MeidasTouch RESPONDS to BREAKING NEWS - 1.2.25

Happy New Year's. It's 2025.
We've got a lot to discuss. Tragedy in New Orleans, compounded by lies and disinformation coming from Donald Trump, MAGA, and right-wing media.
We'll talk about that and also what went down in Las Vegas where a cyber truck exploded in front of the Trump Tower or the Trump building there. And we learned that it was actually someone who appears to be a Trump supporter who was in that vehicle.
We'll break it all down. Maga Mike Johnson, in or out, a vote to determine whether Maga Mike Johnson will be the Speaker of the House once again is set for January 3rd on Friday.
And if you listen to the MAGA base, they hate this guy. They're making posts calling him a traitor, calling him compromise, calling him Democrats, little B word.
We'll break it all down. We'll talk about the dynamic there.
Also, Donald Trump had an awful New Year's event that looked like a D-list celebrity party with Lara Trump singing out of tune and other D-listers there. Even when surrounded with the trappings of the most powerful position in the world, Donald Trump managed to surround himself with losers and to make himself further look like a loser.
Also speaking about that New Year's event, Donald Trump claimed that he's always been a supporter of the H-1B visa program. Well, Midas Touch dug up statements Donald Trump made in 2016 and 2020 where Donald Trump said, I've got a plan.
I've got concepts of plans where I'm going to eliminate H-1B and I'm going to give all of these jobs to Americans. H-1B is very, very unfair.
We'll break all of that down as well as the fact that President Biden on Thursday gave the Presidential Medal Award to Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson for their work on the January 6th committee and telling the truth relating to what happened on January 6th. That and more here on the Midas Touch podcast.
Brett and Jordy, good to be with you both in 2025. And of course, great to be with all of you, the Midas Mighty in 2025 as well.
We are in this together. We are ready to fight.
Happy New Year, Midas Mighty. Happy New Year, brothers.
Happy New Year to our incredible mods. Thank you for everything you've done to help us out over this past year.
And boy, do we have the fight of our lives ahead of us. I'm trying to think back to the last year where I could be like, where I was like, oh, that was a great past year.
We had an amazing past year. I can't really think too much about it.
I feel like every year, at least since 2016, I've been like, thank God that year's behind us. I don't know.
But we got a lot ahead of us right now. And that's why we got to be more united than ever as a community to take on the tall tasks that are going to be in front of us to defend, to protect democracy, to do everything we can to put our values forward, to protect them, and to ensure that democracy thrives here in the United States.
Great to be here. I'm excited to get into all the news.
And oh my gosh, I mean, we're only, what, two days into the year. And there's been story after story after story already.
It's a year's worth of news in two days. We're going to try to get through and dissect it all in this next hour or so.
So without further ado, I'm going to toss it over to Jordy and ask Jordy, how are you doing today, buddy? I'm doing great. Two quick things.
One, shout out to the Ohio State Buckeyes winning their playoff game. I know we have a huge Ohio listenership right now.
And I like to, you know, we split the audience sometimes. A lot of people say, I didn't know you were an Ohio State fan.
I love the show even more. And then some people are like, oh, OSU fan, I'm not watching anymore.
So love to divide the community to start. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.
And then the other thing is you might notice my shoulder. I got some, just call it some baby liquids on my shoulder right now.
And you could have just said like, why didn't I just change before? It's because we're a family here, the Midas Mighty, and we have to record when we're recording and didn't have time to change the shirt. But I think that's just what being a parent is, is you just always have gook on your shoulder when you have to hold a baby all day.
Benji, what's up? And Jordi, going off the point that you just made right there. Where are you going with this? Well, I'm going with it pretty clearly because, Brett, when you said 2024 and some of these years have been difficult, that's because of political divisiveness that has taken place.
And it's not a both sides issue. It's clear

where the bulk of the political divisiveness is coming from. And it's coming from Trump and MAGA and turning everything into a political wedge issue.
But I do think it is helpful to reflect on the things that are also more important to us, our friends, our family, our loved ones, the Midas Mighty community. And this past year brought new myceluses into life from the Geordie family, from the Ben family.
And stuff like that sometimes is what energizes you to do a lot of this hard work, knowing that you're doing it for future generations as well. And I've got the love of my family, the love of Brett and Jordy.
We can do this show together as brothers that we have such a close family and that we've brought the Midas Mighty and the Midas Mighty have brought us into this bigger community and family as well. So that's where I was going with that, Brett, as well.
But look, in all seriousness, I remember times in my life, so granted I'm about to turn 40 this year, but I remember in my life there were times where there would be, whether it would be terrorist attacks or natural disasters, where as a country we wouldn't view it as a political hot potato. I mean, it would more than not, I'm not going to say that's never been used as political hot potatoes, but more frequently, a natural disaster, a horrible hurricane, or a terrorist attack, we'd unite.
We would say we're all Americans, and we all need to stick together And very frequently, you would see the leadership of who was ever in charge actually getting a bump in the polls because America was united. Now, that bump may or may not last based on their subsequent conduct, but Trump and MAGA were set out to turn everything into a political wedge issue.
No matter what it was, it seems that over the past four years, they wanted to blame on migrants. Migrants, migrants, migrants, Biden, Biden, Biden, you're responsible for all of this.
Everything is your fault. No matter what it was, it was somehow Biden's fault or the fault of migrants and usually both.
You just think about the hurricanes that recently hit the East Coast that were devastating to places in North Carolina and elsewhere on the East Coast. What did Donald Trump do? He lied and said that FEMA was prioritizing migrants over American citizens and FEMA didn't have the resources because all of their money went to migrants.
that was just 100% false. There's literally zero true about it, but that's what was pumped out day after day.
And the way the corporate media would say things, they would go, well, Donald Trump and Republicans are saying that FEMA does not have the money. And then on the other hand, Democrats are saying this versus saying Donald Trump is lying, that's false, and holding him accountable and holding MAGA accountable for lying.
So when this horrific terrorist attack took place this week in New Orleans, it was an important time where there should have been responsible media coverage. And in a pre-Fox world, there would have been.
People would have got their facts together. The opposition political party would not come out with lies.
You would hear from the president of the United States who would usually give a thoughtful statement that respected the lives of the victims, that expressed remorse and sympathy to the families and offered heartfelt condolences, and then talked about information as being gathered and we shouldn't rush to conclusions so as to avoid civil unrest and problems domestically that are unnecessary and could be avoided, and then talk about a plan of how accurate data and information is going to be obtained, communicated, and conveyed. We're not living in that world anymore, that we're living in the world where everything is a wedge issue.
So Fox and other right-wing propaganda media started reporting that this horrific attack that we now know took the lives of at least 14 people. Over 30 people were injured in New Orleans.
We know that the individual's name is Shamsa Din Jabbar, 42-year-old from Texas, someone who was in the United States military, somebody who was an American citizen, someone who lived in Texas all of his life. This was, we learned, a terrorist attack.
This was not an attack, though, from a

migrant or from a foreigner. It was from someone who was previously in the United States military

and discharged. By the way, similarly, when we talk about the cyber truck that blew up in front

of the Trump building in Las Vegas, that individual's name is Matthew Livelsberger,

37-year-old American in the Special Forces. He's from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
It was an individual who took his own life and committed suicide and seems to be, by all accounts, a MAGA guy or someone who at least has expressed views that are consistent with the MAGA views out there. And our team, by the way, at the Midas Touch Network was right there going through the individual's Facebook account and showing that it was a person who was saying things about like deep state and Clinton cabals and things like that.
But MAGA tried to weaponize these horrific events against Democrats, against Biden. And who started it? Donald Trump.
Early in the morning on January 1st, he posted the following, which is pure lies. When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake news media.
But it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before.
Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump administration will fully support the city of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil.
Now, this statement should have just simply said, if you wanted to make a statement at all, our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. We fully support the city, period, full stop.
That's all it had to be. But Donald Trump lies and acts like this is a migrant from outside of the country and saying that there are record levels of crime right now, which is also false.
And by the way, Trump has access to this information for people like, oh, well, Fox initially reported that the individual came through Eagle Pass two days ago. So Trump was getting his information from Fox and those around him.
No, Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. And as a president-elect, Donald Trump can ask the Secret Service.
He can get access to highly classified briefings. He could gather this information and actually find out the truth.
But he made it an attack on migrants, and so did all the other MAGA Republicans. Marjorie Taylor Greene, posting New Orleans terrorist attacker, is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass two days ago.
She makes that in caps, shut the border down. And as our editor in chief, Ron Filipkowski, made it clear right away in the morning, all the usual suspects are rolling out the lies.
And notice the language that they use too. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's like, is said to have come across the border.
What do you mean is said to have come? Do you know the answer or do you not know the answer? Because the answer was, this was not an individual who came through the border. This was an individual who lived here in the United States in Texas, Brett.
Yeah. And this is something that happens now after every single incident.
We see this over and over that the first instinct of everybody, and frankly, I will say this is a both sides issue in a lot of cases, but MAGA has particularly weaponized this in really heinous ways and is abetted by the platforms like Elon Musk's X, which helped push the disinformation. But the second any of these incidents occur, what's the first thing you see on social media?

It's the narrative building.

The narrative building kicks off immediately.

And when it comes to Republicans, when it comes to MAGA, the narrative always goes in one direction, and that is migrants, migrants, migrants, migrants. The facts don't matter at all whatsoever.
They have already determined what the fake facts are in their mind that they are going to push, and they coordinate this attack in order to set it in the stone, in order to set it in people's minds that this is the fault of migrants and you should be afraid of migrants. And we need our power in order to do X, Y, and Z.
We see this over and over and over again, and they jump the gun every single time. And then inevitably we sit back and we wait for the actual story to come out.
We wait for the actual law enforcement

authorities. We wait for the actual reporting to come out.
And inevitably, nine times out of 10, it disputes what the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, what the Benny Johnson's, what the Donald Trump's, what all of them have been pushing for hours and hours and hours. But here's the issue with our current media ecosystem.
By the time the truth is out there, the lie has went around the world a dozen times, if not more, and people think that that is the truth. I bet you could even ask folks right now about the Cybertruck incident and about the New Orleans attack.
I bet you could ask them. I bet a lot of these MAGA people will still be saying the false information that they were fed and that they were spreading yesterday in spite of the fact that it has already been disputed and forcefully disputed.
But that's the information age we live in right now, unfortunately, where everybody wants to be first rather than be correct. And in the case of MAGA, it's not about being first or correct.
It's about getting the narrative out first. It's not about the information.
It's about the message that they want to push, that they want to drill into people's minds. Truth be damned.
We see this over and over and over again. It's not the first time, and it certainly will not be the last time.
Perfectly said, because it's not even about the truth for them. Just like you said, it's just narrative building.
What narrative can we push? Because by the time, and we see this all the time, by the time the truth does come out, people don't care. They're already on to the next culture war issue that they're trying to write the narrative for their next one.
These are deeply unserious people. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, all of these folks in the GOP right now are deeply unserious.
But unfortunately for this country and the world, they have very serious roles in government. Clearly.
Here's the issue, Jordi. These are very serious issues that you touched on, right? Yes, exactly.
And so when something like this occurs, you want to be able to break down exactly what the hell happened here, right? How did this individual who was in the US Army, who grew up in Texas, how did this person become radicalized? They weren't in the military that long ago. How did they become radicalized? How did they become sympathetic towards ISIS? The guy apparently had an ISIS.
How did that occur? A U.S. citizen born in Texas.
How does that happen? You want the actual facts and you want to be able to figure out exactly how we got from point A to point B, from somebody fighting for our country to somebody fighting against our country in our homeland. And that is impossible if there aren't actual facts out there.
And that is why, quite frankly, when we look ahead right now to all these people who Donald Trump is pushing to be in his cabinet, That is why it is now more important than ever that we put up a fight against these unserious nominees, because we need people who are going to be taking these things seriously. We need people who are going to be actually looking at the facts because tough talk, bluster, going on Fox News, spouting a bunch of bullshit.
It's not going to help anybody. What helps people is actually analyzing the facts, coming up with a plan, and figuring out how to actually save lives.
And with these clowns who Donald Trump wants to put in his cabinet, no offense to clowns, seriously, that's not going to happen in this administration, despite all the tough talk. Think about when you read a book or an essay or a paper, what is the least thing that you usually look at when you read? Probably the footnotes or the appendix, right? Usually, if you were going to ignore something, maybe you ignore the little fine print footnote or the appendix at the end.
Imagine though if the footnote

or the appendix swallowed the book or the essay and it basically said, you know what, this whole

essay is false. Everything you're reading is incorrect.
Actually, the truth is Y and the essay

saying X, but you have to turn to the appendix after you read a 300-page book to then learn that

literally everything is false. That's basically the equivalent of what a Musk community note is

Thank you. to the appendix after you read a 300-page book to then learn that literally everything is false.
That's basically the equivalent of what a Musk community note is that comes in after the fact, after the news is digested, after 18 different narratives surrounding the initial false narrative is already created, essentially building a moat and reinforcing the false narrative. And then a community note gets dropped and is like, well, actually none of that was true.
Community note. These people treat these community notes like they're like sacrosanct.
It's like, first off, many of the time they're not even accurate because the notes are pushed by people who have voting power, who are the dominant people on the app who are right-wingers. And secondly, like you said, the lie has already gotten out there a million times.
And here's the thing, Ben. The thing that we notice every single time also is even when they get debunked, even when the truth comes out there, they insist on pushing the lie even after the fact because they have zero scruples.
They have zero dignity whatsoever. They just want to spread this lie.
And so we see people like Speaker Mike Johnson, who, by the way, Speaker Mike Johnson's in a lot of trouble right now. We'll get into that in a little bit.
But you see Mike Johnson still going out there. He's blaming still today, after the fact, blaming Biden's, quote, wide open border, saying that that played a role in the New Orleans attack.
The perpetrator was born in Texas, served in the US military. This has zero to do with borders.
But guess what? MAGA Mike Johnson does not care about that. We see that also with somebody like Tom Holman.
Tom Holman, who is the guy who's the Project 2025 guy who Donald Trump is making his borders are. Tom Holman, same thing.
Donald Trump is, Tom Holman is pushing this idea that we need to secure the border. This is the, by the way, the border has been more secure right now than it even was under the Trump administration.
If you look at border crossings, they're at the lowest levels that they've been even since the lowest levels of the Trump administration. So enough with that BS.
But the fact is, and by the way, we should have a secure border. We should be protecting the border.
I agree, but not every issue is a border issue. This is not one of them.
And this is also just part of this disinformation campaign. When you see a guy like Tom Holman pushing this idea, and you saw Tom Holman also, it's the perfect example of how this Trump administration that's incoming is going to operate because he keeps going on Fox.
He's been on Fox now multiple times, and he just shoots from the hip with no facts. And so he was on Fox earlier today and he said something that, you know, he thinks that the attack in the cyber truck in Vegas and the incident in New Orleans, that they're likely connected and that they're both terrorist incidents.
And then he was asked, so you got evidence of that? That's what law enforcement's telling you? And he's like, just a gut feeling, just a gut feeling. And it's like, listen, we don't need gut feeling.
I don't need your gut feeling. I want to know the facts so that we can actually try to solve these issues so that we don't have these attacks or so that maybe our veterans need more care after they get home so they don't get radicalized.
Maybe there's an issue with PTSD that we need to be more focused. We need to figure out what the roots of these issues are.
This is going to keep happening over and over again while Tom Homan just shoots from the hip like an idiot. It's just going to keep happening.
Brett, you talk about the need for a strong border and also all of these issues now that are arising about H-1B visas or H-2B visas or J-1 visas, the need for immigrants to work in or the need for our economy when construction, agriculture, hospitality, other sectors that rely on labor. All of these things were addressed in a bipartisan immigration bill, a bipartisan border deal that would have given a lot more money to border patrol, given a lot more money to asylum courts, would have given a lot more money for drug detection, and that would have comprehensively also addressed the labor needs that we hear people talking about with H-1B visas, also talking about how do we help Americans who have jobs in engineering get hired and not get passed over when they're clearly capable of doing those jobs and also addressing other labor shortages and making sure that we are very strong when it comes to criminals and terrorists and people who cross the border and commit crimes, but also when people are here and they're filling jobs that are needed and they're contributing to the economy and they're paying taxes and they're contributing to our country, can we create a pathway but also have the strongest border? These ideas were addressed through a compromise that was led by a very far right-wing conservative from Oklahoma, a Republican named James Lankford, who cut a deal with Democrats.
And Donald Trump and MAGA said, whoa, we can't give Biden a victory. We need the immigration chaos so we can do the things, by the way, like you're seeing them do right now, even when it doesn't involve a migrant, and even when Biden has been able to secure the border on his own after Republicans blew up the legislation that Biden was trying to do.
They wanted to inflict chaos. They said that because they view the chaos as a winning issue for them.
Again, if you go back to what I said at the outset of this episode, there used to be a time where that wasn't what would happen. I mean, think about it.
The Civil Rights Act, for example, that was passed. The Voting Rights Act that was passed.
Just think about major sweeping pieces of legislation that ultimately the right-wing courts have now gutted because of Congress's inability to agree or do anything. But the right-wing then got their courts and getting federalist judges on to basically repeal the key portions of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and all of those things.
But just think that there used to be a time, even if you look at campaign finance, McCain-Feingold, there used to be ways to rein in the limits. And then the far right wing and MAGA, the precursor to MAGA and Tea Party, and all of these groups got the Citizen United case to basically destroy McCain-Feingold and to destroy all these bipartisan pieces of legislation.
And then right now, there's no bipartisanship and it's not because it's a both sides issue. I'm sorry.
You have President Biden and then the right wing Republican in from Oklahoma, James Langford, who's not MAGA, but's a far right-wing guy. And then MAGA destroys it.
That's what's happening here because they want to say things like this. Don Jr.
going, Biden's parting gift to America, migrant terrorists, or a right-wing propagandist, Rob Schmidt, who hosts one of these right-wing shows on one of these propaganda networks goes, great start to the year. Democrat open border policies welcome a horror show in New Orleans.
Don't expect an apology. They'll respond with a middle finger, working tirelessly to block immigration reform.
And our editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski, went through all of the incidents as well just over the past year or two. Remember like that car crash near the Canadian border? All the MAGA Republicans, the same suspects that I just showed you, were out there saying, that's a migrant terrorist, when it was actually just a guy coming back from the casino.
And you look at all these other incidents from the Super Bowl parade shooting, bridge disasters, to the Gonzaga hoops team buses, all being blamed on migrant invasions and migrant this. And again, this incident and these both of these incidents, the incident with the Cybertruck was like a guy who clearly seems to be MAGA, at least based on all of the posts that are out there.
This Matthew Livelsberger, he's got the American flag tattooed on his arm. The Daily Beast article, which generously borrowed from a lot of the reporting that we broke, says suspected Las Vegas cyber truck bomber was a big Trump supporter source.
And we looked into the guy's Facebook post and he was making all of these posts that seemed to be

like, oh, there's like a Clinton cabal out there. And by the way, did you see this, Brett and Jordy? The governor of Louisiana within about 15 or 16 hours of the incident went in front of Banton prime rib like a super high-end steakhouse in New Orleans, giving the thumbs up and posing with the people at the restaurant about the incredibly expensive steak that he ate.
I mean, how ghoulish can you get? But that's MAGA. And we could have told you about that government.
We did. We were doing reports on that guy leading up to that election.
And it is just unqualified people and just lie after lie after lie. Yeah.
We had all of our researchers on it. And thanks to this community for enabling us to have this incredible research team who was able to dig this stuff up.
So yesterday, I would say, you know, decently early into it, we got wind that this guy was seemingly MAGA based on his posting history on his Facebook and other kind of online profiles that we had seen. And so, you know, it made it all the more frustrating when we started seeing all these MAGA people out there pushing this alternative narrative.
And so finally, we were confident enough in our sourcing and our reporting to post our thing out. And then of course, the first thing is MAGA denial.
And then this morning when I woke up, you saw the MAGA people trying to push a counter narrative, which was that the guys, they called it his wife, but it was his ex-wife, had on Facebook posted anti-Trump stuff in 2016. And so they were saying, because the guy's wife, who turned out to be his ex-wife, who divorced them like eight years ago, didn't like Trump very much, that she was responsible for this guy's act.
They already try to set the narrative by planting these seeds that don't really make sense and don't hold up under any sort of scrutiny. And you just see that machine kick in and the way that it's elevated on the social media platforms, particularly X or Twitter or whatever under Elon Musk.
It's designed to spread these messages. And it's why quite frankly that Elon spent $44 billion to turn that into whatever it's worth now, $6 billion, I mean, a lot less.
But the money wasn't even the point. The point is to control the messaging.
And in order to get these lies out there, that's why we need to use our megaphone of truth every single day in order to combat this and further get out what's actually happening. And my only wish, I mean, I got many, but my big wish in 2025 is that I wish people would stop rewarding these liars.
I wish the American people as a whole would stop rewarding the Republicans for their obstructionism. The Republicans over and over make things worse for the American people.
And I'm not saying the Democrats are perfect by any means. I think the Democrats get it wrong a whole lot, and I think they could push a lot harder in certain directions.
But you see time and time again, the Republicans totally torpedoing bills that would help people's lives, going to the courts to get policies like student debt relief taken away from people. And then what happens is the American people, I'm not saying everybody, but enough people go, the Democrats can't do anything.
Oh, the Democrats, they promised student debt relief and they only did X amount of billion dollars, but what happened to all the rest? It's like the Republicans blocked it. So why are you going to reward the Republicans here? And the issue that the Democrats have to face, if I'm being candid, is that they get attacked on that very issue from both sides.
The Democrats, they can't catch a break because they're being attacked

by the MAGA people for the student debt relief, for example. And then they're being attacked also

by folks on the left saying that they didn't do enough and with people refusing to acknowledge

that they certainly tried and put a lot of political capital into many of these things,

but were blocked by the Republicans or in some, blocked by people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who were Democrats in wolves' clothing, who, quite frankly, deserve a whole lot more scorn even than they have received for torpedoing much of President Biden's agenda that would have greatly improved people's lives, helped the working class, provided people with child care, universal pre-K, higher minimum wage, all that stuff, which the Democrats pushed very hard to try to achieve, was torpedoed by these very bad actors, Jordy. They torpedo, these GOP, these MAGA Republicans, torpedo so much, Brett, even beyond just what you're talking about with the student loan.
The PACT Act, one of the images that stands out to me just so clear in my mind is when Ted Cruz was fist bumping on the floor after the Republicans voted no against the PACT Act. That right there, and that's why they do this whole narrative building, Brett and Ben,

right? It's to distract you, right? They don't want you looking at the real issue. The person from Las Vegas, for example, Brett, who blew up the Tesla, he's also a veteran, right? So I think there needs to be a deeper understanding here of what's going on with our veterans here.
True though, love and appreciation, admiration that the Democrats genuinely have for our veterans versus what the Republicans are trying to do, which is distract you from these issues and try and make you look over here, look at the border, look at the border, look at this, don't ask these questions. When Democrats actually truly love and care about our veterans and actually want to make sure that there's enough resources for them to go to if they need them, right? That's the bigger issue that I'm seeing here, the through line of New Orleans and Las Vegas right now, is how can we help our veterans who very clearly need help at times? And we want to be the party that helps them.
And the Democrats are actually the party that genuinely cares, not Ted Cruz fist bumping after he votes no to the burn pits. Here's the con job also.
They use their lines, which I'm sure tests amazing, right? I mean, what a great line to say. Why are we giving our money to Ukraine and not to the American people? The American people deserve to be the money who we're spending this money on.
Sounds great. Oh yeah, we should be giving money to the American people.
I'm not going to get into the fact that it's a total misunderstanding of how sending money to Ukraine actually works. And then it's actually money going to American manufacturers, American weapons builders, and people like that.
I'll put that aside for right now also. But then you could go, okay, okay, bet.
And by the way, Democrats are starting to do this a lot more right now. We're going to get into this brilliant new strategy that Democrats are cooking up in a little bit to fight back.
But you see that anytime though, you're okay, so spend less money overseas because you want to spend it right here at home on the American people. What's better than, Jordy, to your point, than the PACDAC? We're going to help our veterans get healthcare from these toxic burn pits.
We're going to help people. Oh, you know, a great idea.
Let's help people get healthcare. Let's help people get universal healthcare.
Let's help people get universal pre-K. Let's get them everything that they need so that they don't have to worry about becoming homeless because they got in a medical incident.
Let's make sure that they have everything they need so they could raise their family without worrying. Okay? Let's do it.
Let's pass this. It's a great idea.
Let's spend this money right here at home. Republicans? Hello? Hello? Crickets.
Every single time they fight against it, they go, that's socialism actually. You're a communist.
We're never going to do that. We're never going to help you.
It's time that the people just call their bluff, and this is what the Democrats are working on right now. We'll get into that and say, okay, bet.
Let's put your money where your mouth is. Let's try to pass these policies.
If you say that you want these things, let's see how honest you are. Let's let the American people see how honest you are, okay? Let's make it happen.
But the American people have to see it. Right wing has a massive propaganda arm in Fox and all this right wing media that exists out there.
Then you have MSNBC, which if you just kind of watch it, maybe other than like Lawrence O'Donnell and maybe one or two other people, maybe it's hard to even see a distinction or difference in some of the coverage and some of the both sides ism. I mean, CNN's panels and it's freaking unwatchable.

I mean, the reality to me is I just wish what CNN actually does good is if they can just come have foreign correspondents who actually try to cover what's taking place. But even when they send a foreign correspondent to a place like Syria, the correspondent is like making it about themselves.
And like, they have to become like the hero in the narrative. And they need to go and like rescue somebody there.
It's like, dude, just report on what's happening. Like, just show me what the heck is going on.
I don't need you to be the hero. Don't make it about you.
Just report, please, on the facts and stick to the facts. So that's what's important.
I've come up with the acronym ABC, always be campaigning. So Democrats need to be in a constant year round, decade round campaigning posture where they're out getting these messages out, not just before an election.
And they can't just hope that their C-SPAN speeches on the House floor or Senate floor are going to make it to the people. That's not what people are watching and consuming.
Talk about that and more. I want to remind everybody about a good place you can go to get the news as well, MidasPlus.com, M-E-I-D-A-S-P-L-U-S.com.
That's led by our editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski. Also want to make a big announcement here.
Brett, Jordy, and I will be holding our first meeting on Zoom of the new year at Patreon.com slash Midas Touch, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Midas Touch. If you've got questions for us, want to ask me about the interview I did with President Biden in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing of the White House and more, it's an open forum.
No questions are off limits. Patreon.com slash Midas Touch.
And we've got a lot more show, folks, a lot more show. We'll be right back after our first and only break of the show.
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Benji, where to next? Is MAGA Mike Johnson going to remain the Speaker of the House? Well, we'll find out shortly. But there are a lot of Republicans who are at least posturing that they don't want Mike to have that role.
He's either not MAGA enough or too MAGA. There's infighting taking place.
Look, Donald Trump has said that he wants to keep MAGA Mike as the speaker, but the reason Donald Trump wants to do that is Trump realizes that if MAGA Mike is not named the speaker and there is a protracted speaker battle, then the electoral votes may not be counted on time on January 6th. Could you imagine after Trump leading the insurrection back in 2020 to try to overthrow the counting of the electoral votes that Trump actually causes the delay of himself getting the votes counted on January 6th because the MAGA Republicans have such incredible disunity that MAGA Mike can't gavel in the day because he's not the Speaker of the House yet.
That's one of the things that we're actually confronting and dealing with right now. And the MAGA base hates the MAGA Mike Johnson.
I mean, every time Donald Trump makes a post, the MAGA base responds that he's compromised with a photo of him, traitor with a photo of him, Democrats little B word with a photo of him, a post that says, pack your shit, MAGA Mike. Another post that says, fire, an AI image of him crying with tissues.
You have Thomas Massey, a MAGA Republican who's come out strongly against MAGA Mike Johnson becoming the speaker. And that's really the only person who MAGA Mike can afford to lose.
So if MAGA Mike loses another person and Thomas Massey has this whole, he's just writing diatribes about why Maga Mike is not fit to be the leader. And one of the good points Thomas Massey actually makes is he's like, look, the only reason that we picked Maga Mike is because he never took a position on issues and we didn't know really who he even was.
So when we kicked out Kevin McCarthy, we needed someone who didn't piss us off. So we found the only guy who kind of didn't piss anybody off because he never really did things and never had leadership positions.
So we made him the Speaker of the House. Just pause there for a second, and can we reflect on how ridiculous that concept is to begin with? Look, we picked the least qualified guy who didn't do anything because no one knows who he is.
So we made that individual our leader. Just think about that for a second.
And that's how you got MAGA Mike Johnson. And Massey's like, well, now that we know him, we shouldn't like him.
And the reason Massey gives, though, which is like, well, look, he's been doing compromises with Democrats and Democrats have saved him. So he's not MAGA enough.
We got to get rid of him. And ultimately, you know what, if we don't find the speaker in time, so be it.
But we got to find someone who's even more MAGA than Mike Johnson, who can represent us in the House of Representatives. And a lot of other MAGAs seem to be signing on with that.
Now, the MAGA Mike Johnson is using as really his only ammunition, the idea that a vote against him would mean delaying the certification of Donald Trump and potentially delaying the inauguration. So that's like MAGA Mike's pitch.
It's not like I'm great or I'm competent. It's, hey, Daddy Trump's going to be mad at you if we don't certify this in time.
So therefore, you have to pick me. Just think about that that's where the MAGA Republicans are right now at this moment.
Brett, you alluded to this before. That's the Democrats coming up with kind of a new strategy, which is like, look, in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and by the way, this strategy was discussed by Democratic Congress member Tom Swasey from

New York's third congressional district. It's actually where Brett Jordy and I grew up in.
I'm also Bernie Sanders, a senator. And they're just like, look, and separately they said this in different ways.
They're like, let's draft legislation that word for word says what Donald Trump promised to Americans during the campaign when Trump was trying to take democratic positions to steal our voters, to get the union workers to vote for him, to get the service workers with no tax on tips, to get people who cared about their healthcare and social security and things like that. Okay, let's use Trump's words.
Let's make that into legislation. And then on the policies that are traditional democratic policies, and then let's show that Donald Trump was lying.
Let's actually say, look, we agree. We agree with this.
Let's call his bluff on these issues. And they're also saying, look, we need

to be a strong opposition. But if ultimately Trump and MAGA agree to support democratic issues, that should ultimately be a win for Democrats if these programs are protected.
But they're also saying, though, is, look, we should call their bluff because we realize that they're actually not going to go

along with it. The no tax on tips was total BS.
Donald Trump saying that he was going to cap interest rates on credit cards. We know that's total BS, but that's a great, let's cap it at 10%.
Let's do that. You should remember when President Biden tried to cap credit card penalties at $8, the MAGA Republicans challenged that and a judge struck it down.
Otherwise, you would have an $8 penalty on your credit card late fees. Just think about that.
Just think about that. Did you even know that Biden did that? We have to communicate more effectively because That was one of Biden's policies that MAGA actually stopped.
And so Bernie Sanders is like, okay, Donald Trump, during his recent campaign, he said that he was going to do 10% interest. He's going to do a 10% cap on credit card interest rates.
Great idea. Let's go.
Let's do it. Do you want to cap prescription drug prices and lower them?

Let's do it. It's an interesting strategy.
I think that the MAGAs will ultimately block all

of this stuff. But the key thing, though, Brett and Jordy, the key pillar in this plan that Democrats have to realize, though, is their ABCs.
They're always beat camping. They have to get that message out and they can't just think that when they do these procedural maneuvers on the floor of the House and the Senate, that Americans are paying attention to the nuances of parliamentary inquiry and what takes place there.
You have to then message it. You have to say, we're for health, we're for housing, we're for education, and we're for lower prices.
And just repeat it over and over again and talk about every promise that Trump and MAGA is breaking. Brett.
And most importantly, repeat it in the places where people are listening. If you're just going to say it in C-SPAN, I guess you're lucky that we have people on our team here like Asen and others who watch that all day and clip those moments, but you're going to have to do more than just saying it on the House floor or the Senate floor, right? You're going to have to get on TV.
You're going to have to get on podcasts. You're going to have to put out social media videos yourself, and you need to hammer home these issues.
You have to hammer home this messaging day in and day out. And don't think that just because you say something once that people are going to understand it.
You got to say it literally every day, say it all the time, every single hour, just be pushing the same messaging and look at how, frankly, look at how a lot of the Republicans do it. You see how these stories, how, like, for example, we were speaking about earlier with the way they spread the lies about migrants based on these two seemingly lone wolf attacks or incidents, whatever you want to call each of them.
But it was very much a coordinated effort. And I've done enough reading about these folks and speaking with people that I know that all those folks have group chats where they coordinate this messaging, where they say, this is what we're landing on.
Go, go, go, go, go. And that's why all at once, you always see all those same accounts every single time pushing the same exact messaging.
Well, you know what, Democrats, you know what, anyone who is pro-democracy, y'all need to make those chat rooms also, however you want to do them. You guys need to set up this coordination so that you could put out messages of truth, so that you could put out messages in order to combat these lies, and that you could day in and day out hammer these people.
because here's the frustrating thing. You're right.
You have the upper hand on 99% of these

issues. Okay.
So don't be afraid to own it. Don't be afraid to get out there and scream from the rooftops that you don't think credit card companies should be predatory.
Okay. Don't think, don't act like you're too above screaming from the rooftops that folks should have healthcare.
Okay. Take Bernie as an example here and go and get the message out and hammer this home every single day.
Make these people look like fools and make sure the American people are hearing from you. And it's a lot and it could be exhausting at times, but what I'd love to see Bernie do is now go, go on the offensive here, hit a podcast, go on the Sunday morning shows, go do an interview with your local, like just get out everywhere.
It's one of the things we do here at the Midas Touch Network is we're not, we're on YouTube right now, right? We're live on YouTube, but guess what? We're also streaming to Facebook. We're also streaming to Twitch.
And then we also have other channels on, you name it, Instagram and Blue Sky. And yeah, we're on X.
And it's like, do we love being on all the platforms? Is it exhausting? Does it take a lot of energy? Yeah, it does. But we do it because based on where you're talking, you're speaking to a select group of people who exist on those platforms.
It's important to make sure your message now resonates with each person that lives on the other mediums of communication. And in 2025, that knows no bounds.
You have to show up, ABC, always be campaigning every second of the day and scream it from the rooftops.

Because to your points exactly, brothers, we have, the Democrats right now, they have the right positioning on these issues.

And it's damn well time that the American people know and realize, oh, the Democrats are the ones that care about our veterans.

Oh, the Democrats are the ones that care about our students.

Oh, the Democrats are the ones that care about X, Y, and Z issue.

Because nine out of nine times, 10 out of 10 times, they are the ones who genuinely care. The two biggest issues for MAGA Republicans, if you listen to them, it's basically like the migrants, they're eating your cats and dogs and geese, which is not happening.
And two, what you really need to be so pissed off is penises and vaginas.

Like you need. which is not happening.
And two, what you really need to be so pissed off is penises and vaginas. You need to be really angry about the transgender volleyball player in San Jose State.
What is more consequential to your life, factory worker in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, about whether or not There are 10 transgender athletes in the NCAA and one of the backup players on the San Jose State volleyball team is a transgender. You want to even get more riled up? How about that there is a, Brett was the boxer from Libya? I forget where the boxer, you don't care about international boxers from foreign countries that we're going to disparage and we're going to – Algeria.
Algeria and Libya. We're going to – Female boxing from Algeria doesn't – It should be the most important issue.
No, the reality is that the oligarchs, the billionaires are actually eating your lunch. They're actually taking away your wages.
They're actually preventing you from buying a cat or a dog because you may not be able to afford one because they're giving themselves raises to the tune of thousands of percent increases while there's not even a living wage. They have the golden parachutes and the best healthcare while you're struggling paycheck to paycheck or to even get the healthcare that you deserve.
So we got to focus on what the real issues are. And Brett and Jordy, it's sometimes so crystallized in like what's going on at Mar-a-Lago, right? I mean, can there ever even be more clear imagery than what used to be like the palace court than Mar-a-Lago right now, where the billionaires and oligarchs go to play? And what's so crazy about all these events at Mar-a-Lago too, is you've got these people, right, seemingly with all the power and all of this wealth, right? And it's almost like those movies where you rub the magic lamp and the genie comes out and gives you a wish, infinite power and infinite money.
But you go to this place and Lara Trump has to sing to you and you have to endure our vocals. Here, play this, but only seven seconds of it.
I want that down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I only want- That's all I can tell, right? That's all I can't, I can't, I can't.
The point is made. There's a whole song.
But you have all these people now with all this power, with all this money, and it just is a room full of losers. Like, it looks like a D-list event, you know, at Mar-a-Lago with people who should have everything.
None of them, no one looks happy. I mean, Ted Cruz shows up and his like 16-year-old daughter looks like she's like tripping over herself and it's unclear.
I'm not going to say that she was inebriated or not inebriated, but she seemed to be struggled to like walk in the images that I saw. Just leave it at that.
She certainly didn't want to be seen in the same frame as him. She didn't want to be seen as the same frame as him.
His wife's not there. And all of like the Mar-a-Lago kind of, you know, crew is like taking these photos with Ted Cruz.
The whole thing is, you know, and also Ted Cruz's daughter was with him on the stage before, after the election. And she was like, don't clap for him regarding Donald Trump.
Don't clap. I mean you seem to have these – all these people just seem unhappy and miserable and you have like vanilla ice, like loser rappers from the 1990s.
It's like what am I even – what am? You got Donald Trump out there right now. If you watch Fox Business, he's selling now his new thing that they're selling with his name, image and likeness is fake $2 bills with Trump's face on it for $19.95 that they're selling on Fox right there.
And so you take a look at this and it's just like, I guess my overall reaction to this is like, yuck. But also if you're the Democrats, if you're in ABC mode, always be campaigning mode, then what better symbolism of out of touch, rich oligarchs ugh ugh doesn't it just

make then what better symbolism of out-of-touch, rich oligarchs? Doesn't it just make you gross watching what's going on there and then saying to a factory worker or showing that to an assembly line worker or a school teacher or a union worker or whatever profession? Seriously, this this you like this this? This is you? This is representative of what you've wanted? I don't know, Brett and Jordan. It may just be just me, but what do you think? The simplest message is that billionaires don't have your best interests at heart.
The simplest depiction of that is Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And so if Democrats are unable to make that clear over the next few years, they're in a whole lot of trouble.
But I think they should be able to make that clear because it's just hitting you over the head so stupidly obvious in your face when you have the world's richest man who went from like 200 billion net worth to like 450 billion since Donald Trump won. Since you have Trump would run all of his various schemes.
Just the people, the way they look at Mar-a-Lago, the things they're doing at Mar-a-Lago, the nepotism you see. When you put all this together, I think you have a pretty clear kind of idea of who these people are and who they are for.
And I've just got to say they're not for you. And if you're a MAGA or somebody who's been attracted by MAGA rhetoric, and you're somehow stumbled upon this show, first off, welcome.
Hello. Nice to see you.
Thank you for all the kind comments. But in reality, at a certain point, you have to realize that the things that these people have been shoveling your way, the hatred that they're trying to, the redirects, whether it's with transgender people or whether it's with the DEI conversations, all this stuff, it's all to divert you.
It's all a head fake so that while you're looking the other way, they could pick your pocket. And I think the sooner people realize that on all sides, quite frankly, the sooner people realize that billionaires are not going to have your interest at heart and that you need to find the people.
And this could be people of any political range. You need to find the people who are actually putting forth policies that will help you.
And stop thinking that you are mythically going to become a billionaire in five years. Stop thinking that you are magically going to become Elon Musk.
I'm sorry, the odds are not in your favor, but you can live a very good life. You can be taken care for.
You can make sure that you don't fall into poverty because you have a medical bill that's too high and you had to go bankrupt. You could have all these things taken care of the same way that other modernized countries take care of their citizens on these very basic things.
You could have that here. But there is one group of people who is stopping that, and that is the billionaires in this country.
You know how Elon Musk is making his money? I mean, how he made it? A lot of it was through federal bailouts and the federal government giving him a ton of money for a lot of his ventures. Now, the billionaires are out there keeping you down and not hiring you in the first place.
I mean, like Donald Trump's promise to you was one of his promises. And I'm not going to show the Trump clips because I promised on our YouTube videos I don't show Trump clips or audio.
I'm at least – I've temporarily banned that from happening. You've got a really good run so far.
On the videos that I'm on. But on other social media, we posted what Trump said in 2016, 2020, and 2024 about H-1B visas.
And he previously said that he had concepts of a plan or that he was about to provide a plan or do something that would basically stop the H-1B visa program and make sure that American jobs, he said, would never be replaced by foreign jobs. It was very clear if you watch these.
He's not like, we also need this. No.
He said, I have a plan to stop H-1B, basically, with words almost like that, word for word. And then in 2024, at the New Year's event, he said, I've always been in favor of H-1B.
And let's be clear, I think that there is a role for there to be H-1B visas. I personally believe there's a lot of reform that's needed in the program, and it's often used by tech companies as end run around labor laws and bringing in cheaper labor versus hiring American labor.
But I do recognize that America should have the best and brightest talent for American companies. But I also want to be clear that I know there are many people with STEM degrees here in the United States who can do those jobs, who it would be more expensive to actually pay them than bringing in someone on an H-1B.
But there are people who can do those jobs here and you need to do what you said you were going to do too. Rather than abolish the Department of Education, we should be investing more in education because now Trump and MAGA say, well, since our education system is a failure, we don't have educated people, which by the way, isn't true right now, but our education system does need to be invested in.
But it's MAGA's who are destroying the education system. And just making this episode go kind of full circle, right, you have people like this MAGA Oklahoma school chief, Ryan Walters, out there saying that public school teachers are the ones who are responsible for all these acts of domestic terrorism.
He says, teachers have turned classrooms into terrorist training camps by indoctrinating students to hate America. So it's this type of rhetoric from MAGA people who want you, the MAGA base, to hate education because it's too woke, thereby you stay poorly educated.
Mr. Accordian hands Donald Trump says he loves the poorly educated, but he keeps you not getting these jobs that you could potentially get the education and train for, bring in foreign labor as it benefits his oligarchs and his friends, and they get rich, they loot, they pillage, they make their money, and they further this process.
I call it the authoritarian loop of screwing over the country. Then a Democrat has to come in, fix it like they've usually done, like Clinton and Obama and Biden, and then they get blamed as the firefighter who puts out the fire.
You then reelect the arsonist because they're out there blaming the firefighter because the house burned down. They make you forget that they're the arsonist.
They burned down the house and they blame the firefighter for the house being burned down. And meanwhile, you know who also gets screwed to take this analogy as that forward? Like the firefighters.
And so the unions then don't, I mean, this is incredible. You have all, with Donald Trump and Elon Musk out there saying that they hate unions, basically laughing at unions, workers getting fired for striking.
I mean, Elon Musk says the existence of unions should not even be a thing. They shouldn't exist, he says, because unions create a Lord versus peasant dynamic.
Think about that. It's all projection.
You want to know the lord v peasant dynamic? The people at Mar-a-Lago, they're the lords, the billionaire oligarchs. The peasants are the people who they're keeping poor, uneducated, and with their hands out begging and angry at woke this and transgender that and all of these things that don't impact their lives.
So those people at Mar-a-Lago can keep laughing in your faces, which is what they're doing. You know, Brett, Donald Trump goes, he takes this trip, he meets with the Longshoremen Union.
He shakes their hand, meets with them, goes, I'm against automation. I'm going to make sure that we keep these jobs here.
And then the longshoreman and the union leader and everyone, they're like, oh, he's one of us. He likes us.
He likes us. It's like, dude, do you realize he spent his whole life screwing you? He shows up.
You get a little bit of media attention. You get the camera on you, you get a photo maybe once at Mar-a-Lago, and then you think you're one of them? Like, are you kidding me? Then Elon Musk shortly thereafter posts like a seven-minute video attacking automation that says not a single American port ranks in the top 50 worldwide.
How is that possible? One reason is that while other countries welcome automation, American labor unions ban it. So are they going to- Attacking bans on automation.
What do you say? Elon, attacking bans on automation. Attacking basically what Trump told the union workers that he would be for.
Exactly. And then meanwhile, you have President Biden's record on this issue,

like President Biden helped give Longshoremen a 66% raise. This was from October.
62% wage increase. Go back to that last one.
62% wage increase over six years. And that's kind of a big deal that Biden oversaw a 62% wage increase.
He's constantly delivered for unions. But because Trump showed up and brought a little bit of media attention your way, you're going to just ignore the person who did the thing.
You go back, President Biden's posted like the pensions that he saved, 52,000 in Pennsylvania, 71,000 in Illinois, 62,000 in Ohio, 61,000 in Michigan, 39,000 Missourians, 33,000 Wisconsinites. I bet you if you go and look at these people whose pensions Biden saved, I bet you based on the stats that we know about who voted for Trump, I bet you most of those people voted for Trump, whose literal pensions were saved by Biden.
ABC always be campaigned. And let me just say, let me say this one also, because this is, we're in 2025 now.
You know what it means now that it's 2025? That means that Medicare's, the new $2,000 cap on prescription drugs from the Inflation Reduction Act goes fully into effect. So this will be the first year that folks get to experience the savings, the benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act under Medicare with a $2,000 cap on prescription drugs.
That's going to save people on Medicare a whole lot of money this year. And that's why I think it's important that we need to be saying that and screaming that from the rooftops right now, because you know damn well that once January 20th hits that, and people start seeing those prices come down, that there are going to be plenty of people out there.
And there's going to be people like Donald Trump who are going to be trying to take credit for those caps that President Biden was able to get passed. So that's why we always need to be campaigning.
I want to remind everybody about the first Zoom meeting of the new year with Brett, Jordy, and I. It's at patreon.com slash Midas Touch.
We're going to be doing it right after next week's show. So next week's show is live on Monday, 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific, as soon as the show ends.
So figure probably around 615 Pacific, 915 Eastern. We will go and have that meeting with all of you.
If you ever wanted to meet us and ask us questions, patreon.com slash Midas touch. Midas plus.com is where our editor in chief, Ron Filipkowski is leading some of the best pro democracy journalism out there.
Great work, Ron and the team that's doing all those articles there. Make sure you subscribe to this YouTube channel and subscribe on audio podcast as well.
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Thank you so much. As Brett said at the outset of the episode, thank you to all the Midas Mighty out there.
Thank you to our hardworking mods who help with all of these shows.

Thank you for all the work that you all do each and every day to support our democracy,

to all the Midas Mighty out there.

We're grateful for you.

This community is nothing without you.

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So we're so incredibly grateful, blessed, lucky, fortunate to have you by our side every step of the way in 2025 and beyond. Thank you all so much and have a happy and healthy new year.
Jordy, take it away.

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