The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump attacks Special Counsel, GOP goes full fascist, MAGA meltdown in Arizona + MORE (AZ Sec. of State-elect Adrian Fontes)

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we sit down with Arizona Secretary of State-Elect, Adrian Fontes! During our conversation, we discuss why pro-democracy values prevailed over extremist... MAGA rhetoric during the midterm elections and how Fontes soundly defeated one of the most notorious election deniers in the nation. In this episode, we also discuss President Biden’s impromptu photo with supporters and the utterly insane reaction from right-wing publications, Donald Trump’s dinner with white nationalists Nick Fuentes & Kanye West, Mike Lindell challenging Ronna Romney McDaniel for chair of the Republican Party and the great news coming out of Georgia! New episodes of The MeidasTouch Podcast are released every Tuesday and Friday mornings. If you enjoyed today’s show please be sure to rate, review and subscribe! DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: AG1 by Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. Breaking news coming in from Bet365,
Starting point is 00:00:32 where every nail-biting overtime win, breakaway, pick six, three-point shot, underdog win, buzzer beater, shootout, walk-off, and absolutely every play in between is amazing. From football to basketball and hockey to baseball, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 or older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue?
Starting point is 00:01:03 A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Donald Trump continues to attack the special counsel, Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland
Starting point is 00:01:40 to investigate Trump's crimes. He called Smith a, quote, fully weaponized monster and has attacked Smith's wife, Smith's sister-in-law, and Smith's late mother-in-law. Trump is sinking to new depths of depravity and criminality, which is hard for him to even do considering the depths he's already been in. And in those depths, we find Nazis dining in Mar-a-Lago, or should I say more Nazis dining in Mar-a-Lago. The leader of the MAGA Republican Party, Donald Trump, has hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a Mar-a-Lago dinner last week during Thanksgiving
Starting point is 00:02:27 week. Also in attendance was Kanye West. We'll talk about that and the fallout. And Trump has endorsed the pillow guy, Mike Lindell, to take over the Republican National Committee chair position and to replace the current chair, Ronna McDaniel, who literally stopped using her maiden name, which is Romney, to suck up to Donald Trump. And now Donald Trump is opposing her candidacy as chair of the RNC. Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, comes up with the term corporate communism to refer to private companies who don't want to spend ad dollars on social media platforms that don't provide moderation for content involving hate and dangerous conspiracies. So if you don't support Nazis, if you don't support racism and antisemitism, and if you reject hate against the LGBTQ plus community, then to MAGA Republicans
Starting point is 00:03:34 today, that makes you a communist woke leftist to these deranged MAGA nutjobs. It's really unbelievable. I want to talk about that because things seem to have gotten far worse even now than before the midterm elections when this MAGA Republican party was completely unhinged. Then some good news, early voting in the Georgia runoff election set record highs this weekend after Republicans tried to block weekend voting on Saturday. And President Biden continues to deliver for the people. The cost of insulin for seniors will be capped at $35 a month. Five million Americans have gained access to health care under Biden. 17 states now have unemployment at or below 3 percent, and 11 states and Washington, D.C. now have their lowest unemployment rate ever. Don't you like normalcy of like a president who like whether
Starting point is 00:04:33 you agree or disagree with the policies or actually have policies that are fighting for people and common sense? And our guest, a defender of democracy and friend of the Midas Touch Network, Arizona Secretary of State-elect Adrian Fontes, who beat the election-denying MAGA insurrectionist Mark Fincham. This is the Midas Touch Podcast, and no, this is not a simulation. Brett and Jordy, how are you both doing? It certainly feels like a simulation after reading all those topics. It's hard to believe. It's almost like you put them in a podcast topic generator or something, and it just started
Starting point is 00:05:17 spitting out random things. Pillow guy, fascist, RNC chair, Kanye West, Nazi dinner with Donald Trump. You're like, what is happening? It's MAGA Mad Libs. It's MAGA Mad Libs over and over again. And I'm not going to lie, you guys. I feel like all day there was a lot of yucky, negative, disgusting energy. Just gross, gross, gross energy. But that's why I like the Midas Touch podcast where we have this hour plus to actually spread positivity,
Starting point is 00:05:45 to call out these monsters and tell you a bit of some of the good that's happening in the world. And I'm always, always, always super excited to be with my brothers here and always super excited to be with the extended Midas Touch family who are in this chats, the Patreon supporters, all you guys who really make me get up in the morning when I open up Twitter and see whatever is trending in the day. And I go, oh my gosh, what is going on? Jordy, how are you? I'm doing well. I shaved the beard today. I'm feeling good. You're looking glossy. I'm feeling a little bit glossy. I don't know what I need to do. Oh, thanks for the zoom in there. I really appreciate that. Ben, when you were reading those headlines to, I look really glossy. You're not kidding.
Starting point is 00:06:30 When you're reading those headlines, I'm like thinking to myself, is he reading from the onion right now? I wish you were. I wish you were. Those first half of the headlines that you were reading of the topics that we're going to get into today, I mean, sheesh, man. Like I said, it's MAGA mad lips. It's why I want everybody to stay focused, though. We need to highlight what's going on. We can't be like the both sides of media that buries its hand in the sand and acts like this MAGA extremist stuff isn't taking place. So we have an obligation to call it out. But what we need to do is stay focused on building this pro-democracy, pro-normal coalition and not just play defense, right? We need to be on the offense with what politics should be about, which is actually caring
Starting point is 00:07:27 about people and focusing on things like jobs and education and healthcare, right? And real freedoms, the freedom of a woman over her body. I was just thinking perhaps the Republicans have completely misunderstood or are going by the wrong definition of what it means to go on the offense. And what they think it is, is to go on the offensive, meaning to be offensive, because that seems to be all that Republicans are spewing right now. They're not going on the offense. They are just purely being offensive. And Ben, as we were discussing at the beginning of the show, I stole the beginning of the show, but at the beginning of the show and before the show, as we were discussing at the beginning of the show, I stole the beginning of the show, but at the beginning of the show and before the show,
Starting point is 00:08:07 as we were discussing, we were like, what's amazing. Amazing is the right word, but post midterms, it's like these Republicans decided, you know what? We lost. We did not do as well as anticipated. We really, by all accounts, basically got our asses handed to us. So what are we going to do? We're going to go full Nazi right now. And not just like, we're going to throw out code words like we used to when we're going to dog whistle to the crowd. No, they were just like, we are literally going to become the Nazi party of America. And it's so dangerous. They are learning. That's why I've said, I'm sure people are sick of me saying this now since the election. I said from day one, I said, the Republicans are going to learn all the wrong lessons of the midterms.
Starting point is 00:08:54 And every single day we have seen that come to fruition. They're learning all the wrong lessons. They have doubled down on the extremist rhetoric. They are so beyond the pale as to the things they are doing, the things they are saying, and it's really just incredibly dangerous. Brett, and to your point, there was this very wholesome moment in Nantucket where President Biden was visiting and he was walking down the street saying hi to everybody. And then there was a house with young kids in it who waved at Biden and said, hey, President Biden, we love you. How are you?
Starting point is 00:09:29 And so President Biden, showing emotion, went over there and said, hey, how are you? And waved to them, which would seem to be a very normal, empathetic gesture, right? You imagine if that happened to you, like if you were like a kid at first of any age, but if you were a kid and you were staring outside of whatever building or home or whatever you were in and the president of the United States and the first lady of the United States walks by and you go, Mr. President, Mr. President, please a picture, Mr. President, please. And then the president comes over to the window and takes a photo with you and makes your dream true, that would be like a defining moment. That's like a core memory. In fact, like, you know, it's like, remember when we used to go to like Jets training camps and we used to show up outside of the Jets
Starting point is 00:10:16 training camps, just hoping we could get like a photo with like the Jets quarterback or, you know, a wide receiver. The Hofstra days when they were still practicing at Hofstra. I love that. Yes. And those memories are the kinds of things that I do think back on. And I go, wow, that was a really special moment. And now imagine that's the president of the United States. This is one of the sweetest, most incredible moments. But it shows you, the response to what happened here really shows you just how deranged and disturbed these MAGA Republicans are. I mean, truly sick, sick and twisted. And I think the response has been very revealing. Should we first play the video of the interaction, allow people to see what caused MAGA world to just erupt in uproar? Okay, let's play it now. Okay, here's Jill. There's Jill!
Starting point is 00:11:07 Oh my god, hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Oh my god, yeah! Hi, Mr. President! Oh my god! Give me a selfie! Give me a selfie!
Starting point is 00:11:19 I mean, that's the kind of thing. I mean, just sweet. Just so sweet. Nice. Just a sweet, nice, incredible moment. And any normal person would say, regardless of your political affiliation in the past, you'd be like, that was pretty cool. That was pretty cool.
Starting point is 00:11:37 That shouldn't be a Roshark test. Remember the Roshark test? Roshark, yeah. With the inkblots. With the inkblots. That should not be one of those types of tests. Everybody should look at that and go, sweet moment. Or, okay. I mean, I view it as a very sweet moment, but at worst, you should be like, okay, that's what presidents should do. Why is that even a thing? Okay. The president's showing empathy and being supportive of the people who are cheering for him. But no, now that image is
Starting point is 00:12:11 a Roshark test. The same way a global pandemic, you would normally be like, global pandemic, bad. Global pandemic, let's stop it. The guy who's in charge of our scientific enterprise here in the U.S., good. The guy who's trying to stop disease, good. But no, with MAGA Republicans, bad fascist Nazis, they're trying to take away, you know, they're trying to come after all of us. Oh, my God. Oh, the pandemic. It's not real.
Starting point is 00:12:41 It's fake. It's like, what are you talking about? Can we take it? It's very, right? I mean- No, 100%. And I think as all Rorschach tests do, as they're designed to do, they give you a bit of psychological perspective as to what goes through people's heads. And so we all saw that video. We all saw a sweet moment because we're all normal humans, right? We're all in the plane of normalcy. Like we're regular human beings who just like our families and want to go out and have a good time and enjoy our lives. But these maniacs, here's some of the comments and I'll pull them up.
Starting point is 00:13:15 You have, first I'll start with the New York Post because it's like a newspaper saying this. They show the photos and they go, creepy Joe Biden roasted for strange selfies. Do you think strange about that to you guys? The only thing strange here is the New York Post's framing on this. Let's also just remind our audience real quick. New York Post is owned by? Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch.
Starting point is 00:13:38 You have Mark, how do you say his name, Ben? Levin? Levin. Mark Levin, Mark Levin from Fox News. And he posts an article about it and says, pervert. Yeah, it's apparently perverted for a president to take a photo with supporters who are children, who made their life. That's perverted. I think that says a lot about Mark Levin, more so than anybody else here. You have John Cardillo, one of these right ring. I don't even know what this guy does, to be honest. Always with the little girls. Keep this creep away from kids. You have Tim Young. Wait,
Starting point is 00:14:14 this picture is real crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji. And I left in the top comment to his post because I think Ben as an attorney would appreciate this. And some commenter wrote to him, but if someone else does the same thing, that person will end up in jail. because I think Ben as an attorney would appreciate this. And some commenter wrote to him, but if someone else does the same thing, that person will end up in jail. What? What? What are you talking about?
Starting point is 00:14:36 Christina Pushaw, Ron DeSantis' press, whatever she does for DeSantis, she's like Ron DeSantis' right-hand person, wrote, creepy pic. And Cat Turd, who apparently is the, i don't know the the biggest advisor for their both the republican party and for elon musk goes the creepy weirdo can't help himself so cringe scary shot of creepy joe biden peering through glass at small at small children worries twitter did it though did it though or does it worry the sick and deranged and perverted people who like to sexualize children at every step of the way? I mean, this is a real
Starting point is 00:15:09 sickness these MAGAs have. It's a real, real, real sickness we're dealing with. I want you to think about it too, Brett, from the perspective of those young girls who took that photo in a very wholesome way with the president of the United States, whose photos are now out there. And now you have these MAGA Republicans sexualizing the photo and saying that it's creepy and saying that it's perverted. And now they have to ask their family too, like mom, dad, they're saying that this is a perverted thing. Did we do something wrong? No, it's that these MAGA Republicans, their prism of life, Brett, as you say, is to sexualize kids and is to spread these conspiracies. That's who they are.
Starting point is 00:15:58 There's no other way. This is a perfect test case of showing that. And the real danger of it, when you look at these movements like QAnon and these hashtags, save the children kind of people, these magas who make everything, oh, creep, creep, creep that. One of the dangers in what they're doing here, this is not a conspiracy theory, although it may sound like it because the QAnon crew pushes so hard in the other direction, but they're really covering up the bad behavior of a lot of people on their side. And by bad behavior, I mean a lot of horrific child sex crimes and a lot of horrific, horrific, illegal stuff, just sick, sick, sick things. And we expose this in a video
Starting point is 00:16:38 that we put out and in a few videos that we put out, we've done like five minute plus montages on all the just depravity in the Republican Party. People who have been actually convicted and sent to prison, people as high as the speaker of the house, the Republican speaker of the house, like two speakers ago. It's not like this is ancient history, was caught with child porn and soliciting children for sex. This is the real devious part of the Republican Party and all their rhetoric and stuff. It is all projection. It's all projection to cover up what they are actually doing. And it's sick and it's twisted and it's disgusting. And that's why we got to call them out for it. I mean, it's truly, it's sick. Yeah. And we say this all the
Starting point is 00:17:23 time on the show too. Every accusation from these MAGA Republicans is just an admission of guilt or a confession. That's their playbook. And I just feel, Ben, going back, you're so right. I feel so just bad for those girls who it should have been, and it still should be, a highlight of their lives, something that they'll tell their grandchildren about. When they saw the president walk by, they knocked on the window and said, hi. But now just thinking about these girls who have to go to school, right? And kids are ruthless and kids' parents are even worse. And I bet there's a lot of MAGA Republican parents out there still who are going to go and tell their children, oh, look how creepy this is. And then just that hate then trickle, it's a trickle down of hate, like we talked about on the show too as well. Trickle, trickle, trickle.
Starting point is 00:18:05 And this is what they do to school teachers, like an entire profession, who they tried to act as exposing kids to all of this horrible content, which is not taking place. And I mean, they just go after people like that and denigrate people. But Brett, you talk about, you know, projection people. But Brett, you talk about projection. And Jordy, you talk about projection as well. Jordy, you see, I don't want to forget there that you talk about it as well. I did talk about it. This brings me to the ultimate projector of them all, Donald Trump and his attacks on the special counsel right now, Jack Smith.
Starting point is 00:18:42 We could probably do an entire episode showing all of the attacks on Jack Smith by Donald Trump and Jack Smith's family. I'll just focus on the ones from today, but we're posting, for those listening just on audio, we just posted a photo of Jack Smith. That photo just terrifies Donald Trump. Jack Smith is the person that Donald Trump has tried to avoid his entire life. And one of the things, too, that I like about the Midas Touch podcast is when we bring in experts like we did in the election, like Tom Bonior and Simon Rosenberg, or here with the special counsel, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, who actually was a lawyer and is a lawyer
Starting point is 00:19:20 who worked with Jack Smith. And we have kind of the firsthand knowledge. And then everyone tries to attack us like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. And then people kind of come around and it's like, we're just trying to show you what's different about this than the actual kind of large media networks is like, we're not just pitting two people against each other. Unlike having like a split screen just to fill up air time and fight. Like we curate the actual experts to give you the data. Now, if the outcome doesn't isn't consistent with the data, that happens sometimes.
Starting point is 00:19:53 Sometimes there's anomalous outcomes. But all I can do is show you the data. And Donald Trump here is clearly terrified of Jack Smith. And we said we predicted this is exactly what was going to happen when Jack Smith's name was invoked. And people were like, well, does that make Merrick Garland weak? I'm like, no, it's the strongest move you can make bringing Jack Smith in. Go back and watch those podcasts to get the full rundown of our breakdown there. But this is what Trump said about Jack Smith. He goes, the fully weaponized monster, Jack Smith, shouldn't be let
Starting point is 00:20:26 anywhere near the political persecution of, quote, President Donald J. Trump. Why that's in quotes? I did nothing wrong on January 6th and nothing wrong with the Democrats fix on the document hoax. That is unless the six previous presidents did something wrong also dot dot dot dot dot dot when will you invade bill and hillary's home in search of the 33 000 emails she deleted after receiving a subpoena from the u.s congress when will you invade when will you invade the other president's home in search of documents which are voluminous which they took with them but not nearly so openly and transparently as i did he's in the midst of the midst of the crime and then he spreads the
Starting point is 00:21:09 conspiracy and then goes which i took but very transparently one you didn't you literally committed obstruction of justice you literally had your lawyer um submit a false declaration and submit a false affidavit to the Department of Justice saying all the documents were returned. I thought they were planted. Now all of a sudden he says, yeah, I took them. First they were planted, then they took them, and then they're not nuclear secrets. Then everyone has nuclear secrets. The way that story shifted and changed. You know, one of the things that gets not talked about enough is that Trump himself was the person who cherry picked the documents to return to the Department of Justice after they caught him after the archives, the National Archives caught him back in January of 2022. Trump like went through him, hid like the nuclear secrets and top secret records in between newspaper clippings, like that wasn't
Starting point is 00:22:05 going to actually be discovered, and then turned them over like, that's it, that's everything. And then they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, inside page A22, that looks like it may be a top secret sensitive compartmented information. Hey, Department of Justice, check that out. And then so a grand jury issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. And then what'd they do? They then turned over in a Redwell, one of these folders, additional top secret sensitive compartmented records, and then signed a declaration saying this is it. This is everything. But the Department of Justice has information on the inside that it's not that. So then when they searched Mar-a-Lago on August 8th, they all the records that were stolen. So one, he wasn't, but then he just admits to the crime. Yeah, guys, I did it.
Starting point is 00:22:48 I did it. And then I don't even want to like go into reading all of these, but like he then talks about literally the sister-in-law of the special counsel, Jack Smith. There's something about the sister-in-law. Then there's another one
Starting point is 00:23:03 about the late mother-in-law of the special counsel and then the wife. So he is specifically targeting and then doxing mother-in-law, sister-in-law, wife of the special counsel. Now, in addition to just being completely deranged, in addition to that being evidence, like, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the next exhibit in order, Donald Trump's social media post. And Mr. Trump's like, it's admitting the crimes, but it's also more evidence of obstruction. He should never have had the immunity when he was the president, but he was being covered up before by Bill Barr, who was covering up for him, even though he now tweets all these, you know, and says all these things about Bill Barr, who literally covered for all of his crimes. But the stuff that he was doing with Mueller as a private citizen,
Starting point is 00:23:55 it's just more crimes. And Jack Smith's background, by the way, was prosecuting war criminals for obstruction of justice, literally like killing people and threatening people's lives. And that's who Donald Trump's doing this to Jackson. It's probably like, bring it on, bring it on. But you're reading this. It's just like, these are literally deranged people. You think a war crimes prosecutor is scared of Donald Trump? Give me a freaking break. And you know that every night, I'll tell you right now, Donald Trump will never have a good night's sleep the rest of his life. Those tweets are not the tweets of a happy person or whatever the truth is, whatever the fuck you want to call them. They're not the truths of a person who's enjoying their days, who's enjoying
Starting point is 00:24:40 their family, who's enjoying their lives. This is a miserable human being. So you could take some solace in that. And I'm telling you, and I know there'll be people in the comments the same way with all the other stuff that we predict and ultimately happens down the line. When I say this, Jack Smith is going to take care of him. Jack Smith, indictments are coming for this guy. That's why he is freaking out. He knows his back is against the wall. And I thought one of the most brilliant things that you brought to light, Ben, and I have to read it here if you guys are cool with it, is the quote from Jack Smith from a few months ago regarding something that happened in Kosovo. And here was his statement. And now, yes, this is a statement about this war crimes case, but this so aptly applies to Donald Trump here that it is eerie. And I'll read it for you as quick as I can. Today, justice was served. As stated by the trial panel today, the protection
Starting point is 00:25:43 of witnesses from intimidation and harm lies the very foundation of any system of criminal justice, the acts and conduct of the accused challenge that very foundation. The acts and statements in this case took place in a climate of intimidation. The specialist prosecutor's office will continue to vigorously pursue investigation and prosecution of all acts of witness intimidation, retaliation against witnesses, or obstruction of justice. Intimidating or retaliating against such victims is, in my view, a gravely serious crime which strikes at the heart of this institution's ability to do justice and
Starting point is 00:26:18 the rule of law. If you seek to intimidate or retaliate against witnesses of this court, I will do all that is in my power to assure you that you will ultimately find yourself brought to justice. So you know, everybody, that every time Donald Trump is sending out those truths, attacking special counsel Jack Smith, attacking his wife, attacking his other family members, you know Jack Smith is just jotting it down. Okay, and add it to the list. Adding it to the list. Adding it to the list. Adding it to the list. The Hot Honey McCrispy is so back at McDonald's. With juicy 100% Canadian-raised seasoned chicken, shredded lettuce, crispy jalapenos, and that completely craveable hot honey sauce, it's a sweet heat repeat you don't want to miss. Get your Hot Honey McCrispy today. Available for a limited time only at McDonald's.
Starting point is 00:27:07 Podcasts are great because they help us make the most out of our routine. We learn about the fall of the Ottoman Empire while we drive. Keep up with news while we take the dog for a walk. Or turn folding laundry into a comedy show. Make the most out of your time with the PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard.
Starting point is 00:27:23 A credit card that can get you unlimited free grocery delivery and the most PC optimum points on everyday purchases. The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. We still have to find a better name for the truth for his tweet platform because we can't keep calling them truth. Everything is dumb.
Starting point is 00:27:44 Everything is so stupid. Deranged, unhinged comments. How about, yes, Brett, to your point, everything is dumb and everything is stupid. Everything that the MAGA Republicans are doing. I mean, Trump hosted at Mar-a-Lago Nick Fuentes. And Nick Fuentes, there's lots of horrible human beings and the billions and billions of people who
Starting point is 00:28:06 live on planet earth, but he's probably one of the most miserable, horrible human beings saying the most hateful and horrific things, literally celebrating Hitler, making jokes about the Holocaust. Literally every group from women to LGBTQ plus to he praises Putin all the time and says, why is it a bad thing if Putin and Hitler, if Putin's being compared to him? I mean, you could just go on and on. After the midterm elections, he called for a dictatorship. I could spend, again, a full podcast talking about all of the hate that he spews. But Kanye West brought Nick Fuentes to this dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Maga Mad Libs.
Starting point is 00:28:52 Maga Mad Libs. Just say that sentence one more time. And then we knew it because after the dinner, Kanye posted about it and said that Trump believed that Nick Fuentes was a very compelling person. He's very influential to Trump. He made statements to- Very impressed. What did you say, Brett? He was very impressed.
Starting point is 00:29:12 Very impressed. Yeah, very impressed with Nick Fuentes were the exact words. Remember, this guy's an actual Nazi. Let's not sugarcoat it. Literally, the guy's a Nazi. And then so after the dinner, and then it became like first Trump's instinct was to do nothing. And the reporting is, is that Trump did nothing because he was afraid of losing support from his base. And so he didn't say anything. Then when it became,
Starting point is 00:29:36 we're just posting a post by Hugo Lowell, Trump ultimately made clear that he fundamentally did not want to criticize white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes after dinner at Mar-a-Lago over fears that it might antagonize a devoted part of his base. But finally, when it became a big story, he then put out these deranged statements, again, not criticizing Nick Fuentes in any way, not condemning Nick Fuentes, but just claiming, stand back, stand by, Basically, it was basically a version. Right. You're right. Like, I don't I don't know who the Proud Boys are. I don't know who the Oath Keepers are. I don't know who Nick Fuentes was. It was just someone who Kanye brought over to the House. And he said a bunch of other despicable things. But but, Brad, anything you want to add there? Yeah, I'll add that Nick Fuentes,
Starting point is 00:30:23 you know trump trump is right nick fuentes is does represent a large part of the republican base and if that is your base let me tell you you got a problem if nazis are your base you need to do some introspection and some soul searching and he's a character who says horrific outrageous horrible horrible horrible things but he has gotten in with some of the major players in the Republican Party. This is not just Donald Trump. This is him with Marjorie Taylor Greene at an event. This is the same event where he said good things about Hitler, by the way, and good things about Putin and all the other horrific things he said at this event.
Starting point is 00:31:00 Marjorie Taylor Greene was standing next to him at the event and spoke at the event. Spoke at the event. And this is them celebrating together after everything was made. And then, you know, like a day later when Marjorie Taylor Greene got shit for it, I think she was the same Trump. I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who he was. This guy's been floating around these right wing circles for a bit. On the right, you see if you're looking at this, I have a picture of him with Paul Gosar, who looks like a movie villain as well. And the tweet from Nick Fuentes at the time said, great meeting today with Congressman Gosar.
Starting point is 00:31:30 America is truly on canceled. They held fundraising events together with Gosar. You know, this is a guy who's really been embedded with the party. And now, you know, you have all these really kind of tepid voices. Like you have Ronna McDaniel who like didn't say anything. And then you have Kevin McCarthy, who I still think hasn't really said anything. And then Ronna McDaniel goes and she releases some half-assed statement, which is like, we condemn anti-Semitism and that is bad. Refusing to actually comment on the actual dinner, on Trump, on Nick Fuentes, none of
Starting point is 00:32:04 that. Just like a blanket statement that could have been done any day of the week. And now days and days later, it took a lot of time to get here. We finally have a few people starting to make statements about it, but they're all still weak statements. And it's bizarre that it took days for you to be able to say, you know what, the Nazis, dining with Nazis, not a good thing. Not a good thing. We condemn it. It should not take like five days for you to craft a half-assed statement, many of which also somehow blame the Democrats for it. I mean, these are like real,
Starting point is 00:32:36 real, real, real, real sickos. That's why we're not in the realm of normal political behavior here. There's nothing normal about that. And Republicans have gotten so far, so extreme, so far to the right that anybody who's not in their weirdo Nazi ecosystem to them looks like a woke liberal. I mean, I can't tell you how many times over the past few days when I've condemned such statements, I didn't realize it was controversial to condemn these statements, but when I condemned Nick Fuentes' kind of statements where he said positive things about Hitler and Nazis, where I said, you know what? That's not good, and people should speak out against this anti-Semitism. And the comments I got were, yeah, a Jew would say that.
Starting point is 00:33:21 Okay, you pedo. Okay, you commie. Okay, Antifa. That's the discourse that we're at right now in this country, where if you condemn Nazis, you're too woke for the Republican Party, and that makes you a commie, an Antifa, a pedo. This is what they do. What we're dealing with also is like this. It's like the McCarthy era. It's like McCarthyism. Ironically, we have somebody currently at the top of the Republican Party named McCarthy as well. But we have this sort of digital and probably beyond digital McCarthyism in the Republican Party, where if you break ranks from them, where in this case, it means if you're not a Nazi, or if you don't support Nazis,
Starting point is 00:34:00 guess what? That makes you Antifa. That makes you a pedophile. That makes you a commie. That makes you a rhino. And you need to be ousted. You need to be banned from social media. You need to be ostracized from society. This is their belief system. And it's honestly really horrifying and terrifying. It's really dangerous stuff. And it gets worse. If you could believe it, it gets even worse than that. Because first off, that messaging comes from the top. It actually comes from the mainstream Republican leaders. And then when it is internalized by their MAGA radical extremist supporters, you see what happens is very reminiscent of what took place at the certification in Maricopa County
Starting point is 00:34:43 today, where these MAGA Republican individuals showed up there just to give these speeches. They left when the Maricopa County board actually wanted to speak and say, well, we'll go through these issues with you. If you're raising these conspiracies, we'll show you that they're all false. And the people left, but they would look at the Maricopa Board of Elections people and they would say, you committed treason. The punishment for treason is death. And they would make comments like that, like threatening the lives of the people who work, you know, the government workers who were just trying to certify the election results.
Starting point is 00:35:23 And then you even have, for example, in Cochise County, right, Brett? They refuse to even certify the results. They're being in Arizona. They're being sued right now. But Arizona, you had so many people there cross party lines. You know, what's interesting, and we'll talk to Adrian Fontes about this, you now have more independents in Arizona than I think even Democrats in Arizona. And the independents, we were talking about this from day one on Midas Touch Network still, I'm a Republican, but I'm not a MAGA Republican. These people are out of their mind. But this coalition of pro-democracy, pro-normal saying, we need to get stuff done for the American people and we got to stop these MAGA extremists. That was the lesson from the Arizona election because so many people crossed over and voted for people like Adrian
Starting point is 00:36:25 Fontes against Mark Fincham. Adrian Fontes was running against someone who was literally at the insurrection who wants to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That's who was running for the Secretary of State, Carrie Lake, who's filing a lawsuit. She lost by nearly 20,000 votes, 17,000 plus votes. Donald Trump today saying Carrie Lake should be installed as governor of Arizona. Like, remember a few months ago when president Biden gave a speech on democracy that none of the networks carried for some reason, um, still baffling to me. And he said, using his term, a little jab, I think, with it, a little kind of sarcasm with it, but a powerful statement. He said, these are semi-fascists. He called it a semi-fascist movement. And the media freaked out. People freaked, how dare he say that? How do you
Starting point is 00:37:22 label a political party? Just a couple months later, the party is fully embracing Nazism. And you have the leader of the party, who's their leading presidential contender at the moment, calling to install, his words, install someone as governor who lost their election. It's straight up fascism, folks. That's what it is. But here's the good news. 14 out of the 15 counties in Arizona have certified the election, including Maricopa County. Yes, that means Carrie Lake, you lost again. You could tweet all your bullshit Twitter posts you want with your ridiculous Zoom filter, which I kind of want to know what that is actually. Please send me. I'm curious about it. I think I kind of got the Carrie Lake filter going on tonight.
Starting point is 00:38:03 I don't know. You might be able to use it with that shine. But listen, you lost. You lost again. You just have this one county right now, Cochise County, who voted to illegally postpone. They'll ultimately be forced to do so. Mark Elias, an incredible elections attorney, is already on the case, already fighting it. It's just so ridiculous. And you see all these election denier meetups now, they just don't hit the same. They just don't hit the same as 2020, guys. It's like three people with a megaphone. They look as crazy as they sound. You know what it is? It's Elvis' last act. It's just sad at this point when they're denying all
Starting point is 00:38:42 the... They're lunatics ultimately. And Ben, what I want to add to it, and I know we're sticking on Arizona here, is just like also the midterm showed that it was an outright rejection of this fascism, of this ultra MAGA-ism across the country, because Doug Mastriano here, who was running against my future governor, Josh Shapiro, in my great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he was at the insurrection too. And people overwhelmingly here obviously voted for Shapiro, as we all know. So that was a major, like that was the lesson to learn from the midterms.
Starting point is 00:39:13 And what did the Republicans learn, as we all know, is let's go crazier. Let's hang out with Nazis. Yeah, they've learned Mike Lindell. Let's let the pillow guy who literally was seen leaving the White House around the insurrection saying martial law and appoint Cash. Yeah, this guy who was putting the photo up and appoint Cash Patel, the head of, to make him the head of the CIA. He had the papers falling out of his- You know what, man? I'm going to do devil's advocate for it. They should. Mike Lindell should, he should be the head of the Republican Party. He absolutely should be. Give him the job because he represents the party far more than anybody else.
Starting point is 00:39:48 That is who the Republican Party is. They are all deranged just like him. They have followed in his footsteps. And for all intents and purposes, the people like him and Marjorie Taylor Greene, they are the leaders of the party. They are the leaders of the party. And these are the people who you have, like a guy like Kevin McCarthy, giving more power to in this Congress. They look at the midterms. They look at all that. They look at Nick Fuentes having events, a Nazi having events with Marjorie
Starting point is 00:40:15 Taylor Greene. And Kevin McCarthy goes, you know what? I'm so craven. I'm so in need of these votes that what I'm going to do here is I'm going to give Marjorie Taylor Greene, the woman who is an anti-Semite who hangs out with literal Nazis, I'm going to give her power. In fact, that's going to be my first act of business if I get to be a leader of Congress. That's going to be my first act. Let me just add this, Brett. That is the only silver lining that you could possibly take. You guys know I'm a big silver lining person from this moment because it truly is such a dystopian freaking moment that we're living through right now that they're literally aligning themselves with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist,
Starting point is 00:40:57 a known Nazi, is that I have faith in the American people, that they see what's going on. And when the next election cycle comes, they are going to stand up and reject this behavior in massive numbers. The Republicans have learned nothing. And Jordy, you talk about silver lining. I think a lot of your optimism comes from the fact that people like Adrian Fontes were elected. No election denying secretary of state candidate prevailed in their state. And these protectors of democracy like Fontes won. One of the things that I'm so fascinated about with Fontes or is his connection to the Midas Touch network. Fontes is Fontes, he's a superstar. So I think regardless of Midas Touch network, Fontes has got to do his Fontes is Fontes. He's a superstar. So I think regardless of Midas Touch Network, Fontes has got to do his Fontes thing. But when we saw Fontes early on in the Democratic primaries,
Starting point is 00:41:52 just having this authentic message, he didn't have a lot of followers. And I was like, there's something special about Fontes. And we were all talking. We said, let's get him on the show early on when no one really knew who Fontes was outside of Arizona. But again, always a superstar, Fontes. And his interview with us went crazy viral. It led to MSNBC putting it on the show and all these other networks and the video got millions of views that came out of it. And so to see kind of Adrian Fontes early on with that message that he had, and knowing that it would resonate and seeing it resonate, and knowing the great work he's going to be able to do for the people of Arizona right now, makes it extra special. So I'm excited to bring Adrian Fontes on. And I'm also excited to talk about some positive news in the Biden
Starting point is 00:42:44 administration also after the interview with Adrian Fontes. But I do want to talk about some positive news in the Biden administration, also after the interview with Adrian Fontes. But I do want to talk about a few things. First off, have you seen our new podcast, our new true crime thriller, American Psyop, which tells the story of General Wes Clark's son, Wes Clark Jr., who gets caught up in a bunch of influencing operations and all of these cults that target him and mercenary groups that target him. I don't want to reveal more of the plot than that, but it exists within this kind of fulcrum of where America was in 2016 at the time of that election. It's already number, it's the top 10 true crime. It's top 20 of all podcasts in the country. So check it out. American Psyop, P-S-Y-O-P. Download it. You will love American Psyop. We have like a chat. We have a chat between the three of us where we all just
Starting point is 00:43:39 go crazy with like American Psyop things, even though it's our show. We're like, I'm like, did you know that? Did you realize? They're like, yeah, we're listening to it. And so the episodes drop every Tuesday. So episode four is dropping tomorrow. And I'm not going to say anything because like Ben said, it's like one of the shows, the less you know, the better. And it's all true. It's a true crime series that is so important to everything that's going on today. But episode four is where stuff gets absolutely wild. And I'm just going to say that because I don't want to ruin anything, but go through, binge them, tell a friend, American Psyop, holy crap, you guys.
Starting point is 00:44:16 Yeah. Just in case it wasn't clear, the episodes build off of each other. So go back and listen to the first one and then you'll be ready for Tuesday. And please also consider becoming a patron of the Midas Touch Network. Go to patreon.com slash Midas Touch. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Midas Touch. We just passed 2,500 patrons. There's lots of exclusive content, behind the scenes footage, extra podcasts, special merch drops, and so much more that you can only get at patreon.com slash Midas Touch. But most importantly, help grow this independent media network.
Starting point is 00:44:57 We are not funded by any outside investors at all, especially none of the millionaire and billionaire outside investors who fund the both sides media and the pro fashion media. So we are 100% accountable to you. We are 100% independent. And if you can, no worries, if you can, I know you subscribe to a lot of things, but please consider becoming a member of our Patreon by going to patreon.com slash MidasTouch. And also check out the best unapologetically pro-democracy gear at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com. We got great clothes for the winter and great clothes for the next summer. Great stuff. Store.MidasTouch.com. And finally, our next partner is a product I use literally every day.
Starting point is 00:45:54 And that is literally true. You know this by now. It's Athletic Greens. And I started taking Athletic Greens because I used to take a lot of like vitamin pills and gummies. Yes, I was a gummy person and no, it was absolutely not working at all. But then I replaced it with athletic greens. It is delicious. It is this green powder that you scoop it, you put it in a cup, you put water in, you shake it up, you drink it. And with one delicious scoop of athletic greens, you're
Starting point is 00:46:22 absorbing 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, whole foods, or superfood probiotics and adaptogens to help you start your day right. The special blend of ingredients supports your gut health, your nervous system, your immune system, your energy recovery focus, and aging, all things. It's lifestyle friendly. Whether you eat keto, paleo, vegan, dairy-free, or gluten-free, it's for you. It costs you less than $3 a day. You're investing in your health and it's cheaper than your cold brew habit. And not only is it cheaper than your cold brew habit, it's definitely cheaper than your vitamin habit. Tons of people take some kind of multivitamin and it's important
Starting point is 00:47:03 to choose one with high quality ingredients that your body will actually absorb. Right now, reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into the flu and cold season. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it. No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. And to make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com slash Midas. Again, that is athleticgreens.com slash Midas to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Now, let's bring in our interview with friend of the Midas Touch Network, Adrian Fontes.
Starting point is 00:47:51 We are joined by a good friend of the pod, Adrian Fontes, a Marine Corps vet, a father, and the Arizona Secretary of state elect. I couldn't be prouder to say that Adrian Fontes. It's been quite the journey together. Congratulations and welcome to the Midas touch podcast again. Thank you so much for having me gents. Uh, it's a great joy and,
Starting point is 00:48:20 I gotta say, I don't think you guys played a small part. Uh, you guys were part of it. So thank you very much and thanks to all the folks out there who helped us get to where we are and to beat back the
Starting point is 00:48:32 nincompoops, I think is what we're going to start calling it. It's a kind way to wrap up. You better be more of a statesman now. Definitely more of a statesman, but look, these nincompoops, particularly Mark Fincham, who you ran against, the MAGA extremist election denying candidate, although if you are a MAGA
Starting point is 00:48:52 extremist, that means you are an election denier. If you are an election denier, you are a MAGA extremist. You know, the people of Arizona spoke, though, and they resoundingly favored a defender of democracy over an election denier, conspiracy theorist, insurrectionist. What do you make of that? Well, Ben, I think there's a lot of factors involved here. The idea of democracy being preserved and protected was one of them. But look, we built a coalition of Republicans and independents as well. A lot of folks from the business community. We had some captains of industry, if you will, on our side, because they knew that kind of extremism is, you know, it's contemptible. It breeds uncertainty
Starting point is 00:49:31 and chaos. And the business community here in Arizona is very, very strong. They like opportunity. They like prosperity and they like consistency. They like mature heads who want to just have conversations. You know, we heard from the legal community as well about the potential sort of wackiness that this type of leadership would present. Folks in education, folks in the arts and sciences and across, again, the political spectrum. People just wanted some some normalcy and what the other side presented was not. And so we won. And do you think that is a template that, you know, you were on the cover of Time magazine for being a defender of democracy with a bunch of other individuals in other states, too, who were defending democracy from election deniers?
Starting point is 00:50:21 Do you think that what you see in Arizona, though, is also a template that we can look at for the nation to bring this kind of pro-normal coalition together? Well, I think it's a lot more than just pro-normal. I think what we have to do is be pro-truth. And when we say election deniers, we're being politically correct. They are authoritarians. They don't believe in the consent of the governed, which is part of the American ethos. They are those like my former opponent are seditionists. They wanted to violently overthrow the government.
Starting point is 00:51:00 And they tried. He was there on January 6th so I I think one of the critical components of my campaign wasn't just that I was not that guy but that I was fiercely the American guy the guy who is going to really call it what it is it isn't just a lie uh it is a lie that is damaging and detrimental to the nation and we have to attack it not just defend against it but attack it for what it is it is a cancer it needs to go away uh and i think the you know a lot of times in sports we say um the best offense is a good defense well in this case the best defense was a really solid offense and that's the candidacy that i presented to arizona's voters and they agreed. So what comes next now? As the Secretary of State elect soon to assume the responsibilities as Arizona Secretary of State, what are the priorities and where do you
Starting point is 00:51:53 focus on right away? Well, initially, you know, we're going to get down and dirty. We're going to roll up our sleeves and go out to all 15 of our counties and make sure that their election administrators have the resources they need. We saw some hiccups in the primary in August because of understaffing and underfunding of an election department in Pinal County. We saw some technical difficulties in Maricopa County, nothing insurmountable and nothing that harmed any voters. But these are the kinds of things that give fuel to that fire on the other side. So we've got to improve what is already a very, very good game of election administration in Arizona. That's number one.
Starting point is 00:52:31 Second, and one of the things that a lot of people don't pay a lot of attention to is, as I indicated, the business community cares. We've got to make our business services operate at the speed of business, not at the speed of government. So we're going to be doing a survey of our business services, making sure that the folks in the secretary's office have the resources they need and now that the former secretary is moving up to the ninth floor which is the governor's office i think we'll have a good ear to make sure we get the resources we need to help business in arizona move forward with strength uh and And obviously, the third biggest priority is to
Starting point is 00:53:06 make sure that we preserve Arizona's history and heritage, which is amazing. And being part of the libraries and archives, and hopefully the museum, again, the secretary's office can keep the seal elevated with pride. One of the things that you hear, and I won't use election denying anymore, although I want up to your nincompoop, but I'll just call them seditionists now, which is the appropriate name that they're now saying. And one of the common refrains that we hear, you know, for example, Carrie Lake, after she paled with Trump and Alina Haba and all of that in Mar-a-Lago coming back and basically saying, you know, people in Arizona's votes were suppressed and, you know,
Starting point is 00:53:46 citing policies that MAGA extremists and seditionists put in place to try to limit voting in certain areas. And it was just the ultimate, you know, I think Mark Elias said at best, he's like the amount of chutzpah you must say to complain about things, for example, like long lines that are taking place in certain areas when literally it has been Democrats and, you know, and a broader coalition of people who support our democracy, who's saying, let's figure out ways to have not long lines. Like there's easier ways to do this, folks. And now they're citing long lines as an issue, like the ultimate chutzpah is putting it nicely. But what do you make of statements like that? Well, I think it's hypocrisy. You know, it's not just chutzpah, although there's an element of that involved. And just so people
Starting point is 00:54:36 understand sort of the context in Arizona, 30 some years ago, we created this early voting system that has become very, very robust in Arizona. Eighty percent of our voters get their ballot in the mail and then mail it back. Well, this year for this election, the MAGA Republicans told their people, bring those back by hand or just vote in person. Don't use the early voting system. And then they have this chutzpah to complain that it's taking a lot longer. Well, the system was designed to bring all those early ballots in early so they could do literally due diligence on every single one of those two and a half million ballots that come in and take care that the signature is correct, that the ballot matches the ballot envelope, that all of these other details are checked out.
Starting point is 00:55:20 By causing that delay through directly encouraging their voters to wait till the last second, they cause the problem that they're now complaining about. Right. So they took a system that the Republicans created, the reasonable Republicans, by the way, because there's two Republican parties in Arizona right now. The reasonable Republicans created an efficient system that was secure and accountable. We improved it a little bit in Maricopa County when I was the recorder. And now these guys did exactly what would have been needed to be done to make it less efficient, which is by telling voters to use the system in a way that would make it less efficient. And leadership matters. And so when you've got bad leadership giving bad instructions to voters, some of those voters are going to agree and they're going to go with those instructions and it's going to make things not better, but worse. We're going to counter that fiercely
Starting point is 00:56:09 and illustrate why it is that those folks in that little corner of the Republican Party are flat wrong. And they're getting a lot of pushback politically from the reasonable Republicans now. So the future of Arizona's Republican Party is going to be very interesting to watch as things push forward. Yeah. And, you know, your election as secretary of state is so important for all the reasons that we've already gone through in the show, but we're already seeing the tangible effects of the tangible reasons as to why your election as secretary of state is so important right now in the aftermath of these elections. We're seeing many Republican-led county election
Starting point is 00:56:46 boards already refusing to certify the election results. We are seeing threats of violence that have even caused at least one election official to go into hiding. I know our listeners are following that stuff. I know some of them are concerned about the actions that people are taking. Should folks be concerned about that? What happens next with these challenges? How do we push back in general against these anti-democratic forces? Well, the concerns are real. We do have these off in the fringes boards of supervisors, many of which are just three members in Cochise County, for example, down in the southeast corner of Arizona, up in Mojave County and the Kingman, Bullhead City area. And they're very, very conservative.
Starting point is 00:57:30 A couple out of the three, you only need two out of the three to have some of these weird things happening. So that's really problematic. And Bill Gates, the election official you're talking about, who is literally in an undisclosed location now because of the threats, he's a friend of mine. He was on the board of supervisors here in Maricopa County when I was the county recorder. We worked hand in glove to create that great system that did very well in 2020 and in 2022. And it's terrible that I, you know, a friend of mine is in hiding because of these terrorist threats. So first and foremost, we need to call them terrorist threats. The very definition of terrorism is met here, where threats of violence or violence are used against civilians to reach a political end.
Starting point is 00:58:15 We call them domestic terrorists because that's who they are, number one. And number two, we do everything that we can to continue to push towards pro-voter reforms and the truth, fighting back with vigor and aggression against the lies. This isn't time to be, you know, sort of mamby-pamby and worry about the feelings of the MAGA Republicans. We've got plenty of folks on the political right who do not like the Trumpist movement. They do not like authoritarianism uh and that showed in this election look democrats only have 31 32 percent of registered voters in
Starting point is 00:58:54 arizona and and i beat my opponent by uh five points uh we needed republicans we needed independence and we got them and we got them because they were rejecting the MAGA agenda. We got to keep pushing forward and doing everything that we can, supporting candidates into the 2024 cycle and those folks who are actually being threatened in every way that we can. Your local Benjamin Moore retailer is more than a paint expert. They're someone with paint in their soul. A sixth sense honed over decades. And if you have a question about paint, it's almost as if they can read your mind. I sense you need a two-inch angle brush
Starting point is 00:59:33 for the trim in your family room, regal select in an eggshell finish, and directions to the post office. Benjamin Moore paint is only sold at locally owned stores. Benjamin Moore, see the love. Yeah, that's why on this show, we constantly give shout outs to, of course, Gen Z, who showed up in huge numbers to women who showed up to vote for their freedoms and also to the independents and disaffected Republicans who came out and rejected that other faction of the party that for whatever reason has such a hold in Arizona. And in Arizona specifically, as you look at all the races, one of the things I noticed was there must have been a whole lot of ticket splitting here, meaning that voters were
Starting point is 01:00:14 voting for both Democrats and Republicans, so long as those Republicans were not the extremist MAGA style Republicans on the same ballot. So how does that affect, does it affect your role as Secretary of State? And how do you plan to govern as Secretary of State in a way that meets the needs of Democrats, of independents, and of these Republicans who may have voted against their own party for the sake of standing up for democracy? You know, I was having that conversation with someone earlier today. Campaign campaigns are different than governing. When you campaign, you fight fiercely against the policy proposals of your opponent. Sometimes it gets personal. It did not in this campaign, at least not from my side in any event. And you go forward
Starting point is 01:00:58 fiercely and with strength. And then you've got to switch gears, which we're doing now into governing, because as Secretary of State, I don't just represent Democrats or, you know, centrist Republicans. I represent all of Arizona, and that includes the MAGA Republicans. And so what we're going to have to do is move towards not a conciliatory phase, which a lot of people think is the way to go, but a more truthful phase. And that is to make sure that we include all reasonable, truth-loving citizens in the conversation and continue still to fight with vigor against the lies because they exist. And by the way, the reason that I don't want to anybody to think that I'm going to be very conciliatory towards the liars is because they don't carry the full spirit of American democracy with them. They are, you know, authoritarians. They are seditionists and they don't deserve that sort of conciliatory tone. They don't have to agree with me on a whole bunch of other policies.
Starting point is 01:02:06 But when it comes to the core ideas of democracy that every eligible citizen's vote counts and should count, if they're not thinking that, then I don't have time for them. And I don't have to apologize for that. I don't have to apologize for being assertive and pushing against them,
Starting point is 01:02:23 even though I will respect their vote. I will respect the outcome of the 2024 election if it's a candidate who's not of my political stripe. That's just the way this thing is supposed to work. But that doesn't mean I have to kiss their tails. And that ain't going to happen. So when we do move forward, it's going to be with an eye towards the truth, an eye towards data-driven decisions that are going to benefit all of Arizona's voters, whether we agree with them or not. But I'm definitely not going to be operating from a position of appeasement. That's not my style.
Starting point is 01:02:56 Yeah. As we like to say, if you're trying to be in the middle between a truth and a lie or between autocracy and democracy, you're going to end up somewhere in the middle of those things, which is not going to be good. You're not going to have the truth. You're not going to be on the side of democracy if you are trying to appease those voices. So I like that you're so forceful in repudiating those extremist forces here. I think that's- And from my perspective, following this race as closely as I could from my commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is that you resonated so well with your constituents because among all the great
Starting point is 01:03:27 things that you are, you're a truth teller. What do you think resonated so well with the great people of Arizona, being a truth teller, just being strong in your convictions? Well, I think it's a combination of those things. But look, you don't have to go too far back to recognize a little thing that in Arizona we were proud of called the Straight Talk Express, right? That was old Senator John McCain's way of doing things. And there were plenty of folks on his own side of the aisle that weren't too happy with him sometimes. And that is Arizona. Look, we are a very, very independent type of folks. There's more independents than there are Democrats in Arizona. And the parties are losing ground because folks want to go with leaders who are not going to suck up to them, who are not going to hedge, who are going to be solid in their convictions, even if they don't agree with you.
Starting point is 01:04:17 And here's the thing that I thought was great about the way that we moved through our campaign. I had Republicans who came to me and said, I will probably never vote for you again. But because of this issue, and it's so prevalent, I'm going to support you. And they were writing me checks and saying, you've got to win this one because of where we're at. And I'm perfectly okay with that. Because you can't just be loyal to your party and the person who represents the party, because sometimes that's not the person who represents you and your values. And because this campaign was about really mostly that issue, we brought a lot of people on board. So it's up to me. It's up to some of the rest of the folks who are coming into office to make sure that people realize that this is far bigger than just this one issue. And Arizona does go with really folks who tell the truth. And I'm okay with it, even if it sometimes hurts me or if it's inconvenient for some folks. That's the way we've got to do things. And that's the way Arizona likes to
Starting point is 01:05:21 operate. And I'm an Arizonan, true and true. So that's where I'm going to operate. And, you know, I'm an Arizona and true and true. So that's where I'm going to be. I love it. I love it. And you know what I also love? Something that a lot of folks listening to this might not know now, but you're about to explain it because I need to get your take. So again, one thing that folks might not know is just how involved your mother was in your campaign. It was awesome. Every time we tweet about you, someone would write us and be like, oh my gosh, I donated to him and received a personal thank you card from his mom. It was the best. Could you tell us about that? Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, we had the thank you event for her and her volunteers last night here at headquarters as we're kind of tearing stuff down from the campaign. In 2016, when I first ran, I was sitting at my desk writing thank you postcards to my donors.
Starting point is 01:06:09 And my mom comes up to me and she's like, Mijito, what are you doing? And I said, well, mom, I'm writing thank you cards for my donors. And she says, why? I said, because like you raised me to do this, mom. And she goes, no, no, no. Why are you doing it? And I said, she says, you need to be on the phone getting more money. She says, give me the stack. So she took the cards, the stamps and the list, and she started writing them herself. And she's been doing it ever since. So donors to my campaign, we had to set a threshold because we had over like 35,000 individual donors and she's in her late 70s. So God bless her god bless her but you know folks who donated
Starting point is 01:06:45 would get a personalized postcard from her and then we had so many such a backlog that we got some volunteers to help her address put the addresses on but she still insists on saying you know thank you for donating to my son and then she signs it dr linda pucci and she puts the stamp on all of them herself and she takes a lot of pride in it and last know, a lot of the volunteers that helped her out and did some other postcards came and we had some desserts. And yeah, I just I got my work ethic from her. And she's just, you know, been plugging away. They still got a stack left to do. But she played a critical role in this campaign. And you're right. People recognize that. They love the personal touch. And that's that's an important part of this, because if you take the humanity out of politics, then you're not doing it right. And so that's that's one of the do want to take this quickly, though, to a more serious note and switch gears. After this election, after these midterms, you've seen a lot of these
Starting point is 01:07:52 ultra MAGA talking heads that are in favor of increasing the voting age from 18 to 21. As someone yourself who's fought bravely to defend this country, what does it say that Republicans are okay for someone to defend this country at What does it say that, you know, Republicans are okay for someone to defend this country at 18, but you can't vote for the elected officials who make that decision of where to ultimately send you? Well, what it says is that they're afraid of the electorate and all of their efforts to suppress the vote over the last several years, several decades have been because they understand that people have power and they understand that in our democracy, the people have the power, not those privileged few who find themselves in office. And they want to maintain that power up in their own echelons.
Starting point is 01:08:34 And they know that the youth aren't really aligned with where they're at. And so by narrowing the pool of voters, they think they'll be able to preserve their power. It's like a rat cornered is just trying to scratch out whatever exit route that they can. And it's really quite pathetic to think that these folks would go after it from that angle, understanding and at least alleging that they're such supporters of the military. And, you know, they pound their chests and pretend to be such macho guys. But, you know, when it comes down to it, they're not willing to support veterans when it's necessary. They're not willing to support veterans families. And so it's just part and parcel of their power at any cost sort of mentality.
Starting point is 01:09:17 And if it comes at the cost of of tomorrow's leaders, if it comes at the cost of the future, then I'm not about that. And I don't think that it's just about those folks who are serving. I think it's about young voters who are concerned with the environment, young voters who are concerned with education, young voters who are concerned with so many of those other issues that we're facing that these MAGA Republicans just don't want to address because they don't have any answers to them. Their answer to every question is 2020 was stolen. You know, you ask them about literacy rates, they'll say 2020 was stolen. You ask them about homelessness, they'll say 2020 was stolen. Ask them about the Ukraine, they'll say 2020 was stolen. It's just insane. They don't have any policies other than
Starting point is 01:10:00 that and own the libs. Well, you know, we're going to start owning the rebs. We're going to hit at them really hard and we're going to piss them off at every corner until we continue to beat them down because that's all that they deserve. And we're not going to do it shyly. We're going to do it with some strength. I love it. Any final message to the Midas, Marty and everyone watching out there? Yeah. Listen, y'all, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You know, so many of you went to electfontage.com to help us out and pitched in. And a lot of you got those postcards from my mom.
Starting point is 01:10:35 I hope you enjoy them. A lot of people have them stuck on the refrigerators and stuff. But without an enormous community of like-minded folks who really care about democracy, we would not have been able to do what we did in Arizona for the first time in 48 years. We've got Democrats winning up and down the ballot. We've got a governor.
Starting point is 01:10:55 We've got a secretary of state. We've got an attorney general who's looking at a recount, but that'll probably win. And two U.S. senators. But we're not there yet. They flipped the House seats in Congress. We wereS. senators. But we're not there yet. They flipped the House seats in Congress. We were 6-3. Now they're 3-6. We still have one loss or one minus seat in each House of the legislature. So we're not there yet. We've got to fight hard. And your continued support for folks like me is very much appreciated. Thank you, Midas Mighty out there
Starting point is 01:11:27 for being the true warriors behind those of us at the tip of the spear. Keep pushing, folks. Victory is right around the corner. Adrian Fontes, Arizona Secretary of State-elect, and I love saying those words and love having you on the podcast. Thanks so much, Adrian. Thanks so much, gents. Happy to come back whenever. Keep pushing, stay focused. I thought those were incredible messages. It's so great to see Adrian Fontes representing pro-democracy, pro-normal,
Starting point is 01:12:00 and the coalition of former Republicans, independents, people who are unaffiliated with political parties, and of course, Democrats coming together and saying, look, we want to focus on delivering results for the people. It's why we haven't really given a lot of airtime or podcast time to all of Elon Musk's gaslighting here. It's because I really want the focus to be on, yes, showing the contrast, but Elon's just starving for attention right now and aided by allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who basically claims, if you don't advertise on Elon Musk, that's basically corporate communism. And Elon Musk saying free speech means that private businesses actually have to advertise on Twitter or else they are stifling free speech because Apple has mostly stopped advertising. I'm sticking my my ground i'm making a demand right here right now i'm making a demand to you communists out
Starting point is 01:13:09 there at tesla at twitter at spacex you communists you you have you have not once bought an advertisement spot on the Midas touch podcast and i hereby demand as part of free speech by the power vested in the constitution of the united states of america yes i'm being sarcastic for the emails that i end up getting where people like that's actually not the cost i know by the constitution of the united states of america i demand in the name of free speech that twitter and spacex and tesla pay me and if not i will get my goons in congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene to call you communists for not doing... That's how stupid this is, people. That's how stupid it is.
Starting point is 01:13:52 While the trolls are loud online, they're not loud out there in the real world because they don't really come out from their basements. But the energy out there for the pro-democracy coalition is absolutely incredible. And I'll tell you right now that we just launched on the pack side of Midas Touch. We got a bus going around all of Georgia. And I'm excited. If you're in Georgia, if you see it, come say hi to our driver. He's amazing. He's a veteran. He's a real hard worker. We're driving through the entire state of Georgia with our bus. It's called the Row Your Vote Tour. And it has a simple message, row your vote. Freedom is on the ballot. Re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. And you could see the energy out there on the ground. I mean, have you seen
Starting point is 01:14:42 these videos there of Warnock out there in the streets actually speaking with voters and people getting really excited? By the way, Brett, it's very dangerous when a politician goes, even a popular politician who just shows up in like a sports stadium or a rowdy bar where people are drinking. It's a pretty bold move, even if you're well-liked, to show up there. But Raphael Warnock, it was really a statement, right? He shows up at a bar over the weekend playing World Cup games when the U.S. was playing their game against England.
Starting point is 01:15:18 He showed up, and let's just play the video and show what happens. So everyone right now, standing ovation, shaking Warnock's hands, going nuts. Getting some photos, getting some selfies. Literally everybody in this place is on their feet. Warnock shaking hands with everybody. Interrupts into a USA chant. We're reclaiming USA, folks. We're reclaiming the flag.
Starting point is 01:15:52 Warnock joins in. And you know, so Salty, who works for us, one of our producers and editors here on the show, I don't know if he's watching right now. Yeah, what did I say? Works with us, yeah. So he made one of the most spot on observations about that. He goes, it's like when the Republicans talk, like when Ted Cruz goes, oh, I walked in and then they came out and they hugged me and
Starting point is 01:16:18 kissed me and everyone stood up and applauded and said, Ted, you're amazing. You're the best. And everyone shook my hand and said, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir, for everything you do. That is this, but it actually happened. It's actually happened here. And that kept happening to Warnock as he was walking down the street. He kept getting just applause from everybody. The early voting turnout numbers are great right now.
Starting point is 01:16:46 Looking really good. I'll tell you about it. So some counties had begun the early voting over the weekend. If you remember, Republicans tried their hardest to prevent voters from voting over this weekend. They said, oh, it's a holiday. We're not going to let them. They literally sued. Well, the Warnock campaign sued to allow people to vote. And then you had the Republican Party say, oh, we're suing to prevent people from voting.
Starting point is 01:17:07 Anytime you're trying to prevent people from voting, you're probably on the wrong side of things. But guess what? Even on a holiday weekend, people showed up and they showed out big. On Sunday alone, turnout was 130% higher than this time in the 2020 general election. And nearly 157,000 people voted in person on Saturday and Sunday over the holiday weekend. Sunday's turnout, the total turnout on Sunday nearly doubled the previous turnout record. And Raffensperger, the Secretary of State who Donald Trump tried to extort, he mentioned that early voter turnout is, quote, blowing the doors off expectations.
Starting point is 01:17:47 I mean, this is big. And what we're seeing also in the early data, young voters showing up big. Young voters saying that wasn't a one-off. That wasn't a one-off over the general election. This is us. We show up big. I want to show you now for the people watching the Georgia youth turnout voters right here. This is by age range that I'm showing up for the listeners.
Starting point is 01:18:10 It shows you how many people have voted in Georgia. And all you have to do is notice, look at that 18 to 24 line in the very beginning. Look how that 18 to 24 line spikes so incredibly high. And you just are not seeing that across another ranges until you get to the traditional voter block. I think that is so important. And I think it says a lot about what young voters, how important they're viewing this election. And we'll have more to come. We're going to be doing a lot more for this election. And I'm excited to announce all that. But I think Warnock is right now finishing with a really strong close while Herschel Walker is doing whatever the hell it is he's doing by telling young people that anyone
Starting point is 01:18:51 under the age of 32 that they shouldn't have the right to vote. And that's his closing message to people. Yeah, if you're under the age of 32, you don't even know this country. You shouldn't even be here. You shouldn't be a citizen. Renounce your citizenship. That's Herschel Walker's closing message. It was the most softball question he was asked too. It was like a right-wing media entity, I think, that asked the question. But the question was like a very basic one, right? It was just like, so what's your view about a lot of young people voting? It wasn't a hard question. Yeah, he's like, oh, they shouldn't vote. I give him credit for not going into the whole vampire werewolf speech again, though.
Starting point is 01:19:29 So that's a low bar, low bar, low bar, low bar, low bar. But the highest bar in the world for President Biden, because he could accomplish literally more in two years than anyone's like done in like decades. And it's like, but what's he doing? But what is he really doing it's like okay every one of these things that are like massive accomplishments that most presidents don't get in there too if they serve two terms they don't get this done but let's just talk about some good news roundup involving finishing off with some good news i like it let's end on a high note like president biden today signed a presidential memorandum that will strengthen our nation's effort to combat sexual violence as a weapon of
Starting point is 01:20:10 war a too often overlooked and underreported crime saying he remains quote committed to confronting gender-based violence in all forms here and around the world like that's what biden's talking about today like what else is biden talking about woke woke woke right that's you know that's the knee jerk it's corporate communism that apple isn't buying ads on twitter you need to give their money to elon musk by the constitution by the power invested in the first amendment i don't think that one works what does cat turd have to say let's retweet cat turd 100 times let's call prosecutors monsters vindictive monsters all like these people are like it's literally insane like okay so biden's talking about that biden's talking about the work to build the first national ev charging network and bring in historic
Starting point is 01:20:57 investments for ev battery manufacturing here at home via the infrastructure bill, right? And that's in addition to the CHIPS Act bringing incredible jobs here as well. So what about- So woke. So very, very woke. So woke. We all woke. What about 5 million Americans have gained healthcare coverage since Biden became president. How about Biden reaffirmed his commitment to fighting for the PRO Act to help workers unionize and achieve a $15 minimum wage? Well, very, very woke, right? Well, Republicans believe that people at the minimum wage right now is way too high.
Starting point is 01:21:37 Biden's actually focusing on workers like not only should get $15. He already instituted that $15 minimum wage for federal workers. He's already raised it. But like the fact that you have like the Republican position is that people should have to work multiple jobs and then like not make what they're not make what they deserve. And like, I mean like it's really absurd positions.
Starting point is 01:21:59 Like when you like the biggest scam in the world that like Republicans have convinced people to literally vote against. That's why, though, we have to stay focused on these. How about the fact that 17 states now have an unemployment rate at or below 3% and 11 states and Washington, D.C. No. The lowest unemployment rate ever. Jobs are so woke, dude. Jobs, man.
Starting point is 01:22:26 That's woke. Yeah, we just got to root on elon musk man he should become a billionaire dude i like when people get fired that's what i root for literally that's what these people they go yes elon fired everybody yeah no it's woke bro jobs woke yeah so supporting your family health care yo biden biden riddle me this biden biden you don't need health care man so what biden didn't even have dinner with one nazi trump had dinner with like three so take that you woke yeah how woke how woke is this this is as woke this is as woke as you get because right now seniors on medicare pay as much $1,000 a month for insulin. That's not woke. That's like legit.
Starting point is 01:23:10 Too legit to quit. But starting January 1, the cost is now going to be capped at $35 a month per prescription thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. So from $1,000 a month to 35 a month the price of insulin yeah so that's way what are you doing cheap insulin is so fucking woke dude it's like like so like biden woke insulin pedophiles communists you know that's that's that's that's making healthcare accessible no no no what we need to do is just let's let's focus on what cat turd has to say today because that's what real americans do what's cat what's cat turd dude what about jfk jr huh yeah let's go america i mean dude these people
Starting point is 01:23:59 are literally like it's it's insanity when you're when you talk about these issues like this, it's like not on, what do we focus on? Hunter Biden's laptop from hell, man. What is Putin saying? Let's focus on that. This is what the Respect for Marriage Act also. The Senate's voted to move forward today to pass the bill codifying federal protections for same-sex marriage.
Starting point is 01:24:19 The Respect for Marriage Act with final passage expected later this week. Though not full codification of Obergefell, the bill would ensure that same-sex and interracial marriage is federally recognized and protected and that states must recognize out-of-state marriages. That seems like things. Like the contrast. So we bring it full circle at the end and then the contrast could absolutely not be clearer right now.
Starting point is 01:24:48 What about Trump also praising President Xi in China as the people of China are actually protesting against Xi? And Trump gives these speeches. I called President Xi, I call him king. I call him the king. He's my king. I go, President king i call him the king he's my king i go president g you are the king and then what about kim jong-un donald trump's like i love him like i am able to love with him yeah like we have a love affair imagine for one second not even just if like biden said it but if like i don't know no imagine if like a school teacher in a random part
Starting point is 01:25:28 of america who identifies as a democrat praised the head of the communist of the chinese communist party repeatedly including during his announcement for his presidential run and said i call him king no longer getting normal concluding the presidential true okay okay so i i gotta reel it in back to i didn't ground it back in reality is what you're saying yeah that was so woke of me to go so far like very woke you're such a woke um okay so let's reel in it reel it in folks reel in it so imagine you know give you like that would be something like libs of tikt post and everyone said, look at the Democrat. It would be like front page news of the New York Post. Fox News would run that for a month. I want to give a huge shout out. I know they probably aren't listening to this and probably can't listen to this in many areas, but to the protests in Iran, to the protesters in China,
Starting point is 01:26:29 what they are doing is true, true bravery. And as my wife said to me today, she goes, isn't it kind of ironic that you have these people in the worst of circumstances facing true adversity around the world, And they are fighting for freedom. They are actually fighting for freedom and for democracy and for their rights. While here in the United States, you have people in MAGA who are literally fighting for autocracy. I mean, the contrast is just so, it's just so mind blowing. And so I just have the utmost respect for all those people who are
Starting point is 01:27:06 putting their lives on the line for freedom, to have a little bit of taste of freedom in the face of all that. And I know we hear every single episode of the show, we commit ourselves all the time to ensuring that we keep the freedoms that we have here in this country and work to expand them and to push back these anti-democratic forces. And like Adrian Fonte said, that doesn't mean you don't compromise with that. You can't compromise with that. You need to call it out firmly. You need to reject it.
Starting point is 01:27:34 You need to completely repudiate it. And that's what we promise to do here every single day. And it's why I so love the Midas Touch community because we're more than just some network. Like our biggest strength is the Midas Mighty out there. All of you listening to this and watching it who take the lessons and the discussions and then bring it into the real world, whether it's registering voters or participating in phone banks or just spreading the videos around and having discussions with family members and colleagues and friends and neighbors. It is that kind of active participation in the process that really
Starting point is 01:28:21 gives us a unique advantage. And I say us, I mean the community over all these other astro turf groups that try to spread disinformation and hate. So one of the things that we do to remain 100% independent is that we don't take outside investor money. So we don't, we are 100% funded, crowdfunded, pretty, pretty impressive, because we compete with all the major media networks. We get more digital engagement than them. So if you want to help out, no matter where you are in the world, check out Patreon and consider becoming a patron, which is a membership to the Patreon Midas Touch site, where there's exclusive content that you can only get there. You can just go to patreon.com
Starting point is 01:29:11 slash Midas Touch, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Midas Touch. There's lots of exclusive content, behind the scenes footage, exclusive podcasts, exclusive content and posts and so much more. There's even one tier where you could become an honorary producer of the Midas Touch podcast and your name appears just now at the end of the podcast, your name appears on the podcast. So special shout out to all of our honorary producers. You also get a poster if you're an honorary producer commemorating that you're a producer. And then there are postcards that go out, exclusive merch drops, and so much more on our Patreon. So consider checking that out, patreon.com slash Midas Touch, no matter
Starting point is 01:30:02 where you are in the world. I think you will definitely enjoy that. Also, check out our new true crime thriller, American PSYOP, American, then it's spelled P-S-Y-O-P, brought to you by MidasTouch and the Bunker Crew. This is a true crime thriller about the son of General Wes Clark, Wes Clark Jr., who gets trapped in all of these influence operations and psychological operations and cult operations and mercenary operations. And it's kind of like Forrest Gump meets, I don't know what, because he's literally at all these places. There's sometimes I'm like, oh, okay, that didn't happen. Whoa. But then there's like video of him there. And then there's like photos of him there, and then there's photos of him there, and there's audio of him there.
Starting point is 01:30:46 He's in the room where it happens, and so that additional context, there's just so many moments I was like, wow. You know how for Game of Thrones and stuff, they do a supplemental podcast, like a supplemental show that's behind the show? I like that. I like that.
Starting point is 01:31:03 We might have to do that for the show because I find that all I want to do all day is talk about American Psyop because it's that freaking good. Yeah. And yeah, everybody in the comments right now, if you've listened to even one episode of the show, but I don't think it's humanly possible.
Starting point is 01:31:19 I think once you listen to one, you have to binge all of them. But if you've listened to any of the episodes, go right now in the comments, if you're on this with us live and just tell everybody how much you love it. It's a podcast. You just search it anywhere on any of your podcast apps, American Sci-Up. Let us know if you love it because I really think it's something incredibly special. in the show, from the Nick Fuente stuff to this MAGA influence in the Republican Party, to Trump, to Kanye West, then Elon Musk. It's all intertwined in these psyops. And it's so relevant. I don't
Starting point is 01:31:56 want to say any more than that, but check it out. Subscribe to American Psyops channel. Subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Midas Touch audio channel, wherever you get the podcast. So if you're an audio listener, go to YouTube and subscribe there. If you're a YouTube listener, go to the audio and subscribe there and leave a five star review. That's all I got. And I just want to say thank you to all of the Midas Mighty out there. We so appreciate you and let's stay focused and keep on fighting together. Jordy. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. At Midas Touch, we are unapologetically pro-democracy and we demand justice and accountability.
Starting point is 01:32:39 That's why we're spreading our message to convict 45. That's right. Gear up right now with your convict 45 tees and pins at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.