The MeidasTouch Podcast - The Trump COUP, debt ceiling SHOWDOWNs, and going in the TRENCHES with John Heilemann

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers sit down with the incredible John Heilemann! As you may know, Heilemann is the host of the show ‘The Circus’ on Showtime as well as the Executive Editor at The Recount. The brothers and John cover everything from what it's like working in the trenches fighting to save democracy to how in the world we ended up in this situation to begin with. The brothers shift gears and discuss the latest news breaking around former Trump advisor Steve Bannon confirming he met with Trump and Giuliani the night before Jan. 6 to discuss how to “kill the Biden presidency.” The episode is rounded by the brothers discussing the potential government shutdown and what democrats must do in order to prevent this from happening. If you enjoyed today’s episode please be sure to rate, review & subscribe! As always, thank YOU for listening! Follow The Recount on Twitter here Watch new episodes of The Circus on Sundays at 8/7c on SHOWTIME. Support our sponsors: MAGIC SPOON -- Go to https://magicspoon.com/MEIDAS to grab a variety pack and try it today! And be sure to use our promo code MEIDAS at checkout to save $5 OFF your order! WILD ALASKAN COMPANY-- Go to https://wildalaskancompany.com/MEIDAS to grab a variety pack and try it today! Save $15 OFF your first box by using our URL! Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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thousands of singles worldwide. datemyage.com. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, Ben, Brett, and Jordy. We got an incredible podcast episode. Incredible podcast episode. Incredible podcast episode. Look, it's always a great day. It's always a great episode when you got John Heilman on the pod, executive editor. Let's go, Jordy. Executive editor. Let's go, Jordy.

Executive editor. Let's go, Jordy. Right? Executive editor at The Recount, host of The Circus on Showtime, which is in the second part of their sixth season, which has premiered this past weekend. It was great. You saw they spoke to Gavin Newsom about The Recall. They spoke about the politics of COVID

and how it's been politicized. The Circus is such an incredible show. Sorry to interrupt you, Ben. Sorry to pull a Geordie as the kids are calling it these days, but the Circus is really just such a fantastic show. I mean, where else do you get a behind the scenes look at politics like that? The recording schedule that I hear about the Circus is like the craziest shit you'll ever hear. You hear a little bit about that? You hear a little bit about that you hear a little bit about something is that how i speak you do that you you kind of have been doing on the podcast i've been noticing this a lot lately you kind of have a radio voice where you're like and i've been you know i really think that the you know it's a little bit a bit of a recording schedule that's a little bit i'm sorry man i'll

talk i'll speak very low forever no you're doing it just i would use your own voice that's a little bit. I'm sorry, Ben. I'll talk. I'll speak very low for everybody. No, you're doing it. Just I would use your own voice. That's all. That is my voice. This is my voice. There's a little bit of my voice over here, guys. This stays in the pod. This is ridiculous right now. But where's your vote on this? Does Brett kind of do a little, and then I'll think a little bit, a bit, a bit about this thing. What do you guys think? You know what? The great thing is I don't have to vote. You can't make me vote on this. So I'm

not going to vote. Jordy, the pacifist here. Jordy, the non-interventionalist. I love it. This is how I speak. When you do a show, you got to perform. You got to speak to the people, Ben. Come on. You know this. Let's go. Okay. I really want to talk about my shirt. This is why I'm the favorite son, because you guys are jerks and you guys bully people. I need to talk about the shirts because Jordy is wearing a shirt right now that says favorite son on it. Where'd you get the shirt?

Well, what happened was I went to go visit our parents in New York. It was fantastic. We're vaccinated. It was a great trip. And because I went home and visited them, unlike you two lunatics, I am now the favorite son. So as a parting gift, one of our parents, I won't say who, mom, got me the shirt. Okay. But this story doesn't make sense to me because i see in

the back of ben's room and ben did not go to new york ben also has a shirt that says favorite son hanging from his mantle back there um here's the issue i don't have one of these shirts i never received one of these shirts well brett maybe you will would not be getting one in the mail we just gotta see you with the time frame uh maybe you'll get one. Maybe you won't. What a total jerk. God forbid I try to hype up our guest show, The Circus. I'm excited to have John Hyman on, but I am hyped up, Brett and Jordy. In all seriousness, Brett, I love you. Jordy, I love you. I want people to know that we joke around. There are a lot of Twitter comments where they don't seem to get that. That is just kind of me.

When we tease each other, we love each other and we're really not hurting each other. So just so you know, like that's how we say they can't even listen to Ben anymore. Yeah. I've seen a few comments recently. Wow. Ben's taken a dark turn. He's so mean to Jordy. It's all part of the little

teasing that we do, but we love each other. We have a very loving brotherly. And let me just say, this isn't a new thing. This is how Ben has always behaved. This is how Ben would behave if we were doing this show or if we were not doing this show. This is how we show our love for each other. This is how we show love. Exactly. All right. Let's talk about what's in the news right now. Or what's not in the news right now, because none of the broadcast networks seem to be covering that. There was a coup attempt on the United States that is now documented in writing multiple times.

It seems like the only people speaking about this are us and the cable networks, but zero broadcast news networks gave even a second of coverage to this John Eastman memo, which laid out the Trump plan for a coup to overthrow the United States government. Feels like that would be a pretty big issue. Maybe that would be in our history books that we would talk about, that we would have investigations about. But it's not even making the 6 p.m. news. What do you guys make of this? And what did the memo say then? Oh, let's talk about who John Eastman is. He used to be a professor at Chapman University,

which is actually out here in California. At the same time, or while he was also a professor, he was the chairman of the Federalist Society's Federalism and Separation of Powers Practice Group. Federalist Society sure comes up a lot with all these people. They definitely, but it'd be very clear this was their federalism and separation of powers practice group, which I guess apparently means to then Professor Eastman, it's how the states can lead insurrections against the federal government, or how subsections of states through phony electors who aren't actually elected by the states can lead coups against the federal government. So John Eastman, we all know and recall, he spoke at the January 6th insurrection. Later on in that

day, he spoke with Steve Bannon, who we'll talk about in a little bit as well, and kind of encouraged the insurrection and egged it on while insurrectionists were still in the Capitol building. John Eastman got to retire. He wasn't fired. He was forced out, but he was a tenured professor at Chapman. So he still probably got a significant pension when he retired. But what we now know is that John Eastman was integrally involved in the coup. He prepared a memo. He had met with Trump and Pence and all these people in the Trump inner circle the days leading up to the insurrection. He prepared a memo very specifically of how the coup would take place. You always heard all the Trumpers, including Trump, talking about how Pence's job as the president of the Senate was not simply a ministerial task under the 12th

Amendment, which it is a ministerial task. It's simply counting the votes that are given by the states. But they wanted Pence to essentially go through the states, declare an impasse at all the various states where Trump was ginning up phony voter fraud issues with state legislatures and others who were kind of aiding and abetting in the scheme, basically create an impasse and then allow for Trump to basically be crowned dictator. I mean, I can get into a little more nuance than that, but that's basically the plan was don't count the electors pursuant to the process of our electoral college, claim that whole process is unconstitutional, and then anoint Trump to be

basically president or dictator. This was a serious plan. Let's be clear, dictator, because once you overthrow a duly elected president, once you overthrow the whole system by which our entire country is based upon for electing presidents, you have elected a dictator. You have appointed a dictator. And elections don't mean anything at that point. If all of a sudden the vice president could just pick and choose who the next president is. I mean, nobody, well, I guess 40% of the country does. Nobody rational thinks that that is how the system should work. I mean, nobody, well, I guess 40% of the country does, nobody rational thinks that that is how the system should work. And this document is a damning indictment of what was happening leading up to January 6th. It's a damning indictment of the Republican Party,

as even in this document themselves, they are relying on people. And these are people who come up in the document by name, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, to demand shifts in these rules so that they could appoint Donald Trump to be the dictator of America. And this is a lawyer who is not a fringe, crazy lawyer in the Republican Party. This is one of the main kind of lawyers who has come up in this fascist Republican Party. This is the guy who was pushing forth this idea. And the fact is, to me, this is a document that lays out sedition. And this is somebody, Ben, and I defer to you on your legal judgment here. Can you just give advice like this that runs so counter to the law as an attorney? Or should somebody like a John Eastman face disbarment? Should he face criminal charges for even suggesting this plan to the president of the United States?

You have a violation to and a duty to uphold the Constitution and the laws and not to subvert the United States Constitution. You take that oath as a lawyer when you become a lawyer. And Eastman not only prepared this memorandum, which was a memorandum of how to overthrow and topple democracy. But remember, he was actually on stage encouraging the insurrectionists to attack the Capitol building as well. And so he was very much involved in all aspects of it. I want to talk about Bannon in a second, but I do want to view January 6th like this. January 6th was a stress test on the ability of our democracy to withstand an assault of a fascism. And we've seen this historically. You saw it in Italy. You saw it in Germany. You saw other bodies that had parliamentary processes that were then overrun by dictators, by Mussolini, by Hitler. And we see across the globe how fascism can creep in through

democratic institutions. Our federal courts and our constitutional system of federalism and separation of powers. The ultimate irony there being that that's what Eastman claims that he was on the border for the Federalist Society, but our systems held in the stress test just barely, but you see the roadmap to how the GQP and insurrectionists would go at it again, how they would perfect their norms. And whereas for about a day after the insurrection, maybe two days, you had GQP members condemning it. They're now all for it. They're now pro-insurrection the same way they're pro-cum. And guys, I got to be honest with our audience here and with you guys and with everybody. But today, at this moment, September

23rd, 2021, I am more fearful for our democracy than I was even on January 6th. I think Republicans have not only doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on the acts of that day and are actively participating in an insurrection as we speak. And that's why I give the media a hard time. And that's why I occasionally give Democrats a hard time and Merrick Garland a hard time, DOJ a hard time, because we have to act. Because every day that we don't act, we are giving these people a green light to commit more attacks, whether like the one we saw on January 6th or whether just through the legislative process, just totally destroying our norms, totally destroying our laws

and destroying our government from within. I think we are at a red alert right now. All the signs are there. So what are we going to do about it? Right. You see the surgeon general that Death Santas appointed. You have Governor Death Santas, who, you know, is the kind of heir apparent to Trumpism. Florida is a total covid disaster right now. And Death Santas appoints a surgeon general who is against the idea of quarantining children after exposure to COVID. Like you go above and beyond the mask mandates, you go above and beyond vaccinations. And now you're also additionally saying we're against vaccines, we're against mask mandates.

And we don't even think there should really be any social distancing. We don't think there should be any quarantine whatsoever. Your kids should basically die. This guy's so crazy, Ben, that he's affiliated with UCLA in some way. Every time he goes on TV to do a TV hit, he has to disaffiliate himself. He says, I'm not speaking on behalf of UCLA and then spouts all of this anti-mask, anti-vax nonsense. It's scary. Let's play the clip because it's a funny clip, actually. Oh, sure. Well, good morning and thanks for having me on. And I have to say that I'm speaking for myself and not on behalf of UCLA, but I'm very happy to be speaking with you and your viewers.

I got to say, I am not affiliated with UCLA. They do not support my beliefs at all because they do not mesh with the science, but I am here to speak with you. So let me proceed with a bunch of lies and bullshit and dangerous rhetoric about the vaccine. Here's the thing, Brett, he's speaking though for, he's the surgeon general of Florida. He's not a private individual that's just spouting views on his own behalf. This is a person who sets policy. And you also have a Florida GOP Senator, Manny Diaz, who's calling for all vaccine mandates, whether it comes to polio, mumps, rubella, any of the other significant, like horrible.

Is bring back polio a winning fucking message for 2022 for Republicans? Bring back polio. Bring back rubella. This is what we want. We want all Americans to get infected. To look at the vaccine mandates. This is what happened, I think. They were confronted with the fact that, oh, you realize that we do have vaccine mandates

and have had them forever. So the logical conclusion was let's get rid of all the other vaccine mandates. This isn't the pro-life party. They're the pro-death party. And that's how they need to start being framed. I agree with you, Jordy, there, 100%. And it's just though how,

like when the GQP are unable to debate, they just, rather than have an intellectual debate because their points are so intellectually dishonest. They just go, yeah, we don't need vaccines for rubella or mumps or polio. It's all good. Let's bring those diseases back. It is the craziest, craziest position in the world, which Brett and Jordi brings me to the next point. Oh, I'll just mention one thing about Steve Bannon because I teased it and I'd hate to leave it hanging. But I don't think this would shock our listeners that Steve Bannon was discussing how to kill the Biden presidency and was meeting with Trump and others immediately before January 6th. The language that he used

is just so repulsive back then, like we need to kill the Biden presidency while it's in its crib of infancy. Like It's like a disgusting- Six, six, six, six, six people. They literally said something like that on the show, on the Bannon podcast. He confirmed it, that he did say that. And he did talk about how he wants to delegitimize the Biden presidency and how every day the GQP wants to do more and more efforts to, even if it means destroying our government, if that delegitimizes Biden, they don't care. And that's why I feel like there's no way to read when you hear these

statements that Bannon is saying, when you see this memo by John Eastman at the Federalist Society, when you see the Clark memo, which basically was laying out the way for Georgia to decertify its election. I remember those videos too. You guys remember those videos of those fake electors trying to bust in to those meetings back in January? Yeah, you remember that. They were ridiculous. Insane. But those were legitimate efforts that they were trying to take to overthrow the elections. And so finally, the Democrats and the January 6th Select Committee are issuing, they say a blitz of subpoenas is coming is the language that they're using for top White House aides. They said they're considering issuing a blitz of subpoenas is coming is the language that they're using for top White House aides. They said they're considering issuing a blitz of subpoenas. I just want to say to the Democrats, do not consider this.

Just fucking do it. Do it. Get these people under oath. Get Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Brad Parscale, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. Get all these people under oath. And when they say no to the subpoenas, because they probably will say no to the subpoenas, arrest them and make them show up. I mean, it's ridiculous that you could just defy congressional subpoenas these days. They're acting like they are above the law. And we can't have people acting like they're above the law. Because like I said earlier, what you're doing is you are

enabling another coup. So happy to hear that they have a subpoenas plan. I hope they go from the considering stage to the actual doing it stage very quickly. We need to act now. Absolutely. You know what's driving me crazy with our own party is the pump fake announcements. We might do this and then they don't follow through. Drives me insane. Do it.

Shoot your shot. Jordy was doing a pump fake gesture for those listening. I haven't played basketball in a while. In the words of Ben, I know your legal nickname has been Young Jedi. I think the Yoda quote, to link it back to you, is do or don't do. There is no try or something to that effect. And I think Democrats need to take the Yoda advice here and just do it. Just make it happen.

The Biden White House is leaning towards releasing information about Trump on January 6th. That is setting off a legal and political showdown with Trump and his people all saying now that we're not going to, you can't release information about what we were doing on January 6th. We claim executive privilege. And the Biden administration is going, you're not president anymore. And overthrowing the United States government is not an act of a president. So you don't have any leg to stand on here. So it seems like the pressure is being ramped up here. It seems like the efforts by the January 6th Select Committee are being ramped up by the White House. We just need to start seeing some arrests. We need to start seeing some indictments. We need to start seeing some action because all these people right now, the Steve Bannons of the world,

the Giuliani's of the world, the Trump's of the world, they think they got away with it and they could do it again. And they think that because that's basically what they've currently been told by our current government. And we need to ramp up the pressure and let's bring in Heilman before bringing in John Heilman. I want to talk about Magic Spoon. You have all heard this. If you listen to the Midas Touch podcast that I love Magic Spoon cereal. Growing up, cereal, one of the best parts of being a kid. But I had to give it up because I realized it was full of sugar and junk and other stuff that you shouldn't really eat.

So here was my dilemma. I need healthy cereal. I love cereal. What is it? Boom. Magic spoon, right, Brett? Boom is right. Everybody's been saying Ben's looking good these days on the video podcast. It's probably because of magic spoon because magic spoon cereal has zero grams of sugar, to 14 grams of protein and only four net grams of carbs in each serving it's only 140 calories a serving and it's keto friendly gluten free grain free soy free low carb i love the variety pack that i got it has four flavors it has the cocoa the fruity the frosted the peanut butter one of the things that i like doing which

i've said before and i've been kind of doing this all week is you mix the chocolate, the peanut butter. One of the things that I like doing, which I've said before, and I've been kind of doing this all week, is you mix the chocolate with the peanut butter. You create your own sort of peanut butter cup cereal. It's the best. Great move. It's really, really, that's an elite move right there. That's like a pro move right there. I really can't recommend Magic Spoon enough.

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And thank you so much, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode of the Midas Touch Podcast. Now let's bring in the one and only John Heilman, executive editor at The Recount, host of The Circus on Showtime, which is in the second part of its sixth season, which premiered this past Sunday. John Heilman, welcome to the podcast. Yo, boys, good to see you. It's like, I feel like I'm in the presence of greatness and, you know, nothing that feels more modern today than sitting in front of three white guys you know that's like when i think about when i think about good like good liberal woke media i always think about like it's like you guys in the crooked guys a bunch of white dudes

talking about being it's good to see you good to see you all you're well doing i'm a huge fan of minus touch and all the stuff you guys are doing so you know i'm i'm giving you shit being a white guy myself i can make i can give you shit about being white guys. And I'll throw it right back at you, John. So the circus, you think that is an appropriate name now, given like it doesn't really do it justice. It's kind of like the horror shit show post-apocalyptic. I don't know if that makes a good title, but you thinking about a name change? No, we're not. And you know, it's funny you say that because, you know, we just had this story,

the guy who is the lead TV writer at the AP, Dave Potter wrote a story at kind of like the beginning of our second half, as you said, second half of our sixth season. I can't believe it. I say it now, like we've been on the air now almost six years and it freaks me out. Like, cause like time flies number one and number two, really six years. Fuck. You know? Um, but he wrote a piece and his thing, his question was, you know, what happens to the circus when the circus has left town? And it's like, Dave, like, really? You think the circuit, like, what do you, what does that mean? Like, I mean, yeah, Trump's no longer president, but he's not, not still on the scene. Number one, if that's what you mean, just, you know, Trump. But I,

I, you know But I've been saying for years that I think Trump's a symptom, not a cause. And the stuff that's fucked up is just as fucked up and maybe more fucked up than it was before. So the name of the show, Dave Nevins, the president of Showtime named the show when we started it back at the end of 2015, very like the first episode was in January, 2016. But when we were launching with those guys, it was his idea. And we were sort of like, wow, you know,

that's kind of trivializing. Like, well, people think that we're like, you know, making like we're not taking politics seriously. Well, people think that like we're treating it like a game or something like it's not serious.

We're like, you know, it's it. But it is politics, a circus. It's like there's a there's a performative quality to it. And there's, you know, acts of daring and death defying political courage. And there's obviously clowns and there's all kinds of stuff that are present in our politics. And if we, you know, if we take, if we do, people are going to judge us for what's on the screen, not for the title.

And the title, he was like, I think it's going to be kind of a circus. You know, Trump had just gotten in the race six months earlier. And as it turned out, the title seemed to work in a way that was prescient in some sense. And for four years of Trump being in office, people would say, man, how did you guys come up with that name? It's so perfect. And that whole, that meme, which was elect a clown, expect a circus or whatever that thing was, it's kind of like, it worked really well. And now, no, we've never changed the success of the brand. We are where we are now. But I would say, if you look at the House Republican caucus, you look at Ron DeSantis, you look at most... I mean, dude, the circus has gotten more surreal

and it's gotten more, as you said, and post it's like, we are in this weird apocalyptic end times kind of vibe ever since COVID kicked in with all that plus everything else. It's darker. It's like a very, like, it's a dark, it's a dark, pathological, surreal circus, but it's still a circus. Right. And in this surreal circus, one of the things this week, you know, everyone's talking about the debt ceiling and this idea that the Democrats believe that they could tie the debt ceiling to a spending package, a standard spending package. And they believe they could work with Republicans in a bipartisan way, get this debt ceiling raised, which how could you work with this party at this point that at this point are pro COVID sniffing at this point? I don't know what else to describe the GQP. They literally

are pro COVID. And these are the people you want to negotiate with and think they're going to support keeping the government open? You know, I think it's, well, I mean, I do think it's not unfair to call a lot of the Republican party, most of it. It's like a, it's a death cult now, right? I mean, there's like a weird, there's a dark, dark, dark part of the party that is like, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, so, so, so untethered from science and common sense that you can't help, but actually think they are a little bit weirdly pro-COVID in effect, even if not in ostensible purpose. I don't think there's any illusion on any Democrat's part that we're going to be, quote, working with Republicans to get the debt ceiling passed. And I do think that they thought that in measuring McConnell,

who has been throughout this period saying, we're not going to give you any votes. You're going to have to do this yourselves. And I think there was a little bit of a belief, and I don't know, they may turn out to be right, that in the end that McConnell would threaten and threaten and threaten. If you bend down this path before, we raise the debt ceiling every few years, it happens. And there's always this, there has been in the last decade or so, there's always this game of chicken where we're Republicans, not Democrats. Republicans threaten to not do this thing and then eventually capitulate. And I think that there's definitely a feeling among Democrats that in the end, McConnell would capitulate because the economic

consequences of not raising the debt ceiling would be so calamitous and that the effects on the market and the effects on the economy would be so bad that he would be punished by his donors. It's not like an optimistic thing of like McConnell will do the right thing for the country or McConnell cares about. It's not that. It's just like McConnell will always do what is... The only thing they know about Mitch McConnell is always he will operate in the most narrow, most predictable way. His own power is the only thing he cares about. And his power is enhanced by him being majority leader of the United States Senate. And so all of the calculus is always for him are, what is it, does this thing, whatever the thing is, does it increase or decrease the odds of me becoming Senate majority leader again and giving me more power rather than less? And I think

Democrats even now think that McConnell thinks that where the dark money comes from, where the donor class is, where he's going to need to raise this money to retake back the Senate as a caucus, that he would be punished by those donors if he were to let the United States slip off the fiscal clip, so to speak, and lose the full faith and credit of the United States. And there was a giant market crash and a giant economic crash. We'll see what happens. But I don't think it's naivete of like, eventually Mitch McConnell will see the light of day and decide to hold hands and help us. I don't think that's it. I think it's this guy will realize that the consequences for him and for the Republican Party would be so severe that eventually he'll cave and we'll end up going along on purely self-interested grounds.

And I don't know. We'll see. And in your travels with the circus, what are you seeing in the streets? What are you seeing amongst the voters? You know, you went to California recently. You spoke with Gavin Newsom. The California recall seemed to be a rebuke of GQP policies. A lot of voters saying Gavin Newsom didn't go far enough in covid protocols. We want him to do more things. And meanwhile, you see people like DeSantis, people like Governor Abbott, you know, just doubling down on death. Where do you think voters' minds are at at this point? Well, I think first, it was great to be back in my home state.

I'm from LA, so I always like going back home. It was nice to start our first episode of this run, was to get to go back home. And I've known the governor for a long time. And I had always thought that Newsom would be fine in this recall, even before Larry Elder became an issue, even before the tide turned in the way that it did. His main concern was that another Democrat would run. And this was a controversial thing. You guys know, you know, there were a lot of Democrats when it looked close that were like, wait, this is

a problem. Like if, if Newsom, the way that this works, right. As he loses the recall, it then moves to the vote on all these other clowns. And, and so shouldn't we have a Democrat on the, on the ballot that if Newsom loses the recall that that we won't get stuck with Ari Elder, right? And the calculus there was that is true. And yet, if you have a Democratic option, that that will lose focus. The focus has to be on winning the recall. And the best way to keep people focused on winning the recall is to be like, it's a Republican or Gavin Newsom. So that's what the choice has got to be. And if you give them an alternative on the ballot, then people start to go, well, you know, I don't really like Newsom very much. I mean, I'm a Democrat, but I got, I can go vote for Jane Fonda, who was talking about running privately and among a bunch of other people, Beer Grosso, a bunch of people were

talking about getting in and they managed to keep those Democrats off the ballot. I think that's when Newsom was most worried was he remembered, like a lot of people don't, that the reason Gray Davis lost the recall was not because Schwarzenegger was so powerful. That's not why he lost the recall. He lost the recall because Cruz Bustamante, his lieutenant governor, put his name on the ballot. And it took the last couple percentage out that knocked Davis out in the recall, and then it became all Arnold, right? So that was the struggle out there. And they then got handed. They kept all Democrats off, which turned out to be the right strategy. And then they got Larry Elder and it allowed them to do the things they wanted to do. Nationalize the race and say, this is about you really want a Trump governor here in California, which clearly California did not.

And do you want these anti-science policies? And Newsom said to me, actually, he was in the in the cut that aired. He said the thing that most helped it was in the cut that aired, he said the thing that most helped him was what was happening in Florida and Texas. He was able to look and say to voters, look, do you want that? They're going off the COVID cliff. We're one of the best places in the country for handling this pandemic. Make it a referendum on science, and I can win that referendum. And obviously, he did overwhelmingly. Ben, you're right. I think there are people who thought Newsom could have gone much further on COVID. It turns out and still kept his place in office.

I mean, I feel for the guy because, you know, he could face another recall. You know, there's going to be, you know, he's got to raise another $50 million now between now and October or November of next year. And he's going to probably have another recall. People are going to start talking about recalling the guy, you know guy within months of this recall. It's that fucking nuts out there. How dumb is this recall process? It's the fucking dumbest process in the world. It's lunatic. And the notion that it should be recalled, the ability to recall a governor is a good thing. The notion that it should be as easy

as it is to make the ballot issue happen in California is fucking mental. It's madness. And the fact that California Democrats have not changed that process in the state legislature is fucking just a sign of the fact that many California Democrats are lint heads because they should fix this thing. And the answer to your question, the last question, Ben, is I think, you know, whenever anybody asks me, like, what people are saying, I'm always like, well, where? You know, the country is really divided. And it's always been a big, diverse country. But, you know, I know what people in California were saying about the recall. And I know, you know, what people in California broadly, you know, the best over at a big, huge blue state like that.

It's a very different state than a very different discussion than what you hear in Texas or what you hear in Florida, where I think there's some signs that Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis are going to start paying the price for being stupid. It's like the Delta variant has raised the price on stupid and the political price. It's obviously raised the human price on stupid for people who want to not take vaccines, for people who want to continue to act like assholes and wander around and take risks with their lives and other people's. Those people are paying the price in terms of public health, but you're starting to see the polling numbers for those guys weaken in a way that suggests that the political price for stupidity is also starting to go up. And, you know, I would never make a prediction that either one of those

states is going to be, you know, people have been predicting that Texas is going to go blue for, you know, for the last decade. You know, the demographics of the state suggest that it could and that it should be a state that's in play. And if it ever becomes a really a swing state, you know, the whole electoral map gets turned upside down. If Texas becomes a place the Democrats are really competitive in. And, you know, I think I don't I make no predictions, but I think Beto O'Rourke could be a competitive candidate in Texas. There's no doubt about the fact that that governor's race next year is going to be real. And I think that Ron DeSantis is going to have a run also. So they're weakening. The numbers are weakening in a way that's not yet fatal for either one of those guys, but is suggestive of the fact that if this Delta variant

continues to rage for months more, that the political laws of physics have not been repealed completely. And, you know, you kill enough of your own constituents and you're perceived as killing enough of your own constituents. Eventually, the bottom is going to drop out and you're going to become an embattled incumbent. And I think that's where those two governors are headed. Right. And along those lines, and you sort of answered this a little bit there, but do you think what we just saw in California and the response to COVID in California and the way voters perceived it. Do you think this is a broader national indicator or do you think it's a matter of blue states becoming bluer and red states becoming redder? Do you think it's just this

increased polarization across the country? I think it's not. I think it's a little bit neither of those things in the sense that there's definitely the tendency towards polarization, you know, which is really the story of my of my career covering politics the last 30 years is, you know, that polarization is the dominant thing that's happened in these and the great sorting of ideological sorting of the country is for sure a huge thing. It's also the case that, you know, in, in the Sunbelt, where populations are getting more diverse, those states are moving, like what you're seeing really is like all the states that used to be battleground states, right? The upper Midwest states, right? You're seeing how

Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, even though there are some states there that Biden won, many of them in 2020, those states are harder and harder to lift for Democrats as they kind of become increasingly dominated by old white people. And the Sunbelt, the future is Arizona going blue in 2020, is Georgia going blue in 2020. Virginia is now a blue state. North Carolina is a purple state. People think South Carolina is going to eventually be a purple state. It's not quite there yet, but that again, there's just a huge demographic transformation happening there. So California is the future in the sense of the demography of a lot of those Sunbelt states. They are not,

they're getting bigger and they have an influx of some Republicans, but they have a much larger growing non-white population. Does that guarantee democratic victories? It does not. But California always is a harbinger for what diversity does. And what Newsom would tell you is that what happened in California after Pete Wilson and the immigration thing in the 90s is kind of happening on a national level to Republicans, right? It's like the future of national politics looks a lot like what California looked like back then. California's got a bunch of other problems, but that is a harbinger in that sense. I don't think that, and I'll tell you another sense, one last thing about this is I think, you know, I don't think it's like what happens in California stays in California, like that there's no lessons there. I think Democrats would be dumb to look at the way

that the recall unfolded and the messaging that Newsom and the Democrats embraced to win so overwhelmingly, to look at that and say, well, that's blue California. That has no impact outside the state of California. I think that the longer we go into this pandemic and the more people die and the more people see breakthrough infections and see the craziness of the anti-vax crowd and see all that, the more the Democrats can, there will always be a big anti-science contingent in America

and there will always be a bunch of know-nothing idiot moron, like cult of death people. But there's a much larger number of people who are like, I really just don't want to fucking die and I don't want my kids to die, tell me how to keep that from happening. And Democrats who can seize on and make a compelling political argument around the referendum, as Newsom put it, the referendum on science.

I think there's a big lesson there for Democrats going forward. And I think that there are a lot of Democrats paying attention to what happened in California are going to try to replicate some elements of that tailored to their individual states and demographies and political circumstances. What do you think the Republican play is here? I mean, it seems like increasingly they're playing to a base that is getting maybe more passionate, but is getting smaller and smaller and smaller as the weeks and months go on. I see how that helps raising money. I see how that helps with getting retweets. I don't see how that helps to win statewide and national elections. What is their plan here? I think their play is to corrupt democracy and turn the country into a lawless place and try to like, you know, I mean, they're

running the play. It's like, you know, they look at the sorting thing we talked about, which is geographic. They look at the way in which there's this structural tilt towards parts of the country that are not as populated as other parts of the country that have outsized political party because of power, because of the way that our system works. And they look and say, in the states where we can be dominant and where we have grown in dominance in terms of state legislative control, if we can gerrymander, if we can redistrict, if we can change voting rights laws, if we can restrict the number of non-white people who vote on the front end, and then we can gerrymander, if we can redistrict, if we can change voting rights laws, if we can if we can restrict the number of nonwhite people who vote on the front end and then we can seize control of how the votes are counted on the back end, we can subvert the democratic process. And I mean, I think the party has fundamentally become authoritarian.

And I think they're they don't give a flying fuck about about the about about democratic norms or about about their attitude is that the laws are here to be changed in, in, in accord with what serves their political interests and their power. And so I think their play is, you know, we are more ruthless and more willing to do whatever it takes to win than Democrats who care about democracy traditionally have been. And, and I think they're, that's, that's the, the playbook here is, you know, not, Hey, how do we compete on a level playing field with Democrats? Their playing field is how do we tilt the playing field so we can win even though our message is not broadly popular and our appeal is increasingly narrow to the slice of the voting population that votes.

So they're going to try to rig the game. I mean, we're watching it happen everywhere. It's like, there's not paranoia. It's like, that's what's happening in state after state. Like it's right there in front of your face. It's like not a it's not like some liberal left wing paranoid conspiracy theory. It's like, you know, take a look at these fucking voting rights bills. And they're you know, there's no other way to read them. in my opinion of our democracy is at risk and we have one party who's attacking it. And, you know, we have the, we're basically relying on the Democrats to try to save us from it. Do you think they're doing enough at this point? I mean, everybody is, what more could they be doing? Well, I mean, I think a lot of things, but you know, the first, the first, the first, the first thing I would say is if you believe that the country, that we are in a generational fight to save the country and to save democracy in America, which I do, and Joe Biden and people around Joe Biden say they do, you would have given more than one big speech about

voting rights over the course of your first eight months in office. And you would have said, this is more important than anything else. I mean, there's a lot of things Biden's trying to do that are important. And I don't want to diminish the importance of COVID relief or of infrastructure or of health care or of climate. All of those things are really important. And I don't begrudge, I'm not like criticizing those guys for being serious about those things they're trying to get done. But, you know, if the democracy crumbles, none of it matters. People say, well, we have the filibuster. We have all these problems. Republicans won't play along. It's like, yes, that's correct. All those things are true. There are a lot of things. It's really hard. It's not easy. But I can tell you that

you're not going to be able to pass the John Lewis voting rights bill or try to keep Republicans from being able to subvert the Constitution and the democratic process if you don't make it front and center and be like, we're going to talk about this every fucking day. This is going to be the most important thing we do. I mean, Biden gave one big, very good speech, one, in eight months. And Democrats on Capitol Hill have talked about how important this is, but it's not been like the way that passing Obamacare was for Obama's administration, where that was the thing we're doing for a year. This is the most important thing. Everything else is important. We'll do other things. We can talk and walk and chew gum

at the same time, but this is the main thing we're doing. That's not been the main thing that the Biden administration or Democrats in Congress have been doing for the last nine months. And again, trust me, I get it. We're in the middle of a pandemic. There are other important things. I'm not saying those aren't important, but if the democracy goes away, who gives a fuck? I mean, it's like, there's nothing more central than to my mind than because I believe, I truly believe like, you know, in the midterm elections in 2022 and the presidential election in 2024, we all said 2020 was the most important election of our lifetime. And it was because getting Trump out of office, a aspiring dictatorial authoritarian, you know, was was existential, super important. But it now turns out that it didn't go away and that the party has become completely co-opted by that set of

issues and themes. And so 2022 and 2024 are now the most important elections of our lifetime. And on the backside of those, we could either be in a place that we all still want to live or not. I've never been in my life the kind of person, I used to mock people who would say, if Bob Dole wins the presidency, I'm going to move to Canada. Or if George W. Bush wins the presidency, I'm going to move to Paris. Or if John McCain wins the presidency, I'm going to leave the country. I'd be like, fuck you. You're not going anywhere. America's the best fucking country in the world.

You're not going to go anywhere. Like you're not, you're going to fucking stay here and try to make it better and fight the fight or Mitt Romney. Same thing. It's not like that anymore. It's like there's a world that I can see that's there that a few years from now, if things go bad, where I'm like, I have to leave the country. That's not a crazy thing because the Republican Party has gone that far and it's that extreme and is that fundamentally anti-American that it's like, yeah, that's what we're playing for now. And if those are the stakes of the game, you got to fucking get serious about winning it. I find one of my indicators was every day during the Trump administration, especially in those final years, I would wake up with just this anxiety.

And especially in California, I'd wake up to the crazy tweets and everything. And I'd be like, what the fuck is happening today? And I'm starting to feel the same way now waking up to the news, which I think is a frightening indicator of what's happening here. But how do we deal with these Democrats in Manchin and Sinema who are so set on adhering to this archaic filibuster rule that they won't save democracy itself? How does President Biden deal with that? How do other members in the Senate deal with that?

What do we do? I mean, this is the place where I'm going to sort of beg off because I'm not in the political strategy game. I said before, I'm a journalist, right? So I try to call it like I see it. And I'm not really, I mean, it's not my, I don't mean it's not my place, but I don't mean to, I'm not like, I hate when pundits pretend to be political consultants and strategists who are like, I'm going to tell the president how to do this, right? I can tell you right now on the basis of what I see that the scale of the effort to try to address the thing we were just talking about is not sufficient to the size of the

challenge, right? That's the fact I can observe. It's not really my job to tell Joe Biden how to do it. And I would say to progressives who get mad at Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, you know, again, who I disagree with on a lot of things as a person, as a voter. Like I, you know, they're not my brand of vodka, right?

But like, I'll tell you, if you spend a little time in West Virginia, you'll discover rather quickly that like, if you're not Joe Manchin, you're going to have a Republican. And Joe Manchin is not my brand of vodka in terms of my personal policy preferences. But I think if you're a Democrat who really thinks that, like, a progressive Democrat could win a Senate seat in West Virginia, you're out of your fucking mind. And that there's no difference between Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell, you you're out of your fucking mind. And that there's no difference between Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell, you're also out of your fucking mind. Understand it's a

big, complicated country. And there are things that Democrats in different parts of this country have to do to stay in office because they would not win if Joe Manchin became AOC. He would very quickly have to get 36% of the vote and he'd be out of office tomorrow. And if you think it would be just as good to have a Republican from West Virginia, I don't think you're living in a world that I understand because Joe Manchin has a ton of flaws, but he is not Lindsey Graham. He's not Ted Cruz. He's not. And so I have some sympathy for those people who are trying to work the politics. Now, you can have a reasonable discussion about whether there are things that they, are they, sometimes do they bask too much in the limelight? Are they narcissistic? Do they really get it exactly right? What could they go a little further? Those are all reasonable discussions, but don't be confused that like Joe Manchin could be voting or advocating the way that that that, you know, totally that that that that Cory Booker does. It's why cinema has always been more the enigma to me, because, I mean, Mark Kelly won that race just fine.

And she even ran on a more progressive platform than she's even adhering to now. So that's the one that really confuses me more than anything. That shift is and then I guess you got to follow the money on it. I really don't know what's behind it at the end of the day, but something's going on there. I don't have the answer to that. I agree. A hundred percent agree that she's more, she's a more confusing character than Manchin. Manchin's politics are much easier to read. She's from a much more diverse and much more, not a blue state exactly, but a state where there's a lot wider latitude to be a little more progressive than she is. And then John, going back to our earlier conversation around the circus, I really liked your metaphor about clowns. Who's the biggest clown in the Republican party?

Some very large class of characters to choose from. Who's coming to your mind? I'm picking on the clown car right now, just packed with them. It's hard to surpass Ted Cruz. It's hard to surpass. I mean, again, in the category of people who are, I actually think I have a pretty good read on Lindsey Graham, but he's pretty bad. I mean, Cruz is probably, I mean, there's something about the, I find, you know, to go back to our thing about, the thing we were discussing, I can't remember, we were on air or off air about no bullshit and the power of being anti-bullshit, right? Is that the ones that make me craziest, and I don't know if it qualifies as clown or the ones who enrage me the most are the most flagrant hypocrites. And so in the Republican Party, the Harvard and Princeton educated Ted Cruz with his know-nothing attempts at fake populism.

It's these guys who have their fancy pants educations and they're perfectly intelligent. They know better who then do these things that are wildly both stupid, pernicious, divorced from reality, anti-science, anti-reality, and they're craving this. If you think about, I just can't think of a thing I've seen that's more appalling at the pure human level than being a guy being ted cruz and having a political candidate talk about my wife or his wife in the way that take the way that donald trump did about heidi cruz and then to see his slavish devotion to trump after that it just i'm

like like i mean how can you sleep at night like Like having, you know, be like sucking up to the guy who trashed your wife that way, who accused your father of having been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It's like, it's so comical. Like if I wrote it in a Hollywood script, people would like laugh me out of the building. Like nobody could be that craven. No one could be that repulsive. And then if you, then you look at the guy and it's like the combination is just like, I don't know, I guess he's at the top of my, he's top of my list, but there's a long list.

Obviously kind of, kind of in the similar vein, anyone from the GQP disappoint you the most, like I'm sure with all the work that you're doing with the circus and the recount behind closed doors, like you're probably talking to some of these people and they're quasi normal, but then the next time they're on Fox Trump from where, sorry,, from what? Oh, sorry, the GQP. We refer to the GOP as the GQP because they're QAnon full-on dive. So who from the GQP has really

disappointed you the most? Behind closed doors, I'm sure. You just make up your own language. I know. The GQP, I i'm like what the fuck is he talking about like guys have like some kind of like kind of like kind of weird mental defect there i don't know what he's doing what's going on with jordy he's talking he's missing he's saying the wrong letters this show has just gone totally off the rails everybody this is it's okay it's all right it's all right um who's an example of something like that? You know, I mean, I think about like,

I mean, if you think about all of the, you know, it's the, so I think about like, it's the Jeff Flakes and the, and the Ben Sasses of the world, right. Who will go on the Senate floor and give these speeches about, you know, the importance of democratic institutions, the importance of democratic norms who like, like who are perfectly to, when it cost them nothing to, because you know, I mean, first of all, all of them, like there's none of them that who don't know Trump was nuts. All of them knew Trump was nuts. All of them, every one of them knew he was nuts and every one of them knew it was dangerous. And every one of them know, I mean, they all know all of them. So it's like, if you're asking, like, is there a distance between what these people say in private and what they see in public?

They all are. They're not a single one of them who's not fully on board with the Trump is an idiot. Trump was a lunatic. Trump was dangerous. Trump was bad in private and then in public. Be like, oh, Trump is the best. Trump is the best. Right.

So there's that. And then there's these ones that the senators, people like that, like Sass and Flake are good examples of people who gave, who would occasionally, when there was no political cost whatsoever to it, would go on the Senate floor and give some speech that was like, that would be critical of Trump or in favor of, you know, singing the praises of Jeffersonian democracy and how the importance of our institutions and And they would even sometimes criticize Trump in some setting where there was nothing actually at stake. And then they would vote for his agenda.

And then they wouldn't vote to convict him in an impeachment trial. Or they'd stick with him when the chips were down and they really had to put something on the line that would have actually cost them, that they knew, OK, if you cast this vote or do this thing, you're going to get primaried. And you know what? Who fucking cares? It's a job. It's a job like this whole idea. And I've said it myself. And I sometimes when I kick myself, I'm like, you know, political, you know, what, why do they act this way? Cause they're afraid, you know, and they are afraid, right. They're, they're afraid that if they cross Trump, that there'll be primaried and they'll lose their seat. And then you think about it for a second and go, well, who fucking cares? If you got primaried and lost your seat, what would happen? You go and work for some law firm, you'd be a lobbyist, you get paid more money than you currently get paid, or you're not going to be able to live in the street, like a homeless person. You'd lose your job. You'd lose your job in the Congress and get a better

job and get a job where you get paid, where you get paid more and are, and people would think better of you. And you would be more, you're able to sleep at night without having to take massive quantities of, of, of, of antidepressants and sleeping pills in order to just quiet your, your raging conscience. You're like conscience, what must burn inside some of these people, which is like the, my God, you sold your soul to the devil, motherfucker. And of course, they're all up at night, probably some of them, the ones that have a conscience are like up at night kind of going, I can't believe what I'm doing. It's like, dude, you could have peace of mind. You could have more money. You could spend more time with your family. You could

actually have normal people think you're a good person. All of that could be yours if you lost this primary. How is that a bad thing? So what's the courage involved here? The worst thing that could happen, the worst thing that could happen to me is I could lose my Republican primary in Nebraska. And then I would be making more money and spending more time at home and have way more people who would think that I was like, like I'd acted on principle. I don't know. It's I, so yes. Do I find that frustrating? Like, like people who know better, you know, somehow decide that like are such careerists and have such a limited imagination that they think that the worst thing that could happen to them would be to speak the truth and lose in a primary. Like that's the word that's the, like their job, their idea of what

hell is. It's like, come on, man, like, you know, grow a pair. And John, finally, you having fun with the recount? You know, one of the things that I think was a big issue during the Trump administration, I don't think the media met the moment and in fact are to blame for a lot of the moment in the way the coverage was of Trump. What I like is that you were like, fuck it. I'm creating my own thing. You know, we're going to be, we're going to do it our way. We're going to get out pro-democracy messaging. And you started from the ground up to build this thing. So what's that experience been like? And maybe just talk to our listeners about the recount and where it's going.

Yeah, it's been, thanks for asking. It's been great. You know, I, um, you know, we started the company in, in, you know, in the spring of 2019. So we're like two and a half years old now. And, um, you know, the thought about it was at the outset was mostly like about that. There was this big change happening in how people watch news, right. Where, you know, the world of television went from the world of scarcity, the broadcast thing where we had three networks and then four big networks, and that was how you watch TV. And then we had the 500 channel universe of cable, right? Where, you know, the ESPN got born and CNN got born and Nickelodeon and all these kind of like channels that would cater to people's interests in a certain thing. Now, you know, you guys know what's happening is, you know, the, the world we're moving to this nonlinear world where it's mobile and social. And people are like, you know, especially on the younger side, people are like,

they don't watch cable TV anymore. They, they, it's over the top and it's on demand and no one cares about the schedule and people live this much more complicated lives, right? Where you're, you're assembling, and I'm not sure all of this is good or bad. I'm just describing it right. Where people assemble their, their, how they understand the world through their, their, through this device, which is like, you know, the, the thing that people were people now, this is like the television, new television is this, is this phone. That's not a original concept, but you know, hundreds of millions and hundreds of millions of minutes of video now watch on these phones. That was not the case even five years ago. Now it's like, that's how people like learn about shit. So we were like, if, if people don't in the same way

that like, that, that in that world of, of scarcity in that world that gave birth to broadcast television, there were certain, like the evening news was the right instantiation of that. It's like, that's, you know, everyone would gather on the TV, watch at six o'clock or six 30 cable news created a different, a different structure. The platform was different. And so people consumed it in a different way. Now we see that the way that people consume news and learn about the world and relate to politics is radically different now, but no one's really figured out how to make news for that environment. Like what would be a news product in video, not in text, but in video that would be like where social and streaming kind of come together and where people are assembling their knowledge about the world and watching video on the fly, on the move, it's much shorter form,

not sitting down and watching an hour or three hours or seven hours of television, you know, or like, or with cable, which is mostly like, I got it here. I'm a CBC. I work there. It's on, it's like wallpaper, right? Like it's on all the time. That's not how kids stay watching. Nobody watches like that anymore. Right? So we were like, how can we invent a new news for that new world? Like that was what we wanted to do. And then there was the question of what it was going to be. And from the outset, I'm a political guy. I have a lot of other interests besides politics, but we could see it was the early 2019. We knew 2020 election was going to be a big deal. And politics has become a category that's as big as sports. You guys have seen this in the growth

of your stuff. It's used to be politics was like Wall Street, where it was a big important part of the American economy, but people didn't really think about Wall Street except when there was a market crash. And people didn't really think about politics except on election day or for the last couple of months before an election. Now it's like people talk part of the Trump effect. People think about politics, talk about politics all day long. And so we thought, well, we'll start with politics and try to make something new in video. And once we get good at that, we'll think about other places where power lives. So the company now is,

we're moving from having been primarily a social driven company that was about doing politics in short form video, really mostly for social media, primarily Twitter, to being a company that's doing all the places where power comes, where power lives. So that's Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Hollywood and the Fortune 500. And if it's business, culture, tech, finance, science, if there's a place where we can hold power to account, we're going to go

hold power to account. And we're going to try to do it in this modern way of how we consume video, where social and streaming are really the place where people consume news now. And that's the kind of vision for the company. And it's been awesome to your question, man. It's like, I have worked at The Economist Magazine, New York Magazine, The New Yorker Magazine, Wired Magazine, Wired was the real upstart in there, but some like big established magazine brands. I work at NBC and MSNBC. I work for Showtime. They're all great. And it's great to work at places that have like brand identity and people like there's resources and people like make good shit and you have great collaborators. I love that. I love it. But there's nothing like

starting from the ground up and being like, we have a blank canvas here. We're going to raise a little money. We're going to bring 15 people together into a room and be like, we know what the fuck we want. Like, come here and sit in the room. We first six months of the company, we had a dozen kids and we sat down and said, well, how do we want to do that? Like, what do I do here? Like, you know, we can do anything and we're not going to put anything out for the first six months. We're not even going to show anything to anybody, anything we're making. We're going to spend six months like in a skunk works and try to figure out a new way to use the existing video in the world and create kind of like a hip hop sampled curated experience of

like, that's the way we want to think about how to make stuff live in the world of fair use. There's, you know, there's a lot of video out there, reassemble, reconfigure, make statements by recontextualizing and through editing and producing more than building a news gathering organization, sending out correspondence and stuff. That's how we started. And now we're 50 some odd people now and we're growing again. We made it through the pandemic, which was a tough thing, but we're on the rise and we're hiring people and we have a lot of ambitious plans. And to see the thing grow from 12 people in a room with a computer and a television and be

like, okay, what do we want to make? We'll be creative and try anything. We're not a big company, but we didn't have to lay anybody off during the pandemic. We managed to make it through, made through intact and we raised some money this spring that gives us the ability to go and take a bigger swing in the next year. So everyone check out therecon.com and see us on Twitter and see us on Instagram and a bunch of other places. And I think we've taken to heart the notion of we want to try to make something that feels modern.

We want to hold power to account and we want to be always every day, totally no bullshit and anti-bullshit simultaneously. And that's been the ethos of the company from day one and it continues to be our ethos. And I think to the extent, we did a billion, 300 million video views on Twitter in 2020, which is a very large number that I can't really quite imagine that we did that. So it's worked to some extent now, but we have a lot of green fields to go graze in and a lot of worlds to conquer that we're going to try to go get in the next year or so. So it's going to be fun. And it's been exciting to watch everybody listening. Go check out the recount. Midas Touch, me and my brothers

are big fans, big supporters of all the work the recount is doing. I'm sure the Midas Mighty who are listening know that we always try to repost videos where we see them. We love what you're doing over there, John. John, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. We really appreciate it. John Heilman, thank you. Thank you again. Who's that guy on that bookcase behind you?

What's that? There's a dude hanging off the edge there. What is that? That guy right there? Yeah, that guy. He's like a pumpkin guy. He's a pumpkin guy. Yeah, he's like a heavy pumpkin guy for there's a lawyer in the

downtown courts that looks just like that man when I go to the courthouse and he's got like these and he goes from courthouse to courthouse. He's an appearance attorney. So when I saw that at a Target or whatever I was, I just said that reminds me of that lawyer. And what does that t-shirt say? I'm Ben what?

The t-shirt on you. I'm Ben doing Ben things. I'm Ben doing Ben things. Jordy, what do you got on there? I got on favorite son. I just visited my parents. And so they gave me this shirt because I went home. Is he actually the favorite son? Well, I got my shirt back there too. Oh, there's a bunch of favorite sons.

Mine hasn't arrived, but let's not talk about that. But I'm like, well, Brett's the middle. Brett's the middle child so brett's brett's like brett's like i'm not gonna show you what's on my i'm wearing midas touch merch shout out to the midas mighty uh we gotta get johnson.midastouch.com and john we'll have to send you our merch and everybody make sure you are following the recount make sure you go to the recount.com and make sure to watch the new season of the circus uh second part of the sixth season premiered this past Sunday, and it is really one of the best shows on TV.

Brett, are you trying to kick Heilman out? What are you doing, man? We're hanging out. I'm trying to give Heilman the love of this. I'm trying to give Heilman the love of this show. People got to know to watch The Circus, the best show on TV, everybody. I appreciate all those shout-outs, but I was the only child, so I've never had siblings. I appreciate all those shout outs, but I like, you know, I've never, I was the only

child, so I've never had siblings and like, I'm feeling like a little, like a little, like a Masal's brother here. I'm feeling like I'm like, let's go brother Heilman or uncle Heilman. Yeah. Uncle Heilman, man. Just don't call me grandpa. I like the fact that you guys have this fucking, Hey, I like the

Midas mighty is a great thing. Number one and number two, like, I like that you guys have rolled on the merch thing that's a very like that's like a for most like people in pot who do anything right away like political media it's like the last people think people think of it's if you guys are showing your hollywood you know your hollywood juju there it's like you know yeah of course we're in the merch business guys look at all these fucking t-shirts like fucking great as jordy would, that's the best way to bring down the GQP, Heilman. Thanks, John, for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Everybody check out the recap. Thanks, guys. Great to be with you. We'll be right back after these messages. When you're a forward thinker, the only thing you're afraid of is business as usual. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people and money today so you can transform tomorrow. Workday, moving business forever forward.

Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. So great having Heilman on the show. Jordy, GQP was one of the funniest moments. You know what? We were saying it the whole interview. I don't know. There's something that you guys give off. Let's pick on Jordy vibes, I think.

And so John took that as his moment. I'm going to tease the youngest brother a little bit. Yeah, we didn't even cue Heilman into the teaser. He just decided to, he picked up that energy from you i think that was very funny that the gqp because we say it's so we say it so naturally on our end that it's just become a part of our vernacular but i guess to some people they're like what the you're talking about what are you just saying letters you're just saying words jordy the way you delivered it though is, is priceless, too. I love the explanation, too. You know, because of QAnon and the Republican Party.

So you take the G. So good, Jordy. Let's talk about this issue over raising the debt ceiling, which the Democrats allowed to happen three times under the Trump administration. You know, the idea of having a debt ceiling traces its roots back to the early parts of the 20th century. And there's just this idea of you want to control the debt that the country incurs. You want to control the amount of treasury bonds being issued. Sounds reasonable. You want to make sure

that you're able to pay for things that you've promised in the past by basically raising. I think the best way to think about raising the debt ceiling is kind of like raising the limits on a credit card so that you could kind of pay back like past people or past companies or past things that you owe money to. And so in the past, you'd go, okay, let's raise that so we can kind of pay back people who we owe money so things can basically function. I think that's a very basic way to think about raising the debt ceiling because you need a functioning government, because if you're unable to pay back past debts, it's kind of like you could go into default the same way if you don't pay back your own past debts, you go into default. So that's really what the discussion

is about. I mean, it's obviously a little more complicated than that, but it's about paying back past debts. And here, these are debts that Trump incurred. These are debts that the Republicans who are- How is that possible, Ben? Trump promised to eliminate the debt in his first year of office. I just don't understand. How much debt did he run up? He promised to eliminate it.

Trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. Like $7.8 trillion worth of debt. So following your credit card analogy, Donald Trump put on $7.8 trillion of debt to America's credit card. And now that the bill is due, you have people like Mitch McConnell and the entire Republican Party going, oh, the Democrats, take this on your own. You got this. You got it. You figure it out. You guys got this. Figure it out. But it's even more devious than that because they're not just saying, Democrats, you do this on their own. They're saying, okay, you try to do this on your

own, even though we're saying, oh yeah, it's all you, it's all you, it's all you. We're going to filibuster it and fuck you. We're not only going to tell you to do it on your own, we're going to block you when you try to do it on your own and then go, ha, you failed. Like it's the most cynical thing of politics. And like you said, Ben, this was raised three times under Trump. And the one time in as far back as I can remember, and I think as far back as American history is concerned, since we've had the debt limit that we've actually not increased the debt limit and that our credit has actually been downgraded was in 2011 under Barack Obama when the Republicans pulled the same stunt. So, you know, John Heilman was talking

about this game of chicken that the Democrats and Republicans are playing. Well, I wouldn't be so sure here that Mitch is going to back away from this game of chicken. He will happily take out the entire United States economy and in effect the global economy in order to try to score some short-term political points that he thinks he'll get from this race? So the Democrats are confronted with this issue. We need to raise the debt ceiling. And how do we do that? And so there is a thought, well, can we put that in a reconciliation bill that's part of this overall $3.5 trillion in spending? Do we put it in there? And the reality is that the Democrats say to themselves, this is something that should be done on a bipartisan basis because we did this during the Trump administration. In the past,

other political parties reached compromise because would the other party really want to destroy the United States of America? And I think it takes a long time to go through a reconciliation process and for something like this to be treated as reconciliation. So there's a time concern also about why you don't include it in a reconciliation bill. And then I think the Democrats also, from a political perspective, just didn't want to tie raising the debt ceiling, which deals with past, on this idea of the current spending bill, which deals with future because this 10-year spending bill in the future kind of pays for itself with the way there's going to be additional taxes in the future on the super wealthy and in other areas. And it kind of gives the appearance that the future spending is going to incur a lot of

debt if you attach a debt ceiling to that bill. So I know I'm playing a little inside baseball, but I'm giving you some of the rationale about why they maybe didn't include it in the reconciliation bill. So then the question becomes, well, let's attach the debt ceiling raised to a basic government spending bill, just a regular one and regular kind of course. You might say the term CR, which stands for continuing resolution. To run the government and to operate the government. And there, it would not be through a reconciliation. And basically, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, I think in a way that we probably all could

have predicted, and I think the Democrats should have been able to predict it. They're like, no, fuck it. We don't care. We'll destroy this country. And at the end of the day, should we be surprised? These are the people who literally are cool with 700,000 Americans dying. Don't give a shit. You think they give a fuck about America's credit? They don't give a shit about that. What they have their minds bent on is these authoritarian aims and designs. And that's all they care about. Even if America

fucking suffers like no other, that's what's at stake. That's what the GQP want. And let's talk about what suffering means. If the debt ceiling is not increased, it will likely lead to a new recession. It will erase up to 6 million jobs, experts say, and it could cause unemployment to spike as high as 9%. And so what the Republicans are hoping here is that, oh, if that does happen, they get to blame President Biden and the Democrats. Play that clip, Brad, of Mitch McConnell that the Democrats put out where he talked about raising the debt ceiling under Trump and then what his current view is.

It's kind of like back then and now. So you are expecting then to raise the debt ceiling once again of course we will never we will never have america default but we raised the death center because america can't default i mean that would be a disaster republicans are united in opposition to raising the debt ceiling doesn't that just say it perfectly brett i mean that's how do you get more hypocritical than that that? Oh, we could never, we would never allow the debt ceiling to expire. First of all, you fucking did it already. Like before that happened, you had done it already under a Democratic president.

We would never do that to the American economy. You've done it before. So for those listening, that was in 2019. Yeah, that was 2019 under Trump. He said, of course, we would never let the debt limit expire. We would never, we would always raise the debt ceiling. We would never do that. We would never, never. We would always raise the debt ceiling. We would never do that. We would never do that.

Is that your Mitch McConnell? Ben's just like Mr. Impression today from starting with me to Mitch McConnell. Who's got it with a little bread on the radio? Calling it back and I didn't want to say it because I didn't want to psych you out before the Heilman interview, but you definitely do that radio voice. But your analogy is right, though. Why? Like, why would they care? Why would the Republicans care about the debt when they don't care about your life,

when they don't care about the lives of their constituents? Why the fuck are they going to care about the dollars and rates? It's so pathetic. What we need now is we need Mitch McConnell to come around. And I don't see that happening. I mean, do you guys see that happening? I don't necessarily see that happening at this current point. Or the Democrats need to all get on the same page, and they need to be able to pull these various factions together from the quote-unquote progressive wing to the quote-unquote moderate wing of the party and get people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to say that they would get rid of the filibuster in order to save the credit of the United States of America. And so I heard Pelosi speak earlier today, Pelosi and Schumer. They seemed pretty confident that they'll be able to get together a mutually agreed upon move forward. I think this is an

ongoing situation, ongoing negotiations across all these various bills, all these various plates that Democrats are spinning, whether it's the Build Back Better bill, the standard bipartisan infrastructure bill, the continuing resolution, the debt ceiling, all this is at play right now. All this is in negotiations. And we'll just have to see. We'll have to monitor and see. But it's pretty clear to me that Pelosi and Schumer and Biden know the stakes of this and that they're going to do everything that they can to keep the government going because it could be catastrophic if they let Mitch McConnell win this one. So we will have more to you about this as we find it out. He's funny. You said steaks and we're talking about our other sponsors and making me a little bit hungry right now. I want to talk about Wild Alaskan Company.

Good transition. It's not only is a great transition, it's great food. We all know we should be eating more fish to get our omega-3s and protein, but the seafood counter can be intimidating. Which fish tastes the best? What type of cut? Can you really be sure about the quality? Wild Alaskan Company takes the guesswork out of buying wild caught seafood. Wild Alaskan Company delivers high quality, sustainably sourced, wild cut seafood right to your door. Choose from salmon, cod, halibut, and more, or a combination of them. And every month, there are different specials to explore. You can adjust, pause, or cancel your membership

anytime, and they offer 100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. I made fish tacos this past week with the Wild Alaskan Company membership. I look like a superstar with my girlfriend. I made an incredible dish last night. I did halibut and I did it with like breadcrumbs and lemon. And it was absolutely incredible with some string beans on the side and had like a gourmet meal made from this. And the fish was so good tasting. And I have so much more because a lot of

a lot of fish comes in these boxes that you order and i'm personally a white fish guy so i told them that i wanted uh you know a box of white fish and boy do i have plenty of that and uh the halibut like really i love halibut this was incredibly good and uh highly recommend wild alaskan company right now you can get 1515 off. That's $15 off your first box of premium seafood when you visit wildalaskancompany.com slash Midas. That's wildalaskan, A-L-A-S-K-A-N, company.com slash Midas for $15 off your first box. That's wildalaskancompany.com slash Midas. Make sure to use our address, that URL, to let them know that we sent you.

That what? That URL. I wish that could stay in the pod. No, that's got to stay in the pod. What do you call it? URL? I call it an URL. A URL? A pot. No, that's got to stay in the pot. How do you, what do you call it? URL? I call it an URL. A URL?

A URL. Oh my gosh. Oh my God. You don't call it a URL? Nobody calls it a URL. Brad, please finish the ad read. Okay. It's a URL, everybody.

I just like, every time I see this, it's wildalaskancompany.com slash Midas. Let's get that straight. M-E-I-D-A-S. And make sure to use our URL to let them know that we sent you. I just, every time I do, every time we do these reads, I'm like, all right, do the Midas Touch podcast listeners get like the best deals on the planet? I don't even know how, like, how are they making money? $15 off. Thank you so much, Wild Alaska Company, for sponsoring this episode. And did you see, just to talk about some GQ peers right now, to also see what's at

stake, I think everybody's seen right now that Marjorie Taylor Greene despicable video where she's got her assault rifle and she's shooting at a car that says, I don't even know if that, she had like a bazooka. I don't even know what type of weapon that she had there. It looked like a weapon of war, where it blows up a car that says socialism. Just the level of performative bullshit there is so silly. Midas did a great video that basically showed Marjorie Taylor Greene what she really was destroying in the cars that blew up were free education, better health and access to health care, focusing on climate change and making sure living. And that's what these people are against. And so you kind of go all over the spectrum.

You've got these like just wacky, wild GQ peers like Marjorie Taylor Greene. You've got your Lauren Bobberts who Lauren Bobberts going to lose her seat in the next election. Colorado was redistricted. I did an interview recently, though, and I said, part of me, though, wishes that it wasn't redistricted or that it wasn't going to be redistricted because in a bipartisan committee did the redistricting in Colorado because I think she would have lost anyway. She's detested there. People are embarrassed by her, her constituents. All the interviews we always see, people are incredibly embarrassed by her.

Meanwhile, she's using her campaign as if it's like a personal slush fund. And she was busted for this. Forbes reporting. Yeah, Forbes reporting, right, Brett, that Bobbert admitted in FEC documents the improperly paying rent and utilities with their campaign funds. Yeah, just taking her campaign funds, spending it on her own rent, her own utilities. Well, look, she knows the writing's on the wall. That's why she's doing this. She knows she's about to get pushed. She's trying to abuse the power of her seat. This comes after she logged 38,712 miles for reimbursement. That's $22,000 worth of reimbursement that she got back. And let me just explain to you how long 38,702 miles is. And this is what she claimed she drove

in a three month period. It's a longer difference than the entire circumference of the earth. And so she claimed that's how much she drove in the first three months of her time in office. I mean, she's a scam artist. She's a fraud. And now it's catching up to her, the FEC, that says that they are likely to take punitive action against her. And we will see what that action is. Once again, I'm going to say the same thing to the FEC that I said to the Democrats earlier on. Do not try. Do. Do take punitive action. Do not consider punitive action. Take punitive action. Stop letting people get away with the bullshit or they will keep on doing it. Finally, Susan Collins, what a sham. We warned people about

that election. One of my biggest disappointments in 2020 was Susan Collins winning because I thought there was a real good shot for Democrats out there in Maine. I thought that Susan Collins really represented this real hypocritical, tries to pretend to be reasonable and moderate, but at the end of the day just sits there and enables Trumpism and in many ways is equally as complicit as the Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think she's worse, honestly. To me, she's just as radical, by the way. She's just as radical to me as Marjorie Taylor Greene, as Lauren Boebert. She just hides it fine. Kind of like what Heilman said, huh? When Heilman was like, people like that disappoint

me the most like yeah 100 and she hurt one of her whole things was even when she you know pushed brett kavanaugh through and everything she said roe versus wade is a precedent this this will never be overturned this will never happen and now we're seeing the process of the destruction of roe versus wade play out right in front of our eyes and susan collins suddenly not so concerned she seemed she was often very concerned in the past as you remember suddenly susan collins not very concerned about what's going on and there are bills that are being put forward by democrats to protect roe versus wade to codify roe versus wade into law in order to protect the rights of

childbearing persons. Yet you have now Susan Collins saying that she wouldn't support that legislation. And why? She could give whatever excuse she wants, but it comes down to what we were saying. She's a fraud. She doesn't believe any of the things that she said. And if you go along with what she says and not her actions, then you too are complicit in this. And that's why I think she's not only just as bad as the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Lauren Boebert's, she is in fact worse. I agree in this. And that's why I think she's not only just as bad as the Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boebert's. She is, in fact, worse.

I agree with you. And you think about it. It's like we talked about like the Joe Manchins. We've talked about, you know, I mean, like he's not even facing an election anytime soon. I mean, she's not facing an election time soon. So her next election, she's 68 years old. Her next election will she's 68 years old. Her next election will be in 2026.

If you look at polling in Maine, they are obviously supporters of the right to choose. And here you have though a representative there, representative in the Senate that doesn't have to run for reelection, allowing and enabling the Texas law to take place. Enablers are just as complicit in many cases as those extremists who enacted in the first place. And so that's what's disappointing. What's not disappointing is when Susan Collins looks at Trump leading an insurrection and says, that's disappointing. What's not disappointing is when Susan Collins looks at Trump leading an insurrection and says, that's disappointing. What really has been the biggest disappointment

is Susan Collins. I want to thank everybody for listening to the Midas Touch podcast today. Great episode. Special thanks to our sponsors, the Wild Alaskan Company and Magic Spoon. And of course, special thanks to our guest, John Heilman, executive editor at The Recount and host of The Circus on Showtime. Check out The Circus. Make sure you say what's up to our sponsors. Make sure you give this podcast five stars. It helps our ratings. It helps us stay on the top of the podcast charts. Give it five stars. Give it a nice review. Check out our other podcasts, Kremlin File, Legal AF, Zoomed In, Mea Culpa. We're working on a few more. We're excited to announce those. Just you wait. Just you wait. Over the coming weeks, check out the Midas Touch merch. Check out store.midastouch.com to check out all

the new Midas Touch merch. And maybe you learned a new word on this Midas Touch podcast, an URL, a U-R-L-R-N, URL. Thank you so much, Midas Mighty. We appreciate your support as always. Keep fighting for democracy. We'll see you next time on Ben. You got Brett, you got Jordy. Jordy, take us out. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.