The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump DESTROYS his OWN Defense and MAJOR Wins for Democracy

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Trump delivered a speech at the Faith and Fascist, um, I mean, Faith and Freedom conference over the weekend, where he admitted to engaging in many of the crimes for which he is under federal indictment. Meanwhile, new orders from Judge Aileen Cannon have hit the docket. We’ll break down what they mean. Meanwhile, House Republican stunts somehow continue to get wackier, weirder and more desperate. We’ll discuss their latest moves. Meanwhile, President Biden and the Democrats have scored some major wins for the American people. We’ll discuss some surprising good news out of the Supreme Court as well as President Biden’s plan to deliver high speed broadband to every American. This and more on the MeidasTouch Podcast! Head to REELPAPER.com/MEIDAS and sign up for a subscription using code MEIDAS at checkout, and automatically get 30% off your first order and FREE SHIPPING! Thanks to our sponsor IYLIA: Go to IYLIA.com and use the code TOUCH20 for 20% off your order! Break your habit with Fum! Head to TryFum.com/MEIDAS and use code MEIDAS to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! 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 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 MAGA Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 doesn't stop there. With over 3,000

games to choose from, including fan favorites like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz, and more, make deposits instantly to jump in on the fun, and make same-day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Donald Trump gave another vile speech at a right-wing extremist convention,

this one in Washington, D.C., an event called the Faith and Freedom Conference, which is the exact opposite of what the name is. It's all about tyranny, no faith, and no freedom. And Donald Trump continued to incriminate himself and demonstrate how the Republican Party has become nothing more than a cult. And this is breaking news right now. CNN, we are learning, has obtained the audio recordings from July 2021 of Donald Trump admitting to having classified records. These are the audio recordings referenced in special counsel Jack Smith's criminal indictment against Donald Trump. Before this, we had the transcripts, but not the actual audio recording. And again, we're just learning that now as I'm giving this intro. So as we get more about that, we will update everybody on this episode. Five or six Secret Service agents we've learned also have testified

before the criminal grand jury in Washington, D.C., where Special counsel Jack Smith continues to present evidence about Donald Trump's crimes relating to his 2020 election interference and his conduct relating to the January 6th insurrection. Special counsel Jack Smith is moving closer to a charging decision in that criminal investigation. And this as federal judge Eileen Cannon issued a new order in the criminal case against Donald Trump brought by special counsel Jack Smith that I mentioned earlier involving Trump's willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy, making false statements, and obstruction of justice. In the new court order, Judge Cannon denied, without prejudice, Jack Smith's request to file the list of 84 witnesses the government had against Donald Trump under seal, and by under seal meaning confidential to the public. But Donald Trump's lawyers as of

now have this list anyway. Let's discuss the ruling and let's also discuss the status conference hearing set by Judge Eileen Cannon in the criminal case for July. Another week and more fake GOP whistleblowers, the newest whistleblower scam. The Republicans claim now that there is an IRS whistleblower who is saying that the Trump-appointed prosecutor in Delaware, again, Trump-appointed prosecutor in Delaware, who investigated Hunter Biden and secured the plea deal with Hunter Biden, was told, according to the whistleblower, that the prosecutor cannot bring more serious charges against Hunter Biden, even though the Trump appointed prosecutor says this is not true. This is not true. We've said it before,

and I feel like each week it's getting more and more crazy. And frankly, I think the American people are just getting angrier and angrier at this modern day MAGA Republican Party. And it's being reflected in polls now that these MAGA Republicans just live in an alternative reality where they stew in hate, just weird and bizarre conspiracies and just total, total disparagement for our great country. But let's get back to planet normal, where President Biden has announced today more than $42 billion, with a B, to expand broadband and internet access across the nation. We've learned today as well that the unemployment gap between black and white Americans has been closed for the first time in American history. America is showing how it is leading the world, not just in innovation,

but also in manufacturing. And on the polling front, Biden leads Trump in mostly all of the significant polls, Democrats lead Republicans in all the generic congressional significant polls. But please, folks, do not get complacent. And I'll just share with you very quickly, this weekend, I spent my Sunday with the Santa Clarita Democrats, and that area is California's 27th congressional district. It's actually represented by a MAGA Republican, Mike Garcia. And I spent the weekend making postcards and canvassing with all of the great volunteers there. And it was a great experience as we are about 500 days, a little bit less than 500 days now from the general election. It's never too early to get

started. And so make sure you get started as well with all of your efforts. I'm Ben Mycelis. This is the Midas Touch podcast joined by Brett and Jordy Brothers. How are you doing? Doing great. I'm really excited to get into it today. I feel like another quiet news day, as always on these Monday shows, another super quiet, not much really happening. And the weekend, not much happening. I mean, go out for lunch. There's a coup in Russia. There's not a coup in Russia. What's happening? Who knows? A lot of developments happening both in America and around the world. We're going to try to bring you all the updates. And we also, like Ben was saying, do not want the good stuff to get lost in the mix. There's a lot

of really positive news, a lot of really positive developments. And the one thing about all the Trump stories and all the chaos and instability that there is in Russia and Ukraine is that oftentimes we do get a little distracted from the positive. So we hope to bring you the positive. We're going to give you the analysis on all these court filings, these court orders, because there is a lot to keep track of. But I'm ready, folks. I'm ready to go. Jordy, how are you doing today? I'm pumped, brothers. I'm excited for tonight's show. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. What's going on? Hey, for all my folks in Western PA right now, stay dry. I didn't tell Brett or Ben this before. There is a crazy storm right now. So if my power shuts out and I just go blank,

it's not because you guys tease me too much. Well, maybe it is. But no, it's because I lost power here in Western PA. Oh, no. I think the instability, though, that we see in Russia with Prigozhin's almost fully successful coup, we stopped about, what, 200 kilometers away from Moscow and got very, very close with his Wagner mercenary force. And the instability there to me is frankly, inextricably intertwined with the kind of instability we see in the MAGA Republican movement. I mean, as MAGA gets weaker across the world, that unholy alliance of authoritarianism that they've tried to create and pull America. That's one of the things with these MAGA Republicans, trying to pull our great democracy, not closer to our traditional allies in NATO, other democracies, but trying to push our country closer to places like North Korea with Kim Jong-un, places trying to make our nation closer to Russia and Vladimir Putin. And I can't even stress

enough how consequential history is going to look at that 2020 election, because we'd be living in an entirely different world right now with, I think, Vladimir Putin controlling most of Eastern Europe, if not getting further at this point than being as weak as he is if the outcome was different in our 2020 elections here. And that's why the stakes have never been higher. And I know Brett and Jordi, we were talking about it on our group chat, even as you looked at the commentary from the MAGA Republicans over this weekend, like rooting for Vladimir Putin. I'm like, in what world, what has become of this MAGA Republican Party? It's frankly sad to see. They've completely lost the plot. And you're right. I mean, they want to transform America

into a Russia style country. That's their vision for America. And they'll openly say that too, once you dig into their policies and what they really want. It's why Russia has actually opened up a town. I'm not sure if you guys saw this story a few months back. They opened up a town for right-wingers in the United States who want to live in their right wing utopia. And they're like, come to Russia. And I'm like, okay, go to Russia then. They play into it. And I think the important thing to remember with the whole conflict that we saw over the weekend is that both sides are incredibly evil, horrible, terrible, terrible, terrible people. And so you're not necessarily rooting for one side over the other. But I think anytime that we see Russia take their eyes off the ball, Russia get distracted,

and Russia actually seeing this instability there and seeing that they are far more fragile than the strength that they try to project. And this is all like MAGA does as well. It's all about like, we need to show strength. We need to show strength. They criticize the United States military. They go, it's a woke military. Russia doesn't have a woke military. Well, you know what? Russia's getting their ass kicked, you know, and you could lie all you want. You could gaslight, you could have your stupid tweets, but they've been on the wrong side of this every single step of the way. And they take the Russian propaganda. They regurgitate the Russian propaganda. They try to copy Russia's style of propaganda for themselves. It's really a sick thing. And we'll go through all that as well. And in addition to everything else.

What was your comment this weekend that the Russian army was the second strongest army in Russia? I guess the third strongest in Ukraine at that point. No doubt about it. But look, let's go in because we need to highlight these same tactics, these Putin-esque tactics. So let's take a look at what happened over this weekend at this event in the Washington, D.C. Hilton. It was called the Faith and Freedom Conference. It was a very small gathering there. I want to be very clear, too. We're talking about in the hundreds, not like the thousands.

I went and looked at like, OK, what's the maximum capacity of any of these ballrooms at the Hilton? Because, you know, when media networks reported on this, like the crowd was, it was packed. I was like, these are like, it's like a wedding venue, you know? So it's like, you know, don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm sure it's, you know, a few hundred people there, but I mean, to have a few hundred people there is not exactly, you know, an impressive showing of force. And by the way, I want to show you some of these clips, but I'm just getting word also that we have now received the audio that CNN just played from the indictment that's referenced in special counsel, Jack Smith's indictment of Donald Trump, this audio from Bedminster, July of 2021.

Before showing you that audio and playing that audio, though, I think I could properly frame it by showing you some of Donald Trump's speech where he says ridiculous things about the indictment. So here's a clip of Donald Trump telling the audience at the Faith and Freedom Conference, which is the exact opposite of that. No faith, no freedom. And here he's telling the crowd that the reason that he's being indicted is not because he stole classified records, but that he's being indicted for you. Play this clip. Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists, and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of courage.

I'm being indicted for you. And I believe the you is more than 200 million people that love our country. They're out there, and they love our country. It's a badge of courage. I mean, what an imbecile. A badge of courage and telling the crowd, I'm being indicted for you. But by the way, he did go to Wharton. He wants the crowd to know that he did go to Wharton, but they didn't really teach him in Wharton what an indictment was. Here, play this clip. But the Presidential Records Act, which is not even mentioned in this ridiculous 44-page indictment of me. I didn't know about that. When I graduated from the Wharton School of Finance, we didn't study being indicted, getting arrested, going to jail. We didn't know

about that. They never taught us that. By the way, I think they actually did. I mean, if you take it, I mean, setting aside, it's a ridiculous thing to say. And by the way, people at Wharton don't even remember Donald Trump, like even being around the classes. I think people who somewhat remember him said that he was just like a total jerk and barely showed up. And he always wants to keep his transcript secret because he probably got horrible grades there. But like, they actually do. Like if you, if you took a, if you went to business school, they actually do teach a class on ethics the same way that if you go to law school, there is a class on ethics and business ethics would be a course that would be taught at Wharton where you would learn things that are crimes. And it's a ridiculous thing for him to claim what? That he went to Wharton and

he's just an idiot and he doesn't know what an indictment is? But then this is where he just confesses and confesses. And in a little bit, I'm just going to show you, we're going to play for you the CNN audio. But before doing that, I'll go back to the speech that he gave in front of this small crowd at the so-called Faith and Freedom Conference. And here he, again, what he's saying is 100% false right here. But he goes, under the Presidential Records Act, I had every right to have these documents. That's the opposite of what the act says, but play this clip. Under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil, not criminal. It was done in 1977. Civil. I had every right to have these documents, personal belongings and boxes. Joe Biden didn't. Even Mike Pence

didn't have that right. They weren't covered by the Presidential Records Act. I was because I was president, but they weren't. But these scoundrels and thugs, they only come after me. They didn't go after the many, many other presidents that kept their documents. You know about it. Many, many others. If you look at the Bush family, if you look at even Jimmy Carter, and I say he's innocent. I say Jimmy Carter's innocent. But they went after me. They didn't go after anybody else.

And they went after me criminally. And it's not a criminal violation. It's not even a violation under the presidential records. All right. Setting aside that everything he says there is just completely false. And the presidential records act literally says the exact opposite. Can we reflect for a moment that what this event is supposed to be is a stump speech in terms of running for the office of the presidency.

The very purpose of the speech is to talk to an audience about what it is you're going to do for the American people. And Donald Trump's stump speech, I wear my indictment like a badge of courage. I got indicted for you. Special counsel Jack Smith is a mad dog psycho. Letitia James is a whatever, you know. Fawnie Willis is X, Y, and Z. Alvin Bragg is coming after me. Justice Arthur Angoron is a corrupt judge. Judge Mershon is a corrupt judge.

Judge David Carter is a very corrupt judge. I mean, that's his speech that he goes around to the American people who are saying, all right, we're going into 2024. What are you going to do for me? But did you hear that Judge Juan Mershon donated $10 to president Biden's gift. Did you know that judge Juan Mershon's daughter works for a political consulting firm that does work for the Democrat? What, what, what are you even taught? Like, let's reflect on what's even talking about. It's there. They're very much Russian tactics as we were talking about before. Um, I like his use of scoundrels and thugs. Who speaks like this? He speaks like he's like a pirate in the 1700s. These dirty scoundrels, just a very bizarre

thing to say. And when you really don't have policy beliefs, and the Republican Party at all does this now, you have to latch on to other things. And in Donald Trump's case, he is making that other thing himself. And he is trying to make the indictment, well, an indictment on the entire MAGA movement to that effect. And that's his only move because he really doesn't have any policies. He did a horrible job as president. The Republicans have no plans that they're putting forward to help people. That's why everything they do is just Hunter Biden, this gas stoves that, you know, it's all Mr. Potato Head. So look, we got a whistleblower. Oh, look, we're going to expunge Donald Trump's impeachments, which isn't a thing. It's like these guys, they got into office, presumably, presumably to help people, presumably to help the American people. I think that's what independents would want. I think that's what Republicans would want. I think that's what Democrats would want, at least a sizable chunk of that group. I assume they actually want things that will actually help them and their families. But instead, what do they do? They take the route of authoritarians. They take the route of what Putin would do. That's their North Star. What would Putin do here? And they launched this disinformation campaign, which by the way, I'm unsure, and you could tell me, Ben, Donald Trump makes these arguments, if you want to, it's a generous term for what he does when he just lies about the Presidential Records Act. I'm not even certain that would be like an

admissible argument in court to just, you can't just lie about the law in your argument, can you? Like you can't just make up that the law says – No. So at the beginning of a court case, there would be what's called a motion in limine, which would be a motion to exclude arguments that are false that could create confusion by the jury. Because in the first instance, it's the role of the judge to be very clear on the law. The jury is ultimately the trier of fact. The judge is like the referee when it comes to the law. So you can't make up just a false legal argument. And you may recall an example of that, right?

Remember when Steve Bannon was trying to argue at his contempt of congress trial that basically he was misled by his own attorney and that that was a defense and it's just an example there where the judge in that case said based on the current status of the law you can't even make that argument to a jury because what you're saying isn't the isn't the law you know you you have to stay within the four corners of the law. But this is ultimately admissible, not for the fact that, not for the stuff Donald Trump wants to make, because those legal arguments are not going to be valid. The jury is going to get jury instructions that actually state what the law is and what the elements are. But Donald Trump has the right to remain silent.

He can invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in a criminal case, unlike a civil case. A prosecutor can say, you see, Trump, he didn't even take the stand. You should infer that he's guilty. In a civil case, you can do that. You can say that, infer that Donald Trump is liable because he's refusing to testify and he invoked the Fifth. It's an adverse inference. But because Donald Trump is a defendant in the case, the criminal defendant, Donald Trump's out of court statements would normally be hearsay hearsay and

out of court statement used for the truth of the matter asserted, um, that you can't normally bring into court. He's out of court statements used for the truth of the matter asserted, but as a party opponent, that's an exception to the hearsay rule. So all this stuff comes in like, this is better to Jack Smith than a deposition because Donald Trump's just giving him the sound bites. Like, Hey, here's the sound bite to basically use against me. Like, like this one where Donald Trump says, whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take with him. He has the absolute right

to keep them, or he can give them back. That's the law. It's not the law. But here, play this clip. Phony case. Well, it is true. I mean, it is true. In other words, whatever documents the president decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back to NARA if he wants. He talks to them like we were doing and he can do that if he wants. That's the law. And it couldn't be more clear. It couldn't be more clear. That's not the law. The law is actually the exact clear. It couldn't be more clear. That's not the law. The law is actually the exact opposite of it. I could show you more and more and more. He spends most of his speech just saying that over and over and over again to this crowd,

which is ostensibly supposed to be evangelical Christians. And so he finally goes and talks about Roe v. Wade, and he brags that he was the one who ended Roe v. Wade. Cue in the fact that Democrats will just use this, and rightfully so, as the 30-second commercial going into the general elections. Play this clip. Exactly one year ago today, those justices were the pivotal votes in the Supreme Court's landmark decision ending the constitutional atrocity known as Roe v. Wade. Thank you. Conservatives have been trying for 50 years, exactly 50 years. Amazing that today is the day. I don't know. Did you set this up on purpose? Was that done purposely? This is the day. I don't know. Did you set this up on purpose?

Was that done purposely? This is the day, one year. I mean, today is the birthday of that decision. Did you do that? I mean, it wasn't just by a fluke, right? I assume you did. Whether you did or not, this is the birthday. So it was pretty good. And Ralph's birthday, too. That was set up, too. Something strange is going on here. You know, they'll say it's Trump's fault. But I got it done and nobody thought it was even a possibility. They've been fighting. Good people, strong people, smart people have been fighting for 50 years. And it never even came close to getting done.

I don't believe they've ever even taken a vote. I mean, never even came close. It was something that wasn't going to happen. I got it done. I get a kick out of these candidates and even the other side. Well, I don't know. I think I'm more pro-life on this.

And somebody stood up, a woman stood up and said, this guy ended Roe v. Wade. How the hell can you go against him? And I sort of said that myself, actually. But I'm proud to be the most pro-life president in American history. Yeah, play that video over and over and over again, that as a result of that, the MAGA Republicans like Donald Trump are laughing in your face when they are the ones

making reproductive right decisions over women, that they're the ones who are controlling a woman's body, that Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans and Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and that whole crew, they go, we're the ones who want to stand in the doctor's office and make the decision and we'll make the decision for women. We want to're the ones who want to stand in the doctor's office and make the decision, and we'll make the decision for women. We want to be the ones in your bedroom. We want to be the ones in your bathrooms. Utterly, utterly despicable. And then I'll play you this other one from Donald Trump, where he is saying that if he were to be reelected, he would order the government to deny entry to all communists and Marxists. Play this clip. Today, I'm announcing a new plan to protect the integrity of our

immigration system. Federal law prohibits the entry of communists and totalitarians into the United States. But my question is, what do we do with the ones that are already here that grew up in it? I think we have to pass a new law for them. Using federal law in Section 212F of the Immigration and Nationality Act, I will order my government to deny entry to all communists and all Marxists. Those who come to and join our country must love our country. We want them to love our country.

We don't want them when they want to destroy our country. Welcome to America. We want to destroy your country. Thank you very much. So we're going to keep foreign Christian hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America. We're keeping them out of America. And let's be clear, he uses those labels to refer to anybody who's not in the MAGA Republican cult. And Brad, I know you have the famous post-World War II poem that you posted. Yeah, no, I mean, he's echoing exactly the words of dictators throughout history. And there was a famous poem that I'm sure many of you know. Let me see if I could dig it up here for the folks to see at home.

But Ben, why don't you read it as I pull it up? Yeah, pull it open right there. It's Pastor Martin Niemöller who says, first they came for the socialist and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionist and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a trained unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. And it's not just what Trump was saying at the convention, but the whole ecosystem, this fascist Republican ecosystem built around him and people who are attending the events and speaking openly, like saying positive things

about Stalin and Mao and Hitler. Here, play this clip. This is Liberty University's Ryan Helfenbein, who was there on one of these right wing networks, just basically praising the most disgusting people in human history. Play this clip. Holy, agree with that. Basically, this is an evangelistic movement on the left. And that's what's happening. It's indoctrination. I mean, they are proselytizing to the next generation. And what we're discovering as parents and conservatives is, wait a second, education really is evangelism. So if you don't control education, you cannot control the future.

And Stalin knew that. Mao knew that. Right. Hitler knew that. We have to get that back for conservative values. I mean, saying it, you know. Sheesh. I mean, what do you even say to that?

And Ben, I mean, you're so right. It's that whole ecosystem that made up this faith and freedom coalition. It's so ridiculous to even say. It's just how Republicans or the mainstream media uses or legacy media uses the term conservative to apply to the Republican Party, right? There's nothing conservative about this modern day Republican Party. They're mega lunatics. This faith and freedom rally, I'm putting it in quotes here, it's terrifying. What scares me equally as when Trump says the things that he says or when the Liberty University guy says what he says is the crowd. And I know the crowd's small, but folks, those people vote. So make sure you're doing everything you can to motivate your friends and family around

you. Don't just look at the polls and say, we're good. Those people out there who are laughing at the Roe v. Wade jokes that Trump is making, first off, they're not even jokes. What is he even saying in those clips? They're just laughing because they're so far gone in this cult that they'll laugh at whatever the man says. So folks, get out there and vote. This has been a recent thing. I mean, they've been doing it for a long time. But in the past week alone, they keep bringing up this Hitler quote, like it's become like the go to Republican Hitler quote. It's it's it's an extremely bizarre thing.

And like at a certain point, you're like, oh, well, like maybe they heard the quote, but didn't know who said it. Like, you know, I try to give them maybe the benefit of the doubt of what they're saying. If you should never, honestly. But then you have a group like Moms for Liberty. And Jordi, to your point, the names they use are supposed to be the opposite of what they are, like always. It's Moms for Liberty. It's Liberty University. It's the Faith and Freedom Conference, when everything is about the exact opposite. Then you have Moms for Liberty, this group, which is basically like the female version of the Proud Boys. They're well connected

to the Proud Boys and they go, they disrupt all the school board meetings and they complain that race is being taught. They complain about the teaching of slavery. They complain about the teaching of LGBTQ issues. And this is from one of their local newsletters from last week, where they echoed the exact same sentiments of that Liberty University advisor who was on RSBN speaking at the Trump rally. They gave a quote in their newsletter that said, he alone who owns the youth gains the future. They attributed it right there, Adolf Hitler.

They wrote it, they attributed it, and it was the leading top quote on their newsletter. And that's the same exact sentiments that that guy said at the thing. It shows you that everything they say when they complain, our kids are being indoctrinated at school. They're being, no, they want to indoctrinate your kids into their own ideology. What they fear is the kids, I guess, the youth as they're outlining here, they fear them actually being able to open their minds and think critically and be introduced to new topics and new perspectives that differ from their own. They fear them embracing a world of diversity and inclusion, which is why they rail so heavily against that. And then like Jordi said, everything's the opposite. So they accuse

them, they accuse the teachers who are actually introducing them to new concepts of indoctrination. It's the same Putin-esque style of propaganda we see every single time. Pull up that poster by the whatever, the Mothers of Liberty thing one more time. I want to, Moms of Liberty. Because if you look there, Brett, to your point, what they talk about in this issue, what they're focusing on is also, when you say they want to indoctrinate, they're focusing on, like,

I know everyone's focused on the Adolf Hitler quote, but how about the liberty lessons as a class in biblical citizenship, as well as they're focused on growth of school choice voucher programs is one of their other main things. It's just part of a movement to also try to destroy public schools, but their focus is on also biblical citizenship as well, which by the way- And then underneath the quote, Ben, underneath the quote also, it says, Moms for Liberty will not be intimidated by hate groups. It's literally right under a quote of Adolf Hitler.

Come on. And what they're referring to there is the Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled fairly recently Moms for Liberty a hate group because of their anti-American activities, because of their disruptions of school boards, because of their threatening of violence. They go around, they threaten violence, they threaten to blow up schools. They use all sorts of various tactics. And so the Southern Poverty Law Center put them on their list of hate groups. And so what do they do? They go, no, you're a hate group.

And they put it in their newsletter right alongside their Adolf Hitler quote. So pull up the CNN audio right now. I haven't heard it yet. This is breaking news that we're about to play. This is audio that CNN has obtained. It's the audio recording that's referenced in special counsel, Jack Smith's indictment, uh, where Donald Trump is bragging about having this classified information. And he's talking about how doesn't it make him feel like the winner as it relates to, uh, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley. And it's, he's showing these individuals back in July of 2021 who are basically random dudes to Donald Trump. To give you the context, he doesn't know who these people really are.

I mean, they're ghostwriting a book for Mark Meadows is show them classified information, which I believe in the audio, he admits that he never declassified and that he shouldn't be showing them. So this is the first time I'm going to be hearing the audio because it literally, the news just broke. So let's play the clip right now. Bad, sick people. That was your coup, you know, against you. Well, it started right at the beginning. Like when Millie's talking about, oh, you were going to try to do a coup. No, they were trying to do that before you even were sworn in.

That's right. Trying to overthrow your election. Well, with Millie, let me see that. I'll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. Wow. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't we looked at some this was him this

wasn't done by me this was him all sorts of stuff pages long yeah I just got isn't that amazing this totally wins my case you you know. Except it is like highly confidential, secret. This is secret information. Look at this. You attack and... Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. She'd send it to Anthony Weiner.

The pervert. By the way, isn't that incredible? Yeah. I was just saying, because we were talking about it. And he said, he wanted to attack Iran. He's in the papers. This was done by the military, given to me. I think we can probably, right?

I don't know. We'll have to see. Yeah, we'll have to try to figure out. See, as president, I could have de-'t eat less yeah no i can't you know but this is yeah now we have a problem isn't that interesting yeah it's so cool i mean it's so i'm look we here and you probably almost didn't believe me but now you believe me no i believe it's incredible right no it brings some uh bring some cokes in please goes, it's so cool. It's so cool. I mean, it is fascism meets idiocracy. And then he also admits, as president, I could have declassified it, and I didn't declassify it. if you are not disgusted and offended by the very fact that those were our classified documents,

that's on a recording because Margo Martin, Donald Trump's staffer, used to work with him at the White House, who worked with him at Mar-a-Lago, recorded it. Trump's own staffer was recording these things, not surreptitiously. Donald Trump knew that that was being recorded, but that's how we have that audio recording. So if Donald Trump is doing that with random people that he's never even met before who are ghostwriting, think about what he's doing with MBS in Saudi Arabia. Think about what Donald Trump is saying to our enemies. Think about what he's doing with MBS in Saudi Arabia. Think about what Donald Trump is saying to our enemies. Think about what he's sharing with people who are sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. Think about what he's showing to anybody. He would bring these things out

like trophies and brag about himself. And that's why I said it's fascism meets idiocracy. I got to talk more about all of that. And I do want to remind people you're seeing those Jack Smith emojis and all of the legal AF emojis and the Midas Touch badges. You have to be a member of our YouTube in order to get that stuff. So there's a dollar sign at the bottom of the YouTube. If you're already a member, you can actually gift people memberships. If you want to receive a gift of one of these memberships, I think you could still click the dollar sign and say that you want to receive a membership as a gift. That's one of the ways we fund our

network is through that. We don't have outside investors right now. So that is how one of the ways we do it. So feel free to become a member, no pressure either way. And Jordy would get really mad at me if I don't mention that we're running out of convict 45 pins at store.midastouch.com. So you can check that out there. We have a lot more to discuss, but I need to reflect a moment after hearing that audio recording. Let's take a quick break. Let's stop cutting down trees to make toilet paper. Now it's true. Humans are cutting down tens of thousands of trees every day, just as apply the American need for toilet paper.

And the worst part is that when we use trees for toilet paper, it's just one use and done. It obviously can't be recycled or reused. So it just goes straight into our water system. That's why I made the switch to real paper. Real is 100% bamboo, so we're using a plant that grows fast, can be harvested and regenerated, think like the grass in your lawn, and doesn't impact the entire ecosystems of forests. Real is the best kind of eco-friendly product because it doesn't feel like

you're sacrificing something to help the earth. In fact, it feels like an upgrade. It's shipped free to my door in plastic-free packaging and I could schedule it on a subscription so that it comes exactly when I need it. My favorite thing about Real, without getting too personal, is that it's super comfortable in those sensitive areas. Real Paper is available in easy, hassle-free subscriptions or for one-time purchases on their website. All orders are conveniently delivered to your door with free shipping in 100% recyclable plastic-free packaging. If you head to realpaper.com slash Midas and sign up for a subscription using my code Midas at checkout,

you'll automatically get 30% off your first order and free shipping. That's R-E-E-L-P-A-P-E-R dot com slash MIDAS or enter our promo code MIDAS to get 30% off your first order plus free shipping. Let's make a change for good this year and switch to real paper. Real is a paper for the planet. I'm so excited to introduce you to our next partner, Ilia. But instead of me talking about Ilia's amazing collection, I'd love for you to hear it from their CEO and founder, Leila Joy Williams. Hello, my name is Leila Joy Williams, and I'm the founder and CEO of Ilia. Ilia is a luxury beverage collection which

I produce in Spain. We focus on flavor, flavor, flavor. It's truly magnificent. In addition to that, it's ecologically produced, which means we use the least amount of chemicals from the growth of the fruit all the way through to production. And last but not least, a dollar through each purchase is donated to the Deliver Fund, which is an organization that is working towards eradicating human trafficking. I really hope you give us a try. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much, Layla Joy. This is truly an amazing and delicious luxury beverage. And Midas Touch listeners can get 20% off their order right now if you go to IYLIA.com and use the promo code TOUCH20. That's IYLIA.com and use the promo code TOUCH20.

Thank you. Let's go. Let's go. Hey, real quick. Shout out to our sponsors, all pro-democracy sponsors. If you're in the market for real paper, check that out. Ilya, Layla Joy, huge fan of Midas Touch. Part of the Midas Mighty community. Midas Mighty, support your own. The links are in the description below. Just go ahead, click that. Touch 20 for

Ilya. I love it. So we heard the audio recording that was just released from CNN. That was the first time I was listening with all of the Midas mighty that I had heard it. What's your reaction to it, Brett? Poor Anthony Weiner can't catch a break. That's what I was getting. He always goes back to like these bizarre things. Like these are the things that are on Donald Trump's mind when he's speaking to random people. I mean, that tape right there though, in all seriousness, was even somehow far more incriminating than even seeing it written on paper. Hearing him say those words, hearing him rustle the papers, it's as if you are watching him. It is as if you are there in the room with him, and it could not be clearer as well as to what he is referencing there. He is very clearly referencing the papers that are in his hand.

And he is saying, you see this? This is it. This is it. The military gave me this. It's like if a five-year-old wrote a confession and they were writing a script for a movie and they just made it extremely obvious. It's beyond even parody of a confession. I don't understand how if you're Donald Trump and you go to trial and that's

played before a jury, you get convicted. I don't understand how you possibly get out of that. And Trump is going to do his usual gaslighting and he's going to freak out and he's going to say socks case and presidential records and he'll complain about leaks, even though it probably came from someone in his camp. But guess what? That tape, when that is played before a jury, it is going to be some of the most consequential evidence that we have ever seen against a president. I mean, that is worse than any Nixon tape I've ever heard. That is straight up him saying, basically, yes, I'm committing a crime right now, everybody. And yes, I know that I'm not supposed to be committing the crime that I am committing right now. This is bad, isn't it? I shouldn't be doing this. You may as well be uttering those words as

he's waving. The audacity. That audio is the most damning piece of evidence I've ever listened to. When you listen to that, and it's not even, the words which he's saying, which is so awful and incriminating, but how careless they're being about the whole situation, laughing, mocking. Those are our country's secrets. They're laughing about it. What are they doing when they're not recording themselves? The staffer literally says, now we have a problem. Yeah, you do have a problem.

Think about the investigatory work, though, by Special Counsel Jack Smith to zero in on that, that that was being kept, I think, on Trump's aide Margo Martin's laptop where she was doing the recordings and the amount of work special counsel Jack Smith had to do before he found that audio. And then once he listened to that audio, what that must have been like for his team of lawyers after Donald Trump was disparaging Jack Smith, threatening Jack Smith's wife. After you have all of these, this is what I'm interested in seeing what happens also. After all of these Republicans have basically said, it's fine to do what he did. Now when you hear that recording, we're going to talk more about the behavior of these modern day Republicans,

but how are you okay with that? How are you a modern day political party in the United States of America? The Republican party go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all good. All good. We're good with that. There is nothing more incriminating and despicable than what we just heard on that audio recording. We'll give you more updates as we learn more in the fallout

from that audio recording that just broke. And we'll do a separate hot take on that audio recording as well here on the Midas Touch Network after this pod is over. Want to talk about Special Counsel Jack Smith's other work that he is doing, right? As all that evidence is being unearthed and Special Counsel Jack Smith's making all of these filings in the criminal case that's been filed in the Southern District of Florida. Let's not forget there's other criminal investigations taking place,

multiple other criminal investigations that are taking place by special counsel Jack Smith alone. So he's got, of course, the other grand jury in Washington, D.C. that he's presenting evidence in front of that's investigating Donald Trump's crimes relating to 2020 election interference, relating to the January 6th insurrection, relating to money laundering, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations. Like when Donald Trump would send all of those emails out to people saying, hey, donate to the election defense fund. Guess what? The election defense fund didn't exist. And so that's called wire fraud.

That's a crime, a very, very serious crime. Similar crime that like George Santos was ultimately charged with. And so Donald Trump's being investigated for multiple crimes there. Donald Trump's threats against state and local election officials. Donald Trump's being crimin for multiple crimes. There are Donald Trump's threats against state and local election officials. Donald Trump's being criminally investigated for this. But all of those investigations are taking place before this other criminal grand jury in federal court in Washington, D.C. And today we've learned from an NBC exclusive report that five or six secret service agents

have testified before that grand jury. We've previously heard about Secret Service agents testifying, but there was about two dozen, and they were testifying in the case involving the willful retention of national defense information relating to the audio recording that you just heard of Donald Trump in the case that's now pending in the Southern District of Florida. But now we know five or six of these Secret Service agents are testifying in the January 6th criminal investigation. And of course, let's not forget the heroic testimony of Mark Meadows' top aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, at the January 6th committee, where she told us, told the world a lot about what the Secret Service knew,

and Jack Smith is getting right to the point there. You may recall this. This is Cassidy Hutchinson saying that Donald Trump pled with the Secret Service to let his people in with weapons during his speech that he gave on January 6th, and saying, it's okay to let them in because they're not here to hurt me. Here, play this clip. Something to the effect of take the effing mags away. They're not here to hurt me. Let them in, let my people in. They can march the Capitol after the rally's over. They can march from the Ellipse, take the effing mags away. Then they can march the Capitol. And of course, the infamous or famous clip right now of the incident where Donald Trump lunged to grab the steering wheel and attacked a secret

service member. That's one of the things that Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6th committee. No doubt, special counsel Jack Smith is focused on that. Here, play this clip. The president had gotten into the vehicle with Bobby. He thought that they were going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him, we're not, we don't have the assets to do it. It's not secure. We're going back to the West Wing. The president had very strong, very angry response to that. Tony described him as being irate. The president said something to the effect of, I'm the effing president.

Take me up to the Capitol now. To which Bobby responded, Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing. The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel mr angle grabbed his arm said sir you need to take your hand off the steering wheel we're going back to the west wing we're not going to the capital mr trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel. And when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicle.

She's talking about a story that was told to her by Tony Ornato, used to work in the Secret Service, was on Trump's detail. Trump appointed Ornato as his deputy chief of staff. And that's where Ornato was during the time, relaying the story of what he heard the Secret Service did to Cassidy Hutchinson. Arnato and just how incredibly run the January 6th hearings were. We knew they were run really well back then when we were watching them, but the contrast now as we see this new Congress in there and we see these just clown show hearings day after day, and you put it next to just the absolute professionalism, the legitimacy of the January 6th committee and how effectively they ran that body. I mean, night and day doesn't even

do it justice to call it that, but it's just such a different way of governing. It's such a different way of investigating. They were truly on a fact-finding mission there. They actually had Republicans as well join them in a joint effort for our democracy, even though these other Republicans acted like they weren't Republicans because they had the nerve to choose American democracy over their cult, doesn't make a difference. That was a professionally run investigation and they did a really, really, really good job. And I have to imagine that those hearings, their investigation played a massive role in Jack Smith's and his investigation and all the action that we're

seeing right now. And they deserve a whole lot of credit. I think we'll all look back at the January 6th committee hearings as such a pivotal moment in our democracy. I mean, ultimately, other than prepare a report, the January 6th committee kind of had limited power, right? They're not prosecutors. They can make criminal referrals, but they can't put people in jail. But ultimately, I feel like that was a spark that was so needed at that time. And we shouldn't take for granted that that would exist in the way it is, in bipartisan fashion standing up for our democracy in the moment that it that it did and they did such a good job presenting the truth and i think inspiring so many people and a lot of times when we talk about people who have left the maga movement um

and we do a lot of coverage here on that a lot of people who left, it was definitely very late, though it was January 6th and it was the January 6th committee's presentation where finally people said enough, enough, enough is enough. And what I loved that the January 6th committee did was all of their witnesses were all like Republicans who worked for Trump, one after the other, and they were all just saying, here is what happened. Here is the deal. We're also learning that Donald Trump is now funneling 10% of all of the 2024 campaign donations from the Save America PAC up from 1% to pay his legal defense fees now. So 10% is going, and you may be saying, is that legal, Ben? I don't think it is. I think it's a crime. Jack Smith- He's committing more crimes in order to try to pay for his old crimes

is what I'm- Well, one of the things that we know exactly that Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating, as I mentioned before, is the money laundering, the wire fraud- Crimes like this. The campaign finance violations. Yeah. Jack Smith is looking at these, you know, the ads that Donald, the, you know, 10,000 X, I'll match you this. We're going to see in the indictment. I think a very heavy portion is going to be focused on the money laundering, wire fraud charges. Special counsel Jack Smith comes from the public integrity division of the DOJ. He was the leader of the public integrity division of DOJ. That's what you do at the public

integrity division of the DOJ. And so those crimes, there's going to be a lot of stuff. What happened on January 6th, there's going to be, in my view, obstruction of an official proceeding, which carries with it 20 years. But the way that special counsel Jack Smith presented the indictment in counsel Jack Smith presented the indictment in Trump's theft of the national defense information case and made it so the case was basically one in the indictment, like here's the transcript, here's what he said, it's automatically a crime. Jack Smith's preparing a similar thing with the money laundering wire fraud charges. And he's going to say,

here's what Trump said the money was going to, here's where the money actually went to. And we're going to see a lot of that. So pay attention there. Switching gears, we're going, all right, Jack Smith, Southern District of Florida, Jack Smith, Washington, DC. Okay, back to Southern District of Florida. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. I mean, there's a lot of work going. I mean, they're doing a ton of work. So Jack Smith on Friday night made three different filings. On one of them, he asked for a continuance of the trial date because the current trial dates, let's face it, is a placeholder trial date that was set for August 14th of 2023, just based on the process under the Classified Information Procedures Act

and to get security clearances for Trump's lawyers. That's going to take more than 30 or 45 days. So what special counsel Jack Smith was doing here is trying to set that trial date for a 2023 trial date and to get ahead of it before Trump's lawyers could file anything and put a marker down. So Jack Smith asked for this date, December 11th of 2023. Jack Smith then also asked for a status conference to be held pursuant to the Classified Information Procedures Act. And Judge Cannon granted that. It was unopposed, but there'll be a hearing on July 14th to discuss the handling of classified materials, the appointment of a classified information security officer who helps out in SEPA cases, classified information procedure act cases. So the next

major hearing is going to be at this July 14th hearing. And then there was this order that's being discussed where Judge Eileen Cannon denied special counsel Jack Smith's request to file under seal the list of 84 potential witnesses. You'll recall that the magistrate judge, the duty magistrate judge who presided over the arraignment imposed a special condition on Donald Trump and Walton Outa that they couldn't speak directly to witnesses about this specific case. They could talk about other topics, but they couldn't have direct conversations or communications about the case. Those would all have to be run through their lawyers and it couldn't happen directly. So in order to enforce and implement that condition set by the magistrate judge at the arraignment back on July 13th, special counsel Jack Smith said, look, here are the 84 witnesses,

Judge Eileen Cannon, that Trump can't communicate with about the case. And then Jack Smith said, I want to file this under seal. And he didn't really say why he wanted to file it under seal. He just said Trump wasn't opposing or Trump's lawyers weren't opposing the filing under seal, but that Trump's lawyers may ultimately oppose the way the conditions would be implemented. So it was an unopposed motion to seal the name of these 84 listed witnesses, and Judge Eileen Cannon denied that. And the reason she denied it is she said, the government's motion does not explain why filing the list with the court is necessary. It does not offer a particularized basis to justify sealing the list from public view. It does not explain why partial sealing, redaction,

or means other than sealing are unavailable or unsatisfactory, and it does not specify the duration of any proposed seal. Well, the reason that Jack Smith is filing it, I believe, is because the Magistrate Judge Goodman told him to file it. I mean, that's why I believe he's filing it. But I do understand that even if it is unopposed by Donald Trump's lawyers, you still have to make a showing why something would be filed under seal. And I think in normal course, a judge in Judge Eileen Cannon's position would simply say, I get it. It's a classified information procedure act case. That's the explanation why it's under seal. I'm not going to make you go through the hurdles of doing a particularized finding and showing. But here, Judge Eileen

Cannon's like, you need to follow the letter of the law. And to be fair, the letter of the law is you need to make a particularized showing because there is a First Amendment right to what goes on in court proceedings. The identities of witnesses in a case are public. We know the witnesses. Remember when Donald Trump went to trial in the E. Jean Carroll and lost $5 million, the witness list wasn't confidential. We knew who the witnesses were. So the real question though is, is when do the witnesses get to be public? And is it going to be confidential the entire time? And there are some people who are saying, well, this is just going to let Donald Trump harass the witnesses. Well, Donald Trump already

has the witness list. It's not like Trump doesn't get the list. Trump has all of the discovery. Trump has all of the witness list. So the question here is, does the public, do we the people get to see it? Because Trump's seen it already and he has the right to see it as a criminal defendant. So that's the question. And a number of media networks, essentially every media network, probably other than us, we weren't a part of this motion, but they all asked to say this shouldn't be unsealed in the first place, that it should be public because they're saying First Amendment means witnesses are public in general. And what Judge Eileen Cannon said is, well, at this stage, the media motion to make everything public is moot because I'm going to

make Jack Smith go through these additional hurdles. And again, this ruling in it of itself, like I didn't read any of the commentary before making my commentary. Like I read the ruling and I was like, it's not a ruling that's like, whoa, this is so screwed up, Judge. That's just not how I read this motion. But it does show, like it is written kind of persnickety. It is kind of written a little bit like unnecessarily sarcastic. Like it does feel a little bit like taking a little bit of a jab, but in theory, if you're going to seal a record, you usually have to file a motion explaining why you're going to seal it. And so I don't want to get so caught up in it because this ruling in and of itself does not make me go, Judge Eileen Cannon's horrific.

But it makes me go, Judge Eileen Cannon's horrific is how she acted in the search warrant case. I know. The issue is, given that this is a SEPA case, how is her SEPA rulings going to be, her classified information procedure act? And so far when it's come a SEPA case, how is her SEPA rulings going to be, her classified information procedure act? And so far when it's come to SEPA, she's at least followed the law there. But when we'll really know, when I could really say definitively, this is going south or this is going in this direction, will be when she sets the trial date. If Trump hasn't filed his motion yet to try to kick this trial date out, he's going to try to ask for 2025 or 90 days after the election in 2024. So that's what I'm waiting for.

But this order in and of itself, to me, annoying, but not like it's not a horrible ruling. I understand it. I could see a federal judge making this ruling sometimes to almost haze new lawyers, but you don't really do this to DOJ. But that's kind of like, it's like, okay, we all know this is a SEPA case. Why make us go through these extra hurdles? But legally, she's not wrong. It's also an extremely high profile case, right? And so she also probably at this point, especially due to the backlash that she rightfully received the last time she

was doing stuff related to this case, she probably wants to dot her I's and cross her T's as well. And this is also without prejudice, which means that he could refile, right? And so he could add that information as requested. And so we'll see what Jack Smith does here, but I just wouldn't... I think it's easy kind of every ruling. I feel like that comes through people, you know, especially if it's something that appears to be like against Jack Smith, like this one, people go to like such extremes. And I just, I, I just want to urge everybody to like, just take a deep breath, you know, wait for the Ben hot take the analysis to like, you know, get it, read it yourself. I'll give you the one where it's bad.

We will, we will. Yeah. We, we are no fans of Eileen Cannon here at the show. I think you've seen our videos. I think you're, I think, I think you're aware. But you know, part of us, you know, being straight with everybody is telling you if there's actually something to worry about, or if, you know, it's about or if it's a zero. And this one is pretty much a zero. And you have nothing to worry about at this point. If there is that point, you'll be the first to know. It would be very convenient for us to want to just completely attack Eileen Cannon for this order.

But the truth is, don't worry. Don't fret. And we'll see what the reaction is from Jack Smith and how they move forward. Hey, Ben, is it possible that Jack Smith just wanted Judge Eileen Cannon to make a firm ruling on this? So for example, does Jack Smith really care if this is sealed or not sealed? I refuse to believe this is the one moment where he got lazy and didn't properly fill out what he was supposed to fill out.

You know what I mean? And so is it just a way of him making her do a firm ruling on this so Trump can't say, oh, look, he's not letting the witnesses out, or look, he's letting the... No, this is fully on Judge Eileen Cannon, who we all know has very close dealings with Trump. Yeah. I ultimately don't see... I suppose the concern by Jack Smith would be that if the names are out there, and by the way, do you really think the names are going to be total shockers? But will these individuals now be harassed in this stochastic, terroristic way by the MAGA Republican followers very early in the process versus doing a witness list

as you get closer to trial. I think that's what he ultimately wants to protect. Because again, Trump has the name of the witness list. So it's not like it's going to be a surprise there. But I'm with you, Jordy. I think ultimately, whether he has to make this public or not public, it's not a big deal. know, it's not going to detrimentally, you know, impact the case in either way. I just think that he wanted to, okay, look, I did my best. I tried to keep it private, but let's go on. Let's, let's move this thing forward. Um, we still have a lot to talk about here. We got to talk about Chris Christie, taking some shots at Trump. We got to talk about this. Just pull up this Marjorie Taylor green

post if we can, because I want to tease it before, which I'm like, this is what I mean when I say these people have like, we know that they've lost their mind, but like, here she goes. Last night in my DC residence, the television turned on by itself and the screen showed someone's laptop trying to connect to the TV. Just for the record, I'm very happy. I'm also very healthy and eat well. I'll read more of that in a little bit. This person's a nut. But she's sharing this. It's not like- She woke up. It was her first thought. She posted that. And if your friend posted that, and we'll read the full thing. If your friend posted that,

you would check in and be like, are you okay? Like you'd call your other friends. Like, do we need an intervention? Do we need to like send this person to like a psych ward? Like something's, something's going on here. So all that. And then the ultimate contrast, which gave me so much whiplash and whiplash and doing the research for the show, actually seeing positive things get done for the country by Democrats, actual progress, actual things that help people. And so we'll be back with all that right after this quick break. Don't you go anywhere. More show coming your way. And now let's take a quick break to talk about our next partner, Fume. Cold turkey, it may be great on sandwiches, but there's a better way to break your bad habits.

We're not talking about some weird mind voodoo from your wacky neighbor or some sketchy message board. We're talking about our sponsor Fume, and they look at the problem in a different way. Now, not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad from your habit? Fume is an innovative award-nominated device that does just that. Instead of electronics, Fume is completely natural. Instead of vapor, fume is completely natural. Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air. And instead of harmful chemicals, fume uses all natural delicious flavors. You get it. Instead of bad, fume is good. It's a habit you're free to enjoy and makes

replacing your bad habit easy. Your fume comes with an adjustable airflow dial and is designed with movable parts and magnets for fidgeting, giving your fingers a lot to do, which is helpful easy. Your Fume comes with an adjustable airflow dial and is designed with movable parts and magnets for fidgeting, giving your fingers a lot to do, which is helpful for de-stressing and anxiety while breaking your habit. The first time I used Fume, I was shocked at how flavorful and fresh it tasted. Now, it's easy to hold and perfectly balanced and quite honestly extremely fun to fidget with. The real wood material and sleek design definitely classes it up, and I feel pretty darn cool holding it. Stopping is something

we all put off because it's hard, but switching to Fume is easy, enjoyable, and even fun. Fume has served over 100,000 customers and has thousands of success stories, and there's no reason that can't be you join fume in accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habits by picking up the journey pack today head to tryfume.com and use code midas to save 10 off when you get the journey pack today that's tryfum.com and use code Midas to save an additional 10% off your order today. We are back here live, Midas Touch podcast, Ben, Brett, and Jordy Micellus. Chris Christie, not a fan, but when he attacks Donald Trump, I'm temporarily supportive of him during that. I mean, Chris Christie, former Republican governor of New Jersey, MAGA enabler, at least he's going in the lane of

like, you know, maybe I'm just not going to be part of the cult and run against Donald Trump. So I just want to show you this part where, this is great, where Chris Christie is booed at that same faith and freedom event or whatever. We should call it something else because it's, again, not faith, not freedom. But here's Chris Christie getting called a fascism event. Yeah, exactly. And this is him. This is him, though. I mean, he's calling Donald Trump out.

He's calling. It is what it is. Play this clip. I'm running because he's let us down. He has let us down because he's unwilling. He's unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made. Any of the faults that he has and any of the things that he's done. And that is not leadership, everybody. That is a failure of leadership. And I, you can boo all you want.

But here's the thing. Our faith teaches us that people have to take responsibility for what they do. People have to stand up and take accountability for what they do. I mean, I agree with him there. There's no other way around it. And he's rising in the polls there too. Yeah, he's up to 5% now. He's, what, I think he's like one or two percentage points behind Nikki Haley at this point. And Nikki Haley has been running for months and he just got into the race. He's actually gaining quite a bit of momentum. He seems to be establishing himself as a legitimate challenger to Trump, who's actually not afraid to throw punches.

Like DeSantis wants to play both sides of it. He wants the MAGA people, but he also, at the same time, wants to act like he's different and better or even like a more extreme version. But Christie's just coming out punching. And I thought that booing moment was particularly interesting to watch because first, it reminded me of a few things. First, I want to acknowledge in the beginning, the folks booed. But what did Chris Christie do at that moment? He didn't back down. A lot of these Republicans would be afraid by that sort of reaction. They would try to couch it in something else. They would run away from the statement. Chris Christie doubled down and he made it actually relatable to the people at the unit. Like, aren't we people of faith? Don't we believe in character and honesty? Like, don't you understand? And by the end of it, he actually had some folks applauding him,

if you heard at the end of that clip. It went from boos to applause in about 45 seconds, which I think is interesting to note. Also, I want to talk about that idea of kind of plowing through the boos. If you remember, and I think a lot of people kind of forget this, when Trump first announced, when Trump would go through all these debates, when Trump would give his speeches, oftentimes in the beginning of his run, he'd get booed all the time. He'd get booed at the debates. He'd get heckled at events. It was a kind of a nonstop thing. But Trump kind of plowed right through it, right? to actually stick to your convictions. Now, in that case, Donald Trump's convictions were being racist and homophobic and xenophobic and just the most disgusting person imaginable. But what the Republicans do right now that is their complete mistake is they run away like cowards. They are scared. And they put this guy on this pedestal when they could have done away with them so long ago. They could have went through with an impeachment and gotten

rid of their problem. Twice they could have done that. And they didn't because they had zero spines whatsoever. So at least Chris Christie is going into the lines then here. At least he is challenging these folks on their home turf using their language, and he is not backing down from it. And I think that is really important. I think that is a really powerful force. When you say, no, no, no, no, no, don't boo. Hear me out here. Hear me out here. Maybe it could just snap out enough people to make a difference, and we'll see what happens. But I think he will continue to rise in the polls. I'm not going to say he's going to get the nomination or anything crazy, but I think that he will rise pretty substantially in the polls and be in double digits and not too long of a time,

especially as the other people who are kind of in there just as complete jokes kind of fade off. Could you imagine if DeSantis gets booed? He crumbles under that. I think, Brett, you're spot on. I think as we continue to go on, what we'll see is DeSantis and Christie actually getting closer and closer to each other. Eventually, I think Christie will actually surpass DeSantis because there are people in the Republican Party who kind of wish that DeSantis would take on Trump in a different way rather than doing the MAGA hokey pokey and sticking one foot in and one foot out of it. And really being that- You're the MAGA hokey pokey. Yeah, exactly. And rather just being the Chris Christie and trying to shake it all out, shake this party back together. I'm not giving Christie too much credit here because everyone knows who that guy is, but ultimately it's refreshing to see someone not holding their punches. And DeSantis is down nine points since April in the NBC poll. He just continues to crash hard. Trump continues to rise in the GOP poll because the more criminal you are

and the more insane you are, the better you are for the bulk of that party. It's really a sight to behold. And then you got Chris Christie there at 5%, which is a pretty good showing. And depending on how strict they are on these debate rules could actually get him into the debate. You have Trump now saying he's too scared to debate, that he's not going to get into the debate. He more than hinted at it during his last Fox appearance. And Brett Baier is actually going to be the Fox moderator for the debate. And I think once Trump found that out, he rushed to Truth Social today to be like, why would I give my time to this network who's going to just allow these people like Chris Christie to be mean to me? It's going to be interesting dynamics coming up, especially as all these cases continue to go through.

Donald Trump's going to be indicted multiple additional times. And these crimes are serious. They're really serious crimes with grave consequences. And it's all going to start catching up to him as these things actually start heading to trial. It's a real thing that he's got to deal with here. The dynamic's going to be funny because even though Trump's not going to be there, his proxies are. So they're going to be defending his action, right? So like, I mean, when a DeSantis there, when a DeSantis is there or any of these other Nikki Haley or whoever, they're going to basically be defending Donald Trump's theft of the records. So what Chris Christie is going to be

able to do is use them as basically Donald Trump and basically saying like, how pathetic are you? You do realize that it's a crime. And because none of them have the ability just to like, they're not cult leaders like Donald Trump. It's actually, I think, going to make for a better optics of Chris Christie destroying these people who are going to have to like be up there defending Donald Trump's positions for him, and it's indefensible, and they're going to be stuck there doing that. So I think that'll be an interesting dynamic to watch. Here, pull up this Marjorie Taylor Greene post that she made on her own. This is what she decided to post this weekend. She went, last night in my DC residence, the television turned on by itself, and the screen showed

someone's laptop trying to connect to the TV. Just for the record, I'm very happy. I'm also very healthy and eat well and exercise a lot. I don't smoke and never have. I don't have any medications. I am not vaccinated. So I'm not concerned about blood clots, heart condition, strokes, or anything else. I don't think that's the way it

works, but you could spread your medical disinformation. Yeah, call out the medical disinfo right there. She goes, nor do I have anything to hide because people who don't have anything to hide say that all the time. I don't have anything to hide. Then she goes, I just love my country and the people and know how much they've been screwed over by the corrupt people in our government. And I'm not willing to be quiet or willing to go along with it. And then later on, I think she posted this today or the Marjorie Taylor Greene war room posted this photo of Barack Obama. This is the Obama mural. But then she they redid it to act like obama is spying on

marjorie taylor greene and that is what marjorie taylor green battleground or podcast or whatever is claiming that obama is spying on her some weird paranoid stuff you know i mean it's it's that same world like over this past weekend you had two mega republican terrorist groups the proud boys and the patriotot Front. They were getting into a fight with each other and attacking each other. Who's more MAGA? And then you have Marjorie Taylor Greene and all these MAGA Republicans claiming that the Patriot Front are actually feds, are actually the FBI. Always feds. It's always feds. These are crazy people.

You have two MAGA terrorist groups fighting each other, and then you have MAGA politicians saying that one of those groups are the feds. And by the way, and then also celebrating the other group who are the Proud Boys. That's also the part of it that's kind of insane that gets lost in the mix when you're just like, yeah, it was a MAGA group. The other the other group were like the proud boys look what they call them here pro america patriot rally ongoing is with this benny johnson uh right wing content creator i don't know what the hell he even called this guy he was the guy who's fired he was fired from like buzzfeed for plagiarism or something like that and then uh couldn't get a career in journalism so he he makes up things became charlie kirk's yes yeah so um yeah and then marjorie taylor green goes i agree and they do

this whole thing the feds show up as nazis patriots force the feds out of the rally unmask the feds who panic the nazis cry tremble in fear cops rush to save the feds like how could you not accept just accept the fact that own up to it. Okay. Y'all are the ones who are going in front of Disney with Nazi flags. You got the Trump flags all over the place. Just accept that this is what you are spreading and condemn it. But to make up these lies, lie after lie, after lie, after lie about everything, about everything, no matter if it's even relevant to the issue at hand. I mean, you know, the submersive, the Titanic, distraction from Hunter Biden.

It's all, it was a legitimate thing. That's what they said. No, I know. I know. Distracting from Hunter Biden. Oh, the Wagner group and Putin, this coup attempt that was going on. Oh, that's just the White House wanting to distract from Hunter Biden again. Listen, no one really gives a damn about Hunter Biden except you, okay? The world does not revolve around Hunter Biden. Stop it. Just stop the lies, stop the gaslighting. I don't care if Hunter Biden, the reality, I could care less about Hunter Biden. I just want to be like, he's not in the government. He's not making $600 million working in the White House. He's not someone who didn't get their security clearance, but was still appointed to a major position in the White House, who's basically, again, running COVID policy, running pardon policy, running Middle East policy. I'm talking about Jared Kushner gets $2 billion, $600 million while in the White House,

$2 billion when he leaves from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. What in the world is- I was going on my analogy about the earth revolving around Hunter Biden and somebody said in the comments, Brett, these are the people who believe in the flat earth. They're not going to understand that. And you're right. You're so right. But literally everything, that's their excuse. You know what I realized too? They don't understand the linear passage of time as one thing I've noticed over the past few weeks, months, days, whatever you want to reference. But they were like, I saw all these comments from people, these Republican influencers, and they were like, wait a second. So yesterday, we were talking about this submersive. Today, we're talking about

Russia. What? Do you see how they went from one story to the next? Do you see what they're doing? And it's all because they don't want you to see Hunter Biden. It's like, no. Yeah. Yesterday, something happened. And then today, something happened. And tomorrow, something's going to happen.'s not conspiracy that's just living that's just going through life in the linear time frame that we exist in this universe when you see a tweet like the marjorie taylor green tweet are you just are you guys just like how does this person even wake up in the morning and like put their shoes on and brush their teeth without injuring themselves? What probably happened there?

It's really not worth analyzing too much, but somebody probably tried to connect to their Apple TV or something, and they accidentally hit Marge's Wi-Fi, and it asked for the password, and then they saw them trying to type in the password, which is something that can happen. Have you ever been in a public place? Have you ever seen the airdrop pranks where all of a sudden somebody sends a picture to you, the airdrop while you're on a train or a plane or whatever? Would Marjorie Taylor Greene just like freaking, would she lose her mind if that happened, if that joke happened? You know the Wi-Fi networks that people sometimes label when they go, they'll make like the public Wi-Fi, they'll make their account called like FBI surveillance van.

Like that would totally trip up Marjorie Taylor Greene if you did that like, you know, age old Wi-Fi joke of renaming your thing to whatever it is. She would freak out. She'd probably try to hold congressional hearings over it. There's an FBI surveillance van outside of my house. I knew it. It's Antifa. Your Marge is spot on, B. That's a good Marge. Can I just say this? I'm okay with the Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet. I am. Because for me, I just look at it as this is a compounding interest of craziness from the Republican Party. It's not just one thing that they say that's going to tilt an independent voter or someone who's still on the fence.

I don't know how. But over and over and over again, they continue to just be rake steppers and trip over themselves and honestly just be lunatics. And so I'm OK. Give them the microphone because overwhelmingly the American people do not agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene. They don't. And we'll see it chipped away in percentage points, which is what we saw with this latest Biden poll. Got to keep on just getting the truth out, though. Keep on getting the message out because you got to rebut.

Look, one thing you can say about these MAGA Republicans, though, is they are relentless and they have no shame. Like you would think after fake whistleblower number one was exposed, like that would shame most normal people, right? You'd be like, okay, I'm a disgrace. I just lied about a whistleblower that didn't exist. And then I was asked where they are and I said they disappeared. Like most normal people would be like, all right, like that's the end of my career. And they're like, no, let like that's the end of my career.

And they're like, no, let's do it every day. Let's do it every day. Let's keep on doing it. And we told all of you, remember I said last week, I said, watch this IRS whistleblower thing. Because they started like you could almost see where they plant the seeds about it. And then they're like, okay, oh, we like that. We like that. A new whistleblower.

We're all good. All right. IRS whistleblower. And so the prosecutor on the Hunter Biden case was Trump's guy, David Weiss. Trump appointed the prosecutor in Delaware and President Biden was well within his rights to fire the prosecutor. Wasn't a special counsel. Biden could have just gotten rid of the guy because all United States attorneys are usually fired when a new incoming administration comes in. But Biden goes the extra distance. He's like, all right, I got this Trump prosecutor in Delaware who's investigating my son. I could fire the guy, but then it could create even an appearance. Despite the fact that I'm firing every United States attorney, the only one I'm really

going to leave is the one prosecuting my son. Just think about that for a moment, how insane that is, that they're accusing Biden of weaponizing something where Biden left the prosecutor. The only one he left was the one going after his son who he could have fired and it would have just been, that's what you do. So that's what Biden- Biden's done everything to not even have the glimmer of an appearance of impropriety, even like the little sparkle of impropriety. He's done everything. He's gone the extra mile every step of the way. And by the way, so as attorney general Merrick Garland, but it goes to show you that you can never do enough for these people. You can never do enough. They will always go after you.

Now they want to impeach Merrick Garland over this, even though he didn't even have control. This wasn't his investigation that he gave the four. Here's the letter though. Here's the letter from Trump's prosecutor, David Weiss to Jim Jordan recently. This was sent on, I think it was June 7th. This was sent. So it was sent a few weeks back and he goes, uh, I want to make clear that as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution consistent with federal law, the principles of federal prosecution, and departmental regulations. Again, I have been granted ultimate authority, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file

charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve. He's just saying it. And I think the whistleblower BS claim is that he was prevented from bringing claims in Washington, D.C., and he was prevented from that jurisdiction. But I want to show you this clip from McCarthy. This is what McCarthy says. Not, we are going to do an investigation to determine if allegations are true. And at this stage, I can't comment further. That would be probably be going a little far, even if he said that. But he goes, if it comes true, what the IRS whistleblower says, if it comes true, then

we will start impeachment inquiries. Like, what? Here, play this clip. I'm gonna rub my little genie lamp and if my wish is granted and it becomes true, then perhaps we will proceed with the impeachment inquiry. Here's Kevin. Rob Walker, who was in on all this stuff, good friend,

he's all over the laptop. So will this prompt you to do an impeachment inquiry? Well, you apparently don't follow me on Twitter because yesterday I laid out very clearly by July 6th, because of the allegations from the IRS, because of the whistleblowers and the DOJ, Garland, what he is saying and what David Weiss are saying privately are two different things. And if it comes true what the IRS whistleblower is saying,

we're going to start impeachment inquiries on the attorney general. Okay. They just want to impeach everyone. It's so stupid. I mean, and you notice too, right now, like the eight to 10 other whistleblowers who were paraded out for their other, we're going to impeach because of this whistleblower. We're going to impeach because of this whistleblower. We're going to impeach because of this whistleblower. If you go back, was it last week on our show

or maybe two weeks ago, 17 audio recordings of President Biden engaged in bribery of Ukrainian oligarchs. Who's the source of this? Putin-backed old Ukrainian oligarch. Okay,'s the source of this? Putin backed old Ukrainian oligarch. Okay. So you're telling me that your source is someone who works for Putin. Yes. And you don't think that's wrong? No. So what are you going to do next? We got to protect him. You got to protect the Russian oligarch? Yeah. That's what went down two weeks ago. And then they're like, okay, new one, new one.

IRS whistleblower, IRS whistleblower, Hunter Biden impeach Merrick Garland. I mean, it's utterly insane. But Brett, bring us some- That's what I'm saying, B. That's what I'm saying. The compounding interest of craziness from the Republican Party. That's what we're saying. Just because you brought it up twice. The interest. We're saying it. I like the compounding craziness and I let it go the first time because I get, but why the interest? Why compounding interest? Because like compounding interest, their their their craziness builds up and it builds up into it's a matter of just compounding craziness where's the interest

you don't understand metaphors yeah you just don't understand metaphors and you just don't understand the artistic process okay you don't get it first time jordy said i didn't comment on it and i registered and i was like okay that, that, that interest, why, why interest? And I was going to bring it up privately, but you brought it up multiple times. Jordy's phrases are circular. Circular. Circular. All right, Brett, give us some good news.

That's a deep cut for the Midas Mighty right there. Good news. I mean, while all this craziness is going on, while you have Kevin McCarthy now just completing his transformation into Marjorie Taylor Greene and wanting to impeach everybody all the time, while you have the Republicans rolling out these fake whistleblowers, while you have Donald Trump bragging about ending Roe and ranting and raving about Jack Smith and the prosecutions and these videotapes of Donald Trump's crimes. And you have the Republicans trying to gaslight about their own factions of MAGA fighting each other. While you have all this chaos going on, you actually have real work being done. And it's far too often that this real work doesn't really make it into the news. And today, President Biden gave a speech, and it was a really important speech. And he announced that more than $42 billion was being invested to expand broadband and internet across the nation, with every state getting at least $100 million, the goal being to make high-speed internet access by 2030.

And when this happened, Jordy, I actually thought about you a little bit because one of the things you say on the show is let the people speak, right? Like let the people speak. They'll be able to go on. They could watch Midas Touch. They could watch everything.

And my one rebuttal to that is that a lot of the country doesn't have high speed internet. Like it's actually a lot of the country where they get their information right now is purely from, you know, AM talk radio, right wing radio and things like that. And these rural areas are the areas that this bill is going to actually help the most. This is all part of the 2021 infrastructure law that President Biden got passed, that historic law.

And now he's saying how this funding is going to be organized. And he's also working on plans also to make it more affordable, cutting costs. We'll watch a little bit of President Biden's speech today that he gave about this initiative. Today, Kamala and I are making an equally historic investment to connect everyone in America, everyone in America, the high speed internet Internet by an affordable high-speed Internet by 2030. It's the biggest investment in high-speed Internet ever. Because for today's economy to work for everyone, Internet access is just as important as electricity was or water or other basic services. Think of the parents and students sitting outside of McDonald's or outside your office to be able to get on the internet in a parking lot just so their child can go online to do their homework.

I just heard from Jeff who has to drive his kids all over town to find a good internet connection, but he's not alone in that. There are thousands of Americans doing the same thing. Where small business owners are not able to reach more customers. Where seniors are unable to talk to their doctor through telemedicine. For around 24 million Americans across this country, there's no high-speed internet. And for millions more, the internet connection is limited or unreliable. High-speed internet isn't a luxury anymore. It's become an absolute necessity. That's why we acted as soon as we did, as soon as we came to office with the American Rescue Plan. It included $25 billion, $25 billion for high-speed internet in places where it was out of reach for schools and libraries to help students connect to the internet if they couldn't do it at home. I mean, this is just very good policy that's for the American people. I

mean, there's no doubt about it that when you watch it, and I think one of the interesting things about it also that's just worth noting is that this is an initiative that mostly helps people who probably aren't going to vote for Biden. Let's be real. This is helping people in rural areas, but Biden doesn't factor that in at all to any of his policy decisions, which is why he is a good president in my mind, which is why I think he's effective at the job. He's not constantly trying to divvy up the country into these little pieces and pin everyone against each other. He's always trying to work and push forward policies that are actually going

to help people. So that was the big news with broadband today. I think that needs to get a whole lot more coverage. Then we move, we look at the unemployment gap, jobs, right? Everyone's concerned about the economy. Breathlessly, you have Fox and you have all these right-wing anchors and a lot of mainstream networks, to be honest. We're pushing this idea that a recession is going to hit at any moment. We're heading towards a recession. Well, guess what? All the experts now say- They were trying to make one happen.

Yeah, they even tried to make runs on the bank. Remember that week where all the Republicans were trying to cause runs on the banks? They were actively trying. They were putting blockades up at the borders to try to stop trade. This was happening constantly. And now all the experts are saying that we're not going to go into a recession and that the United States is having the greatest growth period out of any country in the world after COVID. And not only that, Biden is dealing with issues that have long been a massive problem in this country, like income inequality and like racial inequality. And we're seeing that

right now for the first time in history, for the first time in history, the unemployment gap between black and white Americans has closed. People aren't hearing about this stuff, unfortunately, which is why it's so important also for you to take this and move on and go along and speak to your friends, speak to your family about all of this. This is real stuff that's actually going to affect people's lives. Biden's not waking up and going, my TV was taken over by a ghost, and I don't know. This is real, legitimate stuff. The other thing I want to note is a story that we ... I mean, it's crazy. It gives you whiplash when you're going back and forth between all this stuff. The I-95, Jordy, in Philly, in your home commonwealth over there, Pennsylvania, back up and running in like 12 days.

Unbelievable. They thought it was going to take at least like – or up to six months to get people back on the road there to get that opened up. It ended up taking 12 days. You had Governor Shapiro, you had President Biden, you had Secretary Buttigieg just immediately jumped to action there. They figured out a plan to build this temporary bridge to allow cars to pass as they did the other repairs. They had cameras on all of it so that people could watch the progress being made. They ended up ahead of schedule using union labor. And that right there is a testament to the power of competent government as well. And what could have the most repercussions maybe on the entire 2024 race, I want everybody to pay very close attention to

these Supreme Court decisions, which have been quite surprising. Ben, do you want to tell us a bit about this case regarding Louisiana and the gerrymandered maps? Yeah, look, the case in Louisiana is a result of a case that we talked about back in early June, which is Allen versus Milligan in the state of Alabama. And the state of Alabama and their secretary of state and their legislature there in their own kind of racist gerrymandering that they put forward, basically try to eliminate section two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which basically prevents racist and discriminatory gerrymandering. I'm oversimplifying it, but in a state like Alabama where you've got 33, 35% of the population in Alabama is black, yet only one of the seven congressional districts

are actually representative of the black population there. You look at Louisiana- I'll pull up the Louisiana map because- Louisiana map, very similar. You have six congressional districts there, black population in Louisiana, about 33 to, very similar, 33, 35% of the population. And if you notice, I want all the viewers to look at district two, because that's the district that they made into one district. And you'll see that it's a very bizarre shape, right? It doesn't fit in with kind of the rest of the state. And the reason that they drew it that way was to connect a predominantly black area to another predominantly black area and effectively cancel out their vote, effectively lock them into one single district rather than having them actually have the voice that they deserve

based on the amount of representation that they should have due to their population in the state. So when people ask, how does gerrymandering actually affect it in practice? You get the concept, but how in practice does it work? This map shows how it works. And so the court ultimately, Ben, what did they do here? Well, here's the thing. There used to be what's called a pre-clearance. This has been a 20, 30, 40 year project by Republicans, right? Because under the Voting Rights Act, section four and section five, there was called a preclearance requirement. So Brett, pull up the map there. When a map like that would be prepared by state legislatures,

under preclearance, those maps would have to be submitted to a three panel district court judges or to the Department of Justice. And they would have to sign off on it. They'd have to look at this and they would go, that's good. Or what the hell is district two right there? And normally they would send it back. What the hell is district two? But in a case called the Shelby case in 2013, the preclearance requirement was basically struck down. Section 4, the formula was struck down. That struck down Section 5 preclearance. So what that basically means now, and this is the first time since the 2020 census where states were able to come up with their own maps without preclearances, the burden has shifted. Now that you don't have to submit them to a three court district judge panel or to the Department of Justice, the states create their kind of racist

gerrymandered districts. And then they wait until the very last minute before the elections, like the last minute they could actually roll out these maps because they know it's going to take time to challenge it. Then civil rights groups now have to be the ones who actually file a lawsuit. But the civil rights groups have won their lawsuits. So when the civil rights group filed their lawsuit in the Milligan case in Alabama, the Allen versus Milligan case, they won. The district court judge looked at it and said, yeah, that's an illegal map. Same thing in Louisiana.

The civil rights group won. But then what happened? The Supreme Court stopped the decision of the district court. They stayed it saying that there's this principle based on other Supreme Court precedent dating back to like 2006 or 2008 called the Parcell principle, which basically means as we get close to the election, a district court shouldn't disturb the map by the legislature. So the racist maps across the country, but specifically in Louisiana and Alabama, were allowed to remain in effect because of the Parcell principle. And the Supreme Court said, we will then hear oral arguments in its normal course later on.

So later on in the 2022 term and now later in 2023, the Supreme Court made this ruling in the Milligan case, Allen versus Milligan, that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act still exists. It's not eliminated. Therefore, the district court's ruling in Alabama holds blocking the racist map. Alabama, you need to redraw your map been delayed where courts have been saying, well, we don't know what the Supreme Court's going to do in Allen versus Milligan. So this is going to have a ripple effect. By the way, based on my calculations and some other legal observers I've seen, if Allen versus Milligan was not, if the Supreme Court did not stop the decision that they did, you would have had five additional Democratic seat pickups.

So I think if you look at Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and I think it was impacted in North Carolina, there's issues with Florida as well. And there's issues in Texas, but lots of issues. But to me, there's about five easy- That's McCarthy's majority right there. Right there. That's five. Yeah, that's it. So it's like all this stuff too, all this trauma that they inflict on the country with these bogus investigations every day and this, oh, we're going to expunge Trump's impeachments

and all this garbage that they throw at you, all the gaslighting, they're kind of an illegitimate Congress in the first place. They would not have even won most likely had these cases not been stayed. And so this is going to have a massive effect on the 2024 elections. And we should be paying very close attention and we should all give a huge shout out to the election lawyer, Mark Elias, who is bringing a lot of these cases before the courts and is kicking ass, doing an absolutely incredible job with his democracy docket. So big win there. You also have the very unfortunate anniversary of the Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade, but you had Biden and Kamala Harris out there, again, defending a woman's right to choose, defending

a woman's right to bodily autonomy. So they've been out there, again, very, very, very strongly defending basic human rights as Donald Trump is bragging about taking them away from women. And MAGA Republicans are talking about controlling a woman's body. And then another win in the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court rejected the efforts of Texas and Louisiana in the United States v. Texas or Texas v. United States to try to interfere with Biden's deportation policy. And Biden's policy is, hey, let's prioritize the most violent people first, because if you just do it like Trump did, where anybody gets deported, that's not really a policy. That's just being xenophobic and racist. Let's focus on if you're violent, you get deported first. And it's a horrible use of resources also. It's hard. It makes, yeah. And by the way,

border crossings are down 70% right now. And all of the talking points about the border, this, the border, they're just wrong. They're just liars. The MAGA Republicans are liars. Border crossings down 70% right now under Biden since Title 42 has been removed and Biden's been able to implement his policies. So now as a result of the Supreme Court decision, Biden will be able to implement further there his immigration policy, his administration's immigration policy. So wow, a lot of knowledge. We talked about a lot in today's episode, but there was a lot to cover. I'm glad we covered it all. Jordy will get mad at me if I don't tell you. Make sure you go to store.mitastouch.com to get those Convict 45 pins.

We also got a bunch of other great gear at store.mitastouch.com as well. 100% union made, 100% made, all stuff's made in the United States. There's the no one is above the law gear that's selling out pretty quickly as well. Hot Democracy Summer, Midas Pride. I like my beer cold and gay. MAGA Tears, a bunch of great stuff there. Make attorneys, get attorneys. Check us out as well at patreon.com slash Midas Touch, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Midas Touch. We've got great memberships there. We're going to be doing a special podcast that Brett Jordy, let's record that soon. We're going to record that for this week where we do Q and A's. We also have a Zoom meeting that we do with all of our patrons where you get to meet us, ask us any questions. And it's a way to support this network. Again, we don't have outside investors.

So if you're able to go to patreon.com slash Midas Touch, separate from Patreon, different from Patreon, the membership's here on YouTube. There's that dollar sign at the bottom. You could become a member, gift people memberships, ask to receive memberships from people. So a lot of ways to help support this network. No pressure if you can't do it, though. Just spread the video. Share the message is the most important thing that you can do. So we appreciate all of your support. It was great spending this time with you tonight. None of this is possible without the Midas Mighty. We are grateful for all of you. I had a great time with the Santa Clarita Democrats over this weekend, focusing on California's 27th congressional district, which is controlled by a MAGA Republican right now, Mike Garcia, that needs to change. And I would just recommend

everybody, I had a great time this weekend doing that, you know, preparing postcards, you know, going out, knocking on doors with everybody, seeing everybody knocking on doors, you know, and just spending time with everybody was a great time on doors, you know, and just spending time with everybody was a great time. So I hope all of you will also, you know, think about ways that you can help out, register voters, and again, make sure, of course, you register to vote and vote. So thanks, everybody, for watching this. We appreciate you. Support our sponsors. We love our pro-democracy sponsors. They're all listed in the description of our YouTube, YouTube watchers. Make sure you subscribe to YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to the audio

podcast, the Midas Touch podcast. If you listen to this on audio, subscribe to our YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed on both platforms. Thank you all so, so, so much. Jordy, take it away. Shout out to the Midas Mighty! The Midas Mighty standing strong Against the fascists we sing our song We will get it right whenever At Midas Touch, we are unapologetically pro-democracy, and we demand justice and accountability. 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.