The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump’s DEVASTATING Supreme Court loss, voting rights setbacks & more with Michael E. Hayden

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we have a great guest, Senior Investigative Reporter and Spokesperson with SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), Michael Edison Hayden. Michael has written some truly incredible investigative pieces including the link between cryptocurrency & the far-right movement. The remainder of the episode, the brothers cover a ton of the latest news of the week including the Supreme Court clearing the way for the House to get Trump’s White House documents for the Jan 6. investigation, Biden’s 2-hour speech, Mitch McConnell’s disgusting statements with regards to voting rights & New York AG Letitia James seeking court order for a subpoena to force Trump, Don Jr and Ivanka to answer questions under oath. If you enjoyed today’s episode please be sure to rate, review and subscribe! As always, thank YOU for listening. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: ATHLETIC GREENS: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas BETTER HELP: https://betterhelp.com/meidas MAGIC SPOON: https://magicspoon.com/meidas and use promo code MEIDAS Subscribe to the "How We Win" podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-we-win/id1477279890 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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We have an incredible show for you today. We have a great guest, Michael Edison Hayden. He is the senior investigative reporter and spokesperson at the Southern Poverty Law Center. A lot of journalists throwing that title around, investigative reporter who don't deserve that title. Michael Edison Hayden is one that absolutely deserves the title, senior investigative reporter. He does incredible, incredible work. Brett and Jordan, I'm not sure if you've read some of his most recent articles, but I'm excited to talk about one of the articles he wrote with someone named Megan Squire. The article's called How Cryptocurrency Revolutionized the White Supremacist Movement. Don't you see it? We got to ask her about this. I know. I see it all the time. We talk about it. We're like, how did Bitcoin and all these other cryptos become synonymous with white nationalists?

I never understood that connection. And you see it even like, you ever notice the craziest of the crazies? When you look at Josh Mandel, who's running for Senate in Ohio, who's a total sociopath. He's always posting about Bitcoin. All these far right people are posting about Bitcoin. I'm curious to get to the bottom of it. My working theory, and we could ask him about this, is that because the whole point of crypto and everything is that it's decentralized and that it's, you know, quote unquote, untraceable, that they like that they could do illegal acts with the money. But I'm curious to get Michael's thoughts and try to drill down.

And look, we're not saying it's a one to one. If you're listening now and are investing in crypto in some way, we're not calling you a GQP or a white nationalist by any means. But there is definitely, as the brothers were alluding to, major overlap. I mean, if you're on Twitter and a lot of people have these, and they're literal ape accounts. What does ape stand for, Jerry? What does that mean? I actually don't know what it's, they're photos, cartoons of apes and they're sold like NFTs,

like art. And so you don't pay for it with money. You pay for these ape sort of pictures as crypto and that becomes your identity. So a lot of folks on Twitter use their own personalized ape that they bought using crypto, using that NFT sort of space. And that becomes their whole identity. And if you scroll through, I would say 80, 85% of those accounts, and you look at what they've tweeted and what they're liking, I mean, that overlap with white nationalism and just hatred is drastic. It's such a fascinating subculture. And I'm happy you called that out, Jordy, because I don't want anybody to think, I mean,

I've invested in crypto before. I know a lot of people who've invested in crypto before. We're definitely not saying that if you do this, but there is this weird tie between those groups. And something I also have seen is I've noticed a lot of those sort of nameless trolls on Twitter. I don't know if you guys have seen this as well. People who are sort of like comment and always comment like with the most hateful, most vitriolic things. When you click on their profiles, their replies are all there to stir hate. So they look like bots.

It's like James13758964. And all their comments are just the most hateful shit that you could possibly see responding to people left-leaning accounts. But their main tweets are all, buy crypto here, buy crypto here, buy crypto here, buy crypto here. And so there's definitely the spammy nature of it also that seems like it's almost being farmed out from bot farms and things like that. I'm fascinated by this.

I'm curious to get into this and more. I know he also covers hate crimes and things like that. I'm fascinated by this. I'm curious to get into this and more. I know he also covers hate crimes and things like that. And I'm sure his hands are absolutely full in covering that with the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Asian violence that we've seen over these past few years. So very excited for this conversation. I mean, he's doing such important work, Michael. His other article, one year after Jan 6th, the hard right digs in talking about how Republicans, rather than condemn January 6th, have basically embraced the insurrection, embraced fascism and what that means for our country. The one comment I would make just quickly on my own theory of the cryptocurrency, just with every new thing, there's legitimate uses. And then there sometimes are the subcultures that are truly created just to commit fraud. Like Jordi, the example you gave, there's an incredible community, a legitimate community out there called the Ape Yacht Club,

which actually is NFTs done at a very high level that has exclusive giveaways and things that are done. These are like high end. Some of them sell for millions of dollars. But there are people who appropriate that identity. And then what they're doing is they're pushing crypto to inexperienced consumers, the same way Trump does kind of pump and dump with the SPAC. There are great SPACs out there, special purpose acquisition companies that do legitimate and good work. But there are also the SEC saying, hey, you got to be careful. There are people who take advantage of it. There's great usage to crypto that could be used. But with all those vehicles, there are people who exploit and take advantage of it and try to push it on consumers who don't know what crypto is. But all they hear about is Bitcoin prices going up and we're trying to think about the NFTs and Melania and all this stuff.

You hear about it going up. I mean, you don't really know when it goes down. If you watch those account, it says buy at the dip, buy at the dip, buy the dip, you know, is what they say. And so they push you to buy it there. So they're preying on inexperienced consumers. It's not just another grift. It's like a full out, all out fraud being done on consumers.

And the GQP, we know, is very good at fraud. But we have a lot to cover. Let's start off with the Supreme Court. We previously talked about how the Trump administration did an emergency petition to keep the documents that the National Archive is holding relating to the January 6th insurrection. Trump was saying that that is subject to executive privilege, that the archives should not turn that over to the Jan 6th committee. The District Court, Court of Appeals in D.C. dc bolt said no you have to turn it

over trump appealed to the united states supreme court asking for an emergency injunction to stop the documents from that's what an injunction is from going to the january 6th committee on a 8-1 vote only clarence thomas uh dissented. Clarence Thomas said that he would have upheld Trump's executive privilege claim and would have blocked the documents, which is just such an absurd position. It goes against all of the law, but it just tells you where Clarence Thomas is going to rule on every single issue. But the Supreme Court said- Ben, it's worth noting, though, while we're on Clarence Thomas, that his wife, Ginny, was a very big supporter of the January 6th insurrection. She endorsed the rally. She talked about the love of the people that were in the crowd. The phrases that she used to describe that day, the language that she used to describe January 6th, was very similar to the language that Donald Trump used to describe January 6th. So it makes you wonder, you know, and there's been, you know, theories that she paid for buses and things like that to go to January 6th. I think that's been pretty much

debunked at that point, or at least there's not enough proof that that actually happened. But what is very clear is that she spoke very highly of the day, very highly of January 6th, and that she has a lot of empathy and love for the people who were there on January 6th to attack the Capitol. So I think that's important here that her husband is a Supreme Court justice making decisions about this. And I also wonder, you know, does her name appear in any of these documents? There are over 700 documents that are going to be going over now to the January 6th committee. Does Ginny Thomas's name appear in any of those documents?

I think personally, Justice Thomas should recuse himself from any January 6th related things. His wife is just too close to this. His family is too close. They were involved in January 6th. How could you be ruling in an unbiased way on this case if you were literally involved in it in some way and are seen praising it publicly on all your social media platforms? Well, here's why, Brett, because the justices

for the legal AF listeners out there, those who listen to the podcast I do with Michael Popock every weekend called Legal AF, the judges rule on that. You couldn't go 10 minutes into the pod. Couldn't go 10 minutes into the pod without plugging Legal AF on Saturdays. I'm not mad. I'm not mad. I just would like to see on Saturdays you plug the Brothers podcast. But no, please, sorry, go on. The judges rule on their own recusal. So do you think Clarence Thomas, who's willing to basically support Trump's insurrection, is then going to recuse himself and say that he's conflicted? That's so bizarre, though, that the judge themselves rules on their own recusal just is a very, very, very strange concept. But the January 6th committee released

a statement and a tweet. The Supreme Court's action is a victory for the rule of law and American democracy. The select committee has already begun to receive records that the former president had hoped to keep hidden. And we look forward for additional productions regarding this important information. The co-chair of the committee, Benny Thompson, the other co-chair, of course, is Liz Cheney. Benny Thompson was on CNN earlier today and said that they've only received four pages so far, but they expect other documents to come. We'll keep you posted. And Ben, it looks like they're coming for the Trump family now. I mean, they've subpoenaed

and not only subpoenaed, but subpoenaed and obtained documents that they were seeking from Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Trump. And that represents the first time that the January 6th committee has subpoenaed a member of the Trump family with Eric. I know Donald is probably sitting there like, who, which one's Eric? Is he the dumb one? Is he, I don't know who that is. But yeah, this is the first actual time that the January 6th committee is going into the Trump family. And this morning, we learned that now they're going to see if Ivanka Trump will voluntarily cooperate with the committee. Spoiler alert, she probably will not. But I think it's curious now to see that they are clearly, and in the DOJ filings now, they are clearly now at the stage where they are making the connection between the conspiracy at the Willard Hotel,

the acts of the Proud Boys, everything Steve Bannon's done, and Donald Trump himself, trying to figure out what is Donald Trump's connection to the actual conspiracy to overthrow the results of the election and everything that's going on with the seven states that forged the electors. And by the way, these forged electors, this whole thing, this played out in plain sight right in front of our eyes back then. I mean, there is footage of Lou Dobbs talking about this. There is footage of Donald Trump talking about this, of Kevin McCarthy talking about this, of Kayleigh McEnany talking about this. We say it all the time. They're the dumbest criminals. Just because they announced their criminality live on TV doesn't make it any less criminal. We're so lucky that they were the dumbest criminals.

I mean, I was looking at yesterday, Jenna Ellis, who was the attorney at the time, Jenna Ellis also was subpoenaed. Wait, Jenna Ellis? She's the one who got COVID via Rudy Giuliani's fart. On national TV. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's also the one who called Midas Touch. As this process was going on, as Jenna Ellis was trying to overturn the results of the election- As she was getting farted on and getting COVID via fart. As she was getting farted on by Rudy. We made a comment, you know, that at the time that we're lucky that the Trump campaign has

lawyers as dumb as Jenna Ellis trying to do this. And Jenna Ellis actually responded to us at the time, if you remember. And she said something like, oh, now I'm being, trying to be intimidated by some D-list leftist organization. Like we really got underneath her skin. And then I was looking at some of her other tweets, you know, and it's constantly just the most clownish things. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell just released the Kraken.

Like remember the Kraken? This is what was going on. We saw it all play out in front of our eyes. It might seem new because now it's coming up in actual documents and it's being investigated, but we saw it happening. We all know it happened and we all know that Donald Trump is linked to it. Also, we have updates and other subpoenas.

We have the January 6th committee subpoenaing far right Trump activist, Nicholas Fuentes and Patrick Casey, who received thousands of dollars in funds potentially connected to activity on that day. Fuentes is the guy who tried to get into CPAC and was saying that he was going to have the most racist, most anti-Semitic, most hate-filled speech on the planet. And CPAC had actually kicked him out after a little bit. But these are... Yeah, play the clip, Brett, of Trump's buddy, Trump's close friend,

a Republican icon right now, Nicholas Fuentes. So this is going to be the most racist. Whoa! The most anti-Semitic. Yeah! The most Holocaust denier. Yeah! The most right in all of Dallas this weekend. That's who the Republicans are. Yeah. And, you know, like sometimes people will be like, oh, yeah, well, you pick the craziest person out of any party.

You're going to get, you know, somebody who says something nuts or whatever. And I will first challenge you to find anybody on the left that says anything like what you just heard. And secondly, this isn't some fringe lunatic on the right. This is somebody who is being subpoenaed by the January 6th committee for a reason because this person had actual involvement in January 6th and actually was close with the former president of the United States. These aren't fringe, random actors. I'm not picking a random person off the street and saying, these are all Republicans. I'm taking Republican influencers, the people who are really dictating policy and are shifting the hearts and minds on the Republican side are people like Nick Fuentes.

And they're going to realize real quick that their fascist fucking cosplay has real, real consequences. And I cannot wait to see what happens to Nick Fuentes. We have other updates from attorney generals in New York and in Fulton County, Georgia. First, starting with New York Attorney General Letitia James has sought a court order for the subpoena to force Trump and his family members, Don Jr. and Ivanka, to answer questions under oath. And she came with a very strong statement. And in her statement, it was 160 page filing to compel them to testify under oath. And within this filing, it laid out a lot of new details about the fraud. I mean, stuff that we probably knew about Trump inflating the valuations of his property

and giving different valuations to tax assessors, to companies, banks that he was seeking loans from so that he could get more money on the loans and then pay less taxes. So he was just lying about his property. So that's what this investigation is into, kind of tax fraud. So he would tell someone, hey, our property is 100,000 square feet, and then tell someone it's 30,000 square feet. Yeah, it's those objective facts that I think are the most damning. Because I guess with valuations, I guess there's a big probably subjective part of it, right? You could say, well, the Trump brand is worth X amount of dollars. And so, you know, we were valuing it at the market rate of what we

felt the Trump, like, like you could maybe make arguments and stuff like that. But what you can't do is you can't say my property is, is 30,000 square feet when your property is 5,000 square feet, which is the kind of stuff that was going on. I mean, that is just objectively fraud. That's just objectively a lie and there's no other way to cut it. You guys mean to tell me that the guy who would lie about his crowd sizes also lied about other things in his business in regards to the size? I hate to break it to you, but that's exactly. So here's what the New York attorney general said. She said, quote,

we have uncovered significant evidence that the firm used fraudulent and misleading asset valuations on multiple properties to obtain economic benefits. Okay. And these are, you know, that the Trump administration would engage in fraudulent and misleading asset valuations. And that the AG is saying that publicly. Remember, Letitia James is doing two things. There is a civil case going on, which a civil case is you get injunctions maybe to stop actors from engaging in fraudulent business practices and to recover money where a group is unjustly enriched to recover profits or to uncover other monies that were made. But then there's a parallel criminal investigation taking place within the Manhattan District

Attorney's Office. Another shout out to Midas Touch Legal AF that on Wednesdays, we now have the number two person at the Manhattan DA's office, KFA. KFA, a new fan favorite. KFA. I heard it. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office. We have the number two, Cy Vance's right hand.

But then there's also a parallel criminal investigation at the AG level. One of the arguments being made by Trump and his kids, why they shouldn't have to turn over documents in the civil cases. They cite the power of parallel criminal case and they say you're forcing us to basically turn over documents and waive our Fifth Amendment rights in a civil case while you're pursuing a parallel criminal case. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's essentially the argument. You'll dig into that more on legal AF and get into the specifics of it. But I think it's important that it's a parallel case. And I also don't think she would, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think she would release a lot of the information that she would release if the criminal case was not also kind of at the same stage with

her. I mean, they're doing this together. So everything, even though a lot of people say, oh yeah, well, these are just going to be criminal charges. Who cares about it? It's a fine at the end of the day. Who cares? The criminal investigation has obviously all the information that she provided and more and all the details that they needed, you know, and probably approved the release of this report prior to Letitia James putting it out there to the public. Then on the other news, Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of Donald Trump's potential criminal acts. I don't think it's potential. I'll just think they're obvious criminal acts surrounding the January 2021 call to the Secretary of State and related matters.

And for those who remember, there was the phone call that Donald Trump made to Brad Raffensperger after the election to overturn the votes, just find me 11,700 and whatever it was, 41. Fucking audio. Find me the votes, find me the votes. That's the biggest criminal conspiracy we've ever seen in this country. This makes Watergate look small at this point. Yeah. There were so many dimensions to it in so many areas. Like if there was just an effort to unduly pressure and extort just one state legislature, to me, that would be a gigantic scandal in and of itself. But this was a massive, massive criminal act and criminal conduct that involved many states, many Republican legislatures. And one of the main issues that we have, though, and this is what we'll talk

when we have our interview very shortly with Michael Edison Hayden, though, is that the problem and the difference here, though, between Nixon and the modern Republican Party, although the Nixon playbook began really this, you know, with his Southern plan and the way he wanted to embrace basically America as an apartheid state, divide the country. We now see the effect of that. But back then in the Nixon era, we had Republicans and Democrats both called balls and strikes when it came to clear an obvious criminality. This is wrong. We're going to impeach you and then convict you, Nixon. So Nixon resigned because we as a nation came together. Now the Republican Party embraces full-fledged fascism and their actual legislatures do that. So we'll bring on Michael Edison Hayden in a bit. But first,

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it. So I've been reading a bunch of your articles, which is why I wanted you as a guest. A lot of people say they're investigative journalists. It's thrown around, but like your pieces are really compelling. You dig into issues and you recognize the fascist threat that's confronting our country and you call it out by name, which is why I appreciate your articles. I want to talk about some of the articles I've read, but I want to start with the article that you wrote with Megan Squire, which is how cryptocurrency revolutionized the white supremacist movement. We had always kind of talked, me, Brett and Jordy, just probably not on the show, but just like, why are all of these kind of white supremacist Twitter accounts, like why are they promoting

Bitcoin? Why does it seem that the same people who have like the frog logos on their Twitter are also trying to like make me buy Bitcoins or buy cryptos that I've never even heard of before. And so, Michael, for those listening, what's the overall connection there? What have you found in your reporting? Well, I mean, I think the first thing I have to establish there is just that there's nothing inherently extreme, far right about crypto. Now it's become relatively mainstream for better and for worse. The reason why we covered in the first is, and I disclosed in it that I own some Ethereum,

which I had to do because you want to make sure you're not like, the markets are so volatile and things like that. You want to make it upfront that you're not trying to move the price for an hour or something like that. When Bitcoin was first getting off the ground, when it was first starting to get going, there were a whole bunch of people who accumulated large quantities of it. And within that collection of people, mostly what we would describe as libertarian type people, there were extreme far right actors, people we would describe as white supremacists, but neo-Nazis, white nationalists, also storing up large amounts of Bitcoin and also libertarians who are amenable to extreme far-right ideas as well, because there is some crossover there. They may like people who agitate. And, you know,

Jaron Lanier talked about this. He said, you know, on a podcast in September, he was talking about, he said, you know, basically that there are people from the beginning of the Bitcoin movement who are deep into, you know, things that you would not want to be associated with, but we don't really know who they are. So, you know, Megan is so good at, you know, tracking people down just on tech in general, but, you know, on the blockchain. And she was able to determine that there's quite a few of the people that we cover have large amounts of cryptocurrency that they picked up early. We're talking about millions of dollars. And we estimate that there's tens of millions of dollars in the white supremacist movement through cryptocurrency.

You compare that to like the era when, you know, the Klan was kind of the, you know, top dog in that world. This is a lot of money that's being traded around now. And we see how vicious the far right threat is in this country. This is one reason why that's the case is that they're better funded and they have funding that skirts around the normal banking system. One of the things we see on Fox News, you know, going back is a lot of the advertisements about why you should put your money in gold or why you should put your money in silver, you know. And so as these networks kind of preach the propaganda that the government's controlled by a deep state and, you know, implying that banks are run by Jewish bankers. Then you basically get the undertone of the commercials that come in and then try to get

you to, after they scare the shit out of you and lace it with this kind of anti-Semitism in their reporting, if you want to even call what it is, or their fascistic entertainment network. They then push you to gold and silver and these things. Did you find in your reporting that part of it also is like this challenging of the banking system, this idea that, you know, this world order being controlled by a cabal of people and like that the Republicans are that the republicans are pushing that kind of messaging yeah so i mean i think within the crypto community who i you know who i pay a lot of attention to uh for a while i've owned different cryptos um for a while i started when i when i bought um for the first time i bought to better understand the people i was

covering i just wanted to like what is this this stuff? Why is everybody, you know, trading Bitcoin around? Yeah, I remember waking up and like, you know, being like four times the value of what I had. And I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Built into that community as a whole, there is a lot of dystopian, you know, paranoia, existential fears about the world crumbling altogether, which I mean, you know, paranoia, existential fears about the world crumbling altogether, which I mean, you know, seeing people also share because of climate change and other things. So this like, you know, this compounding feeling that like things are really in a tough spot in this century is propelling crypto for people who are not just extremists, right? So there are fears about all this debt that is, you know, there's underlying a lot of corporations that could

potentially, you know, cause, you know, another depression and all kinds of things that are real fears, right? You know, the same way that climate change is a very real fear. And neo-Nazis, white nationalists, exploit that feeling to tie things back to these anti-Semitic tropes about banking, who is messing with you and things like that. And that just really slides in very nicely with the pre-existing kind of paranoia that sometimes drives people to stockpile cryptocurrency in the first place. It's a little different than the gold and silver stuff in Fox News because you have Matt Damon hawking it, right? So Matt Damon is not selling people some kind of fringe neo-Nazi conspiracy theory. He's there peddling cryptocurrency to the mass. I mean, Tom Brady is not doing that,

right? So it's become really mainstream. But it's a mainstream thing that has these little wisps of conspiracy built into it. Just this fear that society is not particularly stable. I mean, there's always talks about inflation, right, driving. And it's really up for debate about whether any of these cryptocurrencies are worth anything, much less some kind of hedge against inflation. But that hedge against inflation thing does lead to who's manipulating your money. And it makes it very easy for neo-Nazis and white nationals to get people who are into that into this.

And Michael, why don't people just make, though, the basic connection, you know, as they spread these conspiracies about the banking system collapsing? Like, why don't they just make the simple connection that when, you know, one that Trump is bankrupt, like he bankrupts everything he touches, that he's actually, if you just look at the basic facts in front of you, he's one of the main reasons for his mishandling of COVID is a lot of the reasons for some of the inflationary pressures we now have in a recovery coming out of COVID with just the total mishandling. Like, why is it so hard for them to just make the basic connection that the individual they idolize is the cause of a lot of these problems? It may be a broader, more whatever question than like a deep reporting question.

But what's your views on that generally? Because to me, it's like, isn't it so obvious or does their white supremacist, their fascism, they are trying to create an apartheid state just kind of supersede logic? Well, I mean, I think that Trump, you know, and this is kind of going off script here, but I think that Trump is, you know, he's like an avatar for people's resentment, right? And they feel a tremendous, there's a tremendous amount of resentment and anger in this country in general. And I mean, from not, not just from Trump supporters. I mean, a lot of people are really angry about a lot of things legitimately. But he's like, you know, because it's very easy for elites, very wealthy people to look down on Trump as a person who is known for being kind of a failed businessman or a person who certainly inflated his business prowess and all those things, because those who are extremely wealthy and more successful than Trump look down on

him with his gaudy taste and things like that, it only helps solidify that avatar of resentment and those feelings of being looked down on. helps solidify that avatar of resentment and, you know, those feelings of being looked down on. I had a friend who's, you know, a Republican and growing up as a childhood friend. And he, he, he kind of gave up on Trump. But I asked him like, well, you know, you know, what's going on? He says, well, you know, I mean, I felt like everybody was telling me I was stupid for believing what I believed and things like that. And I think that so much of this has nothing to do.

It's kind of more of a psychological thing. That's why it's a little bit of a script. It has less to do with, oh, why can't you see this? And more to do with this just feeling of resentment and this reduction of... It's not politics based on improving the material conditions for your family. I mean, more often than not, it is a politics based purely on resentment. And we've actually talked about this a lot recently. So I'm happy you brought that up, that it's more of like a psychology kind of where you fit into society.

But that's why I found your article one year after January 6th, The Hard Right Digs In, which you published on December 30th. You can check it out at splcenter.org if you want to read this. That's why I found this piece so interesting, because, you know, I guess there's the social pressure where you might say, hey, everyone's making me feel like an idiot. I don't want to be looked at like an idiot, so I'm not going to support this anymore. But then there's the flip side of that, which is everybody is attacking me. I must be doing something right. I should dig in even further. And over the past year, since January 6th, we've seen people dig in further

and further to these far right conspiracy theories around January 6th and beyond. I'm curious, just as somebody who does investigative reporting about conspiracies and about hate, what has this last year kind of been like for you in seeing everything from January 6th to kind of what we're looking at, you know, a year out? Well, I mean, the short answer is it's, you know, it's unsettling. It's not a good feeling what's happening now because I'm not entirely convinced that we're going to, you know, the Trump movement is going to proceed with Trump at the helm of it. But the infrastructure for a hard right authoritarian takeover of the country is very real. I mean, if you look at the lasting effect of the big lie, as you lie, as people call it, and all the legislation that they used as an excuse to kind of force through to suppress people's votes, this could have like a lasting impact on our country.

We may lose it altogether. I think that the stakes are that high. So for that, I mean, you know, the simple answer is it's very unsettling because it is the kind of thing that we were afraid of. Those who are taking Trump's rise very seriously in, you know, 2015 and 2016, when he first started talking. And, you know, I'm not convinced it will necessarily go on with Trump as the person. It could be someone else. I mean, it could be Ron DeSantis. It could be someone who picks up what Ann Coulter described as like a hundred dollar bill that was like laying on the street. She referred to Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric. I mean, she would use a different word

to describe it as free money. Like he just picked it up because the party wouldn't really go for that. Somebody else may come along and just pick this up and just see this infrastructure and take advantage of it. It's there and, you know, they're really playing a kind of a very, very dangerous game on, you know, networks like Fox and things like that. One would be tempted to call it anti-American in general, but then we are so accustomed to associating this country with just the symbols and things that Fox puts in your face. But we're talking about an entire restructure of the country for so many people. And, you know, the people who are really going to suffer are people who live in major cities where, I mean, you look what happened with Trump and the way he went after cities like

New York and Los Angeles and places like that. There are a lot of people in these places. So yeah, it's scary. I mean, what's crazy to me and something else you noted, it's like first on paper, you would say, okay, the GOP helped lead an insurrection against the United States. They completely failed at handling COVID. We are all dealing with the effects of all these things. On paper, they should be polling at like 3%. But yet, as you say, it seems like they're growing in popularity in many ways, and especially in terms of the propaganda networks like you just mentioned. Fox News is actually gaining viewers at this point. So what do you think is attracting people to these propaganda networks? What is the

kind of the secret to their strength? And why aren't people just flat out saying like just rejecting it when Tucker like says, you know, Russian propaganda or says January 6th was fake? So there's a lot of resentment. And I think there's a lot of fear. I think one of the fascinating things for me has been watching people who just basically denied the existence of climate change for so long behave as people who are looking to acquire, solidify power at a time where, you know, our world will be in a tremendous crisis. I mean, that's what it looks like to me. I really think that a lot of the people, you know, that sort of the Tucker Carlson type people believe very much in climate change. And, you know, and the kind of really the serious threats that our world faces in the coming future.

This grab for power from them, they're very rich people, mind you, strikes me as being motivated by a fear of what could happen in the future, the instability, the potential instability in this country. That's one thing. And then from the average viewer, the average person who is attracted to, say, Tucker Carlson, and he has a pretty big audience, you know, there's just a lot of resentment in this country. And, you know, so much of that has to do with inequality and, you know, frustration that politicians are not doing things for them. If you look at so many of the bills that, you know, people try, the Democrats

tried to pass, you know, just for the voting rights legislation, this repeated inability to get these things passed, you know, i would imagine is having a pretty big impact in in people feeling angry and resentful and things like that it just feels like things aren't working for them so then someone comes along and tries to harness that resentment and into a a punch uh they're not thinking about necessarily how uh, you know, giving power over to a Victor Orban-like regime would impact their children in the long run. The answer is things would not be great, as opposed to whatever Tucker Carlson may be telling people. It certainly will benefit the families of the people who are closest to power. But they're, they're thinking primarily in terms of resentment and how it feels to lash

out. And Michael, you tweeted about Nick Fuentes earlier this week. We talked about him earlier. We have a story coming out today about Fuentes. Oh, wow. We'll definitely, definitely be on the lookout for that. We actually were talking about him earlier on the show. He's a white supremacist.

He's a hateful person. Your tweet says, every Nick Fuentes statement like this should be viewed in the context of his collaborators in the Republican Party like Paul Gosar. Brett, can we actually play that, the audio real quick for our audience? Yeah, we'll play the statement. We're the only ones that aren't racist we're the only ones ironically and i and i know this is going to come across in a certain way but the irony is people accuse us of hating black people and we're the only ones that treat black people with like actual respect honestly respect enough to tell them, hey, stop committing crimes. Stop being so

illiterate in schools. And when they're cool, we're just cool with them. You know, they're just human beings to us. They're just real human beings. We stand for real human beings, truly. But we also stand for whites. Anyway, anyway, so that's sort of an aside, but it is a little bit funny. This comes from Bannon. This is Getter. Getter is run by Bannon. And Bannon is the fat that goes on these shows and says, we're gonna have African Americans voting 50% for Republicans,

and we're gonna flood the zone with votes. I mean, that's like, literally, he goes on these shows and says that. Michael, do you believe that Fuentes is representative of who the Republican Party is? So the answer to that is partially. I think what has happened in part because of gerrymandering, in part because of a whole number of things. So you look at somebody like Paul Gosar does not have to worry about, you know, appearing moderate or, or anything like that. He's primarily focused on, on making sure people, well, actually I should not talk about Gosar because I don't a hundred

percent know everything that motivates that man. It'd be very clear. He's like a real, he's a very interesting individual. It's putting it very kindly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're very generous. The point is gerrymandering and other factors, a number of other factors have enabled the most extreme far right figures of the Republican Party to sort of speak on the party's behalf on many terms. So do I, you know, do I think that Liz Cheney is representative of Nick Fuentes? No. Do I think Paul Gosar is? Well, he went to go speak at his conference. Do you think Liz Cheney is representative of the Republican Party? I mean, no. So the thing is, there are a lot of Republicans who are very passively sitting by and allowing the extreme hard right to kind of dictate the actual agenda of the party. And it is gradually moving further and further in that direction. So the short of it is that certainly at the most hard right edge of it, Nick Fuentes is there.

Now, what's interesting is Nick Fuentes is actually serves as a kind of a scapegoat for other extremists who want to kind of distance themselves. Right. So they'd be like, oh, we don't want anything to do with Nick Fuentes. But yet we're cool with like Jack Kozobiec, who is a a social media personality who who promoted Pizzagate, who he blocks us. Yeah. He who hustled out a hack and leak operation on that was instigated by Russian military intelligence to try to sway the the French elections in 2017. I mean, he is people believe he's less extreme than Fuentes and he's more embraced by the

Republican party than even a Fuentes type figure. Well, he, he lies in a different, he lies in a different way than Fuentes does. And he plays a different game, you know, altogether. And he is very much a glad hander and does these things, but there's no, I have no indication that Pozovic or Fuente, you know, who is more extreme there. I mean, that's like, you know, I mean, Pozovic targeted Jewish reporters with anti-Semitic harassment. I mean, he did the echoes thing

around Wolf Blitzer's name to indicate that he's, I mean, Wolf Blitzer's family escaped the Holocaust, as far as I know, I have to look back. I mean, this is like, you know, and Pazobic is embraced by, you know, tons of people who are on the so-called mainstream, right? So that's part of the problem is there would there be these soft barriers that sort of kept the extreme far right fringe kind of from the center of the party. Now, you can you can argue that like everything was, you know, is leading up to this anyway. But that wearing down of those barriers between the extreme far right fringe and the sort of center of the Republican Party, it had broke down slowly over those Trump years. And then on January 6,

really, you can argue that there's no barrier at all, that it's just basically now people like Jack Posobiec are the mainstream. So the answer to your question, is he represented the Republican Party? Many will tell you no. Many will say, no, we're not like Nick Fuentes. But then the question is, who are you, Mike? And I think, are they willing to associate with people like Jack Posobiec? Are they willing to associate with Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly voices the white supremacist great replacement theory to an audience of four million people every night.

So that's part of the problem is that this hard right extreme worldview has become so intimate and so personal and so part of the conservative movement as a whole. Michael, where can our listeners and viewers check out your work and the newest article that you have coming up? I will, as soon as I have to check, I got some message. I don't think it's out yet, but I have to approve a copy. And then I think probably this afternoon on Flantes, I'm on Twitter at Michael E. Hayden to differentiate me from Michael V. Hayden of the CIA. The yeah. And hate watch SPLC's hate watch arm. You can just go to our website, Google it. I don't know. It's, you know,

feel free to read it. Enjoy. I'm happy to talk to whomever. Thank you, Michael Edison Hayden, senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Thank you so much for coming on the Midas Touch podcast. All right. Take care. Man, what a fascinating interview, you guys. I love that conversation with Michael E. Hayden. Learned so much. Just love the work he's doing. We got some more to talk about, so stick around. But before we talk about Biden's speech, before we talk about voting rights and where we go from here, I want to tell you about our partner Magic Spoon because it's the new year and Magic Spoon

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or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor for your charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. President Biden, a marathon of a speech yesterday.

What did you guys think? I think he put all that sleepy Joe nonsense to bed. It was the longest press conference in the history of the presidency. Let me read. That's a fact. I'm not just saying it was the longest. I'm not being sarcastic. It was the longest press conference in the history. So let me read to you, Brian Karam, who was the guest on the last Midas Touch podcast. Incredible investigative reporter. Again, a true investigative reporter.

He wrote on a tweet that was nearly two hours of POTUS. He answered each question cogently and to the best of his ability, called down more than 20 different reporters. He never once attacked us. He never once avoided a question. He never once attacked us. He never once avoided a question. He never once tried to belittle us. He stayed on point. And Biden did methodically answer each and every question. There was a big moment that I thought from the press conference where Biden was referring to Mitch McConnell and the Republicans. And he was saying, I could tell you what I stand for.

I could tell you what Democrats stand for. I know what we're fighting for. We're fighting for all Americans. We're fighting for workers. We're fighting to give education opportunities to Americans. We're fighting for Americans' health. We're trying to combat a global pandemic right now. We're trying to help all Americans get jobs and not just the 1% make them richer. We're trying to give Americans health care. We know what we stand for. We're fighting for this

policy each and every day. We're fighting for infrastructure. We're fighting for build back better. We're fighting for more infrastructure to modernize our country. Hey, doesn't that make sense that you want to talk all this shit about America being a great country, you know, make America great again, but you don't support infrastructure. You don't support like building the country and helping our airports and roads and broadband and making the country truly great and not just using bullshit words. Play the clip though, where Biden was like,

I don't know what they stand for. Think about this. What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they're for. And another major, I think, takeaway, Brett, from the press conference on the Build Back Better point is Biden said, well, we said on the Midas Touch podcast, I was like, let's just break up the bill. You know, I don't think we should. I think we should be able to pass it as one package. But let's just break up the things in the bill that are non-controversial. And let's put all these GQ peers on the spot one by one by one. Just do a vote every single day on a new issue that Americans care about. All those issues that poll high, bringing down the costs of drugs, increasing broadband, improving education, making education free for pre-K, let's just put bills on those things

and call it the free pre-K bill and just put bill by bill and let them vote no. It's a great idea. I have no faith in the Republicans to vote for any of them. I guess it's all about getting them on the record though. And it's about messaging and stuff. If they choose to actually vote against the lower insulin to the lower insulin to thirty five dollars bill like it's I think a lot of people will see very quickly that Republicans don't have their interests in mind if they're voting against a straight bill that says that it's going to be an interesting year ahead because, you know, and I think I could sense Biden's frustration, too, yesterday because he was, you know, promoting like saying, hey, I had the most successful year out of any

president ever. When you look at the statistics and we've said everything that's been, we've said multiple times on every single show, everything that Biden's accomplished, whether it's the lowest unemployment rate, the most jobs created in a year, record stock markets. Like if you look across the board at the numbers, it's been a tremendous success. Um, but there has been so much just Biden was saddled with so much shit from the Trump administration that there's never enough stuff. And I think also president Biden understanding that this moment requires like bold action and big swings is taking a lot of big swings. And the thing is, not every big swing is going to connect. Not every big swing is going to pan out at least right away, like with Build Back Better or with voting rights. But then we adapt

and we figure out how to move forward and how to go next. But instead of giving Biden credit for at least boldly championing voting rights or boldly championing infrastructure, build back better, all these things, they just say, you know what, like all those things that we accomplished in the first year, okay, like you didn't get this done though. Like that's kind of how the media frames it. I think the biggest loser of that press conference, and I'm trying to be a little easier on the media these days, but I think the biggest loser of the press conference was the media who asked a lot of really horrible questions. Like, you have the president of the United States, and to Biden's credit, you know, President Biden is a much better person than me. He calls on like every reporter, like he calls on Fox, he calls on Newsmax, who asked like a despicable question about like Biden having dementia, which Biden ignored. Like these are the questions that he was fielding over this two hour session. And then I watched the press conference and I think, you know, Biden did like a really good

job at that. And then, you know, CNN comes off, you know CNN comes off the air and CNN's on and the reporters are like, yeah, so Biden talking about his failure of attorney. I was like, how did you get that from what I just watched and what everybody just watched? I mean, I was talking to people while we were watching it. Everybody who I was speaking with said that President Biden was doing a great job. And then the media framing after was like that this is like some massive disaster. One of the things that Biden did though was he accepted responsibility

for things that he could have done better. Like he said, yeah, what I should do is be doing more outreach to black and brown communities to let them know that I am there for them. Obviously my policies are there for them. Obviously, my policies are there for them, but I need to make more direct connections there. And then they're like, Biden admits he failed. That's how they frame it. They want a blustering, crazy Trump to be like, we're the best at this and the best at this, and I'm perfect,

and I could do no wrong. It's why we need a strong... To me, you could use the word progressive, you could use the word left. But to me, I think those names, I've always said on the podcast, those names are misnomers, because I'm a progressiveQP or period. So I consider myself far more conservative than these ridiculous death cult people who champion COVID. My policies are way more conservative than that. But we need a strong pro-democracy media company like the one we're building here at Midas Touch. It's why we appreciate your support. I mean, the donations, the things in the YouTube chats with the contributions in the YouTube chat, that does go a long way to help us fund these podcasts and keep it going because the fascist media, they're funded by billions and billions of dollars. And we're funded by three brothers who put our heart and soul into this every day.

And really the small contributions that you moment and the existential threat that faces our democracy. And they want to pick out, oh, Biden could have said this better or that better. You had a ranting, raving fucking lunatic as a president who was going to fucking nuclearly annihilate our country with fucking Twitter. He can't be trusted with social media accounts. And you fucking were afraid to do hard investigative pieces on him because it was difficult to make phone calls to the press secretary because she was mean to you or he was mean to you. So you didn't want to pursue investigations into Trump.

But now that you have access, you want to just criticize, which you didn't want to pursue investigations into Trump. But now that you have access, you want to just criticize, which you have every right to do, but you don't want to talk about what's really going on. I mean, play the clip right that Mitch McConnell after we'll talk about the voting rights legislation that was passed. Democrats are championing voting rights legislation. All of the Republicans are against it. The Democratic vote, we'll talk about the filibuster vote in a second, but the Democratic vote on the Voter Rights Legislation Act, all the Democrats, all of them supported voter rights legislation. But because the existence of filibuster, you couldn't do an actual vote on Voting Rights Act until you clear the way and you

stop the filibuster. And what is said by the media is Democrats fail to pass voting rights. This was a Democratic failure. You have all the Republicans who are obstructing it. But then after the voting rights vote, after all the Democrats vote, play the clip of what Mitch McConnell said about Black voters and saying that black voters are not American voters. What's your message for voters of color who are concerned that without the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, they're not going to be able to vote in the midterm? Well, the concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as

Americans. And I'll tell you, Midas Touch was the only media outlet out there that was really pushing that and put that front and center as an issue. Unfortunately, other people picked it up. But Brett, you picked it up. You tweeted it right away. You framed what that issue was. Yeah, because it was a despicable statement. And I think it really revealed what Mitch McConnell thinks, you know,

and I think, you know, we were just talking about why this bill, why the voting rights bill, it's not a loss for Democrats that this didn't pass. It's a loss for America that this bill didn't pass. And it's a loss, especially for the black and brown communities that are being disadvantaged at the polls, that their polls are being literally taken away from their communities, that they're Texas, for example, saying that they don't have enough paper to register them to vote. I mean, these are the weird suppression tactics, the really criminal suppression tactics that are taking place across the country. And when we are upset that voting rights doesn't pass, I'm not upset because Democrats lost. I'm upset because to me, this is fundamental to what America is. And, you know, I would bet, you know,

we still have some time today. I will bet you barely see this Mitch McConnell clip on TV today, but I will bet you see constantly about President Biden saying that he's not sure if the 2022 elections will be 100% legitimate or not because he is genuinely afraid that Republicans are installing people at election boards that have the unilateral power to overturn election results. And then they try to compare Biden to Trump and say, oh, I saw so many of these analysts, these talking heads yesterday being like,

oh, well, Trump and Biden sound so similar. They're the only two presidents that I could remember that are instilling doubt in the election process. I mean, because the last guy and the party that's in, not the party that's in power, even though they act like it, the party that is currently controlling all the election systems that passed all these voter suppression laws. And the state legislature. You're right, though, Brett.

The party that is in power in the state legislatures is an accurate way of framing it. They're the ones committing the fraud. There's a difference between the party calling out the fraud and the party committing the fraud. And we can see it. So what the media needs to do, and here's the other difference as you go back to Watergate to today, the media at that time called it out. They were fearless. And they said, here's what's going on. We had an insurrection and all the media wants to talk about is some bullshit fake story that they create every day just to generate some new headline. They're not focused on what the issues are. America is being overtaken by fascism, by authoritarianism. It's right in front of your fucking face.

Like the movie Don't Look Up, it's here. It's coming. You're supposed to be the fourth estate media, and it shouldn't just be Midas Touch and a handful of other podcasts and local community groups that are the ones raising the red flag. But as we've always said, the media is funded by billionaires. The billionaires want tax cuts at the end of the day. These companies, no matter where they stand, when they're funded by that money, they ultimately know who their corporate overlords are, unfortunately, sometimes. And a lot of those people skew Republicans. So it shouldn't be a shock. But for people who care about our democracy, we could come together and we still can make a difference. I don't want to leave this on a negative note. I'll just make one other observation, though, a negative observation, and then I won't leave it on a negative note. After the voting

rights vote, then there was a vote on eliminating the filibuster and Sinema and Manchin voted against eliminating the filibuster. There's video footage that you could play it, Jordi, as I'm talking about it for those watching it, but I'll just describe it for the listeners. Of all the Republicans going over to Kyrsten Sinema, giving her high fives, shaking her hand, congratulating her and embracing her. And it was her with the Republicans in the corner. So the two images of Sinema that should be run in a primary over and over again in Arizona should be the video of her giving the thumbs down vote on raising the minimum wage and then high-fiving on not eliminating the filibuster. They were treating her like a celebrity. All those Republican senators were treating Sinema like a celebrity

walking over to her and shaking her hand. It was such a strange sight. Yeah, you got to know the people, the company you keep, you know, kind of says everything, but you know, I might as touch here though, you know, we're going to be spending our energy in electing more Democrats. That's, that's, that's what we're going to be doing here. And what I think is important is like, we need to think of politics more like we're like building something, like we're building a house or building a structure or whatever, like electing Biden. Like we actually started building the house. You know, we laid the foundation, we started putting up the wood and everything's coming together, right? And then you get to these points like right now with Build Back Better and voting rights where the building of the house, you know, sort of stops at a certain

point or at least slows down. There are things happening, you know, there are things being fixed, there are things being built up, but like the construction kind of slows down a little bit. What you don't want to do is when the next cycle comes around to call the builders in, to call the people in who are going to knock down the house that you started building. What you want to do is you want to take more people in that are going to finish completing the house. And we need to think of politics more as instead of like, you know, we tried one election and we didn't get everything we wanted. And now, you know what?

Like, let's pack it in. No, like we need to think of this as brick by brick. If we thought of elections as incremental progress and as, you know, we have, you know, okay, so now we have 48. Okay, what we need to do now is we need to get two more senators who could come in to get the filibuster. We need to think about it now as we are actually so close

to being able to have control over the Senate the way we want it. We are so close to actually being able to do that, but we have to get two more senators in there to make it happen. And if we think about politics on more of a basis of we need to keep building and keep building on these wins and actually build this beautiful structure of democracy, then we could actually go forward and we could pass raising the minimum wage. We could pass build back better. We could do really anything we want once we get that majority that we really need in there. But we have to stay in the fight and we have to keep going. And I also hope that everybody, you know, stays really in tune with what's going on at their

state legislatures, because that right now, as David Pepper, who we've had on the show before, those are the laboratories of autocracy, as David Pepper calls him, a former Ohio Democratic chair. And what we need to do is we need to be paying attention to those state houses, and we need to be doing everything that we can, staying involved, writing letters, getting involved at a state and local level to preserve democracy and make sure that these partisan hacks don't take over the state infrastructures of counting our elections. It's really going to be up to us right now. I cannot wait until we make Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin irrelevant by voting two more senators in the 2022 cycle. And then how do you agree with you, Jordy? And then for those listening,

how do you do it? You just do it. You just do it. I mean, Brett Jordy and I weren't involved in politics before before 2020. I mean, I had interned for Senator Clinton, you know, and I interned for a congressman like 20 years ago. Hey, I was secretary of my grade in high school. Right. But, you know, we weren't involved. We weren't involved in, we weren't really involved in politics. And we just got up and used this platform to spread this message every day. You have a platform. You do.

Start by registering family members and cousins and friends and neighbors. You know, set a goal for yourself. Try to register, you know, a few hundred people a month, which sounds hard, but like you could do it, you know, which means you could register thousands and thousands of people in a year. And then if all of the Midas mighty did that, we could register millions and millions of people and we could win in the margins. And I don't mean to be grim and no one wants to talk about that. But because of the anti-vax attitude of Trump supporters, there was a study that I read recently and I want to find it

and maybe I'll go put it in the chat room as soon as I find it. But it's that Trump voters and GQP voters are dying exponentially at a higher rate than Democrats because they're having these anti-vax attitudes. And they're on the margins, a few percentage here and there, where a lot of these elections are decided. Democrats have more voters and Republicans are killing their voters. So while Republicans kill their voters, as Republicans stand for nothing, we come together, we organize, you organize, you are the difference, and you make that change. I want to talk about just a podcast called How We Win, which is a great podcast that also gives you those tools as well. Every week, How We Win tells the stories of people fighting to protect our democracy and defeat the GOP by electing Democrats to key states

and federal offices. So you know the news already, but How We Win not just gives you hope, but it gives you the toolkits to how we can win. It's hosted by campaign organizing veterans Steve Pearson and Mariah Craven. And every week they bring their insight, humor, and hope on the most important issues. They have guests like Nancy Pelosi, Stacey Abrams, Representative Adam Schiff, and others. And it really delves deep into the specifics of what you can do. So make sure you check out how we win that podcast. Thank you, everybody, for listening to the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you supporting all of the Midas Media Network podcasts. Go check them all out from Legal AF to the Influence

Continuum to Zoomed In to Kremlin File to, of course, the Midas Touch Brothers podcast. Check out Five Minute News. Check out, of course, Politics Girl, last but not least, and probably one of the first in my heart, I always have a special soft spot for the Midas Touch podcast. And special thanks to our sponsors, Athletic Greens, BetterHelp, and Magic Spoon. Use those promo codes, Midas, there. And thank you to our guest, the real investigative journalist, Michael Edison Hayden. We will see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast. Keep on fighting Midas Mighty. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.