The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump’s accountants FLIP, the GQP is MIA, and how to be an activist with Steve Pierson and Mariah Craven

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we speak with two incredible guests and hosts of the ‘How We Win’ podcast, Steve Pierson & Mariah Craven. Mariah Craven is an activist, writer and political consultant with more than 12 years of experience in organizing people to create change at the ballot box and in their communities. A believer in the power of new digital tools and effective face-to-face contact, Mariah has worked on online and offline campaigns for Kamala Harris for Senate, Karen Bass for Congress, Alex Padilla for Secretary of State, Holly J. Mitchell for Supervisor, the effort to flip the House, and many others. Steve Pierson is an activist, community organizer, and trainer, who started as a “class of 2016” volunteer. He uses his entertainment industry background to help engage citizens and support Democratic campaigns. Steve formerly worked for the grassroots organization Swing Left as Southern California Field Director and Training Manager. He is currently an elected California Democratic Party Delegate and chairs their Organizing Committee. Following this interview, the brothers dive into the truth about the Durham report, Trump’s accounting firm leaving him in the dust, and Republicans refusing to do anything about inflation! If you enjoyed today’s episode please be sure to rate, review & subscribe! As always, thank YOU for listening. Listen to the "HOW WE WIN" podcast anywhere podcasts are found or go here. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: ATHLETIC GREENS: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas MAGIC SPOON: https://magicspoon.com/meidas and use code MEIDAS WONDERY'S "AMERICAN SCANDAL": Subscribe anywhere you get podcasts or download the Wondery app for new episodes Listen to and follow “The Lost Debate” Podcast! Website: https://lostdebate.com/ Youtube: https://bit.ly/3Gs5YTF Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lost-debate/id1591300785 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lostdebate Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelostdebate 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 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And make same-day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, Ben, Brett, and Jordy fighting for democracy with you each and every day and each and every podcast episode advocating for what we need to do to win, to win for

our democracy. And that is the theme of today's podcast. We are so excited to have some of the top grassroots advocates and activists in the Democratic Party, Progressive Party, Pro-Democracy Party. That's really what we should just be calling it now. Steve Pearson and Mariah Craven will be joining the Midas Touch podcast. They are hosts of How We Win a Great Podcast. Everybody should check out. Steve Pearson actually formerly worked with a grassroots organization called Swing Left.

And Steve's a multi-hyphenate. He's a musician, was in the entertainment industry, an editor, runs events, but has been involved in grassroots activism. And he literally just started in 2016 by inviting people over to his house to talk about democracy. And then you have Mariah Craven, who's worked for Kamala Harris for Senate campaign, Karen Bass for Congress, Alex Padilla for secretary of state, among others. Not a bad resume there, Ben. Not a bad resume at all. And they will talk about how you can get involved. That is a question we always see in the chats. What can I do? Well, do something is the way you can start. Start by knocking on doors. Start by reaching out to friends and family. Start by

making sure everyone you know is registered to vote. And we have very good polling numbers that we will be talking about because Democrats and pro-democracy is appealing for the people. If we believe in it, if we keep the excitement up. But speaking about keeping the excitement up, Brett and Jordy were together on the East Coast. I've been doing depositions all day these past few days, so I'm a little out of the loop about your trip together. Are you a lawyer, Ben? Been doing some big depositions. No, we had the most phenomenal time. I'm so pumped that Brett actually came out here to Pittsburgh. We filmed some incredible content that will be coming out in a few weeks. Not going to, not going to spoil anything. Just going to do a deep tease. And Ben, man, I actually, I owe you an apology all these years when I was

asked, Hey, who's the messiest brother? Who's the grossest brother? Who's the brother that just leaves the biggest mess when they go to someone's house? I always said you, and that was part of my naivete. Like I would just our age difference. Like I just assumed that you were the messiest brother, but after living with Brett for five days in my house, man, this kid is the biggest man child ever. First off, I'm completely out of water bottles. Do you know why? Because what Brett does is he takes one water bottle from the fridge. He takes a sip, puts it down, leaves the cap off, forgets about it. And then does the same thing like 10, 20 minutes later,

he doesn't drink the full water. Okay. And partially like, I know I'm going to get blamed. Like why do I have water bottles? But I can serve. I can know not to your credit. I'm not done not to your credit. And then Brett would go back 20 minutes later, get a whole nother, I'm completely out of water bottles. It's fine. Whatever. Not a big deal, but you know what else? He doesn't consolidate. He doesn't consolidate the water from one end to another to make sure. I will clear my name shortly, but he leaves my house and he goes home. We, again, we had an amazing trip. It was so lovely. I was actually really happy. He came up, he leaves my house, complete mess. I go into the room that he was sleeping in. The bed's not made when he leaves. There are clothes everywhere. He left clothes here. He left his toothbrush here. He left his phone charger.

So you know what I had to do yesterday when he left? I had to go to FedEx or USPS and mail this stuff back to him. I mean, just remarkable, Brett. Brett, you want to clear your name? Yeah, I'd like to clear my name here. First, I don't think I ever retrieved a single water bottle for myself. This is a rough episode for our accents saying water all the time. People are going to be mocking me. I say water normal. You guys say water like the others. Anyway, I don't think I got a single water bottle for myself. I think all of them were handed to me at some point in time. So I'm going to start with that. Number two, why are you using single-use plastics, Jordy? Bad for the environment. Come on, come on, live through your values, okay? I know at my

house, I have, the reason why is I'm not used to drinking from these single-use plastics because I have a reusable water bottle that I use every single day in my home because I care about the environment. Jordy, you don't have a Brita filter. This isn't going to get flipped on me. I know it was the most annoying part about this thing too. Brett is a big coffee guy. Yes. I'm trying to assess this. Yes or no question.

Do you have a Brita filter or water filter at your house? No. Okay. Okay. So I was forced to drink these water bottles. They were all brought to me. Jordi, for some reason, is still in 2022 using single-use plastic water bottles. And not only that, of all the bottles to pick, you'd think like you'd get the Poland spring, the natural

spring water, but no. Aquafina, purified bottled water. What is up with Aquafina? That's what they sell here in Pittsburgh. That's Dasani. Why are you coming after my water choice? That's what I have here. Poor, poor choices of water. And anyway, though, it was really excellent to spend time with you, Jordy. Really great to see you. I'm so excited to share the content that we got over the week because we did some really, really, really, really cool things. And so I'll just, I'll leave it on the deep peas as that. And so, yeah, should we talk about one of the other cool Midas initiatives that we just launched this week? I'm really excited about this being that it's the episode about advocacy.

Talk about it. Talk about it. What happened at Midas University Chapman, the Chapman chapter. So as many people may know, but many people who listen to the show may not know, we have dozens of Midas University chapters across the country. These are like-minded, pro-democracy students who decided we're not going to sit on the sidelines. This democracy is too important for us. We want to get involved. And so we've worked with them. We try to cultivate content with them and try to spread messaging with them. What's so great about these universities is they could all speak to the issues of not only Gen Z, but of the issues of their communities in a way that we can't as a more nationalized group. So we get Midas University, you have Midas George Washington, you have Midas chapters all over the country. And so one of the cool things is thus far, Midas University has been very much a digital effort.

It's been about digital content, bringing your skills, basically making a bunch of mini Midas touches throughout the country at these colleges. But one of the cool things that we did this week is we launched our first on the ground Midas University effort at Chapman University. We had students running a booth outside of Chapman trying to get people involved, working with the Chapman University. We had students running a booth outside of Chapman, trying to get people involved, working with the Chapman Democrats. And we were so honored to sponsor this event. And we are hoping and we are sure that this is going to be the first of many Midas University events throughout the country. So I just want to say, if you have a college student in your family, if you have a son, a daughter, you yourself, a friend, a family member, you name it. Let us know if they want to get involved in the Midas University program, especially Jordy, who handles the Midas University stuff.

Reach out to him because we want to get into states that are crucial to this election. Chapman was a good start, nice and close to home to us in the Orange County area, which is a recently turned Democratic area that we have to hold on to. But I'd love to get to University of Arizona. I'd love to get to. But I'd love to get to University of Arizona. I'd love to get to Georgia. I'd love to get to all these important swing states as well. So please, if you want to get involved, this is an episode that's focus is about advocacy and activism. This is one way that you could step up and do just that.

There's the notorious B.I.G. song, the 10 crack commandments, you know, that that of course never get never get high off your own supply you know in the and the other rules that are listed there we should basically come up with the 10 like being an activist commandments though and my friend transition i mean he's a master at transitions. Really impressive. My idea of the never get high off of your own supply is pro-democracy activists out there. Just do you and build coalitions and work with others to help and support and uplift other activists who want to fight for democracy. This isn't a point where you should be territorial. This isn't a point where you should try to tear down other activists. And I

see it time and time in the space. You know, I even see, you know, look, there are a ton of some of the wackiest conspiracies about Midas Touch and about us controlling all of the media and running cabals. But every now and then people who are supposed to be, you know, who purport to be progressive type people are like, this is bots and there are bots everywhere. And it's a bot farm. You know, it's like, these are real people. Okay. Because you don't do the research, because you are a lazy mother effer, you, for real, that, you know, there is a ton of work that is going into all of these events on the ground, significant efforts to make sure we're not overstepping on other activists and making sure we work with

other activists. And the other quick example is when we did all of the work we did in Georgia, we reached out to all of the community groups there, or as many of them as we could reach out to who take our call, you know, including Stacey Abrams group. And we said, what can we do to be helpful? Our goal is not to step into spaces and to just do things for the sake of doing it. And so we found our own lane. And so the number one thing you can do is, look, we need to truly be well-researched as Democrats. We need to truly know the facts, not just do the quote-unquote research that the right-wing

fascist authoritarians do when they don't do shit. We are better than that. And we need to uplift each other and stop tearing each other down because the polling, we're getting excitement. People want to vote for Democrats. I'll tell you why. Let me give you the answer. Give us the answer. Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gates, Donald Trump. These people are the face of the Republican Party. The January 6th insurrection, fucking green M&Ms, Mr. Potato Head, siding with the Russians and siding with Putin, attacking law enforcement, literally killing police officers and fucking celebrating it. Do you see Howley? Do you see Howley? He's selling a mug of himself during the insurrection. Do you see what Melania Trump is doing? Melania Trump and the Trump family, they're selling NFTs of the United States government. They're attacking law enforcement. They're attacking the FBI, attacking the CIA, attacking

judges. And guess what voters are saying? Who is this psychotic, whiny group of infantile people who are going to destroy this country? That's what they see because it's there. And Democrats are a serious party. So we look at the generic Reuters Ipsos poll. Democrats, 42 percent plus eight Republicans, 34 percent and a big sample size here. Not one of these 300 people, 400 people, a huge sample size. What do you think, Brent? I think it's great news. And I think, as we always say on the show, polls, you know, I wouldn't put too much stock in any poll, but I think trends are an indicator.

And as we've noted over the past few weeks, the trends keep heading in the Democrats' direction. So these are all very good signs. And I want to show you these polls to know that there is hope, that there is a shot and a good shot that we win in the midterms. And got to be realistic about things, but you got to have a winner's attitude and you need to try to attract people to your winner's attitude to get people on your team. And so I was very excited when I saw the Reuters poll this morning that came out. And I think it's a good sign for Democrats. Ben, you mentioned that Melania is right now coming up with NFTs of White House archives to sell off and the people who buy them don't even

know what they're buying until they get them. I don't know. I don't even recommend you read this crazy letter from Melania this morning. But you see just the desperation of the Trumps right now. And it's probably because, I don't know, they're out of money. They need money. Or is it because their accountants left them high and dry over the last few days? Ben, tell us about the Mazar situation, because this to me seems like a BFD for the Trump family, for the Trump organization and for justice in the United States. Before we get into that, I just want to say you guys jacked me up to start this pod. There's some good energy right now. All right, Ben, go ahead. No, there's luck.

People like the Midas Touch podcast because there's good energy. OK, the people who hate Midas Touch and the Midas Touch podcast, they hate it because there's good energy. What you learn when you go into this right wing echo chamber. Here's what I know. We're talking about love on this podcast. We're talking about what we can do to uplift this country. We're talking about how we support the United States military. We're talking about how we support our allies and how we fight for our democracy. You step in to that right wing echo chamber, boy, I'll tell you, they're talking about some of the darkest, wackiest, QAnon-ish. I mean, there's no separate, you know, there's separation between church and state. There's no separation between Republican and

QAnonism. Maybe at the end of the day, that's why they don't want there to be a separation of church and state so they could fully integrate with this QAnon shamanism. Majority's holding a bumper sticker, vote blue over Q. But I'll just tell you how hateful, how vile and just disgusting it is to step into that echo chamber. Makes me want to puke. But I'll go into Brett, the Mazers USC, Trump's accounting firm. They've cut ties with Trump, or at least it's been announced in the past week that they've cut ties. This was in a court filing by Tish James in the current civil action that's being pursued by the New York Attorney General's Office against the Trump organization. Recall there is the civil

action going on into Trump organizations, inflating material misrepresentations of valuations for the organization. In essence, it's fraud. Recall there is a criminal investigation, a grand jury impaneled within the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. And ooh, at Midas Touch, we have the Manhattan DA's number two. We have Cy Vance's number two. Karen Friedman Agnifola hosts the Wednesday editions of Midas Touch Legal AF. Just think about that. Literally, the person who was in charge of this is with Midas Touch. Yeah, I want to say this.

I saw one of the comments because Popak and KFA did an incredible breakdown on last night's Legal AF about this very issue. And if you want a deep, deep dive on this, please watch that. But Popak did a funny thing at the end of the episode where he said, because KFA can't really speak about this stuff, where he goes, KFA, if I veer off or if you disagree with me at any point, you're holding up a red mug. Just lift the red mug up if I'm off base in any way. That was Popak's way of handling it. And so Popak went on and he explained how devastating Trump's accounting firm leaving him was for the Trump organization and for the Trump family.

And I will say, not once did I see that mug raise up in the air. And I saw, you know, there was like a, I saw like a Facebook comment on the stream for the video. Someone was like, oh, you guys don't know anything. What do you think? You guys think you have some special knowledge of the Trump case and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I was like, yeah, we do actually. Yes, we do. But no, this is, this is a big issue. And of course, Trump can't keep quiet about any of this. I mean, this is, I got to explain what I haven't really explained. So they so they resigned. The letter of their resignation that they sent to the Trump organization came out in a filing and they say, we write to advise. This is the Mazers, his his financial company, his his auditors, basically his accountants. They write,

quote, We write to advise that the statements of financial condition for Donald J. Trump for the years ending in June 30th, 2011 to June 30th, 2022, should no longer be relied upon. And you should inform any recipients thereof who are currently relying upon one or more of those documents that those documents should not be relied upon. We have come to this conclusion based in part upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18th, 2022, our own investigation and information received from internal and external sources said the letter, while we have not concluded that the various financial statements as a whole contain material discrepancies based upon the totality

of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate. I like that they say, well, we have not concluded that those various financial statements, quote, as a whole contain material discrepancy. So I just want to parse that though for the non-legal reader, because a lawyer wrote that obviously. Yeah, yeah. What does that mean? What is it in layman's terms? The shit that we did is probably accurate. The shit that you told us is probably not accurate. They're covering their, it's very subtle, but what they're doing there is they're saying, we're good, but you're in deep shit. Are they basically saying like, hey, we're going off the information that was

provided to us? Is that their kind of argument? Yes. And what they're doing is they're saying, well, we've concluded again. That's what that is. It's a subtle comma, which is why language matters. Gotta love that Oxford comma, Benji. They're just saying, well, we have not concluded that the various financial statements as a whole contain material discrepancies based upon the totality of circumstances. We believe our advice to you no longer. The totality of circumstance is you, Donald Trump, mother effer, like you gave us the incorrect. See, I'm not cursing though. I'm avoiding the cursing. You gave us this false information. So that's the totality, but we did our job is what they're actually saying in that paragraph. And then Donald Trump, of course, released a statement very soon.

Hillary Clinton controlled D.A. NFTs. We're not even getting into that. It wasn't a statement. It was it was a five page manifesto. Five page manifesto. Yeah, like a serial killer does. And the statement, of course, contradicts every argument his lawyers were making to protect him this entire time because the guy can't keep his mouth shut. And his mouthpiece, Liz Harrington, who for some reason is allowed to just be Trump's

conduit on Twitter, posted the statement. And it began by saying this, and I quote, we have a great company with fantastic assets that are unique and extremely valuable, and in many cases, far more valuable than what we list in our financial statements. It's like, yes, that's what's being investigated. The fact that you do different valuations for different situations. So once again, admitting to the crime, the New York Times went on to note, they said in a rambling emailed message, Mr. Trump referred to a June 30th, 2014 statement of financial condition prepared by the accounting for Mazars USA showing that the year before his first presidential run, his net worth

had been $5.8 billion. But that's not what he said back then. When he declared his candidacy in 2015, he produced what he called his summary of net worth as of June 30th, 2014, with a very different number, $8.7 billion. So about $3 billion higher than what was released in his emailed statement the other day. A month later, he upped the ante, releasing a statement pronouncing that his net worth is in excess of $10 billion. So as you're seeing, a lot of discrepancies here. And at the end of the day, Donald Trump has the right to remain silent, but fortunately for us and for the law, he lacks the ability. Nice. So brothers, though, I'm sure we have listeners and viewers right now who are thinking to themselves, so what?

This guy has admitted to his crimes before just blatantly and nothing has happened yet. So I ask you guys, so what? What's going to happen next? Well, Trump's company is going to be bankrupt. They're not going to be able to get loans. No one's going to give money to him. No legitimate company or no legitimate source of income is going to come to him. His whole, I mean, his whole operation is fucked.

And I think as, you know, as Popak was saying yesterday, this is going to fall on the people who are listed as being responsible for these statements, who in many cases are the kids, Eric Trump, Don Jr. and Ivanka. Yeah. And so here's the thing. So Trump now has three new sources of income, right? Number one is the SPAC, the special purpose acquisition company, which is a shell company that merged into a shell company. Normally it's supposed to be like a shell holding company

that merges into an actual company, but this truth social thing, Trump had to post his truth social post on Twitter via his son to show what truth social is. Number two, we talked about it today, is the NFTs. And they're literally selling NFTs of American landmarks. And they're not even going to tell you which one it is. They had such success, Ben, with the first one where Melania Trump apparently bought her own NFT. So you can't blame them for now selling a bunch more. Yeah. The first NFTs were very unsuccessful when Melania Trump tried to sell Melania Trump stuff. So now they go back to the kind of typical Trump grift, which is selling pieces of the American flag, basically. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. That's like some American history to his base. Yeah. So so that's number literally number two. And then number three is Trump's pretending that he's running in 2024 or maybe is going to run,

but he's not going to announce it so he can raise all this money off of these kind of bullshit Ponzi schemish style emails. A 10,000% match in one hour if you donate $100 to the Donald Trump Political Action Committee. I mean, it's real just like. And that's honestly probably where he's making his largest source of income right now. Friend, you will be invited to Mar-a-Lago tomorrow if you donate. I mean, literally. And the people pay for it. But look, going back to what we said before with that Reuters poll, that's why there is 43, 44% of people who support Democrats. There is 33% who loves this stuff, who's like really into like letting Trump steal their money.

They like want it's it's it's like Trump. Come take my money. Con me. You know, and they love it. Here's the fact, Ben, like at the end of the day, the more Trump is out there doing this stuff, the worse for the Republican Party. I mean, straight up, because he's he's toxic. He's toxic. McConnell knows that Mitch McConnell knows that

for certain. And that's why you see Mitch McConnell consistently trying to get him to shut up and to back away from the Republican Party. So the more Trump is out there, the more obnoxious for the world and the more painful for the world. But the better it is for us, actually, because voters are repulsed by him. You saw Brett the Quinnipiac, Paul, right? 72% of Americans, 52% of Republicans agree with Mike Pence that he had no right to overturn the 2020 election. Just 17% of Americans disagree. I mean, that's that number.

Now, the 33 number is now at 17. Now, that's that. I thought people asked about the January 6th, right? When people ask, oh, the January 6th, oh, it's taking a long time. Just think about that though. Where we're at now is, if you looked at that poll before, 33% Americans, now it's 17% of Americans. This is a testament. And we haven't even done the public hearings yet. I mean, just wait as this year goes on, as the economy continues to come through with these blockbuster numbers, I mean, the economy is on a macro level is doing incredible as COVID continues to come down, as measures begin to get lifted and you see these mandates start going away because the numbers are

lower and lower, as you see inflation begin to taper off, or at least you see the Republicans inept and unable to deal with the inflation problem. I mean, if they want to talk about inflation, then you kind of need like, oh, and this is how I am going to solve it. But at every step of the way, you actually see Republicans literally running away from the inflation issue and running away from the things that help it. It's not just inept and unable to do it, Brett. They refuse to help the situation, flat out refuse. Because they actually like it. They like it. They're upset that the economy is doing well. They are upset that President Biden is actually accomplishing a lot. That's why they want war between Russia and Ukraine. They want chaos at the Canadian border. They want inflation to skyrocket because they want to take down Biden by any means necessary. And they're just literally supporting another version of an insurrection, this time an economic

insurrection. Yeah, they tried to export the insurrection to Canada. And, you know, like you saw Tucker the other day, he goes, beware of Canada style tyranny coming to the United States. Like, does anybody go Canada? Yeah, Canada, the nation of tyranny and authoritarianism. I am scared of Canada. And this is the same guy.

These are the same people who look at Russia, who look at Hungary as the beacon of freedom. And they are calling Canada the epicenter of fascism and authoritarianism. It doesn't pass the smell test for anybody with half a brain. And I'm going to say maybe 20% of the country doesn't really have half a brain right now, But most Americans do look at that and they go, Canada, really? Are you out of your mind? But Brett, can you go back to the inflation situation really quickly? Because then something really interesting, for lack of a better word, just happened. Well, Jody, you're referring to the fact that, or what didn't happen, that Democrats are actually there trying to nominate the Federal Reserve nominees. And Brett, where were the Republicans?

They don't show up no more? Bring up the photo, man. The photo is stark. And it's- They don't show up. Republicans don't show up no more. That's their thing? That's the thing.

You have Kevin McCarthy running away from questions about January 6th. They don't debate. They don't answer questions. They don't show up to help the country when it's in need. Yeah, Ben, they didn't show up because the whole thing was they can't do business if there's not a quorum, if there are not enough people there. So they don't show up so that nothing could get done. So there really are, let's be real, there are very few things the federal government can really do to ease inflation.

Inflation is a global issue. There's no monetary policy that's really happening right now that's driving up inflation. It's something that's happening across the world because the economies across the world are in recovery after all the economies were basically shut down and after there was a depression across the world because of COVID and the mishandling of COVID. So now we're seeing the results of that. And we're also seeing corporate greed at record levels. We're seeing companies making record profits. And they're admitting it in their phone calls with investors. They are saying things like, yeah, we just need to test and see how much our customers are willing to spend. We're just trying to find that ceiling as we increase our prices. They're making record profits, all these companies.

And they're just flat out admitting, yeah, we're going to just keep raising prices because we're just going to figure out like, yeah, just how much the customers could handle until they start getting upset. So this is a corporate greed problem. And the inflation problem is a global problem. And the one way to ease inflationary concerns is through the Fed. It's like the one lever that the government can pull, changing the money supply in order to help this issue. And so, of course, when Democrats wanted to get together to nominate people to the Federal Reserve, Republicans decided not to show up. And I think we need to use this image a lot, actually, in advertising. I think we need to use this moment a lot in a lot of our messaging going forward, that

Republicans, when asked to help the inflation problem, they decided not even to show up. While Democrats are working to lower costs for Americans, Republicans are AWOL. And that's exactly what Jen Psaki said. And I thought there was a moment with Senator Jon Tester from Montana that was especially powerful when he was talking about Republicans boycotting the vote. And let's just listen to what Jon Tester had to say, because I think it was a powerful moment. I hear on the floor every day, Republicans get up and talk about inflation. And by the way, inflation is very important and we need to get our arms around it. But what group is out there to deal with market forces any better than the Fed? There is none.

Yet they don't show up to vote. I think we should have the vote today regardless, just to prove to the constituents of these folks' estates that they're not showing up. They're not showing up to do their constitutional duty that they were elected to do. You know, and Brett, if you pronounced coup, pronounced coo, coo. It could be no show pro coo for Republicans. But I like no, I like no show. I mean, they're just no show. They're missing in action. MIA. How about that? MIA Republican. MIA GQP. Yeah. MIA GQP. I like that. Missing in action. When the country needs real leaders, the Republicans are missing in action. And Brett, when you talked about the Republicans conduct not passing the smell test, I tried to interrupt you because it was a perfect segue into something that

totally passes the smell test. And you know what I'm talking about, right? I'm talking about our partner, Athletic Greens. This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. You know, Athletic Greens has completely revolutionized the last year for me. I mean, 2022, that is, since we've started promoting Athletic Greens. I use it every day. If you don't believe me, you can literally look at videos of me before I started taking Athletic Greens. Look at the podcast videos from like six months ago. And then look at the podcast videos right now. And Ben is a completely different person. There's a complete actually night and day, you know, look and feel about how I feel since I've had started taking athletic greens because before athletic greens, I tried, I tried to do vitamins and gummies. I put all these things together. The equivalent of Brett,

like leaving all the water bottles all over the place was me leaving all my vitamins and things all over the place. I thought I was good, but I wasn't getting the energy I need. Then boom, I found Athletic Greens. And all I do with Athletic Greens in there, AG1 is I take that powder out of the container.

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up on a complicated supplement routine to recover. And this was costing him a hundred dollars a day. That's why we switched to athletic green. So right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into flu and cold seasons. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it. No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five

free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athletic greens.com slash Midas. Again, that is athletic greens.com slash Midas to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. And Jordy, I did that athletic greens read knowing that you were about to do a great Wondery read that everybody loves. So I had to like, just bring my game. Now bring your game, little my cellist. Oh, is that my new nickname? Little myself, even though I'm the tallest one. All right. No problem. Hey, Wondery American Scandal. Listen up, everybody. Imagine you're a chemist that tests drugs seized from criminals.

Everyone was impressed with how fast you run tests, but you're increasingly stretched thin. So you make a decision. You're going to start marking down results without actually running any tests. From Wondery, American Scandal is a weekly podcast that breaks down a notorious event that rocked America. And their latest season looks at the case of Annie Dukan, a Massachusetts chemist who caused an uproar by falsifying drug tests, throwing more than 21,000 criminal drug charges into question.

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and the intensity of it. It's amazing. Listen to The American Scandal, Fraud in a Drug Lab on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can listen one week early and ad-free by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app. That's Wondry Plus in the Wondry app. Check this out ASAP.

That's a great ad read, Jordy. And the theme of our pod today is activism. And before we bring in our guests, I think I want to share an activism story about me. And many of you probably know the story or maybe you don't, but I was on the sidelines. I mean, I shouldn't say that, actually. Let me rewind. In my own way, I was doing activism. I was doing activism as a civil rights lawyer. And the work that I was doing, though, wasn't political per se. But when I started meeting the families out in Bakersfield and Fresno who had lost loved ones as a result of police shootings out there. There was a lot of problems out there. A lot of the investigations that we ended up doing

actually led to a number of police officers being criminally prosecuted. And look, I think, you know, one of the experiences I've had through being a civil rights lawyer is actually having a great deal of respect for a lot of law enforcement out there and the hard work and brave work that they do. I also have experience, though, that good law enforcement doesn't like bad law enforcement and that there was bad law enforcement out in Bakersfield at that time. Not all of it, but there was a small pocket that was permeating the culture that they had to address. And we did rallies and protests on the street to bring attention to what was going on there. Eventually, because of the work we had

done there, the Department of Justice took notice. They conducted an investigation. The governor, California, Gavin Newsom, took notice. Laws and legislation were passed about police shooting, about excessive force and when lethal force can be used in certain circumstances. And families who are living in Bakersfield were thrust into this, were able to make a difference and literally change the laws. And then you kind of put that into the broader sense though now of politics, of what's going on in the world, what's going on in our country. And what we did, Brett, you, me, we knew we just wanted to touch five people, maybe 20 people with our messaging, 100 people.

And then to affect millions and millions of people with the unique talents that we brought together, you listening, you have the ability to do that with your talents. And it could be whatever your talents are, right? Maybe it's cooking. Maybe your talent is knitting. Maybe your talent is drawing. Maybe your talent is music. Maybe it's building homes. Maybe it's carpentry. Maybe your talent is designing clothes. Maybe your talent is public relations. Maybe your talent is technology, building websites. I could go on and list every type of thing out there,

but the point is you have the ability to make a difference. Think about chefs who are providing food for people who are canvassing and there's anything that you can do, do it. And please start today, do it. And please start today, start today. You know, these echo chambers of chaos, of anarchy, they consolidate, they consolidate and they seem way bigger than they are, but the world is far more normal and pro-democracy, but you have to have to fight for it. So let's bring in these two

incredible advocates who have a great podcast, Steve Pearson and Mariah Craven, hosts of How We Win. Let's bring in the interview we've previously recorded with them. So excited to be joined by the hosts of one of my favorite podcasts, How We Win, Steve Pearson and Mariah Craven. Welcome to the podcast, both of you. Thank you. Am I supposed to be? There we go. See, the punches bring the energy. We like to do that on the show as we all fight for democracy. It's contagious. Jordy gets you pumped. Let me just give, let me try to do some of your background justice. You're both such multi-hyphenated people, have worked on so many incredible pains that I'd probably spend 10 minutes doing both of your bios, but Steve formerly worked for the grassroots organization Swing Left as the Southern

California field director and training manager. He's currently an elected California Democratic Party delegate and chairs their organizing committee. And Mariah, you worked at Kamala Harris for Senate. You worked for Karen Bass for Congress, Alex Padilla for Secretary of State. Some winners there, which I like too, who have major prominent positions, which I like. But welcome both to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having us. We're thrilled to be here with you guys. Let's talk about activism in general, though, and just kind of rolling up your sleeves and getting involved. People know our story about we just weren't political people. We saw what

was going on and we said, let's just start speaking out. Let's tell people how we feel. And it grew into this movement. But I want to hear from you first, Steve, and then you, Mariah, like the importance of activism out there and for our viewers and listeners like who think, well, can I get involved? Can I make a big difference? Like, can they tell us about your activism journey and what people can glean from it? That's my absolute favorite question. So thanks for leading off with that. And it's one of the reasons why I love your all stories so much is like you said, you came from outside of politics and jumped in to do something. I think what most people don't realize is the impact that they really do have.

And that's something that I didn't understand. I came from a sort of political family. My father was counsel to President Johnson. I grew up in Washington, D.C. around a lot of politicians. But I decided not to go that route. I came out to Los Angeles to have a career in the entertainment business. And I'd volunteered, kind of done some light volunteering, some phone banking and stuff like that before. But I'd never gotten like really involved until, of course, 2016. I consider myself class of 2016. when I started just saying yes to some opportunities to be of service, to do this

work of a citizen, is that there's so much opportunity for work to be done. And you really do make a big impact because, you know, I mean, you think that there's all these people doing this work, but there's tons of stuff that needs to be done. And I started organizing with just like little house parties and those got huge. And all of a sudden I was coordinating swing left groups around Southern California just by default because okay, yeah, I'll do that. We need to do something. It just snowballed. And I just had found this great opportunity to have impact. Not only was it powerful because we had such an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and anxiety and anguish in the aftermath of Trump's election. And I found that getting out of myself and doing this work was a great relief for that. We on the podcast say that action is the antidote to

anxiety, right? And it really is. When you get involved, it's great for your mental health. But we're like ripples on a pond. And at a very simple level, if you're... And I'm glad we get to go start knocking on doors again in this campaign, I hope. But if you do something like knock on a door, you don't always get to see the impact of the actions that you have. When you're phone banking or knocking on doors, it may seem like a busted opportunity. You might knock on a door and someone says, I'm not interested. You hand them a handout and they close the door on you. But they might go into their house and throw that down on the kitchen table and someone else in there sees it and says, what was that? Who was that? Oh, someone talking about the midterms.

And like, oh yeah, the midterms are really important. You don't get to see what happens after you reach out, but we all have a really big impact, no matter how tight your circle is or now in, in your all's case, the, the Midas Mighty's is massive and, and you, you found a huge, huge circle, but we all have a big impact. Mariah, if you could share your story as well, and what messages do you have for activists out there? Sure. I would, to answer your question, do people make a difference? Absolutely. I fell into political campaign work because I needed a job. I was living in this apartment in New York and I didn't have a job and the window was broken. And I was like, I got to get out of here before it gets cold

because the landlady wasn't fixing the window. So I got a job on a political campaign and I loved it. And it was the volunteers. It was a mayoral race. It was a very long shot candidate. We had these volunteers that would come in to the storage unit that we were using as an office and get campaign signs and like put them up in the bodegas in their neighborhood and march in parades with us. And I was like,

oh, I need to be with these people. But I also need to get paid to do this work. So I would go to campaigns all over the country and just run into these incredible volunteers. And then like Steve said, 2016 happened and we were suddenly flooded with volunteers. And I was working with Congress member Karen Bass at the time who had this leadership pack that was focused on flipping house seats from red to blue. And we suddenly had all these people at our disposal. Moms who would get other moms. Definitely not disposable people. They were not disposable people. Moms who would get other moms in the neighborhood to come to meetings and get ready to knock on doors. Before I met Steve, I saw pictures of this house party that he had on social media.

And I didn't know Steve. And then all of a sudden, we're in the same circles, knocking on doors in random communities across Southern California and just building this big, beautiful community. So I am so appreciative of the class of 2016. And for everyone out there, if you've been sitting on the fence, wondering if there's something to do that would make a difference, the answer is yes. You do have to find it. And that takes a little bit of work, but your people and your activity, they're out there. They're waiting for you. So let's talk about from the class of 2016 now to the class of 2022. A lot of new activists, whether they're Midas Mighty, whether they're becoming Midas Mighty, whether they're

just, you know, progressive, liberal, you know, and even to me, those labels aren't even the right labels anymore. Pro-democracy, people who really support what this country is all about seems a more apt label at this point versus a radical right extremist group that's loud but small and wants to destroy the country and projects and all these horrible things. It's one. It's a new thing with them all the time. This past week, it was they were railing against the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Last week, it was M&M's. But what can we tell? It really hurt Charlie Kirk's feelings. He didn't like that one. Last week it was M&M's. This week, then it was M&M.

This is an M&M. That's right. So to the new class of 22, though, what do we tell people who are hearing, oh, in the midterms, the party that is represented in the White House, they always don't win and gerrymandering. Like, do you think, Steve, we'll start with you.

You know, do Democrats, can Democrats bring this home? Can we keep the House? Can we keep the Senate? And what do people need to do when they say, just tell me how, what could I do in 2022? Yeah, we definitely can is the short answer to that. And I really strongly dislike the ongoing narrative about historical precedent when it comes to midterm elections and incumbent parties,

because we are in truly unprecedented times right now. We have never seen times like this. And so when we talk about the midterms and the work we have to do, it's kind of twofold. It goes back to exactly the kind of conversations we were having back in 2018 in the midterms there. First of all, there's a lot of people who don't understand what the midterms are still and that focus on presidential year elections. So there's a lot of outreach we can do to make sure people understand how important the midterms are. And then also, it's not just enough to vote. We really need people to volunteer because we have so much to overcome with the voter suppression and the gerrymandering and the courts, the Supreme Court.

You know, like the recent Alabama decisions illustrates that very well. We have a lot to overcome. So it's going to take all of us, not just voting, but getting our friends and our neighbors and our family members involved. Can we do it? Absolutely. We can. We came off of a 2020 in the throes of a global pandemic when we had to throw all of our organizing that we knew how to do the door knocking and all that out the window. And we faced still voter suppression, huge hour

long lines, and people stood in those lines to vote. And we had the largest turnout in history for a presidential election. And so I think that when we have these conversations, like you said, the loud minority, these MAGA fascists who are making the most noise and who truly are a minority in our country, it's kind of a shiny thing to get distracted by that and try to counter those messages and look at like where the swing voters or who are the people that we can kind of bring over to our side when really what we need to be doing is supporting the people who brought us here, which is voters of color, young voters, new voters who were voting in 2018 and 2020 for the first time and keep supporting them, supporting the organizations on the ground who are supporting them and double down on our investment in those voters and other young voters, new voters in the next election. That's how we win. It's also the name of the podcast. Brian, can we win in 2022? We can win in 2022 up and down the ballot. I mean, I think as you were saying, this is not about, no longer about Democrats versus you ever anymore. This is about, like there's a party of people, group of people that have openly tried to overturn an election. And so we have no idea how voters are going to react to that. Hopefully they'll be pissed off as they should be. Those

were their votes. Someone tried to take them away. So what are we going to do now? We don't have any choice but to buckle down and vote and do the work. And the other piece that I'm sure Steve is tired of hearing me say on how we win is that there's more on the ballot than House and Senate. There are down ballot races that are super important, no matter whether a state that you live in is red or blue. There are, my gosh, these attorney general races around the country. Super important. These are the frontline folks defending our elections. The Republicans are quietly going after these seats. So there is a lot to work on and a lot to vote for coming up in November and before, because you got to vote in the primary as well. For the record, I never get tired of Mariah talking about down ballot races.

Well, Mariah, Steve mentioned before that, you know, this past election cycle, it was a lot harder for us to have those in-person interactions with voters. And I think you were really ahead of the curve on this. You were a trailblazer in the digital space. You have always thought that digital was a powerful way to reach voters. And I know you did a lot of digital work for the campaigns in which you worked with. How do you think that digital activism has progressed over these past few years? What do you think of the impact of digital in activism today? Oh, it's so explosive. It's a really exciting time to be involved in this space because now we're starting to talk like voter contact. We know as campaigns what works. Voter contact is your bread and butter, and that happens at the doors and on the phones. But I think we've also seen there is, and you all have given us the perfect examples

of what happens when you're able to capture people's attentions digitally. And then the trick is, what do we do with that? And how do we make sure that people aren't watching a video and getting angry and preaching to the choir, but they're also talking to people who can be persuaded and then they're following through and actually voting. And that's where the work is happening right now. I think there's been some kind of earthquake, earth shattering moments with changes at Facebook and changes with the Twitter algorithm and that sort of thing. So there is a lot to figure out right now. But it's also democratizing voter outreach because now if you can get the right information

and the right tools into the hands of how we win listeners or the mightest mighty, they can spread that further and wider than most campaigns have the capacity to do. And how so? We don't need to do a deep dive on the algorithm changes and things like that, but how have those things shifted in the past few weeks, months, years that we need to be aware of, which says, you know, digital creators? I think a big thing, I think the first real seismic shift recently was Facebook preventing electeds or politicians from running ads. That had a tremendous impact internally. You saw way fewer ads in the last election cycle, which it limited the amount of misinformation that was getting to people. So that's the upside.

But it also meant that we weren't exposed to candidates that might have been really helpful to us. And, you know, I guess the dark and dirty secret about Facebook is if you're not running ads, then it impacts your organic reach as well. So if you're not paying to get exposed to people, you're seeing less exposure even on the unpaid posts. And that's something that the average Facebook user may not be aware of. Facebook rewards users that spend money. So keep that in mind. Go figure. What a delightful company. Meta, I guess. Meta rewards, yeah.

Steve, we share a history a little bit in that we both worked for the entertainment industry before we got into activism. I was curious, how does your history working in the entertainment industry, how does it inform your activism? That's a fun question. Like you said, we're both a lot of hyphenates and my career over the years has moved into some different areas. I'll say honestly, like I came from entertainment, also the music business. Uh, I played in bands a lot. I was a front man of a couple of bands. And, um, and also I'm going to throw this out there. I was a spin

instructor for 10 years. Right. So I've got the serious political credentials of a former blues musician and spin instructor uh you have let me ask you this critical oh no i know exactly uh you just opened up the floodgates steve i can't even believe this okay do you have a peloton is this about is this i was gonna say is this about peloton i have the peloton app i do not have an actual peloton bike me and you both steve i do the do the app also on a fake Peloton bike. I have a Schwinn bike that I use like a Peloton with my Peloton. How did you finish your answer? It's okay. But so, like I said, I took a twisty turn and also I'm a sound engineer and I've owned a sound studio. So that's how the podcasting thing was very organic

for me because I have a background there. But as someone who's used to being on a stage and used to being in front of people and performing, and also a coach, someone who's used to trying to inspire people to go beyond what they think they're capable of and step up in moments that seem difficult. I took that training and found, this sounds silly and I've never really talked about this, but just really organically when I started leading those first meetings and found myself in front of hundreds of people on a stage talking about activism and talking about what it takes to step up and be a volunteer. I was using a lot of the same language that I used as a spin instructor, frankly. Like, what do you want?

What are you willing to do to get it? Like, you know, this is your time. This is the time to step up. And you are strong. You can do it. I mean, you know, I'm not as good as the Peloton Instagrammers, but that was what kind of prepared me. And I didn't really even realize it was happening at the time, but, you know, not everyone is comfortable being up in front of people and giving a pitch or

trying to galvanize action. And I just found myself in a really comfortable space doing that. I have also seen a powerful elected official in Los Angeles gasp with delight at seeing Steve because she recognized him as her spin instructor. That is incredible. So Steve is downplaying it a little bit. He is. He's very popular. That was at the Women's March. We were interviewing a bunch of people backstage at the Women's March in Los Angeles a few years ago, pre-pandemic, including Seal, by the way, which was a random, cool interview. And Nuri Martinez, who's the president of the LA City Council, or the chairwoman of the LA City Council. It was a spin student of mine. Yes.

Steve, that is epic. And I need you to do me a favor. I need you to race Ben because Ben beat me in a race and he won't stop talking about it. So I need you to race him and beat him so we could have bragging rights over Ben again. Would you do that for me?

Well, yeah, let's do it. Let's make an event out do it. Let's make an event out of it. Let's do a spin fundraiser for the midterms. All right. Yeah. And get some more people involved too. Ben looks very confident right now. I think he's scared. He definitely didn't see where I was going to go with that one. I practice. I'm up at like 6 a.m. every morning, 5.30 a.m. No, it's going to be a tough one to beat me on that one. Ooh. Wow.

He was an instructor. All right, confident. You've had Peloton for what, like a couple of months now? Let's go. Yeah, that's good. All right. All right, Rook. We'll see how you do.

Steve, Steve, Steve. Let's go. I'll have to do an inspection of your calibration before to make sure. All right. All right. Bringing us back on Steve and Mariah. One of the things that we often get knocked on that people don't know us like to just be mad at us for is that we preach to the choir. One, it's not true. But our theory too is you have to preach to the choir because when our choir sings loud, louder than their choir, more people turn out to vote. Who do you think we should be targeting in this polarized environment? Should we be focused on firing up the base, getting non-voters

to the polls, converting MAGAs? Where do you sit on this? This is a great question. And when we were talking about the class of 2016, I butted heads a lot with people who were, I think, and they're still butting heads with me about this, who are new to all of this. And they were like, if we just go knock on the doors of Trump supporters and explain things to them, then they'll come this way. And I think that I appreciated that optimism. And I think that if ever it was possible to do that, we're at that place, but you do have to turn out your base and you have to make sure that they are taken care of. And these are the folks who are going to evangelize for you. And I'm a big strategy person and a numbers person.

We want to be talking to the people we can get out and we want to be saying the right things to them. And so sometimes your gut will lead you in the right direction on that. And sometimes it won't. I am not our audience because I'm already like, don't spend the money. Don't spend the time talking to me. I'm in Los Angeles up in Simi Valley, which is a big Republican area. effective in gay marriage, for common sense gun reform and gun law reform, but it hasn't really been applied on electoral politics in a meaningful way. So this study was going out and talking to Republicans, not so much about issues, but about values that they cared about, and then finding a common story that you shared with them, then seeing, you know, if you could find that common ground and move them at all. And what we found from those studies was like, they were like, yeah, you're not so bad. And oh, you're not so bad either. And, you know, like people got got along okay but there was zero movement on their votes there was just no movement and um you know like mariah said uh it's it's really like when we look at the chasm that uh is in our country right now it's a compelling desire to want to heal all those divisions and to try to bring us together.

And I can relate to that because we are a deeply wounded country and it comes from the original wound of racism in our country. And it's rearing up in a very dangerous way right now that threatens our very democracy. So of course, we want to find a way to bring people together. But also, as Mariah said, strategically, when we're looking at who is going to show up and vote for us in what is now the most important election of our lives, once again, these midterms, it's going to be like I said before, it's going to be our voters, these brand new voters who showed up for the first time in 2018 and 2020, and young voters, and the voters of color who brought it home in these important

states. So that's where we need to focus, is these people who don't normally get reached out to but share our values and and less on trying to convince, frankly, cult members who have been deeply indoctrinated? I don't know the answer. I don't want to leave them behind either. I don't know the answer for getting them out of the cult. I think that's two separate conversations, right? You know, how do we win in the midterms? Who do we need to show up and vote? And then how do we just heal the psychology of our country? I think they're two separate issues. Steve Pearson, Mariah Craven, host of the incredible podcast, How We Win. Make sure to check out Steve and Mariah on How We Win wherever your podcasts are available. Steve and Mariah, thank you so much for joining us on the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you for having us. Thank you. You guys are the best. Go Midas Mighty.

Yes. Listen to How We Win and let's go and win at Midas Mighty. And welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. What a great interview. Why is it now like half our interviews, Ben, are like resulting in challenges? Like Jordy talks to the attorney general of Pennsylvania. He gets challenged to a basketball game. You start talking about Peloton with Steve and all of a sudden there's a Peloton competition on the table.

I just, it just keeps on happening. I'm just going to note that. Wait, real quick. Just so everyone knows March one, the basketball game with A.G. Shapiro is going down. So get ready for that. We'll be talking about that much later as the game gets closer.

So sorry, Ben. Yeah, you just got challenged to a Peloton race. Is this going to happen? It will definitely happen. We challenge people because we're very competitive. We're way too competitive, like unhealthy competitive. I don't know how to have normal interactions with people that don't involve challenging them

to a competition is just the truth. But anyway, check out How We Win. It's a great podcast. Those are some great advocates right there. And while we're on the topic, just so many great podcasts out there. And I really want to amplify ones that I think are the best. And a lot of the Midas Mighty I know have been listening to one that we've been plugging on. I've seen it in the charts, just rapidly climbing the charts. And it's called The Lost Debate. What I love about it is when you're looking for news, you often feel, I feel this way sometimes, that you're forced to choose between echo chambers in mainstream media and conspiracy-obsessed alternative media.

But Lost Debate is different. It's a podcast and it's on YouTube and it's for political eclectics like me who want to escape their media bubbles and engage in good faith with ideas across political spectrums. Be challenged a bit. It's got Ravi Gupta. He's a former staffer in the Obama administration. He's a school principal. He founded Arena, an organization that's trained thousands of progressive staffers and helped elect hundreds of candidates. You got Corey Bradford, progressive political organizer from the Deep South, turned TikTok star, who once hosted a Fox News radio show. Corey Bradford's dropped some incredible videos that have gone viral over the past week. The one on gerrymandering. Oh, that was amazing. Incredibly good. And Ricky Schlott, a Gen Z New York Post columnist and libertarian fighting to protect free speech,

cover latest news, ideas, trends that the mainstream media overlooks. And they're not at each other's throats. I like that. They focus on bringing new perspectives in the table in constructive ways, and they sound less like crossfire and more like discussions between real people. That's how I like it. Join that conversation. Check out The Lost Debate today.

They have new episodes that drop twice a week. Here, you just got to search The Lost Debate on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out The Lost Debate podcast. And Jordy, cereal. Brett, cereal. I would do the read, but I know this is Brett's bread and butter right here, so I don't want to take it away from him. It's not my bread and butter. It's my cereal and milk. Milk and cereal. Remember that? Because it's the new year. Magic Spoon is perfect for meeting your calls, whether it's healthy or saving more time in

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Midas and use that code Midas. That's M-E-I-D-A-S to save $5 off. Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode. We've got more to talk about, fellas, but I just wanted to say on the topic of advocacy and activism, I know it could be overwhelming. And I know, especially in politics, things could be overwhelming, but I just wanted to share a bit of advice that's always helped me throughout the years, whether it was when I was doing filmmaking or any job really. And it applies to activism too, but never think that you have to build like, you know, if you're going to build a building, don't think about the building as a whole that you're going

to be built, you know, that you have to build. Think about it in pieces, right? If you're going to write a movie script, don't think, oh, I have 160 pages to write. Take it one sentence at a time, one word at a time, one line at a time, one paragraph at a time. And activism is the same way. Start doing small things. And like Steve Pearson, the small things like throwing house parties and meeting other activists lead to bigger things and lead to bigger things. And the next thing you know, you are doing massive things and you got there by just chipping away at it. So just never be too overwhelmed by it. All that's going to do is cause you anxiety. If you think, oh my God, I got to build a whole organization now. I got to build the whole house. No, start by chipping away at the small stuff and you'll be amazed, like what Steve and Mariah said, at the power of what's saying yes and just doing it,

just doing the thing, the power of what just doing the thing does. I agree with you, Brett. And you think about it too. Like when people though, build buildings and write scripts, you know, they often get help from people too, or even write books. Like if you look at the back of a book, you also see like 50 people who are listed as assisting in the research and helping with the books, you know, and, and all of that. And when it's a building, you're talking about tens of thousands of people sometimes working on building the skyscrapers that you see. When you think about a movie, think about all the credits at the end. And so a lot of what it is, whether you're a director, whether you're a stagehand, whatever your role is, whether you're an assistant to the director, you're all playing a role in making that beautiful movie or building that beautiful building.

But you just got to start by building, by joining the team, by putting yourself out there. And that's the most important thing about advocacy. And I want to turn briefly to foreign affairs for a second. You know, you got to give Biden a lot of credit, setting aside him passing major legislation, historic infrastructure legislation, the biggest in the history of the United States, the American Recovery Act and getting those checks to Americans as promised right when he took office, getting America back into the climate change pact, getting America back into its strong alliances. I mean, you think about everything Biden's done, right?

But now just think about what's going on right now in the standoff with Russia. This is one of the most existential global showdowns since World War II. And Biden's not cowering away from it. Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have released powerful and strong statements saying we are arming Ukraine. This isn't subtle. It's just saying we're not going to put American troops in Ukraine, but we are going to protect all NATO allies with the full force and effect of the United States. And they're saying we are giving Ukraine weapons right now. So if you attack, we are supporting their efforts against you and that we will destroy you, Russia, economically should you invade. That's some powerful stuff. You want to just play his statement and Blinken's statement? Yeah, let's start with Biden's first. Let's start with Biden's.

We will rally the world to oppose its aggression. The United States and our allies and partners around the world are ready to impose powerful sanctions on export controls, including actions that we did not pursue when Russia invaded Crimea in eastern Ukraine in 2014. We'll put intense pressure on their largest and most significant financial institutions and key industries. These measures are ready to go as soon as and if Russia moves. We'll impose long-term consequences that will undermine Russia's ability to compete economically and strategically.

And when it comes to Nord Stream 2, the pipeline that would bring natural gas from Russia to Germany, if Russia further invades Ukraine, it will not happen. While I will not send American servicemen to fight in Ukraine, we have supplied the Ukrainian military with equipment to help them defend themselves. We provided training and advice and intelligence for the same purpose. And make no mistake, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power. An attack against one NATO country is an attack against all of us.

It's way longer than that, but that's a clip from it. Why don't we play Secretary of State Blinken's statement? We've been warning the Ukrainian government of all that is coming. And here today, we are laying it out in great detail with the hope that by sharing what we know with the world, we can influence Russia to abandon the path of war and choose a different path while there's still time. Now, I'm mindful that some have called into question our information, recalling previous instances where intelligence ultimately did not bear out. But let me be clear.

I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one. The information I presented here is validated by what we've seen unfolding in plain sight before our eyes for months. Again, thinking about, like, just compare that to what Donald Trump would have said. What would Mike Pompeo have said? They literally would have said nothing. They would be threatening, as they did Ukraine. Yeah. This is what they would have said to Ukraine. They would have said, Zelensky, find some dirt on Hillary Clinton, or we're not going to help you. I mean, you know, think about he'd be attacking NATO right now. It would be in complete disarray. Well, Ben, I mean, we don't

even, it's not even a hypothetical, right? Like Trump's first impeachment was because he was withholding security assistance from Ukraine. That's where it all stemmed from, for him not protecting Ukraine. So it's not even a hypothetical situation. I just want to say this is an extremely volatile situation. This is developing by the moment. By the time you listen to this, even we could be in a totally different place. But I think it was important to highlight at least what the administration is saying about this right now and the message that they are sending. US intelligence believes that Russia is planning a false flag attack as a pretext for an invasion. That's a very real possibility of what could happen. And I think nobody here wants war.

Nobody is pushing for war. But Blinken and Biden are basically saying, we're going to protect Ukraine. We're going to arm them and we're going to make sure that NATO stands by them. And I think that's an important thing to do right now as Russia continues their aggression. I think you see a lot of the same misinformation and disinformation campaigns come out of Russia as what you see in here at home with the Republican Party. And I think it's worth noting also that there's going to be so much fake news flooding around. And we're also learning by the day that there's going to be so much, so much fake news flooding around. And we're also learning by the day, you know, the extent of Russia's propaganda networks, including they run this organization, this website called Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million

followers on Twitter. And it's a big platform in which the right wing in this country retweets things and spreads information. And I'm willing to bet that there are a whole lot of other Twitter accounts out there, a whole lot of other websites that have masked huge followings by playing into right wing fever dreams that are actually controlled and their messaging is controlled by the Kremlin. I mean, I think that's a very realistic thing. I think one of the best breakdowns to of the whole Ukraine Kremlin issue also is we have a podcast on

the Midas Media Network called Kremlin File, which is hosted by two incredible researchers who know this stuff better than anybody. So if you want to get a breakdown on what's going on and really understand it from people who know it best, check out Kremlin File podcast. I cannot recommend it enough for right now. These are the preeminent experts on this subject. And again, it's on the Midas Media Network. And that's one of the things that I love that we do here, guys. We don't pretend to be experts on subjects that we're not experts on. But what we're really good at doing is finding people who are experts, whether it's Dr. Steve Hassan, when he does the influence continuum about culty programming, whether it's Moe or Ogle for Kremlin File, and whether it's KFA, Legal AF as Cy Vance's number

two talking about these types of issues. I mean, that's the beauty, I think, of the network that we have in large is like, we don't pretend to know stuff that we don't, but we find the people who know this stuff inside and out who are experts in their field to discuss it. Thank you for highlighting me as well there, Jordy, on the Legal AF show, appreciate it. And thank you everybody for tuning in

to this edition of Midas Touch. We appreciate you as always. Special thanks to all of our sponsors, Athletic Greens, Magic Spoon, Wondery. Make sure you use those promo codes, Midas. I want to also give a special thanks to the Lost Debate podcast. I want to give a special thanks to the Kremlin File podcast and give a special thanks to the How We Win podcast and really enjoyed that conversation today with our guests, Mariah Craven and Steve Pearson. Enjoyed them coming on the Midas Touch podcast. Thanks, Brett and Jordy. It was great. Glad that you got to connect with each other. I'm looking forward to your b-ball game

against the AG, Jordy. I'm practicing, I'm practicing. Oh, I do want to say this though, before we did log off. Hey, if you're listening still right now, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Please leave us a review on the podcast charts, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

wherever you can leave reviews. It's super helpful for us. It really helps promote our podcast, get that to the top, helps beat the Charlie Kirks of the world, helps beat the Ben Beginos of the world, helps beat all those lunatics. So please leave a five-star review. And one of the way there, the right-wing crazies try to retaliate against us is by leaving negative reviews. And so- Yeah. So we need you, like right now, even if you think you did a review in the past, go there right now, go on you think you did a review in the past, go there right now, go on whatever app you use

and leave a five-star review because they targeted our page after, you know, after this like crazy conspiracy theory attack on us and tried to like bring the podcast down. So we need you to step up Midas Mighty and rank the five stars. Also, we have limited stickers of the stickers behind Jordy, the vote blew over Q.

We've got limited stickers remaining at store.midastouch.com. So if you want one of those stickers, go get it now. Thank you to everybody who's been posting pictures of the vote blue over Q sticker on your car. I'm absolutely loving it. We got pro-democracy hats now available. Jordy's rocking one of our pro-democracy hats. So get this stuff. We do everything in fairly limited runs. So make sure to go to store.midastouch.com and thank you for a great episode. You know, you have the information. You've heard from the activists.

You've gotten the news of the day. Now go out there and do it. No matter how big or small, go out there and take some action and get involved. Jordy, I'll hand it over to you. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.