Trump Handed BIG LOSS during AWFUL Transition
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So here's the key metric for how you now have to evaluate Donald Trump's cabinet. The question is this, would you let your children or grandchildren be alone in a room with them? I think the answer is no, no,

No, no, no. As you go through that entire cabinet beyond creepy, I mean, we're dealing with serious allegations of sexual assault as well as child sex trafficking and those child sex trafficking allegations as they relate to

Matt Gaetz resulted in him withdrawing his name from the attorney general nomination given to him by Donald Trump. And now we got to deal with Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, where the Monterey police released

Very credible police reports from a victim who described herself as unconscious during an alleged rape by Hegseth. We've got a deal with RFK Jr., whose 23-year-old nanny at the time is accusing him of sexually assaulting her and others who are forming not just this dispute,

Unpickable cabinet, but just also highly unqualified as well. For those who are watching, you see there the photo of Linda McMahon, one of the WWE co-founders who Donald Trump appointed as the secretary of education, despite having no back

and lying about having a bachelor's degree in education. So folks, this is the time we roll up our sleeves because we saw with respect to Matt Gaetz, there is still a place and space where our voices matter.

Trump and MAGA is relying on us to be silent, to be so despondent and feel so much despair that we tap out while they try to impose this kakistocracy, this

completely deranged group of individuals hell bent on destroying our democracy. We will not let that happen here at the Midas Touch Network. This is the Midas Touch Podcast. I'm Ben Mysel, joined by Brett and Jordy. Boom. See you later, Matt Gaetz. Bye bye, Matt Gaetz. You know, in times like this, I think we need to, you know, take stock of all the wins, no matter how big or how small. And I think

The entire situation with Matt Gaetz and all of this cabinet chaos, which was to be expected in this new Trump administration for anybody who was not sleeping during the four years of the previous Trump administration. But I think this saga with Matt Gaetz...

shows that our voices still have power even in this new Trump administration. There was a lot of kind of questions. Does it even mean anything anymore? If we get loud, if we make noise, if we say this is not okay, if we call out injustice here, if we call out corruption there. But I think what this shows is, yes, it still very much matters. Our voices matter. And I want to be clear,

We're not going to win all the battles that are in front of us. We probably won't even win most of the battles that are in front of us, but that does not mean that we do not make noise. We must make noise. We must rally. We must be loud because especially in moments like this,

the beginning of something like this. It's when our voices are the most powerful and it's clear that we all made a difference here and there's a lot much more noise we need to be making, but I'm very proud of this community for speaking out and we need to celebrate these small wins. I heard Robert Reich speaking the other day. He was on the Politics Girl podcast on the Midas Dutch Network actually.

which was a great episode. You should check it out. And he was speaking about the importance in times like this to reflect on the small wins and to take pride in these small wins that we receive along the way. And today was certainly that. And I think it also has further ramifications as well with Donald Trump's entire presidency and with his whole transition process. But this is a great win for the pro-democracy community today. Jordy, what's new?

Excellent, excellent points there, Brett. Just want to echo that same sentiment. Your voice matters. This proves it. We're not corporate media here, right? We don't go to Mar-a-Lago and bend the knee, Joe and Mika. We're not going to do that and roll over and just let these things happen. We're going to hold truth to power, the collective we, every damn day.

And we're not just going to let these things happen. We're not just going to say, oh, Trump's doing this because that's normal now. No, absolutely not. Call it out every freaking step of the way all the time. Great work, everybody. Just think about in the first...

Second week of this transition before Trump even taking office. What essentially the entire GOP save maybe four Republican senators who are gonna be holdouts on gates that they've all been exposed now as pro child sex trafficking.

There's a lot of attention focused on the process. Oh, well, is the ethics report going to be released? And you have a divided five to five ethics panel and they and the Republicans are blocking it and Democrats want it released. And is the Senate going to release it? Should the FBI get it? Like, let's be clear what the it is. Right. We're talking about

child sex trafficking allegations, right? Very credible child sex trafficking allegations. And from the pages that have been leaked about sex trafficking involving Matt Gaetz, I mean, we're talking about detailed Venmo payments that have notations to the payments for girls like, "Just because here for you being awesome, being my friend,

cartridges. He would write checks that said tuition reimbursement. Just think about that. Then you have the web of him and that tax assessor who's in jail right now, Joel Greenberg, and all of these various lines and dots that you see for those watching.

involves women who were being trafficked and paid off by these two sickos. So again, let's not shy away if we are fearless media. We're talking about what this is, child sex trafficking. And let's not be afraid to call out the MAGA Republicans as being pro child sex trafficking. They support allegations of child sex trafficking. They were involved in a two-week cover-up

at the request of Donald Trump, which they all complied with. They are the pro-sex trafficking party. We just need to repeat that over and over again because it is absolutely true. Not only that, but then in their efforts to cover up the sex trafficking report, you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene outing all the other Republicans and saying, I know about your sex assault. I know about...

I know about all the accusations against you. I know you and Jeffrey Epstein and people like Epstein who you've engaged apparently in child sex trafficking with. And if you release the Gates report, Marjorie Taylor Greene says, showing his child sex trafficking as alleged in the report, I'm going to out you for doing the same thing, all of my Republicans. And then she goes, if we're going to dance, let's dance in the sunlight. She calls it dancing.

Just so you know, it's like, oh, Ben, you're just saying these things. Let me read for you Marjorie Taylor Greene's post. She goes, for my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate, if we are going to release ethics reports and rip apart our own, just pause there, rip apart our own by releasing an ethics report that could show child sex trafficking, that's ripping apart ethics.

our own. And apparently this scared a lot of Republicans because they said, yeah, we can't do that. We don't want to be outed as well. We got to support Gates.

Rip apart our own that Trump has appointed, then put it all out there. She puts all in caps for the American people to see. Yes, all the ethics reports and claims, including the one I filed. Apparently, she's filing ethics reports of sexual harassment against people. She then goes on to say, all your sexual, again, she's talking to Republicans. It's addressed my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate. She goes, all your sexual harassment and assault claims, then put it all out there.

that were secretly settled paying off victims with taxpayer money. The entire Jeffrey Epstein files, tapes, recordings, witness interviews. But not just those, there's more. Epstein wasn't, isn't the only asset. If we're doing the dance, let's all dance in the sunlight, Marjorie Taylor Greene says. And again, I want to think about this here. Could you imagine if-

Could you imagine if President Biden appointed someone with credible accusations of child sex trafficking and then one of the most powerful, I hate to say that she is, but she's now in charge of the Doge subcommittee by Donald Trump. She's the one leading the Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy committee that will take away your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and take away the Affordable Care Act. She's

She's leading that now. So she's one of their top people. She sits on the Homeland Security and Oversight Committees. Okay. Could you imagine if a Democratic Congress member put out a statement that said that we've got all this dirt on all my other Democratic colleagues involving sex trafficking, sex assault, all of your relationships with Epstein?

I'm aware of it. If you want to release the sex trafficking report of the attorney general, we're going to release your reports next. And by the way, she's not the only one who said this. I mean, Madison Cawthorn, the one time he got pushed out was when he talked about the cocaine and sex parties by the Republicans. Like this is who they are. And, and, and, and Brett, I'll toss it to you. But again, I don't want to lose track of the it.

And yes, there's some trafficking that involves women, which is horrific and horrible and criminal if the allegations prove to be true. And these are very credible, serious allegations. But Matt Gaetz is also we're also dealing with children. OK, child sex trafficking. And the Republicans were all in the pro sex trafficking party. Right.

Yeah, and this is another example of just so much projection because this is always what they try to put onto Democrats. It's clearly a huge problem within their own party. I'm not saying it's only limited to Republicans, but it certainly seems to pop up a whole lot in the Republican Party. Hey, we made videos that- I was about to say, but you made videos that we actually had to

cut down. It was like a eight minute video that we had to cut down to two minutes to just post. No, Jordy, the final edit was five or six minutes. The original video was like 12 minutes and I'm like, okay, well, no one's going to watch that. So we got to reel it in. And since we even released that, I'm sure there are dozens and dozens and dozens of other examples that we could put in there, but they try to act like they care about these things. Remember the whole kind of QAnon Republican thing was

Save the children. We must save the children. We need to save the children. And then they're all rallying. They're all going to bat to defend somebody who has been credibly accused of child sex trafficking. And this is just such a wild move too by Marjorie Taylor Greene, where she's essentially like, oh yeah, you want to release that report on this alleged sex trafficker? Well, I know about all your behavior too, fellow Republicans, and I'll release that report.

How about we put it all out there? How about we put sunlight on everything? And by the way, I'm all for it. This may be the one time I agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Do it. If any Democrats end up in this mix, fine by me. Let it, as Marjorie Taylor Greene says, what did she say? Let's all dance in the sunlight. That

Fine by me. But this is just the craziest way of running a party to just blame each other and accuse each other of like serious sex crimes and to hold compromise like Russia does, like Putin does over your members.

It's sort of the issue right now for these MAGA Republicans because they're the majority. It feels dirty saying that. They're the majority. So it's not like they could start pointing fingers at the Democrats here and there. They have to actually fight within. And I think we're going to continue to see that

more and more and more over these next four years, this Republican MAGA civil war. As Trump does these loyalty tests here with the folks that he's trying to put in, who's going to go against them? What's Marjorie going to say about that? What's Kevin McCarthy going to do about that? I mean, it's wild to see play out in real time. Shorty, when you're credibly accused of child sex trafficking and

drug fueled parties with underage girls. Who's the number one person who you want to go to bat for you?

Is it Jim Jordan, somebody else who has been credibly accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse at The Ohio State University? Because that's apparently who they put out on TV to defend Matt Gaetz before he ended up leaving. Here was Jim Jordan on Laura Ingraham's Fox show defending Matt Gaetz from the release of this ethics report. Watch this. And Congressman Jordan, do you have

any sense about what will happen with that House ethics report that was supposed to come out Friday? Remember, Gates had been accused of things and no prosecution had been continued. It had been dropped. But Dick Durbin is trying to get his hands on that report, obviously, to leak it out to hurt President Trump. What is your sense on that?

Well, it's my understanding that is not supposed to go public. So if it's not supposed to under the rules, it shouldn't go public. And what I know about Matt Gates is one of the best members we had on our committee. And my time in Congress, which has been a while, I don't know if there are very few people who have the cross-examination skills he does.

And I want someone in the Justice Department who's not going to say moms and dads at school board meeting needs to be investigated. I want someone at the Justice Department who's going to say it's wrong for the FBI to do a memorandum and say that pro-life Catholics are extremists.

I want someone at the Justice Department who can tell us who planted the pipe bombs on January 6th, who leaked the Dobbs opinion, who put cocaine at the White House instead of all the other stuff they seem to be focused on. I wanna take a look though there of the anatomy of that response because they follow a kind of a common pattern, right? So what they try to do is they take away what the issue is here, the it, right? Child sex trafficking, she goes,

He was accused of things, right? Won't say what those things are. Then moves on to the process, right? It's going to be leaked to try to hurt Trump

to hurt dear leader. We're trying to find out if Trump appointed somebody to lead the Department of Justice, the top law enforcement position who was involved in child sex trafficking. All Americans should care about that. But he said to try to hurt Trump, leak it,

And then Jim Jordan says, well, I think it's against the rules. So you see what they're doing. They're dragging you now into a process conversation. So then after trying to take away the sting of what's happening by making this into kind of an anti-Trump thing with rules and it's complicated. Now they're trying to basically get their Fox viewers to say, ah, this is all very complicated.

I don't know what's going on. Rules, this, that. It just seems like another, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia. They're just going after Donald Trump here. And then the pivot that he makes is to conspiracies, right? So then he goes, what we really need to find out is who leaked the Dobbs decision. It was probably Alito or someone was actually some right wing person who wanted the opinion to stay. We need to find out who the pipe bomber

Everybody agrees, but the implication is that that's somehow being covered up. And we don't want someone, he says, who are going to school board hearings to lock up parents simply because they're Catholic. Again, which is a total lie. Department of Justice is not locking up Catholics. That's one of the MAGA Republicans. They're turning your kids trans when they go to school. They're eating the cats and dogs. They're locking up the Catholics. No, they're not. If people went to a school board and threatened to bomb it,

which was happening to blow it up, then the FBI would get involved in people threatening to blow up the schools, which the magas turned around and said, oh, they hate Catholics. But

I want you to see there what he did and I don't want to say he's good at it to make you think what he's doing is good. But in that 60 seconds right there, he did all of those things, misdirect, make it about process, throw a conspiracy, bring a culture war.

And that's why they platform him in that way. And then Democrats go on and they take the bait and then they sometimes go into a process oriented rebuttal when they need to say, you're pro sex trafficking. Let's be very clear. Republicans are pro sex trafficking. They're defending sex trafficking today. These are real sickos. Keep your kids away from these sex trafficking Republican sickos.

How I did it there is how the Democrats need to do it because you can't fight what you just saw with Jim Jordan by saying,

In all of the years that I've been in the ethics committee, it has always been our policy that we would release such a report given the unique circumstances here. You see the difference? Yeah. Ben, I've also seen Democrats go out and they'll say things to the effect of like, "And they want Matt Gaetz to be attorney general? That speaks for itself."

But it doesn't, it doesn't speak for itself. You need to speak it, you need to be able to articulate exactly what that means and the way Ben is being so direct about it, I think is exactly how you do that. And in fact, I think by watching that Jim Jordan clip and watching that pivot is frankly something Democrats should study because there is an art to it. And I'm not defending Jim Jordan, and I'm not saying that they should lie and make up things,

But I'm saying it's important. The branding is important and the way that you clearly and concisely are able to brand other people and bring in these issues that are actually impactful, that do resonate with folks, the way that Jim Jordan brings in those complete and utter lies about the school board meetings and the like. That right there is what Democrats need to do. But by going, you are defending

child sex trafficking. Allegedly, you are defending this behavior. You are defending these crimes. How can you defend these crimes? Just clearly enunciate it. Let the people know what the heck is actually going on.

If you believed he was innocent, you would release the report, wouldn't you? So clearly you're trying to hide something. Why would you be trying to hide child sex trafficking allegations unless you support child sex trafficking allegations? So Republicans, do you support child sex trafficking allegations? Repeat it over and over and over again. Think about the election when Donald Trump was saying they, them,

are coming after you. That's what the whole thing was. They them, right? And who were the they them? The migrants.

And they didn't even define who the migrants necessarily were so that each group thought, oh, they're not talking about me. They're not talking to me. They're talking about that group. They're talking about this group. But the migrants are coming for you. They're eating your cats. They're eating your dogs. They're eating your pets. They're taking over your hospitals. They are coming for you. And the other big one is you're going to send your kids to school and your kids are going to come back a different gender.

You're going to send your boy to school. He's going to come back a girl without your consent. They are coming for you. All lies, all 100% lies. And meanwhile, on the Democratic side, you had the real, real truth on your side. They were not coming for cats and dogs. They, the Republicans, were coming for your Social Security.

They, the Republicans, them, the Republicans were coming for your Medicare. They, the Republicans, them, the Republicans were coming for your healthcare. They are coming to reduce your wages. They are coming to help the

billionaire class and they're coming to screw you over. They're laughing at you. That's what they are doing. And you got to be direct with that. I want to talk a lot more about this because I think we're right on target, right? Because to me, this is the, you know, if they spent a

billion dollars on this campaign. This is the billion dollar answer right here. And this is what's needed. You have to learn from some of these things. You can't just go and move on and be like, oh, let's actually take a look at what went down, how the messaging war was lost.

and what you need to do to restore it. So let's talk about that and more. We've got a lot more show. Want to remind everybody as well that next week we will be doing our Patreon chat. We're doing them weekly now. We did one earlier and it was great. It was so great to see everybody. We're going to try to pick a different time to do it this time around. We did it earlier in the week.

so that people who missed it can be there. But it was hundreds of people who were there. It was so great seeing your faces. Patreon.com slash Midas Touch. Let's take our first quick break of the show.

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Shout out to our pro-democracy sponsors. Links in description of YouTube and audio. I'm laughing because I like when there's all three of us, when we each get a read per break. People write in the chat who they prefer. It seems like my read was the preferred read. But all excellent products. I mean, hey, the commenters can say right now who's their favorite ad reader. You can let people know in the comments. Drop them right there. Ben won't be offended when you say it's either Jordy or Brett.

Leadership starts at the top, Jordy. Or when it comes to Donald Trump, it's the bottom of the barrel. The depths of depravity have no floor. And it's not shocking that the corruption imbalances.

involved with everything Trump touches and that he engages in. The fact that Trump's been found liable of sexual assault. These are the people who he hangs out with, right? This is his crew, right? This is not like a bug. This is like,

who they chill with at Mar-a-Lago, right? Like I guess earlier we talked about, you know, all of the like conspiracies that the right wing would be like, Ooh, there's a deep state pizza gate. Pull up that Matt Gates chart by all of those lines, by the way, like, uh,

I would imagine that if all the pizza gate people, you were thinking it would look something like this, right? Yeah. That's quite literally real life in Donald Trump's world right there of actual trafficking victims who Donald Trump is appointing people who may be involved in all of that with serious allegations so serious that Republicans refused to release the report where that's evidently a page in the report because they want to cover it all up.

That's the conspiracies they were spreading. That's actually what they are doing. So you go to the Mar-a-Lago crew and I think Democrats need to message. This is what they're doing in Mar. This is the Mar-a-Lago crew.

This is what they're doing. Look- Why does it look so much like the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Why? Why did you just say that, man? I was just saying the only thing, I was saying to myself in the head, the only thing that's missing is Charlie Day. Right. Pepe Silvia, Pepe Silvia. If you were involved in this type of conduct and you were trying to preempt it,

you would do what Charlie Day's doing, right? You would like come up with the conspiracy, make it all up when it's actually you who's doing that exact thing right there that's actually going down right there. Now look, when we talk about the Peter Hegseth allegations, okay, if you for a second just take what Peter Hegseth says happens,

Just Peter Hegseth's side, which you should not do. I want to take us through this exercise, though. Just show you that it's disqualifying, even if you just accept Hegseth, right? He's a Fox News host. He's invited to speak at a Republican women convention in Monterey in California.

This is his side of the story. He gets shit-faced. He starts drinking, and he's speaking with two other women who are kind of grossed out with him. And then he doesn't fully remember what happens, but then with this other woman who he's drinking with, who's at the convention, he brings her up to the presidential suite. He knows that she's married.

I mean, he's married. He says that he has consensual sex with her. It's described the sex too, though, in like some real, it is even in his own version of events. And then he kind of like, you know, like, like, you know, tries to like deny that it even happened. But then when he speaks to the police, he, you know, he admits that it happens. That's his version of the event by itself.

that he used his position at Power of Fox to go there, get drunk, start harassing all of these women at the event. And then he just claims that while he and her were saying like, no, we shouldn't be doing this, he did it anyway. That's his version. That's his facts. But remove that, take that away. Because even if you just take that, you'd be like, that's the guy? The Fox News host that you picked to be

Having our nuclear codes? But no, in a situation like this here, let's be clear what the victim says happened. And the victim's very credible allegations need to be taken incredibly seriously right here. She describes it in very, very specific details about what went down.

And it's described as a rape of an unconscious woman. That's in the Monterey police report right there. She has text messages around the time period. She has communications with other women, her husband around that time period. She went to the hospital. She got a rape kit done around that time period.

So we have this police report from 2017 that even with all of this Gates stuff is going down, you have credible accusations of rape against Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense pick. And then when you go in addition to these very serious, credible accusations against against Hegseth, you then go to the fact that wait, so did this person ever like lead the military before?

I mean, he was in the National Guard. I mean, he was in the military. But wasn't this the MAGAs who were attacking Governor Walz, who was in the National Guard for 24 years and saying that that wasn't real, that wasn't enough combat, it wasn't combat experience, and therefore he can't even say. So I'm just trying to understand this. So now you're saying that Hegseth, who was there for far less time, who was not as high of a rank as Walz,

um who's never led a position like this before should be should be made the secretary of defense the the not like the press secretary which he still wouldn't be qualified for the secretary of defense and then you add the sexual assault allegations so hegseth just so you see um what what low character this individual is just so you see how he's just not

prepared to even have this role. He's asked the question that you would expect that he's going to be asked in a situation like this, right? A reporter asks him, so did you sexually assault the woman in Monterey, California? Listen to what he says here. Here, play this clip. We take absolutely nothing for granted and we welcome the opportunity to talk to any senator that wants to talk to us. Did you sexually assault a woman in Monterey, California? I have, as far as the media is concerned, I have

I'll keep this very simple. The matter was fully investigated and I was completely cleared. And that's where I'm going to leave it. Thank you very much. As far as the media is concerned, what kind of answer is that? It may have happened, but as far as the media is concerned, you were completely cleared when he was not completely cleared.

It's very hard to read those police reports 'cause they're so graphic and so disgusting about what he did. But he goes, "As far as the media is concerned," and Brett, it doesn't stop there. RFK Jr.'s former babysitter, 23 years old at the time, she comes forward talking about the times he sexually assaulted her. You've got Linda McMahon, who Donald Trump appointed to be the head of the Department of Education, who's got no experience there.

And has her own child sex abuse scandal. Let's not forget that. I don't mean to make light of this, but literally the only diversity in Trump's cabinet right now appears to be a diversity of sexual assault allegations against a lot of the people who he is trying to bring onto his cabinet. And that's a big red flag, I would say, as we try to view these people's character. And the kind of thing that I think

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are going to have to confront now is he's basically thrown everybody at you who are unqualified, who carry this horrific baggage. And so it's like, how do you pick your battles here, right? How do you, could you take on all of them? You know, like these are not qualified people, but I think it's important that we do pick our battles, especially with those who have control of these departments.

who could literally lead to life or death situations like the Secretary of Defense, like people who are controlling your health. I mean, this is serious stuff where you need people of integrity. And by the way, you don't necessarily need people who agree with you on everything, but you certainly need people who are people of integrity, who are honest people, who are experts in their field. We are going right now from...

one of the most, if not the, I would say the most diverse cabinets, not just in background and appearance, but also in intellectual background to just a cabinet of like dunces, honestly, a cabinet of just men

one person more incompetent than the next one person with more serious allegations against them of the next very credible allegations. Mediaite yesterday, the website, they released the full police report against Peter Hegseth. And that's where this one page that I'm showing right here is from. If you are able to stomach it, I recommend you do look at it and look at the original raw data in that police report because it's,

It's horrifying. It's absolutely, it's horrifying stuff. And I think the public deserves to know and the public deserves to see what is in that. And when you see his response be that, well, as far as the media is not, I didn't do it. As far as the media is concerned, this is all good. I think that is also a red flag that the public has to be taking very seriously.

And what Trump is doing too, he's trying to exhaust you. You listening, us here, all of us. He's trying to exhaust you with these picks. So to Brett's point exactly there, it's important to pick the battles. That's why, for example, like we haven't harped on Rubio so much, right? Because, you know, look, we don't like the guy. We obviously don't agree with the guy. But in any other Republican administration, like it would be a relatively normal pick. But the Hegseths.

the Gateses, the McMahons. You have to stay and be relentless because there is some horrible stuff in all of their closets and he's trying to get you exhausted and not want to pay attention. But now more than ever, it's time to dig in on this. And I'm glad again that everybody was so vocal around Gates because

Point in case, we saw it today. He dropped his name from consideration. That does not happen without the uproar, the righteous uproar of this community, this pro-democracy community. You see though the Republican strategy. You saw what they did there in that clip with Jim Jordan and Laura Ingraham on Fox News. You saw the diversion tactics.

Don't look at this. Look at this. Don't look at this issue, this very serious issue that we won't even mention by name, these child sex trafficking allegations. But look at those evil libs who want to invade your school boards. Look at those evil libs who want to hide what's going on with the pipe bomb. Just a bunch of bullshit. And what you have, you have Fox.

And you have Republicans working in coordination the same way that they did during the election in order to try to issue these diversions. And the biggest example of that right now out there is Nancy Mason.

Nancy Mace is a Republican Congresswoman who just a few years ago was actually an ally of the LGBTQ community, supported a bill for LGBTQ rights, said that transgender Americans must be treated equally under the law. But now what she has determined and what Fox has determined is that this is an issue, one of those culture war issues where we could divide the public. We

We can say, don't look at the alleged child sex traffickers that we want to fill with the government. Don't look at these sexual abusers that we are trying to ramp through and run the government. Don't look at any of that stuff that's actually endangering your lives because guess what? There is a lawmaker coming in by the name of Sarah McBride who just won her race in Delaware for Congress. And guess what? She's transgender. And that means she may have to actually use a bath

in Congress and we cannot allow her to use a bathroom. And so they do this diversion tactic and Fox goes wall to wall with a bathroom gate. Oh, the libs are at it again. They're talking about bathrooms. Nobody was talking about bathrooms at

all. Ben, Jordi, I want to dig in to all of this, this diversion tactic, what they are saying, how they are once again trying to scapegoat the transgender community, how they are trying to scapegoat people in order to try to distract from their horrific behavior. First, let's go to a quick break. Do not go anywhere. We have a lot more to discuss here on the Midas Touch podcast.

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Shout out to our pro-democracy sponsors. Links in description of YouTube and audio. Use the codes. Use the links. Let them know we sent you Brett Fabulous Reads. Real quick, are we done talking about Mace? Are we moving on from Mace now?

I think briefly about Mace. What were you going to say, Jordy? I just wanted to add, it just truly shows how spineless these Republicans are. Brett, to your point that Mace sort of ran on this platform or at least co-sponsored a bill for the transgender community and now fast forward just three short years later, she's doing all of this publicity stunt, if you will. What did she tweet? About 124 different posts. No, over 262 posts.

I mean, it's unbelievable. Just deeply, deeply unserious people. That is the MAGA Republican Party. Sorry, Ben. Let me show you. There are videos like this though. Here's one where she starts ripping things off the wall. Do we have this? Let's play it. This says, "You can't erase us, Nancy. Well, then you shouldn't try to erase women."

I'm going to say for any man that wants to be in a woman's restroom, bathroom, dressing room, locker room, absolutely not.

Adam Kinzinger was raised an interesting point. He goes, what's it about all these GOP men though, who want the transgender woman in the men's bathroom? He goes, maybe we should be looking into that a little bit more right there. Here's Nancy Mace as well saying, I don't care. I'm doubling down or play this video. But she like literally put out like

like 75 videos, like video, video, video. It was just another example of it. Here, play this clip. Hey everyone, I told you I wasn't going to stop with Capitol Hill. I'm filing another bill tonight that would ban biological men from women's spaces on all federal property all across the country. This fight starts here. It starts now. Men are not allowed in women's spaces, period. Full stop. End of story.

You know, and look, I mean, Trump ran the whole thing. We're not for they, them. One of the things about Sarah McBride, the transgender congresswoman, she ran in Delaware. She's been a mainstay in Delaware politics, and she's delivered results for the people in the state of Delaware, and they know about her accomplishments there.

It's also in the Philly market. So the people in Delaware got all of those Trump ads about, you know, she's with they, them, not with you to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. And here's my view of it. It's, you know, the Republicans started saying, well, look, you know, this is about sports. This is about swimming. This is about volleyball, you know, and first off, like why?

why is the federal government getting involved? Why are the individual sports leagues making decisions? And let the sports leagues make the decisions. Why is it a federal government decision in general? But it was never to me about the sports. What they wanted to always do is to find a photo of a transgender person who looks different and mock them.

and put the photo up there and say horrific mean things over and over again. And that's where it really devolved into. And now where it is, is it's an attack on the very existence of a very, very small percentage of- - I wanna be clear about too,

This representative elect, Sarah McBride, she has not done anything other than simply exist. She is not even there yet. She is running on policies. She is only speaking about policies. Even with this whole issue, she conceded the issue to the Republicans and said, make whatever rules you want. I'm not going to get involved in this conversation. I want to help Delawareans here in the United States Congress. And I think this is one of the head fakes that Republicans do, right? Because they want to trap Democrats.

Democrats. They want to trap people in these conversations. What's a woman? What's a man? What's a woman? They want you trapped in that conversation. They want to trap you in those conversations to actually hide the fact of the actual horrific things they are doing that's affecting 99% of the population while they focus on the 0.00001% of the population and scapegoat them. And I think the head fake here, and I think the...

kind of learned lesson that is, I think, completely wrong is that Democrats need to abandon these communities. I think that's, I reject that outright. I mean, you see representative elect Sarah McBride, she won her race. You don't just run away and hide and reject these communities and give in to these Republican framings. I think you need to back these communities a hundred percent, right? Um,

What I think the head fake is, though, is that Republicans want to drag you into the nuances of these conversations when many of these, like to Ben's point, are not even government issues whatsoever. And they also make zero sense on their face when you actually dig into them. Like Kinzinger's response was brilliant. Like, why would you want a transgender woman in a men's bathroom? And it comes down to...

I could be nice and say it's a misunderstanding, but these Republicans know exactly what they're doing. And obviously, let me just show you an example from a tweet that I put out to show you just the ridiculous kind of hypocrisy of what Republicans are actually asking for when they say things like this. I think it's important because people don't know a lot about transgender people in the transgender community. But by Mike Johnson's own rules,

I'll show the picture right here. We see Miss Nevada on the left right here. They want her to only be allowed to use a men's bathroom. Does that make sense to anybody watching this? And would that make sense to, by the way, any of the Republicans out there? If you saw her in a men's bathroom, how would Republicans feel? Would Republicans be okay with that?

I don't think so. On the right, you see a transgender man bodybuilder. Would you be okay if that guy is in a woman's bathroom? Because per the rules that Mike Johnson is passing right now in order to single out this community to try to make some sort of point in order to divert attention from

to the way that Donald Trump is corrupting our government and trying to push through corrupt pick after corrupt pick. He wants that guy in the women's bathroom. This is, I think this is of course like kind of the- - Here's how I think you deal with it. I think you say,

Why are you to Republicans? Why are you so obsessed with penises and vaginas? Like, why are you like, why are you constantly speaking about genitals? Like, can we talk about mortgage rates? Because Donald Trump said that as soon as he was elected, things were going to go down.

But in fact, just the mere threat of Donald Trump's policies, mortgage rates are going up, up, up because Donald Trump is causing a great deal of chaos within the bond markets. And as a result of Donald Trump's tariff policies and the other uncertainty attendant to it, mortgage rates are up just simply on the threat of what Trump is going to do. Mass deportations,

tariffs, tax cuts that are going to create record deficits. And so again, that's what's happening now. They want to talk about penises and vaginas all day and get you to like talk about all of that. They don't want to tell you about what Trump's actual tariffs are and what's happening already in a place like Walmart, where the Walmart CFO is saying prices are going to go way up right now because of Trump's tariffs, even in anticipation of Trump's policies

prices are going to go up. We have the audio of the Walmart CFO on CNBC saying this, but think about why it is they want to drag you into these other conversations and not focus on the issues. Here, play this clip. And I did get a chance to speak with Walmart CFO Brett Biggs when it comes to the ongoing tariff discussion. The company is closely monitoring the developments, and Biggs said, look, as we have said before,

Here's one of the most important things that I think was missed in this last election, right?

The election and Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign was kind of analogous almost in its messaging, which frankly, I like messaging of hope and optimism, turn the page forward as kind of an Obama 2008 message. But people are pissed right now. People feel that they are being screwed over right now and they want somebody to blame for it. They want to move forward, but people are pissed.

And what MAGA Republicans are saying is the reason that this is happening to you is they/them. It's migrants, it's trans people. They're doing this to you. They're there to blame. And this is why this is happening. And in fact,

It's the fact that there are billionaires out there who have chiseled away and then put a blowtorch or sledgehammer, to use analogies that Republicans often like to use when talking about Social Security, Medicare, and social safety nets. They've destroyed the American dream to hoist up oligarchs and billionaires, and the billionaires and oligarchs tapped into people's frustrations and convinced them that it's just they-them.

Not the oligarchs who are doing it. It's just they, them, and blame everybody else. Get angry. And Democrats get sucked into that framing versus what Democrats need to say is, look, we hear you. We care about you. Here are the people who are screwing you.

you. Here's how they are screwing you. Here's how they are lying to you. This is what they are doing to you. Whereas the MAGA Republicans have to lie and say they're eating the cats and dogs. They're coming for, they're eating the cats and dogs. The trans folks are doing this. They're coming for your jobs. This is what they're, they're coming for your hospitals. They're doing all of these things.

In reality, in the real world, Republicans are actually coming for your social security. And Democrats need to play on that sometimes. It's the hope and optimism and pushing forward is great. But Democrats messaging on Project 2025, it's Project 2025. It's this big thing. And I get it, but you got to break it down for people. They literally want to take away your Affordable Care Act. They are going to kill you. They're going to kill you.

They're going to take away your Affordable Care Act. They're coming for your Medicare. They're coming for your Social Security. And make that a focal point of what it is. And we're here to give you jobs, better paying jobs, factories. We're going to make you rich. We're going to make you better. You have to say some of those things because you're actually doing that. You actually are improving wages. You actually are energy independent for the first time. You actually are fulfilling these promises right now. So that to me is a pivotal distinction that I think needs to be addressed and dealt with and

Just take a look. This isn't getting a lot of attention, but just for all of the kind of union people who bought into like the they them and they're coming for you and voted against your own unions. Objectively, we all know that Elon Musk is basically the co-president right now. Elon Musk and this Doge committee that's working with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's leading it.

and Vivek Ramaswamy, that they're going to cut trillions of dollars, they say, of government spending, which really means Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, serious programs that people actually depend upon. But Elon Musk is calling the shots. He's one of the shot callers right now, right? So on Monday, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Amazon and Elon Musk

They were arguing a case, their lawyers were arguing a case before the right wing Fifth Circuit that basically says the National Labor Relations Board should not exist. This specific case involved the formation of a union, I believe, at like an Amazon plant that happened, I think it was even in New York. And they tried to funnel this case to the Fifth Circuit and in Texas because they

That's a right-wing court with all kind of MAGA appointees on this court. But the whole central aim of the Trumpers is to get rid of the National Labor Relations Board because this specific ruling in a pro-labor National Labor Relations Board allowed the union to be formed, allowed for collective bargaining rights, and allowed for the things that union workers need to support their family. Things like overtime, things like better health and safety conditions. Well,

Under Donald Trump, who do you think is going to be on this National Labor Relations Board? Do you think the NLRB is going to do what it did under the Biden administration and vote in favor of labor? Or do you think they're going to support Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the billionaire? So you have to be aware and alert to what's happening. And then you have to realize and make sure you know that what the Republicans are really doing here is they're going off on all of these culture war issues to draw your attention away.

Now, you have to call it out. You have to say what it is because chaos abhors a vacuum. So you have to say this is what's happening. But at the same time, you have to then message directly. You can't always be on the defense. You've got to go on the offense and you've got to speak in clear language and clear terms.

and basically say that here's what they're doing. They're coming for your social security. They're coming for your Medicare because they actually are. Those are all true things. And then you say, we're gonna give you the best healthcare. We're gonna give you the best plans. We're gonna give you choices. We're gonna give you options. We're gonna give you the best education.

because that's actually what you're doing. So you have Trump using that language and quite literally lying and Democrats, pro-democracy, whatever you call it, afraid to use the language of things that are actually kind of true. And look, I

think in chaos, there's opportunity. And I think right now in this moment, there's actually opportunity because the Republicans when they pick set the alleged sex traffickers to run these positions, incompetent people to run these positions, people, you know, corrupt people to run these positions, it gives you an opportunity, I think, to, to recapture the narrative of as a Democrat or as a pro demarra's person doesn't like these crazy ideas.

And Governor Walz was onto something, but they pulled his messaging back when he was calling these ideas crazy. He tapped into the thing and then they kind of pulled it back. These are crazy, dangerous ideas, crazy, dangerous ideas that hurt you, that hurt the people. So we need to not have those ideas and it needs to be messaged, I think, very clearly, very matter of factly. And one more point I'll make and then I'll throw it to you, Brett, to close out is the

appointing judges, so critical and key now. Democrats are trying to appoint as many federal judges as they can. Schumer did this weird deal with Republicans to kind of avoid their obstruction, where he basically traded more federal judges at the trial court level, as opposed to circuit court judges, given literally, I guess it's like a timing thing. But

I think Biden will have appointed kind of more judges than like really anyone before him. And I think that's really, really important, Brett. Yeah. And as you look at this Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos thing, and you look at the entire Trump administration that is coming in, it is the most Trump-like administration.

transparent thing that we are seeing in front of us. It is so transparent that their goal is to extract more wealth from working Americans and bring it to the richest Americans. It is so transparent that they are trying to destroy our regulatory system so that billionaires can run the country like an oligarchy and they could run it without any regulation, without any guardrails.

And you couldn't think of a more kind of comical group of people to run this corrupt operation to funnel wealth to the 1% than Donald Trump, than Elon Musk, than having people like Jeff Bezos jump in with things like this. And you could see his motivations for what he did at Washington Post and everything when you see what he's doing right now with these various lawsuits.

But like Ben said, that presents an opportunity for Democrats to present an affirmative vision of not only what they are against, but what they believe in. This gives them a major opportunity to once again position themselves as the party of the working class while you have the oligarchy, so to speak, right out in front, being as corrupt as imaginable in plain sight, not even trying to hide it.

So this is a big opportunity right now, in fact, for the Democratic Party and for the American people to give their message to the American people. And they better take it. They better not just be against these things, but they better show what they are for, present that positive message, a positive message of how are we going to solve workers' issues, a positive message of how are we going to deal with immigration, how are we going to respect workers'

immigration? How are we going to make this process easier? Just across the board, that's something that Democrats, I think, right now need to latch onto. They shouldn't shy away from it. And that's kind of one of my closing messages here. I'm not sure if we mentioned this earlier in the whole Matt Gaetz conversation, but Trump also has named his new pick for AG. So we're already in round two, folks. This is going to be Pam Bollinger,

Bondi. She was the former Attorney General of Florida. And so she is now the new pick. Forget Matt Gaetz, that never happened, right? We got Pam Bondi here. One of the top line things to know about Pam Bondi, well, at least she is a lawyer and was an Attorney General of a state. So I guess that's a good thing. She also...

helped kind of get rid of the case against Trump University in Florida was one of her big thing after like the Trump organization gave her like $25,000 or something. So of course it comes with a nice tied up in a nice bow of Trump corruption and and will be, you know, releasing videos explaining all of that. I would say Bondi is

very likely to ultimately be confirmed. She's at least a competent pick here, a very corrupt pick, but somebody who is likely to ultimately get through in this round two of the attorney general cycle. But I think that basically sums it up. I think that's all we got for you today. We're going to be doing our Patreon meeting, patreon.com/MightAsTouch.

Next week, we're going to pick it. We did the last one later in the evening, so we want to do this one a little bit earlier. So it'll be probably in the morning sometime next week, so we can make sure that everybody who couldn't attend the night session attends in the morning. Of course, if you can make the night sessions, I'm

make the morning sessions too, if you're able to, but we'll do it that way as well. So anyway, we covered a lot of ground. Stay in the fight. Stay strong. Democracy is still going to prevail. We're in this together, folks. We're in this together. We're going nowhere. We're staying right here. We're on the front lines. And let's do this together. Jordy, shout out to the Midas Mighty.

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