Speaker 1: Welcome to the Political Beatdown with Ben Macellis and Michael Cohen.
On today's show, we will discuss the new bombshell court
filing and Dominion's one point six billion dollar defamation lawsuit
against Fox set to go to trial in April. The
new filing has unsealed text messages and unsealed deposition transcripts
and unsealed emails, and we will react to this because
this is some blockbuster stuff here, and Donald Trump is
reacting to the release of these messages in the dominion filing,
and Trump is now attacking Rupert Murdoch for testifying accurately
in the deposition about what the text messages say. Apparently
Trump wanted Murdoch to lie under oat, something that Trump
probably does all the time, and Trump's accused Murdoch of
throwing the Fox anchors quote under the table. We will
discuss that in some of Trump's other unhinged rants over
the past forty eight hours. And there were more committee
hearings taking place this week, and these are committee hearings
that are scheduled by the MAGA Republicans because they think
that leaning into their conspiracy theories and public forums where
there's actual ability to have debate and not just facts
fox soundbites is like a good look for them. But
I'm just loving these committee hearings because you actually can
see the contrast between the MAGA Republican conspiracy theories and
taking things out of context and Democrats on the Committee's
just telling it how it is. But we are going
to start off by checking in with Michael Cohen. Always
at the top of the show, we see how Cohen
is doing. Michael Cohen, how are you?
Speaker 2: You know? Tay is another crazy day, so to share
with my political beating down brigade. The meeting that I
will go to next, which is the District Attorney of
New York, is not going to be Thursday. It was
pushed back to Friday due to scheduling issues. Most probably
the scheduling issue was really Lannie, who's coming in from DC,
and maybe Thursday wasn't a good day for him, And
obviously I need Lanni there for both support as well
as your loyal support. Yes, my lawyer suffice it to say,
this is not and I want people to understand that
this is no longer sit down's investigatory work and so on,
but rather this is preparation for what I suspect is
going to be a grand jury preparation and possibly to
discuss my appearance and my presentation before the grand jury.
So it's extremely excited. You know. The other day on
my mea Culpa podcast and soon to be released, I
have Glenn Kirshner from Justice Matters as the guest, and
we actually bet one dollar. I almost felt like it
was trading places. We bet a dollar on who would
be right. I believe that the District Attorney of New
York will be the very first indictment to come against
Trump and to hold him accountable for the various things
that you know, he's alleged to have done. You know,
I tried to couch the terms, you know, allegations, you know,
potential simply because we don't want to find ourselves in
trouble for anything. So obviously that's something that the DA himself,
Alban Bragg, has to do. But I am a firm
believer that Bregg now sees the truth and that his
misimpression of me early on, based upon the things that
Donald Trump has done and said about me all in
the past that has been echoed by the Republicans, on
and on and on as well as whether it be
Fox News, an Newsmax and so on. I believe he's
seeing the truth and the fact that all of these
allegations about me and all of the misrepresentations about me
are inaccurate, and that you know who's the real liar here?
Is it me? Or is it Donald Trump? And look,
I've acknowledged what I lied to. I acknowledged that I
lied about the number of times I spoke, you know,
to Donald about the failed real estate project in Moscow,
the Trump Tower Moscow. I stated before Congress the number three. However,
the real number was ten. Yeah, that's a that's a misstatement. Uh.
Is it anything on part to the thirty five thousand
plus lies that Donald has told or that the Republicans
are telling, or like a George sai As or a
Marjorie Taylor Green or a Lauren Bobert or any of
these other animals. The answer is no, And yes, I
acknowledge that the campaign finance violation. I acknowledge the one
that deal would store me Daniels, not the one with
Karen McDougall that I also pled guilty to. And obviously,
if hopefully, hopefully, I'll a political beatdown Brigade already knows this.
Hopefully that you've already read it in my book Revenge.
If not, I please ask you to do it so
that I don't have to repeat myself. But going back,
I am appearing again before the District Attorney's office this week,
of course, will keep you guys posted. You will see
us again, of course on Thursday. I'll regularly schedule time
here at three o'clock Eastern, twelve o'clock Pacific. So that's
just one part. The second part that I need to
also discuss is thank God for people like Congressman Jamie Raskin,
Thank God for people like Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee.
No relation, by the way, Steve Cohen, and it's just
been reported in Ross story Steve Cohen Sault. You got
it there. So Steve Cohen basically went head to head
with Jim Jordan, who happens to be the chair of
that committee, basically again talking about the weaponization of the
Justice Department, and if this is to be bipartisan and
not some sort of a kangaroo Mickey mouse type court,
it is imperative that they look into not just the weaponization,
as Jim Jordan would like and the other Republicans would
like to show that there's a weaponization by the Biden
administration against the former president and other Republicans. But what
about the weaponization of the Justice Department against you, against
people like myself by the former president. If you can't
look back, how do you look forward? And today there
was a nice exchange of words by Congressman Steve Cohen
and by Jim Jordan, and I certainly recommend everybody if
you go to my Twitter page you can find it there.
I'll get a post it as well on my Instagram,
so you could follow me there or on my TikTok.
This has to be a precedent. We must ensure that
no president today, tomorrow, or ever has the ability to
weaponize the Justice Department to do the things that Donald
Trump has done, which is to incarcerate, to literally have
me incarcerated because they did not want me to publish
the first book, which was called Disloyal. So you know,
I'm all fired up on this shit. I can't handle
it anymore. I would love to see bipartisan the fact
that there aren't Republicans screaming like I am, Like Congressman
Cohen like Congressman Raskin, like Congressman Eric Swolwell, like Congressman
lew And Hakim Jeffries, and even Senator Dick Durbin, the
fact that there are more people screaming from the rooftops
that this is not acceptable behavior in America, this is
not acceptable behavior by a president. I don't understand that.
Speaker 1: That's what's so powerful about these committee hearings because everything
the Maga Republicans do is projection. And when they go
on Fox and we'll be talking about the new emails
and the new deposition testimony and the new text messages
that have come out, which is and a lot of
messages from Rupert Murdoch as well, who knew and very
clearly approved of the platforming of election disinformation to keep viewers.
But when they do that whole projection routine on Fox
or on their other right wing echo chamber, me they
get away with it. And frankly a lot of times too,
when they go on large media networks that both sides
it cust is only a certain amount of information and
questions you could ask in a format where there's three
to five minutes of questioning. You know, the MAGA Republicans
can go on those Sunday morning shows and basically filibuster
it and get their talking points out and then basically
not get grilled with any of the actual facts. But
these committee hearings with very smart, fact based approach, the
same type of approach we have here on the Midas
Touch Network on political beatdown being utilized by Democrats is
just so compelling, and there's so many examples of it.
So I want to show some of the clips from
the committee hearings taking place as we speak, and Michael,
I want to get your reactions to it. So the
first clip I want to show you mentioned Jamie Raskin,
and Jamie Raskin reminds Lauren bober Does Boberts trying to,
I guess, blame President Biden for COVID. You have Raskin
reminding Bobert that, guess what, Donald Trump, when he was
in office, was praising the Chinese president she for the
way he handled things. It was Trump who was the
one who was saying that China's doing a great job.
Play this clip from the committee hearing earlier today, Cohen,
I'm gonna want your reaction to this one, and let's
just go through a few of these clips today, so
salty play the clip.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 3: President Trump was in office when the COVID virus was
released from a lab in China, from the Wuhan lab,
and he tried to make that very clear that this
came from China, and reporters regularly dismissed that.
Speaker 4: I appreciate the General Lady's passion. There are two facts
that she should perhaps be alerted to. One is that
Donald Trump, on more than twenty different occasions, defended the
performance of the Chinese government and specifically President she in
terms of his treatment of COVID nineteen, and said he
was doing a wonderful job and a great job, and
they were working closely and they were constantly in touch.
So if there's a problem with the Chinese government unleashing
a virus which has not been proven anywhere, but it
certainly could be true, you would have to pin that
on your favorite President Donald Trump, not on Joe Biden.
The second thing is President Trump's own special advisor.
Speaker 5: On COVID nineteen, Deborah Brooks.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you're aware, and you'm sure you've read her book,
said that the lethal recklessness of Donald Trump's policies about
COVID nineteen cost Americans hundreds of thousands of lives, So
you don't have to believe anybody on the Democratic side
of the aisle. That's Donald Trump's own special advisor on
COVID nineteen. Thank you for yielding, and I heavily yell back.
Speaker 1: Facts matter, Facts matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, thank god, Thank God for Jamie Right,
and you know, I hope he's feeling better and speedy recovery,
you know, from you know his situation. But thank God
for him for literally calling out to stupid because Lauren
Bobert is just that, she's just stupid. And what is this?
This is merely projection. I would love for each and
every one of our brigaders to think, first, let's stop
for one second, and I would like for each and
every one of you to think, name one specific time
that Donald Trump acknowledged that he made a mistake, that
he did something wrong. And the answer is you can't.
I know for a fact, because again I was with
him for more than a decade before he ever decided
to join into this political reef. Donald Trump is incapable
of acknowledging error. Do we not remember when that moron
Mike Pence got up onto the stage. I think it
was at Sea Pack, another fucking joke of an organization, right, seapac.
He's standing there and he's saying that he has facts
and information from the President that says that this is
just like a flu and that everybody should go back
to work. He's got this under control. It will be
gone before the end of the week. Well, really, after
a million people, a million Americans died. Think about that
for a second. When you think about people sitting at
the dinner table and missing somebody at that table, right,
think about, you know, at family functions when an aunt
and uncle, a mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, you know,
friend is not going to be there. Why Because Donald
Trump does not acknowledge that science exists. He does not
acknowledge that this coronavirus was as serious, and he tried
to whitewash it. And this is not my words, insulted
if you can find it. Do you remember when Donald
Trump turned around and said to the American people that
he did not want Americans to get nervous, he didn't
want to scare them, and so he downplayed the coronavirus.
The fact that he did something like that to me
should have been an automatic impeachment. This is the president
of the United States, a man who was elected right
whether you voted for him or not. He was elected
president to serve the American people, and he's afraid to
tell you the truth because he doesn't want it to
cause some sort of pandemonium. That's not even the truth either.
The bottom line is that this fucking moron refused to
listen to people like doctor Anthony Fauci. He refused to
listen to anybody other than the people that were feeding
him the same stupidity and the same false misinformation, disinformation
or malin form me that he wanted to speak so
that he could then what hope that maybe it disappears
on its own, then he could be you know, the winner.
I mean, it's like Munchausen by proxy, that's really what
it is. He expected this thing would go away like
a fluid go I mean, do we not remember this
idiot said, Hey, let's maybe inject chlorine or a life
sool into people's lungs. Hey, And then he said remember
to doctor Berks, he goes, you know what about using
like light therapy? I mean, I know that you've studied
that really significantly, very strongly, because you know he's got
the best words. I know you did that very strongly.
And people say that it's a possibility. I mean, what
fucking episode of Star Trek does this idiot think he's
living in. Enough is enough? And at the end of
the day, he lied to the American people all right
about what he should have known had he he listened
to the experts. But then again, he'll tell you he
has an uncle who works at MIT. Not even know
if that's true, because I've actually asked Don and Eric
whether they have an uncle that works and he didn't
know who he was talking about. So that he is
an uncle that works at MIT, which of course makes
him smarter than everybody else. He knows more about the
military than the generals. Have you not noticed that the
man claims to know more about everything than everybody else,
especially the experts. He knows more about religion than the clergy,
he knows more about military than the generals, he knows
more about science than the scientists. The guy's a fucking idiot.
And the fact that we are even contemplating the fact
that there's even an American out there that's contemplating Donald
Trump running again in twenty twenty four, and providing their
support for him, whether it has a vote or monetarily,
really should scare a shit out of each and every
one of us.
Speaker 1: Look, this isn't WWE wrestling, This isn't some bizarro movie.
You know, this is life or death. And so when
we think about the video clip of Lauren Bobert doing
her kind of fascist stick and then you have Jamie
Raskin again just stating the facts in a very just
objective way, here are what the facts are. Americans have
to think, who do I want to make the decisions
for my life? Who do I want to make the
decisions for my family's life, for my community's life, for
our country, for our neighborhoods. Do you want Lauren Bobert
doing it? Or do you want Jamie Raskin? And look,
I think it is important that Jamie Raskin's approach, though,
also comes from the fact that he's a renowned constitutional scholar.
I think that's an important fact about his background versus
Lauren Bobert. You know, struggled, you know, to even be
able to run a you know, a restaurant that frequently
was cited for causing lots of people to get sick,
very very very frequently.
Speaker 2: But Ben, one thing that I just want to jump
in here with you and share with you is as
the president of the United States, he is responsible for
not just those that voted for him or the Republicans
that are MAGA. He's responsible for all of us. And
when the President of the United States speaking on behalf
of all of the people that work underneath him, the
entire cabinet, the entire administration, that it's it's nothing more
than a flu. It's just a it's a virus. It'll
go away in a few days. You could, you know,
go on and live your life. You know what people did, Ben,
They went ahead and they lived their life. They went
out and and you know what they also did. They
ended up contracting the coronavirus and they died. All right,
that's the truth. And I can't tell you the number
of people, including people in my family, who died as
a result of the coronavirus. All right. So when Donald
Trump turns around and he tells you something, you can't
believe it. And the fact again that the guy is
potentially going to be the Republican nominee, how do we
get the Republicans to wake the fuck up and understand.
This is a man who will lie to you, right
to your face. He will lie to the people who
are supporting him, even if it will cost you your life.
And why because he thinks it will benefit him, that
it would make him look like a strong leader. If
he tells you that is nothing there, move on, go
on with your life, go back to work. Nothing to
see here, folks, And then you end up dying, and
not one person, not a thousand, not like sixty five
thousand people who allegedly die each and every year of
the flu. We're talking about a specific type of flu.
We're talking about a specific virus, the coronavirus that people
like doctor Anthony Fauci and epidemiologists extraordinary warned him and
warned the administration and warned the American people not to
take this lightly. He then told him, you're wrong, I'm right.
Americans listened to him, and a million people died here
in America. A million Americans died. All right, that's the
guy that you want as the president. This is really
scary stuff, then.
Speaker 1: Which is why they have to spread conspiracy. It's why
they're outrage. Echo Chamber in the outrage they manufacture they
are in is so important because if they could keep
you very scared about pronouns and get your very scared
about Disney movies or very scared about mister potato Head
or artificial intelligence or whatever the new boogeyman du jour is,
you're not focused on the fact that the Maga Republicans
or picking your pockets. They're literally stealing your money and
giving it to their billionaire friends, and you're not focused
on the things that are actually really things to try
to address things that are really killing you because of
their policies and as we say, it's all projection when
it comes to Maga Republicans, and these committee hearings really
prove that point. Here's another PLI.
Speaker 2: And before we go to the clip, can we not
just sort of use as an example Jim Jones from
the Jonestown massacre. He didn't tell the people, his followers,
his cult followers, that he was going to poison them
with the kool aid, with the poison and kool aid,
and how many tens of thousands of people ended up dying.
Is there any difference between what Jim Jones did and
what Donald Trump did? Donald Trump either he refused to
listen to what the experts were saying, or he purposefully
ignored it. Either way, it's silence, and it's the same
type of silence and misdirection and lies that Jim Jones
told his followers on that faithful day. So you know, again,
you know, it's just something that came to mind, because
we do have to sometimes, you know, make these comparisons,
as ugly as they are, right, we do have to
make these comparisons, especially in light of the fact a
million people, a million Americans died unnecessarily.
Speaker 1: Well, if you gave Jim Jones the nuclear codes, and
you gave Jim Jones full access over the federal government,
you'd probably have a slightly less worse result than what
Donald Trump brought to the United States, if we're being
completely honest. And I saw a comment to this point,
and I'll just make this point before going back to
Jamie Raskin. Look, do I agree with President Biden and
the Democrats on every single issue. No, I probably disagree
on a lot of issues. I just know that there
are adults in the room right now who are trying
to take these matters seriously and try to come up
with the right solution, whether it's on jobs, healthcare, education,
making sure that women can control their own bodies, making
sure that LGBTQ plus people can marry who they love,
and focusing on our military evets. It's a serious approach
versus a very unseerious approach. And these are very serious times,
and a very serious person in these very serious times
is Jamie Raskin, and he points out that Comber who
is MAGA Republican, Comer who's like the head now of
the Oversight Committee. You know, all these MAGA Republicans are
talking about weaponization and Twitter was weaponized by the Democrats.
And it's like, wait a minute, who was the president
of the United States during the time period that you
are talking about weaponization? Like y'all realize that in October
of twenty twenty, Donald Trump was the president, that Christopher
Ray was appointed by Donald Trump, that Bill Barr works
for Donald Trump and covered up all of Donald Trump's stuff.
You're calling these people rhinos or Democrats now, they couldn't
be further from Democrats. And one of the things that
Jamie Raskin points out here in addition to that is, look, Comer,
you and the MAGA Republicans stated over the weekend that
you are calling up the head of AT and T
who has an not put Newsmax as not renewed to
their contract with Newsmax, not because of any political view. Heck,
AT and T is one of the top donors to
the repub to the Republican parties. There are less people
who watch Newsmax than who watch the Midas Touch network.
In the first five minutes of our video, like let's
be clear, like the Newsmax ratings are so far less
than the Midas Touch ratings. Like we get five, ten,
twenty fifty, sometimes one hundred times the views of Newsmax.
And you don't see us saying you need to make
sure we get on every cable network or else. Yet
you have the maga Republican members of Congress who are
threatening AT and T that you need to platform Newsmax.
This right here is actual weaponization. This is collusion, This
is using the government, and it's out in the open.
Jamie Raskin does an incredible job pointing this out here.
Speaker 4: Play this clip and Facebook, and if we're going to
confront this problem of people using their public offices in
state power to try to intimidate. Then let's do it
in a comprehensive way. Let's take an example, mister Chairman,
that you'll recognize. Immediately over the weekend, you appeared on
Newsmas and you boasted that you had told AT and T,
a private company, that they needed to restore Newsmas to
carrying DirecTV or face the consequences. To quote you verbatim quote,
I'm very upset that DirectTV doesn't have Newsmax on there.
I've been in constant communication with the leadership of AT
and T and DirecTV. I've strongly encouraged them to meet
with your CEO, mister Ruddy, to get this worked out
or else or else. Now, I have no opinion about
whether or not AT and T should carry Newsmacs. Apparently
it was purely a business decision, according to the Wall
Street Journal, And I'll ask unanimous consent to introduce this
editorial by the Wall Street Journal called rights wrong attack
on Direct TV over Newsmas. A commercial dispute isn't about
censoring conservatives without objection, so we can submit that there
was also a letter written by forty two of our colleagues,
including the Chairman, to directly to AT and D demanding
that they carry Newsmax now, and the premise of it, it
was there some kind of left wing conspiracy or so on.
In the Wall Street Journal completely debunked that saying political
coercion of business is as distasteful from the right as
it is from the left. But if threatening official course
of pressure like this follow our orders or else applied
against it, not just private social media entities, which is
what they're proposing this bill, but against any media entity,
it would transform politics in America in the meaning of
the First Amendment. But if we're going to do it,
let's do it. And the First Amendment says, if this
is going to apply to the Internet, if it's going
to protect Twitter arguably, which is the conceit where pretense
of this bill, it should also protect AT and T
against getting coerced into making a deal it doesn't want
to make and spending millions of dollars it doesn't want
to spend with Newsmax.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a good point right there. I mean,
what is more coercive than the chairman, a Republican chairman
of the Oversight Committee, threatening AT and t's executives to
carry Newsmax when it's not a profitable network. They're forcing
a company to pay millions of dollars. You know, it's
a carriage feed dispute where Newsmax claims that they are
entitled to money that is inconsistent with their very low viewership,
and AT and T is like, well, if you drop
your carriage fee, we will still carry you on the network.
We're just not going to pay you tens of millions
or hundreds of millions of dollars because it's just you're
not getting the views.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, there's a bigger problem that goes on here. Now,
all of a sudden you have Newsmax, which of course
is it's part of the Donald Trump campaign arm. So
Chris Ruddy, the president's CEO, is somehow exerting pressure over
the likes of a Jim Jordan or some of these
maga Republicans in order to do his bidding and to
go up against it to David and Goliath scenario. But
let me then give you a better example. Something that
you should be entitled to, something that I should be
entitled to, and something I'm desperately trying to get, which
would show the weaponization of the Justice Department, which you
know it goes right back to my whole story on
an unconstitutional Remand so for example, I have an a
turning by the name of Mark Zaid. The Mark Zaid
has brought Foyer requests against the government in order to
get documents, and those documents will show beyond a reasonable
doubt to anybody, including maggots, that what the government did
was unconstitutional and illegal. But of course they don't want
to do it. The court has told the Foyer office.
They have told government that you need to start processing
what was originally zero documents that related to the Foyer
request to over four hundred and eighty thousand documents that
relate to that Foyer request. So now they're required to
provide five hundred documents a month that was supposed to
start going back to August of twenty twenty two. And
I tell this story not because it's my story, but
simply because we, as the American people, we are entitled
to this information. It's unless it's top secret then, which
of course you see, it goes into everybody's houses, you know,
from Donald all the way down. But here's what we
just got after seven additional months and another court directive
for them to start to provide the documentation we received,
literally on the twenty third of the month, we received
from the FBI a document stating that as of today,
five hundred and four pages were reviewed and zero pages
are being released. Could you imagine we're talking about my case,
which was pleading guilty to a one page information, five
hundred four pages reviewed, zero being released, four hundred and
ninety seven pages are being withheld for referral or additional
consult while seven pages are being withheld as being duplicative.
I mean, could you imagine the frustration that I have
Mark Z Brian Caram, you know, a journalist who helped
me with my book Revenge. Could you imagine the frustration
that Americans have in order to get something that we
are entitled to. Instead, you have now these Moga Republicans.
You have the likes of Jim Jordan and others Lauren
Blobert asking for things that they're not even permitted to
ask for that they're doing things that they're not even
legally entitled to do, and they're acting in a way
which goes against the Constitution of the United States. So,
once again to the brigaders, this bullshit has to stop,
which is why I continuously say we need to build
this brigade so big that when it comes to a Newsmax, right,
when it comes to Oan, when it comes to Trump's
fake social media platform, that we have the ability us,
the political beatdown Brigade, have the ability to put an
end to it. And the fact that somebody like Lauren
Bobert or Jim Jordan that they should be exerting influence
on AT and T in order to force a private
business transaction. I didn't know that we have the ability
to get our members of Congress to do our bidding
for us. I mean, I know I haven't had that,
and I'm pretty sure none of you had either. But
then again, you're not up thes of Donald J. Trump,
and you're not his you're not his political campaign on
of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. Maybe if we were, then
maybe we would be entitled to the things that I'm
asking for or the things that they're asking for. What's
happening to this country? It's really talking that.
Speaker 1: As he asked that question, you know who apparently is
entitled to it? Cohen the insurrectionists who Republicans call political prisoners.
In addition to turning over the surveillance footage, from the
Capital Building on January sixth, to Tucker Carlson and Tucker
Carlson's producers, we are now also learning that the Republican
leadership in the House of Representatives are moving to let
the January sixth insurrectionists who are defendants have access to
the Capital security footage as well. The MAGA Republicans in
the House of Representatives are fighting really hard against the
objections of the Department of Justice to make sure that
these insurrectionists get information that could indeed lead to the
insurrectionist learning about things like the movements of members of
the Senate and the House of Representatives and security on
January sixth, then secret rooms and safe rooms and things
like that. And look, the MAGA Republicans say, oh, don't worry,
that's not the stuff we're going to share with them.
But guess what there actually is something called courts, right,
and in these cases, the criminal defendants in federal court
are entitled to discovery that is relevant to their case.
And guess who makes the decisions of what is the
relevant information. It's not supposed to be people like Kevin McCarthy,
supposed to be Article three federal judges who make that decision,
and so discovery requests are made to turn over video footage,
which all of the January sixth insurrectionists and their lawyers
make those requests, and as it relates to them, they
can get that information, but they don't need and usually
aren't allowed to get information that is part of criminal
investigations by the Department of Justice that don't relate to them.
But this is what I mean, Like to me, is
this show a political show? Well, it's called political beatdown,
But in the sense what we're trying to beat down
is the fact that our politics have been infected by
fascism masquerading as a political party when we should all
as Americans say, wait a minute, we're giving the capital
surveillance footage over to the terrorists, and that's what a
group of people are fighting for. That's a very bad thing,
you know, we.
Speaker 2: Should be looking at. Yeah, but let's break this whole
thing down here, right, forty thousand hours we're given to
fucker Carlson and Fox News exclusively. Now, you and I
may not agree on everything, I believe wholeheartedly in transparency,
and I hear a lot of the Democrats in this
specific case saying, well, those tapes show the positioning of cameras,
and you can see angles and so on. First of all,
those cameras need to move. They need to be rotating
so that there is not a single inch of the
People's House that is not covered by video. So anyone
that goes into that capital needs to understand every single
movement except inside of the lavatories are being recorded, not
just for your protection, but for the protection of members
of Congress, for the protection of the People's House, and
so on. I have no issue with the fact that
it was given away. What I have an issue is
why Kevin McCarthy had the sole ability to give it
to one group, meaning Fox News, who are election deniers,
who are insurrectionist deniers, propagandists, that they give it to
this fucker Carlson, who we already have information. We have
text messages on him with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham
sending back and forth messages that could you believe how
stupid this is? And they go and they then continue
to promote this again lies the misinformation, disinformation, malinformation to
the American people. And let me then jump in once
again on something that I routinely say, and yet their
programs are still top rated, that there are still god
knows how many millions of people that are watching their shows.
How could you possibly watch somebody who called you stupid,
who called you nuts, who lie to your face, as
a journalist, as a reporter, as the host of a
show that's supposed to be promoting the news. I believe
that if it was given to Fox, it should be
made available to everyone, ABC, NBC, EMAS, NBCCNN, CBS, everybody, PBS.
It should be made available to all Americans. No one group,
especially not Fox News, especially not fucker Carlson should have
the right to becaussess all of that information.
Speaker 1: And look, you know, I think I've said this before.
You know, fascism is a form of an abusive relationship,
and where you have someone like Donald Trump so abuse
his base, but then feed them lies and feed them peanuts.
Life is very complicated. We live in very complicated times,
and you could try to unpack the complicated nature and
try to find solutions, which is what the pro democracy
community and Democrats are offering. Okay, let's focus on bringing
manufacturing jobs. Let's actually build infrastructure here, Let's increase wages.
Let's focus on strengthening unions, Let's focus on lowering prescription
drug prices, let's make healthcare accessible to all. But those
things also to implement are hard and messy and take
a lot of thought and process. Fascism some times works
because it's easy just to say it's the China virus.
That's it, and just repeat it over and over again.
And it takes complicated topics and makes it in a
way that people can just say, you know, okay, got it,
that's it. That's a good problem, not their situations. But
that's why the messaging is so important.
Speaker 2: Sure, but the problem here is that the way that
Trump uses information, the way that he relays the information
to the American people, it's comical. I mean, think of
that fat orange face with the with the candy sweep,
you know, flip flap flop, as I like to have
called it in my first book. Think about him sitting
there and going, it's the China virus, all right, the
China virus, China, China, and everybody thinks it's funny. By
the way, the president is not supposed to be a comedian.
Funny as shit is the fact that the Ukrainian president
log Mia Zelenski is actually a comedian who's acting like
a president. Here in America, we had a president who
thought he was gonna act like a fucking comedian, but
he's just not funny. There's nothing funny about a virus
that can wipe out the you know, a million people
like that, And to sit there and to tell people,
look again, I could go on and on this. You know,
this is so ridiculous on so many levels. And allowing
our members of Congress to act like the mob, which
is what they're doing when you have somebody as a
member of Congress using political sway to threaten a private entity,
even though att is a publicly traded company, right, did
threaten that other company? That either you do something that
our fearless leader, the self proclaimed feurer, monarch, dictator, supreme leader,
that what he wants. That's a real problem. That to
me is if you go back and you start watching
The Godfather, that's exactly the same mentality that exists in
that movie that's existing right now in our Congress.
Speaker 1: And this is gross, And you know it's important because
large media networks did not take that threat seriously. So
and they still don't take that seriously. They still want
to promote the next fascist in DeSantis, and they lean
into that there are so many great democratic governors. I mean,
look at the great work that Gretchen Whitmer's doing in Michigan.
Do you ever even hear the national media talk about
Governor Whitmer? But how many times do they talk about
DeSantis each and every day when he is espousing these
very fascist policies. But we need to bring that contrast
here as Political beat Down. The other shows on the
Midas Touch network, as Maya Kulpa and others now have
the same audience, in fact larger audiences on many shows
than large media networks. Now, speaking about the contrast, I
also want to show you from the committee hearings earlier
in the day a clip from Eric Swalwell who points
out that, you know, when the MAGA Republicans wanted to
do this kind of performative pledge of allegiance before they
hold these committee hearings, You're already do the pledge earlier.
So they want to do the pledge each and every time.
I guess they thought that Democrats were not going to
vote in favor of the pledge of allegiance because Maga
Republicans focus on just those performative issues. Well, the first person,
it turns out that Gates brought to do the Pledge
of allegiance was actually a murderer. He found a murderer,
brought the murderer into the Capitol building, who he claims
he met at a gun shop, and that is who
led our pledge of allegiance in the Capitol building. Watch
this clip from Eric Swalwell exposing it all.
Speaker 6: One of the very first committee is the very first
committee hearing of this Congress. Mister Gates, after we'd all
agreed on what the committee's plan was gonna be, it
was gonna be voice voted. Everyone agreed, mister Gates wanted
to offer an amendment to say the Pledge of allegiance.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 6: Every single person on our side supported that. Now I
don't think he really genuinely cares about saying the Pledge
of Allegiance, but he wanted to do it again to
own the Libs and to see if we would vote
against it.
Speaker 5: We didn't.
Speaker 6: But who did he bring in here to say the
Pledge of allegiance? Who did he parade in here in
a uniform? Somebody that he met at a gun club?
He said, locally. Okay, mister Sicillini had the crazy idea
that maybe we should vet the people who come in here,
make sure they're not insurrectionists. Mister McClintock, I am not
kidding you. Mister McClintock said, well, it's not like we're
gonna invite somebody who committed murder. No, he literally said that,
it's not like we're gonna invite somebody who committed murder. Okay, well,
who did mister Gate? He brought Corey Beakman. Corey Beakman
in twenty nineteen was in a standoff with the Michigan
police after he was arrested and charged with murder, assault
to an intent to commit murder, and two counts of
felony firearm possession. The family of the victims said, mister
Gates doing that it was like getting a dagger stuck
in our heart again. We were infuriated when we first
saw it. I was disgusted with the whole thing. That's
why there's a trust deficit here. You'd pull off a
public stunt to try and owen the Libs, and what
you did was you brought in a guy who allegedly
shot two people and killed one of them. That's where
the trust deficit is. So you can play your games,
conduct your stunts. We're here to get shited done.
Speaker 1: You're here to play your games, conduct your stunts. We're
here to get shit done. Congressman Ericswell, and here's one
other clip I want to show. This is Gates questioning
a witness who works I think in the State Department,
and what Gates is citing has his evidence is actually
just Chinese propaganda. Like he's literally reading the Chinese propaganda.
The Global Times is a Daly tabloid newspaper under the
auspices of the Chinese Communist Party flagship newspaper, The People's Daily,
commenting on international issues from a Chinese ultra nationalistic perspective.
This is the source that Gates is reading in the
MAGA Republicans reading here play this clip.
Speaker 7: Is the azof Battalion getting access to US.
Speaker 5: Weapons, Not that I'm aware of, but.
Speaker 7: If you have information, I entered to the record the
Global Times investigative report that indicate that talks about training.
It's from the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab, citing
Diaz of Battalion was even getting stuff as far back
as twenty.
Speaker 5: Eighteen, without objection, show ordered.
Speaker 7: Any reason to disagree with that assessment.
Speaker 5: Doctor, is this the I'm sorry? Is this the Global
Times from China?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 7: This is.
Speaker 5: Well that's what you read.
Speaker 7: Yeah it might be, Yeah, woulout the reason.
Speaker 5: As a general matter, I don't take Beijing's no.
Speaker 7: No, yeah, just tell me if if the allegation is
true or false.
Speaker 5: I mean I don't have any evidence one way or
the other. As a general matter, I don't take Beijing's
propaganda at face value.
Speaker 7: Fair enough, I would agree with that assessment. April twenty
twenty two, I've got and that's crazy. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: You can't make you can't make this stuff up, you know.
I actually, after Matt Gates somehow successfully avoided prosecution despite
the fact that his buddy Joel Greenberg is doing time,
you know, for a crime that they both committed, that
there is documentation, whether it's the transfer of money through
venmo to emails and text messages. I really thought that
Matt Gates was going to do something better. He wanted
to be better, right, And I don't know why I
had that hope. I was hopeful, not optimistic, but I
was hopeful the same way that I was hopeful and
I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to
Jim Jordan that this entire committee, this weaponization come the
Subcommittee on Weaponization by the Department of Justice, was not
going to be a fucking joke kangaroo court that you know,
it's basically Hunter Biden's laptop. Hunter Biden's laptop. You know. Oh,
we're talking about right now sending military aid to Ukraine
in order to fend off the Russian attack, which I'm
sure everybody will acknowledge. We would rather the war take
place on someone else's soil than on ours instead. Fuck that,
nobody cares about that. If you're a maga Republican, all
they care about is Hunter Biden's laptop and Barisma. And
so I mean this. We are we are so divided
as a country. And it's not just divided between Republicans
and Democrats. We are divided now between the insane and
the sane, between the you know, the patriots and the anarchists,
between the fascists and the demo and the democracy. You know,
this is insane what we're even watching the fact that
Matt Gates, who is not a stupid guy, I want
to be clear, he's not stupid. The fact that he
would quote or his people would give him a document
by the Chinese government to quote, and a congressional hearing
when he is deposing somebody, you know, where's the sanctions,
where's the reprimands? Where's the removal from the committee? If
you're going to waste not just the committee's time, but
the American people's time and the witnesses time. And there's
no repercussions, But what do you expect? Yeah, why don't
we just quote, you know, let's quote the guy who
was the artist for what was the uh, stupid Dilbert Right,
that's no longer you know, able to act as a
comic artist or whatever. For me, you know, for saying
stupid racist shit, he is now suffering repercussions. Point being,
there are no repercussions for anyone who's successful in winning
an election. That then gives you immunity from being an asshole.
Speaker 1: Cohen, though that I think that you said. I don't
know why I hoped that they would take it seriously,
but I held out a slim hope. And here's why
I think you did. Because you still care about our country,
and because you care about our country. You do want
people who possess positions of power to act like adults,
and maybe you hope that once they get into those
positions that they will understand the importance of their role
and that they will change. But I think, as President
Barack Obama once said, when people get these positions of power,
whether it's becoming the president of the United States or
one of these other high level positions, it tends to
basically accentuate the characteristics that you've had. So if you
are a diligent person who cared about humanity, it should
bring out those qualities more. If you are a horrible person,
once you get that taste of that power, it actually
accentuates that more. And when you gave those dic economies
that exist of the divisions, I think it was important
that you pointed out that these divisions are really no longer.
Here's Democrats and here's Republicans, and we don't even really
talk about it that way. On the Midas Touch Network,
we talk about pro democracy and then we talk about
the fascism that has infected our politics. Because within pro democracy,
I want to be very welcoming of people who truly
identify as conservatives and not just use that name, but
do things that are actually the opposite of conservative. I
want to welcome former Republicans. I want to welcome independents.
I want to welcome people who are not affiliated with
any political party or who don't like politics. I want
to welcome progressives. I want to welcome liberals. I want
to welcome everybody who's ready to have a serious conversation
about advancing our national discourse, about improving our country, and
who take these issues very, very very seriously. And I'll
give you the juxtaposition again here that you laid out
between normalcy of President Biden tweeting out and posting things
about jobs and infrastructure and protecting social security and making
sure seniors are protected, and on and on and on.
You compare it with what Trump with Trump was saying
over the past forty eight hours, you know, calling Jack
Smith a mad dog psycho. I think we have the
psycho prosecutor assigned to me for the document hopes Jack Smith,
question Mark is not only together with his wife, family
and friends, a massive Trump payter, blah blah blah blah blah.
There's the other one where he just calls him mad
dog psycho over the weekend, you know, and by the way,
you know why he does the question mark after Jack
Smith and what he's the dog whistle there. He's saying
that Jack Smith is not Jack Smith's real name. That's
part of the conspiracy theory, and implying in his own way,
this is the signal that you know, Jack Smith, like
the Jewish globalist whose name really isn't Smith. That's the
wink and the nod of why he does the question
mark there, and he'll he'll deny that, but that's very
specifically the reason why he does that. And then you
also have Donald Trump attacking Rupert Murdoch and we've got
those posts as well, where he says that Rupert Murdoch
is throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens
to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers who
will again be leaving him in droves they already are.
There's massive evidence blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Where then he spreads election disinformation and he's basing that
on some of this new information that dropped in the
Fox legal filings.
Speaker 2: Or did you notice what Donald did you notice and
did our brigade notice what that with that tweet by
Donald on his untruth social platform, what it was really saying?
You know how I always referred to Donald as like
a mob boss, that he speaks in code. So if
you read through the lines, what is he basically doing.
He's reminding Rupert that he has a massive contingency of
followers that are or could be former Fox viewership, and
so that they are leaving now in droves. Right because
you're throwing the anchor under the table, which makes no
fucking sense in and of itself. You don't throw, you know,
want to throw shoes under the table. How are you
throwing an anchor under a table? One is in a boat,
the other is no.
Speaker 1: No, no no no no no. I analyze this, Coen, You
and I both thought the same way. This is what
he means, and I had the exact same feeling that
you did.
Speaker 2: Oh trust me, I know what he means here. This
is basically a It's an implied threat to Rupert to
stop the ship against him. All right, come back on
board right with what Jared used to be. Because Evanka
happens to be Rupert's kids godmother and Wendy, Rupert's ex wife,
is Evanka and Jared's kids, you know, godmother as well.
So they play that bullshit back and forth somehow. What
this is really doing is this is supposed to be
a threat to Rupert that get in line or you're
going to financially suffer. I'm sorry you were saying, Ben,
So I was.
Speaker 1: Trying to look up idioms and say anchor under the table,
like is this some expression that I've never heard before?
And you know, Trump barely makes sense in the statements
that he that he says. But what he's actually saying,
what I believe he's trying to say, is you're throwing
your anchors, your news anchors like Tucker and Ingraham and
Hannity under the bus. But he doesn't know the expression
under the bus. So he's saying you're throwing them under
the table when he means under the bus. And what
he's specifically referring to is the deposition testimony we have
from the New Dominion filing in their one point six
billion dollar defamation lawsuit, and specifically there's this one transcript
in salty. It's one of the last ones we have
where it talks about the next day was January sixth,
and it cites deposition transcripts where it says Rupert understood
that Fox could do something about the false claims. Indeed,
he believed Fox was uniquely positioned to state the message
that the election was not stolen. On January fifth, Rupert
and Scott discussed whether Hannity, Carlson, and Ingraham should say
some version of quote, the election is over and Joe
Biden won. He hoped those words quote would go a
long way to stop the Trump myth that the election
was stolen. Scott, that's Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox.
When you're seeing Scott, so the CEO. Scott told Rupert
Murdoch that quote. Privately, they are all there, but quote,
we need to be careful about using the shows and
pissing off the viewers. So nobody ever made a statement.
The next day was January sixth, So privately, they are
all there, meaning Hannity, Carlson, and Ingraham all were there,
that the election is over and Joe Biden won. Privately,
they all made that statement, and they were uniquely positioned
to state that message. However, they were worried about this.
Speaker 2: As much as I would like to believe, as much
as i'd like to believe you are giving a rational
explanation to an improper again statement made by Donald who
really has no command of the English language. The idiom
that you're referring anchor under the table, it doesn't exist.
I looked at up while you were reading this. It
does not exist. There's no such a thing. And maybe
he wants to make one up and he'll say, he's
so clever, be with this man woman TV camera, right,
I mean, you know person, you know, maybe he thinks
he's going to make up some sort of a statement
anchor under the table. Oh yeah, I love saying. I
was saying that what is he's not? But he's not
referring to the anchor you know of a show. He's yeah,
I don't know. Listen again, why are we trying to
figure out the as they said in Young Frankenstein, the
nonsensical rantings of a lunatic mind? Right, you remember that
with the famous line by Gene Wilder, Right, it's the
nonsensical rantings of a lunatic mind. That's unfortun who we had.
And if we all don't get together and we don't
all start, you know, ensuring that the brigade continues and
we are growing, folks. I hope that you continue, you know,
to see how great the show is actually doing in
the you know, in the charts where really, I mean,
we're killing it. So thank you all for being a
part of that. But we need to grow this to
ensure that our voices are really heard and heard with
the force and the power of a brigade. And that's
why again, you know, please make sure that you support
Midas Touched the Midas Network. If you have a chance,
check out my Maya Culpa podcast, check out Legal af,
checkout Politics Girl, check out Midas Mighty. Check just try
to ensure that you stay within this group because this
is the place that you will get your raw, unfiltered
and totally truthful information. No shit here, not accepted, not accepted,
not accepted. So we ask you stay with us, please
support them so that we could continue to do this
and we could continue to bring you updated news. And
I promise you one thing, my brigaders. A lot of
shit's happening right now in New York, whether it's the
Attorney General and God bless our unsinkable Attorney General Tis James,
who is going to financially slap that fat ass of
Donald's like he's never been slapped before. All right, maybe
mommy and Daddy should have done it, But what he's
going to do to that fat ass is something grotesque.
I mean, I think it's so grotesque it would make
the devil vomit. But at the end of the day,
it's going to be in my opinion, Alvin Bragg, who
is sort of the he's like the long shot that
nobody thought was going to happen. You're going to see
a lot of things coming out of the DA's office,
and I think he'll deserve a lot of kudos if
when that happens. I do believe that it's going to
be sooner than later. So stay here, stay with Ben
and myself and be the first to learn what's going on.
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for watching this episode of Political Beatdown.
Just to give you all the specific number because I
saw some of the comments in the Jonestown Massinger massacred.
Speaker 2: It was about a thousand.
Speaker 1: It was nine hundred cultists. Two hundred children were killed
in the massacre.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: Make sure you all get Cohen's new book, Revenge. It's
out wherever you can get books and audio books. Revenge.
Definitely check that out check out Cohen's other pod, Maya Kulpa.
It is great. We had the exclusive footage on the
Midas Touch YouTube channel of his interview with Lev Parness
That was one of the most compelling interviews. I think
you can just do a full documentary of just you
and Lev speaking for two hours and sharing stories, but
for those who want to check it out on our
YouTube channel, you at least get that hour for free
right there. Make sure you see Cohen's interview with Levparnis
and make sure you subscribe as well to Maya Kulpa
with that set as well, make sure you subscribe to
this YouTube channel. We are marching to one million subscribers
in the month of March, and wherever you get your
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shirt the Maar Lardo Correctional Facility merch the official one
one hundred percent made in the US, one hundred percent
union made right there, ma Lardo, one hundred percent Mari Lardo.
I want to thank everybody for watching this episode of
Political Beatdown. If you want the full breakdown of the
Fox filing, there's a forty five minute video that I
did which goes through every single page. It's on our
YouTube channel. We will see you next time here on
Political Beatdown. That will be on Thursday. Michael Cohen, always
so much fun spending this time with you bretting the
truth and everybody we really really obrigators.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Shout out to the Midas Mighty