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- [00:01]
Michael Popok
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. It's been so long. How have you been? Hello. I'm doing well, Dave. Why are you talking that way? Please say one for a compliment or two for a question. Yeah, this is weird. I think I'm gonna go. Talking with an automated phone tree can feel pretty ridiculous. That's why when you call Pacific Source Health Plans, you'll get a real person to answer all your important questions. Pacific Source Health Plans.
- [00:53]
Anthony Davis
This is a real person. How can I help you?
- [00:55]
Michael Popok
Human service, not automated phone trees. Find a plan@pacificsourcemembersfirst.com welcome to the Midas Touch Podcast. Don't adjust that dial or those knobs. You have Anthony Davis. You have Michael Popok for a very good reason. Because, and I'll tell you in a minute, because the brothers were off doing an exclusive interview with President Joe Biden at the White House, along with a lot of our production team. And so they said, hey, Anthony. Hey, Michael. There it is. Can you fill in for the brothers? I've been on the brothers podcast. So has Anthony. We've never hosted it. In lieu of the brothers, we're going to do our best. Trust me, we will. And here's what we're going to cover on this show. Anthony, in case you didn't know, we're going to do the ab. I call it the Disney ABC settlement. Bend over. Everybody owns everybody. Trump owns abc, Disney, and now George Stephanopoulos. And they've decided rather than. They've decided rather than fight the good fight for the First Amendment and for freedom of the press, they would rather pay $16 million to Donald Trump. It sets a terrible, terrible precedent and we can't, we can't allow it. But we're going to talk. We're going to talk more about it. Then we're going to talk about Judge Rashan and the immunity decision. We finally got it. We've got one. One down and one to go. The immunity decision went against Donald Trump, which means we're ever closer to him being sentenced. There's one more motion left. We're going to talk about the 41 page decision that just came out with Judge Mar, I mean literally as we were going on the air then the Republicans and MAGA in the House, they've just got Anthony, they just got mansioned or cinema'd because one of their own, Victoria Spartz, I thought she was one of their own out of Indiana. A Republican congresswoman. Congressperson has now declared that she is not going to caucus with the Republicans. Meaning and she doesn't wanna be on any committees. But then strangely wrote all she wants to work on is government efficiency and work with Elon Musk. Really weird. But what it does to the ever shrinking. I can't even call it a majority anymore. It's, I used to say slim majority but we're down to, we're down to equipoise. I don't even know if it's one. You and I are going to talk about it. I'm going to do the math with you. It may be zero, but that's, that's a new crazy development and what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So we'll talk about what is the heck is going on in what looks to be another do Nothing Congress. The 119th coming in on January 3rd. Alexander Smirnoff, getting a little international here. That's good for us. Alexander Smirnoff, he sounds tasty and delicious but what he really is is a guy who was an FBI informant who lied to the FBI that Joe Biden and his son took a 5 million dollar bribe over the spring and that got all the Oversight committee and the Judiciary Committee on MAGA all hot and bothered. Oh, the Biden crime family. $5 million bribe because of Burisma. Fake, false. And ironically the same prosecutor that nailed Hunter Biden nailed this guy. So Dan Weiss 2 and I don't know what 0 but Alexander Smirnoff just pled guilty to lying about the Biden family. Too little too late in my book. And then you and I are going to talk just at the very end, a little Easter egg here at the top about a new show you and I are going to do that we call wait for it everybody, Global af about how the world is responding good, bad or indifferent to Donald Trump and the incoming presidency. What they can do to rein him in or what they can do to salvage their own economies and governments. We're watching European countries and countries in like Canada starting already to collapse before Donald Trump even takes office. Oh, we have so much to talk about. Anthony. First of all, good close friend of mine, you And I had a long chat yesterday. Didn't expect to be on the horn with you today. But I'm so glad to see you. How are you?
- [04:53]
Anthony Davis
I'm very well. I think I've got over my depression. You know, a lot of people in this arena, undoubtedly the Midas Mighty have been through a kind of a brief period of mourning since the election. But so many things have changed. Positive things. Like I heard today about David Hogg, like, you know, running to be a politician. I mean, these are the types of things that give me the kind of energy to continue and certainly all the messages of support that we've received, as well as the kind of resolve of Midas Touch and the Midas Mighty. And you know, Ben wrote that piece about really kind of not katawing to Trump or any of this drama coming out of the administration. And that motivated me a lot. So I am now fighting the good fight. I'm back on the horse and I am almost looking forward to taking this on in the new year.
- [05:46]
Michael Popok
I agree with you. I don't know what the stages of grief were, but I collapsed them all instantly into anger and fighting back. I had a. I've been to Miami today and I took a plane ride. I mean, I took a cab ride to get to the airport. And I had a very nice conversation with a guy who instantly recognized me from the show, at least my voice. And we had a long chat. He had his own legal AF in the back of this car. And he gave me whatever. I mean, I'm able to meet a lot of people in New York who know the show. He gave me a lot of confidence. He said to me, you know what I like about you and the show? You guys aren't scared of Donald Trump and maybe you should be, but you're not. And it gives me a lot of confidence. And we're not scared. I mean, first of all. Well, we're going to talk about the ABC story in a second. I just want to touch on the amazing get by the Midas Touch network and by Ben Melas and his brothers to have Joe Biden give what normally would be like on 60 Minutes is on the Midas Touch network. And there's a good reason for it. We as an American people can no longer trust, if we ever did corporate or mainstream media to do the right thing, to defend the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. Instead, they're so worried about their stock price, their licenses, their government contracts, depending upon their parent companies. And now you have this whole parade. You know, it's like, they must be given. I don't know, they must be standing in line like a Katz's Deli in New York to get in to see Mar A Lago and kiss his ass. It's like Apple and Facebook and Amazon.
- [07:17]
Anthony Davis
Joe and Mika were first in line.
- [07:19]
Michael Popok
Joe and Mika. I mean, they must bump into each other in the parking lot and away into Mar A Lago. And what we. That means, what we've been saying is true, that independent media that exists on the ecosystem of YouTube, like the Midas Touch Network and all of the channels and things that we do is really the only place because they can't yank my license. I mean, they can try. They can't. They can't. I don't. I don't have a military contract with them. I don't have anything that they can take away from me. And I'm not worried about them like Cash Patel going after, you know, Olivia Troy with threatening, ridiculous demand letters. I don't care about that. I've been a practicing lawyer for 33 years, and I'll defend myself and everybody on this network from false attacks of defamation. There's a big article today. I don't know if you saw it, Anthony, do you see the article in the Times about the new strategy of the MAGA is going to be. And now that they've been successful with ABC and Disney, the new strategy is going to be to use the investigations and defamation actions.
- [08:20]
Anthony Davis
Yeah, well, Steve Bannon spoke about this as well, because there was a gathering at Mar A Lago and Steve Bannon's back in the frame. I mean, he, of course, is the architect of so much of this insanity, including the deconstruction of the administrative state. And, you know, he was in prison. He's out of prison. He should go back to prison. There's this whole thing with him. I mean, they've all got four more of these people. But he basically talked about retribution in such clear language. And it is frightening. And I think that this is what people struggle with. It's like, is it the threat that's frightening? Because invariably the legal letters or the subpoenas, they don't come for ages. It all starts with just these kind of empty, veiled threats. And as you say, if you're not frightened of their rhetoric and if you recognize that, so you know that they're cowards. And ultimately in court, they invariably lose these types of cases because we don't tell lies, we just report the facts. And they are compulsive liars. And so ultimately, the Truth will catch up with them. I want to say something very quickly, Michael, about the, about the media, generally, that kind of media space. You know, because I used to work in the network news in the UK and Europe and stuff. Everybody. I worked for Al Jazeera and I worked for sky and various networks. It's so incestuous. And this is the reason that Joe and Mika were first in line to Mar a Lago. You know, these people have had long term relationships with Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been in the media for so long, 30, 30 years. Odd, right? And so he has been around these very same people who are news anchors, who are channel managers and owners and you know, they all know each other. And so there is history there and we don't have those relationships. And so, you know, we start clean at this point onwards.
- [10:12]
Michael Popok
Well, as we get into the ABC story next, let's just look at, let's look at it this way. Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post and then drowned it in a bathtub. You know, democracy dies in the darkness. Yeah, it died. It died because he has Amazon has 30 billion with a B billion dollars worth of military contracts with the US government. Jeff Bezos parties with Ivanka and Jared, their next door neighbors in Florida, right down the street from where I'm at right now. He was never going to allow the Washington Post to bring down another president the way Catherine Graham did and, or the New York Times did with the Pentagon Papers or with the, or with the Watergate. Never. And neither is the LA Times owner who's a billionaire who wants to. I want all views. I want everything. Yeah.
- [11:02]
Anthony Davis
Meanwhile, you can't endorse Kamala Harris. Jeff Bezos said the same thing for the Washington Post. And you know, these things do have an effect on the election result. And that's why for all the people that are like thinking, you know, was this election rigged from a disinformation perspective? Pretty much. You know, so much disinformation. Buying an election by nature of the huge amount of money. We've never seen an election that had this much money spent on it by people who are not even in politics.
- [11:31]
Michael Popok
And Disney, let's now turn to Disney. Disney, which owns ABC, already got bashed under during the woke era by DeSantis in Florida, even though they sort of won that. Not really. They didn't want to go through it again. Donald Trump in 2017 tried to block, this is known, he tried to block the sale of CNN by Time Warner because he hated the CNN coverage. And ABC and Disney don't want to get on the wrong side of Donald Trump from a First Amendment freedom of speech position. What George Stephanopoulos said in his interview with Nancy Mace, which was consistent with what a federal judge said, that Donald Trump was technically a rapist, was easily defendable in Miami, in the courtroom that I'm in all the time down in the Southern District of Florida, we said that from the beginning on Legal af, they were never going to settle this case. We said, because they're in the right just to bring, you know, I don't want to talk in shorthand for the whole show. I want to bring everybody up to speed. In an interview back in March, Nancy Mace, who's a representative, a lot of people know her now because she won't let a transgender member of Congress use the bathroom of their choice. And she's, she's, I almost said balls out on this. I read some of her social media posts. She's disgusting on the issue. I'll just put it at that. But she's also run for office on a platform that she was a rape survivor. It's public. She talks about it. It's part of her personal story. I have no reason to doubt it. That's not my point. But when George Step Stephanopoulos said to her in an interview, how can you support Donald Trump where at least two juries, federal juries in New York have adjudged him to be? And then he used the R word, he should have said technical rapist, which is what the judge said. And the reason we're hung up on the semantics here and splitting hairs over something ridiculous, because whether you're a sex abuser in New York or you're a rapist in New York, I don't see how you could ever be defamed. I don't know how Donald Trump with his reputation could ever be defamed anyway. You have to have an unsullied reputation in order to be defamed. But the issue is this. In, in, in New York at the time that Eugene Carroll was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, she could not accurately testify to the jury because her eyes were closed because she was being sexually assaulted. She could not tell them what part of Donald Trump was inside of her was whether she was digitally or with a penis. And so the jury said, okay, sexual abuse under the law as it existed in New York at the time. The law has been changed now. It would be rape. And the judge said, when Donald Trump tried the same defamation trick against Eugene Carroll to try to sue the victim in that court case, the judge says, you're not going to. Because she used the R word. The judge says, no, technically you are a rapist. I mean, that is a federal judge. So for Stephanopoulos to say to Nancy Mace, how can you, a rape survivor, support somebody who's been adjudged to be a rapist? That's what this whole thing is about.
- [14:31]
Anthony Davis
Right?
- [14:31]
Michael Popok
For those who don't know now, Nancy Mace is. Did you see Nancy Mace's comments?
- [14:36]
Anthony Davis
Yeah, I mean, she, she has been running a whole story this week, hasn't she? I mean, she's been walking around with her arm in a, in a cast.
- [14:43]
Michael Popok
Yeah. She said that she was shamed as a rape victim, which is ridiculous. And then Jeremy, our producer, do you have the social media post that she just put up today or after the ABC first, first of you, and this is Nancy Mace and now ABC News. We are so back. 2025 will be the year of a mainstream media apologies. Okay, so.
- [15:05]
Anthony Davis
And they love this, don't they? Like, they literally revel in the idea that the mainstream media is going to do a huge backtrack because they, you know, they've finally got their comeuppance. Well, the play out like that.
- [15:18]
Michael Popok
Well, what you said earlier is right. The interarum, the terror effect of making comments like this is what they want. They want the media to think twice about running any story. Whereas in the past it was like, you know, we are the media. We're the fourth estate. We are freedom of the press. Forget it, that is over. And the only place left is independent journalism and independent media platforms. Because nobody knew what you and I were going to say today.
- [15:48]
Anthony Davis
Right.
- [15:49]
Michael Popok
Let alone tell us what to say.
- [15:51]
Anthony Davis
Trump was asked earlier today at this press conference that he gave at Mar A Lago about, you know, would he seek retribution? Would he go after. And they actually said, you know, the questioner basically said, would you go after the YouTubers and, you know, smaller organizations? And he goes, well, the newspapers, yes, but we've identified some others that we're going after. And he says, yes, we have to. We have to. The problem is that this is the playbook of authoritarianism. And because we don't have any examples of authoritarianism in the United States from recent history, certainly these few generations that are currently watching this, you don't know necessarily that what he's saying falls under the banner of authoritarianism, but it does. This is the language of the dictators of history. This is the language of these characters that he hates us comparing him to the Hitlers and The Mussolinis and the Stalins, he hates that. But the reality is that if you go down the road of the press is the enemy of the people, and saying fake news, fake news for nearly 10 years, that is going to have some corrosive effect on the media's ability to take part in the democratic process. And a true democracy is having a free press that can hold the authorities to account. And Trump is going to do away with that. So we are now living in that kind of post apocalyptic world that we've been warning about. It's actually happened. His words today confirm the fact that that is the environment we are now living in. And we used to look to, we used to look to the Soviet Union and go, well, you know, that stuff will never happen here. It is happening here.
- [17:36]
Michael Popok
I don't know who the, I think the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and investigative reporting. I don't even know who you handed out to anymore. Right. Certainly not in America. You can't trust any of them. I mean, look, here's the settlement that just happened. Just to round out this discussion Ben and I did on Legal af, an update on the story. We said, oh, all right. The magistrate federal judge is ordering Donald Trump to sit for deposition this coming week. And for Stephanopoulos, okay, four hour deposition. Fine, do that. And then ABC, you and your white shoe, $5,000 an hour, lawyers, file your motion for summary judgment. You're going to win on the First Amendment and put this thing to bed and set the right precedent that you're not going to a cow town, put your neck voluntarily under the boot of Donald Trump and instead, not only do we get an announcement of a settlement, it's $16 million, $15 million for a presidential museum. It's like, this is like Madame Tussauds.
- [18:38]
Anthony Davis
Well, it was supposed to be a library, but Trump. But interestingly, do you know why they chose the number 15 million?
- [18:47]
Michael Popok
No. I'm drunk and hate it.
- [18:50]
Anthony Davis
That is the annual salary of George. That's what he gets paid every year. They RECKON he's worth $100 million. I mean, I don't know why. No disrespect to journalists, but I don't know that they're worth that much money in this case. You know, they've chosen his annual salary to use as.
- [19:09]
Michael Popok
That's a very good point. I didn't know that one. I didn't know, though. Well, look, and the million, they didn't rack up a million dollars in attorney's fees. I know the lawyer that he's using in coral Gables there's no way they racked it up on how limited the work's been done in this case at all on one set of motion practice. And they had a very good judge, Judge Altenaga, who I know well, she's the chief judge of the Southern District. I knew her when she was a Miami Dade County Circuit Court judge at state court. She's very good. They had the right judge, they have the right facts, they have the right law. They just didn't want to tangle with Donald Trump on the way in. They wanted to make nice and so Stephanopoulos had to agree. I'm sure they all got in a room and the Ben just did some reporting about some secret meetings between ABC executives and Donald Trump at some point. And, and now you, and now you understand it all. But, but look, we're, we're going to talk about, we'll talk a little bit more about the White House coverage by and, and why I think Midas got it and no one else got it. This last interview or one of the last interviews for Joe Biden. They're going to talk about this. Breaking news happened like a half an hour, an hour before to the air, which is Judge Maran as expected, ruled on and against Donald Trump. He found that the immunity decision by the United States Supreme Court from July has no impact at all on the evidence that was allowed into the convict to the trial that led to the conviction and therefore he denied it. We're not done yet. There's one more motion coming. We'll talk more about that on the other side of the break as well as what is going on with the Republican MAGA. 0 majority now in the House with Victoria Spartz, person I never heard of and now she's Ukrainian.
- [20:48]
Anthony Davis
She's a Ukrainian. She actually voted against more aid to Ukraine. So that's a whole other, you know.
- [20:55]
Michael Popok
More than I do. You'll take over that one and then we'll talk about Alexander Smirnoff and things that are going on around the world. But one of the things that keeps this globe spinning and this Midas Touch network spinning because we don't have outside investors is our sponsors. And thank God they were all or thank whoever they were all here after the election and doubled down on supporting independent and fair minded reporting and commentary and journalism like we're doing here on the Midas Touch network. So let's take our first ad break.
- [21:26]
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- [22:32]
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- [24:34]
Michael Popok
And we are back. All right. So Anthony or for those that are just coming in midstream, the brothers are at the White House.
- [24:45]
Anthony Davis
No big deal.
- [24:45]
Michael Popok
No big deal, right? Midas Touch got the exclusive interview. Got to get with President Joe Biden. We'll work on it. There you go. Jeremy loves this posting. And then we will. And then it will end up on the Midas Touch network when it is ready. So let's talk about a new order that just came out by Judge Marshawn. 34 felony count conviction. Anthony Wright of Donald Trump. All that's left is the sentencing. The jury spoke 12 jurors, 12 zero. In New York, he got convicted 34 times. That's a lot.
- [25:20]
Anthony Davis
And he wanted to have it overturned because of the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity. So that was his leverage. Right?
- [25:28]
Michael Popok
Well, right. I mean at some point after he was convicted, at no time did he raise supremacy clause issues except over a couple of witnesses during the trial. He never raised, they never raised it in motion practice. He never raised any immunity or supremacy clause. But then he got this great ruling in July afterwards before he was sentenced and he asked the judge to let briefing happen about it. The judge was about to enter this order on 12 November. But the after the election, the other side and the Manhattan DA both joined together and said to the judge, well, there's been an election. Maybe that's changed some of the analysis.
- [26:09]
Anthony Davis
Give us time to a lot of people off. Didn't it that.
- [26:11]
Michael Popok
Yeah, he was ready to. He was. He already wrote this, this 41 page order that just came out. He wrote this already. He was ready to issue it on the 12th against Donald Trump. I am convinced there's a copy of it. So we had a wait and the judge says you want to bring another motion? What's your other motion? And there's a unique, there's, there's a, a criminal procedure law in New York that allows for trying to overturn a conviction or throw out a conviction on kind of equity and justice grounds. But you got to have these factors in order to do it. Judge says, all right, submit your, you, you Trump, you submit your motion on equity grounds and you Manhattan DA, you oppose it and that's it. It's the only papers I want and then I'll get around to ruling on that. So that has been fully briefed. And I think that's a dead loser for Donald Trump. And what I said when we covered it on legal AF is there's the immunity decision that's still out there. We're waiting on that. And now we don't have to wait any longer. So 41 pages came out. I won't bury the lead. Denied effectively. The judge reminded Donald Trump and his lawyers that they already conceded that the conduct that's at the heart of the criminal prosecution is not presidential, which takes it out of the entire kind of framework of the immunity decision from July because that was all over official versus unofficial and what is out the outer boundaries and what's core constitutional and presidential function for immunity grants. But the judge says we don't have to get to any of that. Cause you've already conceded in your moving your motion practice that what you did before you were elected in 2016 in the conspiracy to bury the Stormy Daniels sex act.
- [27:57]
Anthony Davis
I love that this all goes back to Stormy Daniels. It's kind of brilliant, isn't it, that she is at the center of this entire storyline.
- [28:06]
Michael Popok
Yes. And the election interference that went his first round of election interference. And the judge said since you've already conceded that, the only issue then for me is whether you waived the issue because you didn't raise it properly on, you know, sort of, sort of that procedural issue and even on the merits, whether the evidence that I let in from some of your White House connected people after you got elected and some testimony after you were already in the White House, whether that impacted the jury or his harmless error. And did you get a chance to read it?
- [28:38]
Anthony Davis
No.
- [28:38]
Michael Popok
All right, so let me. I don't want the audience to go Popox just talking over and I'm good, I'm good. I had a chance to read it and I don't think Anthony did. So here's the ruling. The judge found that he that Donald Trump did not properly preserve many of his arguments. Particularly he said he it was not preserved as to Michael Cohen the immunity issue because he never raised it. It was not Preserved as to Madeline Westerhoot, who was his executive assistant in the White House. And it was those two were no only hope hicks did they find it was properly preserved. But the judge says, I'm going to, I'm going to just look beyond that. I'm going to act like you did preserve it. And now I'm going to rule on the merits. And the merits are that the evidence that came in is not, is not immune. It's not about your official conduct. It's about your, your private affairs, literally your private acts, which are not covered by immunity. And even if that weren't the case, the judge said this is what we call harmless error. Given the volume and the mountains of evidence and testimony against Donald Trump. These little snippets from Michael Cohen about checks being written in the White House and made and Madeline Westerhood about scheduling meetings for Donald Trump and no picks about. We were really concerned about certain things during the campaign is it was not the reason that Donald Trump got convicted. So immunity decision is in. Donald Trump has a way to appeal it. He can take it up to the two courts in New York State courts doesn't like the rulings there. He can take it over to the United States Supreme Court. But we're still waiting on the issue of whether the second motion. I think now the second motion's dead, which is just throw it out because I won. I mean, it's effectively that just throw out the convictions and all the jury's hard work because I won the election. That's not how that works. So once he clears that out, here's the question for you, Anthony. Does he's got time to sentence. Even if he postpones the actual start of the sentence, he can actually sentence Donald Trump before the inauguration. Do you think he does?
- [30:52]
Anthony Davis
Well, I think he should.
- [30:54]
Michael Popok
Right.
- [30:54]
Anthony Davis
And this, I think, is the bone of contention that came when this delay was announced a few weeks ago is that everybody thought, well, when is this guy going to get caught up with. Because the thing about Trump and MAGA Republicans is that they're all pleading, you know, this is a witch hunt. This is a witch hunt. But most people never have any connection with law enforcement. We're never arrested, we're never arraigned, we're never in court. We're just that world, that kind of criminal world is not something that most people are ever connected to. And yet Donald Trump, his whole life has been around this. Invariably, he's got away with things because he has paid people off. He has enough money to get lawyers and so, you know, he's basically been able to buy his way out of trouble for decades. But that's why it's so frustrating for those of us who are law abiding to see these kind of lifelong criminals who somehow they're so slimy, they slip through the fingers of justice. And I think that that's really the hardest part, or the hardest lesson from this is that yet again, it feels like the white male, rich and powerful are getting away with everything. And yet, you know, you go look at the number of young black men incarcerated for marijuana, and it's, it's just so unjust. And, you know, I keep saying it and I keep defaulting back to this position that the United States really is a lawless country. And the only law, as I see, or the only kind of rules, as I see, are those who can afford expensive lawyers to fight cases for them.
- [32:43]
Michael Popok
This is why you and I are going to have a great new show. Yes. Because we don't agree on everything.
- [32:49]
Anthony Davis
Yeah.
- [32:50]
Michael Popok
But we do it in a respectful way that I think people are going to find really interesting. You and I are going to do a show come the first of the year, beginning of the year, called Global af, where we're going to a little pitch there. You and I have been talking about it for two years. Remember, we literally was two years ago. Yeah. About how. And now's the time. About. About Trump's impact on the rest of the world and the rest of the world's impact on Trump and how the.
- [33:14]
Anthony Davis
Rest of the world is clamoring to protect itself from a future Trump regime. Notice I never say the word administration because that's intentional.
- [33:24]
Michael Popok
But we're, we're, we're a very short amount of time away from the inauguration. France's government looks like it could fall. Germany's government just fell.
- [33:34]
Anthony Davis
Correct.
- [33:34]
Michael Popok
Canada's finance minister just dropped out because of a dispute with Trudeau about how to handle Donald Trump. Right.
- [33:42]
Anthony Davis
You left out South Korea.
- [33:46]
Michael Popok
South Korea is martial law. Didn't work. So now they're going to. Now they impeach the guy. But this is the kind of things I think are important to kind of expand the reach of Midas Touch and your work and my work and bring it to that next level. So, everybody, we're not ready to announce a date and time for it yet, but Global AF is on its way. Let's talk about, and I want to debate with you there, where I'm going to have you come on Legal AF to talk about lawlessness. Yes. Yeah. I just don't completely agree with you. It doesn't mean.
- [34:17]
Anthony Davis
Well, it's hard for you because A, you're an American, so you're institutionalized, B, you're a lawyer so you have a vested interest in justice and C, ca But from my perspective, you know, I come from a country that is a lot less litigious than the United States. People do not sue each other. It just doesn't work like that. And you know, here just to hear like states suing each other and weird stuff like that or it just, it just makes no sense. We're all supposed to be on the same team.
- [34:49]
Michael Popok
Yeah. We'll save it for global af. But when I was a global head of something, I had a fair amount of litigation that I supervised in the UK but will.
- [34:57]
Anthony Davis
But it's like copyright and patent law.
- [35:00]
Michael Popok
Yeah, yeah. It's financial services stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:02]
Anthony Davis
And financial services is all that really comes out of the UK and weapons of mass destruction, but that's about it, you know.
- [35:10]
Michael Popok
Well, at least your country is productive. And what's not productive, look at this segue is going to be the 119th Congress. I thought the 118th Congress was a do nothing Congress. Wait till you see what's on the menu for the 119th. Mike Johnson. He thought well all right, I got my four or five whatever it was as we're waiting for Cal invariably for California to finally get it's. I don't know why it takes so long for so long for them to count votes.
- [35:38]
Anthony Davis
But San Diego was still, still going a couple of days ago.
- [35:42]
Michael Popok
The dust finally settled and it looked to be three or four seat majority. And then Donald Trump decided to put Elise Stefanik in as UN Ambassador and she's. And the governor of New York is a Democrat. So there goes. So now you had a three seat lead or so Elise Stefanic is gone. Then he decided to put. Let me get my list right. Who else? There's two more that he put in. He put in Mike Waltz as national security adviser and, and Lori Chavez as labor. So there went. There went the lead. And now you've got Victoria Spartz who I want you to talk about because you seem to know a lot about her. A Republican from an Indiana congressional district who had the weirdest. If Jeremy has it, let's put it up has the weirdest social media post I've ever seen. I am not, I'm going to stay a registered Republican, but I'm not going to caucus with the Republicans, meaning she's not going to Vote with them. Until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing. Well, good luck, because the 118th didn't govern. They did a lot of investigations. They did a lot of hearings. I learned a lot about Hunter Biden's pictures and laptops. Yeah, but then put it back up for a minute, Jeremy, so I can read it. I do need to be involved in circuses. I do not need to be involved in circuses. I'd rather spend my time helping Doge. That's Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency, and Representative Thomas Massie to save our republic, as was mandated by the American people. So weird. That's Ron Philip Kowski of our. Of our Midas Touch Network. Because here's what it means. Just to unpack that. If she's not gonna go on committees, which is where all the hard work comes from, it's on committees, voting things out of committee. Until then it gets to the floor. It shapes our laws. So if you're not gonna be on committees like Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn't. Wasn't either for a lot of time there, and you're not gonna caucus with the Republicans, meaning they can't count on your vote, then effectively she is the mansion and cinema for the Republicans, because they. That. That just for me means that Hakeem Jeffries is effectively the speaker of the House because they're not going to get anything big passed in the House without the Democrats. And they. And how many times the Democrats bail out Speaker Johnson and the Republicans in the last year alone? Many times.
- [38:13]
Anthony Davis
Well, he knows that he needs them. And so it's hard for Speaker Johnson because he tries to play the tough guy, but he ain't a tough guy, as we know. He's kind of an impish, wimpish little Rumpelstiltskin of a character and who has his son. Check out his social media, apparently, to make sure he's not looking at any adult sites. One of the weirdest stories I ever read. But that aside, he is having to kind of play that fine line. Now, you know, I am of the opinion because specifically. And if we just look at that social media post again, there is so much contradiction in there, because at the top, she's talking about not wanting to sit on committees or participate in the caucus. But then in the second breath, she's saying, I want to help Doge and Thomas Massie. Well, Thomas Massie is a disaster. And he ain't going to be saving the Republic. And Doge, as we know, is. It's just Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk who are going to just be arguing with each other. I have never seen those two men in the same room. I don't even think they know each other. I don't know if you've noticed, if you do a Google search on those two guys, there isn't a single photo. No, there isn't a single photo of those two men together. So they're both egomaniacs. They're going to kill each other. So undoubtedly Doge is either going to fall apart or only one of them will survive. And they're claiming that they want to pull $2 trillion out of the, or $3 trillion out of the national spend. That's going to mean.
- [39:44]
Michael Popok
When you hear that, by the way, when you hear that that's your entitlements, that's Social Security, food, Medicare and Medicaid, because that's what it is.
- [39:53]
Anthony Davis
And it's also the firing of so many people who work for the federal government. And so a huge number of people are going to be out of work. So that, again, is a disaster. And they don't care. I mean, look, Elon Musk has a history of firing people. Just look at Twitter becoming X and him having no emotional skin in the game and just firing everybody. So I'm very much of the opinion that all of that is going to end in disaster. But what's interesting with this individual, this character, she, who we shall name Victoria Spa. She, I mean, she wasn't even going to run. She, she, she ran and then she won. This is in Indiana. And so now she kind of feels like she has a little bit of. A little bit of leverage. I think she might be one of these egomaniacs who's just trying to play for a little publicity. I mean, Cinema and Mansion were very much like that.
- [40:47]
Michael Popok
Tell me about.
- [40:48]
Anthony Davis
It was all about them.
- [40:49]
Michael Popok
Tell me about the Ukraine connection, which I didn't, I didn't. I didn't know she was Ukrainian. I didn't know she was against the aid to Ukraine, therefore pro Russia.
- [40:58]
Anthony Davis
Well, it's. Yeah, it's hard to know, isn't it? Because if, you know, she's. You don't know how she has been whipped. You know, this is a British phrase. I hope you use that in American politics. But you know, the. Ultimately, her personal opinion on Ukraine, I mean, it's the same as George Stephanopoulos. We don't know what he thinks, but clearly he's been required to make a decision. And it's the same with her. Maybe she was made to kind of vote in that direction. But her personal opinion, I guess I would think if she is a Republican. And as we know, most Republicans now tend to be kind of far right MAGA Republicans gone to the days of your grandfather's conservative party. And so I'm just of the opinion that she's, you know, just rolling with the team on that one. But maybe she felt like she wanted to claw something back for herself. There's two types of people that go into public office. There's people who genuinely want to make a difference and then there's the egomaniacs hungry for power. So we don't know this person well enough to know which category she falls into. But I worry with people like Cinema and Manchin, two very, very complex and dangerous individuals, say one thing, do another, then the next day they've relocated their political position completely. They're slippery, they're snakes, and there's always plenty of them in American politics.
- [42:25]
Michael Popok
Well, the good news is that I believe that Donald Trump and those that are coming into power with him have underestimated the amount of levers that need to be pulled in order to run a government. And he only has, I know it seems like an interminable period, but he only has four years. It's actually less than that if we crush him. The midterms.
- [42:49]
Anthony Davis
Yeah.
- [42:49]
Michael Popok
And, and we, and I believe we will. I, I don't believe, and you've heard me say this before, I don't believe we just witnessed the magification of the United States and it just all went red. It had to do with the economy. It had to do with people not being enthusiastic enough to come to the polls. And it had to do with some social issues where our narrative and our brand took a hit. But that can easily be resolved if the Democratic Party in fair minded people focus on it. But Donald, here's, here's. So the good news is they're never going to be able to rid the government of all the civil servants and all the people that actually operate the government in the amount of time they have on the clock. MAGA Congress is going to be so tied up with their almost non existent majority where they're going to have to rely heavily on Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats who are disciplined and taught taught that by Nancy Pelosi. By the way, poor Nancy Pelosi slipped down some stairs in Luxembourg how to get, how to get a hip replacement.
- [43:48]
Anthony Davis
But at least she got a hip replaced in Europe and not in America. That's the advantage to that. She's a Health tourist.
- [43:58]
Michael Popok
This is going to be a good show for you and me, this global af. I see it already.
- [44:02]
Anthony Davis
I know I'd much rather have my hip fixed in Luxembourg than in the United States. I would just.
- [44:06]
Michael Popok
Yeah, but poor Nancy. And then her husband gets his head covered. I know it's been a bad couple of years, but she, she's taught the Democrats and Hakeem Jeffries how to keep their party together in opposition. She's been in opposition before. She's still speaker emeritus. She's going to help. Believe me. Nobody has sharper elbows that knows how to run that halls of Congress better than her. Donald Trump knows that. And the reason he's so reliant, he's going to be so reliant and this is a good thing for the, for the legal side of this show. He's going to be so reliant on executive orders. But executive orders are the mo Are the weakest of power for a president. They're easy to write and they're easy to sign, but they're hard to defend because you have to make sure that you haven't crossed over and breached the separation of powers, that it aligns with a law that's already on the books by Congress, that it's within your wheelhouse of a constitutional power. And Donald Trump screwed it up the first time around and he's going to screw it up again. Which gives us an avenue of attack, an angle of attack to take these executive orders into Democratic controlled federal judges and federal circuits. Yes, it all times out at the United States Supreme Court. But we can tie him. 4 years is not a lot. We can tie his policies and him up in knots over the first two years as we come into the midterms, crush him at the midterms and make him as, as quickly lame duck as possible. And then it, then the third year of his administration, there'll be the mad scramble between JD Vance and Nikki Haley and people we haven't even thought about and Ron DeSantis and everybody else and Joni Ernst to try to get the mantle and run for, you know, and run against whoever the Democrats are. And we have a very strong bench, a very young, nice bench of 50 and early 60 year olds who are, who are ready to run, including Kamala Harris, should she try again.
- [46:03]
Anthony Davis
Yeah. But another example of that is Trump's threats about mass deportation where he was talking about wanting to deport what was, what was the number? 13 million or something like that.
- [46:14]
Michael Popok
Yes.
- [46:15]
Anthony Davis
To do that would take at least a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars, and he ain't going to be spending that much money on deportation. Also, it would involve the military. You just couldn't do it with, with the kind of ICE enforcement that you have now. So a little bit like he's kind of threats to journalists. I think the threats about deportation are just that. They are threats. They are designed to scare people, but they were also designed to make people who are a little bit racist and xenophobic vote for him by thinking, yeah, let's get rid of anybody who doesn't look like me. And so that's kind of worked for him, but again, he's just not going to be able to do it. And then the other thing I would say, and you know, there's so many avenues to talk about here, but I'm not convinced that Donald Trump wants to do the work. You know, he, to me, is checked out. He wanted to get over the finish line so that he could get out of these legal cases. That really was all he wanted to do.
- [47:18]
Michael Popok
Agreed with you.
- [47:19]
Anthony Davis
He doesn't want to work. And so he's going to be playing an awful lot of golf. And, you know, and the Democrats are not going to be playing golf. They're going to be very, very focused on either fighting in Congress or fighting in court. And so I think that he's going to end up delegating to people who are unsavory. And I worry about some of the people that he will delegate to because they might have much more extreme or they do have more extreme views. I mean, he doesn't really have any views. Remember, he'll just say whatever is necessary to whichever audience is facing him. But the people around him, Stephen Miller, who's, you know, now the sidekick for policy, I mean, I saw.
- [48:01]
Michael Popok
But Trump doesn't like to be shown up either. He doesn't like to be. He doesn't like being.
- [48:05]
Anthony Davis
Well, that's why J.D. vance is missing in action. Right? It's like that guy's gone. Elon Musk now is the vice president, acting vice president elect, it seems. So that's going to be very interesting is how much fight he has, because even this press conference he gave last night, it's kind of impromptu thing at Mar a Lago. He was moving slow. You know, he is knackered. And I, and I get as well as bonkers. Two great words.
- [48:32]
Michael Popok
Right.
- [48:33]
Anthony Davis
And I get the feeling that he is going to do as little as possible just to maintain. He likes to pretend he's like an actor. Right? He's like a TV actor. Playing the president. He just wants to play that president role again and have people suck up to him. And that's why it's so frustrating that the, you know, the media is already collapsing in on itself to please and.
- [48:55]
Michael Popok
Those in favor of democracy and the lawyers around them. We had a dress rehearsal for four years in 2016-2020 and we know what to do now. The federal courts are a little bit harder these days because Donald Trump got a lot of maga right wing federalists.
- [49:11]
Anthony Davis
Especially in Biden's got a whole bunch of fresh ones in there too.
- [49:14]
Michael Popok
Biden's got a whole bunch of fresh ones. There's some that are unretiring. We'll talk about that after we come back from a break. I love that there's three judges who basically I'm 70. I thought I was leaving, but now that you're screwing around with my appointment for my replacement, I'm going to stay. And it's driving MAGA nuts. You know what else drives MAGA nuts? The Midas Touch Network. They love attacking us. They love, you know, you get a lot of comments on Substack from Ben when he writes these great Midas plus things. By the way, numbers of way people always ask me, and it's in the chat too, how do we support you guys? You people, how do you, how do we support the network? How do we keep it up and running? There's a number of ways. One is you're here already on the Midas Touch Network. Take a moment if you haven't already and hit that subscribe button. It's free. Most of the things I'm going to talk about here are absolutely free. That's one. Support the contributors like Anthony and me in our shows that are on the network. Anthony, plug your the shows that you.
- [50:13]
Anthony Davis
Have on the network, I have uncovered on Wednesday with my friend Ron Filipkowski and on Sunday, the weekend show where we do deep dive conversations with some of the great brains around the world. And that's always fascinating.
- [50:26]
Michael Popok
So how did I get on that? How did I get on that show?
- [50:28]
Anthony Davis
You've been on a couple of times. You know, I always just make space for you when there's a cancellation, you know.
- [50:34]
Michael Popok
Yeah, that's true. Then we've got Legal AF in various versions. We've got the Wednesday edition. I do with Karen Friedman. Karen Friedman in the news for very good reasons. She's defending Luigi Mangione, the person who's been accused of killing the United Healthcare CEO. I'm hoping she'll do midweek with me this week I think she's going to. And I think we're going to be able to talk about parts of it. So tune into Legal AF midweek for Karen Freeman, fresh off the the the. The press clamoring for more kfa. We got her exclusively on the Midas Touch Network. On Saturdays, I do Legal AF with Ben My Salas, who I co founded the show with. We got a Legal AF YouTube channel called Legal AF MTN from Midas Touch Network. And then I'm curating a lot of stuff over there, six or seven videos a day and some new shows that we're doing. So you can go over there, help us build that pro democracy channel we've got. Midas has a substack, it's called Midas plus, where you can get a version of this show without ads and the version of Legal AF without ads over there on midasubstack.
- [51:40]
Anthony Davis
Can I plug my substack? Is it a good time?
- [51:44]
Michael Popok
Whatever you like.
- [51:45]
Anthony Davis
Well, it just started, so it's pretty small right now, so it needs a little bit of growth. But yeah, the Anthony Davison on substack. And I'm writing like personal thoughts, so not stuff that necessarily is connected to 5 minute news or the other work that I do. And I wrote a blog last night about these drones in New Jersey and I kind of predicted what I thought is actually happening down there. And then today I heard that two idiots got arrested and I was like, I think I might have got that story right for a change because I did not predict the election correctly.
- [52:17]
Michael Popok
You're one for one. And then, and then, of course, we've got our sponsors. And I don't want to make too light of this, but the sponsors are part of the lifeblood of what keeps our lights on. There's no other way to put it without them that this wouldn't, this whole thing wouldn't happen. And so we, we test out these products, we get these products. We turn down advertisers that we don't think fit. We fire advertisers like Washington Post that we didn't want out here any longer for various reasons. And so listen to the ads, listen to the products. If you can afford them, you know, try them out. If you can't, you can. I understand that. I'm not trying to, I'm not a huckster, but they are. And they know what we do here on Midas Touch and they know it on Legal AF and Weekend and all the shows. And they're like, we're in. We want to talk and address that audience. And we're a very unique audience and we're very respectful of our audience. So that's a long winded way of saying, here's a word from our sponsors.
- [53:17]
C
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- [54:58]
E
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- [56:18]
Michael Popok
Now, for all I know, that Moink ad read by Ben may have caught the eye of the Biden administration and led to the interview. I'm just.
- [56:28]
Anthony Davis
I think it was.
- [56:29]
Michael Popok
I'm spitballing. Yeah.
- [56:31]
Anthony Davis
Hopefully Ben showed up with like half a dozen stakes in his. In his back.
- [56:35]
Michael Popok
All right, so we're back on the Midas Touch podcast. People might think, what happened? Popak and Davis hijacked the show.
- [56:44]
Anthony Davis
We might come.
- [56:45]
Michael Popok
We might try it again, knock them out, come in and run the show for a little bit. We're having fun here, though. So look, let's get international, you and me. Just leave it at that. Let's get international about Alexander Smirnoff and his. As an FBI informant. We did a lot of coverage on it. I might as touch. You might have also.
- [57:10]
Anthony Davis
Yeah.
- [57:10]
Michael Popok
About his testimony, because it was like bombshell testimony. Could you imagine a guy coming out and saying to the FBI and to what a special prosecutor that was prosecuting Hunter Biden at the time. I've got news for you. Hunter and Joe took a $5 million bribe. I think it was a piece. Right. And a payoff from Burisma, and it's part of the corruption scandal. And. And Dan. Dan Weiss, special prosecutor, was like, go on. And then James Comer and Jim Jordan and the MAGA Oversight and Judiciary Committee.
- [57:46]
Anthony Davis
They got so excited about it.
- [57:47]
Michael Popok
Oh, they got so. It was like a wet dream. The f. They finally found it. The $5 million bribe scandal. Now, look, let me. Let me just tell you why. I don't know. I don't mean our audience. I mean others. When did they suspend critical thinking Joe Biden. You can say a lot about Joe Biden, okay? You can have your own respectful criticism of Joe Biden and his career in the 80s, in the 90s, things that he was responsible for. You know, we could talk about Clarence Thomas. We can talk about busing. Busing. We can talk about three strikes and you're out. We can talk about a lot of things if you want to be critical of Joe Biden in his evolution as a politician. But one thing you have to give the guy credit for, he's been in the public eye for 50 years. He was the youngest senator we ever had. He was the oldest president we ever had, and everything in between. The media has had the ability to X ray and acid test pressure, wash Joe Biden for 50 years, and they've come up with nothing in terms of corruption because he's not corrupt. So all of a sudden, because Mag is in Congress, Joe Biden is now, you know, a mobster taking $5 million bribes. Come on.
- [59:08]
Anthony Davis
I mean, so offensive. That phrase Biden crime family is so offensive because it's all projection coming from the Trump crime family. And, you know, the other thing that people fail to remember is that Joe Biden has experienced so much loss and grief in his life. And, you know, that changes people. Not that he necessarily needed changing, but it is the measure of the man. I mean, the fact that he went straight back to work and kind of pushed through the grief of losing his wife and daughter in this car accident and then losing his son years later. I mean, and that also contributes to Hunter Biden's addiction. Hunter Biden's first memory of Beau Biden was waking up in a hospital bed next to him when they were kids after the car accident.
- [59:58]
Michael Popok
Yeah, they were in the car crash.
- [60:00]
Anthony Davis
They were in the car crash. And they. And they lost their sister and they lost their mom. I mean, it's unprecedented. And to come back from that, you know, they might. They might have a famous name now, but they are still only human.
- [60:14]
Michael Popok
Joe Biden almost did not take the seat because that car accident happened around Christmas time.
- [60:20]
Anthony Davis
Yeah.
- [60:21]
Michael Popok
And he was going to be sworn in for that January 3rd date as a new senator, as a young senator. And he thought about not doing it because just several weeks before, he lost his wife and one of his children and had a scramble to create a support system while he was still obviously grieving. And Joe Biden should be on Mount Rushmore as a civil servant. Right, Right. Just for everything that he's done. Vice president to the first African American president and a Strong partner and supporter of Barack Obama.
- [60:56]
Anthony Davis
I mean, and someone who's pivoted as well. You mentioned the evolution. I mean, how many other politicians can you count that have pivoted and evolved in a way that Joe Biden has, considering that he was born like 200 years ago when the world was very different?
- [61:12]
Michael Popok
I mean, the fact that you even mentioned busing, where Kamala Harris had to take him on in the debate. Right, right. About. I was that little girl, Joe. I was like, wow, so far. He was way back then, huh? But, but my point is, it just chaps my backside to hear MAGA try to destroy Joe Biden, force him not to run for reelection, effectively along with the media complicity. The complicity of the media. And then we're gonna talk about Alexander Smirnoff, who just pled guilty because he's a phony informant who lied in order to curry favor with the FBI. Dan Weiss, the prosecutor, believed it for a while, the Hunter Biden prosecutor. And then, of course, MAGA went crazy with it. And they spent so much time with public hearings over it and money as well.
- [62:03]
Anthony Davis
The cost of the cost of hearings.
- [62:06]
Michael Popok
Where is the apology? Where is the apology to Joe Biden?
- [62:10]
Anthony Davis
Forget that.
- [62:10]
Michael Popok
You can.
- [62:11]
Anthony Davis
You can forget that. But the other thing that Smirnoff did, which I thought was very interesting, is he claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in the Ukraine capital where he'd stayed was wired and under their control. And he said that that information had been passed along to him by four high level Russian officials. Except Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine. So there was this whole kind of.
- [62:37]
Michael Popok
Easily, easily, easily, easily debunked. Right?
- [62:42]
Anthony Davis
So. But I get this feeling that whenever the MAGA Republicans get a little morsel of potential evidence or something, because their entire remit is to own the libs. The detail is irrelevant as long as you own the libs. And that's what they use this guy for.
- [63:03]
Michael Popok
So you're saying libs like liberals.
- [63:05]
Anthony Davis
Right, the libs. Liberals.
- [63:06]
Michael Popok
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so make sure people heard it right. Not lips.
- [63:09]
Anthony Davis
Not Liv Tyler or lips.
- [63:11]
Michael Popok
Right.
- [63:11]
Anthony Davis
Or lips even. Yeah, yeah.
- [63:13]
Michael Popok
The libs of the libs. Well, listen, I think this is one of the reasons I remember two years ago, I was, I think, well, on holiday, you know, when I'm just taking a stroll and I called you from wherever I was at. I was out of the country somewhere with my wife, and I said, hey, Anthony. Right?
- [63:36]
Anthony Davis
I was like, what's he phoning me for?
- [63:38]
Michael Popok
Right, right, right. Or I Texted you first. I said, I got an idea, and I think, you know, I'd love to do it with you. And at the time, it wasn't like the right time. This Global Afghanistan. What's now. What now we're referring to working title Global af. I think it'll be the title. And, you know, we were very focused as a network on not insular, just focused on things that were happening here and with Trump and with the resistance and all, and then pivoting to helping to try to get Kamala elected, you know, with our, you know, in our. In our. With providing good information and pure information. But now, you know, the global impact of Donald Trump's return to power, and we're watching it. I mean, it's already in real time. It's not even like we have to hypothesize.
- [64:28]
Anthony Davis
And he's not even the president yet.
- [64:30]
Michael Popok
He's not even the president yet. And Canada is in turmoil. Germany is in turmoil, France is in turmoil.
- [64:37]
Anthony Davis
You know, and he's gone to war with Mexico and Canada over trade.
- [64:41]
Michael Popok
Absolutely. While he invites the Chinese president to come to his inauguration.
- [64:47]
Anthony Davis
I mean, I'm surprised that Putin's not already on the invite list. This is what we're going to discover in the coming weeks and months. And, you know, there was some kind of fancy MAGA Republican celebratory event for the election in New York last night, and Steve Bannon was talking about wanting Donald Trump to run again in 2028 and actually saying it seriously.
- [65:10]
Michael Popok
Oh, this was the Young Republicans dinner.
- [65:12]
Anthony Davis
Yeah. He said, Mike Davis, the Viceroy, said, since it doesn't actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in 28. And Trump has alluded exactly the same thing. And I actually just want to quote Steve Bannon from that thing last night, because this is these very scary words. He said, we want retribution and we're going to get retribution. You have to. It's not personal. It's not personal. He said, we need to. They need to learn what populist nationalist power is on the receiving end. I need investigations, trials, and then incarceration. I'm just talking about the media. He said.
- [65:47]
Michael Popok
Did he say Sig Heil after that? And everybody saluted.
- [65:50]
Anthony Davis
He said everything but that. Listen to this next one. We want all your emails, all your text messages. Everything you did, you colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monaco and Jack Smith. And literally, like, he's laying out this playbook, this kind of Nazi playbook. It's like the stasis Showing up at your door and rounding you up.
- [66:13]
Michael Popok
Right. Or Stalin. Or Stalin.
- [66:15]
Anthony Davis
Or Stalin. And he's saying this stuff out loud. And he is representing Donald Trump and the Trump regime. And we would be fools to not take it seriously. The media thought it was all a bit of a joke, but it isn't.
- [66:30]
Michael Popok
Well, that's what you and I and the Midas touch and the brothers and those on this network are going to have to do. We got our work cut out for us over the next two years to four years because we're going to have to shine a light on this and we're going to have to and call it out. And then the reason that I created with Ben and The Brothers Legal AF, the YouTube channel a month or so before the election was not to help Kamala win. It was, what if she doesn't? And what does the legal landscape look like in a potential Trump presidency where we're going to be lurching from one constitutional crisis to another one? Abuse of power. Daily abuse of power. Meaning we're going to have to run into the courts. That's why on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, I have court accountability action over there with me. And they're amazing. They're like a think tank slash investigative organization that looks at corruption at the federal court level up to the United States Supreme Court. And they do some amazing work. And this is why we're here together, not to scare the shit out of each other. I mean, we have to. We have an action. It's a call to action, too. We have a call to action.
- [67:41]
Anthony Davis
Yeah. It's a calling for sure, because the media is not going to call it out. And everything that he announced, I mean, today was it, he announced like, $100 billion investment from SoftBank. Right. I mean, the media will just repeat that story. They'll just repeat what he wants them to say, like a press release. But we don't do that. We're like, what's behind this? Because Trump doesn't announce anything unless it benefits him and he's wealthy.
- [68:10]
Michael Popok
Well, it was right on Q. It was orchestrated. Right. Two days before, in his social media post, he put America up for sale. I'm sure you saw it, right. Anybody that wants to invest overseas, $1 billion in America, we will speed through your approvals, including environmental. Yeah, he threw that in there. And two days later, softback was like, we'll put $100 billion in. Now, what happened the last time? They put up. They put money in.
- [68:36]
Anthony Davis
Yeah. Well, I was going to say, did you see RFK's face, standing behind him, of course, his environmental lawyer by trade, listening to this thing about, you know, circumnavigating the regulations on the environment. Trump just has a problem with the environment because I think in Scotland, they put a wind turbine near his golf course, near his golf course. And he hated it. And he tried to get it removed and they couldn't, they wouldn't. So for that reason, the entire climate change kind of scenario has become a hoax to him because of that turbine in his garden.
- [69:11]
Michael Popok
Well, for those that are tuning in late know the Midas Touch podcast has not been canceled by the brothers. They are busy doing God's work, interviewing and finishing an interview with President Joe Biden. The whole team was there. Ben conducted it. You guys will be seeing. It'll be hot off the presses soon enough here in the Midas Touch. And they asked Anthony and I to step in. And we said absolutely. We've never done, we've done, we've done each other's shows, but we've never done a show together. Trying to hold up the lantern here, hold up the torch for the, for the brothers. We're so pleased that we were able to do that for them. And hopefully you guys found this as interesting as you would if the three brothers were on, or at least we're at that level. And we got to announce that Anthony and I are going to be doing more things together come the new year in a new show we're calling Global af, where we're going to, you know, he's a Brit and I'm not, I'm an American. And we're going to talk about Global perspective. I had a global, a job at a Wall street firm and, and know a little bit about the rest of the world. And Anthony, of course, has lived, lived a life and has been a broadcaster and a commentator on other non American media throughout.
- [70:25]
Anthony Davis
I've also traveled. And I think this is something that's really important is that, you know, there is no substitute. You could read about it online as much as you like, but there is no substitute for being there. And the thing about, I felt blessed growing up in England was that, you know, all these places that we read about are only a couple of hours away, a cheap flight away. And so I've been lucky to have traveled extensively around Europe and to places where systems of governance and of democracy are completely different to the system that you have enjoyed here in the United States. So as American democracy falls, we're going to shed a light on the way that other democracies are successful. And I think that's going to be very interesting.
- [71:07]
Michael Popok
And that's where you and I will debate, because I'm not ready to throw in the towel on the American democracy just yet.
- [71:13]
Anthony Davis
Good man.
- [71:14]
Michael Popok
Thank you. So you've joined the Midas Touch podcast normally with Ben, Bret and Jordi, Michael Popok and Anthony Davis sitting in for this particular episode. Thank you to everyone in the audience that supports all of our shows. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button for the Midas Touch Network. You can also subscribe and help help this organization, help this independent entity by going over to their Midas plus substack and hit the subscribe button and join over there as well. And then of course, Anthony's got a couple of shows. Plug them right now.
- [71:47]
Anthony Davis
Anthony uncovered Wednesdays Live 4pm Eastern and the Weekend Show 8pm Eastern on Sundays as well as all of the additional 5 minute news content that I provide.
- [72:00]
Michael Popok
And I've got legal AF on Wednesdays and Saturdays and a new show called Popoc Live by myself on Tuesday nights at 8pm right here on the Midas Touch Network. And shout out to all our sponsors and to the Midas mighty the Midas might as standing strong against the fascists. We sing our song. We will get it right whenever.