listen. He said, this is from memory, he said, we have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions.

We need to establish the narrative that the president is still in charge and that things are steady or stable or what's that thing. I immediately interpret that as politics, politics, politics. Red flags for me personally, no action, but I remember it distinctly. And I don't do political narratives. So while President Trump and his advisors were drained, other leaders upheld their oaths to do the right thing. Maybe it was exhausting to get the president to put out that video. But think about the law enforcement officers who were attacked by the mob that day. President Trump had summoned

them himself to Washington. And what about President Trump? He watched TV, tweeted, called senators to try to delay the count of electoral votes, called Rudy Giuliani, and argued with his staff who were insinuating, who were insisting that he should call off the attack. Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to President Trump's message to the mob at 417? I was struck by the fact that he chose to begin the video by pushing the lie that there was a stolen election. And as the video went on, I felt a small sense of relief because he finally told these people to go home. But that was immediately followed up by him saying, we love you.

You're very special. And that was disturbing to me because he didn't distinguish between those that peacefully attended his speech earlier that day and those that we watched cause violence at the Capitol. Instead, he told the people who we had just watched storm our nation's Capitol with the intent on overthrowing our democracy, violently attack police officers, and chant heinous things like, hang Mike Pence, we love you, you're very special. And as a spokesperson for him, I knew that I would be asked to defend that, and to me, his refusal to act and call off the mob that day and his refusal to condemn the violence was indefensible, and so I knew that I would be resigning that evening, and so I finished out the work day, went home, and called my loved ones to tell them of my decision and resigned that evening. Thank you. Indefensible.

Let's hear what some of your colleagues in the press office told us about their reaction to the same 417 message. I felt like it was the absolute bare minimum of what could have been said at that point for something on camera what else do you think should have been said um so a more forceful a more forceful dismissal of the violence, a more forceful command to go home, a more forceful respect for law enforcement, even a comparison to the respect that we have given law enforcement as it relates to what was done to them in the prior summer and i thought it was important that an acknowledgement be given to the u.s capitol building itself what it's a symbol of what it means not only to the people that work there, but to the American people generally,

and the work of Congress that by law needed to be conducted that day. Do you wish in hindsight that the President had asked the protesters to leave the Capitol earlier than he ended up asking them to do that? Of course, I would love to. The go home message would have happened earlier in the day. The president's words matter. We know that many of the rioters were listening to President Trump. We heard from one last week, Stephen Ayers. Let's listen to what he had to say about the 417 message from the president and see how rioters reacted to the president's message in real time. Well, when we were there, as soon as that come out, everybody started talking about it. And that's

it seemed like it started to disperse, you know, some of the crowd. I'm here delivering the president's message. Why don't you ask everybody to go home? That's all we're going to do. He says go home. But just as Mr. Ayers said, police were still fending off the last throes of the brutal assault i yield to the gentleman from illinois while everyone else was working to get congress back in session what did president trump do at 601 just one minute after the citywide curfew went into effect he posted his last tweet of the day.

After officers engaged in multiple hours of hand-to-hand combat, with over 100 of them sustaining injuries, President Trump tweeted at 6.01 and justified the violence as a natural response to the election. He said, quote, These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously, viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly, unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and peace. Remember this day

forever. He called the mob great patriots. He told people to remember the day forever. He showed absolutely no remorse. A few minutes later, at 627, the president left the dining room and he went up to the White House residence for the night. On the screen is the last photograph of the president that night as he went into the residence. As he was gathering his things in the dining room to leave, President Trump reflected on the day's events with a White House employee. This was the same employee who had met President Trump in the Oval Office after he returned from the Ellipse. President Trump said nothing to the employee about the attack.

He said only, quote, Mike Pence let me down. Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to President Trump's 601 tweet? At that point, I had already made the decision to resign and this tweet just further cemented my decision i thought that january 6 2021 was one of the darkest days in our nation's history and president trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion with that tweet and so it just further cemented my decision to resign. Others agreed with your assessment of that tweet. Let's look at what they had to say. Who asked you about this tweet before

it was sent? The president. Tell us about that conversation and everything that you said and he said to the best of your recollection. Sure. So he said, what do you think of this? And I believe I saw the text message on his phone. And I remember saying to him, the wording on the first sentence, I guess it's one long sentence, but the wording on the first sentence would lead some to believe that potentially he had something to do with the events that happened at the Capitol. What did he say? I don't recall him saying anything in response to that. I believe that was the end of the conversation. Did he change anything in light of your comments? No, sir, he did not. And what about this made you think that someone might perceive the president having a role in the violence at the Capitol? The phrase, these are the things that happened, to me, think calling them patriots is, let's say, a stretch, to say the least. Is that all it is, a stretch, or just flatly wrong?

I don't think it's a patriotic act to attack the U.S. Capitol. Would you call it unpatriotic? Criminal? Unpatriotic? Sure. What happened at the Capitol cannot be justified in any form or fashion. It was wrong and it was tragic. And it was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for this country. I thought it was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for this country. I thought it was inappropriate.

Why? To my mind, it was a day that should be remembered and infamous. I wasn't the tenant of this tweet. Despite the violence of the day, the effort to delay the certification continued. That evening, Rudy Giuliani called several of President Trump's closest political allies in the hour before the joint session resumed. Representative Jim Jordan and Senators Marsha Blackburn, Tommy Tuberville, Bill Hagerty, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz. We know why Mr. Giuliani was calling them, because at 7.02, he left a voicemail for Senator Tuberville, which later became public. Let's listen to just the start of it.

Senator Tuberville, or I should say Coach Tuberville, this is Rudy Giuliani, President's lawyer. I'm calling you because I want to discuss with you how they're trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you. Mr. Giuliani did not even mention the attack on the Capitol. Instead, he was pushing on behalf of President Trump to get members of Congress to further delay the certification. Even though some members did proceed with objections, Vice President Pence and Congress stood firm and successfully concluded the joint session in the early morning hours of January 7th.

Here are some of what members of the president's party said in the days and weeks after the attack. There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes

and instructions of their president. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. The violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American. It was the saddest day I've ever had

as serving as a member of this institution. Madam Speaker, today the People's House was attacked, which is an attack on the Republic itself. There is no excuse for it. A woman died, and people need to go to jail. And the president should never have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot be. Well, after three in the morning, Congress certified the 2020 election results. Soon after, this statement by President Trump was posted on Dan Scavino's Twitter account because the president's account by now had been suspended. As you can see, President Trump stuck with his big lie that the election was stolen,

but he did say there would be an orderly transition. We learned, though, that the statement was not necessarily his idea. Jason Miller, a campaign advisor, told us that after the joint session started, he heard nothing from President Trump or the White House about assuring the nation that the transfer of power would take place. So Mr. Miller took it upon himself to draft the statement and call the president at 923 that night to convince him to put it out. Let's listen to what he had to say about the call. Did he disagree with something that you had put in the statement, some particular word or phrase that he did not want included? I'd say just that he wanted to say peaceful transition. And I said that ship's kind of already sailed.

So we're going to say orderly transition. That was about the extent of disagreement or pushback from the conversation. The last person President Trump spoke to by phone that night was Johnny McEntee, his head of personnel. Mr. McEntee told us that they talked about the events of the day and the multiple resignation by administration officials. The decision whether to resign was one that weighed heavily on people in the administration. On the one hand, people like Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Matthews here, as proud as they were to have served, refused to be associated with President Trump's dereliction of duty. But others were sincerely worried that leaving President Trump

to his own devices would put the country at continued risk. Listen to what we heard about that tension from Pat Cipollone, General Mark Milley, and Eugene Scalia, who was the Secretary of Labor. And then after that, some people were resigning, obviously, over January 6th. We know who they were. Did I consider it? Yes. Did I do it? No. What I was concerned about is if people in the council's office left who would replace me.

And I had some concerns that it might be somebody who, you know, had been giving bad advice. On the morning of the 7th, the decision I arrived at was that the most constructive thing I could think of was to seek a meeting of the cabinet. You know, I thought that trying to work with the administration to steady the ship was likely to have greater value than simply resigning, after which point I would have been powerless to really affect things with the administration. She thought that there should be a cabinet meeting.

Do you know why? I don't remember why. I think it probably had something to do with Mark's view of how the president might react and things like that. Now, there was a couple of calls where Meadows and or Pompeo, but more Meadows. How's the president doing? Like Pompeo might say, how's the president doing? And Meadows would say, well, he's in a really dark place. But here's one, for example, on the 7th of January. So this is the day after, right?

POTUS is very emotional and in a bad place. As you heard, Secretary Scalia won President Trump to convene a cabinet meeting. He put his request in a memo to the president. And here's what it said. You can see that Secretary Scalia recommended to the president, and here's what it said. You can see that Secretary Scalia recommended that the president, quote, no longer publicly question the election results after Wednesday. No one can deny this is harmful. Secretary Scalia also highlighted the importance of the public knowing the president would invoke his cabinet in decision-making and not quote certain private

individuals. Though Secretary Scalia did not say it, he was referring to Rudy Giuliani and the rest of the so-called clown car working with President Trump to try to overturn the election. Secretary Scalia understood that the president needed to do more to reassure the public about the last few weeks of the Trump administration. Mr. Pottinger, when you made the decision to resign, did you walk out of the White House immediately? No, I wanted to first talk to my immediate boss, that was the National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien. Robert O'Brien was traveling on the 6th. I reached him at about 4.30 p.m.

and told him that I was submitting my resignation. He accepted the resignation, but he also asked whether I could stay until he could get back to the White House. And I agreed to that. We both wanted to make sure that I was leaving in a responsible way. We still have foreign adversaries to worry about, you know, hackers, terrorists, nation states. And I did not want to leave my chair empty, given that I was the top national security staffer in the White House. So I ended up staying at my desk through the night. When Robert O'Brien

arrived back at the White House the next morning, the morning of the 7th. I debriefed with him and left for the last time. So you and I both share a passion for national security of our country. Can you share with me, what's your view on how January 6th impacted our national security? Well, when you have a presidential transition, even under the best circumstances, it is a it's a time of vulnerability. It's a time of vulnerability for, you know, when you have a contested election. I was certainly concerned that some of our adversaries would be tempted to probe or test U.S. resolve. As an example, in late December, the Iranian government attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. They did that using some of their terrorist proxies. President Trump did handle that. He sent a very clear warning to the Ayatollah and his regime, which I think had a useful effect.

I think that we would have handled other threats of that nature, and luckily no other threats materialized before the inauguration on the 20th. But our national security was harmed in a different way by the 6th of January. And that is that it, I think it emboldened our enemies by helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative that our system of government doesn't work, that the United States is in decline. China, the Putin regime in Russia, Tehran, they're fond of pushing those kinds of narratives. And by the way, they're wrong. We've been hearing for the entirety of U.S. history from kings and despots that the United States is in decline. And those kings and despots have been proven wrong every single time. But nonetheless, January 6 helped feed a perception that I think emboldens our adversaries.

The other part, I think, is simply our allies. I heard from a lot of friends in Europe, in Asia, allies, close friends, and supporters of the United States that they were concerned about the health of our democracy. And so I think it's incumbent upon us to put their minds at ease, to put our own hearts at ease by investigating what happened on the 6th and making sure that it never happens again. Look, I've always said democracies are not defined by bad days. They're defined by how they recover from those bad days. And that's what we're doing here is to bring accountability to that so we can actually come back even stronger than when we went into January 6th. Ms. Matthews, as you left the White House for the last time that night, January 6th, what did you think Americans needed to hear

from President Trump? I think that the American people needed to hear and see him publicly commit to a peaceful or at least orderly transition of power. In the aftermath of the Capitol attack, it wasn't just enough for us to ask him to condemn the violence. He needed to agree that he would peacefully transfer power over to the incoming administration, because that's one of our fundamentals and what it means to live in a democracy. And so that evening when I resigned, the resignation statement that I drafted, I referenced this and I said, our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power in hopes that it would put some sort of public pressure on the White House and President Trump to publicly agree to an orderly transition. Thank you. I yield to my friend from Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Kensinger. The staff who remained at the White House on the morning of January 7

knew the president needed to address the nation again, and they had a speech prepared for him that morning, but he refused for hours to give it. As you heard Cassidy Hushon testify previously, President Trump finally agreed to record an address to the nation later that evening, the evening of January 7th, because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th Amendment or by impeachment. We know these threats were real. Sean Hannity said so himself in a text message that day

to Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. He wrote, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th Amendment are real. We obtained the never-before-seen raw footage of the president recording his address to the nation that day on January 7th, more than 24 hours after the last time he had addressed the nation from the Rose Garden. Let's take a look. Whenever you're ready, sir. I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday. And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement.

You do not represent our country. And if you broke the law, you can't say that. I'm not going to. I already said you will pay. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defied the seat of justice. It's defiled, right? See, I can't see it very well. Okay, I'll do this.

I'm going to do this. Let's go. But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results. I don't want to say the election's over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over, okay? But Congress has certified. Now Congress. Yeah, right. Now Congress. I didn't say over, so let me see. Don't go to the paragraph before. Okay. Okay.

I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday. Yesterday is a hard word for me. Just take that. The heinous attack. Ah, good. Take the word yesterday because it doesn't work with the heinous attack on our country. Say on our country. Want to say that?

No, he did. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. On January 7th, one day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, President Trump still could not say that the election was over. Mr. Pottinger, you've taken the oath multiple times in the Marines and as an official in the executive branch. Can you please share with us your view about the oath of office and how that translates into accepting election results and a transfer of power? Sure, you know, this isn't the first time that we've had a close election in this country.

And President Trump certainly had every right to challenge in court the results of these various elections. But once you've had due process under the law, you have to conform with the law, no matter how bitter the result. Once you've presented your evidence in court, judges have heard that evidence, judges have ruled. If you continue to contest an election, you're not just contesting an election anymore. You're actually challenging the Constitution itself. You are challenging the societal norms that allow us to remain unified. I think that one example, for example, you've got Vice President Richard Nixon back in 1960

had lost a hard-fought election against Senator John F. Kennedy. There were irregularities in that vote, according to a lot of the histories, and a lot of Vice President Nixon's supporters asked him to fight, contest it, don't concede. But in one of his finest moments, Vice President Nixon said no. He said it would tear the country to pieces. And he conceded to Jack Kennedy and announced that he was going to support him as the next president. We have an example of a Democratic candidate for president, Vice President Al Gore, who faced a very similar dilemma. He strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision that lost his election bid and allowed President George W. Bush to take office. But he gave a speech of concession in late December, mid or late December of 2000, where he said, this is for the sake of the unity of us as a people and for the strength

of our democracy. I also am going to concede, I'm going to support the new president. His speech is actually a pretty good model, I think, for any candidate of, for any office, up to and including the president, and from any party to read, particularly right now. You know, the oath that our presidents take, it's very similar to the oath of office I took as a U.S. Marine officer and the oath I took as a White House official. It is to support and defend the Constitution.

It's to protect the Constitution, to bear true faith support and defend the Constitution. It's to protect the Constitution, to bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution. And it is a sacred oath. It's an oath that we take before our families. We take that oath that oath. And I do still believe that we have the most ingenious system of government on earth, despite its imperfections. I don't envy countries that don't have this system that actually allows for a predictable, peaceful transfer of government every four to eight years. And it's not something that we should take for granted. Thank you. In the immediate aftermath of January 6th, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy understood that President Trump bore responsibility for these calls was that a resolution had been introduced in the House calling for Vice President Pence and the Cabinet to remove President Trump from power under the 25th Amendment.

Let's listen. I've had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it. The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass and it would be my recommendation we should move on. I mean, that would be my take, but I don't think he would take it. But I don't know.

But let me be very clear to all of you, and I've been very clear to the president. He bears responsibilities for his words and actions. No ifs, ands, or buts. I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he needs to acknowledge that.

President Trump has never publicly acknowledged his responsibility for the attack. The only time he apparently did so was in that private call with Kevin McCarthy. There's something else President Trump has never acknowledged. The names and the memories of the officers who died following the attack on the Capitol.

We're honored to be joined tonight by police and first responders who bravely protected us on January 6th. Your character and courage give us hope that democracy can and should prevail, even in the face of a violent insurrection. We on this dais can never thank you enough for what you did to protect our democracy. On January 9th, two of President Trump's top campaign officials texted each other about the president's glaring silence

on the tragic death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who succumbed to his injuries the night of January 7th. These campaign officials were Tim Murtaugh, Trump's Director of Communications, and one of his deputies, Matthew Walken. Their job was to convince people to vote for President Trump. So they knew his heart, his mind, and his voice as well as anyone. And they knew how he connects with his supporters. Here's what they had to say about their boss. Murtaugh said,

Also shitty not to have acknowledged the death of the Capitol Police officer. Wolking responded, That's enraging to me. Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie. To which Murtaugh replied, you know what this is? Of course, if he acknowledged the dead cop, he'd be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won't do that because they're his people. And he would also be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault. No way. President Trump did not then and does not now have the character or courage to say to the American people what his own people know to be true.

He is responsible for the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. Thank you, and I yield to the gentleman from Illinois. Thank you, Ms. Luria. Tonight's testimony and evidence is as sobering as it is straightforward. Within minutes of stepping off the Ellipse stage, Donald Trump knew about the violent attack on the Capitol. From the comfort of his dining room,

he watched on TV as the attack escalated. He sent tweets that inflamed and expressed support for the desire of some to literally kill Vice President Mike Pence. For three hours, he refused to call off the attack. Donald Trump refused to take the urgent advice he received that day, not from his political opponents or from the liberal media, but from his own family, his own friends, his own staff, and his own advisors. In the midst of an attack, when there was no time for politics, the people closest to Trump told him the truth. It was his supporters attacking the Capitol, and he alone could get through to them. So they pled for him to act, to place his country above himself.

Still, he refused to lead and to meet the moment to honor his oath. It was only once the vice president and the members of Congress were in secure locations and the officers defending the Capitol began to turn the tide that then President Trump engaged in the political theater of telling the mob to go home. And even then, he told them all they were special and that he loved them. Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this. Donald Trump's conduct on January 6th was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation. It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy. When we present our full findings, we will recommend changes to laws and policies to guard against another January 6th.

The reason that's imperative is that the forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away. The militant, intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation and the disaffection, the weird fantasies and disinformation. They're all still out there, ready to go. That's the elephant in the room. But if January 6th has reminded us of anything, I pray it has reminded us of this. Laws are just words on paper. They mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of law and who are held accountable by a public that believes oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of scoring political points. We the people must demand more of our politicians and

ourselves. Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters. If we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, this great experiment of ours, our shining beacon on a hill, will not endure. I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Kzinger. Throughout our hearings, we've provided many facts and painted a vivid picture of the events of January 6th. The violence, the human toll, both emotional and physical, including the tragic loss of life. The threats to our Constitution, the rule of law, and the danger to this nation, a nation we all love as Americans. In tonight's hearing, we've gone into great detail about the events inside the White House on January 6.

We've described how the President of the United States, who was bound by oath to the Constitution and by duty to ensure the laws are faithfully executed, took no action when the cornerstone of our democracy, a peaceful transition of power, was under attack. But it's more than that. Donald Trump summoned a violent mob and promised to lead that mob to the Capitol to compel those he thought would cave to that kind of pressure. And when he was thwarted in his effort to lead the armed uprising,

he instigated the attackers to target the vice president with violence, a man who just wanted to do his constitutional duty. So in the end, this is not, as it may appear, a story of inaction in a time of crisis. But instead, it was the final action of Donald Trump's own plan to assert the will of the American people and remain in power. Not until it was clear that his effort to violently disrupt or delay the counting of the election results had failed did he send a message to his supporters in which he commiserated with their pain and he told them affectionately to go home. That was not the message of condemnation and just punishment for those who broke the law that we expect from a president whose oath and duty is to ensure the laws are faithfully executed but instead it was his newest version of stand back and stand by to, this is personal. I first swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic when I entered the U.S. Naval Academy at age 17.

I spent two decades on ships at sea, defending our nation from known and identifiable foreign enemies who sought to do us harm. I never imagined that that enemy would come from within. I was not as prescient as Abraham Lincoln, who 23 years before the Civil War said, if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. Donald Trump was the author, and we the people, for ourselves and our posterity, should not let Donald Trump be the finisher. Thank you, and I yield to the vice chair.

Thank you very much, Mrs. Luria. I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. Members of the select committee may have additional questions for today's witnesses and we ask that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions. Without objection, members will be permitted 10 business days to

submit statements for the record, including opening remarks and additional questions from our witnesses. I'd now like to turn things to Chairman Thompson for a few closing words. The members of the committee and I appreciate and thank all persons who've come forward voluntarily to provide information to help protect our democracy. And our work continues. As we've made clear throughout these hearings,

our investigation is going forward. We continue to receive new information every day. We are pursuing many additional witnesses for testimony. We will reconvene in September to continue laying out our findings to the American people and pushing for accountability. In the first hearing of this series, I asked the American people to consider the facts and judge for themselves. The facts are clear and unambiguous. I thank the American people for their attention over the past several weeks.

I wish you all a pleasant evening. Let me again thank our witnesses today. We've seen bravery and honor in these hearings, and Ms. Matthews and Mr. Pottinger, both of you, will be remembered for that, as will Cassidy Hutchinson. She sat here alone, took the oath, and testified before millions of Americans. She knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50, 60, and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege. But like our witnesses today, she has courage, and she did it anyway. Cassidy, Sarah, and our other witnesses, including Officer Caroline Edwards, Shea Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are an inspiration to American women and to American girls. We owe a debt to all

of those who have and will appear here. And that brings me to another point. This committee has shown you the testimony of dozens of Republican witnesses, those who served President Trump loyally for years. The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump's own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family. They have come forward, and they have told the American people the truth. And for those of you who seem to think the evidence would be different if Republican leader McCarthy had not withdrawn his nominees from this committee, let me ask you

this. Do you really think Bill Barr is such a delicate flower that he would wilt under cross-examination. Pat Cipollone, Eric Hirschman, Jeff Rosen, Richard Donahue, of course they aren't. None of our witnesses are. At one point in 2016, when he was first running for office, Donald Trump said this, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters. That quote came to mind last week when audio from Trump adviser Steve Bannon surfaced from October 31st, 2020, just a few days before the presidential election. Let's listen. And what Trump's going to do is declare victory. Right. He's going to declare victory.

But that doesn't mean he's the winner. He's just going to say he's the winner. The Democrats, more of our people vote early that count. Theirs voted mainly. And so they're going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump's going to take advantage of that. That's our strategy. He's going to declare himself a winner so when you wake up wednesday morning it's going to be a firestorm also if trump is if trump is losing by 10 or 11 o'clock at night it's going to be even crazier you know because he's gonna sit right there and say they stole it if biden's winning trump is going to do some crazy shit and of course four days later president Trump declared victory when his own campaign advisors told him he had absolutely no basis to do so.

What the new Steve Bannon audio demonstrates is that Donald Trump's plan to falsely claim victory in 2020, no matter what the facts actually were, was premeditated. Perhaps worse, Donald Trump believed he could convince his voters to buy it, whether he had any actual evidence of fraud or not. And this same thing continued to occur from Election Day onward until January 6th. Donald Trump was confident that he could convince his supporters the election was stolen, no matter how many lawsuits he lost, and he lost scores of them. He was told over and over again in immense detail that the election was not stolen. There was no evidence of widespread fraud. It didn't matter. Donald Trump was confident he could persuade his supporters to believe whatever he said,

no matter how outlandish, and ultimately that they could be summoned to Washington to help him remain president for another term. As we showed you last week, even President Trump's legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, knew they had no actual evidence to demonstrate the election was stolen. Again, it didn't matter. Here's the worst part. Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. And on January 6th, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution.

He has purposely created the false impression that America is threatened by a foreign force controlling voting machines, or that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots were secretly injected into our election system, or that ballot workers have secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them. All complete nonsense. We must remember

that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation. In late November of 2020, while President Trump was still pursuing lawsuits, many of us were urging him to put any genuine evidence of fraud forward in the courts and to accept the outcome of those cases. As January 6th approached, I circulated a memo to my Republican colleagues explaining why our congressional proceedings to count electoral votes could not be used to change the outcome of the election.

But what I did not know at the time was that President Trump's own advisors, also Republicans, also conservatives, including his White House counsel, his Justice Department, his campaign officials, they were all telling him almost exactly the same thing I was telling my colleagues. There was no evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the election outcome. Our courts had ruled. It was over. Now we know that it didn't matter what any of us said, because Donald Trump wasn't looking for the right answer legally or the right answer factually. He was looking for a way to remain in office. Let's put that aside for a moment and focus just on what we saw today. In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark and unmistakable choice between right and wrong. There was no ambiguity, no nuance. Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order.

There is no way to excuse that behavior. It was indefensible. And every American must consider this. Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again? In this room in 1918, the Committee on Women's Suffrage convened to discuss and debate whether women should be granted the right to vote. This room is full of history, and we on this committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for. Ronald Reagan's great ally, Margaret Thatcher, said this, let it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it.

Let me assure every one of you this, our committee understands the gravity of this moment, the consequences for our nation. We have much work yet to do, and we will see you all in September. I request those in the hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted witnesses and members from the room.

Without objection, the committee stands adjourned. So there you have it. The eighth public January 6th select hearing bombshells the footage of the outtakes of Donald Trump's videos of him let's just be frank being a whiny little baby did not disappoint I'm going to bring in Ben Mizellus one of the hosts of Legal AF to respond to the second half of the hearing and the video of the outtakes that we witnessed tonight.

Ben, what did you make of the video there and the second half of the hearing? Wow, wow, wow. We were promised bombshells, and boy, did the January 6th committee deliver. And Tony, it wasn't just that Donald Trump was acting like a baby or said that he couldn't, that the word yesterday was apparently a very difficult word for him to say. But it's also Donald Trump saying, I don't want to say the election's over, as he was basically just told what he had to read to put the country at ease, to get peace in this country, that the election was over. And every time you hear Liz Cheney with her closing statements, She always has to be ready. Just burns them down.

The shade that she was throwing when she mentioned Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews saying they had the courage, but there's 56-year-old men that can't even muster up the courage to not invoke privilege was absolutely amazing. Yeah, that line was a complete mic drop moment right there for me, these 50, 60 and seven year old men who hide behind executive privilege. And it's so true. I mean, what Sarah Matthews said so articulately, just so directly, you know, to have the courage to one leave on January 6th and just to sit there and tell the truth. You know, what she said was, Liz Cheney repeated this, was that what Donald Trump had did was indefensible and it would be her job to have to try to defend that if asked about it. You go back and you read that tweet

from January 6th, 2021 in its context, when you see all the video footage and everything that was going on with Trump saying, he goes, these are the things and events that happen. This was at 601. These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been unfairly and badly treated for so long? You know, we forget about that tweet, but how sick, how disgusting, how authoritarian can you be that after everything that went down, that that is what you say, calling these people patriots and not distinguishing between the terrorists who

were there and anyone else? I mean, how horrible is that with the assistant saying, Mr. President, the assistant to him saying, Mr. President, you know, that tweet looks like you're saying that you were involved in it, that you were responsible for it. It seems like you're taking credit for it. And in fact, we also hear that he's making the phone calls to get, you know, Congress to overturn the election even after all of this was taking place. And how cowardly, again, and we knew this about Kevin McCarthy, but how cowardly is Kevin McCarthy right now? He was the one who had the conversation with Trump saying that Trump said that he was responsible and Kevin McCarthy just hides right now. And that's worse than even

the 50, 60, 70 year olds who hide behind executive privilege. I mean, Kevin McCarthy hides behind the trader privilege and that's where he belongs, but big mic drop moment, but an important step for democracy. And that's what Adam Kinzinger said at the very end of this, though, is that at the end of the day, we want to be a stronger nation. We want to be a better democracy. And that's what these hearings are all about. And I think they just hit it at a point. I think so. I pulled the clip of Trump's outtakes. Let's play that real quick. It's just under two minutes. And then I want to get you to respond again to this clip watching it a second time. Whenever you're ready, sir. I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday.

And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement. You do not represent our country. And if you broke the law, you can't say that. I already said you will pay. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defied the seat of, it's defiled, right? See, I can't see it very well. Okay, I'll do this.

I'm going to do this. Let's go. But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results. I don't want to say the election's over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over, okay? say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over, okay?

MS. But Congress has certified it. Now Congress has certified it. Now Congress has certified it. SECRETARY KERRY, Yeah, right. MS. Now Congress has certified it. SECRETARY KERRY, I didn't say over, so let me see.

Don't go to the paragraph before. Okay? Okay. I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday. Yesterday is a hard word for me. Just take that. The heinous attack. Ah, good. Take the word yesterday because it doesn't work with the heinous attack on our country.

Say on our country. Want to say that? No. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. Just a complete, just, just, just a baby, just a complete baby. Tony, the emperor has no clothes. He never had no clothes.

And watching that, it is so scary to believe that that individual had the nuclear codes. That individual is a traitor. That individual is a moron. I will never refer to him using the word former president ever. This person is a traitor, fascist, dangerous and a freaking idiot is what we see in the clip. So if the Josh Howley clip from earlier was the appetizer. Oh, this was the filet mignon that we've been waiting for. Apologies to all the vegans out there, vegetarians, but that's what this was. And boy, oh boy, did the January 6th committee have their forks and knives out

to eat Trump apart right there. And now the question really is the fallout from that moment. I mean, how could you in your right? I mean, no depth there's no bottom ben ben i don't i don't want to interrupt you but um uh loughran is walking in front of the microphone here so let's see what she has to say you know what now that you have those initial batch of documents the evidence that comes in and then how we decide to you know make it through here what's the plan you know you're getting way ahead of us. There's certainly a number of significant leads to fill in details that have come in, and we're going to pursue those.

We're going to figure out this whole mystery with the Secret Service test. But we solved a mystery tonight, I would say. I mean, you know, Sherlock Holmes had the story where the dog that didn't bark was the key to solving the case. And here was the president who didn't act. And that was the key to solving this case. It's like a security guard in a bank who does nothing to stop a robbery of the bank. And then you learn that he knows all the robbers and he helped to form them into a group and he knew they were armed and he waved them in and the whole thing comes together. So, you know, we had the constitutional indictment and trial of Trump in the Senate, which ended with a 57 to 43 vote. And this is like, I was thinking about it tonight,

kind of a moral trial of the president where the whole country just gets to use their common sense and figure out what happened. And there can be no question that Donald Trump was at the absolute center of the conspiracy to overthrow the election and to assault our democracy. He did that. And whether there will be a legal trial, that's not up to us. That's up to the Department of Justice and other prosecutors in the land. But we're going to complete our investigation. What did you think about? We haven't gotten there yet.

What did you think about Merrick Garland's comments yesterday, saying no one is above the law and they're closely watching what you guys are doing, but obviously they're continuing to know? Well, I appreciated his comments. What was interesting to me about it was that he's been saying the exact same thing for months, but I think it had a different resonance for the public when he said it, because the public has seen all of the evidence surface in our hearings. So when he says no one is above the law, people are thinking, okay, you know, the Department of Justice is taking it seriously, and well, they should. Mr. President, there was a lot of Kevin McCarthy that was featured in tonight's hearing. Do you believe that, what does the committee need to do? They need to buy this subpoena, and why is this testimony necessary still? Well, I mean, Kevin McCarthy was a key witness to these events.

I mean, he was the lead Republican in the House where all of the action was. And so he was desperately trying to get the president to act. And that conversation was enormously revealing, where he says, these are your people, Mr. President. And then Trump's response was, well, maybe they just care more about election theft than you do. In other words, Trump knew exactly what was going on with his mob and he supported them. So, you know, that to me was the dramatic importance of having him in here in that way. So what are you going to do then it? Are you just going to continue to defy that subpoena? Yeah.

I mean, look, we have been emphatic that people comply with our subpoenas, but we're not going to go on wild goose chases with people because we're keeping our eyes on the prize in terms of assembling a body of evidence that will make the story real and make it factual for people. Congressman Raskin, on top of that, the Senate has come to an agreement or a deal on the Electoral Count Act. I know that you said that this is insufficient. Are you, do you still stand, what are your thoughts on the potential to reform the Electoral

Count Act? Here's my take on it. And, you know, we'll have a lot of time to get into this, but my feeling is that reforming the Electoral Count Act is necessary, but it is not sufficient. If all our committee did was to come out and say that the Vice President of the United States doesn't have the power to unilaterally nullify electoral college votes, which no serious person ever believed, and only Donald Trump was arguing, then we obviously will not have done enough to

fortify our institutions. So there's a lot more to do because there has been an onslaught against democracy, not just on the January 6th joint session of Congress, but we saw it take place at the state level. We've seen it with attacks on voter rights. We've seen it in efforts to overthrow the decisions of election boards and now to impose political decisions over election boards. So there's a lot going on, and we have to use this as a moment to be very serious about the attacks on democracy. Congressman, can I ask you something about the pipe bombs? Is that something that the committee is learning any information about or is that something that

you guys are leading entirely to law enforcement? Because we still don't know who laid those pipe bombs. As far as I understand, and this is not something I've specifically been working on, but as far as I understand, those remain unsolved crimes. And so we don't have any further information about them, but any, any evidence or information we get, we will consider to be part of our investigation too. I just, I, I'm not aware of any, but I know it's something that is obviously showed outtakes of the January seven video today, but we've heard there's, you know, more than an hour long of outtakes. Why did you specifically choose to show this?

You know, I think that that question best goes to Miss Gloria and Mr. Kinzinger, who did such a great job tonight pulling everything together. I would ask them about how all of those decisions were made. Because, again, I mean, I know just from the hearing that I did last week, it's very difficult. I had about eight or nine hours of things I wanted to use and we had to get it down to two hours. What do you think of the missing piece? What do you think of the president who's not willing to say the election is over?

What does that say that even after the riot, there was still this unwillingness to admit it and there was even an unwillingness to say peaceful in the tweet? Well, we can go further than that. If the newspapers today are to be believed the president still wants Wisconsin to say that the election is not over and is still looking for a way to reopen it. So to this day, he does not accept the outcome of the election. And he is trying to make that fiction a litmus test for participation in the Republican Party.

He wants everyone to accept the big lie. I hope that these hearings have completely and once and for all demolished the big lie. And if not, we see that he's really trying to operate a political party like a religious cult. On the missing Secret Service text, what do you infer from these missing texts?

Do you think that Secret Service might have been involved in trying to cover up what happened here? Were they involved in this effort to overturn the election? I don't know what it means. I'm not committing to any conclusion other than to say it's a very

unusual and striking sequence of events and we have learned strange things and we want to get to the bottom of it and we will get to the bottom. We heard new information about Trump's calls to senators during the Capitol riot. Is the committee going to try to solicit testimony from any members of the Senate? I don't know the answer to that question. And, you know, you're you're raising a difficult question of about bicameralism and the relationship between the two chambers within Congress. And so it relates to that.

And obviously, we've encouraged everyone to come forward. But beyond that, I just can't say. Have there been discussions about the legality of that or just requesting voluntary testimony? Would that violate any of the norms? Yeah, that's all I really want to say about that. Congressman, what comes next? And sort of what do you think that the American people kind of need to get out of the September hearings? Yeah, let me just say that we have not announced September hearings yet. We've not announced any new hearings yet, but we are continuing both on the investigative path, but now also on the

path of legislative recommendations, which is part of our mandate under House Resolution 503. So, you know, I can bet you that there will be other hearings in the future, but we're not saying when and we're not saying exactly what the subjects of them are. And, you know, we have a lot of work to do over the month of August. You guys did receive one test. Has that been helpful or enlightening in any way? I don't really remember it. I can't say I really remember it. I can't say I really remember it.

And we have to assume, I mean, as you can see from the abundant texts that were flying around that day, and as all of you know who were here, there was a lot of texting going on. It just defies belief to think that there was just one text that took place within the Secret Service on that day. We will get to the bottom of it. I can't remember if there was much evidentiary mileage in that one text. Tell me when we have to go. Do you think—

Sorry, in two minutes I can— Do you think Republican members who have defied the subpoena, in your view, should the committee move forward and try to hold them in contempt? Well, the speech and debate clause says that members of Congress, in doing their work, cannot be held to legal account outside of Congress itself. Now, there's a question of what people's work is and what is covered within the ambit of the speech or debate clause. But I would say that if there are going to be any effective remedies in a situation like this, and let's hope this remains a once in every 240 years kind of event. But, you know, in a situation like this, I would hope that remedies would be found within Congress. So as Jamie Raskin wraps up here, I'm going to go back to our panel. Ben Mizellus. Jamie Raskin is trying to answer some of the questions that we had earlier about the footage.

And they said there was almost nine hours, I think, of outtakes. And that's the amount that we got. So there's obviously some other gold nuggets somewhere out there. think he said tony that his speech he had about nine hours oh yes yes yes yes that's right and they had to get it down to two that's right that's right exactly and first off i want to give kudos though right now to the Midas Touch camera person who gets Jamie Raskin right there and i want to remind everybody watching this that Midas Touch has our own proprietary cameras in the Capitol building right now. And so it's through contributions like yours on the YouTube where you can make contributions that allows this independent journalism to thrive, where we support pro-democracy.

We do not both sides issues. We don't call the right wing just conservative or Republicans. We call them out as being radical right extremists and fascists, which is what all of the media should do and not both sides issues. And if you want more evidence that these people are fascists, just look at what the House Republicans were tweeting during today's very solemn event, during today's powerful, impactful, important event for our democracy, the fascist political party known as Republicans. They're tweeting this like every 30 minutes. They're just tweeting these things. Stories are not facts. All hearsay. Why don't they have a secret service,

agent testified. They never show what President Trump was saying the word peacefully. Why? This is what the Republicans are saying? Are you kidding me? These are fascist idiots. And I look in the eyes of anyone who calls themselves an independent out there. After watching Donald Trump give that, whatever you want to call that thing, on January 7th, if you are still on the fence somehow, you're going to throw your support behind that screwed up fascist idiot who tried to destroy this great country. Meanwhile, you have on a bipartisan basis, Adam Kinzinger, who served abroad overseas for our great country. Meanwhile, you have on a bipartisan basis, Adam Kinzinger, who served abroad overseas for our great military, as you have Representative Lurie sitting there who

controlled our Navy nuclear submarines. They're asking the questions as you have our great police officers who are sitting there. And as you have Trump's aides who are basically saying in their text messaging each other, yeah, this thing about Trump supporting law enforcement, total bullshit. That's what they're saying about Trump. Total bullshit. And quote, you know what that is, of course. If Trump acknowledged the dead cop, he'd be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won't do that because they're his people, the mob. And he would also be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault. If you support

that, then you support fascism. If you support that, then you support being a Nazi. If you support that, you support our enemies. You support Putin. You are anti-American. You are unpatriotic. You are disgusting. And so that's who you support, those Republicans, these fascists. And I'm sick and tired of the media, which is why we created the Midas Touch Network, because I'm sick and tired of them being called conservative and somehow being liberal is being against insurrection. That's not being liberal. That's being an American. That's what being a patriot is. And we are going to reclaim what being a patriot is. And that's what the January 6th committee is doing. And that's what everyone

who subscribes to the Midas Touch Media Network is doing. So make sure you all subscribe to the Midas Touch Media Network. Hit that subscribe button right now. Support pro-democracy content. We so appreciate you. We appreciate what you're doing, Tony. And can't wait to bring out some of our other great patriotic panelists, true patriots. I got someone waiting in the wings that I can't wait to see and hear exactly what her take is on this hearing. We heard from her before, Lee McGowan, politics girl. But Ben, do me a favor, because if you're

going to come back for the panel, make sure you go get Jordy to get his microphone set up and everything. Can you do that for me? And make sure he's not, you know, sauce by the time we get there. No, thank you for joining us. And if you want to join the panel, just come back soon. Come back soon. Thank you, Ben. We'll talk to you soon. So I want to go to Lee McGowan, politics girl. I think she says she's turning into a vampire or something over there. Yeah, basically. I'm good. I'm tired. That was long and great and wonderful. And I have to tell you, I was just listening to Ben and I'm totally fired up. I completely agree. I have to say, listening to them read Trump's last, his, you know, his stop it, go home, we love you speech. It just, I realize how infuriated I am and how infuriated I've been for years, being called evil and bad. And you know that these

people could have taken it from us and these people stole our election and these people could take it away. And, you know, you're special and you're wonderful, but they were evil and bad. I mean, he uses those words. And I think, here's a man who knows he's lying. He knows he's lying. He knows what he's saying to his people is a lie. He just watched death and destruction and carnage and all of these things. And he is still unprepared to do the script that he's been given that they are literally begging him to do. He has to go back to say it was a landslide election and everyone's a liar except for me. And I just think, I have to say, I'm so angry. And every single time I see those videos of those patriots attacking our Capitol,

I just, I feel sick to my stomach all over again. And I thought that, that they said it really well tonight, that Adam Kinzinger, he said he turned people's patriotism against their own country. And he did it in a planned, premeditated way because he knew he'd get his people on board and he knew that they would do whatever he asked them to do. And even as his own people were begging him to stop, he wouldn't do it. He refused to defend our nation. He refused to defend the Constitution because he never cared about our nation or the Constitution, right? It has never been about anything other than him. The law means nothing to him. Morals mean nothing to him. People mean nothing to him. So we're shocked the Constitution means nothing to him? Of course it doesn't. That never meant anything. The day of the inauguration meant

nothing. There was no, wow, the solemn occasion of putting my hand and doing the thing and saying this oath that people keep talking about. The oath means something. The country means something. Democracy means something. But it never meant anything to this man. It never did. And so it's not surprising that, as they said, he didn't fail to act. He chose not to act. And exactly what they said at the end of tonight, they said it wasn't an action. It was his final action to get the result he wanted because it was never about anything other than him absolutely well and i think it shows in the outtakes of the video where even even ivanka is trying to guide him through the word yesterday and guide him through a few phrases because he's getting so frustrated

he can't even muster up the courage to to get through the script and do the video it's almost like he was such a baby that he that he knew he lost he didn't want to say it on camera he didn't want to admit it and now here he is he's standing in front of a camera it almost felt like he was going to walk away um and well he might have i mean the thing is is that it's it's easy to make fun of his childish behavior it's easy to make fun of his idiocy and his inability to say words and his complete lack of courage, of course. But, I mean, it was put really well tonight. He hurt us.

He has hurt the nation. Literally every single person in the White House was like, please say something. And these are Trump people. These are people that have his back. These are people that were trying to get him elected again. These are his people. And they were like, please stop. And we heard tonight he hurt our national security.

He helped feed the perception that emboldens our enemies, that America is in decline, that America is weak. He has helped our enemies feed a narrative that divides us and that is still to this day being used against us, right? There are still people out there ready and willing to go forward who are still winning their elections right now for GOP primaries, for governor, for secretary of state, for mayors on the big lie, which is a complete fallacy, right? And Kinzinger said it well. He said, we need to learn from this. We need to grow

from this and we need to come back stronger from this. And we cannot do that without accountability. So I think that was one of the greatest moments when Adam Kinzinger basically said, moments like this don't make democracies weaker. It's what you do about it is what can make you stronger. I think that was one of the most powerful moments. I'm not always an Adam Kinzinger fan for obvious reasons. Liz Cheney either. But there was another moment when Liz Cheney absolutely burns down Pat Cipollone's house in the moment where she basically calls him a coward

for invoking privilege. Pat Cipollone had the absolute ability to sit there and not invoke privilege and tell the American people what the, at the president at the time, Donald Trump, how he felt about them wanting to kill his vice president. And he wouldn't do it. Like he struggled to even like, should I, should I not? And you could tell he was holding the words. He's holding the thoughts. He's holding the knowledge and he won't give it to the American people because it means, I don't know. I don't know why. I don't know if it's ego. It's a weasel.

He's a weasel. I mean, I can't watch that and not think of what a weasel he is. What an opportunist, you know, to have the truth at your fingertips, like you said, on the tip of your of your tongue to know exactly what happened to know exactly what was in the room and keep looking at your lawyer like he's going to save you and you you keep hedging there was a bunch of men in these these testimonies that just hedging trying to make sure that they could still have a job somewhere else the lobbying group after and as long as i can just pretend it is exhausting for goodness sakes just be a good person just tell the truth this man is going to burn it all down anyway you know tell the truth watching people try to put their own best interest in front of what they know to be true is painful to watch and I thought what Liz Cheney said about giving a shout out to all the brave

women, especially the brave young women and the people like the women who worked Ruby and Shea, who work and were attacked by the Trump people, all these women that stepped forward when so many men hid behind their privilege was, I think it was right, right to give them a shout out like that, because especially in a country right now, that's giving the middle finger to women, you have all these women saying like, I'm brave enough to stand up for the constitution and the country and my oath beyond my future career, beyond my perception within my party, because I know that this is the right thing to do. And she even invoked women's suffrage, having mentioned in that room, in that very, in that very actual room. Yeah, well, Tony,

that's the thing. I mean, listen, Liz Cheney and I, like we said before, are on two different sides of every issue. But women have fought long and hard for the rights we have in this country. We have fought to be taken seriously. We have fought to have our voices heard. We have fought for our vote. And this is all women, all women. And we need to respect the fact that women by nature are under attack and always have been under attack. We've always fought, just like

people who have fought for civil rights have always fought to be seen in this country. You know, I think there's this idea that America has always been this perfect, beautiful democracy. And then all of a sudden, here comes Donald Trump. But it hasn't. It hasn't been. You know what? I totally understand what Adam Schiff was saying in one of the other hearings when he was saying how Shea and how her mother Ruby had been attacked is not American, is not who we are. And I understand what he's saying. He's saying this is not who we want to be. It's not our morals. It's not our values. But it is who we are. And we can't pretend that we don't have an entire history of treating Black women like garbage or we don't have an entire history of treating Black people who want to vote we don't have an entire history of

treating black people who want to vote or have anything to do with the voting system terribly. That is part of American history. And I think, thinking we had this beautiful, perfect democracy, and they just got messed up by this one man, that's not true. We have always fought to be part of democracy. There's always been people, women, Black people, people of color, indigenous people who have fought to be included in the American story. And Donald Trump and his people, all of his enablers represent this idea of who belongs, who democracy belongs to. And I think it's wonderful to have a Republican and a woman like Liz Cheney out here saying like, shout out to these people,

these people who often have their voices completely marginalized and to thank them for standing up when people who have never had their voice marginalized don't have the courage to even speak. Well, I agree with you because I keep telling people this, that everyone wants to make liberalism weak and it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. Liberalism is tough. Liberalism is the tough, long slog to equality and equity and using democracy, getting through compromises, because you're right, our history is peppered with shameful things.

Littered. Right, it's everywhere. But we long as a progressive liberal democracy for a better place in the future. And democracy is hard. It is tough. Authoritarianism is easy. You get one bonehead the ability to have a magic wand and tell everyone what they're going to do. But liberalism is the toughest, the toughest type of government. It is the toughest type of society. Lee, tell us about your podcast next week, because I know you're going to do a show. We talked about it earlier, but tell us before you go about your show.

It releases on Tuesday. So everyone. We drop every Tuesday. And this Tuesday, we are we're talking about all of the hearings. I'm having David Bender on. We're going to discuss all of the hearings, what's come out of it, where we think we're going next,

what's coming up. And I'm really looking forward to the conversation because he's just brilliant and he comes up with a million analogies that I just love to dig into. And I'm just really looking forward to it. I hope people will listen to it next Tuesday because I think it's going to be a great episode.

Well, subscribe here on the Mindest Touch Network and catch the video version, but also go download a Politics Girl podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, anywhere you get your podcasts, go download it on Tuesday. You will get a synopsis with her and David Bender of the hearings of the parents. So thank you, Lee, for joining us. I really appreciate you coming and spending the late night in the primetime hearing. Yeah, well, listen, I appreciate what this committee has done. Right. I think Kissinger said it perfectly when he said you can't abandon the truth and remain a free nation and we have to keep that in mind as we move forward.

Well, thank you, Lee, for joining us. I appreciate it. Have a good one. We'll see. We'll see you soon. Now, I want to bring in our panel. We have a few people here waning in the wings to give us their take on the hearing. I have some great questions, I think, in mind for two women on the panel, but I have a bone I want to pick with my co-host first. I'm not sure exactly where in the hell he is. He can't get his mic there we go where where am i right now i can't figure out where you are i relocated to a more fitting setting okay which would be

where trump gave his will attempt at saying the word uh yesterday i see i see so so you're in the yesterday room i see well what's yesterday room yeah yeah but i'm thinking you know but we gotta keep moving for the tomorrow room right okay okay OK, OK. I got you. I got you. I got you. Well, let's let's welcome in our other guests. Jessica Denson, Heidi Felsen Soto and Texas Paul. Of course, we got to have Texas Paul with us as well. We got to have a hat on the panel here. Yeah. So our local hat there, Texas ball, Jessica, I want to go to you first because Lee mentioned something. And I wanted to ask you since Liz Cheney, it left her lips was about Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews and the, and the courage that those two young women had and the shade that she

threw on the 50, 60, 70 year old men who didn't have the courage to tell the truth when the truth should have been told. What was your reaction when Liz Cheney gave those women that... Give us your reaction because I believe it's an important part of this hearing. Like Ben said, it was not a subtle burn. It was not subtle at all, calling out the contrast between the courage of these young women with their entire lives in front of them and all of the weight and negative attention that comes from doing what they did in contrast to someone like Pat Cipollone, who, if you remember that clip, it was really stunning and awkward to me where he, he, that he was describing how everybody,

everybody in the White House was wanting the violence at the Capitol to stop. And the committee questioners asked him, but was there anybody who didn't? And there was this back and forth. Well, you asked about the staff. No, I just asked about who's in the White House. And, and he him, but was there anybody who didn't? And there was this back and forth. Well, you asked about the staff. No, I just asked about who's in the White House. And he said, he was like, yeah, I can't. I privilege that lack of courage in this moment in history, this gravity that we are experiencing and witnessing that he could not even just admit that simple thing that he knew that Trump was the only person in that White House who wanted the violence to continue. But I want to pick up on some really important threads that both Ben and Lee have been talking

about. And that is that there was so much filth under the rug prior to Trump's, both prior to his presidency and just in our country for years, that this is kind of like a moral chemicalization that we are going through that is always difficult. These experiences where we confront things that we have not been willing to face in the past, when they finally bubble up to the surface, they are very trying. They are very ugly, and they require great work on our part to overcome them. But this is an exceptional opportunity that we find ourselves in. And I say this very much from a personal individual perspective too, because I most certainly have had that moral chemicalization in my own life, realizing the things that I did not see and I now understand. But we have this

as a country collectively, an opportunity to realize what we really need to confront these fascist forces, these undemocratic forces that are at work in our country. And really, I think the greatest function that the Trump presidency served was to expose the dishonesty and bad faith of the Republican Party, just how anti-patriotic they are. I'm one who followed them for years, believing that they were the party of freedom, the party of patriotism. And I now realize they are completely the opposite. And I have lived how completely the opposite of these values they are. They are the anti-freedom party, the anti-free speech party. I mean, I lived almost the life of a political dissident during Trump's campaign for speaking my mind, and not a single Republican ever spoke out against his attacks on

free speech, and he still gets away to this day as being hailed as some champion of free speech in the Republican Party as well. They are the enemies of free speech, enemies of choice. They are the promoters of government oppression and suppression. For goodness sakes, just look at what's being done with women's reproductive rights and just yesterday on contraception. It could not be clearer. And all of these things now are coming to the surface. In addition to handling, as we must, the first ever president in our country's history who committed treason. We could not possibly have this law on the books and not enforce it when it is violated as it has been, as we saw so vividly today. And I want to just, we reference a lot of

the former witnesses in the January 6th hearings. And one of my favorite, I love all the women too, but one of my favorite was Judge Luddig. And remember his eloquent, slow speaking, but eloquent speech on the rule of law. If we don't utilize these laws, then we have nothing to hold us up anymore. So. Well, speaking of the law, I want to go to a top attorney, Heidi, who is running for city attorney in Los Angeles. She knows a thing or two about the law, I want to go to a top attorney, Heidi, who is running for city attorney in Los Angeles. She knows a thing or two about the law, I'm sure. So give us your take on the law part of it and the legal part of it, Heidi. Tell me, what is it that we are supposed to know about the law? I'm not sure there was a lot of law today.

I mean, what I tended to see was a one-man manure pile of historic proportions. I saw a man who was an architect, strategist, commander, and cheerleader of an unprecedented effort to undermine our government and to take government by force and of the people by force and appropriate it for himself. And so, yes, Jessica's exactly right. That's one of the definitions of treason. It's at a minimum a definition of sedition if it's not on behalf of a foreign power. And the difficulty, I think, is that the criminal courts

have a standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt. And the criminal courts require a jury of your peers. And if you look at the hurdles that the Department of Justice will have to overcome in a traditional criminal trial, I understand why the committee is doing what it's doing. And I think that this is a much bigger service to the American people. Because I don't think anybody watching today can conclude that this was anybody's scheme, except Donald Trump's. I mean, this was his con on his followers. And so whatever may come of it, whether it's the New York Attorney General, or it's the

investigation in Georgia, or it's a Department of Justice coming to account for really a president that has betrayed everybody, betrayed his own followers, betrayed his oath, as people kept saying repeatedly, betrayed his base and betrayed everybody in the country. I think that that was laid out today in a way that just piece by piece, you could see it falling into place. And there's no other conclusion other than this man is unfit to hold office. This man is unfit to be respected. And what I take away from it is I think that the political way in this instance was much better than the formality and the dryness of a tried convicted and indicted in the court of public opinion tonight and i think that is what everyone needs to understand and i i i always i always hear this democrats are weak on messaging and they don't get out there and they don't say things

well on my show gabe knows this is my co-host, I say politicize everything. And tonight, the committee delivered you an entire mountain of politicization that you can go to your neighbors, your friends, your family, wherever you are, to tell them what you saw tonight on this broadcast and in the select hearing that you can use to politicize this and politicizing it leads me to uh one of the best politicization machines out there the guy down there in the hat texas paul um give us your react your first your first gut reaction because what i really want what i want to know from from paul is his reaction about the outtakes, mainly. Because I know we're going to get a Texas Paul video of a reaction of some of this footage. But Paul, what did you think of the videotape, the outtakes? Not just the hilarity of it, but really to show that this guy was outside his frame of mind.

You're muted there, Paul. Well, it just confirms for us what we've always known is the guy is actually an idiot. He can't read. He can't write. He can barely talk. You listen to him at his rallies and he just ambles on. There's no real i i don't understand the draw to this guy for people that follow him i mean i i can't stand to watch his speeches for more than five minutes he just annoys the piss out of me and it's not he's just a moron I mean you you can't he has no consistent line of of speech at all he's just an idiot and that outtake shows it and he's a spoiled little child throwing

tantrums and stuff slapping the desk and you know come man, just make your statement. Just do your damn job. What did you take, Paul, from the national security standpoint, though, also as well? I'd like to hear your take on that of what when they started to talk about how this has national security implications. This isn't just some fun and games that happened at the Capitol where a bunch of people in Trump costumes went and shit on the walls. Literally, they shit on the walls. This isn't just that. This is this had national security implications, especially when Matthew Pottinger, the National Security Council deputy advisor, said, hey, people from other countries are calling me and they're worried. What did you make of that? Well, you know, you had Milley calling China as well.

I mean, it was all about Donald Trump. And that's the thing is people keep looking at this wrong, trying to understand what's going on. Look at Donald Trump like he's a criminal. And imagine that he's thinking like a criminal. You know, different people that do different things look at the same scenario you do, and they look at it differently. Somebody that works in security is always scanning for, you know, security weaknesses. Somebody that's a criminal is looking for purses laying around. Donald Trump absolutely just cares about Donald Trump. And yeah, he absolutely put us in danger by weakening our democracy. I mean, hell, look what they've done to the Supreme Court.

Look at what they've done to the Secret Service. I mean, the Secret Service looks as bad as the Russian military right now. I mean, everything this man has touched has been fractured and broken. And yeah, he left us in a real pickle there for a couple months. People were, you have Republicans attacking Biden from the get-go. They had no idea what we were doing. It took several months to pull our NATO allies back together. Donald Trump left us in a freaking mess, in a mess. And I will

always say this. Donald Trump caused the invasion of Ukraine. Every life lost in the Ukraine is due to Donald Trump, because Putin was operating under the misconception that this damage that he had done was permanent. He did not think that Joe Biden would have the skill to pull together the support he did to do the things that he has done. Putin deeply miscalculated just how much there is a difference between a Democrat and a Republican. He just totally did not understand that

at all well jessica i know ukraine is an important issue to you and you're always making sure that the audience um does not forget ukraine and and i know the national security question is you know because that was when i was watching the TV that day, I remember thinking, holy hell, what what is the rest of the world going to see our democracy as now? What damage as far as weakness? I mean, what missiles are going to start flying in because they thought it was over? I mean, it looked like as if the president of the United States was going to do nothing and our democracy could be over at any moment. Yeah, a couple of things there. I'll get back to Ukraine for sure. But on the national security crisis that Donald Trump basically started on by allowing this to go on on January 6th,

what struck me in the hearing was Secretary, Labor Secretary Scalia. He talked about calling a cabinet meeting to steady the ship after January 6th. And all I could think of was why the hell were they not calling a cabinet meeting to invoke the 25th Amendment? And we remember there was a resolution that the House passed to invoke the 25th Amendment, and it didn't happen, and it damn well should have happened. This man should have been immediately removed. How many times have we passed egregious behaviors from him and nothing has been done, and the state of our country and world has suffered for it?

So just a reminder of all of these individuals, the cabinet members who were empowered to invoke the 25th Amendment and did not. But going back to Ukraine, yes, absolutely. This is a global crisis of impunity for so-called strongmen, flagrant criminals, flagrant dictators, the likes of Putin and Donald Trump, that we absolutely must face now. Yesterday was actually the 100-day mark of imprisonment for a heroic Russian dissident. Many of you probably know him, Vladimir Karamurza. Not long before he was imprisoned, he has, by the way, been twice poisoned by the Kremlin, survived poisoning attempts, and this time returned to Russia, which is such a brave, brave thing to do. Individuals like him and Navalny have said, this is our country. If there is going to be a

change made here, we have to be the ones to do it from our own country. And, you know, we hear a lot of discussion these days about leaving the United States, telling you if you're a patriot, if you're an American, you can't leave. It's ours to fix. We're the living. We're the Americans. It's our job to do this. Let us do it. Let us be the brave ones, the heroic ones that set the course of history for the future and stay in our country. But going back to Vladimir Karamurza, 100-day mark yesterday of his imprisonment, of course, unjust. And I will tell you, I am always flattered and humbled when days of the war on Ukraine, just because he has seen the impunity that Putin has enjoyed for decades, the impunity for his actions, the impunity for his terrorism of the Chechnyans, of the Syrians, of his own people,

the oppression of his own people in Russia, and the effects, the obvious predictable effects of impunity. And I put in that tweet, end impunity now, charge Trump now. And Vladimir Karamurza retweeted me. He knows, let us honor the sacrifices and the bravery and absolute heroism that many of us have never come even close to, to put your life on the line like that. He knows the consequences of impunity and we, we are, it's right here in our face for us to, to handle right now.

So let us handle it. Well, Heidi, you put it so well, the architect, the strategist, the commander, the,

and the cheer, cheerleader. It, he does kind of this this outtake i i know i know it seems hilarious but he does seem like he wants to be putin like you know as jessica puts it this impunity it like that's embodies him that's what he wants that's what he wants to be he wants to be a dictator he wants to be. He wants to be a dictator. He wants to be king. He wants to be the murderous person that can say this or that. Putin, Kim Jong-un, all kinds of people that he got along well with. And who on earth,

what other president in history has ever taken his translator's notes or had a meeting just between himself and, you know, the leader of Russia or someone like Vladimir Putin. But I will tell you, I want to leave with a little note of hope here, Tony, because the fact is a friend of mine put something, I think it was on LinkedIn, but it stuck with me because he was talking, he's a great lawyer, has taken a lot of cases to the Supreme Court and he's fought a lot of civil rights issues. And he put up there a quote that was something along the lines of, most people say the glass is either half empty or half full. I have written about this and I'm now going to tell us all. Whether it's half empty or half full is not the issue because the glass is always refillable. So let us dedicate ourselves to refilling that

glass. Instead of, you know, worrying about how bad it was, let's look forward to what we can do now. And I do agree with Jessica that some of what we need to do now is hold people to account. There have to be consequences. If there are no consequences, the next time it happens, we're not going to be so lucky and we're going to wind up with a broken glass instead of a refillable one. I also wanted to take one quick minute for anyone who was interested on my comment earlier about the fact that Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger are necessary to the committee's ability to issue depositions and subpoenas. And the reason for that is if you look at

the House resolution for the 117th Congress, and it's specifically House Resolution 8, and then also the House resolution forming this committee, 503, the chair doesn't have the power to issue subpoenas without consultation with the ranking minority member. So if you didn't have a ranking minority member, you would call into question the legality of the entire procedure by which they've been going. And that's one of the reasons why I at least have been very grateful to the two Republicans who have stepped up to be brave. That is not to say that I'm not equally grateful to folks like Raskin. OK, and, you know, Adam Schiff and our heroes, because those are my heroes. But I'm also realistic about the fact that part of the reason why we have a refillable glass is that a couple of folks on the other side of the aisle stood up for what was truthful and what was right. Well, you have a great way of putting it,

Heidi. I do appreciate it. So tell us about your campaign out there and tell us where we can find you. Tell us where we can find you. I spell my name funny. It's H-Y-D-E-E. So I apologize for that. But once you see it, it's memorable. And my website is H-Y-D-E-E, the word for F-O-R, cityattorney.com. I squeaked by in the primary. But as they say, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and dancing. So I am on the ballot for November. If elected, I would be the first woman city attorney in the history of Los Angeles. And I really appreciated what Lee said earlier, what Jessica said earlier. Women, we are finding our voices just as the tides are trying to turn to silence us and take us back to the handmaid's tale. And so I do feel

a bit of a mission and a bit of a need to use my voice in podcasts like this. And then hopefully once in office elected to stand up for women, for people of color, for indigenous folks, for the LGBTQ community, for all of us who have been marginalized and have been fighting for our place in society and are now watching that at risk. And so my call to action to everyone, and my fundraiser would say, just sell yourself. I don't need to do that. Let's elect fresh leadership. Let's go find the woman the democratic woman running against kevin mccarthy okay and give her a real shot let's look at our landscape and understand how much there is at stake in this midterm election and let's not let it lie as a low turnout election let's get out

let's vote and let's send a message. Well, thank you, Heidi. Thank you for joining us today. And please, please come back. We're going to have more of these hearings. I'd love to hear more about that. That is refillable glass. Yeah. I want to see season two and a revisit to the refillable glass. So thank you, Heidi, for joining us. Thank you very much much thank you for having me tony we'll talk to you soon we'll talk to you soon uh so gabe as you um are there in the uh the the yesterday room and hopefully tomorrow will come what do you what do you what do you think this country is going to take from the the what we saw tonight there's going to be part of the country that didn't watch this and they're going to wake up tomorrow they're going to go to work and they're going to hear the president of the United States, Donald Trump. He tried to overturn the government and he was a baby.

Right. Well, I think there's going to be a few things that we pull out. Right. You're going to learn that Josh Hawley was quick to run away from the problem, that he was there to support. Right. He was throwing up his fist and saying, let's go insurrectionist. But at right when he his life was at risk, he stormed out of that building faster than you could actually say Josh Hawley. Right. You look at President Trump. People these are going to be clippable moments. Remember that they are preparing this so that people remember these exact moments. You've got Josh Hawley. You've got Trump on, you know, off the cuff. You know, people know people were debating oh was that speech at 4 17 in the rose garden was that off the cuff of course it was are you telling me that a paid professional wrote that

speech hell no no one wrote that thing he was there just feeding off to say in a very long-winded answer to not you know unable to to uh to um admit that there was fault to be put on these people but again like like it was mentioned during the hearing if he admitted that they did wrong then he would admit guilt that he was the cause for that wrongdoing right so then you go to the yesterday room which i'm in right now he can say yesterday. These are all clippable moments where you're going to say this guy that said he aced the cognitive test, which isn't about acing the test or anything like that. It's anyway, the fact that he said he aced the cognitive, which is the Mocha test, right? It's a series of questions. He says, oh, I got it so good. He's like, oh, man, camera, woman, TV. Right. But he can't say yesterday.

This guy is supposed to be the stable genius. He's supposed to be the leader of the free world. These are the people that Trumpers just adore and celebrate. No way. But then you also look at the situation that they've established, which is, you know, when they're talking about national security threat, when there is a transfer of power, I don't know if people remember this, but, you know, after the 2000 election, which was a contention as to who was going to actually be the outcome winner, which was either Bush or Gore. It wasn't until six months into Bush's presidency. Do they have a full security team or a national security team in place. And the commission, the 9-11 commission, actually looks at that and identifies that as a possible threat for why 9-11 happened, because we were vulnerable, right?

And they talked about that tonight. And I think this is just another example of moments when we look weak, right? And we're not weak, but we have certain individuals that are trying to make our country look weak, right? Because they're having a tantrum. They can't say this word. They're unwilling to do this. They, you know, they, you know, they were, they were, what did they say? They were, they're all drained after that 417

speech in the Rose Garden. Like you're telling me that the whole day you're spending in the dining room watching Fox News, that you go give a speech in the Rose Garden, which you give for a few minutes. Everyone's like, well, that's a take. That's the best we're going to get right now. You're telling me that after that whole day that he was drained? And he totally dismisses the efforts of the Capitol Police that were there to protect the people inside, which he, by the way, is also calling those senators as they're running for their life. And he's going, hey, BT dubs, make sure to delay the certification. Like, what world are we living in?

You know, again, a Republican is making a mess and unwilling to look at the shit they spread on the walls of the Capitol and say that it was actually their fault. They walk away, they run away and say someone else will deal with it, not me. And that is Trump. And that is the Republican Party. And to say to what Heidi said and Jessica said, I am very grateful for people like Kensinger and Cheney who are willing to stand up and actually say something. We may sit on the complete opposite end of the spectrum for all the policies that they have. But this one, which is actually how to protect our government and our democracy of the United States, I'm very grateful to have them in our corner right now. Well, I want to go to the Texas Paul and Jessica for one last word. Texas Paul, give us your one last take here, and then I'll go

to Jessica. What do you have for us for your one thing to remember for tomorrow in the tomorrow room? Yesterday's room, but tomorrow's room tomorrow. Well, let's answer the question we came here to answer. What did Trump do for 187 minutes? The answer is he was crying. That's what he was doing. He wanted to go down to the Capitol. He wanted to stop the certification. He did nothing for 187 minutes because he was trying to see which way it would come out. Look at it through a criminal's eyes and everything you saw today makes complete sense. I don't want to say that the election is resolved. You know, people try to look at that through their own eyes.

Oh, that must be pride. No, it's not pride. It's a criminal. He is still to this day looking at this through the eyes of a criminal. He is still trying to figure out a way to beat the rap on this, to con people, to everything about him is always criminal. And if you look at, if you want to know what Trump's going to do in any situation, say, what would a criminal do? And that's what you get. That's exactly what you get. The other thing that I'd sum up with is that Liz Cheney answered it, the second sentence she came in yeah we're getting

more hearings in September there will be a season two so hold on folks we're getting more Tony you're muted oh you're muted yes yes see I got all this time all this time all this time and I finally I finally mess up my mute but I I am very excited for season two as well. I think it's going to be, you know, I I've talked about this on our on our daily show. But like, you know, season one of the hearings is very much a world building. You're setting up what happened during and around January 6th. very much going to be the character development and us identifying specific Republican lawmakers who helped Trump, especially those who are running for the 2022 midterms, right? I mean, you've got September, October, November, you've got all that time to add content, to call out these fascists and these traitors who are trying to help Trump stay in office.

And I think that's what we're really going to see in season two, because as we come to the finale, we've led up to January 6th. But now there's hours, hours of footage. We only just saw Don Jr. We just saw Stephen Miller last hearing. There is tons of footage of this hearing that we have not seen yet from the depositions that I think will be very revealing in season two. Well, Jessica, speaking of depositions and the Trump world and dealing with Trump worlds and depositions, I know you've done this time and time again. So give us your

final thoughts here, because another character that worked its way in was the guy that kind of helped you bring up in the 2016 campaign was Steve Bannon. When he gives this recording of where he knew, he knew what the strategy was, and it was to steal the election. It doesn't matter what it takes. Donald Trump's going to do it. So give us your final take here on the hearings. Yeah, major takeaway for that, like I've said before, is that the intent was obvious to everyone in Trump world. They knew that he planned from jump to stay in power by any means necessary. I started off today talking about how today's hearings were going to paint Trump as an enemy from within. And if you heard Representative Elaine Luria,

who, by the way, is in a competitive House race. So thinking of how we can have a part, as Heidi was saying, to make sure this moment in history does not pass us, hold the House, hold the Senate for Democrats. Elaine Luria could use our help, but she wrapped up her comments today describing being a naval officer on ships and looking out for enemy ships. And she said, I never imagined that the enemy would come from within. That's what we have. That's what we're dealing with, an enemy from within who to this day is treated as a legitimate political figure in American politics, which is just ludicrous. I want to point out on the women theme, one other extraordinary woman, a woman who I am a huge fan

of, who has, you've seen her face in these hearings, you haven't heard her name, but that woman is Sandra Garza. And she is the partner of the late officer, Brian Sicknick. There was again, a reference to Brian Sicknick today in bringing up the just the disgusting fact that Trump never even, his so-called care for the men in blue and law and order, he never even acknowledged Brian Sicknick's death. And the camera went over to Sandra Garza sitting between Officer Ganel and among the other Capitol Police officers. This woman is extraordinary. If you've ever heard her speak on her media hits, she speaks with such clarity about the events of January 6th. She has, you know, put her pain to purpose

in speaking out about the need for accountability. And a very interesting fact about her, as was true for Officer Sicknick, is that she used to be a Trump supporter as well. And she could not be more clear now on the threat that he poses and his need for accountability. And I have so much respect for that woman. So, Jessica, tell us where everyone can find you. Give us your shameless plug here at the end. Oh, well, as always, I'm on Twitter at JessicaDenson07. I do have a lot in the works. But if you want to help me, I don't,

I haven't done this in a long time, but speaking of depositions, we have some very high profile depositions going on in my initial lawsuit against the Trump campaign. We are hunting down Steve Bannon. If you've watched this panel before, you know that we are on Steve Bannon's tail to get him seated in a deposition. And this is the lawsuit, by the way, that through all of my ins and outs of the legal system through the past five years has led me to invalidate the Trump campaign's nondisclosure agreement. Without my initial lawsuit, which I filed in 2017 without a lawyer for discrimination and defamation, we would never have arrived at this point. But that existing lawsuit is ongoing to this day. We are doing high profile depositions all the time.

Yesterday, Tony knows this. I had a somewhat disturbed morning through a deposition of none other than Kellyanne Conway. These depositions and the process servers, they're very expensive. I have on my initial case, just two lawyers that are working contingency. I would love to be able to pay them something for all of the dedication that they have put into defending democracy in my case and broadly. So if you want to support if you want to support that effort in the legal the legal fund, it's pinned to my Twitter, my Twitter profile. It's donor box dot org slash Jessica V. Trump. And like I said, any help would be would be greatly appreciated.

Well, go go check. Go check Jessica's link out there, Texas. Do you have Texas? Paul, do you have one last shameless plug? Yeah, just a quick 20 second thing I want to throw out there real quick is 20 seconds. 20 seconds. Matthews just nailed it all down. They're freaking criminals. Democrats and Republicans are not the same. I think she even said she pointed at the TV and said, does it look like we're fucking winning? I think is what she said.

I think is what she said. And here at the Midas Touch Network, we are winning because we're getting more and more people watching because of these great panels that we have with the Midas Mighty Favorite, Texas Paul, and the Trump NDA killer, Jessica Denson. So subscribe to the Midas Touch Network. Thank you, Texas Paul.

Thank you, Jessica, for joining us. Come back to these hearings that we will have soon. Thank you very much, my friends. Gabe, I've got a special guest here in the wings, a last-minute guest. A last-minute addition. A last-minute addition if Adam Parkamenko is ready. Adam, how are you? uh gabe i've got a special guest here in the wings the last minute guest a last minute edition a last minute edition if adam uh parka minko is ready adam how are you i'm good how are you guys oh we're doing great doing great i'm glad you could join us because i really i want to get a

sense from adam you're a great political strategist so what does this because i always talk about this on our show i say politicize politicize politicize politicize because they're always like oh don't politicize things no that's exactly what we need to do because i believe there's two things there is government which is policy and there is politics which is elections and if you don't do the politics in the elections you do not get to do the policy you do not get to govern so tell us tell us what tonight hearing is, what the impact is in the politics of Donald Trump. Well, first, thank you guys for having me. Last minute, of course. I'm so excited to see Democrats finally playing like Republicans.

We got to we got to fight fire with fire. We need to politicize the hell out of this because at the end of the day, it is political. I mean, post-Trump, every Trumpism is here to stay. Nothing's going away. And we see Democrats with large platforms every single day. All they do is attack Liz Cheney. Look, I don't care at this point what Liz Cheney's politics are. What I care about is she's doing the right thing. She's on the right side of history for this country on this. And for me, I think this is a committee that at this point, not to knock the oversight committee, but this is a committee that should be here to stay. Whether it's through January and beyond, I want to see another hearing in August. I want to see four hearings in August. I'm glad to see Chuck Schumer finally on video. Again, we have a lot of questions about Chuck Schumer out there as Democrats. We should. On video asking how long is it going to take to get back to work? Is it going to be four hours? Is it going to be five hours? We shouldn't be in recess. We should be working around the

clock right now. We know we're going to have a majority in the House and the Senate either next year. We should do everything that we need to do between now and when the next Congress takes place to keep going. Michael Fennone is being harassed outside of the Capitol right now. I'm looking at this. One, you have pro-January 6th people outside there, insurrectionists. Maybe it's a good opportunity for the FBI to take the video tonight and identify the individuals who we're still trying to identify from January 6th. The outtakes, they were incredible. I think they're more than we asked for. We're finally putting on a show. Trump put on a show with a bunch of bullshit.

We're out there actually putting on a show with facts. The people that have put their time and energy into making each one of these hearings what they are, the outtakes alone should be enough to put Donald Trump in handcuffs. He isn't. And then I think the final thing is Cassidy Hutchinson was right. We are, you know, this may be popular, unpopular, but it's time to bring the Marines in. I think you need to disband the Secret Service and you need

to build from scratch. From top down, Secret Service is totally corrupt. Cassidy Hutchinson has been proved correct every single time. And tonight, of the three individuals in the Secret Service who got private counsel, one of them is not only the former deputy chief of staff under Donald Trump, who is currently the deputy director of the Secret Service, an individual should have never had that position. Well, I tell you, I follow, I go on true social. I have an account on true social so that other people don't have to. And I was just checking it as you were talking as I was listening.

He's going he's going. The former guy is losing his fucking mind. I mean, absolutely losing it. He didn't tweet or post truth, whatever the hell it's called over there. He didn't do any of that during the hearing but but once that outtake came in because to me this whole time he was he could be pissed about anything but i think the secret service story the ketchup story and these outtakes are gonna be the thing that absolutely get in his crawl the most. And I think the committee knew that. And I think they understood that what Gabe was getting at earlier,

what you were getting at is this little clippable thing, these little bitty things that really get not just in his crawl, but in his entire supports crawl, that this idea that somehow, you know, Gabe's in the yesterday room here because he couldn't, he couldn't say the word yesterday. So tomorrow, tomorrow, as Democrats, as pro-democracy people emerge into the world tomorrow, a different day than what was today. Now everyone knows what a treasonous piece of

shit this guy was and what he didn't do for his democracy and for his oath and his duty to the law what do people arm themselves and what do they say to their community members their friends their family what do you think they say going forward to make sure to politicize this to make sure that not just don Trump, but Trumpism in this country cannot take power. And we don't need this fascism. We need to get these rights for people back that we've lost over the last few months. What do these people use and what do they say to politicize this? I mean, I think there's probably two things. The first is you need to run as quickly as you can to the polls or to vote early as josh hawley ran from the people that

he put his fist up to what wait wait wait wait he was he was hauling ass i think someone i think someone tweeted that he was hauling ass he was it was it was pete's husband actually pete pete what was it yeah i was casting at that point of that he was hauling ass and he was hauling ass in slow motion i mean he's and i think the second thing is, I mean, when you look at the makeup of the committee, some of which you guys just talked about is, you know, people like Elaine Luria, who are, you know, they are in tough districts. I think we should all reach out to these matters and say, we want more of this. I mean, if this is what Congress, there's so much corruption. If anyone is, quote unquote, you know, draining the swamp, it's the January 6th committee. And I think whether it was an unintended consequence or a self-inflicted wound or Kevin McCarthy had something in him that made him do the right thing, we actually have this committee because he didn't put on a bunch of assholes like Jim Jordan. So this is actually, you know, the counter to conventional wisdom. This is one of the first times we actually have a committee of people who are interested in getting the bottom of the truth and not a bunch of jokers who are just bullshitting and using the time and

playing games. So, you know, everyone's got to vote. But I think at the end of the day, what we're watching is incredible. They have plenty of time left. They need to just keep doing this. And I love primetime. I'm not criticizing them for when they do them at other hours, but I think this was an incredible night. And whether you believe polls or not, there's been a lot of polling that suggests that there's independents early on prior to this committee that didn't believe that Donald Trump had any involvement. I mean, it couldn't be further from the truth if anyone's paying attention at this point. Well, the hearings are definitely, I was going to say, the hearings are definitely doing the intended purpose of moving the needle, right? You had people who either, one, didn't know what happened on January 6th and were kind of out of the loop,

or you had people who lived in denial, right? But having these hearings and exposing all of these key players for the cowards and the fascists and the traitors and the liars that they are have been very effective to get people to say, I actually don't think that he should Trump run again. Or I don't think that what he did was good. I mean, the downside is there are some people who are saying, oh, Trump shouldn't run and we should go for DeSantis, you know, for 2024, which isn't the greatest outcome. But I think the first step and breaking through that, well, I forget who, it was Liz Cheney talked about, you know, the cracks through the dam, right? And these are the cracks that are beginning to break apart this dam to let the floodgates, you know, come through, which is to expose this party for what it is and hopefully try to rebuild it for something better, right? Yeah. I mean, the hypocrisy at every single level, whether they

get it or not. At some point here, you're going to have 55% of white women who voted for Donald Trump who are getting stopped at McConnell checkpoints wondering, are they going to wonder? But we have those checkpoints because of them. You've got Donald Trump who is telling people privately in Florida that he doesn't want DeSantis to lose, but he doesn't want him to win by a lot, just by a little because tax evasion. He moved to Florida and he is a resident of Florida and he wants to make sure there's a Republican governor. So there's corruption at every level. But I think that this committee has been incredible. And I think that between now and the end, they've just got to keep this up. You've got Republicans out there who want to, you know, one, deny that a 10-year-old was raped.

Two, once the truth comes out and say, oh, OK, she was raped. However, she still has to have that baby. And then they go and they're focused on the doctor as opposed to the rapist. It's just unbelievable. The Walgreens story today about denying, you know, condoms. I think this is stuff we should talk about. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I've been I've been focusing on the hearing. What the hell are you talking about? Walgreens doesn't have condoms anymore. Well, so the news of the day is the three of us and others are no longer shopping at Walgreens. Walgreens had a staff member who denied condoms to some individuals that came in, customers

on religious beliefs. And Walgreens is siding with their staff. And, you know, this is just one more thing. So this is like this is like the cake thing all over again. Exactly. Pretty much. Wait, wait, wait. So a dude walks into, I want to make sure I track this down. The dude walks into Walgreens. The dude walks into Walgreens. He goes to buy condoms.

And the clerk won't sell him condoms because he doesn't agree with the condoms or he doesn't agree with the way. I'm not even sure if it's a guy. It could be a girl. I mean, at the end of the day, I think people are either proud or embarrassed to go and buy condoms. Whatever it was, they were denied getting those and Walgreens sided with their staff. turn roe v wade i on my show predicted and i my audience knows this this thing i say doubt me because it seems as if i have a crystal ball and it really isn't that complicated to know where these people go and what they think you just like like kind of like texas paul said you got to think just think of them as criminals and think like a criminal and boy you'll get there if you just think like a fascist boy you'll get to where they want to be pretty damn quick right and i said there

is going to be a moment in this country where a trumped up white dude in a rural state or a blue state is going to walk into a gas station somewhere to buy condoms and the clerk is going to say condoms we don't have condoms condoms are outlawed and they're going to say what the hell what do you mean condoms are outlawed well didn't you hear they overturned roe v wade and they're banning contraception like who's banning it republicans like wait a second i vote for republicans and and we are at those moments we are at those places that they had they just take shit way too far and it it actually played out tonight in the select hearing where Trump took this idea that his supporters, his crowd, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys were going to come to Washington and they were going to save him from not being president of the United States. And that's not how it turned out. But now we're seeing the aftermath of it.

And I think if everyone in this country can just hear the voices out there, and I appreciate you coming on the show because I know you were one of the early ones in the Midas Touch movement to believe in the Mizellus Brothers. And we're building this network here of folks. So subscribe to the Midas Touch Network if you're still here with us late tonight. Don't forget to subscribe. And again, this independent journalism, this across the table talk, as we were talking earlier, I think is very effective in the realm of media because people are so tired of getting talked to. They want to have a conversation. I think that's what this network is about. And I know you've been with Midas Touch and the My Zealous Brothers from the beginning back in 2020,

I believe. If I don't have that wrong, you can correct me. You got it right. Well, and so tell us what you think about that. Tell us how you think that independent media is so important and people to take independent media seriously and really look at it and give it a hard look. Now, seeing that we're trying to build something here that people can come to and hear a pro-democracy message from front to back, as opposed to the bullseye crap or, well, let's hear from this person who's a fascist, who's obviously just going to lie to us or just straight up be right wing. Tell us why that's so important. Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly important, especially because this country is still an experiment that is, you know, hanging in the balance. But I think what, you know, Ben, Brett and Jordy have done and all of you that have been part of this Midas network is incredibly important for a number of reasons. One, you can always tell, I'm right outside of DC, but you can always tell when

you're doing something right when Washington, DC and New York and LA and others start attacking you. And there was a hit piece in Rolling Stone and a number of other individuals that attacked Midas and the Midas Network because they're doing really great work. And anytime that you shake up something, people get upset. There were a number of stories that never even came out because the facts were just bullshit. It was a bunch of bullshit that was pitched against them, because they're working really hard. And one of the things that I respect more than anything else is the first thing that they did when they started prior to the media network is they launched a super PAC. And with the super pack, you share everything, every expenditure and every contribution

over $200. So not only were they transparent, but they were getting attacked because they were transparent and shared what they were doing. And they moved past that. They didn't let that, you know, put them aside. I think they released over 500, you know, 504 videos, maybe to be exact, in 2020. They got millions and millions and millions more views than, you know, many of these packs have been around for, you know, years that weighs 10, 20, 30, 100 million dollars. And yet a number of old school reporters who just don't like things to be, you know, switched up that were saying, oh, you only got this many points on TV. Well, that's actually not the truth. They were really smart and creative and they got millions and millions of views and they got tons and earned media that's worth millions of dollars by only doing a $10,000 spend. From there, they expanded and they look for talent all over the country.

They are building with you all and many others exactly what the left has needed for years and years and we've never had and it continues to expand each week i mean texas paul is a great example but like i mean i talk to the brothers every single day and there's not a week that goes by that i don't see that you know there's someone new that's part of this network who's getting out there and and you all are building off of each other and able to help expand the platform and the voice that you guys have so i'm i'm proud to be part of it i consider myself a stepbrother but platform and the voice that you guys have. So I'm, I'm proud to be part of it. I consider myself a stepbrother, but I love the work that you guys are doing.

Well, we appreciate it too. And we won't, we won't, we won't tell anybody that you're a stepbrother. No problem. We promise. It's a great movie though. Well, that is it. That is a good movie. That is a good one. Gabe, did you have any questions for Adam? I didn't mean to monopolize. No, no, not at all. I think, I think i think adam you know he came in you know it was a it was a nice addition to the panel sliding right there at the end right yeah boom but i think i think everything that adam has said so far you know talking about how democrats are finally doing

what they need to do right they need to step up to the plate and call this shit out for what it is right and they need to, you know, take a page out of the Republicans playbook, you know, not so maybe aggressively in some ways, but they need to do what, you know, I know that many people say the Democrats need to be the moral high ground. Well, times have changed and we do need to confront what is in front of us. And we can't play nice ball all the time. And I think that is exactly what needs to be happening right here, which is to call everything out and address it and not back down, right? Yeah, and continue to remind everybody,

the Republican Party is literally the party that is taking the American flag and beating police officers with it. I mean, that's what it comes down to. Every single thing they pretended to stand for, they don't. And not only that, but stripping rights, you know, rights that people have had for decades and saying, actually, that thing that you thought you had, actually you don't have anymore. Yeah. I think there's going to be a whole lot of people that want... The Republican Party

allegedly has been the one that has wanted people to stay out of their... In government, stay out of their bedrooms forever. Democrats are literally the ones staying out of people's bedrooms and it's on full display. So at this point- Republicans are the ones that are like, hey, are you a boy? Are you a girl? What are you? They're the ones who are trying to, in some sick, twisted way, trying to find out someone's gender. They're trying to take away books because it says inequality- Republicans are the ones that claim Democrats are groomers, but Republicans are the ones that want to inspect the children's dolls.

And whenever it's brought up, whenever there's some staffer that gets revealed and you're like, hey, what about this person that was on your team? Just nothing. No acknowledgement, obviously. And then the very next day, it's a call out. It's all projection, right? And I actually think the media, there's a whole bunch of people the media should be quoting and reaching out to for interview on some of these things like the Marriage Act. They should reach out to Denny Hastert. They should reach out to Mark Foley. There's tons of Republicans that are no longer in Congress, you know, that have shown who they are that should go on record how they vote if

they were in Congress. Right. Right. I think you're right. I think you're right. And the other thing I want to I want to close with here, besides, again, subscribe to the Midas Touch Network here. Do us that favor and do yourself a favor because these hearings are going to keep coming. But Adam pointed to all the personalities and all the videos and all the updates, especially ones from Jordy Mizellus, the younger brother. The favorite brother, as he so self-labeled himself earlier. But here's what I want to say. I want to tell the audience why we still have them here before we leave, is that this idea, and I've been saying this for weeks, that this idea that liberalism is weak, and this hearing proves that liberalism isn't weak.

Liberalism stood against a mob. Liberalism stood against a person who wanted to overthrow our democracy. Liberalism stood against all those things. And it still survives today because liberalism is tough because democracy is tough. Equality and equity is not achieved just lightly. It is a hard working piece of history that it takes, just like Lee McGowan pointed out earlier. Yes, our history is littered with vile things to get us to where we are today. And we must move forward. And we cannot let these fascists that are at our front door take over our institutions and our government and our democracy. Because the thing that they want the

most is to take it away from us because democracy does not serve them well democracy does not give them the ability to push their fascist ideas equity and equality is the exact opposite thing that they want to achieve that is pure blooded fascism and we need to stand against them we need to be tough because liberalism is tough and i i get sick of that that liberalism is weak it is really weak and really tired and really it's just pathetic to point to one person and go i want that one person to tell me what the hell i'm gonna do what the hell i'm not gonna do and let them decide for the rest of the people what the hell they're gonna do and and what the hell. That's easy. That's easy. The hard thing is democracy. The hard thing is the fight. The hard thing is to use your ballot and engage with your ballot.

And I'm just not talking about marking your ballot. I'm talking about engaging in your democracy. Rather that be using your talents to yell and scream into microphones like some of us here on the Midas Touch Network do. Some some people are good at texting. Some people are good at writing. You can write postcards. Hell, some people have some extra cash to give in these races where it can and will matter to save your democracy. So do what you can. Engage where you can. Rather it be on a microphone here on the Midas Touch Network or in your grocery store at your clerk, asking them, did you see the hearing last night? Can you believe that? That's a good way to start the conversation. And I think that everyone needs to remember that democracy and liberal democracy is not weak. Our republic is strong, and liberalism is what makes it strong. And we need to stop walking away from this idea. And we need to

embrace the idea that free freedom and liberty are the strength of our country and that we can use that to go forward. And we can fight for that. Rather it again, rather it be with the ballot, with your microphone, just having those conversations with your friends, your family are working for campaigns, whatever it may be that your talent is and your time is that you can engage in your democracy, because I think that is the thing that may put America back on track, is once they really engage in the democracy, I think we'll get there. Adam, give us your final word. I think that's it. Couldn't have summed it up better.

I didn't mean to take the words out of mouth. I just get very passionate here. And also, if you like those passionate speeches, go follow us, me and Gabe, on YouTube, the Tony Michaels Podcast. We got our own channel. We broadcast every single weekday, Monday through Friday,

noon Eastern, 11 Central, 9 Pacific on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, and we also simulcast from the Midas Touch Facebook page, so go follow us over there. Now, follow Adam Parkamenko on Twitter. Adam, is there anything else you want to shamelessly plug at this point? I think that's it, but I appreciate all you guys do, and I'm

glad you guys are for this network. Well, I appreciate it, Adam. Thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon, my friend. Gabe, what a night. What a network. Well, I appreciate it, Adam. Thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon, my friend. Gabe, what a night. What a night. Wow, we are five hours and 20 minutes into this. You know what? Let's just pull an all-nighter.

What are we doing? Are we just going to do like eight hours? There's still like five or 6,000 of the Midas Mighty. Yeah, why not? The loyal Midas Mighty that are still watching. Yeah, I could pop up another bag of popcorn, you know? I could make another drink or something. Well, you know, we could just replay the hearing and we could just rewatch.

Yeah, we could just go through it again and get everything that we missed. We could put it in, like, you know, super fast mode. We could rewatch it. Now people are really leaving. Like, ah, this guy. These fucking guys. These fucking guys. I actually, I do think that that video the outtake

is gonna get in his crawl it's gonna get i i already i already can feel the trolls in the twitter threads being so pissed off about that at outtake and people making fun of him not being able to say the word yesterday deconstructs and breaks down this idea that Trump is this mega king. Oh, I'm this man who could, you know, like it's, he is not, he is weak, right? He is vulnerable. He is someone who does not do well with pressure, right? He's always going to put up his arms and he's going to say he doesn't want to help out when, you know, you look at all the meetings at the G20 summit, you at different things like he is not someone who likes to play ball he only likes to help himself he is a narcissist he only cares about his ego he will

not do anything unless it serves himself right you look at the the fact when they brought up he went through to get up his things or get his things out of the dining room. And he's like, I'm very disappointed in Mike Pence right now. You know, he's showing the tweet to be like, should I tweet this? You know? And they're like, Oh, I don't know. I'm not a writer, but I'm not sure you should say that first line there. And he's like, Oh, sent like this guy doesn't care about anyone. He only cares about himself and he and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and all these other people are incredibly weak. And when they have to actually, you know, stand up for what they believe in and they're proven to be cowards and traitors and everything and liars, they will back down. Right. We'll never back down. They will back down.

Well, we saw that today with Steve Bannon. Right. Like you go in. Well well well in the court room hearing he was supposedly gonna bring war with him well he said he said and i quote i'm gonna he's gonna go medieval yeah medieval now i don't know if he has a hard time saying medieval or understanding the definition but i can tell you for a fact that if you don't bring evidence or other witnesses or uh gonna go up on the stand to actually address the jurors. That doesn't seem like you're going medieval. That seems like you're cowering.

And it seems like that's your go to play when you're up against something that is pressuring you. You just give up. Well, that's what they do. Definitely. Definitely. He doesn't understand what medieval is because what he did today was not medieval. He didn't do anything. I mean, he looks like he has the hygiene of someone from the medieval time well that it could be true it looks like he's got the plague on his face right yeah he is decomposing before

he goes to jail the the the craziest part is this chaos machine right because he goes in the courtroom and steve bannon knows because his lawyer is looking at him and go, if you say anything, if you try any tactics or any bullshit in this courtroom, when you are sentenced, because you're going to be found guilty. Yeah, yeah. When you are sentenced, that judge is going to use every bullshit thing that you tried to do in this courtroom against you in your sentence. So Steve Bannon, he did the advice of his attorney. And then when he went outside he got in front of the microphone he's like blah blah blah oh benny thompson has coveted like doesn't want to address anything and i'm a nazi i'm a nazi i'm a nazi and i'm a nazi and then you've got the

guy who's blowing the whistle which you know again like how effective is a piece of plastic that probably cost 25 cents it worked on on Marjorie Taylor Greene. It worked on Matt Gaetz. It worked on Steve Bannon. It will work against fascists. Well, you know, we actually watched that video on our show today. So I'm going to do another shameless plug here. Go over to our channel, Tony Michaels Podcast on YouTube.

And we reviewed that video. We reviewed that video today. Hey, your dogs. Is the dog at the White House there with you? Is the dog at the White House there with you? Is the dog at the White House there with you? Yeah. Is the dog? Yeah, well, let me do another shameless vlog

while the dog's still barking. While you're subscribing to YouTube channels, go ahead and subscribe to the Midas Touch Network. Also, also, if I would be derelict in my duty. That's what the overall theme was tonight of the hearing for Trump. I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't bring up Jordy's pens here, the unapologetically pro-democracy enamel pens. Those are going quick, huh?

Union-made in the USA, baby. Yeah. And you get 10% off these great pens and everything else in the merch store. If you go to store.minustouch.com, use the promo code justice. That's store.minustouch.com. Use the promo code justice for 10% off. I don't know if Jordy's still awake. He might be asleep. He might be asleep. He is.

He had his wine earlier. Yeah, I know. I don't know. I don't know if Jordy's still awake. He might be asleep. He might be asleep. He is. He had his wine earlier. Yeah, no. I don't know. I don't know. Well, we do appreciate all the Midas Mighty joining us here on the Midas Touch Network. And I will give one more plug. Yeah, okay. Because on Fridays, we have a special edition of our show, which is called Bonehead of the Week.

Bonehead of the Week. And we support democracy. You can go vote on our channel on youtube at uh the tony michaels pod you can vote on twitter as well and on friday in the second hour from 10 to 11 we go over who the bonehead of the week is and this week it's a family affair who did you put on bone end of the week we got donald trump we got ivanka trump we got donald trump jr oh my god all three of them are in the running right now i'm pretty sure which one i know of the week. We got Donald Trump. We got Ivanka Trump. We got Donald Trump Jr. Oh my God. All three of them are in the running right now. I'm pretty sure which one, I know which one's going

to win. Yeah. But we've also got other people that we present after the, whoever the winner and the contestants are during the show. But for those who are still watching, I don't think you're going to want to miss it. It's going to be good. There's tons of material and we clearly saw a good portion of it during the hearing tonight. So go to our Twitter account at Tony Michaels pod. You can vote there or go to the YouTube channel, the Tony Michaels podcast here on YouTube. You can vote for bonehead of the week. You decide you get to vote who the bonehead of the week is. And we break it down on Fridays because Gabe, we broadcast every single weekday for two full hours, Monday through Friday, noon Eastern, 11 Central, 9 Pacific on YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch.

And we simulcast from the Midas Touch Facebook page. But we're going to come back for more of these hearings. So don't forget to subscribe to the Midas Touch Network. Gabe, I normally say surf's up, but have a good, great night. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being here with us. Don't miss it. Everyone who is here and who stuck around, the 5,400 and so people.

Yeah, yeah. We are incredibly grateful for the people that have stayed through and that learned some new things, some embarrassing things about Trump, but some new things. And we I mean, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for the people that were watching. And so I just want to say thank you for the people that are supporting independent journalism. Like we said so many times on the show, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you all. So thank you and good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.