← The MeidasTouch Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
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B
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C
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B
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A
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B
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A
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B
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A
The MAGA Republican Congress members just spiraling out of control. They've ordered most of their members to go on vacation and not show up on Capitol Hill. You have some MAGA Republican Congress members in leadership there? They do this morning press conference and each day it's kind of more bizarre and dangerous than the last one. So this morning you had MAGA Republican Congress member Steve Scalise act like somehow Republicans are the champion of programs like Head Start and other programs that they're the ones ripping away with this government shutdown and with the disastrous budget bill. Here, play this clip of Scalise Head Start, which is a program that funds education and nutrition services for 800,000 kids under the age of six. You hear this theme over and over again. Now, who the Democrats are using for leverage and hurting is kids and nutrition programs. That's who they've chosen to target. And it's real harm and real pain that they're causing the level of just utter sociopathy right there as they're the ones destroying the programs. As Democrats are saying we need to fund these programs and support these programs, they then blame Democrats for fighting for these programs. I just want you to think, regardless of what political party you're from, I just want you to think about that. Then you have Kelly Leffler, billionaire who somehow runs the Small Business Administration program in the Trump regime. She says, but the issue here that we can never agree to is to subsidize the health care programs. And that's what Democrats want to do here. Play this clip.
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B
They're demanding $1.5 trillion in taxpayer money to fund health care for illegal aliens and other liberal causes. Their spin is fact free. They want to subsidize their broken, fraudulent and unaffordable health care system where premiums have increased by 80% since 2014. And those are the enormous costs that are borne on the shoulders of small businesses. But the pain is the point. Every single day of the Shutdown has stopped 320 local businesses every single day from accessing $170 million in SBA loans for hiring and for expansion.
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A
Then you have MAGA Republican Congressmember Tom Emmer applauding what ICE agents are doing in his own state as they cause utter havoc and chaos. Play this clip. Present a district on the western edge of Minneapolis. As I recall, there have been numerous arrests. Kristi Noem was there on Friday. This is the readout. Since January, federal law enforcement officers with Homeland Security say 4,300 have been arrested for criminal activity, of who of which 3300 had a previous crime criminal history. What is the status for what ICE and Homeland Security is doing in your home state?
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B
Well, first off, God bless Donald J. Trump and Kristi Noem for what they're doing.
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A
You just referenced the number 4300 illegal.
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B
Aliens since just January, Bill, and we've.
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A
All seen the videos. Now we know that the Trump regime is raiding car washes and farms and factories and Home Depot parking lots. And they're target targeting people going courts and they're going after people who are innocent, hardworking people. And it's just very cruel and unusual what they're doing. I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren to the program. Great to see you, Congresswoman. I Just want your reaction as you see these press conferences and these interviews that the Republicans give every morning, they come up with new excuses to justify that. They just refuse to want to extend health care coverage and extend the subsidies for millions of Americans which will cause lots of people to lose their health care. And then they try to justify it as though they're fighting for these programs. I want to get your reaction to that first.
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B
Well, it's jaw dropping really. They voted to cut these programs. I mean, the hits to the nutrition program and the big ugly bill were huge. None of the Democrats voted for that. And then they've done this shutdown because they refuse to act to avoid these astronomical increases in premiums that are going to hit in the Affordable Care act coverage. I'll just give you an example. A 60 year old couple in my district earning under $83,000 a year, which is not a lot of money in this area because of the cost of living, their premiums would increase. Not their whole premiums, the increase would be more than $26,000 a year. I mean, it's just, it's not possible. They are starting to hear from their own constituents about how bad this is. But they're not acting. They're trying, you know, they have the White House, the Senate and the House and they're trying to act like they're just mere victims here. Meanwhile, the speaker refuses to call the House back into session. They're not even talking to us. So they're bizarre.
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A
You've represented the congressional district in the Santa Clara area in California since 1995. You won the election in 1994. You've seen other government shutdowns before. This one feels different in the sense that at least before there were efforts between the parties like the, the Schoolhouse Rocks taught me growing up in fifth grade government. They're supposed to talk to each other and have conversations and negotiate. And here MAGA Mike Johnson and the Republicans refuse to speak with Democrats, refuse to show up yet alone negotiate. So from your perspective, what's different about this? And, and what are you seeing that I think you offer a unique perspective into this?
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B
Well, that's, that is the big difference. You've hit it right, right the nail right on the head. But I remember the first shutdown that I was in was in December of 1995. Newt Gingrich threw a hissy fit when President Clinton made him leave Air Force One through the back stairway and he shut down the government. And they thought they were going to win. And it went on and on and on and at the time, I was president of the Democratic freshman class. And I finally, I called the president of the Republican freshman class. It was a huge class, who was Roger Wicker, now a senator from Mississippi. And I said, roger, what's plan B? And he said, well, there is no plan B. Our plan is that the Democrats came. I was like, well, Roger, that's not going to happen. And what happened at that point was that Clinton became engaged, seriously engaged in, and pulled it together. Now, instead of the President weighing in, we've got him doing weird little dances as he lands in Asia and he's missing in action. The Senate is refusing to negotiate across party lines and the House of Representatives isn't even meeting. I mean, it's just I've never seen anything like this before. I was in Congress and before I ever ran for office myself, I was in local Congress government. I worked for my predecessor right out of college. And so I've been watching Congress since, you know, 1970. This is unprecedented. This is just darn weird.
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A
Yeah. You mentioned Trump's weird dances that he's doing in Malaysia, ripping down the East Wing after saying that he wasn't going to touch any area of the facade. $40 billion goes to Argentina. In a way, it feels that he wants this shutdown in effect. It feels like we were in a government shutdown, frankly, since January or February, based on what Doge and he were doing to the government. Now it feels kind of a formal version of it, but it seems like they don't want government to function like that. Seems that that's part of it. I don't see an end in sight to this. Like, it will definitely be the longest shutdown, but I don't see how this gets resolved before the midterms. And I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, I just, I don't.
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B
Well, one possibility is the Senate acts without regard to the filibuster rule. I think that's being discussed. Honestly, I've always opposed the filibuster. I think it's unconstitutional and it makes an anti Democratic institution, the Senate, where the minority of Americans rule, the majority, even less representative. So although no one wants to see the Republicans less bound for the institution itself, it would be good to rule by majority vote. That's one possibility. A better possibility would be if they'd actually come to the table and deal with the health care crisis that they have created. I guess the other thing that strikes me, I was interested in to watch the clips from the Republican leadership in the House. They're now embracing These programs that they vote against and hate. So they must be realizing that these programs that they've defunded have a lot of support in the country. Will that realization lead them to make changes in what they're doing? We'll see.
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A
You know, the question is, is do more Americans support the private jet tax exemption, which we know the private jet industry is booming, or the 42 million Americans who rely on Supplemental Nutrition assistance program, the 20 million Americans who may lose health care? Now, talking about nutrition, we focus a lot on these ICE raids and just how unlawful they are, the chemical weapons that are being used against Americans that we see. There's also another impact that I know that you're seeing and a lot of Congress members are seeing in California, which is the farms no longer are having workers. And that's going to have a major impact. The way we're seeing soybean farmers suffer right now and others, cattle ranchers suffer. There's another crisis that's brewing, quite literally that we're going to be seeing soon. Can you talk through that? Because, yeah, I don't think farmers have the, the workers anymore. And that means that we're not going to get food here.
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B
It's a slow moving catastrophe. I represent in addition to Santa Clara county, the redistricting commission several years ago switched up my district with Jimmy Panetta's. And so I have a large section of ag territory in my district. The Salinas Valley, the salad bowl of the world, San Benito County, Watsonville, strawberries and other berries. And I've really learned a lot about agriculture, which is heavily, heavily dependent on farm workers, many of whom maybe most of whom lack documentation. In fact, before I ever represented ag territory, I led a bipartisan effort to legalize farm workers and modernize the temporary program. It passed the House twice with the bipartisan vote, but was blocked by the Republicans in the Senate. That failure to pass is going to have a real big impact coming soon. One of my colleagues sent me this morning some news about the Coachella Valley, which is obviously not in my district in the far south of California, where farm workers are not showing up to work because they're afraid they'll be snatched. And that's the source of almost all fresh fruits and vegetables in the United States in the wintertime. So if it doesn't get picked, not just California, but people across the United States are going to see that in their grocery stores. That's compounded by the other source of fresh vegetables and fruit, which is imported from Mexico, in some cases Central America, New Zealand, and The like, they've been all hit with tariffs. So prices are going to go up and there will be scarcity. The other thing that is hitting the food industry, and this is not a big California thing, is the packing industry, which is heavily dependent on immigrant workers. For a long time there were undocumented workers in the packing industry with enforcement earlier, several years ago, many of those workers were replaced with refugees whose status has now been yanked. And so there's a real labor shortage in that area, which is going to contribute to the cost of meat chicken going up. And then the other thing that could be a real catastrophe. And we do have dairies in California. As a matter of fact, California is the largest producer of milk in the United States of any state. The dairy industry is very, very dependent on immigrant workers. If you've ever been to a modern dairy, it's very mechanized and it's highly skilled. Well, if they are afraid to go to work or if they are abducted by ice, the impact in in dairy will be catastrophic and immediate. The cows need to be milked and if there's no one to milk them, those herds have to be sold off. And it will be a dramatic thing. Someone called it a black swan event that could be coming to us because of what's happening in immigration enforcement. The stunning thing to me is, is that the White House appears to be oblivious to what's going on in farm country, saying, well, there's plenty of unemployed Americans. Well, I'll tell you, if there's somebody who's unemployed in Chicago, it has nothing to do with picking lettuce in the Coachella Valley. I mean, it's absurd.
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A
Well, finally, it seems, and with Trump being in Asia, what their plan is though, is not to focus on these systemic things, but instead to come up with another fake trade deal announcement. A framework that isn't actually a binding agreement. We have zero binding agreements with anyone. They said 90 deals, 90 days. There were like 6ish frameworks that are non binding that the other countries disagree with the terms. And then, you know, everyone's talking about, oh, he's going to China. I see the markets going up on this and it's like, like they're coming up with the framework. I was like, wait a minute, didn't they announce this in May? And I saw May 11th they did. I said, didn't they announce this on June 27th? They did. And so every two to three months they come back, they make their China announcement, the markets go up, their rich friends make a ton of money while people suck. It seems that that's what the focus is versus the systemic things, which is breaking the country. So I'll give you the final word because that's, to me, what they're doing. It's a pump. It's a pump and dump. And they just hope the dump doesn't happen during these four.
- [18:27]
B
Well, when we get the majority, we're going to find out who did short sales and stock manipulation in the White House. But putting that to one side, I think their strategy is that propaganda and frankly, just BS is going to work and the reality of what's going to happen will then be ignored by the American people. We'll see. That does work to some extent. But if you've lost your job, if you've lost your farm, if you've lost your health insurance, if you can't buy milk for your kids, that's a reality. It's hard to obscure through just a bunch of bs. So I wish that they would show some responsibility, govern with us, but I don't have high hopes. This is the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States. They're all in it for the money.
- [19:23]
A
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, Great to see you. Thanks for coming on.
- [19:26]
B
Good to see you.
- [19:26]
A
Soon everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers this month. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our substack@midasplus.com you'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski ad free episodes of our podcast and more exclusive content only available@midasplus.com.
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C
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com Morning, Zoe.
- [20:50]
B
Got donuts. Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage? Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you. Teach me so Dana oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
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C
Wow.
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B
Impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice. Jeffrey, you heard them.
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T Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade in in any condition.
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B
So what are we having for launch? Dude, my work here is done.
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The 24 month bill credit is on Experience beyond for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 device connection charge credits ended balance due if you pay off early or Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs $1099.99 and new line minimum $100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oaklove Speed Test Intelligence.
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C
Data 1H2025 visit t mobile.com AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com.