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The Breakdown Audio | Trump Election Threat Triggers Emergency Drills to Stop Him
00:37:46
Allison speaks with Simon Rosenberg about midterm election security, and how Secretaries of State are running table-top exercises on how to prepare for Trump possibly physically interfering with election infrastructure.
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- [00:01]
Frangela (Frances Collier and Angela V. Shelton)
Hi, I'm Frances Collier. And I'm Angela V. Shelton. And we're Frangela. You know what you mean in your life. The Final Word podcast. Yes, you do.
- [00:10]
Allison Gill
That's right.
- [00:11]
Frangela (Frances Collier and Angela V. Shelton)
It is the final word on all things political and pop cultural, where we make real news, real funny, where we inspire you so you can resist. Subscribe and get a new episode of the Final Word podcast each week. It's the news we think you need to hear.
- [00:26]
Jocelyn Benson
That's right.
- [00:27]
Frangela (Frances Collier and Angela V. Shelton)
We think you need to hear it. Okay.
- [00:29]
Allison Gill
Yeah.
- [00:29]
Frangela (Frances Collier and Angela V. Shelton)
It's what we say.
- [00:30]
Simon Rosenberg
So.
- [00:30]
Frangela (Frances Collier and Angela V. Shelton)
That's right. And because all we do is give. Every Thursday, you can listen to our hysterical podcast, Idiot of the Week. We round up the stupid. Because you know what? Somebody has to.
- [00:40]
Allison Gill
Okay. All we do is give. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Breakdown. I'm Alison Gill. So we had a big win this past Friday when the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that trumps tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers act, or ia. You'll hear me refer to it as iea. They're illegal. Those tariffs are illegal. According to the Supreme Court. There was a lot of wins this past week, actually. We saw the New Mexico Attorney General reopen the criminal probe into Epstein's Zorro ranch. We saw Prince Andrew get arrested, albeit for sharing trade secrets with Epstein. But I'll take it the South Korean president was sentenced to life in prison for his attempted insurrection. Must be nice to have a functioning Supreme Court, a federal judge throughout the Trump administration's mass detention policy. And the Secretary of the va, Doug Collins, walked back his rule gutting veterans benefits after major backlash from we the People. So we've had a series of wins. But also this week, I interviewed Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who's running for governor in the great state of Michigan because big gretch Gretchen Whitmer is termed out. And she told me, which put my mind at ease a little bit, that Democratic secretaries of state right now are running tabletop exercises for what to do in the event the Trump administration attempts to physically interfere somehow with the midterm elections by any number of means, including seizing voting machines or vote tabulator tapes or ballots, which he wanted to do in 2020, but failed for many reasons. Why? Or by threatening to post federal officers, ice, cbp, HSI at polling locations. They're actually having to prepare for these eventualities at the state level because, as we know, states administer elections. Not the president, but Chief Justice John Roberts, who just handed Trump a big loss again on Friday. He did a couple of things in his immunity ruling that have emboldened Trump, probably leading to the seizure that we saw of ballots down in Fulton County. Some of the things that Roberts did, he decided any collaboration between Trump and the Justice Department on elections is immune from criminal prosecution. He did that in the immunity ruling. And that led Jack Smith to supersede his indictment, to revise it to remove the DOJ conspiracy with Jeffrey Clark, who he was trying to install as attorney general. And Roberts wrote that the take care clause, you know, to the president must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, actually gives the president some authority over federal election law. It's why he sent Tulsi Gabbard to Fulton county to steal their election materials in the name of a Department of justice investigation. And it's why he's hell bent on disenfranchising millions of voters by trying to impose voter ID laws, which is going to be an uphill battle in the Senate. And that's something Republicans have been trying to do for decades, by the way, because they know they can't win elections on policy. And joining me today to discuss all this and more is the author of the Hopium Chronicles on Substack and a Democratic political strategist, Simon Rosenberg, everybody. Welcome to the Breakdown. Hey, Simon, it's great to see you. How are you, my friend?
- [04:05]
Simon Rosenberg
I'm really well. I think I agree with you. I think we've had a good week. You know, I feel like the opposition to Trump kind of got bigger this week and more powerful and more confident and stronger, and he's had a whole lot of retreats, rebukes, repudiations, you know, so I'll take it. I think we had a really good week this week.
- [04:28]
Allison Gill
Yeah, I am basking in this Supreme Court 6, 3 ruling on tariffs. And, you know, one of something that he came out and he gave this word salad of a press conference. But I think some of the main takeaway from this press conference is that he admitted clearly that he lost this one. He didn't come up and say they're wrong, and I'm going to keep doing this under aipa. He said, the Supreme Court told me, I can't do this. I'll find other ways. You know, he said he actually misread. He said he's very good at reading language. He misread the ruling because he said that John Roberts, who wrote this opinion, Simon, gave him permission under other statutes to do all these tariffs, when there's actually a footnote where John Roberts says, no, no, no, that's in the dissenting opinion. I Want to make sure everybody realizes that we aren't going to opine on those hypotheticals. So it's actually quite the opposite. But he has squandered 13 months of, of his time trying to do something that he could have done had he just gone through Congress.
- [05:38]
Simon Rosenberg
Well, the reason they didn't go through Congress is because Congress never would have actually voted to approve the tariffs. And so, and in fact, Congress, both the House and the Senate in the last few months have both voted to repeal aspects of his tariffs. The Senate voted amazingly to repeal basically all the tariffs. And the House, just last week, the Mike Johnson controlled House voted to roll back the tariffs on Canada. So this has been an area Trump has suffered his most significant other than the Epstein vote, which was this incredible rebuke of Trump. Trump has suffered his most significant rebukes from the congressional Republicans on these tariffs. And I do think that the fact that Republicans in Congress voted now in both chambers to repeal the tariffs gave greater license, frankly, probably to Roberts and company to be aggressive in this because they could have. There was a lot of speculation that, and I'm not a lawyer and so I'm always very careful that they were going to find a way to sort of say, hey, look, you don't have to pay back all the tariffs that you took. And it's really just to go forward, you know, issue now. But they didn't do that. And this is pretty important because the, the question now is they left Trump with a whole lot of chaos. It, we don't know if he's going to have to, they're going to have to pay back the tariffs, although people are speculating that the court, the trade court will rule in that way. And in fact, I just read this after, you know, I read this afternoon that the Trump administration itself had said that they would pay back the tariffs. The reason that matters, if I can just say briefly, is that this is going to put a big hole in their budget and it's not just a repudiation and sort of a guardrail being put up against an out of control president on something that really matters to him. But it was two things I'll say just to end. One is that this creates an enormous amount of fiscal and economic chaos that is going to be very problematic for Trump and the Republicans. He made a huge mistake. This was an error politically, economically, in every way, legally, constitutionally. But the second thing I want to just say about this, and I've been, this is what I've been saying is that I think this is the greatest abuse of presidential power in American history. I think that for him to have overruled the courts, overruled Congress, over, gone against the American people, gone against the wishes of our allies and our trading partners all around the world, he told everybody to f off and that he was my way or the highway on this. And so what he did was he slowed the economy down, he angered, he hurt our relations with all of our trading partners and our allies. He drove costs up for American consumers. He did enormous amount of damage to the United States. And I think that I just come away that in any other democracy in the world, his government would have now fallen by now or he would have been removed from power. Because I think it's of this magnitude. I think this is arguably the most reckless thing a president has done in all of American history because he changed the fundamental economic relationship between us and, and literally every consumer in the entire world, illegally, unconstitutionally, and everyone was telling him not to do it. So I think this is an enormous blow. And his insane performance in the press conference on Friday reinforced how jarring this is to him and how much this has shaken him. And so I think for us who want to keep having that first year of Trump, 2025 Trump, to roll back the dark things that they've done, ice, the cuts, the attacks on science, this right. Hopefully will restore the ACA subsidy cuts and fix Medicaid. We should take heart that you're starting to see, I think, a level of opposition and confidence in opposition to him that is very. That is really weakening him and giving us enormous opportunity to keep going.
- [10:09]
Allison Gill
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And you know, you, you reminded everyone that he admitted and said that he would have to refund a lot, a lot of these tariffs. But let me show you something, because I had somebody, an opposition insider who works at the. For Customs and Border Protection, who, by the way, billions of dollars in vendors, right. That were subject to these tariffs. Sent me an internal email and a screenshot. This is about a month ago. And. And if you look, it says the title at the top is IPA Refund Kickoff. So they were planning on having to refund these tariffs a month ago and start now. IPA Refund Kickoff sounds like the worst party ever, but they knew it and they knew that they were going to have to do this. So there's all sorts of evidence floating around out there, especially within these agencies, that he knew the refunds were coming. And you know, when you mentioned Congressional Republicans having to vote or not having to, but voting to repeal these tariffs in both Chambers. That goes towards something you and I talk about quite a bit, which is the reckoning that's having to go on with Congressional Republicans who have to get reelected, because Trump does not have to get reelected. Whether he, you know, tries to stay in power illegally or leaves peacefully in 2029 or it happens between now and then, whatever the reason, he doesn't have to run for office again. And so Congressional Republicans have had to decide whether they're going to back wholly unpopular Trump policy or do the right thing for their constituents. I know, I know it sounds a little out there, but we've seen this happen time and again, like you said, we saw it with Epstein, we saw it with the votes to repeal the tariffs. So I think that's a good opportunity to pivot into the midterm elections, because these guys have to get reelected.
- [12:14]
Simon Rosenberg
Yeah. Look, there are thousands of Republican candidates at all levels of government all across the United States who have ambitions for their career and who want to stay elected or get reelected or move to another office, whose lives have been made much more difficult by Donald Trump. And they are having to go out and. And what I call defend the indefensible and defend this outrageous agenda and all the things that he's doing, the ICE expansion and the terror regime that they put into place. How do you defend that? And we're seeing, not only did Trump have this enormous rebuke on his central economic policy, but his central, really, you could argue the central policy of Trumpism itself, which is xenophobia, white supremacy, racism, has now been wildly rejected by the American people through their rejection of not just ISIS terror regime, but of mass deportation more broadly. And so the things that are the core of his brand and the offering that he made to the American people are dissolving. They're eroding underneath him. And what's left is that these candidates have to go run on his agenda and not him. Right. And you can't defend what he's doing. And so I do think that, as you and I have discussed when we've been together, I've always felt that the thing that people were overly discounting to some degree was this idea that everyone's always going to stay loyal to Trump and they're going to be there no matter what. That's just not how politics works.
- [13:57]
Allison Gill
Right.
- [13:58]
Simon Rosenberg
And particularly because he's increasingly looking like, you know, he's old and addled and his days are numbered and his polling numbers are terrible. His health is bad. You know, his days. He doesn't have many days left. Being the head of the Republican party, he's not 45 years old. And so you're, I think you're going to start seeing more ambition and bravery and courage and willingness to challenge him than, than even before. And you know, we talk about how courage is contagious. Right. Or as I call it, the circle of defiance continues to grow. I think you're going to start, I think his control, he lost control of the House last week on these tariff votes. He lost control of the House on the Epstein boats. And I think that he is struggling. I think that one of the things that's happened in recent weeks is that his control over Washington has really frayed. And now the Supreme Court rebuked him. Right. His best buddies. And so I think he's in a very weakened state. And what happens in the shark infested waters of Washington and politics is when people see weakness, when they see blood in the water, you know, they pounce and I think. Or they run away. Right. Whatever your analogy is. And so I do think his hold over the party has been also severely weakened and is eroding right now. So, and I think, because look, let me, I, let me do a little bit of data for you. And he's now polling regularly underneath his, where he was in 2018. And remember, he got 46% of the vote in 2018. He got 50% in the last election. So he's fallen further and faster than he did in 2017. 2018 in 2018. I was a chief strategist for the DCCC in that cycle when we flipped the House and we won the House by 8, 8.6 percentage points nationally. Trump is polling underneath where he was in what was a midterm route and one of the high, the best performances by a political party in a midterm since World War II. And he's doing worse than where he was in that election in 2018 right now. And it's why we should view this year as a year of opportunity for us if we execute and raise the money and do the things that we need to do and prevent him from doing whatever the hell he's going to do around the election interference stuff you were talking about earlier. You know, we can have the election we all want to have if we, but it is, I just want to say this as somebody who's been doing this full time since 1992 in election after election. He's in the shitter, man. And you know, and he has no easy way out of getting out of where he is. And in fact, I think things could get worse for him because I think that he took a. It would hold Trump up, is that he's strong and others are weak. Well, this week he looked really weak. And Trump, when he's weak, what's left is the ugliest political thing that we've all ever seen.
- [17:07]
Allison Gill
Yeah, agreed. And let's talk about the erosion of support from the, from the party. And like, I think a lot about this. When I talked to Miles Taylor, who was the original anonymous Lodestar article writer, then he published a book anonymously about the Trump administration. Then he published Blowback under his real name and said who he was. And he talked in that book about dissent and the, and the permission structure that when more people start defying Trumpism, other more people feel compelled and safe to do it as well. He framed it as an economics lesson. He's like, when the price of dissent is high, how do you lower the price of dissent? You increase the supply. And so the more people that speak out against him, et cetera, it's like an Econ 101, basic economics. Right? And you're right, we're seeing it in, in spades, especially in recent weeks. And now while he's down, he's been kicked again by his own Supreme Court. You know, at least he's got three appointees on there. But, you know, and so that puts us in a really great position for the midterms. But I want to talk a little bit with you before I let you go about what he could possibly do, because I think Fulton county was a dry run. You and I talked about it, and you and I had wondered if Maduro was going to play a role. And then we learned a week later from Roy that Tulsi Gabbard had actually gone down and seized voting machines in Puerto Rico as part of a Department of justice investigation into Maduro and Venezuela potentially interfering in our elections. So he sits in a jail cell right now, probably willing to make any kind of a deal. But I wanted to just play you. I was actually kind of surprised and heartened when I spoke to Jocelyn Benson again, Secretary of State of Michigan, who told me they're running these scenarios and I just want to play that clip really, really fast. You talked about it recently in a meeting of the association of Secretaries of State a few weeks ago in D.C. so talk a little bit about that. What you see, what you're preparing for as the Secretary of State, to ensure that Michiganders have a free and fair vote, have access to the ballot, and can make sure that their voices are being heard.
- [19:32]
Jocelyn Benson
Yeah. I mean, as astounding as it is to have a President of the United States joking about canceling elections, incredulous as that sound staff, to both take it seriously and also recognize that we've been at this rodeo before, what we're seeing right now actually isn't new. We saw it in 2020 when he similarly made these types of jokes in the midst of COVID saying maybe we won't have an election, and then trying to intimidate election workers, throwing out or trying to get people to throw out votes and threatening to take machines. We saw it all in 2020. And what I saw living through that, prevailing through those efforts were, was how important it is to stand firm and know that the truth, the law, the history and the vast majority of people in our state and our country are on our side. And that ensures that we're actually going into 2026 and beyond, more prepared than ever to use every tool in our toolbox. With our 1500 professional election workers, thousands, tens of thousands of poll workers and citizens throughout the state who know the importance of their voice, their vote, we're all going to stand firm and ensure that our elections are held on schedule and continue to be safe and fair and free, and that we're there to use the law and all of the facts that will be on our side to protect the security and sanctity of our elections and those results. The bottom line is you need state and local officials who will plan for every contingency. As we are, we actually go through scenario planning exercises. What happens if there's everything from a physical interference to something line that creates confusion at the ballot box? We prepare for everything and equip first responders, clerks, and local law enforcement with the tools they need to protect our machines, protect our elections.
- [21:24]
Allison Gill
It brings me a little bit of sigh of relief that there are tabletop exercises on what happens if, like, the Pentagon shows up and tries to take your voting tabulators or whatever. All right, so what do you think of what could possibly go on with Trump in the midterms? Is he going to physically come in and try to take voting machines? Are you heartened by the fact that groups of Democratic Secretaries of State and election officials are actually preparing for that potential eventuality? That kind of blew my mind. I'm glad they're doing it, and I'm also glad we have organizations like Democracy Docket who focus on this legally as that's their, like, sole purpose. I feel like, I feel like I, I don't know, I feel a little bit better. I sleep a little bit better at night. About the midterms, knowing that these things are going on and they're being led by incredibly smart people whom I trust. What, what are your thoughts about these midterms?
- [22:22]
Simon Rosenberg
Yeah, you know, this is a really important question, and I'm going to try to. I'm not good at giving short answers, but I'll try to, to do this with a little bit more rigor than I usually do. You know, I, I think that we have to recognize that they are desperate and scared. And Donald Trump has talked about it openly that losing the midterms would be catastrophic for them. And I think that we have to anticipate that they are willing to do anything, that there is no boundary, that there's no. I mean, Trump even on Friday said he can still impose tariffs, right? And he claimed he's imposing 10% tariffs across the board. Who knows where that authority is coming from? But we know that he doesn't feel bound by law, convention, you know, democratic norms or whatever. So we have to sort of think of 2026 as the battlefield being unique and different than any other election that we've ever been through before because of his lawlessness is so extraordinary and his desperation is going to be even greater than we've ever seen before. And also, I think the Epstein stuff is really eroding his legitimacy. I think one of the things I talked about in a thing I was on earlier today was that part of what's happening to him is that the combination of him looking like a complete lunatic on the tariffs and this wild abuse of power, self indulgent, impulsive abuse of power, and the Epstein files, I think is starting to erode his legitimacy, right? Which is different than his approval. And I think that seeing Prince Andrew fall and seeing other elites have accountability happen to them, the notion of it happening to him now becomes not far fetched, right? It becomes, well, if Prince Andrew goes down and the executive chairman of Hyatt goes down, and if people resign in a scandal, you know, Scandinavian country, well, then Trump could go too, right? All of a sudden this becomes not like, what are you talking about, Simon? You're being crazy. And I do think we have to start introducing this idea that his legitimacy is now being questioned, that the consent of the govern has been removed. But there's also questions around his. I don't think that he should be allowed to govern the country anymore, given the recklessness of the decision that he made on the tariffs. I think this would be sufficient to impeach and remove him is my own view. So that's number one. So it means that we have to anticipate a level of ambition and desperation that would allow things that were sort of almost unimaginable to happen. And I put them into four buckets. Right. One is that in terms of what the battlefield's going to feel like this year, number one is they're building a large super PAC that the incumbent party doesn't usually have in a midterm election. So they're going to be spending a lot of money that isn't normally spent, and they will probably outspend us in traditional politics this cycle, which is not something that has happened in a long time. We've been out spending them. And. And I think that creates a new dynamic. The second new dynamic that we have to manage is the continued snatch and grab or catch and kill of legacy media organizations and things like TikTok, where, you know, they are removing information sources or. Or. Or taking control of information sources that will be important in informing the discourse as we get closer to the election. That's a new thing we haven't really had to deal with in this exact way, and particularly, you know, TikTok being, you know, something that is very firmly in their control right now and that we don't know. The third area that I think is unique to this year is going to be, you know, the Russian government is also going to do whatever it takes to keep the Republicans in power. We already knew they played an instrumental role in throwing the election to him in 2016. And I think our government has disabled all of these things that were in place that would have made it harder for Russia to do what they do in lots of other countries and they've done here before. And I think that we're going to be facing. The Russian government, I'm sure, has been given a green light by Woodcoff and Kushner and these discussions to go have at it here in the country, and how we manage that without the government of the United States working to repel it instead of encouraging it, also creates kind of a new wrinkle in this election cycle. But then the fourth thing is what you're describing, which is all of these dark things in Trump's head about all the things that he can do. And I think, as you know better than anybody, the good news is that he's tried a lot of this already and has repeatedly failed, and that the system has proved to be far more resilient, both in terms of, as you pointed out the local control and also federalism more broadly. And so they've had these dark imaginings about how to toss all this. They even led an insurrection. And all of these things have failed and the system is held, and we've had elections that haven't been interfered with. And that is one of the things that heartens me, right, that they've tried really hard at this and repeatedly failed. I do think that it is important that secretaries of states, the governors, the mayors, our parties are going through these kinds of exercises to imagine and plan for all the contingencies of what could happen. I know that Mark Elias is most concerned. I met with Mark a few days ago. He's deeply concerned about the seizing of the ballot boxes. As you know, that will be very hard to do given how many precincts there are in the country. But even if you just take Philadelphia offline, right. I think we have to assume that they are not going to ever accept the election results under any circumstances, and that we have to work backwards from there, that we have to assume that they will never acknowledge that they lost the election under any circumstances. And that what it means is, I think, Alison, what we've learned from other countries that have been through this kind of stuff with the Russians and others is our public leaders need to have a big conversation to prophylactically explain to the public about what's about to happen so that it isn't a surprise that we have to say we believe he's going to contest the election. We believe that he's going to try to steal ballot boxes. We believe that he's going to do X, Y and Z, because we've learned from other countries who've been through circumstances like this that this prophylactic kind of way of getting the population to understand what's coming makes it easier to repel it. And I think that we're going to have to learn from the experience of other countries. And so I do think, to your point, there's more going on to create resilience than is probably understood because not all of it is centralized. There's more because that's the way our system is, right? I mean, our system is decentralized. And I can tell you from my political work that this topic with politicians that I talk to, state party leaders, this is very front of mind, everybody. There is no gee, we're going to be surprised kind of thing. We've seen this movie before. But what I think everyone has to realize is that all of this stuff I just described is happening because he's weak and not because he's strong. And that there's a level of. This is sort of pathetic and desperate. And I think people, I think the country is like, kind of sick of this shit. They kind of have seen his. They get it. Like, they understand his play, the playbook. And, you know, he looks like a pathetic figure now. And so I think also part of what we have to do. If you're worried about the elections, there are two things that are important to do now, for us to do now. One is our candidates and our party committees need as much money as possible to communicate in what is going to be a very difficult information environment. Right. This is essential. Earlier money is better than later money. And the second thing is that I had a second thing, and I'm. You know, this is a. I haven't had this conversation that often, but the second thing. Simon. And Simon has support.
- [31:03]
Allison Gill
Independent media.
- [31:04]
Simon Rosenberg
Yeah, support, of course. Well, that's a given, Allison. Right. And.
- [31:08]
Jocelyn Benson
But.
- [31:09]
Simon Rosenberg
But the second thing is that we need to continue to degrade him and delegitimize him and weaken him. And I think that our. I think our political leaders in Washington have done a good job of creating conditions for our electoral and political success. We have this other muscle we need to sort of. We can't just legislate. We now need to degrade and weaken. And what that means for me is that we have to open up as many fronts against him as humanly possible to continue to weaken and undermine and delegitimize the regime. I think the example, the best example of that is the Epstein files, right? Which have just been, I think, fucking devastating for him. And that that scandal has broken out of containment. Their effort to contain it has utterly failed, spectacularly failed. And it's reaching a place where. Of enormous danger. But as in any kind of battle you're in, you don't open up. You don't only play in one front. We need to open up 6, 7, 8, 9 fronts to continue to degrade and weaken them and to do what they do to us, which is to overwhelm us, Right? We need to overwhelm them on offense. And I think that, to me, the great sort of. The other good news, you know, you mentioned a lot of good news at the beginning is the decision by Schumer and Jefferies and the Democratic leaders to fight it out on ice, on raining in ice. The Republicans are screaming we're being unreasonable, right? All this stuff. And, yeah, this is not a time to be fucking reasonable about the terror regime. And what they're trying to build with these mass detention centers. And so I feel like this is a new kind of level that our leaders have gotten to. And my gut is, whatever happens with the ICE fight, they're going to take on other fights like this, because when we have these fights, we get stronger and they get weaker. And I think Schumer and Jeffries now are learning that. I think they learned that in the first government shutdown fight. We got stronger through that, and Trump got weaker. When we fight with him, we get stronger, he gets weaker because he's often in a place where he's fighting against public opinion and against common sense. And so I. Assessing the landscape, right. I ended up giving a long answer, of course, but the. I am. I feel like we are probably further along in developing an effective, opposite ferocious opposition movement than we all understand. And because it's not centralized and that it's now becoming organic. It's becoming organic by these protests in Republican areas against the detention centers and the, and the data centers. It's. It's becoming organic in the farmers and the small business people that have been fighting against the tariffs. There is much more. And I even wrote about this at Hopium this week. The Maha moms, right, which is this thing I can't even believe I'm saying, the Maha moms had a huge break with Trump and they're trashing him unbelievably this week. This is a core, hardcore new constituency of his coalition has gone into open rebellion over him embracing the chemical behind Roundup this week. And, and the other thing that happened this week, right, just to sort of celebrate the growing defiance against him and sort of is that pro life groups have banded together and written a letter and are protesting the treatment of pregnant moms and nursing mothers by ice, which is kind of an unimaginable thing, right, that we now have the pro life movement attacking ice, in addition to all of us attacking ice, Right? And so I think what's happening now, you know, if you haven't seen that video and maybe you can run it, you know, as, as, as part of when you release this, is that there's a Senate candidate in Illinois named Juliana Stratton who released a campaign ad where it's just people saying, fuck Trump. And it's the most amazing video that I've seen. And I think that that sentiment, which is like, fuck this guy. Is becoming like a common sentiment beyond kind of the core Democratic base, where it's like, farmers are like, fuck this guy. Small business people. This guy like, this is becoming like a, you know, something that's like a cultural moment that he's just gone too far, you know, and it's ridiculous what he's asking us to tolerate. So I'm optimistic. I think that we have to be realistic though, that this cycle has unique challenges that we have to manage. And in order to take advantage of the opportunity we have, I believe we can. And I'm feeling a lot better about everything than I was a few weeks ago, certainly.
- [35:56]
Allison Gill
Well, good. I'm glad. Me too. And so, all right, your two things, prepare, degrade. I'm going to add a third. Support independent media. Like you said, they have a chokehold on all sorts of ways to get in the information sphere. As we have seen, there are too many examples to name. So support independent media, I think is important. Thanks everybody for being here on the Midas Touch Network. Thanks to Midas for giving me this platform. You can support Hopium Chronicles and Simon Rosenberg on substack. And for your daily news, you can check out the Daily Beans podcast that's always free. And so I just want to let everybody know I'm going to be off next week from this show, from the Breakdown. I'm actually taking a break and I want to encourage everyone else to take breaks as well because we need to be. We're no good to anybody if we're absolutely exhausted burning the candle at both ends. But anyway, I just wanted to thank you so much for coming on and telling us all about this and I really encourage everybody to subscribe to your substack. So thanks for taking the time today,
- [37:01]
Simon Rosenberg
Allison, it's always a pleasure to be with you and thank you. One of the things I love about your presence on in the media is just how gritty you are and just how forward leaning and you're just in there fighting every day. And that spirit is. Lifts me up when I follow you and hear your commentary. I just, you know, I'm grateful for your spirit and so thank you for, you know, being in this fight and helping lead us these last few years.
- [37:30]
Allison Gill
Thank you, that is so kind. And thanks to all of you for being here. And again, thanks for Midas. Thanks to Midas for, for hosting the show again. I won't see you next week, but I'll see you the week after. Thanks for watching the breakdown.
- [38:14]
Simon Rosenberg
Love this video. Support independent media and unlock exclusive content ad free videos and custom emojis by becoming a paid member of our YouTube channel today. You can also gift memberships to others. Let's keep growing together.
- [38:34]
Amanda Sturgill
It's no surprise that newsmakers try to manipulate the audience. They want you to believe that they are the one holding the line, and they'll use any trick they can to get you there.
- [38:42]
Allison Gill
But don't let them fool you.
- [38:43]
Amanda Sturgill
Get Unspun I'm Amanda Sturgill. I've been a reporter, and today I teach future reporters to cut the spin and think critically about what newsmakers say. My podcast, Unspun, shows you how to know when you're being manipulated by the news, learn to spot the tricks, and how to make up your own mind about what's true. So if you're tired of being fooled by the news, subscribe to Unspun today. Unspun because you deserve the truth.