The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump ONE STEP CLOSER to Prison after BAD DAY at Trial

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

On today’s episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast: Trump is held in contempt of court again as former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testifies on the stand; The Trump Media auditor is charged with “massive fraud,” Republicans blow it in a series of bizarre weekend TV interviews; Leaked moments from the RNC retreat at Mar-a-Lago; A new key endorsement for President Biden; and more. Support Ukraine and get your official MUGA hat here: https://store.meidastouch.com/products/muga-hat Deals from our sponsors! LifeLock: Save up to 25% your first year at https://LifeLock.com/MEIDAS Rhone: Head to https://rhone.com/meidas and use promo code ‘MEIDAS’ to save 20% off your entire order. Oracle NetSuite: Download NetSuite's KPI Checklist, absolutely free, at https://netsuite.com/meidas Fast Growing Trees: Get this exclusive offer only at https://fastgrowingtrees.com when you use code MEIDAS at checkout! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/coalition-of-the-sane/id1741663279 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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a future resources company. We'll be right back. 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. As Donald Trump's criminal trial concluded today, week four, day 12, Donald Trump left the courthouse and said that he would like to go to jail for violating the gag order. Earlier in the day, Trump was found in violation of the gag order and held in criminal contempt for the 10th time. Yep, the 10th time. And Justice Merchant said, look, I didn't want to have to throw you in jail, but clearly these fines are not working. The next time that you violate the gag order again, which is unambiguous, we will be throwing you in jail. That's what I have to do to preserve law and order in the courtroom.

Speaking about what was going down in the courtroom, after Donald Trump was found in criminal contempt, we heard the testimony. There he is right there. Every cartoon of Donald Trump or sketch of Donald Trump is him sleeping because that's apparently all he's doing in the courtroom. But we heard the testimony from Jeff McConaughey, who's Donald Trump's former controller. McConaughey worked at the Trump Organization. That's Deborah Tarasoff right there. She runs the Accounts Payable, and they both testified on Donald Trump's systems

and the Trump Organization's systems for making payments, how invoices are done, reimbursement payments, and McConaughey laid it all out with the documents and notations to back it up how Michael Cohen was reimbursed $130,000. It was grossed up. There was another payment included in there as well for other work that Cohen had done that he needed to be reimbursed for. It's quite literally in the notation. So Makhani went through all of that and Tarasov talked about how any payment above $10,000, Donald Trump would personally review and personally need to sign off on. So clearly, if there were payments being made to Michael Cohen in the amounts for reimbursement, Donald Trump would have looked at it. Donald Trump would have had to approve it. Despite the fact that Makhani and Tarasov worked for the Trump organization, or in the case of Tarasov, still work for the Trump organization, Donald Trump's lawyers continue to complain to

Justice Marchand that they were being sandbagged. First in the morning, Donald Trump's lawyer said, whoa, we can't proceed. We don't know how we're going to cross-examine Jeff McConney. He worked at the Trump organization for 40 years. He testified in the New York attorney general civil fraud case. He testified in the prior Trump criminal fraud case where the Trump corporation was found guilty on numerous counts of financial fraud. What do you mean you aren't prepared? He worked for you. Tarasov still works at the Trump Organization, and you're paying for her legal fees, and you're saying that you're being sandbagged?

You're paying for her lawyers, right? Anyway, we'll talk about that and more. Also, Trump Media, that was formed through the special purpose acquisition company, the SPAC, that's now trading publicly. Remember how we've been raising red flags the moment that the SPAC merger was announced, even when the SPAC was announced many years ago? We've been raising lots of red flags on lots of different areas. But remember, I've been saying there is some serious red flags with that auditor. I mean, I looked at the auditor's office, not a big four accounting firm that usually engages in these, you know, normally engage in doing financials for a publicly traded supposed billion dollar company. And I said, who is this BF Borgers firm? Ben Borgers?

Well, they've now been charged by the SEC with running a fraudulent audit mill. They've reached a monetary settlement with the SEC. They are suspended from appearing before the SEC. And what's so critical about them is Donald Trump's other independent auditors quit before Trump media went public. So where did Trump go? To BF Borgers to sign off on the audit when nobody else would do it. Now we know it is running a fraudulent audit mill, according to the SEC. You see this pattern happening with Donald Trump over and over again. Maybe there's something to it. Speaking of something to it, definitely something to it that Donald Trump is losing his mind. He held some

retreat at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend where he invited about 400 donors. He brought them to Mar-a-Lago and then started cursing at them and berating them for not giving him enough money. He said that he's going to be spending more time with people who were celebrating a wedding at Mar-a-Lago because they were paying Donald Trump more money than the donors were paying. But wait a minute. Didn't the media tell us a few weeks back that Donald Trump had raised $50 million? What happened to that? I don't know. Was that just another phony headline that corporate media and Trump propaganda media tried to spread and that we continued to call out?

And while Donald Trump is engaged in scam after scam, I think people are starting to focus on what's happening right now in this election. We're seeing, for example, with Decision Desk HQ for the first time having President Biden up in their aggregate of polls. We saw two really big polls, the ABC poll and the NPR Marist poll, which has President Biden up by statistically significant amounts when you're polling likely voters. That's kind of an important category, don't you think? Likely voters. And I don't like to talk about polls all that much, but given that the media spends such

a huge amount of time on bad polling, when there's good polling that cuts against their narrative. I think it is worth mentioning. Maybe worth mentioning as well that the RNC has a new plan. Trump brought in a bikini model to be the RNC's national spokesperson. You can't make this up. Also, speaking before, I talked about the NPR-Morrist poll, which has Biden up, NPR did an incredible investigation showing that federal judge Eileen Cannon did not disclose lavish trips she took to a lodge in Montana paid for by right-wing activists. When she was called out for it, Judge Cannon blamed the court clerk and said it must just be a technical issue with the website. A technical issue, really? blaming portions of her book where she said that she met with North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un, which was false. She blamed it on her ghostwriter, even though she was the narrator of her own book.

You'd catch that. And then there was also a bunch of other right-wing leaders just showing how disqualifying they are, but they're built on the image of Donald Trump. Brett and Jordy, that's a lot. How are you doing? A lot of stuff, a lot of info today, a lot going on. I'm doing good. I think I could sum up your introduction with one word in regards to the connective tissue between many of the stories that you discuss. That one word, whining. Whining, whining, whining. We are going to see

on this show the constant whining, the constant making of excuses, whether it's people like Judge Cannon, whether it's people like Kristi Noem, whether it's people like Donald Trump. They just come out and they just whine. If there is one quality that MAGA has in addition to the fascism and the idiocracy and all that stuff, it's just being a perpetual baby and a whiner. No offense to babies. I think babies honestly are more well-behaved. He doesn't whine that much. More well-behaved, right? He's more well-behaved than these MAGA people. It's like at the end of the day, just accept responsibility for your actions. Right. And then with Kristi Noem, if you wrote that in your book or if you had a

ghost writer for whatever reason, write that in your book, just own up to it. But what do they do? They double down. They lie. They blame the media. They come up with these excuses. In the case of Kristi Noem, you read the audio book. You read your own audio book, okay? Were you not paying attention when you read that part? What are we doing here? But you know what? I'm going to pass the mic to Jordi. As we saw with Ben's intro, we have a lot to cover today. And I'm curious to dig into exactly what happened in today's portion of the trial, which may have been a less spicy portion of the trial in terms of what kind of the media often likes to latch onto, but consequential in terms of the data and the

evidence that was produced today. And I'm excited to dig into that and more. Jordy, what's up, man? I'll be brief because we do have a big show to get to. I'm excited to kick it a bend. But Brett, all that whining seems to be coming from one side of the political spectrum. It's red wine. That's what I like to call it is red wine. And no shots taken at red wine. I love drinking red wine. But this very specific red wine right here, it's just so sad that there's an entire political party out there that is just absolute losers. Like deep down, losers.

This MAGA Republican Party is just a bunch of cry babies. All they do is complain day after day, minute after minute, and they love playing victim to their own stupidness, honestly. Like in the case of Kristi Noem, Brett, to your point exactly, she read the audio book. She knew exactly what was going into it, and she was writing that book, obviously, for an audience of one, which is Donald Trump, because she wanted to seem tough in front of him. We'll get into all of that. But honestly, it's just so sad that there's an entire political party that exists out there. That is just an embarrassment to this country. Ben, what's up, big bro?

Look, the Republicans used to be the party of, reportedly, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, right? Now the Republican party is, my bootstraps are too tight. My bootstraps don't fit. The fake news media is creating more bootstraps. Stop all of the bootstraps. The bootstraps are too big. The bootstraps are too small. The bootstraps are too – it's like, okay, can y'all just chill? And by the way, the importance, look, it's not to say that there's nobody on the so-called left who behaves certain ways. The issue is leadership. And there's not a both sides when it comes to at the leadership level. Notice what when right-wing media tries to go after like their version of the left, it's always people who I very rarely even like know, if know at all, a random student, a random person, you know, somebody who's probably not even a Democrat, somebody probably who

doesn't even identify as being, you know, part of the Democratic Party. And they say like, this is the person. We're talking about your leader, Donald Trump. We're talking about on the right wing, your governors. We're talking about like the people who you claim are your top lawyers. We're claiming at the leadership level, what are people doing? And that's what's important because leadership sets a tone. Leaders need to lead. And when it comes to the MAGA Republicans led by Donald Trump or misled by. Well, that's just the Republican Party. Add to it, then you've got bikini models who they're promoting as running their, nothing wrong with bikini models, but they're planting the stories that they've got bikini

models now as the head of the Republican, as spokespeople for the RNC. We'll get into all of it. Let's just talk about what happened at the criminal trial, Donald Trump. We did a lot of videos on this, so I don't need to give you the hour-long version. I'll give you the Cliff Notes version, where we're now in week four. We're in day 12 as of Monday, as of this live recording. The first three weeks were spent on Trump's election interference. What was he doing? Who was he doing it with, right? So we got Hope Hicks on Friday. We got Keith Davidson, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal before that.

And then early on, we got David Pecker. We then also had like C-SPAN archivists and other people to authenticate posts that Donald Trump was making during the 2016 campaign, speeches Donald Trump was making where he says, I don't know any of these women. I don't know who they are. This is all made up. It's fake news. So you saw the stakes, what the issue was. We heard about the Access Hollywood tape where Donald Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, all of that timeframe, right? Now we're in the coverup phase, how Donald Trump actually falsified the business records, right? So you need to get people like the Trump organization's controller. You need to get, that picture's wild. You need to get people like the,

you need to get people like who's in charge of accounts payable. What are the processes and procedures when Donald Trump pays an invoice or writes a check or does a reimbursement? We need to know that. So today we got Jeff McConney, who was the former Trump controller at the Trump organization for- I had to say, it's bonkers, Ben. Just to do a quick aside, I was looking through every sketch that came out of court today. I looked at just about every single one.

In more photos than not, Donald Trump's eyes are shut. And remember, sketching, you can't just miraculously make a sketch. You'd kind of need people to sit in a certain spot, stay kind of relatively still in order to get that done. I was just amazed. And then I went through and we're pulling up them. This is Jeff McConaughey here on the stand in this sketch. You see Donald Trump is sleeping in this sketch that they have right here. And then I was like, okay, let's go back.

Let's check another photo. So I checked another photo. This is a different sketch. Also Donald Trump sleeping at the trial. I was like, okay, well, let me look at last week's photos. Let's check out Hope Hicks, right? Here's Hope Hicks. She had this powerful moment where she broke down in tears after giving devastating testimony against Donald Trump. I said, okay, let's look at what was Donald Trump's face during all this sleeping? Donald Trump was sleeping also during this moment. And I want you to go through the McConaughey testimony, but first Ben, like, what do you think a jury is thinking? Like it's silly to look at right from here. Oh, he's sleeping.

He's making like these weird, I don't even know what this is. This is the craziest photo I've ever seen. This is a real photo. Good thing. She's wearing a mask back there. That's all I'm going to say. But we're looking at these photos, and the jury is seeing this man sleeping during all this testimony.

Very important, kind of powerful stuff. They're seeing Donald Trump's attorneys, as every piece of evidence is presented, objecting to things that they knew was going to be happening in the trial. They're seeing all these things that previously should have been stipulated to, like in a normal trial, you would stipulate to the facts of the case. Things like, yes, that Access Hollywood tape transcript is real. You don't need to necessarily bring in all these witnesses. So running just so afoul of all this, do you think that affects the jury? Yeah, I think the jury feels disrespected by Donald Trump's behavior in court. But I think more significantly, they feel disrespected by being betrayed by what Trump's lawyers claimed what the evidence was going to actually show when it's showing what the prosecution is showing. Trump is so used, again, look, let me be clear. I don't know what

the jury's ultimately going to do, right? Is there a rogue juror? Is there a problem? I can't predict the outcome. I can tell you generally based on my experience as a trial lawyer, how juries generally feel, and that's where this is coming from, but they're not in Fox fake news world anymore, or OAN or Newsmax, where you can tell all of these lies and Sean Hannity will funnel them or Laura Ingraham will funnel them. You're in a court of law where you're in an evidence-based system where the facts actually matter. There was once a time when our media was close to that, really before the fairness doctrine was overthrown by Reagan and the media was recrafted by the plan by Fox News dating back following the Nixon administration with the plans with Roger Ailes and right-wing media. But this is an evidence-based system.

And when the jury is being told one thing but then Hope Hicks says the following on Friday and you're a jury, you go, huh, do you think I'm an idiot? Like, like, you know, I mean, Hope Hicks has, is a Trump-er, is a Trump person and she's giving testimony that's against Donald Trump. Here was the questioning to Hope Hicks question. Did he, Donald Trump say anything about the timing of the news reporting regarding Stormy Daniels? Answer, oh, yes. He wanted to know how it was playing out and just my thoughts and opinion about this story versus the story, a different kind of story if it came out before the campaign had Michael Cohen not made the payment. I think Mr. Trump's opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election. So when Trump and Trump's lawyers deny like having any knowledge of any of this and Hope Hicks tells this story and breaks down with her being there with Donald Trump, that's pretty compelling stuff.

You know, when Donald Trump's lawyers basically talk about how, oh, you know, Michael Cohen was just paid for services rendered and he was just a lawyer and he's getting paid for that. But then on the other hand, Trump's lawyers are also trying to say that Michael Cohen was rogue and he was not credible. So he's rogue and not credible, but then you paid him for services rendered and you paid him extra. That's your theory. And then your controller comes in and testifies that it was a reimbursement and that it's on the documents that it was a reimbursement that you grossed up. So Michael Cohen did not have to pay the taxes. So Brett, to answer your question, I think when you put that together, the jury's like, oh, you're treating me

like I'm dumb. And even if you had a Trump supporter on the juror or a juror who was inclined to want to feel for whatever reason sympathetic to Donald Trump or not, you have to feel every day they're disrespecting your intelligence with stuff like that. Like pull up this document from Jeff McConney's testimony today. And this is where it was. This were handwritten notes from Weisselberg to McConney. This is on and out an account activity log. This is not that one. It's another one that has Michael Cohen's bank statements on it, the account. This is Makani's handwritten notes right here. Let's look at this one first. This one, you'll see it says on the bottom, you have $180,000 payment.

And what's that for? There's $50,000 paid to Red Finch for tech services that Cohen paid. It's alleged to online polling companies to try to rig polls in Donald Trump's favor in 2016, which by the way, there was a passing reference to that today. I think that deserves more attention given all of the kind of right wing polls that they're paying off polling companies $50,000 in 2016. That's what that red finch is believed to be. Then you have $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels that Michael Cohen paid, which McConaughey made clear was reimbursement. Even on cross-exam, when Donald Trump's lawyers tried to act like it was services rendered, McConaughey said, oh, you mean reimbursement. We were reimbursing him.

And then you'll see on the bottom what the handwritten notes say. It says grossed up to $360,000 so that Cohen would not have to pay the taxes on it. Plus, you see they added a bonus right there of about $60,000 to make the final payment $420,000. So it's very easy to see how you got to what that number was. The Stormy Daniels payment, the Red Finch payment, you gross it up by multiplying it. Right there in black and white, literally. Right there. In black and white, literally. So that's what, and then if it wasn't just there in black and white, literally. is obviously all laid out right there. So Brett, going back to your point, if I'm the jury, I feel

my intelligence is being disrespected. Then after Makani, who worked at the Trump organization for 40 years, testifies, then you have Deborah Tarasoff. She works there right now. She's currently working there. One of the things that Karen Friedman Agnifilo stated though, is look, Eric Trump decided to show up in court today. He was also there on Friday, but Eric Trump, like why would he show up then and there, right? Well, he knew Hope Hicks and Hope Hicks knows her and Deborah Tarasoff currently reports to Eric Trump. So her boss was sitting there looking at her, which Karen Freeman Agnifilo said is kind of a subtle form of witness intimidation. And she says that she thought the jury would make that connection

as Tarasov was talking about basically reporting to Eric, who was right there, and that would not be a good look for Trump. And the jury would probably be like, oh, wow, I see what you're doing. But she talked about, look, any payment above $10,000, Donald Trump had to personally approve and sign off on. If it came from Trump's personal account, he would personally sign those checks. He would read it. If Trump didn't want to pay something, he would frequently put void on it. He would examine all of these invoices. So he would

know exactly how it was being characterized. And he approved those payments. He signed off on those payments. So I think that was an important link to have tariffs off. One more point I'll just make about, two more points I'll make about today's proceeding. Trump's lawyers saying they were sandbagged by these witnesses. These witnesses worked for the Trump organization for 40 years. One still works for them. You're paying her legal fees. So how are you being sandbagged by people who work at the Trump organization? Those are your own documents. That's the opposite of sandbagging. And then Donald Trump was held in contempt for the 10th time for making statements about the jury. These were statements that he made like a week and a half ago or two weeks ago.

The contempt hearing was held last week. It was Midas Touch reporting that actually flagged exactly what Donald Trump said about the jury. And that was the one area where Justice Merchant found violations. Justice Merchant did not find Donald Trump to violate the gag order where he made a few comments about Cohen because Cohen had called Trump von Schitzenpanz. And so the judge said, I'm not going to find Trump in criminal contempt for potentially responding to von Schitzenfanz, but I will find him in criminal contempt for making statements about the jury. It is unambiguous. You're not allowed to do that. Justice Merchant then looked at Donald Trump and said, going forward, this court is going to send you to jail. It's important that you understand that

I've tried to avoid sending you to jail despite your violations, and I've given you the benefit of the doubt that I probably shouldn't have. The magnitude of the decision of me locking you up has not been lost on me, but you is what Donald Trump said about going to jail for violating the gag order. I think we have this clip. Let's play it if we do. And it's a disgrace. And then you have the other thing that maybe is even more disgraceful is the gag order, where I can't basically, I have to watch every word I tell you people. You ask me a question, a simple question, I'd like to give it, but I can't talk about it because this judge has given me a gag order and said, you'll go to jail if you violate it. And frankly, you know what? Our constitution is much more important than jail. It's not even close. I'll do that sacrifice any day. But what's happening here is a disgrace to the appellate

court, so to get involved. Let me be very clear. The gag order simply prevents Donald Trump from threatening witnesses, threatening or making statements about the jury, threatening the district attorney's office. He's allowed to go after and attack Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor, which what other criminal defendant would be allowed to attack the prosecutor and the judge? He just can't go after their family members. I want to be in a fact-based world. That's all Donald Trump is limited from doing. He can make any other statements that he wants. He's got more benefits than any other criminal defendant. The Constitution does not give you a right to threaten jurors. The Constitution does not give you a right to threaten jurors. The Constitution does not give you a right to threaten witnesses in the case, does not give you a right to threaten

court staff when you are a criminal defendant. In fact, one of the most sacred parts of our Constitution is preserving and protecting law and order. And Trump is continuingly to try to tread to the Constitution. I want to talk more about the proceedings today, Brett and Jordy. I want to get your take on what Trump said. We got to take our first quick break of the show. Then when we come back, I want to get your takes. Let's take our first quick break. Like many of us, you might think identity theft will never happen to you. But consider this, there's a new identity theft victim every three seconds in the US. That's over 15 million people by the end of this year.

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he's being held in contempt for the 10th time. Think about any other criminal defendant. It would be strike one, you're in jail. The fact that the judge has put up with 10, and frankly, I've been a big fan of Justice Mershon. I got to tell you, I thought Justice Merchant, even articulating, and he's even admitted, he goes, I've gone above and beyond to not put you in jail. I understand what he means by that, but I'm like, why? Why? Nobody should be above the law. And you send a message that our system is very malleable if you let anybody get away with it and be treated like they're above the law. But anyway, Brett, and then you have Trump going out and engaging in these histrionics and more whining. What do you make of it, Brett?

I mean, like I said, today's episode is brought to you by whining, brought to you by red wine, as Jordy said, and Donald Trump has proven to have the boldest red wine out there. And so when Donald Trump comes out there before the break, we spoke about Donald Trump basically daring the judge to lock him up. I don't care if I violate the gag order. It's about the constitution. Okay. It's not about the constitution at all. This is how it's done in all cases. And here's my whole thing, be my guest, okay? If this is how you feel, if you really want to try to make a martyr out of yourself, if you really want to spend the night in jail, do it. Violate the gag order. Go. What are you afraid of, right? Do it. Do it. See what happens. I think the reason and the only reason

that Justice Merchant gave Donald Trump leniency on this round of charges is because that Donald Trump did these prior to his last warning. So this was prior to the last gag order hearing where Justice Merchant says, if this happens again, I will consider throwing you in jail. So there's probably part of him that also felt, well, it's a little unfair because he had already committed these violations before I had warned him the first time. So that excuse, as far as Justice Merchant is concerned, is gone right now. I don't want to hear it anymore. If Donald Trump violates this gag order, and by the way, I believe that he has, we found footage of Donald Trump that he posted on his Truth Social feed of Andrew Giuliani standing outside spreading lies about the judge's daughter,

which I think is a violation personally. The Manhattan DA has not brought it up. I'm not quite sure why, but we should not be affording this guy any breaks. And listen, I hear the theory. I hear the whole, but it's going to turn him into a martyr and blah, blah, blah. I don't care. I honestly don't care. I don't think, like Ben was saying, I don't think we bend our rules for what might or might not happen. We heard the same things too, like when these indictments were going to happen in the first place, right? Oh, it's going to cause all this outrage. It's going to, you know what? Donald Trump's poll numbers have only gone down. His favorability ratings have only gone down. That's not why these cases are being brought. But I do not believe that there is any sort of world where it's like, oh, Donald Trump

was put in jail because he attacked the judge's daughter. Now I'm going to vote for him more. The MAGA people are going to be loud about it. They're loud about everything. They're annoying about everything. Who cares? Honestly, who cares? Let it happen. Donald Trump, bringing that nice bottle of red wine with him today. He also, when he goes, the case is moving way too fast. It's going too quick, too quick. Today, a few days later, Donald Trump comes out and goes, I'm going to have to be here now. It looks like for another two weeks, this case is taking too long. We put those clips side by side. It's just such a clownish. I'll play it for you now. You have a judge who's totally conflicted, totally, absolutely conflicted that he's We put those clips side by side. I'll just, it's just such sort of clownish. I'll play it for you now. You have a judge who's totally conflicted,

totally, absolutely conflicted that he's rushing this case through. The government just said that they want two to three more weeks. That means they want to keep me off the trail for two to three more weeks. Also, it also shows Donald Trump to be a tremendous liar

because he made up that whole lie about, oh, Barron, his graduation. I need to be a good father and be at his graduation. Poor Barron. Poor Barron. They're not going to let me go. The judge just said the trial hasn't even started yet. Could we figure this out? And then the judge ultimately decided, yes, you could go. We'll take that day off. That's fine. And did they apologize for lying about the judge? No, absolutely not. But another statement Donald Trump made today when he came out and was like, oh, it's taking too long now, was he goes, I thought this was going to end today. I thought today was the last. What? You thought today was the last day of trial? Then what was all the Barron stuff in mid-May about? He's just the liar. They're all liars. They all whine. And the truth is you can never do anything that's going to make them happy. Like you can't, they're going to complain that it's too fast one day, that it's too slow one day,

no matter what you do, when you zig, they're going to zag. So don't accommodate them is my whole thing. Don't accommodate them. I think one of the other interesting things we saw during the case today was when they were speaking about how intimately involved Donald Trump was in every little payment that went out of the Trump organization. And this even extends beyond the trial, but they were saying that Donald Trump refused to pay any bills without first negotiating. This is just something we've heard about the guy now going back to the 80s, the not pay bills without first negotiating. And we all have seen the strategy time and time again, where Donald Trump tells a contractor he's not going to pay them until they knock their price down. And if they refuse, what does he do? Donald Trump uses the legal system to his advantage, to bully them, to burden them with legal costs. And it's how

Donald Trump has completely punched down at the little guy every step of the way, how he screwed over contractors his whole life. And it's why, quite frankly, his entire business and his entire life is complete and utter fraud, because he got there by weaponizing the judicial system to attack people who could not afford to fight back. This guy is such a coward, and it's all being put on display at this trial. And I'm happy that people are actually getting to see it. And I think the people who could not afford to fight back. This guy is such a coward and it's all being put on display at this trial. And I'm happy that people are actually getting to see it. And I think the people who actually care about this stuff, not the cultists, actually see what is happening here. Absolutely. And Brett, I love for, if you give them an inch, they take your life. That's what

MAGA does. They've taken over the Republican Party because inch by inch, MAGA would give into the threat. I mean, where the Republican Party would give into the threats of Trump and MAGA before the Republican Party was fully taken over by MAGA. The Democratic Party has not been accepting of it. And the pro-democracy community more generally is like, what? No, what are you talking about? Corporate media has given in to Donald Trump. They let him go over and over again. It's also the judiciary has let Donald Trump get away with it. And that's why, to your point, Brett, you just got to say no, no. And you hold him accountable and you do it with strength and an iron fist and you show that

there are consequences for behavior like that. Sorry for interrupting you, Jordy. No, I was just going to say, Brett, I love that you have that great side-by-side of it. It's going too fast. No, it's going too slow. You know what this reminded me of? This is the same ilk, this MAGA ilk, this Trump ilk that brought you the, stop the count. No, keep counting. It's just a repackaged, more dumb version of what happened after the 2020 election. I mean, does this surprise you, Brett, that you see Donald Trump complaining to the media after he gets out of court today and changing his tune about the speed of the trial? No, it doesn't surprise me. And it's every aspect of it, Jordy. When we talk about who are the MAGA leaders now, you have someone like the governor of

South Dakota, MAGA Republican, Kristi Noem, who's out there bragging about how she would want to kill President Biden's dog and lying about meeting Kim Jong-un and then lying that she went to North Korea and then blaming her ghostwriter. When you have MAGA Republican Senator of Florida, someone who, when he first became a Senator, he was viewed as like a young potential moderate person, Marco Rubio, who's went full MAGA, totally discredited himself. He's out in the weekend talking about how women in democratic States are getting abortions after a child is born. It's like, y'all are just the biggest liars and it's

misogynistic and it's so stupid. And that's all based in the image of Donald Trump. You got someone like Senator Tim Scott, MAGA Republican, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, who's out there when asked a very simple question, well, will you accept the results of the 2024 election? He goes, well, I'll accept that. This is a horrible accent. He goes, I'll accept, I'm not even sure what a Tim Scott accent would be. I'll accept that Trump will be the 47th president. And then they ask, well, but will you accept the results of a free and fair election? And he won't answer. Then you have Lara Trump, who's running the RNC. We'll show these clips in a little bit. And she's asked like, well, by Fox, by Maria Bartiromo. So I hear you have all these lawsuits. And she's like, yup, we're suing every state to stop their counting

of votes on election day. It's like, y'all should realize too, that it's the Republican state, a lot of them that push forward the legislation that says that counting can't start until after elections are over and after Election Day. You know, all of the things they complain about, too, it was the Republican Party that wanted all of the mail voting because what was important for them was to have seniors vote by mail. And now that they've discredited mail voting amongst their voter base, they're against mail voting. But that was a whole Republican priority. Anyway, one of the things that the party has done to under MAGA is it's not us politicizing these things or it's like a lefty thing when we report on objective facts. It becomes political because MAGA will accuse you of reporting on objective facts as being a lefty for saying these things. One of the best examples of this is when we and other outlets started raising the red flag on numerous things about Trump media after it went public through the reverse merger. We've been talking about this for two years about what's going to happen with very specific detail, but there were some obvious red flags that people weren't covering that right away, what was I saying? Look for this auditor. Who is this BF Borgers, this so-called independent auditor who signed off on this. One of the things that really alarmed me is that were two other auditors from Trump Media and from the SPAC that quit and that they couldn't find an auditor

because when they quit, they said that they had serious concerns about financial controls at Trump Media. So you had a company called Markham quit before finishing the 2022 financial results. And then you had another company called Witham Smith Brown quit being the auditor months after being appointed. So I'm like, who is picking this up? Then I saw was this guy, Ben Borgers, who I never heard of. I had worked with SPACs before as a lawyer. And so I'm familiar enough with this area. And you would normally want one of the big accounting firms that's familiar with the PCAOB, which is like publicly certified board that there's a certain kind of standard that you have to do. So I'm like, I would expect it to be a big four accountant or at least one of the bigger firms, if not the big four, something adjacent to it. And then I saw Ben Borgers. I

don't even know who this is. The office, no offense. I mean, look, the office may be fine, but like not for, you know, auditing billion dollar companies for it to look like a rest stop restroom in Colorado. I'm like, what is this? And then we started reading from the Financial Times. They did a story on it after we reported on it. And they talked about how the PCAOB, which does these audits of the auditors, that regulates the auditors, that they showed a 100% deficiency rate in their audit of Ben Borgers and BF Borgers, 21 of the 21 files were found to be defective. Like, well, that's a massive red flag right there. And as all of these red flags were being called out, what was the statement by the Trump campaign and by Trump media, right?

This is what I mean by them politicizing it. They said the following. This came from Trump media. This was about three weeks ago. With stories like this preemptively attacking our auditors before they've even begun their work for us as a public company, it's unclear why anyone, but the most partisan left-wing activists would ever read the Financial Times. Really? I wouldn't necessarily go Financial Times, partisan left-wing activists. Those libs, rhinos. Those Financial Times, partisan left-wing activists who are – I mean, come on. And so they're making this a political thing when there's just 21 of 21 defective audits from the PCAOB. That's not a political thing. That's just a thing that should

be called out. Well, in any event, at the end of last week, the SEC charged BF Borgers and its owner, Ben Borgers, with massive fraud affecting more than 1,500 SEC filings. It was referred to as running a sham audit mill where they would just sign off on any audit at all. Sometimes they would just adopt financials from whatever accounting firm came before them without even doing any checking or any independent analysis at all. They would just sign off on these numbers. But that's who the Trump media group went to in order for them to even take this thing public when the two other accounting firms resigned because they said that there were not appropriate financial controls. And then what do they do,

Brett? Whine. You have Devin Nunes, the former MAGA Republican Congress member, who now is the CEO of Trump Media, going to his buddies, Jim Jordan, James Comer, the same MAGA Republican crew, and saying, this is an outrage, this is a leftist plot. Those leftist naked short sellers. You think that the leftist short sellers, the big hedge fund leftist short sellers, it's like, come on. My only point is the objective reality here is that everything that Donald Trump does like this, the Trump organization, fraudulent, found by a jury to be criminal, engaged in criminal fraud. People forget about that, right? Donald Trump himself found liable for sexual assault. By the way, that's why I found it so utterly disgusting, honestly,

when Formula One had Donald Trump show up and shake the hands of those kids and he used it as a prop. You're allowing someone found liable of sexual assault to shake the hands of those kids and he used it as a prop. You're allowing someone found liable of sexual assault to shake the hands of children at an F1 event so Donald Trump can post it for his PR. He should be far away from children. This is someone who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, taking photos with him. He brought his kids to hang out with Jeffrey Epstein, who's in the Epstein depositions. Keep this guy away from children. Donald Trump in the trial today, seeing his conduct. Then you go to Trump media, Trump suing the founders of Trump, co-founders, the co-founders suing him, the founder of the

SPAC suing Trump, Trump suing the founder of the SPAC. They're accusing each other of corporate espionage and hacking. It has nothing to do with leftist, rightist politics. It just has to do with fundamentally Donald Trump and his entire career was not a builder. He was a destroyer who brought many things bankrupt, bankrupt, bankrupt, bankrupt, bankrupt, whose businesses failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, who screw over workers, who bragged about sexually assaulting women, who's been found liable for that. That is just who he is. And character at some point needs to matter in the United States of America. And Donald Trump, time and time again, not just shows that his character is defective, but shows that his character is putrid, below the depths of depravity, of scorn. It is something that is so disgusting, so despicable, so vile, it could really only go by one name, Trump. We have a lot to discuss still on this show.

Brett, I want to talk about some of the things that President Biden's up to. I want to talk a little bit about some of those right-wing appearances as well. Stick around. You're not going to want to miss this. We still have a lot of show to go. Let's take a quick break. I know from a lot of the emails that you send me that a lot of you watching and listening are entrepreneurs.

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fastgrowingtrees.com, code MIDAS. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Let's go, y'all. Shout out to the Pro Democracy sponsors. Y'all know what to do. Links in the audio description and the YouTube description. Let them know we sent you fabulous deals. Thank you to the Pro Democracy sponsors. Ben, what is going on? Can I just say this, Ben, too, as we get back into it? You don't have a teleprompter in front of you. That was straight from the dome right before break. That was very impressive. You ended it with a nice mic drop moment. I mean, it's like you've done this before, big bro. It's always from the dome, just so people know. We have a rough outline, but then I kind of don't go off the outline. And so at some point though, you just got to speak, you got to speak from the heart. And, you know, as we start,

and it's important that we keep a conversational tone for the show and we're making connections while we're live too. And, you know, Brett or Jordy are in the comments, I'll see things as well. And we'll be, you know, and the connections are happening just like we would be chatting about it in person. And we're reflecting on it. I think the same way y'all are reflecting on watching this kind of craziness and dangerousness and MAGA whining. Speaking of bad red wine, we should call it stale bad red wine, not because people like red wine. I don't want to ruin the taste of it for them. Brett, tell us more about the bad, stale, red wine appearances of Magna Republicans. So Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, has been under fire ever since she

voluntarily, in her own book, confessed to murdering her puppy in cold blood and what was it? And her goat, I believe also, and disposing of them in a gravel pit. It's like a really sick story. And, and her story has continued to shift since it came out. I think one of the most revealing things is apparently the people around

Christina, like her staff and stuff were like, I can't, I, we had no idea that was going to be such a big story. You didn't know killing your puppy was going to be a big story? Who are these human beings where you don't realize that it's not really going to go over well? She's been trying to dig her way out of it, but Kristi Noem, like all people in MAGA, learned the opposite lesson from the so-called rule of

holes. Instead of stop digging, what they always learn is let's keep digging. Let's keep digging and digging and digging. And so that's what Kristi Noma has done. She's changed her story now about a billion times. At first it was, oh, I just hated that dog. It was annoying. And now it's that dog was trying to kill my kids and I'm a hero and I saved it. And it's like, okay, we heard you the first time you wrote it in your book. You were also, as we said earlier in the show, you read the audio book. You said it in your own voice. So you could say, oh yeah, it must've been a ghost writer who wrote that. But no, you admitted it. You thought it made you look good. It backfired. It doesn't. It makes you look like a creep and like a psychopath and like a sociopath. And so what does any good sociopath

do? Not only does she like double down on all this during this interview, and I want to give a huge shout out to Margaret Brennan for this interview. This is like an example of good journalism, of asking the right questions, of holding someone's feet to the fire. And Kristi Noem went on television and her response to her shooting and killing her own puppy was to suggest that also someone should shoot President Biden's dog. I'm not making this up.

Here's this clip from Face the Nation this weekend with Margaret Brennan. You talk multiple times about it. In fact, at the end of the book, you say the very first thing you would do if you got to the White House that was different from Joe Biden is you'd make sure Joe Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds. Commander, say hello to cricket. Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still

think that you have a shot at being a VP? Well, number one, Joe Biden's dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog? Well, he's not living at the White House anymore. That's the question that the president should be held accountable to. You're saying he should be shot? That's what the president should be accountable to, is what is the number? And I would say about Republicansans criticizing me these are the same republicans that criticized me during covid they've criticized me when i've made other

decisions in south dakota to protect my state and so you're not going to retract the book and to prevent china governor this book is a powerful book it's an honest book it's an honest book about blueprint for america of what citizens can do here to take their country back. And I'm so proud of this book and what it will bring to people. I hope that they will. So great job. Great, great, great crisis PR work there, Kristi Noem. And that wasn't even like the worst of the interview.

She kept getting called out for other lies. I see Jordi's face who's like in shock. Horrified. Mortified. Mortified. Mortified. Brett, her response to killing her puppy Cricket was to murder another dog. Yeah. Maybe Commander should join Cricket.

What a sicko. What a sicko. No. That's why I'm like, seriously, what a sicko. I'm going to say this a lot of times during this episode and especially during this segment, is that's why it's not about Democrats versus Republicans, okay? Like this shouldn't be about teams. This shouldn't be about left v. right.

Like let's just like focus on like normalcy versus sociopaths, like honesty and truth tellers versus just complete and utter liars. And guess what? You don't have to give those two sides, if you want to call them sides. You don't have to give them equal weight, okay? I've said this on another show. If you had a friend who maybe told a lie to you once, but was generally honest, I think you could continue to trust that friend when they tell you things. If you had a friend who every single day lied to you, just the most outrageous lies, every single day, you should not trust that person. And the media needs to learn that lesson

overall with somebody like a Kristi Noem, someone like a Donald Trump. You don't need to be like, well, this known liar, this prolific liar who lies about everything says this. What do you have to say about that? We don't need a balance on it. Just say that it's bullshit. Just say that it's bullshit. And Margaret Brennan did, as I said, to her credit, a lot of props, did call Kristi Noem out during this interview. I thought it was a very good job by her. Another lie, another whopper by Kristi Noem was she wrote in her book that she met Kim Jong-un and that she stared him down. She said that – She tried to act – Once again, it's all like the service of making herself look like she's tough, I'm strong. Her example for why she made Kim Jong-un

nervous – Once again, she never met Kim Jong-un. This is a made up story. Her example of like, why like it's because she said it's because she had experienced quote, staring down little tyrants. She said, I had been a children's pastor after all. So she was so evil towards children that like,

like she was so evil. She hated kids so much that that's why she made Kim Jong-un afraid of her. Dealing with children prepared her for her fake story with Kim Jong-un. With Kim Jong-un. Does she not know how books work? Do you want to play the clip and then on the other side, we'll talk about this? Yeah. Here's her being asked about this fake Kim Jong-un meeting. So you write about lessons learned in leadership and you bring up some specific incidents I want to ask you about. You talk about meeting some world leaders and one specific one. Quote, I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've been a children's pastor after all. Did you meet Kim Jong-un? Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage. And I've met with many, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits. So I'm glad that this book is being released in a couple of days and that those edits will be in place and that people will have the updated version. So you did not meet with Kim Jong-un. That's what

you're saying. No, I've met with many, many world leaders, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. I think I've talked extensively in this book about my time serving in Congress, my time as governor, before governor, some of the travels that I've had. I'm not gonna talk about my specific meetings with world leaders.

I'm just not going to do that. What does she mean when she says, I'm not gonna talk about meeting with specific world leaders when she did talk about meeting with a specific, why the change in tone? Because she's a liar and because she got caught. Does she not realize how books work that when you put pen to paper, it's there for everyone to see that you're just lying. And the lies are so aggressive and specific. Because again, I think her book is for an audience of one,

and that's Donald Trump. She thought this book about murdering her puppy and staring, the fake story about staring down Kim Jong-un was going to impress Donald Trump. And that, this was it. This was what was going to seal her VP nomination right there, this book alone. And now she goes on all of these media outlets. She cries fake news this and fake news that. By the way, her crying fake news and liberal left media when she gets called out for her own words and putting this down, that's actually probably most helpful for her case from a Donald Trump perspective. But does she not know how books work, brothers? What was that? Well, Jordi, let, let me show her playing the victim because, you know,

she was confronted with these questions and this is how she reacted on the air to it. This is what is so discouraging about politics in the media today. Why am I being treated differently than every other person that you've interviewed? I've looked at your last several weeks of your interviews. You don't interrupt other people you let them talk thank you for inviting me to have this conversation about this book this book is extremely uh important to the people of this country because you lied and she's doing her job once again not a left right thing that's actually what journalism is supposed to be then of course she went on twitter and she went oh margaret brennan interrupted me so many times. She doesn't interrupt other people. Yeah, because other people aren't just pathological liars like that. It's a sickness. You're a sick

person. And Jordi, what you were saying before, the only reason that this is bad for her chances as VP, it's not because she killed her puppy. Donald Trump could care less. Donald Trump hates dogs, right? Donald Trump could not care less if she shot her puppy in the face. He does not care. He cares about the publicity fallout from it. He cares about people not being happy about it. And so she's trying to, I don't know how she even, she's over. She is done, done, done. And if that wasn't weird enough, then you had Lara Trump, just like to just think about that Lara Trump is the co-chair of the RNC. So then you have Lara Trump going on Fox because Lara Trump certainly can't handle an interview like that. And Lara Trump is speaking with Maria Bartiromo on Fox on vote by mail in Nevada. And Larry Trump says that they're suing to make it so that you have to stop the count on election night before the ballots are counted. Saying for a while now that your priority is to ensure a transparent election. And I see that the

RNC and the Trump campaign filing a lawsuit in a battleground state to stop counting ballots past election day. What are you doing with regard to suing Nevada right now? Yeah, well, that's exactly right. You cannot have ballots counted, Maria, after elections are over. And right now, that is one of the many lawsuits we have out across this country. That's literally how elections work. Ballots are counted after the elections. And do you know who has prevented ballots from being counted until the elections are over in many states? You may have guessed it because Ben said it earlier, probably.

Republicans. The Republicans have passed laws in states which don't allow the count to begin until after polls close. So they are purposely delaying the count. And then they are complaining that the count is delayed. And then their solution is to then disenfranchise voters who vote by mail, disenfranchise military voters, voters overseas. Just count the votes. How about that? Let's just count all the votes. That's how elections are supposed to happen. And you're the reference

you made earlier, Jordi. She's trying to make like stop the count a thing, like a law, stop the count. That's what the Republicans want. Then in addition to this, like one of the whole Republican strategies, and I kind of sense a bit of panic when I hear them say things like this, is that Lara Trump was saying that she wants Trump supporters to be striking at polling places. Then she made some weird comments that she wants people to be there ready to hit things. I mean, let me know what you think of this. But we need to get through this election and we need to play the hand that we are dealt. And so right now we do have a bit of an election season. But what you're talking about is exactly why we plan on having attorneys in all of these major polling locations across the country,

because Maria, we can't wait to litigate something weeks after it has happened. We need to strike at a moment's notice. We want people there on the ready to hit things and hit the ground running when they happen so that we are never seeing 2020 happen ever again. What you losing elections and I understand it was tough for you. But you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Once again, this should not be a Democrat versus Republican thing when you have people saying that. If people in the Democratic Party were saying that, I would, of course, call it out. But what we can't do is we can't try to find some sort of middle ground

between complete lies and the truth because then you're not getting to the truth. You're getting to some weird sort of place. And that's why as I look, you see some great work by people like Margaret Brennan, who really pushed back nicely there. And then you see these reports from the New York Times, which have just been honestly so disheartening as somebody who grew up reading the New York Times, and you're just wondering, what is going on at the New York Times? And I read this article in CIMAore. I think it's how you say that site. And it was Semaphore. Semaphore. Semaphore. Yes. Okay. Semaphore. And they did an interview with the executive editor at the New York Times, this guy, Joe Kahn. And I just want to read you what Joe Kahn said about their

coverage because I think it is very revealing and I think it gets to the heart of the problem. Once again, it's not me saying this. This is Joe Kahn, the executive editor of the New York Times saying how they just dictate their coverage. He said, it's our job to cover the full range of issues people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them, but it's not the top one. Immigration happens to be at the top of polls and economy and inflation is second. Should we stop covering those things because they're favorable to Trump and minimize them? I don't even know how it's supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House. We become an instrument to the Biden campaign. We turn ourselves into the Genoa news agency or Pravda and put out a stream of stuff

that's very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side. And what would that accomplish? And that would accomplish what? Just cover things fairly. No one's asking you to be a cheerleader, but when something good happens out of the Biden administration, cover it as something good. You don't need to put your kind of both sides twist on it, right? And you have this false dichotomy that you're setting up between, well, we can either cover things fairly or we could say good things about the Biden administration. We're going to pick to cover. We're going to decide to cover things fairly. That's a false choice. That's a false choice. And why is your coverage being dictated by polls? Your coverage should not be dictated by what's polling the best. And I completely resent the whole notion too that, oh, so we shouldn't cover immigration because it's a good thing for Trump. Maybe tell the story about it, about how Trump torpedoed the immigration bill, and maybe it would be viewed as differently on the polls by voters. You are going in there with your own biases that you just exposed in this interview. Here's the thing. Their very existence depends on the issue,

which they claim is less important to them than what they're conducting polls on, right? The very existence of free press exists because in our democracy, they have a freedom to write the way they do, as opposed to in an authoritarian system, they would be the first to be shut down and locked up. Donald Trump has said verbatim that he's going to essentially lock them up and shut them down. Well, actually, I think a bigger issue is we're going to poll people and see what they think, not the very fact that our entire system of government may be ripped because Donald Trump wants to destroy our democracy, he thinks that if there were to be a bipartisan border deal negotiated by one of the most actually conservative members

in the Senate, Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, that that would actually prevent Donald Trump's effort to turn America into an authoritarian fascist dystopia where he becomes a dictator on day one. So he torpedoed a bipartisan immigration bill that a lot of Americans wanted, including me, where I was willing to give on a lot of the things I thought were needed because I wanted a deal to happen. But Trump said that's a bad look for him. I never see them cover that. By the way, nor do I see them cover, I don't even think it was in the paper, or if it was, it definitely wasn't on the first few pages. When Pence, when Trump's own former vice president said he was not endorsing Donald Trump, you would think that would be like a major story. What else of an indicator can you get when your own vice president says that you are disqualified from holding your own vice president? I can guarantee you if Kamala Harris said that about Biden, if you had state or Biden said that about

Obama, it would be not just a front page. It should be front page for a week. The fact that you don't think that's newsworthy enough to put on your first few pages makes absolutely zero sense other than you're complicit and you're aiding and abetting this. Look, I want to give a hat tip, by the way, to Jeff Duncan as well, former Republican Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. He came out today in the Atlanta Journal of Constitution, the big paper out in Atlanta. And he says that he's endorsing President Biden. He says, I don't agree with President Biden on a lot of things. Nonetheless, I think he's a decent man. I think that democracy is on the ballot. And Trump has talked about overthrowing our democracy.

I cannot support someone who wants to overthrow democracy. And I'm not going to sit on the sideline. And I would tell other real conservatives to vote for President Biden because Trump represents an existential threat to our country and to conservatism because Trump ain't conservative. Pence has said Donald Trump doesn't reflect any conservative values either. I want to talk briefly about retreats for a moment. I want to talk first about the retreats that Donald Trump's appointed judge, Judge Eileen Cannon, was going on, hat tip to NPR investigations investigations for looking at a bunch of judges who were going on lavish trips and not disclosing it a la Clarence Thomas, although Supreme Court justices didn't have to disclose it, although there's been some reforms there. Remember, Clarence Thomas would go

on all these lavish trips funded by Federalist Society billionaires, like quite literally, like millions of dollars in gifts Clarence Thomas would take of people who were appearing before Clarence Thomas. Well, when NPR investigated the trips that judges were going on, what they found was that Judge Eileen Cannon would go on this retreat over and over again to something called the Sage Lodge in Montana, paid for by donors at George Mason University, which is the Justice Scalia School of Law. It's funded a lot by right-wing Federalist Society members who send the judges on cases where they'll appear in front of these judges on lavish trips. When Judge Cannon was confronted with

why she didn't disclose these lavish trips to the Sage Lodge where they're known for having incredible gourmet meals and all of these excursions and trips and there's a spa. She said, oh, I actually did post it. It must be the court's fault. She blamed the clerk, said there were technical issues. And then after NPR asked her questions, voila, it all of a sudden showed up on the disclosure website because federal judges have to disclose. But does that surprise you about Judge Eileen Cannon, that that's what she would do? Speaking about retreats, I should mention this. Donald Trump held a RNC retreat at Mar-a-Lago.

And what we learned about this retreat from various sources was Donald Trump spent the time constantly cursing at his donors for not giving him enough money. And he's saying, why would I even want to spend this time with you? I'd rather be with the wedding. The wedding in Mar-a-Lago is paying me more money than you're paying me. So don't even ask me for pictures if you're just going to give me $40,000. Trump was also quoted as saying, you know who's really ugly and not handsome? Jack Smith. What an ugly human being he is. He's just not a good looking person and I don't like him and I hate him. And like Donald Trump would just go and just start cursing. That effing Jack Smith, not attractive, not an attractive man over and over again. I mean,

how strange are you that that's like what you are saying? And how much is Jack Smith like in your head? And of all people, Donald Trump saying that Jack Smith, who's run like hundreds of triathlons, is not a good looking man. That's Donald Trump. This is you right there. Also, Donald Trump made this comment. When you are a Democrat, you start off essentially at 40% because you have civil service, you have unions, and you have welfare. Don't underestimate welfare. Democrats get the welfare vote, and then they cheat on top of that. They cheat. Donald Trump essentially saying that like 40% of the democratic vote is from welfare voters. I mean, just how, what a just despicable thing to say. But by the way, I don't know if you picked this up. We did a story on this about Trump's Wisconsin rally, where it was one of

the other scams that were exposed, where Trump called up someone on the stage who said that under Trump, her vegan business was thriving. And now under Biden, it's not doing well at all. And remember, Trump couldn't say vegan. He called it vegan. It turns out that her business was first opened as a small business under President Biden for the first time in 2023. She didn't even have the business while Donald Trump was in office. She was also railing against migrants being on government programs. Meanwhile, she was on multiple government assistance programs over the years and that she declared bankruptcy three times within the past decade before Biden's plans actually helped her start a small business. But yet she was, I mean, it's just some of the scamming.

Let me just say also, Donald Trump came out during this retreat to the January 6th anthem also. Like his intro music was his version of the national anthem featuring the January 6th, the violent January 6th insurrectionists. So that's what set the stage for this event. And something I also found interesting, just to briefly mention, was that when you look at the people who Donald Trump invited there, you'll notice that somebody, very loud somebody, was missing from that stage, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene actually did not receive an invite to this event, but who did receive an invite I think is even more

interesting, Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson, who is the mortal enemy of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Johnson, who's been called the traitor by all these MAGA influencers like Cat Turd, who's like the voice of MAGA on the internet, and all of these various MAGA influencers like Cat Turd, who's like the voice of MAGA on the internet, and all of these various MAGA influencers. They act so enraged by anyone's embrace of Mike Johnson, and then Donald Trump does it, and what happens? They're silent on it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, he's keeping at a distance. By the way, Kristi Noem was at this event, but Donald Trump did not invite her on stage for this photo in this moment. So I think that shows you also that he's very conscious of kind of who he has around him

at events like this. Brett, I want to show you what President Biden had said earlier as well. In response to Donald Trump also gave that interview with Time magazine, we talked about this on the last episode where Donald Trump was bragging and saying that, yes, he does want to basically become a dictator and he thinks his base likes that and American voters are looking for a dictator right now. That's how he responded to the questionings. Donald Trump was also bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade and he says how happy he is to overturn Roe v. Wade. And he says how happy he is to overturn Roe v. Wade.

He also said that he believes states should be monitoring the pregnancies of women. So if women want to leave the state to try to prevent that and to try to control the pregnancies of women. So not only banning women's reproductive rights, but he wants to, he is okay with states implementing a monitor program against, you know, on women. I mean, they're not denying that. They've had other surrogates out there saying that that's what they want. Just horrific, horrific stuff. And here's what President Biden's like, like the contrast cannot be more clear. Here's what President Biden said. He brags about getting Roe v. Wade overturned. He just did an interview with Time magazine and said states should monitor women's pregnancy.

Monitor. Monitor pregnancies. He also said we should prosecute those who violate abortion bans. Kamala and I never let that happen. We're going to keep fighting to restore Roe v. Wade's law of the land. Look, I think, again, the contrast cannot be more clear. I don't like talking about polls on this show. Good polls, bad polls. The issue is, though, where corporate media and right-wing propaganda media flood the zone with bad polls and then report on those. I feel I have an obligation when good polling data is out there from highly rated polls that look at likely voters and they consistently reflect President Biden in the lead. it's just worth me saying that that

exists. Because if you just watched corporate media, you would think the opposite. So I think I have a duty to at least say this as much as I really wish I didn't have to report on any polling. So for example, the ABC News Ipsos poll, when you talk about likely voters, has President Biden up by four, 49% to 45%. That's a top-rated poll. NPR-Morrist, another top-rated poll at likely voters, has President Biden up five, 52% to 47%. For the first time since last October, President Biden leads Donald Trump in decision desk's favorability rating is at the lowest since Decision Desk HQ and The Hill Average since last December, and it's lower than President Biden's. Again, I just think it's worth mentioning that. And we'll tell you what's statistically significant. As you go up on these polls from just adults in general who don't vote to registered voters, and then when you go from registered voters to likely voters, and that's the most important metric, likely voters, consistently what we're seeing is President Biden in the lead with likely voters. And that is also consistent with the primary data that we've seen

because the likely voters are the ones voting in those primaries. So when we're saying, well, why is there these primaries happening this way? But then the polling is showing something different. The polling has been showing just kind of like kind of random groups of people, regardless of if they're registered or a lot of them are, or regardless of if they're likely voters. But when you focus on likely voters and when you push undecideds to vote, then you see President Biden in the lead. Look, don't get complacent. I don't want to spend more than that talking about the polls. I just think with all of the kind of just bogus polling stories out there, I make it seem like Donald Trump was more popular than he is. We know this. This is here in court documents. So do you think

he's doing anything different now? Do you think he's running his businesses any different now? Do you think he is operating his campaign any differently now? I'm going to say no. Okay. I'm going to say he's doing it the same way that he's done it for decades. I'll say this. It's gotten worse. You went from National Enquirer to Fox. You went from Trump stakes to Trump media. The stakes are higher. He's gotten worse. Literally, the stakes are higher. Picked it up. That's why it's so important that we report on this the way we do here. If you want to support our independent journalism here, we're not funded by outside investors. The best way you can help us, well, the best way you can help us is just subscribing. It's free to subscribe. And if you share this channel with others, that's one of the best ways you can help.

Just let people know about the network. network otherwise if you want to help out financially with this network and help us continue to grow that way it's patreon.com slash Midas Touch p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash m-e-i-d-a-s-t-o-u-c-h also shout out to our pro-democracy sponsors the discount codes are in the descriptions below. Jordi vets those sponsors. We love our pro-democracy sponsors. They're great products and services with great discount codes that Jordi helps negotiate. And so that helps our program as well. And there's great stuff there that I think that you will enjoy. And then also, just thank you to everybody who's gotten the YouTube memberships with all those fun emojis and things like that. Finally, just thank you to to have KFA lead that as well. Michael Popak, incredible. The whole team, great work, everybody on our team. And thank you to all of

you, the Midas Mighty. We're nothing without you. We're grateful for you. And let's just keep building this together. Make sure pro-democracy people you know are registered to vote. Share this channel. Make sure people are paying attention. Together, we're in this together, and we're going to save our democracy together. Jordy, take it away. Shout out to the Midas Mighty! Against the fascists, we sing our song. We will get it right whenever... It's Ken Harbaugh with the Midas Touch Network. The film Against All Enemies, which I co-produced with Ben Maisalis and this network,

has won awards around the world for its up-close portrayal of America's insurrectionist movement. It premieres in the u.s on march 29th on amazon and apple tv go to againstallenemiesfilm.com or click the link below but don't just watch against all enemies tell your friends about it it's one more way to hold accountable those who threaten our democracy thanks mightest mighty let's use our power well