The MeidasTouch Podcast - We are the Majority… NOW ACT LIKE IT!!! (Feat. Jason Kander & Ravi Gupta and Brian Karem)

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we have a handful of incredible guests! First up, we sit down with Jason Kander and Ravi Gupta, hosts of the podcast, Majority 54. Kander was the Secretary of State of Missouri until 2017 and received the most votes of any Democratic candidate in his Senate race against Roy Blunt in 2016. Gupta is the managing partner of Arena, an organization dedicated to convening, training, and supporting the next generation of candidates and campaign staff. Gupta also worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. During the interview we get specific with what everyday Democrats can and should do in order to help preserve our democracy & much more. Next, we welcome back our friend and incredible journalist, Brian Karem. Karem dishes on the differences between the Trump & Biden administrations as well as the motivating factors behind most journalists we see today. Brian’s new book is available now and is called FREE THE PRESS: The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It. The remainder of the episode the brothers discuss the latest Trump/DeathSantis feud as well as WTF Gov. Youngkin is doing in Virginia. If you enjoyed today’s episode please be sure to rate, review & subscribe! As always, thank YOU for listening! Subscribe to Majority 54 here: https://wondermedianetwork.com/majority-54 Buy Brian Karem's book here: https://amzn.to/3nAt2YK DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: BETTER HELP: https://betterhelp.com/meidas ATHLETIC GREENS: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas MAGIC SPOON: https://magicspoon.com/meidas and use promo code MEIDAS 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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Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, Ben, Brett, and Jordy fighting for democracy with you, the Midas Mighty, each and every podcast episode and each and every day. Brett, Jordy, we have an incredible show today. We've got a few guests on the show. So we have Jason Kander, former secretary of state of Missouri. He and Ravi Gupta have a podcast, Majority 54, which is an incredible pod. If you're not listening to a Midas Media Network pod, you should check out Majority 54, but we will have Kander and Gupta on Majority 54. They talk about strategies, how Democrats, how progressives can champion progressive Democratic ideas and win in red states as Jason Kander did.

And I always think personally that I think Kander would just be an incredible, incredible candidate. I think he's someone in the future who could be like the president of the United States one day. But it's an incredible podcast everyone should listen to. And of course, we also have a friend of the podcast, Brian Karam, out with a new book called Free the Press, The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It. Brian Karam joins the podcast today to talk about his book and to talk about his experiences as a journalist during the Trump years. Right now, of course, Brian Karam asked the famous question during the White House briefing to Trump on September of 2020 if he would accept a peaceful transition of power, and Trump responded there won't be a transition of power. Win, lose, or draw in this election.

Will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election? There has been rioting in Louisville. There's been rioting in many cities across this country. Red and your so-called red and blue states. Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election? Well, we're going to have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. I understand that, but people are rioting.

Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transfer of power? We wanna have, get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very, we'll have a very peaceful, there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation. Brian Karam has been in war zones. Brian Karam has been everywhere. He's been on the front lines. He's been to jail for protecting a source. How many journalists?

Multiple times. It's wild. Who today in the journalistic atmosphere would do that? Absolutely no one. Here's the thing. Karam was like the first person during the first war in Iraq to like arrive like in, I have to go back and read it, but like he was like one of the first war in Iraq to like arrive, like in, I have to go back and read it, but like, he was like one of the first people in the war zone as a journalist. Then he was also in Columbia during the drug war with Pablo Escobar. He's been, you know, involved in,

you know, pretty much anywhere where there's been like serious action, like Karim's been on the front lines. And here's what he said to me before privately. We'll see what he says in the interview, that January 6th, above war zones, above being behind enemy lines and cartels, January 6th was the most fearful he ever was. Talk about that today on the podcast. But Brett and Jordy, how are you doing otherwise? Everything is fantastic, Ben. I mean, we're looking right now at the battle for voting rights, which is not so fantastic. And I don't know how we're going to see this one through. To be honest, it's going to the floor tomorrow. And we are monitoring that. There are changes

literally by the minute happening with there. It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I want to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, not just today, but every single day by fighting for the values that he held dear and by fighting for everything that he fought for. So I just want to make it clear that Martin Luther King, we don't just celebrate him today, but we celebrate him each and every day, not just with words, but with our actions in fighting for democracy and fighting for voting rights. And personally, everything is good. Jordy, I hear you got about a foot plus of snow or something over there. What's happening? Yeah, that's what I'm going to say. Everything should be good by you and Ben right now. And no snowless California over there.

I got a foot of snow. Jordy, it's like 58 degrees here. Do you understand how cold that is? Oh, that's so cold, Brett. Jeez. But I got to tell you guys something, and I want to get ahead of this. The attorney general of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, he's coming for me. And I don't mean like he's going to put me in jail, although he might. He's going to be the future governor of the state, fingers crossed. But this one-on-one game that we discussed when he came on the podcast, a few weeks back, it's happening. It's heating up, huh? It's not just heating up.

I'm constantly in communications with his staff throughout the day trying to figure out the logistics of when this is going down. I'm not in shape for this. I'm kind of freaking out. He has my number. He's in shape. He coaches teams. He's in a run,

a weekly run where he gets up shots. It's snowing here right now. I'm not going to go into a gym and put up shots right now during this COVID era. I don't know what to do. I'm freaking out. This is me getting ahead of that. So context for our listeners who may have not have heard our interview with AG Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania, who was running for governor. But there was a challenge made, a gauntlet thrown. Gauntlet thrown. The gauntlet was thrown. A challenge made for a one-on-one basketball game to happen in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. One-on-one, Jordy Meiselis versus Attorney General and candidate for governor, Josh Shapiro.

Josh Shapiro, apparently an excellent world-class basketball player. I've been doing the research. He won a state championship in Pennsylvania. He's really good. It's funny. As this heats up and as the plans start to happen, and this is happening, guys, this is going down. I spoke to dad yesterday. And I'm just going to tell you his honest thoughts, because I don't know if he told you directly. But I said, dad, Jordy's playing the attorney general of Pennsylvania in a one-on-one basketball game. I said, how do you think he's going to do? Dad said, pretty concerned for Jordy. I said, you don't think Jordy still got it? He's like,

I don't know, man. I love the honesty. Yeah, no, I think he's right. I don't think I still got it. I haven't played since I played Ben in three points and Ben walked off the court. So I really have to figure out like my game plan. I was trying to do research. Like I found video clips of him playing online. He's good. Like he could play. So I'm a little bit nervous. Normally people who go into like a boxing match, the prep before they talk about how they're going to knock the person out. Jordy, on the other hand, talks about how he's going to lose, how he's fearful. It gets worse. Well, better too, because the loser of the game is going to have to donate like X thousands of dollars to

a charity, which is fantastic, but we're going to have to figure out how much we're willing to pay and how much, what charity all this is going to go to. Sounds good, Jordy. Let's go talk about some news, Brett, as you talk about honoring the legacy of MLK, as you have the transition to Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, the first thing Glenn Youngkin does is a series of executive orders. And one of the executive orders is the abolition of critical race theory,

which is not being taught anywhere in Virginia. So it's abolishing something that doesn't exist. It's like banning unicorns or something. It's really now. Now, here's the thing, though, about what makes this order, though, particularly kind of fascistic and scary, though. The order bans any executive employee at a school level from directing or otherwise compelling students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to inherently divisive concepts. Inherently divisive concepts. Now, if you flesh out what this means, there should be nothing divisive about Nazism and fascism and whether democracy is better than fascism. There should be nothing divisive about making sure Black lives matter, Brown lives matter, and supporting Black and Brown causes,

there should be nothing divisive about that. But specifically, that is what is being targeted in this order. One can view it being a quote unquote divisive concept to be supportive of the work of Martin Luther King, which should not be divisive at all. Those are the types of things teaching the truth about American history could now be attacked under this executive order in Virginia. It's the first thing that he did. Yeah. I mean, that's what CRT is code for in Republican circles. CRT itself is not a thing that exists unless you're in law school. But the concept of CRT, what they want to do is they want to fold basically the teaching of history about race into the CRT bucket. So teaching about slavery, teaching about civil rights, basically anything that they think will make white kids uncomfortable, you know, or these white parents uncomfortable that their kids are learning about.

And what we as Democrats need to do is we need to go forward and we need to own the message of education. Yeah, it's making racist white parents uncomfortable. Yeah, because we need to own this message that Republicans are trying to erase American history. They don't want your kids prepared for the real world. They don't want your kids prepared to go to college and be armed with the information. And this is not about shaming kids by teaching them the history of slavery.

It's not about shaming kids about teaching them about the struggles of civil rights. This is about instilling kids with an appropriate teaching of American history that they are equipped to handle and providing them with empathy to understand where others are coming from in America. It's important that we all have a comprehensive view of American history. And it's about time Democrats step up and say, hey, listen, Republicans are actively trying to erase American history from curriculums. That's how we need to be framing this each and every day.

And it's to make American better. It's to make American truly the melting pot it is by teaching about history, by respecting diversity. That is how we will grow as a nation. was to ban mask mandates at schools, which he probably isn't even allowed to do at a local level, but he's directed basically the state superintendent to require local schools that have local ordinances and local rules where they want to have mask mandates. And they want to have mask mandates at their schools because that's what the parents want, not the people who are the radical extremists who support COVID, who go into these school board meetings, not them, but like the vast majority of parents in schools don't want to see their kids getting sick. They don't want to get sick. Republicans try to frame these beliefs as we are doing what parents want. But time and time again, when you look at polls, parents want their kids to be safe in schools and they want to be safe in schools. And I think also we're not looking

enough at, we talk about what the parents want, we talk about what teachers want. We're not looking about what the kids want often. And I think that's the thing that frustrates me so much. And you're starting to see across the country, kids walking out of schools that put in these policies of, you know, you got to go to school and we're not allowing, we're not requiring masks or we're not requiring people to get the vaccine. What that's creating is it's creating an environment in schools where teachers are afraid to teach and kids are afraid to go because they're afraid of getting sick. They're afraid of passing it on to their immunocompromised loved ones. And that's really what we need to be looking at in addition to parents' beliefs and especially

in addition to politicians' beliefs. especially in addition to politicians' beliefs, it's what are kids going to be comfortable with and how can we provide them with the best education possible and keep them safe? Nobody wants their kids to have to be home. Nobody wants to have their kids wearing masks. These aren't things like Republicans try to frame it as this issue of Democrats just have this weird fetish of wanting kids to wear masks and wanting people to wear masks. People don't want to wear masks. And politicians, it's not politically popular to make people want to wear masks. But we have to try to keep people safe. And once again, we have to own the issue as Democrats are the party of parents. Democrats are the party of

protecting children, protecting teachers, supporting parents, and supporting the safety of all kids across the country. And we need to pump people up. Like that is what being a good person is all about. The level of sacrifice that we have to make right now as Americans is nowhere near the level of sacrifice that our grandparents and great grandparents had to make in World War II. We've talked on our podcast before how both of our grandparents, who sadly are no longer here with us today, who we think about all of the time, though, who were in one way or another involved in the war. We had a grandpa who was a psychiatrist who helped on the home front with mental health. And we had a grandpa who was a tail gunner overseas, who was literally fighting and risking

his life every single day. On, he thought he flew the max amount of missions possible, was a well decorated for his courage in war zones. All we're asking right now is to help other Americans by doing very basic. So it's like, yo, wear like a little napkin over your face. Just put this on. Only when you're out in public and you're very close to people. Can you get the vaccine? Can you just go to the doctor, get the vaccine? The lack of civic duty that citizens in the United States care to take up for them

is so disheartening and so scary for the country at large. People now are so selfish and it's just so sad. What we have right now in America, I think one of the overriding issues, almost above everything, is a lack of empathy. People have a lack of empathy, a lack of caring for others. I don't know if this comes because we're all now communicating with each other through text messages and tweets and Facebook posts. I don't know if that's where it comes from, but there's a level of empathy that no longer exists. And I think what kind of sums it up more than a lot is when you look at these Trump rallies, when you look at the people who

go to these Trump rallies. And yesterday at this Trump rally, there was a video that stood out that was posted by Patriot Takes, which I feel like is in fact indicative of the MAGA movement. And it was a video from this Trump supporter, Ethan Schmidt, who is a big proponent of the Arizona MAGA governor candidate, Carrie Lake, the fascist candidate that they're running over there. And he was raving about his love of harassing cancer patients. And this was what he was proud to project on the Internet. And I'll play this clip because I think it's important that we understand kind of the empathy deficit of what we're dealing with right now. Hey, guys.

My name is Ethan Schmidt. And I am Grayson. Tara Schepanski, Polish American Brotherhood. Who's that in the back? Out of Francisco. I'm Kyle. Yeah. Anti-maskers club taking over the world.

I love harassing cancer patients. I love harassing cancer patients is what Ethan Lake said. And, you know, it's hard to even say anything after that. It's just such a horrific thing to say. But these are sentiments that are echoed so much by this MAGA movement. And it's embodied when you see these people harassing employees at Olive Gardens and Applebee's and Cheesecake Factories and all the things that they're doing, harassing nurses, harassing doctors, protesting against nurses and doctors. This is a movement, it's a hate movement, and it's a movement that speaks to the fundamental lack of empathy that we're seeing from the right wing in this country. That's a great point, Brett, and framing it as a hate movement is really apropos, and I've never heard it referred in that kind of simplistic terms before. But yes, what you have on the Republican Party is a movement of hate.

And what we have on the Democratic side is a movement of love, democracy, supporting people, trying to come up with the best science possible, you know, learning, supporting and valuing education and truly, you know, truly supporting our fellow Americans. And that's why I'm so happy to have Jason Kander and Ravi Gupta on the podcast today with Majority 54, who give prescriptive ways that we can go about helping Democrats when helping the types of messages, Brett, that you just discussed break through. And we'll bring them on in a second. Before that, I want to talk about our partner, BetterHelp. This podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. If there is something

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In fact, so many people use BetterHelp. They are recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. Now get this special offer for the Midas Touch podcast. Listeners, get 10% off your first month. Just go to betterhelp.com slash Midas. That's betterhelp.com slash Midas. So now let's bring in our guests. So happy to have on our podcast, Jason Kander and Ravi Gupta. We are joined by Jason Kander and Ravi Gupta, the co-hosts of my favorite podcast. When I'm not listening to the Midas Touch podcast, Legal AF, or the Midas Mighty podcast. The podcast is called Majority 54. Of course, we had Jason on as a guest seven months ago.

Wow. I don't know if it feels like a really long time ago or a really short time ago. All I know is I looked at those clips, Ben, and Jason looks the same, but we all look 10 years old. Just for all the Midas Mighty out there, of course, Jason Kander was Secretary of State of Missouri until 2017. And Ravi Gupta is the managing partner of ARENA, an organization dedicated to convening, training, and supporting the next generation of candidates and campaign staff. And he also worked on Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and a majority 54. They break down based on their experiences,

how progressives can win and flip red states blue. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Thanks for having us. I'm thrilled that we're your fourth favorite podcast. That's I like that Ben listens to his own podcasts. I got to favor my own podcast, but you are the next best podcast after our own podcast. But Jason, going to you for a second, you know, you tweeted something interesting recently. It was an article you were quoted in in the New York Times where you recount the experience of Todd Aiken, a Missouri Senate candidate for the Republican Party. It was dug up in his race against Claire McCaskill, him saying in 2012, this was a quote that this Republican candidate said, quote, if it's a legitimate rape,

the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. At that time, Claire McCaskill seized on that moment. There was a chorus of reprobation and that basically tanked Aiken's campaign. And what you say, though, is if he had said that now, it would be the opposite. You would have support from this current Republican Party. How have things changed and devolved into this? And even if it has changed, which it clearly has, can Democrats, though, capitalize on this and just say, look, this is the party that you support. These are the people. Yeah, I'll even take you back a little bit further in time for a story that most people haven't heard about that, which is that. So it's 2012. I'm running for Secretary of State. Claire's running for re-election to the U.S.

Senate. And we were on the phone, I don't know, like a couple, maybe a month before, I guess a month before the primary. And she was telling me her strategy of going ahead, and some people may remember this, of running ads during the Republican primary that were like, they were really meant to prop up Todd Akin. He was really running third in the Republican primary. And the ads were Claire McCaskill ads saying Todd Akin is too conservative for Missouri. And people were like, this is nuts. She's wasting her money in the Republican primary to get the candidate she wants by telling conservative voters he's too conservative. So anyway, fast forward, primary happens, Aiken wins. I remember the next morning,

I'm on the phone with Claire. And I'm like, Claire, that was incredible. And she says to me, and this is before Aiken has said the crazy thing. She says, Jason, mark my words, I will be in the lead by Labor Day. And at that point, she was like pretty far behind. Like it wasn't maybe two days later or something like that, that Aiken goes on TV and says, well, you know, if it's a legitimate rape, the woman's body has a way of shutting that whole thing down. And the Republican Party, you know, flips out there like, oh, my God, we can't have this guy be the nominee.

The other senator in Missouri, Roy Blunt, is going on TV saying, yeah, he's got to get out of the race. Romney was the nominee. He's calling on him to get out of the race. And then Clary ends up winning because they weren't able to get him out of the race. So the question was posed to me by the New York Times, if this were to happen today, what would happen? And what I said was, look, what would happen is the right wing would just say, oh, yeah, that's how it works. Like a woman's body just shuts that down. And there would just be an echo chamber that repeats it over and over again until it really didn't matter whether that was true. So what can we do about that? Well, that's what Ravi and I talk about all the time on the show is how do you counter the fact that there is this just constant echo chamber on the right

saying things that aren't true so that facts don't matter. And what we talk about often is one, personalizing it, talking about why you believe what you believe, not just throwing facts and figures and statistics that they could see on cable news at them and really using your personal relationship. But we're really trying to now go in an even deeper direction. I'll let Ravi talk about that, about what we're trying to do to advise candidates and campaigns and the party as a whole at a greater level. And so, Ravi, I'll jump right off that. So tell us what we are doing now messaging from local, state, federal candidates to seize on the fact that you have this real radical right extreme party. And at the end of the day, if you look at the issues, not the party, but the issues, overwhelmingly, people support Democratic candidates' issues. But how do we get Democratic

candidates to fight and to be out front and center on those issues? Yeah, I think it's twofold. One is, you know, we tend to do better on the issues with people, but we aren't telling a story that's compelling to people about this country and where it's going. I think in general, we did really well, you know, relatively speaking during the Trump years, because the story was really obvious, like, here's this terrible person, and we need to stop him. And that was pretty compelling, even though it wasn't much of an affirmative vision. Right now, we can say we want to, you know, expand healthcare, we want to protect the right to abortion, we want to protect access to abortion say we want to expand health care. We want to protect the right to abortion. We want to protect access to abortion.

We want to protect our democracy, which I think is one of the more compelling causes that we have right now for voters, even including independents and former Trumpers. So I think in general, we need to think about what our story is. This is what Obama was so good at, was that he told a story that connected where we were as a country to who he is as a person to where we're going. And he's like, come along with me. And so we need politicians who can do that really well, all the way from the top to the bottom, all the way down ballot as well. And so for us, what we're doing on the podcast is twofold. One is we have this pledge to persuade where we're pushing our. And our audience is very middle America. I think our biggest city, no surprise for our podcast is Kansas City, where Jason comes from.

And we do really, really well in states that, I would say traditional left-wing media doesn't, because a lot of people who listen to us have family members and they want to know how to talk to those people and persuade them. So the Pledge to Persuade is challenging our audience to find people in their lives who are persuadable. And on the podcast, we continually come back to different ways that people can talk to those family members on the issues. And we even have those people on our podcast talking through. We had a woman bring her mom on who's a persuadable and we talked to the mom even.

So that's one. And then the second is we're really getting in and talking to candidates. And especially we want to spend more time this year on down ballot candidates that don't get a lot of attention because the right is so good at this. They are from school boards to election boards. They're putting candidates up and supporting them. And they're actually unifying the story that everybody's telling. I think it's a bad story, but they're telling the same story in school board races from Virginia all the way to Washington.

Ravi, walk me through for the person listening to this who doesn't have a massive Twitter following or doesn't have huge social media accounts, but just says, you know what? I want to persuade my next door neighbor or a family member. It's 2022. I want to take some action. So walk me through the steps of like, what could that person do after they turn off this podcast? Are they sending an email? Are they picking up the phone? Like, is it weird if they just go, I want to talk to you about politics, right? How do you bring up that conversation in a way that feels subtle, but persuades? And how do we arm the person with that knowledge? Well, I think it starts with just spending time with the people in general, right? Because if

you just pick up the phone and you don't have this person in your life enough to begin with, and you're just like, hey, here's why you can't vote for Ron Johnson, it's not going to be effective, right? So you need to be like, whatever it is you do with that person. So whether it's playing basketball or revving drinks or going for walks or having your kids play together, like you need to keep doing that thing. Like, and I think that's really important. And I've talked on the podcast about my own struggles with this. So after January 6th, I stopped talking to my own father and brother, both of whom are Trump supporters. And my dad in particular was a very, was a very, he was a fan of the insurrection, if you could believe it. And so he and I didn't talk most of the year, but that really didn't do anything. Like that wasn't solving any problem,

not talking to him, wasn't persuading him. And so I'm talking to him again. Now, do I think I'll persuade him? I'm not sure. But the only chance you get is if you have multiple touch points and then you start putting in subtly, right? Like maybe a, like you talk through one thing that's concerning you here and there, and you do a lot of anchoring, right? Like you want to, one thing we do on the podcast is we, we try to validate any position that the quote unquote other side has that's, that's valid, right? Like when, you know, when we thought CNN was being a little hard on Joe Rogan, for example, on the ivermectin stuff, we, we, you know, I'm not even sure we were correct about this in hindsight, but we were like, yeah, you like, like, like, he there's something behind what he's

saying. And it's not insane. And so we try to find moments like that to be like, we're not just poking fun at the other side. But if they're on to something, we try to at least take it seriously. One of the things we try to do, Ben, is make sure that in order for people to have credibility, we try and convince them that you've got to say the parts where you agree. But we're really careful to say that doesn't mean you've got to agree with stuff you don't agree with. Right. We're not like doing the thing that some candidates do where they pretend to be conservative when they're not. We're not saying that. But we are saying that one, you've got to you've got to have credibility. You can't just like shame people. And that's a big part of it is that if you look at what a lot of the left has become and like we're both progressives, but what a lot of the left culturally has become is sort of this virtue signaling oriented approach that says, if we are completely dismissive of arguments of the other side, and in fact, kind of arrogant towards some of those arguments, then that's our persuasion method. And what it really is, is it's saying we don't need to get

any of these votes. And the thesis of our podcast really is, if you want to win elections in the future, we got to win these votes. And it's not a matter of like, are you caving to the other side by spending time with these people? No, you're trying to save souls. So for instance, recently, there's been a pretty clear move by the right to try and associate like manhood and masculinity with conservatism. And on the left, the instinct has been to just be really dismissive of that, and to just point out all the ways that the messengers from the right are really not that manly at all, and then just kind of move on. And Ravi and I have been making the point that you've got to recognize the effectiveness of their arguments when they're making them. And that's a

deep, it's wrong, and it's disingenuous, but it's a deeply effective strategy in places where I'm from, for instance, Kansas City, middle of the country, where if you can associate being conservative with being manly, well, you're going to lock down a lot of votes that way. And we can't just dismiss that. We have to have a strategy to counter that. What's the strategy to counter that one? Well, we talk a lot about redefining what masculinity and manhood is, right? And that doesn't mean that that doesn't necessarily mean that it's got to be about like, maybe what you might expect, right? It's not just about talking about your mental health, which I'm a big proponent of, and you know, that kind of stuff that's that's more in vogue. It's also about just kind of

reframing it, right? Because if you want to talk about policy, well, not taking care of people who are sick, that's not what a man would do, right? Like not looking out for children that have come across the border without parents, like a man would not be dismissive of those people. And so it's going ahead and countering that directly as you find it. So I think another thing that kind of too often people on our side are dismissive of are those kind of kitchen table issues. When we speak of things like inflation, you know, I remember there was the CNN story a few weeks ago, it could have been months ago, I don't know, I lost all track of time, about the family that was complaining

about the price of milk. And they said, you know, some price of milk and all like a lot of liberals jumped on them being like, where are you finding milk? That's that price and kind of wagging their finger at them. But there was a real issue underneath there that you're ignoring and you're not going to win over any votes by telling this person that they're feeling about the prices that they're feeling, no matter how many kids they have or whatever is wrong. So how do we message kind of issues like that of inflation by saying like, hey, yes, this is a problem, but no, Republicans are not the solution to that problem? Yeah, I think the first part of what you said, yes, this is a problem, is something that we struggle with sometimes. I think the lockdowns, we as a party had a very uneven messaging response to across the country.

And we have listeners who get very frustrated by this. We had a business owner, a brewery owner from Pennsylvania come on a couple of weeks ago who was just like, he just didn't feel hurt. He like his business was shut down. He was really struggling. And I see this in New York all the time. I'm like just a stone's throw from Chinatown where businesses really have never recovered from the pandemic because they had the earliest shutdowns because of all the anti-China sentiment early on in the pandemic. And because of their dependence on tourism, they've been as late to come back as anybody. And they just feel like

they aren't being heard. And I think that's the beginning of how we need to talk about these things is like, we can't be dismissive. Inflation is a good example. Like we can't be dismissive of the impact that inflation has, especially because inflation is strongest for people who have the least amount of money. Like if you're depending, if you're going paycheck to paycheck, you know, the difference of 7, 10% is a huge difference when you're already, you know, close to the red line anyway. So I think that's the starting point. And then I think the second part is, and I know Jason talks about this all the time, is promising the right amount. Because I think what happens is we promise so much and then we get into office and then we don't deliver.

And then people don't trust us anymore. And then they don't give us credit for the things that we do accomplish because they're expecting more. So like if if Biden were tomorrow to wave a magic wand, which I think he has the power to do and and give some kind of student loan relief, if he doesn't give, you know, some huge amount, like a lot of Democratic politicians saying all student loan relief, debt relief, like because the party is kind of putting all these messages out, I think there would be some frustrated people who are like, how come all student debt isn't really? So these are things that are just a challenge for us as a party.

Well, you've got to fulfill your promises and you especially have to fulfill your promises when you are the party of government. We forget that the Republicans say over and over again, basically, that the Democrats think government is good, and the Republicans think government is bad. And we have to accept that they're actually right about that framing. We actually do believe believe that government has a purpose and we are the pro government party and everybody knows that Democrats know that Republicans know it, independents know it. So we have to accept that.

And then when we are in government, we have to do a really good job. And that means we have to actually tell people what we're going to do and then do it, which starts with telling people what we can do and then doing that. Because if you get in, if your argument is government is good and then you get in and you don't do the things while you're in charge of government that you said you were going to do, well, they're not going to think government's very good and then they're not going to vote for you. Yeah. And President Biden has accomplished quite a lot in the first year. But there,

of course, as you're saying, there were a lot of other big promises that have not been met yet just because of the gridlock in the Senate, because we really just don't have the raw numbers to make it happen. The latest example is the battle over voting rights. I know this is going to the Senate floor for debate tomorrow. Jason, we spoke about this seven months ago on the Midas Touch podcast with you, and I could play the clip right now and it's really no different. It's still exactly the same relevant. You expressed then this kind of need for activists to have both urgency and patience simultaneously. I was wondering, do you think anything has changed since then? Like, what would you tell people now who are just so frustrated that they didn't see Build Back Better passed? And it seems like this voting rights thing is just not going to happen right now. I guess I wouldn't say that it's different as far as patience, although with the Senate, I wouldn't expect people to have the same patience they had seven months ago. But one of the things

Ravi and I have been trying to focus on or will focus on in the coming year on Majority 54 is that there's the fight over voting rights at the top level, like in the Senate right now. And then there's the there's the fight that is being overlooked a lot. You know, I saw the other day that the Republican Secretary of State's National Funding Committee raised $33 million, and the Democratic one raised a million dollars. Well, look, we could get everything we want passed in the Senate, and we're still going to struggle with the issue of that the right is trying to insert people into local election authority positions, county clerks, county recorders, county auditors, and they're trying to elect

secretaries of state so that no matter how the vote counting goes, they can just overturn elections. Well, we can't take our eye off of that. And so that's the other piece that we have to be really focused on is getting people elected at that local level, people who administer the elections to make sure that we still have a democracy, regardless of what passes in Washington. And they're saying it right out in the open. I mean, there was a clip that went viral over the weekend of Donald Trump saying that sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate and that these vote counters have to get a lot tougher and smarter, which sent chills down my spine. I mean, we know that's happening, but to hear it directly like that is horrifying. So, I mean, going into these midterm elections, if you see that voting rights is going to be an uphill battle, if you see that Build Back Better

is going to be an uphill battle, what do you think now? I know a lot of people kind of think, what have you done for me lately? So come November, if not a lot of these things have happened, what do we have to do to win at the end of the day? Now that we're in football season, I think of this analogy a lot. It makes less sense now given the state of the Patriots. But what I used to say is that the GOP are like the patriots and think the Brady era patriots where they're just so disciplined and whether it's from a policy agenda or it's from a tactical electoral perspective,

they invest in institutions long-term. They don't think of them just in terms of any one cycle. They invest in people. They invest in policy, going all the way to when I'm in law school, the federal society is this well-oiled machine that's taking people to the judiciary, you know, basically from the point where they're like 19, you know. So and then we're the Jets, the Democrats. We have like a.

It's really hit home for me right now, Rob. Yeah. It's really hit home for me. We fire a coach every year. We change our strategy every year. And that's from a policy perspective. That's from a storytelling perspective. That's definitely from an infrastructure perspective. And when Jason talks about the Secretary of State's fund being so low, that doesn't surprise me at all because you've got everybody from the donors

on down, constantly armchair quarterbacking and changing their mind about things when we got another side that is just ruthlessly investing in their institutions. So I think number one is investing in institutions and investing in the unsexy stuff like, you know, the voter protection organizations, the secretary of state's races, you know, the local parties like we had the Wisconsin Democrat Democratic chair on last week. Like I think people, especially if you don't live in a place where you can do it in person, invest in the less sexy of the organizations and not the priorities USA. They'll always have money, but all the way on down. And we're trying to do that on our podcast is give people good recommendations. Yeah. For people, you know, as we know, don't know who

their state legislator is, but just about nobody knows who their county clerk is. And your county clerk is the one who's going to run your local election. And if you're in an area that is competitive, if you're in an area where you have a Democratic county clerk who is running for reelection, it's going to be competitive or your Republican county clerk who is running for reelection, there's a Democrat who might be able to beat him. I promise if you call up that campaign, that Democratic campaign and say, I would like to volunteer, you will be the only person this week who does that. And if you're like, I want to hold a fundraiser for you, you'll be the only person this week who does that. And that means that it has the benefit of not only being like

on the front lines of protecting democracy, because you're going to be involved in a race that has to do with administering a local election, but or a presidential election, possibly at the local level. But you're also going to like have complete access and a lot more fun because you're going to be knocking on doors with the candidate. I mean, like that's far more rewarding. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, everybody get involved, you know, at the small local levels, because that's what Republicans are doing. And if you're not in the school board speaking out, guess who is in the school board speaking out the people going viral and all the videos that you see on Twitter every single day. Where do you think Trump fits into this all,

Jason? I mean, I feel like the kind of immediate reaction after Virginia was that Democrats put too much energy into Trump. I'm not sure personally that that's the right takeaway, but I'm curious to get you and Robbie's thoughts. Well, to me, where that takeaway goes wrong is that it concludes that we put too much energy into Trump in the Virginia race, when the truth is, is that what we what we did is we got, frankly, a little bit lazy for those years, because we saw that Trump was a weight. It started in the, like in 2017, in the special elections, we started winning because Trump was not very popular. And we said, Oh,

let's just keep hammering this. But the problem was, is that our message, because we wanted to get Republican votes, our message was was Trump is not like other Republicans. You can't support Trump. But what that said is other Republicans are fine. And the truth is that Trump is the id. He's the natural outgrowth of what Republicans have been saying in code for years. He just, you know, we all know this. He just removed the code and just said it. So what we should have been saying and what we need to start saying when we talk about Trump is, Trump is a Republican. This is what Republican politicians are. Because one of the differences, in addition to all the institutional and infrastructure investment that Republicans make that Ravi pointed out, is that Republicans year round make an argument for why

you should be a Republican and not a Democrat. And what we do is race by race, we make an argument for why you shouldn't vote for that Republican and why this Democrat is okay. What we need to do is be like, if you don't like Trump, it's because you don't like Republican ideas. And now heading in to 2022, now that we're in 2022, we have a lot of great Democratic candidates running in redder states. Tim Ryan in Ohio, Beto in Texas. Now, if they called you up for some tips, what would you tell them? Well, I've talked to both of those people before, and neither of them really need much for tips. I'll tell you what I just generally, because I do talk to, and I'll let Robbie answer this too,

because we both do this. I talk to a lot of candidates who are running in like swing districts or red areas. And I always tell them the same thing, which is voters will forgive you for believing something that they don't believe so long as they can see that you believe it because you care about them. So I tell them, like, do not bend over backwards to move yourself into the middle on issues if that's not genuinely where you are. But likewise, if you are genuinely closer to the middle on an issue, do not bend over backwards to make yourself seem more progressive to satisfy somebody else. Like what voters respond to is authenticity because most voters are not paying attention to these policy issues at the level that, you know, us nerds are. And so you just got to be real with them. And Ravi? Yeah, I echo everything Jason said. I would add that, you know,

start with story. You know, I often I talk to these candidates, not the particular candidates you're talking about, but I think people are relatively new to the game and they just give a list of the policies that they want to accomplish. And that just doesn't work with the voters like they don't they don't pick their candidates based on policy alone or in case some a lot of cases at all based on policy so uh i think people really need to hone the story that they're telling people and and to jason's point has to be authentic both who the candidate is and what the district is as an example of that like you know we all talk about obama rightfully as like oh we just need another obama or god would

we ever get another obama but what we forget about is, is that that Barack Obama was sort of the perfect, like, time where the man, the moment and the message all came together, which is what Robbie's talking about the story, right? We had a moment that obviously, you know, the country was looking for some kind of change. We had a message that was like, change. I mean, that was the whole message was change. And then what did we have? Who did we have pushing that? We had a black man whose middle name was Hussein, who was in that way and in like many other ways and many other ways, unlike anybody else who had ever been a nominee or a major candidate for president, let alone, you know, the president. And so those three things came together. And that's a story, right? When that person gets up and says, change, you go, well, this would be a change. And when he says, yes, we can, you go, well, he must be able to accomplish amazing things, because otherwise, how is this guy in this position? And so that's what you've got to not just think about what you stand for.

But you got to think about how do I embody that that that change that I want to make? And where does it come from within me? Why do I want to do it? That's the story I got to tell people. redrawn maps are looking like in different states. Is there cause for optimism for Democrats? I mean, is it as bad as we thought it was going to be with the gerrymandering? You know, as you're really looking at it, I mean, is there an opportunity for Democrats to keep the House? You know, when is this woe is me attitude that's out there by a lot of Democrats and this defeatist attitude, which we tell them, stop it. We really have an opportunity to keep the house. Just stop being defeatist. What are your thoughts along those lines, Ravi?

I think the gerrymandering is not as bad as a lot of people thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be terrible. It turns out it's not as bad. It's still bad for our country, but what wound up happening is that Democrats wound up, you know, adding seats through their processes in blue states more aggressively than a lot of people expected. And, you know, like my home state, New York, we're expecting to, you know, my own home district in Staten Island, for example, is going to be gerrymandered in a way to probably add that seat back to Max Rose. So gerrymandering is not going to be as much of an issue. But when you put that there is an advantage for Republicans in the census,

gerrymandering, and then the voting restrictions that they have, you know, there's obviously the wildcard of all these new election officials being installed in various places or legislators that are passing laws to strip various election officials of powers. So putting that all aside, I'm with you. I do think we could still pull this off. And I think the thing that we, there are two, there's one thing that is out of our control, but we can just watch it play out, which is the Republican primaries. That is going to be a shit show. You're already starting to see it now. Like just look at Ohio, Jason and I love to talk about this race. It's it is a just a total circus of psychotic. Yeah. Just previously respected. Yeah. Previously respectable moderates like J.D. Vance and Josh Mandel, who are at each other's throats to prove who can kiss Trump's ass the most.

That's good for us. You got to remember, there's so much pessimism about Virginia, but Youngkin was able to sneak by without saying anything really of substance until he wrapped up that nomination because it was in a convention, not a primary. Right. And so he was able to appear moderate because he didn't have to go to a Democratic Republican primary. So these Republicans are going to fight it out all over the country. They're going to accuse each other of election fraud. Oh, that's a good point. That's going to be a shit show. And so that's something for everybody to look forward to. Now, while they're doing that, that's where we need to really be building up our infrastructure.

And for us, what does that mean? Well, we have to go through our own primaries. I have a feeling these are going to be way less contentious than the Republican ones. I'm pretty optimistic about that. I think we've learned our lesson there. And I think two is we need to do everything we can. In the meantime, we need to do everything we can to ensure that the candidates who come out of our primaries has a very strong infrastructure coming out of it, which means strong state parties, strong support organizations, PACs that are well- funded. And then I think we've got a

fighting chance. There's so much that can happen between now and that election. Biden, who knows what happens with the agenda? Remember, Obama was dead in the water heading into his reelection, and he pulled it off. And so he did get his ass kicked in the midterms. But there's so many new cycles that happen even more than 2012. I have full confidence that we'll have the ability to turn this around, but we have to be really good. Jason, what do you think? Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, I guess I, and Ravi's heard me make this analogy before, but whenever I'm asked, what's going to happen in the election? Are we going to win? Are we going to lose? I always compare it to if you walked up on a drowning man and you were like, you know, what's going to happen in the election? Are we going to win? Are we going to lose?

I always compare it to like, if you walked up on a drowning man and you were like, do you think you'll make it to the surface? Like that, that dude should not spend any time or energy, like, trying to figure out whether he's going to survive. He's got to put it all in to get into the surface. Right. And so like, I don't know the answer and I'm typically pretty bad at predictions. But I guess what I would say is, is that like, anybody who's listening to this, who is really nervous about what's going

to happen in the midterms, they should take that energy and they should put it into getting involved in a campaign, whether it's a congressional campaign or otherwise. Because otherwise, if you don't do that, it's just wasted nervous energy. Absolutely. Jason Kander, Ravi Gupta, co-hosts of the podcast, Majority 54. After you listen to this podcast, turn on Majority 54. Make sure you subscribe. Jason, Ravi, really appreciate your time today. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate the chance to be here.

We will be right back after these messages. Wow, it was a great interview with Jason and Ravi. Definitely check out the podcast. And I'm telling you, we could win. We will win in 2022. For those who listen to our legal AF podcast on the weekends, went on a little rant as we were talking about the Supreme Court and elections having consequences, how we have all these radical right extremists on the Supreme Court. But the gist of my message was stop being defeatists. The fact that you're listening to this podcast is a great first step, but now we need you to take action. We need you to knock on doors. We need you to get involved in registering voters. Now is the time in 2022 where you listening, you watching have to leave

it all on the field. That's what this movement is all about. What I love about Midas Touch is, yes, we make the incredible videos. We have, Brett does. We make these inspirational podcasts. We do these, you know, but what we're trying to do at the end of the day is to motivate you to get out there. What happened in Georgia with Asaf and Warnock, And because of the great leadership of people like Stacey Abrams, the fact that everyone rallied around Stacey Abrams and all the local community groups that were putting in the work and what we saw there in Georgia, we can replicate that in 2022.

Americans are yearning for normalcy. They don't like the radical right extremist stuff. That stuff gets a lot of soundbites and a lot of attention. But when you do go to most American households or apartments or wherever Americans are living, when you go there, what you find is that people just want to be treated with respect. You know, there was this one video, Brett, of a Trump supporter leaving that Arizona rally and she left early. And one of the things that Trump did to punish people who wanted to leave early was he locked the parking. So you literally couldn't leave until the speech was over. You had to suffer there. And she was the first person, this lady was how she wants to. So, you know what? Play the clip of her, you know, just got to play the clip. I may file a lawsuit. I, this is

bullshit. I've never had my freedom restricted like this in my life and of all places for it to happen. My first Trump rally. And so that experience though, while so minor, that's how Trump just treats people. He treats these people like shit. That's how the GQP treats their base. He left them out in the freezing cold. And some people got hypothermia right before the election. Remember that whole incident? Yeah. Yeah. And that's what they think about people. They do not care about people. And us as Democrats, as you heard from the interview, we care about people. We care about government helping people. And we have to be loud and proud about that message. I want to give a shout out to on that note, too. You know, if you look at what Beto O'Rourke is

doing right now in Texas, I think it's just so incredibly impressive. He's hitting the ground every single day campaigning like it is the week of the election. And that is the kind of organization that we need. I also want to give a shout out to the Midas Mighty followers who have now in January 2022, treating every single day like it is election day, registering voters. Because the reason why Kander and Gupta call their podcast Majority 54 is because Democrats are the majority. Yes, even in Texas, Democrats are the majority, which is why we need to stay motivated, which is why we need to build coalitions, and we need to register people, and we need to vote, and we need to really position this as a battle for the heart and soul of our democracy.

And we cannot give any credence to the other side. We cannot give any oxygen to fascism. We need to be hammering home the point that our democracy is on the line every single day, and I need you to be inspired. I need you to get out there and knock on doors, make phone calls, run for school boards. If you're listening right now and you have that itch in the back, itch on you right now, that you have that itch in the back of your head that maybe I could do something, what could I do? I don't know.

Run for school board, write some letters, write some postcards, make some phone calls. You know that there is something that you can do to be a part of this movement. Shout out Jerry, man. Every time I see her post a photo of her canvassing or her registering voters out there, I do a fist bump. I go, yes, yes, Jerry. Yes. It's amazing. Ben, one thing I want to make fun of you for, I've noticed you do something that's really frustrating. Every brother podcast, you do a great tease for your Saturday Legal AF podcast, Saturday, Sunday Legal AF podcast. Now I listen to all the Legal AFs that go on Saturday night and then I re-listen on Sunday when the pod drops. You don't give the same shout out to your audience there to tell them to listen to the Brother podcast. It's not true. If you listen to the last

Legal AF, I talk about, hey, all of this political news, I'm not going to belabor the point. Go listen to the Brother podcast if you want the political analysis. So that's not true. But it also is the Midas Touch podcast. This is the flagship property. We want to help up other podcasts on the Midas network, which are doing very, very good. But we want to use our strength here, Jordy, to help other podcasts. So that's where that

spirit comes from. But this, that makes sense. Our next partner has a product I use literally every day. This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I started taking Athletic Greens because 2022 is all about health for me. And if you can see already for those watching, I have my empty AG1 cup right here. And for those listening, it's just an empty cup. There's really nothing that you really needed to see. You can see the green at the bottom. I take athletic greens every single day. Before athletic greens, I would have a cabinet that was basically filled with all these different vitamins. And I would try to mix and match from pills to gummies. Popak was like, you're a gummy person.

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nutritional insurance today. Now we are joined by Brian Karam and we're back with the Midas Touch podcast. And we've got a very special guest for you. We have Robert Downey Jr. from Ironman on the podcast. Right. Is that Robert Downey or is that Brian Karam? No, I apologize. It's Brian Karam looking like Robert Downey Jr. He's got a new book out, Free the Press, The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It, which is out now anywhere books are sold. Make sure you get Free the Press. But Brian, now that you're promoting this book, it's a bestseller. I love this book. You were nice enough to share with us in advance. And so we got to, you know, read a copy of it.

But is it safe to say, though, that you are doing a new look, a Robert Downey Jr. Now that you got this great book out? This is the scruffy look for when it's cold outside and I got to take the mask off. So when I'm walking through the, you know, it kind of keeps your face a little warmer. From December to March after that, it's gone. So tell us, Brian, what's going on in your world now? Obviously, this great book that's out there. Everybody knows that you are one of the handful of journalists who was actually holding Trump accountable out there, you know, fact

checking on the spot, you know, in real time in the White House itself. Or as my mom said, just giving him shit, which he needed. But yeah, OK, I like my I like my version of it. But now, you know, talk to mom about that. So now what's going on, you know, the Biden administration, obviously, you know, there's not so much of a focus of what's going on, you know, in these White House press briefings from a public standpoint. It seems that all people are talking about really is when Jen Psaki talks to Ducey, but there's nothing really reported from it. Is that a problem to you though? Let me just ask you that. I feel like not a lot of news is coming out of these press briefings right now. Well, I think that's by design. There are a lot of things, and I'll say it right up front. Biden is a much greater improvement over the previous president.

And it's a little bar to cross. And I think he went higher than stumbling over the bar. So I'm going to give him all his due. I think he's done a lot of right things. I think the communication, though, is a problem for the Biden administration, because since they don't take up as much bandwidth as Trump did when he was there. I mean, you know, they would have their minions out on the South Lawn on television. They'd be at the sticks talking to us. They always constantly filled the airwaves with with. Well, for lack of a better term, crap. But, you. But they'd be out there with their alternate facts.

And so they took up a lot of oxygen and a lot of bandwidth. And the Biden administration has decidedly not done that. And there's pros and cons with that. The pros are we're back to a very decidedly adult-like professional experience inside the briefing room, which is much needed. I haven't had a death threats for a year, so that's nice. Being able to go home, not have my rear window bashed out or walk into the White House and have some guy with a Confederate flag go, I'm going to kill you. Those are all improvements. But because the downside of that is since the Biden administration isn't as vocal, although they like to say they are, they really aren't.

But and that's fine. I don't know why they don't just claim it. But since they're less vocal, there has there's still a lot of oxygen in the air. And Trump and his minions have continued to suck dry whatever bandwidth, whatever oxygen they can. And thus, we still have a problem. And as I don't know if you saw the latest Trump appearance in Arizona, but I mean, we're looking at I mean, this is full on fascism, folks. There's they're not even pretending. This is this is really bad, nasty stuff. And it's got to be put down like a rabid dog. And I'm sorry, I'm all for free speech, but let's agree on a couple of things. One, we're a democracy. Two, we're a representative democracy.

And three, we shouldn't be threatening everyone's lives if they don't agree with us. And filling people full of hatred and false facts. Now, if we could do some of that, but the Republican Party isn't interested in that. And I'm not trying to be partisan either. I mean, I look at this objectively and objectively, there's one party that embraces science and reason and one party that embraces science and reason, and one party that embraces lunacy, drinking your own urine, taking horse dewormer, and ingesting Clorox. Now, if that's you, have at it, and there'll be fewer of you left. Do you think journalists are still giving Donald Trump a pass? We see what he's doing in Arizona, you know, but yet the headline is,

why hasn't Biden convinced Republican senators to support things that these Republican senators just can't get them around to support? I mean, they're not necessarily full on the Republican fascists, but even the more moderate Republicans now are kind of wildly radical. Yet with Trump, we know that he led an insurrection, attempted a coup. Just why on the front of newspapers across the country are we not covering the fact that there was a coup in the United States using those words and with a sense of urgency about it? Like, doesn't the media realize, and I know I'm asking a lot of questions, like, don't they realize that at the end of the day, if you don't cover this, what's going to happen is, is that a Trump is just going to come into office and just full fled, shut you down and kill you and actually cancel you because that's what fascists do. Yeah, I've been there. Look, you're asking the question that the book is it tries to tackle. And that is the fact that there's nothing easier than

to fool a journalist and that journalism is filled with a lot of people today that shouldn't be there. And there's reasons for that. Look, when I got into the business, 80% of what you see, read, or hear was owned by 2024 companies. Today, a handful of companies, five or six, produced by, you know, 90, 90, you know, five or six companies produce more than 90% of what you see reader here. That's a problem. There's twice the number of people on the planet today than there was on the day that I was born. And there's half the number of reporters. And the perfect example of that is one of the places that I reported from in my Calo youth down in Laredo, Texas. When I was there 30 years ago,

35 years ago, there was a hundred thousand people. There were two local newspapers in English and I think two in Spanish. And there were four, three or four television stations that broadcast news. There was a magazine. There were two, three, maybe four stations, radio stations that broadcast news. There was a magazine, there were two, three, maybe four stations, radio stations that broadcast news. Today, there's one newspaper, one television station, and three times the number of people. There's not enough reporters. And since the constriction of the business has occurred, what you see is that, you know, you used to have to have three to five years of experience to go anywhere. You started at a small, you know, locale to have to have three to five years of experience to go anywhere. You started at a small, you know, locale, learned your business before you moved on to a larger

publication or to a larger television stations. Today, they're hiring people straight out of college to cover the White House beat. Now, and they're only paying them $35,000, $40,000 a year. Who the hell are you going to get that's worth a damn, that's straight out of school, that's paid that little money and working in the nation's capital? Well, you're going to get people that don't know what the hell they're doing, but they're pretty convinced that since they're there, they're important. So that generates the elitism. And what they really are afraid of is losing access because, and then they know they wouldn't be able to report so they're not going to be as critical as they should be now the problem with trump is you also have into that

since he sucks up a lot of oxygen and gets a lot of attention those four or five or six media companies that depend upon uh you know ratings and circulation to make money are going to keep them in the mix. The biggest problem with American journalism is that it's tethered to capitalism. And there's nothing wrong with capitalism. I'm all for it. But there's no reason why capitalism should be tethered to American journalism, because what has happened is what we get is news that you want to read instead of news that you need to hear. And that's the biggest problem. You famously asked Trump a very simple question in the press room. Would he commit to a peaceful transfer of power? You know, his response was there wasn't going to be a transfer of power when loser draw in this

election will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election and there has been rioting in louisville there's been rioting in many cities across this country red and your so-called red and blue states will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election well we're gonna're going to have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transferal of power? We want to get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful, there won't be a transfer, frankly.

There'll be a continuation. Now we're seeing with the January 6th committee's investigation that there was indeed a very detailed plan that was taking place from fake certifications to inspiring a coup to cause a delay to state legislatures, having their own electors and having actual members of Congress and senators object to the certification process. All of those were working hand in toe to try to literally do a coup by both violent and by other unlawful, mischievous means. As you start hearing all of this information, do you view Trump's response as even more telling that all of those things were in motion there, and he knew that those things were going to be? Well, hell, he told us on September 23rd, he said, you stop counting the ballots, there won't be a transfer of power. That's what he was

trying. He told us on September 23rd, when I asked him that question, exactly what was going to happen. All you had to do was listen. And no one in the press followed up on that question that day. The next question that was in the briefing room was about Meghan and Harry and, you know, the royals. And that was that was the follow up question. It wasn't until the next day that John Carl from ABC News asked about the question I asked on September 23rd. And Kayleigh McEnany called me a lunatic and misogynist and everything else. And to John Carl's credit, he said, yeah, but what about the question? He stuck to the issue and they couldn't answer it. The simple fact of the matter is Donald Trump never wanted to leave office and he was going to try everything he could

not to leave office. And I have really lost patience with people who think that, you know, the insurrection on January 6th was in fact some kind of peaceful protest or a walk in the woods or a nice little visit. Everybody who thinks that A wasn't there or B is lying. And if you're a member of Congress and you support that nonsense, you should be expelled. You should be investigated, indicted, and prosecuted for sedition and being a traitor to the U.S. Not even during the Civil War was the Confederate flag walked through the capital of the United States. It's an anathema. And Brian, you were there on January 6th, right? I know you've covered literal war zones throughout your career. What was it like being there on January the 6th? I was the most afraid I've ever been. I've been in a war. I was in the Gulf War. I've covered the drug hunt for Pablo Escobar. I've covered riots in Baltimore, riots in St. Louis, riots in Saudi Arabia. I've covered riots down in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, Texas. I've ridden with DEA agents. I've been in shootouts and nothing was as scary to me as that insurrection. And that's

because I didn't know. I've never seen that many Americans wanting to do harm to that many other Americans. And the lack of, some of them had, I call it the NFL warrior mentality. You know, like the one idiot who is, you know, in the Wookiee outfit. I mean, some people just showed up and took their shirts off and painted their faces and were like, roll, roll, roll. And, you know, but they all got stirred up. And there were some serious mischief makers there and some serious insurrectionists who stirred the crowd up. You know, like Rudy Giuliani saying trial by combat. And one of those interchangeable sons of the former president, you know, I don't know, moron A or moron B. And then, you know,

the major orange moron, you know, saying what he said. So the crowd watched him. I walked with them. They all got stirred up. They walked down to the Capitol. They were looking for a fight. And what happened to the, you know, the weekend warrior guys, they got caught up in the moment and said, and then they started pounding on people. Look, man, they erected a scaffold and they were, if they had gotten ahold of Mike Pence, they would have hung his ass. I guarantee you that. And if they'd gotten ahold of Nancy Pelosi, they would have killed her. I have no doubt in my mind that after what I saw and, you know, the cops that I knew that worked that beat and they, you know, some of them fought tenaciously tooth and nail and testified in Congress. I have one, you know, literally said, hey, look,

I got kids. And that was the only thing that kept them from killing him. I mean, they had his I think they had his, you know, weapons. There are people that were, you know, with the guy that came after me, had it like, I don't know where he got it. It looked like he had a TV or a old TV rabbit ear antenna or something that he ripped off of somebody's car. And, and they were in a friend of mine, got sucker punched in the back of the head. Crazy. As a reporter, this was serious shit. And I was, I was fearful that day. And I kept my head on a swivel and my playboy

press pass prominent because that's what saved me was, was the, you know, the morons that were climbing up the wall. I looked and I said, Hey, morons, you don't have to climb up the wall. There's steps on either side. And so I said, somebody's going to break their damn neck. And they did. And then they came over like it was my fault and threatened to kick my butt. And I held up that press pass that I had to go to court three times for and keep from Donald Trump. And I said, hey, guys, I'm with Playboy. And one of them stopped and said, really?

And they looked at my press pass and he goes, can you get me into the mansion? Can you get me in a party? And that was the only thing that kept them from kicking my ass. You know, there were six of them. They were they stymied. They were stymied by the prospect of seeing, you know, scantily clad women in the mansion. Well, I think it was a good thing you didn't have your CNN pass on you. Oh, hell, they would.

Yeah, I wouldn't be sitting here talking about her if I did. I'd probably have a fewer teeth. So last week we saw, you know, finally, DOJ bring forth charges of seditious conspiracy against the leader of the Oath Keepers and 10 others. Just want to get your thoughts on on that. And what do you think it what do you think that means kind of for the future of the way DOJ is going to charge January 6th? Well, Merrick Garland said he will not rest until everyone is brought to justice. And I hope I can take him at his word, because if that's the case, then Donald Trump will face charges at some point in the future. If not for that, maybe from the Southern District of New York or for some other reason. But, you know, I wrote I wrote a column that ran, I think, a day after the

sedition. Donald Trump was responsible for it. End of story. I was there. No other BS is going to convince me otherwise. I saw what happened. That man needs to be held responsible for trying to destroy the United States. End of story. Brian, the one thing I love about you is, you know, you're a journalist, but you're not afraid to speak your mind. You're not afraid to give your opinions. And I feel like so often people think that the role of a journalist is to say, well, this side said X, Y, and Z, and that side said A, B, and C. And so you decide, but you're a guy who really just calls balls and strikes. So I'm curious, what do you decide, but you're a guy who really just calls balls and strikes.

So I'm curious, what do you think is the role of a good journalist? Well, there's two, a good journalist vets facts, a good journalist makes sure that he produces and writes facts. And then as far as opinions go, I've had reporters come up to me that I've mentored and have worked for me. And they say, well, this is what I think. And I go, I don't give a shit what you think. I barely care what I think. What do you know? So a journalist's role is to produce facts. A columnist's role, mine, is to produce an opinion based on vetted facts. Now, anyone's welcome to their opinion, right?

I listen to opinions, but some opinions are worth more than others. I'll take Anthony Fauci's opinion over Joe Rogan's because Anthony Fauci knows what the hell he's talking about. And Joe Rogan doesn't. End of story. I don't care how many YouTube videos you look at. I don't care how many doctors you talk to. You're not a doctor. You're not an infectious disease expert. Stay in the land of comedy where you were born and stay in your lane and I'll listen to you and you might be entertaining. But so I think that we've gotten away from trusting our institutions, including journalism, including, and politicians have been, you know, part and parcel reason why. And so have reporters, we have screwed the pooch many times. It's because we don't have seasoned people. Walter Cronkite had an opinion.

And, you know, when he came back from the Vietnam War, his opinion was based on the fact that he had covered World War II, was a beat reporter, had the gravitas, and people recognized him for his experience and respected him for his experience. How many anchors anywhere do we respect like we respected Walter Cronkite? We don't have them anymore. Brian, as you say that too what what's scary is lots of people think of the coup beginning right around the election time when Trump was polling less and Trump was figuring out how do I stay in power? The moment Trump got into power, he was trying to figure out how he stays in power forever and basically becomes an emperor. And the attack on the institutions, the attack on what they refer to as the deep state, which at the end of the day is attacking people who are just truly professionals and well-qualified people and researchers like Fauci and trying to create that as this conspiratorial kebab, attacking journalists as enemies of the people so that you can elevate

joe rogan's over actual credible journalists if you actually view it in the context owns and the oath keepers and that other moron that he gave the you know the i won't even say his name that he gave the award to wrestling ball piece of shirt uh I won't even go there, who that was. But, you know, that guy, elevating all of them is what happens when you knock everybody down. Right. You almost have to rewind what January 6th is looking at the committee afterwards and say, wait a minute, this was an effort from day one to overthrow democracy. I think the effort to overthrow democracy, I'm going to blame on Richard Nixon and Roger Ailes. I think that's where all of this started. And I mentioned that in the book as well.

The undermining of our institutions, Richard Nixon's Southern strategy. Remember, Richard Nixon, that idiot, was the moron who also tried to get in touch with South Vietnam and jury-rig, you know, the end of the world, of that war, the Vietnam War, if he got elected. That's what he tried to do from the very beginning. He was a seditious moron. And he used the Southern strategy to get people of the South to back him, painting the Democrats as socialists and as far left. Stop me if you've heard this before, because that's where we was innocent. And then Richard Nixon, after he left and Ronald Reagan was the next Republican to be elected, he took Roger Ailes, he took the rails off of journalism. He allowed multiple ownership. You used to be limited. And in fact, most newspapers back in the day, and I cover this as well in the book, you know, they try to get Congress to lobby the

limit ownership of newspapers and television stations so that there wouldn't be this monolithic structure. The media today in this country is more powerful than some countries as far as being able to get the word out. And what word do they get out? Well, they say we're tilted to the left, or they say we're tilted to the right. Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight. That's all bullshit. We're tilted towards the money. How can we make money? So there are some stations that go and some networks that go to the left and some stations and networks that go to the right. And then some of them like OAN go way out there somewhere where you can't even see them with binoculars. And so that's the

problem. They're chasing revenue streams. If we take away, if we subsidized journalism, we'd be much better off if we had, and reinstituted the fairness doctrine and also took care of, all of this really starts, it all starts in the fact that we have no more community newspapers. You know, community newspapers are where a lot of the national stories begin. How do we know about problems with infrastructure or roads or clean water? Well, because some community newspaper covered it in a city council meeting or covered it, and then people started linking up and go, wow, and it was organic, and it grew from, you know, the bottom up. And then people started linking up and go, wow. And it was organic and it grew from, you know, the bottom up and the community newspapers are key. And, you know, you may be to the left or you may be to the right. You may be down the middle. You may be off the charts nuts,

but everybody wants to be able to drive their car on a street that doesn't have potholes. Everybody wants to be able to, you know, that if that traffic lights up there, you want to know, well, what the hell? Why isn't it working? Or, and here's a great story that, you know, a community newspaper I worked at began and investigated. Where is the money going for traffic light cameras? Wouldn't you love to know? It seems like it would go to the city or the county or the jurisdiction, and it doesn't.

Many times, half of the money does, and the other half goes to companies. And those companies we found in one case, one was a wholly owned subsidiary of another company, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of another company in Florida, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of a company in London, which, oh, that was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bin Laden Group. So, you know, those kinds of things, those things you find out at the community newspaper level. And there's a vast newspaper desert in this country now, because many of these community newspapers have closed and they're not viable because governments have stopped printing public notice ads and public service ads, which were sometimes

the entire profit for the year for these newspapers. It was a subsidy that was needed. And look, everybody used them. Salesmen, lawyers, you go and say, oh, this guy moved. This is state sale. Let's go talk to this guy. It built a community. It helped to build communities instead of tearing them apart. We're left with national journalism, and you got to go left or right, wherever the money is, and it tears us apart. So until we get better journalism, we're going to continue to be a very divided nation. Reading your book, Free the Press, I think the story that you told when you drew the through line from Nixon to Reagan to Fox News, I think was something that I didn't really know about. And I think it's something that a lot of people really didn't know about, that an entity like Fox News has been planned since the 1960s to have a not a conservative point of view, but to be a Republican propaganda network. That's something that was in the public arena,

he said, you'll not have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. Spiro. You know, I used to do a good Nixon, but it's been a while. And so you have to, you know, do that. You could do any impression of Nixon right now, and a lot of our audience will just accept it. But know who it is, right? Oh, Spiro.

Anyway, so that idiot tried to, you know, he hated the press and said, you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. And then sure enough, three years later, we did. Roger Ailes, he found on the Mike Douglas show as a young producer when Mike Douglas show was in Philadelphia, brought Ailes in. Ailes told him how to stand, how to dress.

And Ailes said, hey, this is the way they're going to elect presidents from now on. And then, yeah, he wanted to open up a conservative network. And then he tried. Nixon got kicked out. And then he worked with Augie Bush, I think, or somebody else to develop a platform that, in fact, was just a news service. And then he went to MSNBC or CNBC, or I can't remember which one, one of the NBCs. And then went to Fox. And when he went to Fox, that's when, yeah, it was a marriage of souls or soullessness.

Take your pick. Brian, your book is called Free the Press, The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It. So I wanna ask you about that latter half. And you hinted at it a little bit ago. You said maybe one way is to subsidize these kind of smaller papers and local journalism. But how else? And everybody read the book for the full picture.

Let's not do the spoiler alert about it. Part of the book, I recognize that we're not going to get rid of bloggers. And I don't think we should actually. But I think we can make them more responsible. So part of the book is trying to teach people how to be a responsible reporter of facts. And if you can do that, then your income tax every year? If, you know, if you could prove that you, I don't know, had a subscription to a newspaper, that, you know, that would be, you know, a wonderful way to subsidize newspapers. What if we reinstituted the Fairness Doctrine? So we weren't limited to our informational silos, and you actually got to see, read, and hear how other

people think. What if we limited ownership? So you don't have the Sinclairs, you don't have the Alden Group, you know, this this huge vulture capitalist that has literally raped journalism and reduce and owns hundreds of newspapers and some of the best ones have have lost their voice being sold to these large corporations. What if we broke those down? What if we used existing antitrust legislation to break up the media monopolies? We should do that. And finally, one of the big things I think, and one of the things I've always fought for the hardest, is to make sure that we have a national shield law so that reporters who use confidential sources

don't have to go to jail or be threatened with jail or have their sources be threatened with, you know, the Alien and Sedition Act or some other bizarre for the Espionage Act for giving people information. The information needs to be seen by the American public. The facts need to be seen. And then evaluate the facts. If we can all agree on what the facts are, we need to get back to that. Vetting facts and making sure that facts are given to the American public. There's going to be differences of opinion. But politics in the past was how we worked out our differences to reach a common goal. Today, our politics are used to beat our brother over the head, our brother or sister over the head and demand that we're

righteous and everyone else is wrong. And, you know, it's, we have two parties in this country. One has no heart, one has no head. I wish that, you know, the Democrats make some really good decisions, but they really don't have a head for the fight. I mean, it's even James Carville who said, you know, I interviewed him for Playboy. He said, I don't like the Republicans, but you got to admire their work ethic. They work hard to do what they do. Now, it happens to be seditious and treasonous, but hey, and they have no heart. All the Republicans want is power. And all I want is to inform the American people and let them make their own decisions. I think if more people were involved in the process and were more aware of what's going on, the world would be a better place. More information is always better than less.

And Brian, to that, how can we best remain appropriately critical of the media while championing a free and vibrant press corps? I think to be critical of the media, you need to point out, everyone needs to point out, factual time. Look, we don't apologize for our mistakes enough. We don't admit when we make them. And it's not helpful to just go, you're wrong. It's you're an enemy of the people if you do that. I've got six headlines in a collection of newspapers downstairs about the Titanic. And the first one says, Titanic hit an iceberg.

Everybody's safe. Fake news. Well, no, it was the best news we had at the time of publication. That's what news is. We have to be more understanding, to be critical of the news, we have to understand what it is. It to frame an argument because there's so much out there and there is so much that's bullshit. So you have to be a wiser user of information today. And that is what scares many people. Because look, who has the time? You want to be

able to trust Walter Cronkite, I got to get my kids to soccer practice, it's snowing, I got to get the you know, the chains out, I got to go shovel, I got to make dinner, all this kid sick. I mean, you got your life you're trying to lead, who wants to spend 24 seven, trying to vet facts, which is what reporters are supposed to do. Yeah. So to be really critical of the press, we have to, as members of the public, make government do the right thing and then let reporters hire people that have the experience to do the job right.

And that's the, you know, we lack a lot of experience. The institutional knowledge in journalism has just fallen so far. I mean, I tell this story often. I, you know, I first day I walked into the White House briefing room. There was Helen Thomas, who I met. She took me home, made me a great Lebanese dinner afterwards. Great lady. And then I knew some of my family.

So we got along great. And then she reintroduced me to sam and i i've known sam donaldson since the 84 election sam wrote the uh intro to the forward to this book he's a great guy and was a great mentor him and helen were both great mentors and sam said listen brian look at that first row in the brady briefing room there were seven seats there because there's probably 220 years of experience there. And it listened to all of them. And he said, oh, and by the way, Helen's probably got 200 years of that experience. And then Helen said something to Sam and he goes, he goes, Helen, it's all right to have an unexpressed thought. And Helen said, Sam, when it comes,

you have a lot of unexpressed thought. I didn't know what else I was going to do for the rest of my life, but man, that was a great day. Just two people who knew what the hell they were doing and, you know, and they were in a groove. They knew what they were doing. And I listened to him today, that first row of the Brady briefing room doesn't have half that experience that we had then. And that's a problem. If we can be critical of that, that's what people need to do is point it out and, and out and make sure that politicians are aware of the problem and force them to take action. And then, Brian, you mentioned them before, and I really want to get your take on this.

DirecTV removed OAN from their distribution network over the weekend. Good for democracy. Good for the country. I have mixed feelings about it. I think that everyone always used to say, hey, don't you just hate OAN? Because during, and I go back to September 23rd when I asked that question. I had gone, the White House Correspondents Association had voluntarily limited the number of people in that room because of COVID to 14. There have been 100, 150 people in that briefing room during the briefings. And then, of course, we didn't have them for a year. And Kayleigh McEnany brought them back,

but had limited the number of people to be there. They made an exception for OAN. OAN could stand at the back and she would call on OAN all the time because they had favored nation status. Well, I thought since the White House was breaking their own rules, I'd figure what the hell, I'll show up once a week and ask my own questions because fuck them. So that's how I ended up being there. On September 23rd, there was an empty seat. And rather than have OAN take it, I took it and sat down. I had no clue. I thought for sure Trump wouldn't call on me because we'd gotten in fights before. But son of a bitch, he called me. Not only did he call me, he called me first. So I remember going, all right, here we go. Strap in. You know, I've got to ask this question.

So I've never I've never given OAN grief for being there or being a part of the show. I just wanted to be there. I figured I have a strong enough personality and a strong enough inquisitive nature that I'll get my job done. I didn't care that OAN was there. OAN ran into a problem because they started broadcasting lies about COVID. And that got them banned from DirecTV. That's a decision made by a company.

That is not a First Amendment decision. Banning OAN from the White House would be a First Amendment violation. So OAN is on its own to get its stuff out there in the public any way they can. I would advise them to be a little more factual in their presentation of said facts, and perhaps they might find a home. So those are my two thoughts on it. They ought to open that room up to everyone. I mean, I remember a time when there was a guy, I can never remember his name, John Roberts from Fox. He and I used to talk about this guy all the time. He was a defrocked minister who would always ask questions about Bigfoot and Area 51.

And one of my favorite memories of that era was Mike McCurry, I think it was, was out, or maybe it was Joe Lockhart. We were in the briefing room and this guy, he was the front minister said, isn't it true that you, you have captured Bigfoot and you've put him in area 51 with the space aliens. And we all sat there and McCray didn't even, he didn't smile or nothing. He had this huge briefing book and he thumbed through it and he's looking, he's scanning the pages and his thumb through it. And the guy said, Hey,

Hey, and he goes, wait a minute. And he goes, no. And afterwards, you know, I remember going back and I think it was Roberts himself or somebody else had asked him, why do you even call on this guy? And he goes, well, because he makes the rest of you look like idiots. And I go, Oh, well, okay. But it should be a vast area where, you know, that briefing room should be representative of everyone. Now, you don't have to call on everyone, but, you know, they should be allowed to be there. So I've got no problem with OAN being there. I have a real

problem with them producing fiction and parading it around as fact. They need better fact checkers and a real dedication to what journalism is. And, you know, you don't need to tell me that there's chips in the, you know, the vaccine and, you know, Satan's going to follow you around or any of that other crap I can do without all the proselytizing, you know, that, that you want. I I've had a, uh, one guy in there who is, uh, he tells me he's Christian and, and he doesn't want to get the vaccine because, you know, not enough, basically, you know, the, there's only one person, maybe up to 1% of the people are dying from it. And I'm go, well, you know,

there's a real Christian attitude. You, you don't mind 300, you know, 3.2 million people dying in this country, as long as you don't have to take a vaccine. And so he, he's a bit of a close talker and he got to me one day and I said, look, I love you, but you're not vaccinated. You're not, move your ass over. And then he started talking about it. Well, I think it's like wearing a yellow star.

I go, nobody's putting you in an oven. That's garbage. Just get vaxxed. And he said, well, some American Christians believe. I go, yeah, I'm an American Christian. Don't preach to me. Get your ass vaxxed. And I was accused of browbeating and bullying bullying him and it was the only time i've ever

been called to the white house and somebody in ys said uh i heard you got in a fight with yeah i go oh thank you yeah glad to help i'll still give you shit but I don't mind giving anybody shit. So sometimes you'll like me, sometimes you'll hate me. But, you know, it's it's tough. So all the way in. Good luck to him. I say bad luck to him, Brian Karam. Thank you so much for joining us on the Midas Touch podcast today.

Brian's new book, Free the Press, The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It is out now anywhere books are sold. Also, check out Brian's podcast, Just Ask the Question with Brian Karam, a great podcast as well. Again, the book is called Free the Press. If you miss all that, I'll be in my Iron Man suit later flying through the cosmos. Brian Karam, thank you so much for joining us on the minus always it's always a pleasure guys we will be right back after these messages great

interview with brian carom i love brian carom so much i really think he is one of the best journalists that we have out there we need more brian caroms and fewer peter deuces and fewer chuck todds anyway we have more show coming up, but first, I want to tell you it's the new year and Magic Spoon is perfect for meeting your goals. Whether it's eating healthier or saving more time in your morning routine, Magic Spoon will fit into your new year's resolutions. Growing up, I know cereal was always one of my favorite parts of being a kid, but at a certain point, I had to give it up because you realize it's full of sugar, it's full of junk, and a lot of stuff that you shouldn't really eat. And we're all trying to eat healthier. We're all trying to be better versions of ourselves.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Ben, what else we got? Well, I'm reflecting also back on that Jason Kander and Ravi Gupta interview. And one of the things that they mentioned is the primaries, which is a race to the bottom of Republicans trying to kiss Trump's ass. But there's one wrinkle in that also, too, which is, are they trying to kiss Trump's ass or DeSantis' ass right now. And as Republicans war with each other, Democrats, we need to do the tough work, but we should make sure we're continuing to drive that wedge between these Republicans. And so one of the things that we saw this weekend, and Trump took a shot at DeSantis over the vaccine and basically saying that DeSantis took the booster and shouldn't be lying about it. Called him gutless.

Called him gutless. And this weekend, Trump, you know, went after DeSantis and basically, you know, in my view, really declared war on Ron DeSantis and made it clear that he's going to go after Ron DeSantis. He feels threatened by Ron DeSantis. They're both that he's going to go after Ron DeSantis. He feels threatened by Ron DeSantis. They're both out there in Florida right now. Trump feels that he's the reason that DeSantis was elected. And you have Roger Stone, a Trump lackey who, and clearly at Trump's behest, we know that Roger Stone, you know, in addition to being a co-conspirator with Trump in the insurrection, basically does whatever Trump's dirty work is and was in exchange for getting a pardon. Roger Stone said that he knows the reason also why DeSantis disappeared for the past week or two weeks when he was gone and was posting old photos and acting like they were current

photos. But let's be clear. Trump is at war with DeSantis. DeSantis is going to be at war with Trump. And we as Democrats should make sure that we sit back, let that happen and do everything we can to encourage that. Can I read this Roger Stone statement? Let me read it just in case people haven't heard it or read it yet. He says, Trump sometimes President Donald Trump hits it right on the nose. Ron DeSantis, yell Harvard fat boy, can't get out of his own way, not smart, not honest, and not going to be president. An unknown congressman with a bad haircut and an ill-fitting suit until Donald Trump made him governor. I know where he was when he was missing. Ask Emerald Robinson.

Hashtag fuck Ron DeSantis. Emerald Robinson was the reporter is too kind of a word. She was the propagandist on either OAN or Newsmax, I forget, who was too crazy for those networks and was kicked off because I think she said Lucifer was in the vaccine or something crazy to that extent. And so that's Roger Stone. What is he referring to when he went missing? This was talking about like a few weeks ago when nobody knew around DeSantis was, right? When no one knew who DeSantis

was. Then we saw the footage of DeSantis like the day after and he couldn't breathe. And everyone was speculating that he had COVID. And Roger Stone is basically saying, we know that there was more to it than that. And we are going to come forward. And in another post after, he said that he had video. And so, you know, in a world of trusting people, Roger Stone is well on the bottom of my list of people to trust. But I do think it's interesting. And I think it says something that they're attacking each other.

And we need to, you know latch on to this division we need to um you know play into it i think and understand that and these people need to understand that and they never learn their lesson that no matter how much you suck up to people like donald trump he will always come back to bite you i mean ron desantis is the guy whose campaign ad his famous campaign ad was teaching his kid to build the wall and reading Donald Trump's Art of the Deal to him. Like to so shamelessly debase yourself for a man who is now attacking you, calling you dull, calling you worthless, calling you an idiot. I mean, it's just like the cycle just continuously repeats itself. be interesting to see if DeSantis takes it like Cruz and, you know, or, you know, DeSantis is at a crossroads though, where he wants to run for president. That's clearly what his intention is.

And that's going to put him at loggerheads with Trump and Trump's going to run for president again. You know, I think Trump's going to be held accountable with January 6th committee and everything that's going on, but Trump wants to run again. So the question is, is when does DeSantis make his move and when is he going to be overtly anti-Trump? I mean, he has, DeSantis has staked out the primary anti-vax position and has his surrogates attacking Trump on that front. But we'll see. Just that Emerald Robinson that you mentioned, she worked at Newsmax and she was fired because she wrote a statement. Dear Christians, the vaccine contains bioluminescent markers called luciferase. I won't even read the disinfo that she said. Don't get us kicked off YouTube, please. Thank you. Yeah, it's complete disinfo garbage.

Trump also called DeSantis an ingrate, apparently, an ingrate with a dull personality. And DeSantis actually made a comment, too, basically saying that it was something to the effect of he was upset that at the time he didn't go after Trump enough for the lockdowns and mandates that occurred in 2020. So they're going back and forth. They're bickering. That is what it is. I think what Democrats need to do now in 2022, we need to make everybody care about American

democracy. I mean, at the end of the day, that is what's on the line. And it's something that people can and should get passionate about. I know over 50% of Americans right now view American democracy as being on a course towards extinction. That's a horrifying statistic. And they're right. Frankly, they're right. So what do we have to do, though?

We have to rally that people. We have to make sure that people know who is the cause of the destruction of democracy. We need to make it clear that Democrats are out there fighting every single day for voting rights. And if you get Republicans in there, that they will continue to destroy our democracy, continue to take away voting rights, and continue to make it so that America looks much more like Russia and Hungary than the United States of America. Because it's going to be a difficult year in terms of getting legislation passed with everything that's going on. So we just need to go scorched earth on Republicans, burn it all down, destroy this party, hold up their fascist tendencies to everybody in this country, and make people make the decision based on that. And we also need to still care about these kitchen table issues and tell people, guess what? Your inflation problem, that's not going to be taken care of if you have a fascist government who doesn't like to govern, by the way. They have zero ideas, zero policies, anything that will help working people, nothing. And Democrats

are working day in and day out to work for your concerns. So do you want to put in a party that's going to continue to block your help, to block aid to you, and who's going to usher in an autocratic, fascist government? Or do you want to keep America a democracy and put in more people who are going to be fighting for you, who are going to be helping you get more tax credits, who are going to be helping to lower taxes on the working class, who are going to make big business pay up, and who are going to make our economy continue to thrive and make sure that your kids and your family are safe and are having a full education and are learning about American history. I mean, that's kind of all of it wrapped up in a package. Special thanks to our guests, Jason Kander and

Ravi Gupta of Majority 54. Special thanks to our guest, Brian Karam, with his new book, Free the Press. And special thanks to our sponsors, BetterHelp. Go to betterhelp.com slash Midas. Athletic Greens, go to athleticgreens.com slash Midas. Magic Spoon, go to magicspoon.com slash Midas. Definitely check out our sponsors. It truly helps the show. And make sure you leave a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. And give a written review also. Don't just have to click the five stars.

Write about what you like about this podcast. That helps with the algorithm. The more reviews, the better it is for the podcast. So leave a five-star review with a written review. We would appreciate that greatly. And also check out all our other podcasts. We've got the new podcast, The Influence Continuum with Dr. Hassan.

We've got the Legal AF Legal Podcast. We got Politics Girl. We got Zoomed In. We got Kremlin File. We got Maya Culpa. But of course, your favorite, The Midas Touch Brother podcast, which is here. Thank you for watching the show. We will see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast.

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