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The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
00:24:59
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- [00:01]
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- [02:26]
Political Commentator
By now, I'm sure you all saw the clip of this weekend of Donald Trump saying he doesn't know if he needs to uphold the Constitution. But in all of the chaos and disaster that Donald Trump has caused in the federal government and the constant crises each and every day, I don't want us to lose sight of one of the biggest stories that's not being reported and that's that Donald Trump has worked to systematically dismantle the fec, the Federal Elections Commission, which no longer even has a quorum for it to conduct business, evaluate complaints and act on it. So with all of this dark money coming into politics and specifically hoisting up Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, they've been making moves behind the scenes to dismantle even more an already dismantled Federal Elections Commission. I want to analyze how we got here. First, let me share with you the clip that you've seen this weekend. I want to take a little historical detour. I want to show you McCain Feingold's bipartisan legislation passed in 2002 which was again systematically dismantled by the Supreme Court and the Citizens United case and another horrific voting rights cases. But first, let me show you the Trump clip from this weekend. And let's go back to the future then into the present. Let's play it.
- [03:52]
Pronamel Advertiser
But even given those numbers that you're talking about, don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
- [03:59]
Donald Trump
I don't know. I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.
- [04:16]
Political Commentator
Now let's rewind to 2007. The late great Senator John McCain, Republican, because this stuff didn't used to be political or partisan. John McCain was on all places Fox News at the time and he was asked in 2007, do you still support this bipartisan piece of legislation you did with Russ Feingold, a Democratic senator, to try to remove all of this dark money from politics and to create a system that really checked some of the most damaging aspects of corporate influence and oligarch influence in the elections. This is McCain 20002007 on Fox. Play the clip. If you had it all to do.
- [04:54]
Degree Advertiser
Over again, would you still go for McCain?
- [04:56]
Donald Trump
Funko Absolutely. You've seen the corruption in Washington. We have former members of Congress in federal prison. The approval rating of Congress is down around 11% because the, because the law was not fully implemented. And the 74 law on these so called 527, 527s are disgrace and they have to be eliminated because they're clearly.
- [05:19]
Political Commentator
In violation of the Then comes the Citizen United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 and lots of people were warning what a disaster this decision was going to be. It essentially said that, look, corporations and all these dark money groups, they're like people, they have a free speech right to say whatever the hell they want in the elections. And people were warning, you know what they're going to do? They're going to use that as a license to deceive and interfere with elections and trick people. And billionaires who've amassed all this wealth are going to buy their power. Exactly what McCain Feingold bipartisan legislation was created to stop. So what did we have in the 2024 election? Elon Musk spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the role that we've now seen is what he wanted to do. Doge destroy the federal government and take your data and how they do it with everything. These groups warned against the RBG pac. Remember that? That Elon Musk created. He was claiming that rbg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually supported Donald Trump. And they ran ads that great minds think alike. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Donald Trump were the same people were on the same team. I mean, that's what they were doing to the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who would have been someone standing up and she was someone who stood up to Donald Trump. Then Elon Musk would announce on stage, I'm giving $1 million. Play this clip. I have a surprise for you which is that we are going to be awarding a million dollars to randomly to people who have signed the, signed the petition every day from now until the election. They ran that playbook, deceitful playbook, with success in the 2024 election. And then they tried to run it again in all of these state races. Fortunately wasn't successful in the Wisconsin judicial race. But here's what they were doing in Wisconsin where they were talking about how if you voted for the Republican MAGA candidate, you'd get a million dollars. This was someone named Ekaterina Deisler who said she got a million dollars from Elon. Watch the ads they were putting out. Let's play it.
- [07:45]
Tiffany Mueller
My name is Ekaterina Diesler. I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do. Sign petition, refer friends and family, vote. And now I have a million dollars.
- [07:58]
Corona Advertiser
What?
- [08:00]
Political Commentator
Let's bring the president from end Citizens United here. Tiffany Mueller, about to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of your group. All of this can be traced, right? The Citizens United decision. This has been going on for a long time. But when you see all of that, what's your reaction to it? And then I want to pivot and talk about what's been going on even more with the Federal Elections Commission.
- [08:26]
Tiffany Mueller
Well, first, Ben, thanks so much for having me on today. Even though these aren't always fun topics to talk about, they are critically important topics to talk about. And it's so good to be here with you. I mean, I think that what we're seeing right now in this moment in our country is exactly what 15 years under the Citizens United ruling does to a country where you have the richest man in the world who, as you said, spent almost $300 million to elect the president of the United States and then is rewarded with unprecedented access and power and the ability to line his own pockets with more government contracts and big data that he can go monetize in his private businesses. And we're seeing that play in cabinet position after cabinet position. And with Trump rewarding himself right. This is about 100 days of chaos, corruption, but continued rising prices on the American people. So I think we've seen what they're prioritizing. They're prioritizing themselves, they're prioritizing who can write the biggest check. But it's all coming at the expense of the American people. And our organization, to your point, is 10 years old. And we are a grassroots powered movement that is actually just made up of everyday, hardworking Americans, retired teachers, firefighters, folks who give $10 or $15 at a time because they care about the future of our democracy and they care about having a democracy that doesn't just work for those who can write the biggest check, but really is about everyone having the same power and voice in our.
- [10:13]
Political Commentator
Tell us about what's been going on with just the composition of the Federal Elections Commission and what it means, obviously. I mean, we've reported before Donald Trump fired one of the Democratic members, a strong advocate just for fair processes and democracy, Commissioner Weintraub. But then we saw a lot of Republican commissioners resign. And now there's no quorum. There's only like three people on the panel. So they're not even able to meet and make decisions. So they have all these backlogs of complaints and they can't even make advisory opinions. Like they literally it shut like they're doing nothing. Like, can you talk to that?
- [10:57]
Tiffany Mueller
They are absolutely doing nothing at this point in time. Look, you know, the Federal Elections Commission isn't one of those sexy agencies that's in the headlines every single day, but it's now 50 years old. And it was formed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. And when our country took a bipartisan approach to cleaning up corruption and restoring faith and trust in our government and in Congress in particular. And it was a bipartisan system. You have three Democrats and three Republicans, and it takes four of them to open investigations or to say that someone broke the law and have a fine or things like that. And what Donald Trump has done is he has gutted the agency. But what we've seen over the past 10 years is an agency riddled by dysfunction anyway. So we have seen that it has been mostly stalemated, with the three Republicans and three Democratic commissioners often voting 3, 3, and having nothing move forward. But now they've gone even further, and Donald Trump's trying to take over all these independent agencies. And what he's done in the case of the Federal Elections Commission is he said, well, we're going to just outright fire the biggest advocate who's taking on corruption, who's calling out the abuses of money in politics when he fired Commissioner Weintraub. And then they're just gonna leave the other vacancies open. Right? Because again, if there's not at least four members on that commission, they can't do anything. They can't do any business whatsoever. And so this is one more step that Donald Trump has taken to really gut the watchdogs who are at the heart of our government trying to clean up corruption. We saw it with Federal Elections Commission, we've seen it with inspectors generals in independent agencies, and we see it in weaponizing the DOJ time and time again.
- [12:58]
Political Commentator
You know, when I do interviews of international leaders, whether it's in Canada, Australia, or many places in Europe, they're very just kind of confused at our system in general, that our election system, these commissioners, that they are part of a political apparatus. Like, just conceptually, that's not a thing. In many other democracies that are working in Canada, the elections commission is the least political, has nothing to do with politics. And it wouldn't even be considered a political thing that a prime minister has powers to influence like that. And in other countries as well, and here in the United States, that's imbued in the system. And you've seen even where you have a Republican like McCain and a Democrat like Feingold in 2002, identify the problem because they did their jobs, they predicted in advance exactly the clips that I then showed what was going to happen. Then we have a political Supreme Court right wing where no one was even talking about it the way they are today in 2010, still a Roberts court, saying, you know what? That bipartisan effort violates the freedom of Speech rights of corporations to deceive. Gotcha. So we're gonna stop the legislation. When finally, Democrats and Republicans work together to do something, the Supreme Court goes, nah, screw it. I mean, that's crazy.
- [14:38]
Tiffany Mueller
It is so crazy. And also, I think that you said. I mean, first you said that folks in other countries don't understand how our system is working. I mean, me too. Half the time I don't understand what's going on with our system. But what we do know is that this amount of money and this dark money and corruption and just outright corruption that we see is absolutely undermining our democracy. There are reasons why other countries are keeping that money out. And it's what you said. It's so that they have a functioning democracy. They actually put rules around whether or not you can run TV ads or for what amount of time. They put rules around who can give money and who can't. And we have this wild, wild west system at the moment that really has come down to one thing, which is how does money drive the policy outcomes that the richest and the biggest corporations want to have happened? And, you know, you're absolutely right. Even the Supreme Court was talking about money in politics differently when they decided the Citizens United case than they do today. And I'll give two examples. Number one, the court said in that opinion that money itself wasn't a corrupting factor and didn't necessarily lead to Americans not trusting their government. Well, I think we all know that was just flat wrong, right? Number two, they said that this money that flooded into our system would be disclosed and we'd be able to trace it back to where it originated from. Well, what we know is that that's not true either. We have more dark, undisclosed money flooding into our system than we've ever had. There's actually about 75% of the money that was in this last election cycle in 2024 that we don't have full transparency into where it came from. And that's letting in more corporate money, more foreign money, more foreign government money, and it is just completely corrupting the system. And, you know, one thing we haven't talked about, Ben, is also how this money impacts every single other policy priority that we have. You know, I always think about climate change. Prior to Citizens united, there were 14 instances of Senate Republicans joining with Senate Democrats to try to address climate change and what it's doing to our Earth. And then Citizens United happens. Big Oil and Gas becomes the number one spender in our elections. And would you like to guess how many times Senate Republicans have joined with Senate Democrats since then to try to fix this pressing issue.
- [17:24]
Political Commentator
I'm gonna guess it is a whopping zero. Burger.
- [17:27]
Tiffany Mueller
It is zero, Ben. It is exactly zero. And you can go down the line. Prescription drug prices, gun violence, even reproductive freedom. We know that the right wing spent over $1.1 billion first to stack the Supreme Court and then to actually tee up the court cases to overturn Roe v. Wade. So even in reproductive freedom, you see the amount of money in our politics absolutely causing gridlock, dysfunction and hampering our ability to make real progress.
- [18:03]
Political Commentator
You know, I think about the song that was used for the Apprentice, Money, money, money, money, money. And then I also think about the Supreme Court. They do this over and over again. They did it here with campaign finance, they did it with the absolute immunity ruling when people were saying, you know, Donald Trump's going to abuse it if you give him absolute immunity, he's going to start doing illegal things and claim it's in the interest of national security. In the Supreme Court, the same way in Citizens United said, we don't think money's a corrupting factor. They said, we think that's hypothetical. Our bigger concern is are we going to chill the legitimate functions of the executive branch if he doesn't have absolute immunity, we're not worried that it'll be abused. And then you had the liberals on the court saying, hello, he's saying he wants to be a dictator on day one. And the majority saying, we just don't see it. And it's like, how out of touch are you? Clearly rich people are gonna try to buy elections and they do it over and over again. I wanna talk about though, the dictator part of this. Cause that's where this is heading, right? I mean, it's there. But the question that our viewers have on their mind is, are there even going to be elections in the future? And Donald Trump talks about how he wants, you know, he's. Now he's doing, you know, he does the, he always test bubbles things with the jokes. Oh, third term, third term. Hahaha, I'm being funny. Oh, he's trolling. And then it starts to become real and real and real. And then before you know it, you've got MAGA Republicans saying, let's reopen Alcatraz, let's tariff the world dictator on day one. Let's do it. So the gutting of the fec, I believe, and the destruction of all of this, its natural conclusion is the kind of oligarch king authoritarian system is what they want. I Think the resistance has been strong. Groups like yours have stepped up. Nonprofits in other spaces have stepped up to push back, but that's where they want to go. So what are you doing to stop this? What's the plan?
- [20:15]
Tiffany Mueller
Yeah, that's exactly where they want to go. They want to both weaponize the powers of government to attack their foreseeable, their perceived enemies. Right. We see them doing that day in and day out. And they also are using it to line their own pockets. I mean, so much of this is a grift for them and their cronies to get rich. And so look, we have to do a few things. Number one, we need a check on Trump and this corrupt administration. And we can get that by winning back the house in November 2026. And so at, in Citizens United, there are three big buckets we work in. One is electoral. One is on the Hill trying to pass good legislation or at the states trying to pass good legislation. And the third is calling out the corruption and raising these issues up in the day to day narrative. And so on the elections front, we absolutely have to win back the House. And I think that we can do it. But I don't want anyone to think that this is going to be an easy fight. The battleground map is hard. And despite what we see every single day, too many Americans out there right now aren't sure who to trust or who is fighting for them. So we have to go tell them every single day how corrupt this administration is, how much it's hurting them, and how we as Democrats have a plan to change it. Number two, we have to win elections in these battleground states for these key constitutional offices, Governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general. It matters who sits in these seats because it's going to be the very people who are administering and certifying the next election, the next presidential election. In 2028, we know how important it was that in 2022, folks like Jocelyn Benson beat election denier Christina Karamo in Michigan for Secretary of State. We know how important those wins were and we have to go do that again. And then every single day, the folks watching you, the folks out there, we have to join together and raise our voices to make sure that we are pushing back on this corruption that we are seeing just day in and day out. So that is what we're doing every single day.
- [22:38]
Political Commentator
Ben, well, good to have you on. Tiffany Moeller from End Citizens United. Where can people find out more about the work you're doing?
- [22:45]
Tiffany Mueller
Please come join us. We need all the help we can get we are at endcitizensunited.org endcitizensunited.org and you can follow us on blueskycitizensunited.org so looking forward to having you all join.
- [23:04]
Political Commentator
Keep us posted and there's always an open invite to use our substack midasplus.com if you want to get out information to the public. We've got a great distribution group there as well.
- [23:15]
Tiffany Mueller
Thanks so much everybody.
- [23:16]
Political Commentator
Hit subscribe let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas substack for ad free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now@midasplus.com.