The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump Spirals as Criminal Charges LOOM + GOP Attacks Economy

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we bring you the latest breaking news to keep you informed! On the show, we discuss the latest developments regarding Trump’s imminent indictment in New York and his deranged and desperate reaction to the news, President Biden’s swift & decisive action following the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank as Republicans cried ‘woke,’ Donald Trump’s role in gutting regulations that would have prevented the SVB failure, Ron DeSantis’s rocky start on the national stage as he fumbles the propaganda style interview by Fox, the DOJ blasting Tucker Carlson in a recent court filing in federal court and much more! New full-length episodes of the MeidasTouch Podcast featuring the brothers are released every Tuesday & Friday morning. The rest of the week, enjoy our short-form content we call ‘The Mighty.’ If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: ZBiotics: Head to zbiotics.com/meidas and use code ‘MEIDAS’ at checkout to get 15% off your order. Magic Spoon: Head to magicspoon.com/meidas and use code ‘MEIDAS’ at checkout to save $5 off your order. Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario president biden took swift and decisive action following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank as Donald Trump's role, direct role, in removing key regulations that would have prevented this bank failure from happening has become exposed. And can we compare the calm, thoughtful, and decisive action of President Biden to these MAGA Republicans who just seem like they're actually trying to cause more economic devastation and blaming the big failures on things like diversity and inclusion and wokeness. It is absolutely absurd. Also, Donald Trump has officially declined the Manhattan District Attorney's offer to appear before the criminal grand jury as more witnesses testify before the

criminal grand jury, including Michael Cohen, who we were aware would be testifying earlier today. Folks, indictments are imminent. So naturally, Donald Trump is responding by making videos of himself calling special counsel Jack Smith, not even the Manhattan District Attorney, calling Jack Smith again, mad dog psycho and asking Jack Smith to go after Obama and Biden. We will discuss. By the way, that's not the craziest video he made today. We'll go through all of those videos. Also, Ron DeSantis' presidential ambitions are off to a very rocky start as he fumbled the easiest propaganda-style interview by Fox. They literally gave him a softball interview.

They had him throwing a softball with one of their hosts. He is not ready for primetime, to say the least. And also, the Department of Justice is calling out Tucker Carlson for giving selectively edited clips on his program. And the DOJ is doing that in a recent federal court filing in Washington, DC. We will discuss this and more here on the Midas Touch podcast. I am Ben Mycelis. I'm traveling today with Brett and Jordy Mycelis. Jordy rocking the Midas Touch hat. Brett, how are you? Got a lot. Ben, I love how you just never miss a day, though. Travel, don't skip a beat, right to work for the Midas Mighty. Got to appreciate that sort of level of dedication. Man, it really seems like these Republicans, man, are like, I know they've lost it.

I know that's already been a thing that's happened for a long time now. But you see it then go extra chaotic at the moment as indictments get closer and closer. And this could very well, folks, be indictment week. It's not out of the realm of possibility that there is an indictment this week. So we will be watching to see what happens, whether it's this week or next week, we will see Donald Trump denying, declining to speak with the Manhattan prosecutor, with the grand jury, big, big, big developments out of New York. And you just see that the Republican bench, you guys, they were hailing DeSantis as this

sort of savior of the party. These people are not ready for the prime time. These people are in their own little MAGA bubbles. And once they escape them, they fall flat on their face every single time. Once people see them, they're like, oh, they're repulsed. I don't want anything to do with it. But we're going to dig into all that and more. Jordy, how you doing? I had a great time with you at the house. It was great seeing you. It's a great hanging with you in person. How's it feel to be back in Pennsylvania? Big bro. It was great. It was great seeing the big brothers down in LA. That was awesome. Got to stay with Brett. I'm not over Brett being gone.

So in honor of me staying with Brett, I changed my background today for all those watching. We got a nice image of Brett right there. Ben is podcasting today from a closet, it looks like. So that just goes to show his dedication. I know how embarrassing. I'm wearing the same outfit. You are wearing the same outfit. I'm wearing the same outfit as the photo.

We did not plan this at all. I'm very excited for today's show. By the way, Jordy, this isn't my closet. This is my hotel room. I mean, I'm sorry I'm not staying in a lavish hotel room. This is where I stay when I travel. My bed is right over – I have a bed right here. That's basically the room,

Jordy, but thank you. You didn't hurt my feelings. It's totally okay. And here's the thing though, Brett, to your point about these MAGA Republicans just being repellent to Americans once they actually start to speak, that's the thing we've always been talking about. Americans want normalcy. Americans want compassion. Americans want decency. We don't like seeing people get bullied. We don't like seeing people spreading hate. We don't like seeing people spreading conspiracy theories by and large. And yes, there is now 20% or 25% of the American population that's in this MAGA Republican echo chamber, and they are fueled by hate. But by and large, there is this exhausted majority who is really, really, really just sick and tired and no longer exhausted, tired, but ready to make sure the pro-democracy coalition

continues to win elections. And just saying enough of this, like, did you see over the weekend, like Paul Gosar being asked questions about on right-wing propaganda TV, Gosar was asked, so do you think that the January 6th committee members are going to get arrested? Like, are you going to recommend that in Congress? The fact that that's even a question in the right-wing echo chamber, but then Paul Gosar, who is a leader in the Republican Party, let's be clear, he's not a fringe figure. Him and Marjorie Taylor Greene, they're not fringe figures. They are leaders. Let's look at what he said. Play this clip. Same with Liz Cheney. Is there a chance that you guys could prosecute certain members of Congress or former members of Congress over the January 6th riots?

I would not leave it at just that. I think there's also military that are involved. Right. And I think that their heads have to roll. Otherwise, you condone this lawlessness. And that's what America sees. We see lawlessness in Chicago. We see law's what America sees. We see lawlessness in Chicago. We see lawlessness on our border. We see lawlessness everywhere. And that's part of the precipitating

actions that Congress is allowed. What about the guy asking the question, yo, so like, what do you think, bro, about, should we be prosecuting Cheney, bro? What do you think? It's all such a ridiculous and scary sort of thing to watch. It's just so weird. It's a Should we be prosecuting Cheney, bro? What do you think? It's all such a ridiculous and scary sort of thing to watch. It's just so weird. It's a weird fascist echo chamber. Paul Gosar, clearly not physically or mentally well, by the way, as well. I mean, you watch that. You don't have to watch it without sound. But if you watch it without sound, you see even more that there is something seriously wrong with him that he is hiding from the public that doesn't excuse his actions. It has to be pointed out. But you have this guy who's from the Gateway Pundit, which is a fake news, far right news source asking the question. And this is the Republican Party in a microcosm, if you will. You have a guy,

everything that is reality is flipped on its head in the Magiverse. Everything that they do is designed to just flood the zone with endless amounts of disinformation and lies. And it's lies in the pursuit of fascism in silencing their political enemies, who in this case are the investigators who are investigating a domestic terrorist attack on the United States of America. Because in the Republican mind, in the rotted MAGA brain that you see here of Paul Gosar, the people who attacked the Capitol, the people who attacked the United States of America, those are the heroes. And the people who tried to prevent the attack of January 6th are the villains in his mind and are the criminals. And the people who tried to prevent the attack of January 6th

are the villains in his mind and are the criminals, and they should be locked up. It is very, very, very Putin-esque. And we're going to see this, though, in all aspects of our society. And that might be ridiculous and out of left field, but Republicans use those sorts of lies and disinformation to fuel problems in the country that have real world effects on your life. And we'll get into that as we talk about their reaction to the Silicon Valley bank collapse, but it's the same tactic. I just want you to note, it's the same Putin-esque disinformation tactic designed to destabilize and destroy the United States of America. And speaking of Americans wanting normalcy, like I showed you Paul Gosar, who is a leader.

Let's show you a clip of the cult leader. Like this is the videos that Donald Trump is actually making today. He is spending today making videotapes of himself calling the federal prosecutor who is investigating him a mad dog psycho and requesting that the mad dog psycho go after Obama and Biden. And Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. He is, unquestionably. Who the current Republican Party today is today is led by Donald Trump. Here, just play this clip from earlier. Mad Dog psycho prosecutor Jack Smith.

Sounds like a very innocent name, doesn't it? Put there for only one reason by Biden and the weaponized Justice Department. Should stop this witch hunt altogether or at a minimum should give biden obama and everybody else the same treatment as they give me because we have two sets of justice in our country and the people won't stand for it i mean just such a whiny victim mentality by him and then he goes jack how about that dog how about that dog whistle there when he goes goes, Jack Smith, such a, such a nice name. Well, one of the things that he goes and talks about, and you have to give kind of the broader context though, is he always claims that Jack Smith's name is a fake name. And the

dog whistle that Donald Trump is giving to his base is that Jack Smith is actually like a fake name that Jack Smith uses because Jack Smith really has a Jewish last name. And that's the dog whistle right there. But when he goes, that sounds like an innocent name. I mean, just the fact that he's even saying those words is so bizarre. And then he makes another video, like he made a series of videos today. And in the next video, he calls for mental competency tests. Mind you, what really should, the test that should occur is everybody should have to get a security clearance if you want to be a president. I really feel that way. He would fail every security clearance. He wouldn't even be able to take a

security clearance test, yet alone pass a security clearance test. Jared Kushner, of course, failed the security clearance, yet he was given all of our classified and top secret information, which he then gave to the Saudis and other foreign governments so that Kushner could get bailed out of his bankruptcies. That's another thing that our government should actually be investigating when we're talking about weaponization and corruption. Let's look straight in the face of Jared Kushner and Ivanka. But the other video that Donald Trump made, I guess, as it's very clear to him that he's going to be indicted, he goes, we need a mental competency exam. I did great on my mental competency exam.

Remember when I said man, woman, person? Remember? I would do even better. But just the fact that he's saying this, how isn't it 100% of Americans who watch when I'm about to show you and go, what the hell is that? I mean, it's 65, 70%. It's growing to 75%. But how is there still 30 or 25% of people who look at that and go, that's someone who I want to lead me. That's someone who I want to get me through these very difficult times. Here, play this clip. In my mind, anybody running for the office

of President of the United States should agree to take a full and complete mental competency test simultaneously or before with the announcement that he or she is running and likewise, but to a somewhat lesser extent, agreed to a test which would prove that you are physically capable of doing the job as president. Being an outstanding president requires great mental acuity and physical stamina and strength. If you don't have these qualities or traits,

it is likely that you will not succeed and you will disappoint the entire world, let alone our own country. We need to make America great again. Take a competency test. Let's see whether or not these people that are running for office are competent. I took the test two years ago, and I ac aced it and I'd love to take it again because

I think I'd even do better. Some weird stuff, man. That is a mental competence. Watching those videos should be a mental competence test. I am ruling right now, incompetent, incompetent, incompetent. And that's also in addition to the person, woman, man, camera, TV part of the exam. I just want to refresh people's memories of the interview with Chris Wallace that Trump did while as he was bragging about this test. And Chris Wallace called him out on it. And he goes, that test, it asked you to name what an elephant is. It showed you a picture of an elephant. It said, what is this? This is the test you're bragging about. And Trump's like, oh, it was very hard. I bet not a lot of people. They're like, it asked you what a giraffe was. It showed you a picture of a giraffe. It said, what is this? Here's an image I'll show to the viewers. But it's really like the most basic. Which one is an alligator? This is what he's bragging about two years later. Two years later, he's bragging about passing this test.

I mean, this is just outrageous. To even brag about this test is incompetent. But Ben, I know Trump didn't stop there. Trump, with the back against the wall, is going on a rampage today of making these short clips. He just locked himself in whatever weird, deranged basement in Mar-a-Lago where he records these things. And he's just, dude just been on a tear.

Where did he go next? Well, next he talked about going after the, he went after the prosecutors, said the real issue here is that there are all of these, that these prosecutors are racist in reverse. And that the reason that he is being investigated and likely going to be indicted by Alvin Bragg is because Alvin Bragg is a racist in reverse. And that's why Donald Trump

is being prosecuted, not because Donald Trump broke the law. These are videos he's making. Play this clip. Crooked Democrat prosecutors, many of them racists in reverse, they are absolute racists, are trying to steal a second presidential election. They did it in 2020. And we're not going to let them do it again in 2024. Make America great again. Buddy, can you turn the lights on to in that room? Like, like, is is he trying to like, look at the fascist playbook and just make the thing look as ominous as possible? It's so dark in the room, you can almost only see his teeth. It's so intentional, Ben. You got to understand the guy is not going to look great with good lighting on his face. I mean, that's ultimately why- I want you to make it as dark as possible. I want no one to be able to see me. And then I'm going to

start off with Mad Dog Psycho. I'm going to make a video about Mad Dog Psycho. And then I'm going to go in, I'm going to go into talking about racist in reverse. Let me hit that. All right, you ready? Racist in reverse, prosecutors. All right, where do we go next? Where do we go next? Mental competency exam, got to hit the mental competency. And then where do I go next? Let's talk about Trump derangement syndrome. Let me make a new video on that. All right, you ready? Three, two, one, Trump derangement syndrome. Brett, play this video where he talks about Trump derangement syndrome. Massive and unprecedented prosecutorial misconduct due to Trump derangement syndrome and very, very big leads against both parties in the polls.

That's what's causing it. We can't let it happen. It's illegal as can be. We're going to stop it. We're not going to let them win elections by using the law illegally. Thank you. The law illegally. By the way, he can't speak. He doesn't speak well, right? So it's like, you don't know where to put that punctuation. And so it just sounds like a confession there that he's going to use the law legally so that Democrats can't win election. That's what that actually sounds like when you listen to it. He's so close to being right on some of these videos because he goes, we have a two-tier justice system where you have justice for some. And I'm like, yeah,

no, that's exactly right. Except you're the one who's been evading justice all this time. And now it's time for you to pay the price. And look, the reason he's making these videos of himself is that it was a very busy day in the Manhattan grand jury. We started off with the knowledge that Donald Trump has turned down the invitation to speak before the grand jury, which is usually the precursor to a criminal indictment. Then we learned about Michael Cohen. By the way, we're going to have Michael Cohen tomorrow on, of course, Political Beatdown, which I co-host with him. So I'm excited to get as much as he is able to share with us. But we're going to talk more about what took place in the Manhattan Grand Jury later on this episode. But Brett, where I want to start off talking about

though, too, is you talked about how everything in the MAGAverse is like done in reverse. It's like the upside down world where up is down and down is up. And so when you think about this law that MAGA Republicans passed in 2018, in the 115th Congress, that's when the Republicans controlled the House, Republicans controlled the Senate. Republicans controlled the White House. And so could they, one of the things Trump was saying was, I'm going to pass the greatest healthcare bill. It's going to be better than Obamacare. Well, by the way, if you could come up with something better than Obamacare, that'd be great. Right, Brett, Jordy? I mean, we're good with that. I'd want you to do that. Oh, good. I'd be supportive of that plan. I'm going to make the infrastructure the best you've ever seen. Just give me two more weeks. I would support that. All the Democrats said they would support that. And by the way,

you controlled every single, you controlled the Senate, you controlled the House, you controlled the White House. So it would have been very easy to pass an infrastructure plan. To be fair, I think it's still coming in two weeks. I think it's still coming in two weeks. That's what I'm hearing. It'd be very easy to pass it. By the way, though, I would have been supportive of it. I would not have been, oh, it's Trump, so I'm against infrastructure. I would have been like, that's a smart, savvy move. We support that. But what was their shining piece of legislation? Well, there's two, right? One was the tax cuts, which got a lot of publicity for billionaires. Let's make sure that billionaires can get more jets and write off more private jets

and write off everything. Let's just give all the benefits to the billionaires and let's screw the middle class and the working class. And I just remember that signing ceremony where all of them were just clapping as they screwed over their base. They screwed over the working class and middle class people who they claimed to appeal to. And I was like, oh, don't you know you're just being played by these people? But that is one of their major pieces of legislation. And then their other big piece of legislation that they announced publicly, but I guess it got a little bit of less fanfare, was the signing of Senate Bill 2155, which was referred to as the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. So when I

say everything's in reverse, it did the opposite of economic growth. It did the opposite of causing regulatory relief. And it did the opposite of causing consumer protection. That's for sure. It certainly did the opposite of causing consumer protection. And look, back in 2007, 2008, during the financial crisis, there is a reason why ultimately emerging from that crisis, there was critical legislation that was passed. and local banks, banks just like Silicon Valley Bank, to address them from incurring too much risks. And to the extent the risk was identified as part of the regulatory scheme, there could be early intervention so that it could avoid well in advance any type of bank run from McCurry. It was the exact reason why you had Dodd-Frank enacted at this point about 15 years ago, right? It was to address this point. And then when Donald Trump came into office, his crowning piece of legislation was to basically slam Dodd-Frank and to go all in

on removing all of those regulations, which were not put in place because Democrats are like, we love regulations. Let's throw more regulations, right? No, it's because we learned, right? We learn from history and go, you know what? That caused the crisis. If we had done this, we could have avoided it. And so I think we even have, because you really can't understand what took place with the Silicon Valley bank failure unless you understand that it is existing in this post-Trump regulatory scheme. And then some people go, oh, and I want to address this. Well, why couldn't Biden by an executive order just remove the law that Trump passed in this video? Because it's a law. It's not an executive order. One of

the executive's orders that Biden did implement was to come up with the plan to eventually overrule what Donald Trump did, but Republicans have the filibuster. So because of the filibuster, you have to come up with what your priorities are in terms of what legislation you want to pass. Biden passed a lot of historic legislation. I mean, a lot of laws were enacted, but that one just wouldn't, based on the filibuster that feasibly cannot be implemented. And it couldn't be implemented via an executive order. And Trump was able to implement it because he controlled all of the various branches. And by removing regulations, you're able to then basically classify it as deficit neutral, which is not an accurate characterization because it

doesn't show the future impact that something like this is going to cause. And then ultimately, if you say, hey, I want to put in a regulation because it would technically increase the deficit on paper or increase the debt, it triggers the ability to filibuster it and not get around the filibuster. So I know that's technical, but I do want to address that because people are like, well, why didn't Biden fix it? To me, I don't know what you think, Brett. The very fact that that question's asked is like, okay, so Trump created the problem though. Let's be very clear. Why didn't we put out the fires that he created? Just play the signing, Brett. And I want you then, if you can,

to kind of break down in layman's terms what took place with SBB. The legislation I'm signing today rolls back the crippling Dodd-Frank regulations that are crushing community banks and credit unions nationwide. They were in such trouble. One size fits all. Those rules just don't work. And community banks and credit unions should be regulated the same way. And you have to really look at this. They should be regulated the same way with proviso for safety as in the past when they were vibrant and strong, but they shouldn't be regulated the same way

as the large, complex financial institutions. And that's what happened, and they were being put out of business one by one. And they weren't lending. Since its passage in 2010, Dodd-Frank has dealt a huge blow to community banking. As a candidate, I pledged that we would rescue these community banks from Dodd-Frank, the disaster of Dodd-Frank, and now we are keeping

that commitment, and all of the people with me are keeping that commitment. We passed and signed a record number of bills terminating job-killing regulations. In the history of our country, no president, whether it's four years, eight years, or 16 years in one case, has ever passed more regulation cuts. So that's what they're bragging about. Of course, we talked on the other episode about how Trump removed regulations regarding railroad safety. Their main policy was removing things to make people safer. And so it's the arsonists who then, I guess they want to claim that they want to then be the fire fighters. Not even that though. They're like, hey, we're the arsonists. Can you give us more fire? What do you think, Brett?

Can you break down what happened at SVB in the most basic terms? Yeah. And first, I'll just say, I think this is going to be happening to our country now, unfortunately, for years, if not decades. I think Donald Trump laid a ton of landmines in those four years and did untold damage to our nation. And we will see it continue to pop up like this. It's going to keep happening because the damage was so precise and it spans all these various industries and it affects people on a very granular level. I mean, Trump had

a policy that he was pushing. Do remember, do you guys remember when Trump would go, for every one regulation that's added, two regulations need to be cut. I mean, sounds good on a bumper sticker, but you got to realize a lot of these regulations are here for a reason. These regulations were put here in response to the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. These regulations were here for a reason. So instead of just indiscriminately saying all regulations are bad, we need to chop down. Remember that footage we showed of the train regulations that he cut when he showed the visual was him taking a big scissor and cutting the ribbon in between the regulations in the year, when was that, from 2018? Cutting that back to 1960 standards.

Guess what? We've made a lot of strides since 1960. There are a lot of regulations that have put in there that have made this country a lot safer. We've learned a lot of things. So now let's get into the nitty gritty of SVP. And this is a real high level view of the situation. So it won't be all the details, but I hope that it's enough that you guys could kind of understand a little bit of what's going on here. So for the record, SVB, Silicon Valley Bank, it's like the Silicon Valley Bank. It's the bank that is the go-to for tech companies. When VCs, when venture capitals invest in tech companies, they usually require that the companies invest their money in SVP. It's a very popular tech bank. And so they recently, as everybody probably knows by now, just became the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial

crisis. They're a regional bank. They had a ton of cash at first because they were a tech company and tech was growing at a rapid rate and these VCs would get their money put into the bank. So they had a ton of cash. They had a lot of money. What they decided to do with the money was not all that controversial. They decided to put it in treasury bonds, which should be a stable, modest investment that produces modest returns. And they did that while interest rates were low, thinking that interest rates would be low kind of forever. But it turns out that thinking was a little bit short term because when the Fed raised rates, the bonds became worthless, which wouldn't normally be an issue. But the problem is SVP would have to wait

for those bonds to mature over a long period of time before they could take that money out without penalty. It wasn't liquid at this point. But because of the slowdown in the tech sector, deposits started slowing to the bank, clients started withdrawing their money, and the bank started to run out of money. And so in response to this, the parent company of SVP said it would undertake a 2.25 billion share sale after selling $21 billion of securities from its portfolio. And they would be taking a $2 billion loss in the process. And so they were doing this to try to get more liquid cash. We need more cash, right? But this had the effect of terrifying people who invested in the banks and terrifying the VCs who invested in the banks. And so panic spread, which ultimately led to a run on SVP. And this all kind of happened

kind of over Slack chats and over Twitter of these tech people all kind of freaking out about what was going on SVB. And if they kind of just sat there and did nothing and didn't panic, nothing would have happened, but they kind of instigated this run on the bank and SVB was not prepared to handle it. And the person who sparked this all was actually Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel, as you know, he's a far right venture capitalist who funds a ton of tech companies, huge guy in the tech industry. He also helped bankroll a lot of these campaigns and super PACs for these far right candidates during the 2022 elections. Like Blake Masters was his guy.

That was Peter Thiel's guy. But Peter Thiel and his company, his fund, they started to tell all their companies that they managed the money for to pull their money out of the bank while they could. They sounded the alarm. And so these companies started pulling their money out of the bank. And so what happened? The bank went under virtually overnight is what happened. Peter Thiel's founder fund, which is a fund made up of a lot of startups. It's a very big fund. By telling all these founders, and this is what's been reported, that, hey, the moment that SVD offered to sell additional shares in it and take this significant loss, hey, get your money out of

there. What the reporting is, is that because of how big the founders fund is, that when those companies withdrew, it then really kind of started this cascade. And then Brett, to your point, the environment on Twitter generally right now, without disinformation being filtered, is such that there was, through Twitter, pretty much being spread this widespread panic about Silicon Valley Bank. And normally, in the past, when it was run by mature people who had standards about disinformation, spreading disinformation could lead to being banned. That's not a censorship of free speech.

It's let's use a platform responsibly. But in this kind of current environment, there was a lot of disinformation that spread on Twitter. And by the way, you don't have to take that from me. You could take that from the Republican chair of the Financial Services Committee, who put out a statement. And in that statement, this is by Chairman McHenry, Republican Patrick McHenry, who said, today, House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry issued the following statement after the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced actions regarding Silicon Valley Bank. Quote, this was the first Twitter

fueled bank run. At this time, it is important to remain level-headed and look at the facts, not speculation, when assessing the right path forward. I have confidence in our financial regulators and protections already in place to ensure the safety and soundness of our financial system. And look, this is a moment, and Brett and Jordy, I want to get your take on it. McHenry's right. I don't want to criticize. There's a lot of other areas where I'll criticize McHenry, but it is a time to be level-headed. And so on the one hand, we can compare the level-headedness, I think, of which President Biden addressed this, and let's compare it to DeSantis, and let's compare it to what Fox is saying in a moment. But I will criticize Republicans where criticism is due, which is often a lot, but that statement was the right statement to make.

Yeah, 100%. That was the right statement to make. And the most important thing that you could have is somebody level-headed at the helm dealing with the issue. But what you had over the weekend, especially on social media, were these panicked, all caps tweets from these far right venture capitalists on Twitter. You know, one of the funny things that I keep seeing from a lot of these MAGA Republicans out there is they go, the liberal VCs of San Francisco, the liberal Silicon Valley. I'm like, have you ever talked to anybody who works in Silicon Valley? Have you ever talked to any of these venture capitalists? They're not really liberal on the whole. They're very libertarian.

They're all kind of like Elon Musk's, if I'm generalizing here. They're all kind of like Elon Musk style people. And these were the people who were going absolutely nuts over the weekend, because one of the things that they kind of didn't mention, but was very obvious, is that they had invested a lot of money in a lot of these companies who use the bank because they required them to use this bank. So they were scared that they were going to take a hit with all these actions. And they were trying to, in fact, scare people, trying to stoke bank runs, trying to pressure the Biden administration to do things, criticizing them before they even did anything. It was the most

outside, most insane panic on the planet. And there's a phrase, which you may have heard, whether you agree with it or not, but there's a saying that goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. The complimentary statement to that in this case would be, there are no libertarians in a bank run. So as the bank run is happening, these libertarians who for all this time were going, no government, get away, no regulation, we don't want it. Government, stay out of Silicon Valley. We're the first ones to go. You have to do something right now, now, now, now, now, now. It's Saturday. This just happened 30 minutes ago.

Why isn't the government intervening? Government, intervene. Weren't you the same people back when the law was being introduced, S2155, when you said government, get out, and now you want the government back in? Now you like Dodd, Frank. I mean, but look, I think Biden did the right thing here. Biden absolutely did not give a bailout to the banks, but Biden gave relief to the depositors. And that's a big difference. You know, if you were a shareholder or if you were an executive at the bank, and by the way, we need to look into a

lot of the trading behavior of those executives at Silicon Valley, who coincidentally, and I put it on an air quotes, sold a lot of shares over the past few weeks, but those people are not getting a bailout here. And in fact, Biden said, we need to investigate people who engaged in wrongdoing at every level. But Biden said, people who innocently deposit money at a bank, which is supposed to be a risk-free proposition, deserve to have the money that they put into a bank. When you put money into a bank, you're not engaging in high-risk speculatory securities, okay? You're putting your money in a bank deposit and you expect to be able to withdraw that amount of money. But it didn't stop anybody.

What were you going to say, Brett? I was going to say to your point, I saw a lot of criticism over the decision that Biden made from both the right, from the Marjorie Taylor Greene types and Lauren Boebert types, two people on the left. And when I saw this, I just really didn't understand it. I mean, I think first we have to acknowledge there were no popular decisions that Biden could make here. It was either let people lose all their money, let these businesses lose all their money or protect them. And I think Biden took a nuanced approach, which is not a taxpayer-funded anything, which is not a bailout to the shareholders, which is not bailout the executives, but that secures the money for depositors.

I mean, just think about when you put your money in the bank, you assume that the money you put in the bank will be there tomorrow. That is the crux of our entire financial system. Of course, that needs to be protected. This is where these startup businesses kept their money for payroll. So just think about the consequences if they are unable to access that money for their payroll. Think of the working families who work for these startups, who then are unable to receive a paycheck because they are not able to access their money in the bank. So I think it's easy. I think it's really easy to try to be like, oh, this is the VC douchebags. They're getting there.

They're getting the bailout. And why do they deserve anything? But this is really much larger than that. And I know people will be like, oh, I could already see the comments coming in of people who would be like, but they knew that it was insured by the FDIC up to $250,000. They should have known that the money above 250K wasn't insured. I mean, if you want to be super technical, sure. I mean, I will concede that. But these are businesses with large payrolls. And your solution to that, I guess, is, well, they should have opened up like 10

different bank accounts, which is just completely impractical as a business. We just need to be practical here about what these businesses are doing. And at the end of the day, this is absolutely the right move. Help the depositors. Make sure people know that when you put your money into a bank, that you are going to have it the following day. It shouldn't just go and vanish. Now, if you tried to buy stock in that company and the company failed, that's on you. If you're an executive in the company, that's on you. And let's push for more regulations and let's push for accountability. Let's look into the stock trades of the executives who cashed out coincidentally just weeks before.

Let's look into the CEO of the bank, Gregory Becker, who sold 11% of his shares on February 27th, about $3.6 million worth of stock. Let's look into their counsel, Michael Zucker, who sold 19% of their stock on February 5th. Let's look into their counsel, Michael Zucker, who sold 19% of their stock on February 5th. Let's look into their CFO, Daniel Beck, who sold 32% of his stock on February 27th. Michael, Michelle Draper, the CMO who sold 25% of her stock on February 1st. Let's look into all that. Let's push for more regulations, but let's not leave working people who work for these businesses on the hook. And it also affects, for example, Etsy is one of their partnerships. Etsy has to do business. When you buy stuff on Etsy,

those are a lot of small businesses, people who are working out of their homes, people trying to sell products. If all of a sudden they don't have a bank where they could process their transactions and fund the entire entity, then those small businesses go under too. And it could have a catastrophic effect at large. So I think we need to all take a more nuanced approach here. I think out of all the bad options, because there really was no like, this is great. Everyone's going to be happy. I think Biden took the steady option. Biden took the correct approach here. And truthfully, the only option that was even on the table that he could even take. Brett, Brett, Brett, Brett, that was an incredible breakdown.

That was honestly the best breakdown I've heard on this. Ben, you too. I wanted to sit this one out intentionally and have you guys explain it because quite candidly, this one was over my head. And so I needed that breakdown. And I have not heard it explained in that level of detail. So kudos to y'all there. And the McHenry statement, real. And the McHenry statement,

real quick, the McHenry statement, I mean, he's obviously being called the rhino left and right, right? By these MAGA Republicans. I mean, that's such a rhino move, McHenry. I mean, I just hope that, I know I'm not going to hold my breath here, folks, but I hope these people who are freaking out over the weekend, like the David Sachs's of the world, who is like someone who's very close with Elon Musk and whatnot, who are freaking out and stoking panic and demanding that the government help depositors in some way. I hope that they see that the Democrats and Biden actually stepped up to help depositors. And on the whole, the Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene are calling this a woke liberal bailout of the woke elite and are just throwing it in their face. These are the

people you support. Just remember that. You may like to pretend that you're a libertarian and you don't need the government or whatever, but when push comes to shove, guess what? You came begging and Democrats and Biden actually saved your ass. Did you also coin that libertarian bank phrase, Brett, the bank run? Did you coin that phrase just now? I've kind of been seeing it going around. You coined it. It was a great phrase. I knew the other phrase, but it's just so apt to what we are seeing today. I understand libertarian ideology in its purest form. I understand the sentiment behind it. It sounds great, you know, get the government off my back, let everybody just, you know, do what they want.

But the reality is when push comes to shove, there's a reason why the government is there to act as a failsafe in case things go wrong. And we have to acknowledge that there is a place for government to help people. And this is one such place right here. And look, let's just compare the level headedness of Biden to what the Republicans are saying. I mean, look, this is the this is the head of the House Oversight Committee, Chairman James Comer. And Comer is a MAGA Republican. And just watch what he says about what he believes caused this. And then we see now coming out that they were one of the most woke banks in their quest for the ESG type policy and investing.

This could be a trend. And there are consequences for bad Democrat policy. And I think we need to keep an eye on all the banking sector right now. Right, let's just be as unserious as we can be. Let's show what clowns we are and just say it's a woke ideology. Let's not actually do the breakdown that Brett gave and let's actually talk about the need for appropriately tailored regulations to exist. We should talk

about, let's not have even conversations about interest rates and about long-term maturity of treasury bonds. Like, no, no, no, no. Let's just woke, woke. It's embarrassing. It is embarrassing when they do that woke routine. And we've talked about this before. The whole woke routine that they're doing, they've completely overplayed their woke hand. They weaponized the word originally. And now the fact that because they are so vapid, because they don't have any actual theories and they don't even want to have conversations with people, they just go, yeah, it's because it's woke. It's because it's woke. It's because of potato head. It's because of Potato Head. It's because of green M&Ms. Here he goes.

It's because of Disney characters. It's because of bathrooms. It's because of pronouns. And eventually Americans are like, no, no, it's not. It's because of you. It's because of you. It's because of you. And stop with potato head and stop with M&Ms and stop treating me like that. And increasingly, I just think that the number of, you know, 60, 65% of Americans who just are repelled by that, that number is continuing

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bowl of guilt-free cereal at magicspoon.com slash Midas and use the code Midas to save $5 off. Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this. Jordy, those ad reads are just... Hey, look, if you're in the market for some excellent products, some Z-biotics or some Magic Spoon, definitely check that out and use the promo code Midas. I want to talk about Trump indictment watch because things are really heating up there. Before going into that, I forgot to talk about one other point when we were talking about SVB that I just want to hit. So the Republicans, in addition to spending the weekend talking about that this was caused by

the woke and the woke and potato head and all of that, you've got DeSantis saying it as well. Because by the way, like DeSantis has one move. So no matter what, like if you're ever debating DeSantis, just ask him, can you define woke? What is this woke that you want to kill? You want to kill the woke? What are you even referring to? By the way, debating DeSantis would be like my dream. I wish I could get on a stage and debate with DeSantis because the guy's just not ready for prime time, right? Yeah. I will go more into DeSantis. I don't know if you want to hit Trump indictment watch first, because there are some other major, major, major updates to bring everybody listening and watching this podcast. But the whole woke diversity thing, you know, it's exactly what Pete Buttigieg has said about Republicans as a whole, that

when you're using a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And that's DeSantis. He only has one move because he only looks at things one way. Everything is a woke nail that he has got to hit down. And it's just like a joke. I saw this meme kind of going around that, let me see if I could find it so I don't mess it up. But there was this guy who was speaking about Elon Musk. And the point of what he was trying to say was, I knew that he was a genius. I thought that he was a genius at these certain industries because I didn't know those industries. But once he started speaking about what my expertise was, I realized how full of shit he was. And I think a lot of people are going, I've seen it too already with this SVB thing right now. A lot of people who actually have a little bit of knowledge of the financial

sector and of the banking center and people who run businesses are going to look at all the Republicans going, oh, it's because it was a woke bank, woke. It's because they cared about diversity. They're going to look at that and go go, I thought they were onto something with this woke stuff, maybe with this other thing, but that's very obviously not what's at issue here. These people are full of it. They're absolutely full of it. It's such an excellent point there, Brett. And if you really want to drill down why as well, it's because in this moment, people are scared that this woke nonsense that is being preached by the right, left and right, that they're using as actual platforms. It's not a platform, by the way. You can't run on woke because it leads to what we continue to see play out.

It's starting to hit people in their wallets. And that actually terrifies them that, oh my goodness, Ron DeSantis is just going to keep crying, woke this and woke that. And he's not going to have any real solutions to solve problems like Joe Biden did when Joe Biden just stepped in and helped resolve this. Or Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to be elevated in that Republican party as she screams woke this and woke that. And now people are realizing, oh crap, it was fun for a little bit for me, but now that it could actually start hurting me financially and my family, I don't know if I'm on board with shouting woke this and woke that in lieu of solving real issues and working in real policies.

And Jared, you know, these Republicans, they love a good acronym. They love breaking things down into an acronym so that it sounds scary. CRT, it's all CRT. CRT, CRT. Now they got DEI. It's all because of DEI, which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's all the big DEI plot, the whole diversity plot. The irony is, or maybe not, maybe irony is the incorrect word, is that really just about all companies have diversity initiatives, have equality initiatives, including, I may add, Fox News, Fox Corporation. If you go to their website right now, you will see that they have pages dedicated to inclusion and diversity and equity, because this is something that most large brands actually have built in.

So blaming diversity programs is just so ridiculous. And it's not only ridiculous, it's really a white supremacist ideology because you have to peel back what they are trying to say when they blame diversity for something like this bank crash. By the way, Silicon Valley Bank, if you look at the executives of the bank, I think are just about all white people, the executives of the bank, I think are just about all white people, the executives. So they're trying to blame not the deregulation on the banks. They're trying to blame not a bank mismanaging its funds, not people stoking a run on the banks. They're not trying to blame that. They're trying to blame the fact that they encouraged black Americans, LGBTQ Americans to apply for jobs. That's who they're blaming.

I mean, it's fundamentally racist. It's fundamentally homophobic. And it's their way of couching their racism and homophobia in terms like DEI, CRT, whatever it is. Because what they don't want to say directly is what they believe, is that only white men should work for this company. That's what they're saying every time they push this. So we need to be clear about these racist, I would call them undertones, but to me, they're screaming them like they're using a bullhorn when they say all this stuff. It's just so insane.

Obviously, you have Don Jr. chiming in also saying, SVB is what happens when you push a leftist woke ideology. What are you talking? What are you talking? What are you talking for? Fundamentally unserious people are like Ben, the great word that he used to describe them just vapid, vapid. I like that word too. That was a good word, Ben. Well, I mean, to me, that's the issue. I mean, there's so many issues, Brett, to your point, but the very idea that this party created by the purple M&M or Mr. Potato Head or the woke or the pronouns. They are being created by a Republican economic policy of trickle-down economics, which doesn't trickle down. It doesn't even trickle. It just is giving

these incredible benefits to billionaires and not focus on working class and middle class Americans. Like fundamentally, what we need to realize that the backbone of the American economy is actually not billionaires. It's workers. It's working class Americans who work very hard, who deserve good paying jobs, who deserve better working conditions, and we got to treat them with dignity. We got to treat people with dignity and with the pay that they deserve. We have to be framing issues in terms of real serious solutions to serious problems. That ultimately I think is what is critical. All right, should we go into the Trump indictment watch? I think everybody wants to know what's going on with Trump. And you saw those videos that we showed you earlier. I could only imagine the videos and the posts that we were going to see

after he hears this news that just came out of the Manhattan DA's office. Ben? Well, things are getting very, very, very close. And so the reality is that as part of the last step that exists before the Manhattan DA will ultimately indict, we talked about this before, they invite the person who they are about to indict to speak before the district attorney's office, they invite them. It's not a subpoena because ultimately they're not forced, you know, being forced to show up because if you force them to show up, you have to give them a transactional immunity. So you basically say, hey, you're invited to show up, testify, tell your side of the story. You're going to have to waive

transactional immunity, but you can tell your side of the story. So Trump declined that. How do we know that? Trump's lawyer, Joe Takapina, went on TV earlier this morning and said that they are declining it. But what we did learn is that Takapina and Trump's defense team did in fact make their presentation to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office separately about why they believed Donald Trump should not get indicted. And by the way, Takapina tried to make this presentation on Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos. It was just some of the weirdest stuff imaginable. They're really going in on Donald Trump was extorted by Stormy Daniels, that he never had sex with Stormy Daniels,

that he was the victim of extortion, and that he paid to avoid the extortion. That is their defense. Do we have, Brett, some of this Takapina interview? Because Takapina just fumbled this thing, and he crumbled this thing thing and he just was all over the place. And Stephanopoulos was like, can we just go through the elements of this? Was the payment made? Is it in the financial ledgers? And was it in connection with the election? And then Takapina just like, watch this, the opposite of level-headed. Play this. Three questions, simple yes, no questions at the heart of the case. I want to put them up on the board right there. Number one, did Trump authorize the payment to Stormy Daniels? Number two, was the payment properly recorded?

And number three, was it connected to the election? So let's take all three of them in turn. Number one, did Trump authorize the payment to Stormy Daniels? First of all, all we need to do is start and end with number three, because it's not... Let's answer number one first. It's not directly related. Did Trump authorize the payment? Ity daniel first of all all we need to do is start and with number three because it's not let's answer number one first it's not directly related did trump authorize the payment it's not directly related trump authorized it's not directly related to the regardless we're going to get to that well let's assume he did for the argument so the answer to that is yes let's assume he did okay this was a plain extortion and i don't know since when we've decided to start prosecuting extortion victims. He's denied, vehemently denied this affair. But he had to

pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him. Was it properly noted in the Trump organization records or was a false record made saying this was legal representation? There was absolutely no false records made. To my knowledge, there was no false records made. To your knowledge. So you're not sure. Well, I wasn't there at the time. But my understanding of these facts is clearly there was no false record. But you would acknowledge that if a false record was made, that is a crime, a misdemeanor, correct?

No, I wouldn't acknowledge that any false record made in a private banking record. If it were made, it is a crime. It's a misdemeanor. It depends on what context. That's a rough interview right there. Whoa, whoa, Ben, before you give your legal analysis, what a lunatic. I mean, he didn't blink once. It didn't look like he blinked once. He was very hyper aggressive.

That was bizarre. I want to also remind our viewers who have been following all of our various videos on our YouTube channel that Joe Takapina is also the same guy who was representing one of the January 6th insurrectionists. And his argument in court to try to defend his insurrectionist client was that Donald Trump made him do it. So in one case, he's actually throwing Donald Trump under the bus. And in this case, he is defending Trump. So it's a whole weird dynamic that kind of feels like a little bit of a conflict of interest, if you ask me. But this is the guy who Donald Trump has chosen to defend himself here.

And this is the situation that Donald Trump now finds himself in. It's always, woe is me. I'm the victim. I am the true crime victim. Everyone's out to get me. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Well, it's kind of worse than that. I mean, he's going and giving speeches, calling Stormy Daniels a horse face and saying, horse face, no attraction, no affair. Going back

to what we talked about at the beginning of this episode, like normalcy and decency and compassion. Let's just assume for the sake of our discussion that Donald Trump was being criminally prosecuted unfairly. That's completely false. It's a very hard hypothetical for me to imagine, but just bear with me. So how does a human being act in that situation, right? When confronted with a situation where you are under a criminal investigation and you feel you are innocent. Can you think of really any examples? Like even with the mafia, mobsters, almost any criminal who goes up and starts calling the individual who's the main witness a horse face over and over again, horse face, no attraction. Okay. Now let's think that this is somebody who's running for the highest office in our country, in the world, who is saying that he did not have sex with the porn star who he paid

off because she's a horse face. And people in the Republican Party go, that is who I want to be my leader. Here, play this flashback clip from the Cult Pack convention, just so people can see I'm not putting words into his mouth. This was actually part of a speech where he wrote these words. It was a premeditated, it doesn't make, whether it's premeditated or not, he said the words, but he wrote these words before. Play the clip. To bring charges against me for now ancient, no affair story of stormy horse face Daniels, no attraction, no affair. I call it no affair where there's no crime anyway. And then his other lawyer, Alina Haba, who was just sanctioned approximately $1 million. Yeah. Alina Haba is not the one who just admitted to the Colorado bar

that she lied about everything she said in connection with the 2020 election. That's Jenna Ellis. Alina Haba may have her day before a state bar in the future, but no, Alina Haba is the one who was sanctioned $1 million for a judge that said every allegation that she brought in the lawsuit was completely and utterly frivolous and no reasonable lawyer would have brought it. This, by the way, is what Alina Haba said in the past few days about the Manhattan District Attorney's case. Play this clip. It's kind of par for the course, as you said. I'm not as panicked as the media likes to make this. We knew that they had a DA. We have another Michael Cohen special that's happening here.

And this will be the first time ever if they do go ahead and try and indict a former president. Number one, that a former president's been indicted, which is a sad day in our country. And number two, that somebody gets indicted and gets charged with being extorted, because that is actually what happened. Let's remember that she wanted payments, hush money payments, they call them. This is something that a lot of people have gone through when somebody sues them and then they settle a case. But this is somebody who creates a story, goes and tries to go to the press, gets paid by his old attorney who advised him so.

And let's not forget, there was an attorney involved here who did the payment, you know, and orchestrated it. Mr. Cohen, lovely face. Can't wait to see him in court again soon. By the way, they are terrified of Michael Cohen. Their obsession with Cohen. I'm going to ask Cohen about that on the political beatdown. I can't wait for you to bring that up tomorrow.

They are obsessed with him. And then they said, they call it, talk about his face. You know, you know on the political beatdown. They are obsessed with him. And then they said, they call it, talk about his face, you know, you know, the, the, the Michael Cohen face. And by the way, if you watch what Alina Habba goes, he goes, we knew they had a DA. What are you? Yeah. What are we talking about? Of course. That was the first point. We knew they had a DA. Yes. Yes. The Manhattan does have a- Nothing gets past you, Alina. Nothing gets past- They do have a district attorney. And then she goes, everybody goes through something like this when they get sued. What are you talking about? No, everybody does not go through that. And then

whether he had sex, which he did, 2.5 or one and a half seconds of sex or whatever you want to call it, did take place. But whether there was an affair or sex, that's not the issue. or in connection with the election and the campaigning is what takes it from a misdemeanor into a felony, which is why this case is going to be charged as a felony. And indictments are imminent. How do we know indictments are imminent? Because of the offer to allow Trump to testify before the grand jury, because Trump's defense lawyers gave their presentation, which is often the final step before an indictment takes place, and also the witnesses. Jordy wouldn't let me say this in the tweet, in a tweet. The pod is a safe place. Ben's talking about Trump's experience with Stormy Daniels. It's not like dropping food on the floor. There's no five-second rule to get out of the calling it an affair or not an affair. There's no five second rule. Like if you drop like a crumb on the floor

and want to pick it up in Trump's case, he's a hook for this. And I just love the idea that he paid all this money- Jokes always work great when you have to explain what you're talking about. He paid all this money for nothing. And actually he's the victim in all of this. This is the real- Brett, let me save you real quick. Ben, your analogy, let me help you out with this one, because you always start off really strong when you're talking about Bragg, swing for the fences, but then you just lose the baseball analogy for the rest of the segment. He's hitting for the cycle, single, double, triple, and then the big home run case all right so i think we just you know we we stick to that going forward that brag is hidden for the cycle so let's talk about though from the

grand slam to just kind of a softball interview um i think that's a good transition so fox as fox's kind of propaganda machine um they're now all in and basically endorsing DeSantis and pushing DeSantis so hard and doing all the ridiculous propaganda. It's humiliating. Honestly, this makes Russian propaganda pale in comparison to some of this stuff. It's like the version of Putin riding the horse. It's like, let's just see an average guy just chucking a softball around. Here, watch. They actually do a softball interview.

Play this clip. Time to run for president. Would you think at some time it's safe to say that that would be one of your goals? I would only do stuff if I thought there was a rationale for me to accomplish things on behalf of the people. So it's all substance driven about whether I could serve or not serve in a variety of capacities.

But I'll tell you, you know, as governor and if you're a determined executive, you know, you can make things happen. And we've done that in Florida. When can we expect the big announcement? Depends how good we do in this legislative session. That's the most cringeworthy thing I've ever seen in my life. Do you have the fake creepy smile on Maria Bartiromo? I mean, because it doesn't have real human emotions or interactions. So here, do you have this? And for the audio listener, they are talking about stuff, but it's less important what they're talking about than the faces that they're making. So I do recommend you check out the video clip of this.

Ron DeSantis and the governor is out with a new book titled The Courage to Be Free. Welcome. Hey, good morning, Maria. What is the impact of this ruling? And what were you seeing before this ruling with regard to migrants coming into Florida? Can I just say this real quick with a baseball catch for these people who pretend to be such alpha males, right? Oh, alpha this, and we got to play. He's ridiculously out of breath for just throwing a baseball head. Did you guys pick up on that? I mean, he has to stop at one point to get his point out before he could throw the ball back. mean it is just humiliating on multiple levels just a couple regular dudes just a couple regular dudes having a baseball in suits wearing full suits uh on a baseball just a couple regular normal red-blooded americans jordy and like i like this thing like you know with me everybody as he throws the softball it's all about

substance you know and to the puddin point yes he throws the softball, it's all about substance, you know? And to the Putin point, yes, the horse, but also Putin's been known to play hockey and have himself being filmed playing hockey. There are a lot of comparisons you can make to that, Ben. It might also be a subtle jab at that picture of Donald Trump catching the softball. Do you know the photo? Absolutely is. Yeah. But this is Murdoch we have the video from where desantis is asked

where he says that like the reason that he knows that people like him uh is because they make fun of him do we have that one come on locker room gets you ready for the press right because your teammates if they like you a lot they rip you all the time the way you know that people like like you is if they're making fun of you. So you really have concluded the press really likes you because they're always ripping. Yeah, it's really embarrassing. Look, let's face it. He's not ready for prime time. He's never had to really perform at a national stage. The shtick that he does where he just yells at the Florida reporters does not translate outside of that. And here's an interesting fact though, and everybody should pay attention to it. So the current law in Florida, and I hadn't realized this until earlier

in the day, and I think it was Philip Kowski who posted it, and that's where I had learned it from. But this was a fascinating fact, that in order to run for president under Florida law, you have to resign as a governor. A governor can't run for president. So the moment that you, and I look deeper into the law. So the moment he would have announced that he's running officially, he has to resign as governor. However, what he will likely do because he controls all the chambers in Florida.

So watch this happening in March. No. Him passing a law that will allow him to run for president and not give up his job as governor. Wow. I have. Rules for thee, but not for me. So get ready to play this back in the next three or four weeks when that legislation gets introduced, then I'm going to say, told you that it was just a matter of time before that legislation was introduced, Brett. Yeah. And you see him now making all these stops, which is very obvious that he at least wants to

run for president, whether he's just taking the temperature right now or trying to figure out the logistics with that issue. But DeSantis, he's heading to New Hampshire. He's been to Iowa, Nevada. He's going to all the stops that, guess what? Florida governors don't really go to unless they have bigger ambitions. But I think the guy is in for a rude awakening. I mean, all of these attempts for him to try to relate to a national audience thus far, he's just fallen completely flat on his face. Honestly, the whole thing is just really humiliating. And the fact is DeSantis doesn't really stand for anything, which is why he just uses the woke, woke, woke, woke, woke thing all the time because he's kind of has nothing else. He's also like a complete fraud who just goes whichever way the wind blows. I mean, DeSantis just a few years ago was pushing. You're going to say,

what are you talking about? But this is true. In 2018, he was pushing the Florida universities to expand the DEI programs, the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the state until he realized that that was an unpopular thing and that it's actually more popular to ban books in the state and to remove diversity initiatives and to attack them. And so that was him just a couple of years ago. He was a guy who, when he was in Congress, and by the way, you remember DeSantis in Congress, right, Jay? The point is nobody remembers DeSantis in Congress because he didn't get anything done. Nobody knows the guy in Congress. Nobody knows him as a congressman. And in fact, when he was in Congress, he was a guy who was actually urging President Obama at the time to arm Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

Now, obviously, he sees, oh, my base hates Ukraine. My base is pro-Putin. So he adapts all these pro-Putin talking points and he becomes Mr. Anti-Ukraine. This guy doesn't stand for anything. He has the charisma of paint drying. He really is unable to articulate his positions. He already is, but there's a phrase that I've heard people in Florida tell us, which is the more you get to know Ron DeSantis, the more you dislike Ron DeSantis. And he is about to experience that on a national level. And he has not faced that level of scrutiny, especially once he gets out of his safe space that he's created for him in Florida by whisking away all these journalists who dare ask him a

question. He's not going to be able to do that on the national stage. The guy is going to fall flat on his face. And look, this is an important opportunity for pro-democracy. It's an important opportunity to, again, let America know. We can't just speak to our own echo chamber, and that's not what we do here on the Midas Touch Network. We make sure that we are just letting people know too, who start looking at the DeSantis's and the Trump's, that we let them know we love our country. We love America. We love our constitution, not in a performative way, in actually doing the hard work, in doing the hard work each and every day. And finally, I just want to close with this one story, though, which is the Justice Department just made a filing in federal court

where they called out the selective editing by Tucker Carlson of the video footage handed over by Kevin McCarthy. And the Department of Justice made this filing in the Dominic Pozzola case, which is part of the Proud Boys Seditious Conspiracy Trial. It's been going on for a really long time. There's been a lot of delays in it, including there's kind of a delay now while they're fighting over potentially other confidential information or classified records that were turned over. But Pozzola, like many of these January 6th defendants, have used the Tucker release to claim that it's basically what's called a Brady violation, meaning that

the Department of Justice intentionally suppressed exculpatory information that they now see on Fox. And as a result, we're seeing this stuff on Fox now. We never got this in discovery. So the government was suppressing it from us, to which the Department of Justice says, no, you idiots, you have it. You have it. The procedures that we gave it to you are through a court-supervised way of doing it so that we could make sure we protect the Capitol Police officers. We could protect this national security. We did it the right way, not the way Kevin McCarthy did it to Tucker. But guess what? You have all those security cameras. There's nothing that we've turned over to you that is not in what Tucker Carlson played. It's the same. You have that footage. Sorry if you

didn't go through it, but you have it. And in any event, it's not exculpatory, meaning this is not something that's going to prove your innocence. It's inculpatory. It's going to prove your guilt when you look at it, because Tucker Carlson, for example, edited, like when it comes to the Jacob Chansley footage, for example, which Dominic Pozzola points out, the Department of Justice in their filing goes, yeah, Tucker played the clip from 2.56 p.m. to 3.00 p.m. Guess what he didn't play the clip from? 2.09 p.m. to 2.56 p.m., where Pozzola and Chansley engaged in a lot of horrific conduct. And then they went through what the horrific conduct was, including Pozzola attacking police officers. And so enough is enough. And the Department of Justice in this filing just presents the facts. And so enough is enough. And the Department of Justice in this filing, you know,

just presents the facts. And so I did a hot take on the Midas Touch Network. I read the filing and went through each and every one of the true facts here, because that's the problem. You know, going back to what the theme of this episode has been about, kind of normalcy and decency and compassion, but most importantly, truth. Truth. And that's why our slogan at The Midas Touch is, because truth is golden, facts matter. Facts matter. And sure, could facts be hard sometimes? Is it sometimes frustrating to have to confront reality? Is it sometimes difficult? Is it hard?

Is it harsh? But we need to have serious conversations. And those are the types of conversations we love to promote here on the Midas Touch Network, serious conversations about what the issues are. I don't try to label, whoa, potato head, this, that, no. Let's go through the facts. And ultimately, you as the viewer, whether you are progressive, liberal, independent, not affiliated with the political party, someone who used to identify as a Republican or as conservative, but doesn't think that it's

conservative to like attack the Capitol building, or some of these other views or to deny free and fair elections, like, we just want to present the facts for you. of these other views or to deny free and fair elections. We just want to present the facts for you. And at the end of the day, I want to be on the side of decency, compassion, and normalcy. Brett, I'll give you the final word and then I'll let Jordy take it out. That's why what we're doing here at the Midas Touch Network is so important. And when I say we, I don't just mean we as in the three of us, but I mean we as in everybody who listens to this podcast, everybody who watches this podcast, everybody in the pro democracy community. That's who I mean when I say we, because we are up against one of the most

sophisticated, one of the most well-funded disinformation, Russian style propaganda machines that we have ever seen ever in history. It has never existed on this level where you just have all this power, all this money, pushing just lies, just lies with no basis in fact, and big lies that are very easily provable lies, just in-your-face BS. So what's the antidote to lies? It's the truth. And we here at the Midas Touch Network are working to deliver the truth every day. And that's why it's so important that you all out there are there spreading the messages,

having these conversations with your family and friends going, okay, come on. You think the bank failed because it's a woke bank? That's what you're going to... Let me explain to you. I heard what actually happened to the bank and I actually did real research on it, not the do your own research, quote unquote, kind of research, but I actually did real research as to what actually happened to the bank and here's the actual situation. So let's agree on this set of facts and then let's figure out how are we going to prevent this in the future. Let's have that conversation. And we should all be having these conversations in our communities and just try to promote normalcy, try to promote the mainstream networks to catch up. We can't wait for anybody else to be our savior. We need to be the ones who save us.

So thank you for watching us on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. We are so, so, so grateful and humbled by all the support and by you spreading these messages. We are marching to 1 million subscribers here on YouTube, and we are marching there quickly thanks to you spreading the word. I love, love seeing that these messages are catching fire the way they are. It is so incredible to witness. Jordy, now you get the final word, unless you just want to go and sign us out.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty. The best part of waking up? Maga tears in my cup. Check out the new Maga Tears mug available now at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com.