The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump-Endorsed Bolsonaro HUMILIATING DEFEAT, the MAGA Plot to PURGE the Government + MORE!

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

On today’s episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers interview national security and foreign policy export David Rothkopf about his new book, American Resistance: The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation. Rothkopf shares how America’s dedicated civil servants saved America from even greater catastrophe during the Trump years and warns about the MAGA plot to purge the United States government if they retake power. The brothers also discuss the latest election news with just about one week till the midterms, updates on the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi and the despicable GOP conspiracy theories, former President Barack Obama’s stunning speeches on the campaign trail, and the defeat of fascism in Brazil. As always, new episodes of the traditional MeidasTouch Podcast release every Tuesday and Friday morning. The rest of the week, enjoy our short-form episodes we call The Mighty! Order David Rothkopf's new book here: https://amzn.to/3TU5Pid Follow David Rothkopf on Twitter: https://twitter.com/djrothkopf DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: Instaflex: Receive a complimentary 2-week sample of Instaflex Advanced when you text MEIDAS to 42424. Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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. We are learning more details about the home invasion and attempted murder of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and her husband, who was seriously injured, Paul Pelosi. The Department of Justice has filed federal criminal charges in addition to the state prosecutors who filed attempted homicide charges. And the MAGA GOP is out there spreading heinous conspiracy theories and mocking Paul Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi and inciting more violence. Sick, sick behavior. Trump filed an emergency application with the United States to the Supreme Court to try and block turning over his tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee,

a typical MAGA tactic running to the Supreme Court. This has been a legal battle since 2019, complete coward. And Obama holds incredible rallies in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan for candidates there. And how refreshing to see a normal and passionate political rally talking about issues that actually matter to people. We'll talk about that here on the podcast. We will also dig into the data of early voting, where there are promising signs for Democrats, but don't get complacent and vote and make sure others vote blue. And in Brazil, Luiz Lula da Silva defeats the extremist Trump-supported president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, after the Trump-endorsed Bolsonaro as part of the MAGA access of authoritarianism endorsement does not pan out.

And our guest, David Rothkopf, national security expert and foreign policy analyst and author of the new book, American Resistance, the inside story of how the deep state save the nation joins us and talks about all these issues and more. This is the Midas Touch podcast. I'm Ben Micellus, joined by Brett Micellus and someone who resembles. This is ridiculous. First off, you guys told me we were not starting the show on a serious note

this was a Halloween special it was supposed to be levity you guys started right away with the serious stuff you guys told me to dress up because we were all supposed to dress up for Halloween it's the Halloween edition and I'm the only one dressed up this is the second year in a row I'm done dressing up for Halloween now Jordy let the

audio listeners know who you're dressed as spider-man i don't know about that there's webs that you should okay so a lot going on at the jordy house but jordy i think the costume looks good i think this actually worked out in your benefit you make you make a good spidey i think you'd maybe you actually are spider-man you know i think you get a lot of skills that people don't even know about jordy jordy all right let's get back into the news big brother ben needs to direct the show where it needs to go let's start off by talking about uh some recent developments in this uh really tragic situation out in san francisco where the pelosi residence was subject to a home invasion by an individual named David DePape, whose posts look very similar to all of the MAGA extremist posts out there.

Same type of QAnon conspiracy type stuff, anti-Semitic stuff, the anti-women stuff, anti-Democrat party stuff. He broke in to the residence asking for, this happened on October 28th at 2.27 a.m. in the morning. He was looking for Nancy Pelosi. She was not there, fortunately. She was in Washington, D.C. with her security detail. Unfortunately, her husband, Paul Pelosi, was there and in bed sleeping. He was woken up by this David DePape, who proceeded to say that he was looking for Nancy and that we learn more about what this plot was. He was fortunately apprehended, but he had attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, bludgeoning Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer. Paul Pelosi and the Pelosi's are the Pelosi family is in a San Francisco hospital at the ICU wing there fighting for his life. The initial reports were that he was going to make a recovery, but he's 82 years old. And an attack like that that knocked him unconscious has very, very, very serious consequences.

And after this, David DePape was arrested. He was given his Miranda rights, and he spoke to investigators, and he said he was looking to find the leader of the Democratic Party. He says that Nancy Pelosi was the ringleader. He wanted to hit her in the knees with the hammer so that she would have to be wheeled around as a message to other Democrats who he referred to as other, what he called them, bread communists and all of that right-wing hate speech that's always directed at Democrats. And he also said he was trying to use her as bait for at least another individual, whatever that means.

This comes from an affidavit that was filed in connection with federal criminal charges that were brought. So state prosecutors have filed an attempted murder case against this David DePate. The federal charge relates to attacking an individual who's a spouse of a lawmaker and trying to retaliate against the lawmaker. Federal crimes that carry 30 years and 20 years respectively in the state law claims combined with those would put this David to pay in prison likely for the rest of his life. But then you have the MAGA response to this, where you would think no matter what political side you are on, everybody would condemn this in no uncertain terms with no obfuscation, just this is bad, this is horrific, and that no one should do this and

political violence is bad. Instead, on the MAGA Republican Party, you have the exact opposite. Brett, you want to tell us what Don Jr. did and what some of these other MAGA Republicans did? Yeah, well, first, I think I want to put in perspective just, you know, throughout history, when an incident like this would occur, like Ben said, it's the only right thing to do is to go and to make a statement and to say, you know, something to the effect of, you know, to decry all political violence, to say that this cannot happen in the United States of America, to reach out across the aisle and say that we cannot allow this to happen to our country. And we have examples of

this very recently. Everybody remembers when Steve Scalise got shot at that congressional baseball game or softball game or whatever it was. Here's what Representative Pelosi said then at the time. This is her quote. And I'll read this to you first so that you could have this in contrast to what I'm about to tell you about these MAGA Republicans who spoke out. Pelosi said at the time, she wrote, on days like today, there are no Democrats or Republicans, only Americans united in our hopes and prayers for the wounded. Now compare that to the Republican Party and overall across the party. I would say the best case were the people who didn't even say anything. The best case were the crickets from people like Kevin Elder, from people like Glenn Youngkin, who's supposed to be considered. The media told me the guy's a moderate.

He wears a fleece vest. He's got to be a moderate guy, right? No, all these people were absolutely disgusting. Here's the post that Don Jr. made. Don Jr. put a post of a tighty whiteys pair of underwear and a hammer and wrote, got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready. Remember, Paul Pelosi right now is in the ICU after getting his head bashed with a hammer fighting for his life. And this is the joke that Don Jr., who is an actual leader of the Republican Party, whether anyone wants to admit

it or not, this is what Don Jr. had the nerve to say. Let's try to find some other ones that I- And Brett, you can, because the conspiracy, because it's always a conspiracy with the MAGA extremists, was that they are spreading the false statement that Paul Pelosi was in a romantic relationship with his attacker. And that's why his attacker was there. And they were wearing their underwear at the time of the hammer attack. And so that's what they spread, that that's what was going on. And then they accused him of being drunk when that was taking place. And so that's why, again, they spread that conspiracy. And then you even had people like the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, spreading an article from something called like the Santa Barbara Observer or something. Something that spread like that aliens you know live amongst us and that like i think they reported

in 2016 that like hillary quinn hillary clinton wasn't alive you know like they're known for just reporting the most outrageous false stuff and that was the source that was cited by elon musk is saying well it's potentially true i'm looking into despicable despicable despicable stuff but brett go ahead i wanted to give context to why they're even posting the underwear hammer picture to spread the conspiracy when they know it's false and completely it's it's important context and here's larry elder who's a right-wing radio host you probably know his name because he was the guy who was running in the recall election against gavin newsom for governor here in california recently larry elder wrote too soon poor paul pelosi first he's busted for dui and then gets attacked in his home for governor here in California recently. Larry Elder wrote too soon. Poor Paul Pelosi. First,

he's busted for DUI and then gets attacked in his home, hammered twice in six months. Another very clever joke here from Larry Elder. I mean, these people are just so despicable and it really sums up everything that is wrong right now with the Republican Party. And I love like the conversations, the back and forths that you could have with MAGA's about this. They'd be like, what? That's ridiculous. You really believe you're to wait. You're telling me you really believe that there was some guy who was radicalized by right wing calls to violence. And so he went to attack the husband of the Democratic Speaker of the House. Do you even hear yourself, bro?

Do you even hear yourself right now, bro? Then you'd be like, okay, so what do you believe? Okay, you don't believe the official story. You don't believe the confession that came from the guy's mouth himself. You don't believe the DOJ affidavit. What do you believe? And by the way, they have like where the guy lives in an area called Richmond in California. They went to his, he lived in a garage.

Like they have all the information from the guy too. They have everything about the guy. I mean, these people on the right who are just so quick to make jokes about this when the guy's literally fighting for his life in the ICU at the moment. They're not human. Like it's not a huge, like, like there's nothing human about the way that interaction goes with a Don Jr. posting a Instagram Halloween costume, Paul Pelosi. Like, what are you, what are you doing, man?

So what's, what's the story from your perspective, right? What's the, what's the story from, okay. You don't believe the official story. You don't believe the words from the guy who did it. Okay, so tell us your story. What's a more believable story? Okay, well, a gay, vegan, nudist, pedophile, lover of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez was in some hot foreplay with the husband of the Speaker of the House. You're like, what are you talking?

What are you talking when things went awry and then police showed up and they covered it up and the Department of the House. You're like, what are you talking? What are you talking when things went awry and then police showed up and they covered it up and the Department of Justice is lying and everyone is lying. Okay, that's why we need to abolish the FBI and we need to repeal the Espionage Act and vaccines. You want to know the real trickle down?

The real trickle down is the trickle down of misinformation and disinformation out there that comes from the Don Juniors and the leaders of the Republican Party. You know, they tweet out this stuff and it has real fricking life consequences as seen as it played out over the weekend. And you always have to just call it out and condemn it. I don't, it's crazy to me that not one single Republican has condemned this as flat out said, this is wrong. You know what the turning point really was January 6th after some of the Republicans at first condemned what happened and then took a step back and said, oh, my poll number shot down. Oh, my constituents

don't like that I said that. Oh, I'm going to stay silent. Or, oh, you know what? I'm actually going to go right on this and say X, Y, and Z and help propagate this weird conspiracy theory. There's just no humanity in it. It's sad. I'd say it probably took hold when Trump became president and even before that on January 6th, probably solidified it. But it's always interesting when you see, they wait for their marching orders, right? They try to figure out, okay, what's the story? What are we going with here? Did Donald Trump say anything yet? Did Charlie Kirk say anything about this? Did Bannon say? What do I say? I don't know what to say about this. Okay. At first they were like, let's make it a crime issue. This is crime, San Francisco crime, random attack.

Oh, wait, that didn't work. Mental health, the guy was nuts. The guy was absolutely, oh, wait, that didn't work. Gay lovers, gay lovers with Paul Pelosi. He was in his underwear. And the way these stories evolve is just ridiculous. At the end of the day, this is domestic terrorism, okay? And I even hesitate to use

the term political violence because it is confined to a specific political party. This is MAGA domestic terrorism. This is specifically MAGA political violence. And it is the direct result of the lies and gaslighting and the violent rhetoric that we see from these Republican politicians. And all of them own it. Kevin McCarthy owns this. Elise Stefanik owns this. Ted Cruz owns this. Marjorie Taylor Greene owns this. And that's why when stories like this happens and you see the media and people say, oh, America right now is so polarized. We live in such a polarized country. We just can't seem to agree on anything. I really don't think we are that polarized. We have a party that refuses, and the Republicans, they refuse to accept objective reality about the

election, about this, about vaccines, about climate change, about anything. They refuse to accept basic facts that should just be agreed upon about anything. These are undebatable things. These kinds of lies and propaganda would make Kim Jong-un blush. They are so outlandish and they are so crazy and they are using these lies to distract from an attempted assassination attempt against the Speaker of the House simply because the Speaker of the House is a Democrat and their way of trying to deflect from this attack is to create gay erotic fan fiction. It's like, how does their minds even go there? What is happening? They did the same thing with the Mar-a-Lago documents, you know, and first it was, it's a complete lie. The documents were

planted. No, he's allowed to have all of these records. He declassified everything. You just kind of cycle through it and just spread big lie after big lie after big lie. And we'll talk about when Obama held these rallies at these, you know, in Georgia and in Wisconsin and in Michigan. One of the things, the lines that he used is he's like, you know, look, when I used to go around and shake people's hands and give speeches, we used to be able to have kind of normal discussions, even if people didn't agree with me. And he goes, remember when the craziest thing out there was birth certificate stuff? He's like, that wouldn't even make the top 10 now. And that was pretty crazy. No, that was super tame. Now it's a great, but super tame, the birth certificate stuff.

He goes, that wouldn't even make, he goes, that wouldn't even make the top 10 list. And he goes, but now you literally have a Republican party that doesn't want to do anything other than, and Obama said it, other than like own the libs and worship Trump. And those are the two things, however you do it. And so they're all about, they don't have a policy. They are memeing, they meme hate every day. And then they like try to one up each other with the memeing of the hate. And it's like, what in the world is is going on here? And it really is sick and disturbing stuff. Jordy, anything else you want to add?

It's just sad. It's just sad. Let's move on. Well, I'll just say it's not just them. Like when we go to vote, if you haven't voted yet and you can vote early, vote now. It's a huge help. If you vote early, it's really important. So vote if you can. If you're going to vote next week or if you haven't voted yet, here's what you're voting for. It's not just Democrats versus Republicans. It's truth versus lies. You are voting for reality itself. If Republicans have power and they run the Congress, they're going to be doing all these

kangaroo courts, all the things that they try to act like, oh, the DOJ is the Congress, they're going to be doing all these kangaroo courts, all the things that they try to act like, oh, the DOJ is weaponized. And this is what they're going to weaponize their positions in Congress to issue fake reports about COVID, fake reports about Fauci, fake reports about Hunter Biden, fake reports about the Pelosi incident. They're just going to start issuing all these official documents that look official. They'll be official and they will be complete and utter bullshit. And that's what we'll be wasting our time with for the next two years. Will Biden be able to block anything legislatively? Yes, sure. But they are going to try to muddy the waters, and they're going to try to do everything they can to tank the economy, to ruin things for

Americans so they could then in the next election go, oh, look, the Democrats have failed you, better vote for a Republican for president. They're not going to get in there to make things better for you. They have no plans. Their only plans are to cut the programs that are actually beneficial to you. And any pain that arises from that, they are just going to try to shift on the Democrats. I cannot even tell you how important these elections are. And we'll get into the early voting data and some of that in a little bit. But I am feeling pretty good about these elections. But we need to stay fired up and we need to keep this energy at a high level because as Adam Frisch said on our show, we got two parties. We got the crazy party and we got the pro-normal coalition. Democrats are the pro-normal coalition right now. And that includes the normal Republicans

who left them. That includes independents. That includes Democrats, progressive Democrats, conservative Democrats. It's a big tent of normal. And while Republicans are doing all this crazy shit, I truly believe, and you could disagree with Democratic policies, of course, disagree here and there. Let's have debates. At least Democrats are working from a point of objective reality and are not just making shit up and living in an alternative universe. And they aren't trying to gaslight you and lie to you and all the trauma that comes to the country with the endless amounts of gaslighting. I mean, I cannot emphasize it enough. You may disagree with the democratic policy, but we need to agree that a policy is needed, okay? The MAGA Republicans deny the very existence of the thing, that it's not real, and you

are imagining it. So you can't have a polarization assumes that there is an issue that is objective, where there are two polls, and the polls disagree on that issue, right? But that's not actually what we have here. We have the issue. Democrats are saying, here is the solution. And Republicans are saying, we love Donald Trump, we love Vladimir Putin, underwear, underwear, underwear, underwear, what are you talking about? Like, it's really that, it's that level of insane. And their cult leader, Brett, you want to say something?

I was going to go to the emergency. No, yeah, go to that, go to the cult leader. But I just, before you go there, I'll just say, here's the one benefit. It's hard to think of a benefit from this, but I see all across these right-wing influencer circles, all their tweets, all their tweets, all their posts,

everything that they're actually speaking about with each other, at least online, they're speaking about underwear. That's, that's, that's the main topic of their conversations. When I speak to Democrats, when I speak to Democrats on the phone,

when I speak to Democrats online and stuff, Democrats are talking about voting. Democrats are talking about the election and it's bringing back memories of 2021, the Georgia elections in a big way for me, when Democrats were constantly talking about one date in January. And guess what? It was not January 6th. It was January 5th, the date of the Georgia elections. And Democrats were talking nonstop, January 5th, January 5th, January 5th, while Republicans were saying, voting is rigged, voting is rigged, January 6th, January 5th, January 5th, while Republicans were saying voting is rigged, voting is rigged to January 6th, January 6th. And I think that made all the difference in that election that we were fired up. We stayed focused eyes on the prize. And also, you know, that's why like, you know, right now, all the Elon Musk stuff, him spreading this, it truly, truly, truly, truly disgusts me. But at this moment in time, I think we all need to be laser focused on these elections and kind of deal with that after. But we have to win this. We just have to stay focused. We got to stay more

focused than them. That's a great point. We stay laser focused on the election. Let them stay laser focused on shit posting or whatever they call it. Yeah. That's why we're not really focused. If you've noticed, we don't really post anything about Elon Musk. It's intentional because we are focused, laser focused on November 8th. And Brett, why don't we talk about it too? Because I am very data driven. You know, I don't, the media and the mainstream media has this both sides agenda and then has the pro-fascist agenda. And the mainstream media has let people

down so much, by and large. Occasionally you get some great reporting, but by and large, that really my focus is on the raw numbers. And so I'm constantly looking for who's actually analyzing numbers of who has early voted, what does that look like? And someone who I think's just done a great job about it from the New Democrat Network, the NDN, is someone by the name of Simon Rosenberg. And we're going to have Simon Rosenberg on this podcast as well coming up. And I'm excited to speak to Simon about it, but he's been just drilling into the data and been reflecting it honestly, what we're seeing. And one of the things though, he also points out though, is that if you look at a lot of the polls that are flooding and manipulating

averages, one of the right-wing tactics as part of their voter suppression has been to fund a wave of new polls. And I've seen it, Brett, too. I'm like, who's this organization? I've never heard of this group before. Who are all these people flooding the zone with these weird Republican-leaning polls? And it does look like there's this overcounting of Republican led and auto dial firms and these partisan outfits that are trying to kind of create this narrative, which if you give the media, you know, the red meat that they want, literally, they'll just go and write, you know, oh, the shifting for the red, red wave. You know, they just it's just so dumb, but that's the way the media is. But Simon Rosenberg did this post and he said, hello, media friends, you've been played by the GOP. Here are the percentage of polls released

by GOP allied groups that are ranked by 538 and of all polls taken in the state of October and shows that the GOP polls are heavily weighted. But when you actually look at the data from Target early, of who's voting early, I mean, we're talking about 2.4 million votes more by Democrats, a 2.4 million vote lead over Republicans. And just to give you perspective, at this point in 2018, Republicans had a 400,000 vote national lead. I want you to help break down some of these numbers, Brett. But the one thing I do want to mention, it's your point, Brett. The MAGA Republicans are all out there talking about underwear and spreading conspiracies. They're doing their weird freaking memes and they're patting themselves on the back about how great Elon is.

They're doing all that weird stuff. And Democrats were putting in the work. Pro-democracy is putting in the work. And one of the strands of Trumpism is incompetence to totally downplay, and this is what they've done, the concept of voting. They don't promote the idea of voting as a thing. In fact, they talk crap about voting all the time. So as they do that, let them, let them be distracted there. And we need to focus really on getting people out to the polls and to vote. And Brett, I want you to break it down. Final point I want to make that each and every person who watches this or listens to this podcast, you can actually be the difference maker.

Each person who listens to this gets one person, five person, 10 people, 20 people, 50, whatever it is that you can do with the amount of people who watch and listen to that. That already has an exponential effect of millions of people who will vote. So you listening could literally be the answer that saves the democracy. So you could talk about, oh, Democrat messaging this and that. You listening and watching could actually be the difference. Brett, break down some of these numbers somewhere. Yeah, sure thing. First off, the polls in general have largely went completely unchanged since a few weeks ago. There was all that, you know, the media went wild when there was like an outlier poll or two that showed Republicans winning. They were like, oh, this is chaos for the Democrats. The like Ben said, the numbers that I am truly focused on is how many people that are actually

getting out to the polls. And this data comes from Target Early. Pennsylvania, this I believe is through the end of the day yesterday. Pennsylvania as of yesterday. Here are these facts. 777,309 early votes. So that's the amount we have. Okay. 72% of those early votes come from registered Democrats. So 72% of the over 777,000 votes in Pennsylvania come from registered Democrats. That is currently beating the Democratic performance that we saw in 2020 during a. And the early voting remains encouraging for Democrats basically across the entire country. Using target early, we show that we can outperform 2020 in all these states right now. And remember, 2020, election year, Trump is president. A lot, a lot of people go into the polls. Democrats are doing better right now than 2020 in Georgia, in Iowa, in

Michigan, in Nevada, in New York, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in Texas, in Virginia, in Wisconsin during a midterm election. That is a, as Joe Biden calls it, a BFD. Dems are outperforming the 2020 early vote share in so many important states. And this is how many points better Democrats are doing than in 2020 in terms of their share of the early votes. So in terms of share of the early vote, remember, this is from now to 2020, we are doing 22 points better in Michigan, 14 points better in Wisconsin, 13 points better in Iowa, 12 better in Pennsylvania, 11 in Georgia, 11 in Minnesota, eight in Ohio, five in Texas, four in Virginia, three in Nevada, two in New Mexico, 11 in Georgia, 11 in Minnesota, eight in Ohio, five in Texas, four in Virginia, three in Nevada, two in New Mexico, one in North Carolina. There are only really two of the main

states that we are currently falling just underneath those 2020 metrics. But in those states, at least in Arizona, we're actually seeing kind of an overall slightly less of a turnout in Arizona and in Washington. So this all bodes really, really, really well for the Democrats as far as turnout. Now, we need to keep this up. We need to keep this energy. We need to keep it going. So if you already voted, you need to make sure, like Ben said, that you're calling five friends. Start with two friends, maybe. Start with two. Work your way to five. Work your way to 10. post about things on social media. Just do anything that you could do right now to get people to the polls. That is our sole focus right now in these elections.

Because if we continue on this pace and we show up in high enough numbers on election day, and by the way, if the youth shows up in numbers that we need in election day, that is going to be the difference maker. All these projections right now are showing that if the youth shows up at 2018 levels, which was the record for youth turnout in an election, if young voters meet those benchmarks, Democrats take back the House, all other things being equal. And currently, youth voters are outperforming those 2018 metrics across the country and in individual states. I saw today

in Wisconsin, youth voter turnout is higher than in 2020 in Wisconsin. This is a big deal. Young voters are fired up. All voters are fired up. And it really is a result, though, of you being this passionate, understanding the true threat of these MAGA Republicans, and we really need to stop them. And now it's really just a sprint through the finish line, as you said, Brad. And I'm just going to reemphasize this point for a third time. If you already voted, there's someone in your circle, a family member, a neighbor, a friend who hasn't, who will vote blue. Remind them, just nudge them. Be like, hey, did you vote yet? Why not? Are you going to vote on election day? All right, great. Let's go. It's a sprint through

the finish line. The youth numbers are amazing to see. The overall numbers are amazing to see. We're going against every historical context to date. So the fact that we're doing this while so early on is definitely a positive. So let's keep that momentum up. Do not get complacent. Work, work, work. Now is when we work harder than ever. It's those last five yards, right, Jordy? It's those last five yards. Do not get complacent and think you've got the touchdown. You need to work harder than ever. Let's talk about this emergency application that Donald Trump filed with the United States Supreme Court today to try and block turning over his tax returns. The United States Congress House Ways and Means Committee was trying to get these tax returns all the way back from 2019. And there's a presidential audit

function that the House Ways and Means Committee engages in with the IRS. And it's not really controversial that presidential tax returns will go to the House Ways and Means Committee if they want it. And it's not really like a separation of powers issue because if you're the president, you shouldn't be hiding the tax returns. It should be something that you turn over because you're not a freaking criminal and they shouldn't be having stuff that you don't want people to see if you are seeking the nation's highest office. And so when Trump was in office, Steve Mnuchin for the IRS rejected the request from the House Ways and Means Committee. House Ways and Means Committee filed a lawsuit against the IRS at that time. When Biden

became president, he reversed the IRS decision there, ordering the IRS then ordered that these documents be turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee. Trump intervened. He lost his case to the district court where he argued that there was no legitimate legislative reason to have his tax returns. And he was in front of a judge, Trevor McFadden, who was a judge he appointed, was the district court judge in Washington, D.C., where he lost in front of his own appointee. He lost in front because it's not controversial. Congress can get these records. That just literally is an exception to tax privacy is for presidents. And the House Ways and Means Committee is entitled to get it. Frankly, they can get it for anybody, but there's a presidential audit function. Then Trump appealed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He lost there in a unanimous decision.

He then requested en banc review, meaning in front of all 10 court of appeals justices, not just the three panel. He lost there. And now he filed this emergency application with the United States Supreme Court. It will go before John Roberts at the Supreme Court. Justice Roberts is the supervising judge for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. And this House Ways and Means Committee issue is different than the House Oversight issue. That was the committee Carolyn Maloney chairs, and they've already got their records after Trump lost all of his lawsuits there to turn over financial records from his accounting firm,

Mazers. But this is different. This relates to his taxes from 2015 to 2020. And in Trump's motion, he goes, can you imagine the separation of powers issues? If a president is ordered by Congress to have to turn over tax returns, it could be published publicly. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's what happens. You're the president of the United States. We don't have kings and emperors here. That cognitive dissonance there is the actual issue. What about this cognitive dissonance? Because you're the president. Because you're a public position. What about this cognitive dissonance there is the actual issue. What about this cognitive dissonance? Because you're the president. What about this cognitive dissonance? The Republican reaction, and this goes along with all their fucking lies that they do nonstop.

The Republican reaction where they're like, this has never been done with a president in my entire life. They are targeting Trump. Well, why? Why has this never been done with a president? Do tell. Do tell why this has never happened. Who was the last president who didn't give over his tax returns? OK, I'll wait. OK, I'll wait. You let me know the answer to that question. And then we'll figure out why Donald Trump is the only president that's going through this. OK? OK. Yeah. Tell me about the last president who stole top secret nuclear records. Let's talk about the last president who incited insurrections. Let's talk about the last president who had a hotel across the street and would like require foreign diplomats to like pay excessive rates and would charge the secret service five X or six X what the actual government rate. I could go down literally every issue, but why is Donald Trump being targeted for these things? Because he's the only person who's done it. And bringing it back really quickly to where we started the show, it's why they try to discredit

every single story that comes out, whether it be the Paul Pelosi attack or whatever true story that comes out. They try and discredit it because if they could disprove one thing, then they could disprove all the things that the media is talking about. It's really a wacky... Go ahead, Brett. I was going to say, and that, Jordy, is exactly why the lies are so insane. That's why they're so crazy because you can't just do a little lie. You can't just do a little teeny white lie, a little fib. You got to tell the biggest lie imaginable. And that's what they do with Pelosi. That's what they do with January 6th. It's even what they're doing with these early voting numbers right now, trying to gaslight people into not going to the polls. So what they do with everything, it's their main strategy.

It's the through line in every single thing they do. Yeah. Right. When they go to their BS election fraud claims, like where do they go? They go, oh, it is the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez satellite link with Italy and then bamboo in China. And then the bamboo arrived. And you're like, what? And actually, that's what Obama said in his speech about Tudor Dixon, I think, who's running against Gretchen Whitmer. Do we have that clip, Brett, where he goes – where he like listens and he goes – what are we talking about here? I think it's this one, so let's play it. The other day – I did not realize this. I did not – I read about this.

Somebody had to show it to me. The other day, a video came out of Governor Whitmer's opponent claiming that Democrats have been working for decades to topple the United States because they're still upset about losing the Civil War and that COVID restrictions were part of some master plan to do this. Now, first of all, what? What, what? What? I mean, I know some folks go down these rabbit holes on the Internet. They're up too late.

But that's like a subway tunnel. That's deep. That's the darkest rabbit hole I've ever seen. And by the way, it's not like this quote was from, you know, sometimes folks get quoted way back when they were in college after a frat party bender, you know, and they just said something. And, you know, you kind of want to forgive them because you're all like, all right, I've been there. I remember right after that game, you know, we got a little stupid. She said this two years ago.

Two years ago two years ago so I guess that's what she actually thinks I imagine if instead of coming up with a story about how us having to watch Tiger King in our sweatpants was somehow some kind of government plot. Imagine if she spent some time coming up with some ideas to create more jobs here in Michigan or to give folks more health care or to improve our schools. That's what you want from the governor of your state. No one does it better. Here's the thing too have you ever even heard one of these fascist trump rallies where they actually talk about here's what we want to do for you the people

like education lowering prescription drug prices getting you back to work, you know, more jobs. How do we improve our infrastructure? Like anything of substance that is about anyone other than Trump saying, and they did this to me and then they did that to me and whoever treats me like this. Your Trump impressions really got in strong over these last couple of episodes. It sounds just like him. Yeah, we. It does a little bit. Yeah, no, but Ben, like you're forgetting, Trump does play the QAnon theme song.

So give him a little bit of credit. But seeing that rally, so refreshing. You could watch some of the other Midas Touch vid network videos that we released where we covered the Obama rallies and just everything he said, his passionate defense of the candidates because of the candidates' policies benefiting the people. And then he would draw the contrast to what people like Ron Johnson want to do. And he said, Ron Johnson, his three kids all have private jets. You can't just share one. You all need three private jets. And then your main focus is tax cuts for people with private jets. That is what you're voting for, Wisconsin. You want someone who will fight for the private jet community and not like actual people like

that's the issue. And the same thing he did with Gretchen Whitmer and her race for governor against Tudor Dixon. You draw the contrast, but then you focus on the issues and actually standing up for the people. And he did the same thing in Georgia as well with Raphael Warnock comparing it to how inexperienced Herschel Walker is. And Obama's like, look, Herschel Walker may have once been a great football player, great football player, but am I going to trust you to fly my airplane?

Am I going to trust you to perform surgery because you have that? You think you can protect the people, yet you're walking around pretending you're a cop with a little phony police badge. And then going into all of the things that Raphael Warnock has done to actually fight for the people, to lower prescription drug prices, to make education more accessible and affordable, to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. And, you know, Herschel Walker's, you know, response to everything is, oh, diabetes, you just need to eat better. Forget actually addressing making insulin more affordable. Like we're not going to do that. They're going to raise the price of insulin if they get into, if they get into power. And then you had Obama also with a passionate defense also of social security, you know, and he would tell the crowds, do you know why you have social security or why someone you love has social

security? Cause you work for it. You deserve it. It's yours. And the Republicans are going to try to take that away from you. And that's not fear mongering. That's exactly what they are going to do. We got David Rothkopf, you know, we got to get him. I want to talk about Instaflex Advanced. I got to be honest with you guys. Since I've been doing lots of running, I got to be honest, like my knees, I get lots of discomfort in my knees and my fiance knows that I kind of was walking with a limp, but then I started taking Instaflex Advanced for fast, powerful joint relief. Try Instaflex Advanced the same way I do because Instaflex Advanced targets the root cause of joint discomfort with one little pill per day. It contains a unique combination of five key ingredients found in no other product

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Messages and data rates may apply. Terms apply. Available at instaflex.com slash terms. Should we bring in our guest, fellas? That was a great read. I just want to compliment the read really quickly. And then, hey, personal call out to all the Midas Mighty. Text 42424 right now and text Midas to that number. Let's do it. Our guest, David Rothkopf. Brett, bring in David. We got a special guest with us today, David Rothkopf, a foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and host of Deep State Radio. His upcoming book, American Resistance, the inside story of how the deep state saved the nation on sale November 1st. Everybody get a copy of that book. And David,

welcome to the podcast. Real pleasure. Congratulations to all you guys have done here. No, we appreciate it and we appreciate all the work that you've done. I'm excited for the book. And I got to ask you, though, before I kind of bury the lead here, because people are wondering the deep state, how the deep state saved the nation. What does the title mean? The title means what it says, you know, that the idea of a deep state, you know, there's always been people who say, well, these people secretly control the government. But it kind of got popularized in the U.S. right around the time Trump started to rise. And and you have to ask what, you know, I mean, the idea of a big conspiracy involving the largest organization in the world, which is the U.S. government,

kind of ludicrous, but what's the point? Why were they doing it? And I traced the beginning back to what I would call Reagan's big lie, which preceded Trump's big lie. And that was that government was the enemy, that, you know, government was going to hurt you. And there are a lot of negative consequences to that big lie. And one of them is, of course, Trump's big lie, because if government's the enemy, then you discredit them. And if you discredit them, then you don't believe what they say or do. And that gives you an opportunity to undercut them. But another dimension of it is that it allows you to, you know, cut back agencies and functions within the government that constrain

the power of a leader. And if you say, I want to get rid of the people who are following the law, who are, you know, pursuing regulations, then that enables you to increase the power of a president, for example. And that's just what happened during Trump. Trump, you know, wanted to essentially behave like he behaved in his home business. I wouldn't say he, you know, had an ideology. I don't think he ever thought things through that much. He just wanted to control everything. But he very quickly found that when he tried to do things, the Muslim ban, for example, that there were little obstacles like the constitution or laws or people who said, you have to follow these laws. um uh you know gradually he came to the realization because the deep state the which doesn't really exist in that respect but the professionals in

the government civil servants foreign service officers intelligence officers military officers they were the guardrail that worked you know know, when the Congress didn't work, when the judiciary was taken over by guys like Bill Barr, they were the folks who actually said, no, you can't do that. And now, of course, it's relevant because Trump and a lot of people in the GOP are floating an idea, this Schedule F idea, that would let them fire them. And the reason they want to fire them is to concentrate more power in the hands of fewer people. It's an authoritarian power grab, much like make it harder for people to vote. And you talk about it in the book, but isn't this the way that what always set America apart is that we had this thriving civil servant class that to some degree, more than in other countries, existed as close as a meritocracy as you can with accurate information rising to the top or as close to accurate information as you can get. Of course, they get it wrong a ton of

times versus, you know, you compare our system to a system like what we see right now in Ukraine and with Putin, where you have generals and people just telling him whatever the hell he wants to hear with incredibly damaging consequences. And you think about that, you think about our COVID response you take with under Trump, you take away all of actual science and you've got an idiot saying inject bleach in your veins or you got Putin trying to play general and not actually trust in his people. And it's a disaster over there for them as as well versus you see what you know what's going on in Ukraine. So what do you think about that? Well, I don't think we're the only country in the world that's had an effective civil service or people who wanted to get things done in a good way or who might actually tell leaders what they needed to hear.

But I do think that the underpinnings of our entire system are that we're a nation of laws, not of men, that these people actually report not to an individual, but to the American people. Their loyalty, the oath they take is to the Constitution, not to an individual or to a party. And when you undercut that, you undercut what is vitally important about making our system work. And one of the things that I try to illustrate in the book is time and time again, Trump, who, let's be clear about this, was a lunatic who was unbelievably ill-suited to the job that he had, would come up with terrible ideas. And people in his administration, including people in his cabinet and his subcabinet, who were government professionals that took their jobs seriously, put the brakes on it, stopped him from doing things. And when I say, you know, crazy things, I mean, you know, starting a war with North Korea, launching missiles against Mexico, building a moat at the southern border filled with alligators.

You know, what you what you talked about, injecting bleach into the into people's veins. You know, each time he tried to do one of these things, fortunately for us, there was a Tony Fauci or there was an Alexander Vindman or there was somebody you never heard of who said, no, there's a law here. There's a regulation here. You can't do that. And, you know, he would have done the past or the four years of the Trump administration would have been those who don't know, and for people just learning about you for the first time, could you let them know also the work you did in the Clinton administration? Yeah, I was in the Clinton administration a million years ago when dinosaurs were on the earth. And I was the Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade. And then I was acting Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade. And I've been in and around foreign policy my whole life, and I ran Foreign Policy Magazine

for a while. And so I've watched, and I've written histories, I've written several books that are histories of how the government works, particularly the national security side of the government. And I have to say, there has never been a government as dysfunctional as that of Donald Trump. In fact, there's never been one close. And the first chapter of the book is essentially when the penny dropped. And I went to 100 people and I said, when did you realize this train was going off the tracks? When did you realize this government was not like any of the other administrations that you had participated in. And I have to tell you, I was talking to, you know, some people who died in the war, Republicans, some people had very senior level jobs in the administration, but who had served

in other administrations. And I would say unanimously, they said the penny dropped during the campaign or during the transition to the new administration or within the first couple of weeks. In other words, they all said it happened real, real early because this was an administration. He didn't want to do a transition. He just wanted to surround himself with people that were close to him. He had his daughter and son-in-law in the White House. He had really sort of defective people like Stephen Miller in there. And they would just, you know, let's, hey, let's ban Muslims from coming into the country. And, you know, you remember back then the chaos at the airports because they didn't mention it to TSA. They didn't discuss it with the Department of Homeland Security in advance. You probably heard about him getting invited to go to the Pentagon a few months in,

go to this meeting in the tank. You probably read about this in some other books. I talk about it here too, because the general said he doesn't understand what an alliance is. He doesn't understand how our military works. We need to teach him. But he was unteachable. The Clinton administration had its dysfunction. It had people that shouldn't have been in it. It made a lot of mistakes. All administrations do. But there was never a president whose loyalty was doubted, whose competence was doubted, who was seen to be potentially corrupt, who is a loose cannon where most of the people in the administration tried to work around him because they couldn't work with him. Strangest thing to me, David, we talk about

this a lot on the podcast is, you know, and we always say, look, like set aside your political party, like, and just apply an objective criteria to the things that occurred. I just open your eyes and the things that occurred during that administration, all of the things that you mentioned that took place during the Trump administration. The part about me, which is so shocking, is after the horrific way in which he handled everything, you know, and particularly you think about, you know, the covid response. You think about the fact that the fact that he caused an insurrection, what he did on the day of January 6th, just you go to the Muslim ban, you just go to all of these things,

Charlottesville. And yet. The Republican Party portrays those years as this utopia, as though as though this was the greatest four years, our lives were the great wasn't this the most incredible four years? And we're like, no, it was the worst. It was actually objectively horrible. How do we combat that? And like, does that part shock you too, that you literally have a whole political party now, the Republican Party that just lean in and say that's what they want. They don't want the American experiment anymore. It's a question I ask myself every day.

You know, here here was, you know, January 6th. Here was an insurrection. This wasn't because, you know, the president didn't react. He led the insurrection. He was at the head of the crowd. It was his idea. It was for him. And you thought in the moments after it occurred that the Republicans were going to come to their senses. You know, you thought that periodically they would come to their senses, you know, after each one of the outrages of the administration. And here we are almost two years later. They've doubled down. There are 300 candidates on the ballot who are election deniers.

The majority of ballots in the United States have election deniers. And, you know, there are a few reasons for it. One of them is an amazing thing that scientists will be studying years to come. Half the American people or a third of the American people went through rapid evolution where they've gone from you and I and others like us who actually breathe oxygen to a third of the American people who have come to depend upon and learn how to breathe bullshit. And, you know, they go and they go on, you know, listen to Fox and they take that in, this stuff that you or I would say, oh, no, this is complete nonsense. This is crazy. This is racist. This is contrary to science. This is contrary to our national interest.

And they go, ah, the fresh air of, well, what is it the fresh air of? It's the fresh air of their narrow national personal interest, self-interest being protected as they feel history is against them, as they feel demographics are turning against them. Because ultimately, you know, the disaffected underpinnings of the Trump movement are sort of not well-educated, mostly white men who are afraid of demographic change in the United States. And they've been fed a line. Now, the people who fund the party, they're doing it for a different reason altogether. They say, well, if we can get this under mass to go and support us, then we can cut our taxes and get even richer and have even more control. And so, you know, it's a bit of a scam. But the problem is that at the beginning, you know, Trump didn't understand how the government worked, the MAGA crowd didn't, and they learned. So by the end, they said, oh, we have to get rid of this

deep state. We have to get rid of these guardrails. And now you've got Newt Gingrich and other Republicans saying, hey, there's this thing called Schedule F. This thing, you know, and, you know, we should fear all the things that are going on. This may not be one that's front of mind for people. But this is the idea that they can fire 50,000 career government employees. Why? Because they don't want any more Alexander Vindmans and Fiona Hills and Tony Fauci's. They don't want those people who are going to say no to a president. They want a bunch of stooges of Rick Grinnell's and Kash Patel's and Stephen Miller's, and they want to be able to impose them. And if they do that, if they get to do that, you can kiss democracy goodbye, because those people will then not enforce the law. They will not protect you and I, and they will allow that scared, bullshit, breathing minority to run the country despite their complete disregard for facts or what we really need.

And it feels like we started seeing that in action at the end of the Trump presidency. I mean, earlier in the interview, we were speaking about the chaos of the transition into the guy doing is when he started rearranging people in positions like at the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, after he had already lost the election leading up to January 6th. What did you make of that when you were watching all that go on? And were you raising red flags? Were you sounding the alarm? Well, first of all, I'm not a paid professional psychotherapist, but I want to tell you that your panic was completely justified. So you shouldn't worry about that. I talked to senior people in the Trump administration, cabinet secretaries, who said their biggest fear was Trump was going to get reelected.

Because what he was going to do was implement these things and put, and we look at it, look, look what happened at the very end around January 6th. You had a guy running the defense department who was a handpicked Trump guy who didn't do what he was supposed to do and who let this insurrection go on the way that it happened. You had a guy running the department of Homeland security who was a handpicked Trump guy who had sitting in his inspector general's office, a handpicked Trump guy, and they let outrageous things go on with the Secret Service, with not warning people and not doing what was necessary to protect the country. And, you know, these people in the administration, many of whom quit right before January 6th

or, you know, in its immediate wake, they were like, this has got to stop because we will literally have an out-of-control rogue president and a government that responds to him and not to the people. If, God forbid, Donald Trump did get, I don't even like sending this into the universe, but we have to talk about the real threat. If he did get a second term as president of the

United States, how would it look, do you think, in comparison to the first term? Would it just be pure chaos, revenge, a purge of all government officials? Well, yeah, those thingsge of all government officials? Well, yeah, those things. Did I sum it up? That's pretty good. I mean, it would be chaos and it would be revenge and people would get kicked out and Justice Department would be investigating people. But, you know, who knows what else it would be because they would actually know what to do. And they might not put

people up to be confirmed by the Senate. They might just make everybody acting so you could appoint them without oversight. They might put in place this Schedule F thing and fire all the people who were the guardrails. Of course, they do what they did in the Department of Justice, and they'd seek to have a Republican Congress play the passive enabling role that the Republican Senate did in both of those impeachment hearings. And they would try to consolidate their power, knowing what they learned in the first four years. But I got to tell you something. I don't think Donald Trump's going to be the next president of the United States.

He's old. He's in legal trouble. There are a lot of Republicans who are worried about it. But I think Ron DeSantis would do this. You know, Ron DeSantis is running Florida as a little fascist state with his own police department. And shutting, you know department. You talk about COVID shutting down the COVID data, imposing his social views on schools and so on and so forth. Do I think Kristi Noem would do this? Do I think Tom Cotton would do this? Do I think Ted Cruz would do this? Do I think Glenn Youngkin, who's kind of the wolf in sheep's clothing of the Republic? Yes,

they would all do this. And that's the problem. You know, you've got two parties in the United States, one that embraces democracy and one that opposes it, one that is for doing things for the people and one that is for doing things for the 1%. And that's not politics. That's objective reporting of the facts of the period in which we live. And we've got to deal with that. Yeah. And it seems like these Republicans and all the names that you mentioned who previously positioned themselves as these conservative voices have ultimately found that democracy isn't the answer to solve America's problems. And in fact, autocracy is a quicker way potentially to do it. But most importantly, it's kind of like a get rich quick scheme for them in many ways. Why do you think they are latching on to this autocratic

movement? Do you think it's because their ideas are not popular on a democratic forum just by popular vote? Why are they leaning so heavily into this Trump brand of right-wing extremism? Well, if you are a undereducated white Christian male who saw that by the year 2043, the majority in the United States will be groups that we once described as minority. And that's 21 years from now, right? It's close. It's in our lifetime. You know, if you saw the way things were appropriately changing with regard to the role of women in society, the role things were appropriately changing with regard to, I don't know, letting people love who they wanted to love, you might say, wait a minute. The way of life that I'm accustomed to, the privilege I'm accustomed to, the treatment I think I deserve, is not going to be available to me. But you would also realize that if you leave things to the public at large, you're going to lose. Because the majority of people actually believe the opposite of the views that they've got. I mean, you know, one of the things I always get in these discussions with people are like,

you know, are the progressives too much in control of the Democratic Party? And I'm like, no, everything has shifted. 70% of Americans, not just Democrats, 70% of Americans support gun control. 70% support, you know, doing, taking big steps on climate change. 70% more support the right to an abortion. 70% or more support, you know, educational reforms and tax reform that makes the rich pay more. All of these things are what these people don't want. They're afraid of the 70%. They're afraid of the majority of American people who are trying to impose the one thing they fear the most, which is progress. I mean, there are debates within the Republican Party. Do we want to turn the clock back to 1950 or 1850? But with regard to the rest of us, they just can't abide that idea.

And we've seen throughout the world, though, that that vocal minority, that 30 percent of people who may choose fascism over the beliefs of the majority often are able to consolidate power in ways. I mean, we've seen this kind of taken place in governments across the country. We've seen this kind of taken place in governments across the country. We've seen it throughout history. What do you make of sort of this global alliance that you kind of see forming in the background or maybe not even so much in the background, but there's certainly an alliance forming between the MAGA people, people like Orban, like in Italy. What do you make of that sort of new faction that's forming? And should we be concerned about it? First of all, it's real.

This is not in the background. This is in the foreground. And it's not an accident. The conditions that made it possible were created in part because we pushed forward with an agenda of globalization. And I was a pro-globalization Clinton international economic official. But we didn't realize the dislocations that would take place. We didn't realize the jobs that would be lost.

And that produced a lot of resentment and fear in these countries. And the sort of the ethno-nationalist right started to rise up because they said, hey, we don't want to give up our sovereignty or our jobs to China or someplace else. We want to control them. We don't want to let those people who don't look like us end up being in charge. And then there were people who took advantage of it. You know, Putin, in the past couple of years, has spent $300 million across Europe trying to get his people involved. Putin invested in Brexit. Putin invested in Trump. And so now you have this kind of ethno-nationalist movement tapping into the disaffection with some of the things that have happened in the past years. And you're right. It's in the US.

It's in Brazil. It's in Italy. It's in Sweden right now. The conservatives in the UK, you've seen the rise of it with Orban. You've got it with Putin. But you also have it with people like Modi in India and so forth. And so this is an international challenge as well as a domestic challenge. But I'll tell you one thing. If the U.S. loses its ability to lead on these issues, this particular contest is over. If the United States goes the way of the MAGA GOP, if democracy is eroded in our country,

if the extreme right gets entrenched, then it'll be the extreme right in the U.S. working hand in hand with the extreme right in Russia, working hand in hand with the extreme right in these places. And look at McCarthy saying, you know, I don't know if we're going to fund Ukraine. No, I'm going to try to shift it. We're speaking about a lot of really heavy subjects here, and rightfully so, because the world is in peril. But before I toss it over to Jordi for a couple of questions, let's try to get a little optimistic

here and at least maybe formulate a little bit of a plan. How do we combat this? How do we fight back against this? How do we as ordinary citizens, as the United States of America, push back on this rising tide of authoritarianism here and abroad? help others around you vote. And if they can't get to the polls, get them to the polls and support candidates because this is binary. This is a single issue election in my mind. And if Democrats don't win this, it's going to set us on a slide towards 2024. It's extremely, extremely dangerous. Recognize your own power, not just the power of voting, not just the power of mobilizing those around you through direct action, but even the power that you've got on

social media. Look at what you guys have done and built in just a couple of years. Why? Because you hit a nerve, because access to social media is free, because we live in an era in which each and every one of us has the ability to go out and touch everyone else and use that power. And you can be sitting at home and say, well, I got 62 followers. How am I going to do that? Well, if you see something on the internet that sends a message that you think is important and you hit a button, 62 other people are going to see it. And if some of them hit a button, other people are going to see it. Virality is one of the things we've got going for us. Modern technology is another. But to go back to my point a little bit earlier, we're the majority. Stop behaving like we are. Act like it. Act like

it. We are the majority in the United States and progress is on our side. We will ultimately win this. The key is going to be making sure that the transition to this new, more diverse America is not disrupted by these forces that want to turn back the hands of time. David, you're so spot on. We are the majority. When you put pro-democracy values up against these fascist values, nine out of 10, 10 out of 10 times people agree with the unapologetically pro-democracy values. So I guess what is your take out there to the doom and gloom Democrats who, you know, who want to say the world is on fire? And, hey, maybe, you know, in many instances, it very well could be. But then, you know, close up their books and shut their phones off and say, I'm not going to do anything. Why does that even exist? And what would you say

to them to try and rally them? Well, you know, to go back to another era, you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem. And so, you know, this is the time where you've got to stand up and you've got to recognize, you know, there are Ukrainians in ditches in the middle of winter fighting against a huge neighbor in order to preserve their rights. Your grandparents or great-grandparents fought in World War II at the risk of death, many of them dying, many of them losing limbs, suffering in order to preserve these rights, it's not asking that much that you vote, that you help others vote, that you tweet, that you share ideas, that you say, yeah, these rights, these rights are worth my not watching another episode of The Bachelor tonight, and instead spending an hour trying

to keep America from becoming fascist. Spot on. And then I just want to dig in a little bit more to your virality comment, because I think that is so important. I don't want to gloss over that. You had a tweet recently where you said, when you see a message that helps at the Democrats, retweet it. Don't just like it or nod your head approvingly. The power of social media is that everyone has the power to amplify important messages. Even if you have just a few followers, it can make all the difference. So how important is social media, you know, in order to uphold our pro-democracy values. Well, how important is it to you? You know, and I don't mean just the three of you. I mean, how important is it to people who are listening?

How much of your life is affected by it? How pissed off were you at Kanye? How pissed off are you at, you know, whatever is triggering you with your local sports team? How pissed off are you, you know, with, you know, these things that travel around in the Twitterverse or on Instagram or on TikTok or whatever? And the point is, listen to that. It's working. It works on you. It changes how you feel. And what we've got to do, you know, Democrats, there was a guy I worked with in the Clinton administration. He always used to say, we're real good at coming up with a thousand reasons to do things, but never just one.

In other words, you know, we don't boil things down to something that can actually make people act, do something, touch them emotionally. And TikTok is a hell of a better way to make somebody want to do something than a long op-ed in the New York Times. No doubt. Right? So use it. It's free. And when people, when your grandkids say, what did you do in the war, Daddy? At least you can say, I did something. I fought. I was against these people. I was not just another stooge who was like, hey, this democracy thing was nice while it lasted. What's the latest deal at Pizza Hut?

I love it. David Rothkopf, where can people get the book, American Resistance? I guess it's where you get books, you know? I mean, you can get them at your local bookstore and you can get it on Amazon or other places, I would just hope you would go and get it because this is not just an abstract story about how dysfunctional the Trump administration was. This is a warning about what the next Republican administration will try to do away with as part of their effort to move towards an authoritarian future for us. And we've got to understand it in order to do something about it. That's why I love the book. All the Midas Mighty out there listening to this, get a copy of your book.

It's out November 1st. I think it is critical that you not only get the book, but share the book as well with others before the election and after the election, but also before the election, because there's some stark warnings in there. The book is called American Resistance, the inside story of how the deep state saved the nation. David Rothkopf, thank you for joining us. Really, really enjoyed it. Brett, you're on mute. Oh, technology Brett's on mute. I got to say, I actually was speaking too, and I was on mute. I was the only one who was not on mute.

Brett, what'd you think? Way to be. I thought it was an incredible interview. I got to check out the book. I love David. I've always been engaging with David on Twitter and was finally really excited to actually speak to him and hear more about it. The stories that he was telling us about what was going on during the Trump administration,

I mean, you think you've heard it all. You haven't heard it all. And it's really is just so terrifying how close that we actually came to a disaster. But what I love also is David doesn't just talk about, you know, what happened in the past. It's it's very forward looking. And it's very important for us to be aware of all those threats now, because Donald Trump, as we head into these midterms, as we head into the 2024 elections, him and this MAGA, and it's not only Trump, I think we got to be clear about, it's this entire MAGA movement. It's all these Republicans. And you see them in broad daylight right now when you see someone like a Ted Cruz say, and we're going to investigate DOJ and we're going to take down the

FBI and we're going to take down the IRS and we're going to take down the IRS and we're going to take down this organization, that organization. It's like, give me a break here. You know, like let's, let's see what they're doing. Like they are announcing exactly what their plans are and it's up to us to stop them. And I love his advice, which echoes what we were saying earlier in the show. It does not matter if you have one follower or 1 million follower, your voice matters, no matter where you are using it, especially around peers, around family and friends. So if you ever thought about using your voice, if you ever thought, you know what, I don't want to wake up on November 9th and have any regrets the day after the election, now is the time to get into action, to make those phone calls,

to speak to your family, to speak to your friends, to spread those messages across social media. We need you in this fight. Couldn't agree more with you, Brett. We talked about during that interview, the authoritarianism abroad. I refer to it as the intro of the access of authoritarianism, which is really this Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin. Who's that guy from Hungary who everyone talks about? What's the guy's name? Orban. Orban. That whole, yeah, that whole access of authoritarianism. And fortunately, in Brazil, Luiz Lula da Silva defeated the extremist Trump-supported current presidents, Jair Bolsonaro. Trump had repeatedly endorsed Bolsonaro, tried to put his thumb on the foreign election, which is just such a weird thing to do. But notice after he lost, just like, that's the thing about these losers, is that the moment he lost, like he pretends he didn't do and say all of these

things, right? They're just losers. They're cowards. No dignity at all. And you got Steve Bannon and some people, they point fingers at each other and they try to claim election fraud and all the ridiculous things that they claim. This is Ali Alexander, one of these right-wing extremist crazies. In Brazil, the military has the right to insert itself into an election where there is suspected fraud. We must have an audit now. I mean, these people are ridiculous. This is Bannon.

This election was stolen in broad daylight. Outrageous. I mean, that's all they know how to do. That's why when they talk about that's all they know how to do that's why when they talk about that's a thumb is that a thumb that's a thumb this is roger stone's post this is right this is pretty funny actually roger stone's post making fun of jason miller because jason miller was also a guy who kept repeatedly flying remember that day where jason miller was like wasn't he like stuck in brazil or he was like at the airport when he came back was stopped by federal authorities.

Like he was really trying to interfere in this Brazilian election and was meeting with Bolsonaro and Bolsonaro's people. So Roger Stone does this post where he puts a picture of Jason Miller next to a picture of a thumb with, which has a goatee drawn on it and eyebrows drawn on it. And it legitimately the thumb looks exactly like jason miller and like i could not it looks more like jason miller than jason miller looks like i can't tell which is the thumb i don't know which is the thumb i i'm

being told there's a thumb here i i can't figure out which it is but roger stonewright wrote bolsonaro lost in brazil sadly this is what happens when Jason Miller is your political advisor, hashtag loser. So they all hate each other. They all grift off each other. They all cry election fraud. They're all a bunch of losers. But the good news is fascism lost there. We have momentum.

We have energy. We could do the same thing that Brazil did here. And it's up to us to pick up the mantle of democracy and to spread it in the United States. But that was, you know, just great news. Great news. And here's the thing about the Midas community is that we are an active community. We're not just passive. We don't listen to these podcasts and watch these podcasts and go, you know what?

Ben did a funny thumb joke right there. Let me go and now watch whatever else is on TV right now. That's not what we do, the Midas Touch community. We are solution-oriented. We take the great advice and sage wisdom of people like David Rothkopf and the other great guests that we have on here. We crowdsource this incredible wealth of knowledge together as a community to spread the truth and to make sure- Ben's got some trick-or-treaters.

Trick-or-treater. A trick-or-treater. My first trick-or-treater of the night, by the way. Are you going to go give them candy? Go give them candy. Right at the concluding epic rant point where I channel the Midas Mighty's power. That was your moment. That's when the trick-or-treater shows up.

Yeah, you know what? I've not gotten one trick-or-treater. And I didn't get any last year either. And I'm starting to get a little offended, people. Should I tell the trick-or-treater, I'm recording a podcast here, trick-or-treater. I'm recording a podcast in my living room, trick-or-treater. I'm concerned they're not going to get a little offended. People should I tell the trick or treater? I'm recording a podcast here. I'm concerned. They're not going to get any candy. Get them on the podcast.

Bring them on. I'll be that person. I'll be like the Grinch on Halloween. I'm recording a podcast. No good. But what I was saying was the might, but I went right through that. I'm going to give myself a little credit. The might is mighty community is an active solution oriented community and that we will

get results, not just on Halloween and getting some great candy to trick or treaters. We will get great results in November 8th. So take the advice. And if there's one thing you do, one, make sure that you voted and make sure you call up whoever you can and have them vote blue. I'd also ask you to do this. If you want to support independent media like this, we are not funded at all by any outside investors, literally zero outside investors. So the both side ism media, the pro fascist media, they've got some real money, huh? They're funded by billionaires

and millionaires and just continue to perpetuate the problem. We have zero outside investors here at the Midas Touch Network. So we are only powered by democracy and we are fueled by you. And so if you want to help out, go to patreon.com slash Midas Touch. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Midas Touch. There's a number of different memberships there with exclusive content. And so there's exclusive podcasts, exclusive Q&As, behind the scenes footage, bloopers. Like if we weren't live, that may have been a blooper. May have been a blooper. May have been a blooper. You got to see it.

There's even a tier where you could become an honorary producer of the Midas Touch podcast. And your name appears during the podcast and appears at the end of the podcast. There you are. Honorary producers, you get a big poster that says you're an honorary producer. Yeah, it's definitely grown. But look, I always get asked, is there a way you can help? No pressure. If you can't do it, don't worry.

We're still always going to have the free content on YouTube and all our other social media. But if you can, people subscribe to a lot of things. If you're able to, it would go a long way and it would be really helpful. That's patreon.com slash Midas Touch. And also, you should check out the Midas Touch store. That's store.midastouch.com. Get official Midas Touch gear, Legal AF gears. That's the make attorneys, get attorneys cap, the blue cap.

That is a really good one. We've got convict or convict 45, person, woman, man, camera, prison shirt. Some bestsellers there. Rovember, row, row your vote. There's a flash sale on those two items, Rovember and row, row your vote, 30% off there. Here we have I read banned books sweatshirt. I love the I read banned books sweatshirt and so much more at store.midastouch.com. Check it out. That's patreon.com slash Midas touch that store.midast touch.com. Check it out. That's patrion.com slash Midas touch that store. Midas touch.com. There you have it folks. There you have it.

Real quick. I've just kept picturing in my mind. You guys remember the movie, a big daddy with Adam Sandler the night when he takes, uh, his son that he's taking care of trick or treating for the very first time. And the person doesn't answer the door and he's taking care of trick-or-treating for the very first time and the person doesn't answer the door and he's like the Grinch and so Adam Sandler sneaks around like puts the guy in the headlock and like makes the guy give the kid like everything he has I'm just picturing that happening to you right now Ben I do remember that there Jordan no oh and one other thing subscribe to the YouTube channel if you're watching now and you haven't subscribed, please hit the subscribe button. And for those who watch on YouTube, please subscribe wherever you get the audio as well.

That goes a long way as well. So subscribe wherever you get audio podcasts, leave a five star review there. Our audio listeners go subscribe to our YouTube. Let's grow all of these platforms to 1 million subscribers, please. Can we get that done? I want to thank everybody for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Special thanks to our guest, David Rothkopf. Check out his book. It's a great one. Resistance, the inside story of how the deep states save the nation.

Brett and Jordy, love spending this time with you. I better go before I get more trick-or-treaters at my house right now. So I'll see you next time, Jordy. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. At Midas Touch, we are unapologetically pro-democracy and we demand justice and accountability. That's why we're spreading our message to convict45. That's right, gear up right now with your convict45

tees and pins at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com. Thank you. Outro Music