Rep. Brad Sherman Discusses Dems Fight Back against Trump

0:00Ben Meiselas:These MAGA Republican Congress members and politicians are crying now and blaming California Governor Gavin Newsom for redistricting in California when it was Donald Trump who ordered the MAGA Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to do the redistricting right before the midterms. You've got the MAGA Republican Congress member from California, Kevin Kiley, posting the following. we will not let Gavin Newsom destroy democracy in California. Then he went to the Wall Street Journal, who Donald Trump is suing, and did an op-ed saying, in today's Wall Street Journal, I set out my plan to stop Newsom's corrupt redistricting scheme and to assure it doesn't ignite a gerrymandering war across the country.

0:46Ben Meiselas:I mean, these people just make stuff up like y 'all started this in Texas. The Democrats supported for the People's Act, HR1, in order to ban this partisan gerrymandering. I mean, this Kevin Kiley guy, this MAGA Republican congressman from California, what is he even doing here? He does like a press conference in his own office and brings the podium. This looks so weird. And he's been going on all of these shows and whining. Let me show you what he did here when he says, it's Newsom who started this. Newsom's trying to destroy my district here. Play this clip. This is merely an attempt to eliminate political opposition, but his past attempts to target me have failed.

1:25Ben Meiselas:And I'm confident that this one's going to fail as well. Yeah, I know that you recently introduced a bill to limit redistricting to the beginning of each decade. I know you said that Newsom is subverting the will of voters and trying to wipe out essentially what remains of the California Republican Party. There's only nine of you guys. Can you tell me more about that bill? Yeah, of course. So my concern is, first and foremost for what's going on in California. And Gavin Newsom is a unique threat to democracy. He is trying to overturn the will of voters who put in place an independent citizens redistricting commission.

1:58Ben Meiselas:He's come up with a scheme to sideline that commission and to seize its powers for himself in order to draw a hyper-partisan map that, as you said, will reduce Republicans to holding nine out of 52 seats. That's what we have right now. Not that many, But that's too many for him. So he's going to. You know, just total sociopaths, right? They're bullies. And then you punch back and then they go, they're coming after me. I'm the victim. They're coming after me. You've got this MAGA Republican candidate for California governor, this Steve Hilton guy. He's like, Newsom started it. Newsom started it here.

2:32Ben Meiselas:Watch this. Well, of course, like everything else that Gavin Newsom touches, a disaster and a fake and a phony, because what he's saying there is a total lie. He's saying that his scheme to steal power back from the people and write the maps to suit Democrats is responding to Texas. That's not true at all. It's a complete lie. California started. California started it. Of course, it was California who started it. No, it didn't. What world are you living in? Then you had MAGA Republican Congress member Daryl Issa. Here's what he's got to say. Let's play it. Well, Governor Newsom fired off a Trump style tweet yesterday saying saying this.

3:12Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump, the lowest polling president in recent history. This is your second to last warning. The next one is the last one. Stand down now or California will counter strike legally to destroy your illegal crooked maps in red states. Press conference coming hosted by America's favorite governor, Gavin Newsom. Final warning next. You won't like it. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Is he is he joking? Is this a joke? Well, you know, the ultimate in false statement, Trump's low approval rating, it couldn't be higher. I know. But from a more practical standpoint, look, in some states, the voters have allowed politicians to draw their own line.

3:52Ben Meiselas:In California, the voters made a decision that it was going to be done by an independent commission. And he's trying to override that so we can go back to having politicians draw lines for themselves. All right. We will leave it there. Let's bring in California Congress member Brad Sherman. Congress member, I showed you those clips right there. You see your MAGA Republican Congress members. They're trying to rewrite history a little bit, huh? What incredible hypocrisy. First of all, the voters will be very involved in this process. I believe it's today the maps are going to be published. In November, the voters vote and they'll have a choice.

4:34Do you want the maps that you had last election or do you want this set of maps? You couldn't. Every single voter in the state is going to participate. And Kylie, you know, we've been pushing for a decade and longer, so Lofgren and I and others, for every state to have to have a independent redistricting commission. And he never supported that at all until the day that it could adversely affect him personally.

5:02Ben Meiselas:And you see right here, though, with Democrats fighting back, the reactions, though, you're seeing from your Republican colleagues, like they're not used to getting counterpunched, it seems. And their response, though, is to now play the victim like they're under attack and you're coming after me. when, as you said, look, Democrats yesterday, tomorrow, you name the time, would get rid of partisan gerrymandering in general. And they're the ones who have been the ones supporting partisan gerrymandering. They're the ones who supported, you know, all the getting rid of campaign finance. They're the ones who are doing all of this, huh?

5:42Ben Meiselas:Yeah. And this idea that California started it. The whole country knows Texas started it. But we also know that Trump is ordering his allies in Florida, Indiana, and Missouri to do more of it. And we would be very happy as California Democrats to have an immediate ceasefire. But the only person proposing that on the Republican side is Kylie. And he doesn't speak for the Republican Party nationwide. You know, you talk about a ceasefire when it comes to partisan gerrymandering. I mean, Donald Trump is went to Russia on, I mean, went to Alaska on Friday, which he called Russia repeatedly. You had Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, wearing a CCCP T-shirt already going into the negotiations, wearing USSR gear.

6:34Ben Meiselas:You know, just think about the message that that's, you know, sending to to start this thing. In your career as a Congress member, could you fathom this scene right here of in Alaska as Russia setting the terms of a negotiation, America excluding Ukraine and Europe from it? And then the foreign minister, the main negotiator with Putin, shows up like a conquering hero wearing USSR gear. And Donald Trump just lands like, well, everybody, OK, let's let's do it. High stakes, everybody. It doesn't look good going in, but the real outcome will be apparent soon. And if the president starts trying to force Ukraine to give up more territory than it's lost on the battlefield and to give up its, I mean, Putin is pushing for there to be severe limits on the future Ukrainian army.

7:33So he's invaded Ukraine twice. And now he's saying we want you to have a much smaller military in the future so that when we invade for a third time, you won't be able to defend yourself. This this meeting shouldn't be happening, but we'll wait to see what effect it has. We'll know pretty soon.

7:53Ben Meiselas:You know, one of the things Donald Trump has desperately trying to do, whether it's because that's one of the reasons why he's doing this meeting now or or he's talking about 2016 conspiracies involving Hillary Clinton. And, you know, when he's like Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, it's like, dude, you're meeting with Russia in Alaska today while they're wearing USSR gear. Like arguably what's happening today is even worse than the worst conspiracies that you're even talking about from 2016. But a lot of people are saying he's trying to distract from Epstein. He's trying to distract from his dark past.

8:33Ben Meiselas:I mean, he's already given preferential treatment to Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker, while the DOJ has ignored and re-victimized the victims of Epstein and Ghislaine. And what do you is Congress? Y 'all aren't going to let this go, right? I mean, when you get back into session, you're going to be bringing back up, you know, front and center, you know, Trump's cover up of Epstein. Right. Well, Speaker Johnson sent us home early in effect, canceling Congress because they had to spend time trying to put together their pedophile protection project. But when we reconvene, he is going to face a bill that has 11 Republican co-sponsors.

9:19And every Democrat would support this requiring the release of the Epstein files. He's going to be desperate to try to avoid a vote on that. Now, his method will be to turn to those who Republicans who co-sponsored it and said, well, you co-sponsored it, but don't sign the discharge petition. So you say you're a sponsor of the bill, but don't actually take any action so that the bill will get a vote on the floor of the House. And we'll see if he can find a few hypocrites to stick with him on that. And they are so desperate to avoid a vote on this. As to the Russiagate and all that, the Republicans conflate three different things.

10:02First, did Russia try to affect the election? Yes, they did. They had a fair amount of internet advertising and most significantly, they hacked the DNC and released a memo that was embarrassing to the Democratic Party. The second issue is, did Trump collude with Russia to help their efforts? And that hasn't been proven. I've never alleged it, but it can't be disproven either. We just don't know if they talk to each other. And the third issue is, did Russia successfully deal with the tabulation system? And the answer there is clearly no. But what Republicans will do is say they didn't mess with the tabulation system.

10:53Therefore, they didn't try to affect the election. You know, that's absolutely absurd. I've been in the elective office for a long time. I try to affect every election. I never mess with the tabulation system. So whether it is, you know, Russia clearly preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton. They did what they could. and the material that they stole from the files, the electronic files of the of the Democratic National Committee and released. That was a harmful blow to Hillary's campaign, whether it was decisive or not. I don't know.

11:31Ben Meiselas:Yeah. You know, and Donald Trump said, Russia, if you are listening, do something. and then shortly after that thing happened and it's not normal i always try to say this on the show this is not normal political behavior and i always get mad when corporate news normalize it that someone running for the presidency of the united states says to any country ally or foe yet alone foe if you're listening i need you to do something illegal you got to do a little hacking scheme for me. And he said it. I mean, it's on tape. And so every time they go back to it, I say it's on tape. You may want to address that.

12:14Ben Meiselas:But let me just I also want to before we go talk about the Palisades, because that's you in your congressional district, Donald Trump. As I also like to say, I don't like normalizing his behavior. And there are so many things that he says that just go unreported because it's just Trump being Trump. And as it relates to the fires, You know, he keeps on saying that he turned on a magical spigot on the border between California and Canada, which he thinks Canada borders California. And he turned on the water. And then that's what saved the day. And in reality, he emptied reservoirs after the fire was contained into farmland that was not connected to Southern California.

12:56Ben Meiselas:And at the end of the day, I just think people want just can you help us here or you not? Are you just going to do these like weirdo fantasies? So talk to us about where we're where we're at right now, what you want to see and just the kind of the barrage, the deluge of lies that came out from the White House and still do today. Well, water is a precious commodity out here in California, and there are three ways to use it. You supply cities, you grow crops, or you let some of that water flow to the ocean to create the estuaries that fish and fishermen need. And it's always controversial, but the cities get the water they need.

13:35And yes, there are pictures of fire hydrants dry in the Palisades. That had nothing to do with how much water was available to Los Angeles. Everybody in Los Angeles was living their lives, taking showers if they felt like taking it right through those fires. We had plenty of water in L.A. The problem is the Palisades is up on a hill, and we did not have the capacity to pump the water up to those fire hydrants because we had a system that was designed to allow the people of Palisades to live normal lives and even put out a couple of house fires at the same time. Nobody created a system up there that would allow you to move enough water up the hill to deal with hundreds of homes all burning at the same time.

14:21So this had nothing to do with Canada, fish, or farmers. It had everything to do with a firefighting system in L.A. that was not designed to deal with something that nobody imagined. And that was hundreds of fires and 100 mile hour winds. And as we deal with climate change, we have to start imagining the things we didn't imagine 50 years ago. And we have to be resilient. We have to be prepared for it.

14:51Ben Meiselas:Before we go, I know also you've been pushing back against Trump's crypto schemes, and that's a big deal for you. I'd love to hear more about that, because with, again, all of the deluge of stuff that comes out out of the firehose of disinformation and the craziness, we shouldn't forget the grift that's taking place before our eyes. Can you speak to that? Oh, I mean, this is kind of like Hunter Biden's paintings on wow steroids. Hunter Biden could spend an hour making a painting and then sell it for 50 grand and somebody might buy it, hoping to have some influence with his father back then. What Trump does is he literally creates a cryptocurrency.

15:42It's no different than, you know, creating a finger painting. And then he sold 300 million dollars of Trump coin to the Chinese business interests that control TikTok. Then he provides$2 billion of, quote, Trump stablecoin to Abu Dhabi, which is part of the United Arab Emirates. And with that stablecoin, at least in theory, they can get their money back. In theory, they're supposed to be reserves. But he gets an interest-free loan of$2 billion. That's worth millions every week. And then if he ever adopts a foreign policy that Abu Dhabi doesn't like, they can pull their money back out. It's the perfect bribery scheme.

16:32It's like having the president on retainer. He makes a couple million a week.

16:37Ben Meiselas:Congressman, great to see you on the Midas Touch Network. Come back. Anytime. Thanks. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. The truth is more important than ever. Check out our new Truth Over Lies collection at store.midastouch.com. All 100 % USA union made.