Rep. Deluzio Discusses Fighting Back Against MAGA Madness

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3:01Ben Meiselas:Magamike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, is panicking as members of his own party want him out. They think that he is the worst Speaker of the House ever. Magamike, as you know, shut down the House of Representatives until at least July 13th, when there was a full-fledged revolt in the past week and a half against Magamike's leadership. The MAGA Republican extremists in the House blocked MAGA Mike from passing a rule, as it's called, in order to keep Congress running. So MAGA Mike panicked and he was like, okay, everybody go home until July 13th. So MAGA Mike shut down the House of Representatives until at least July 13th.

3:46Ben Meiselas:And now we're hearing other MAGA Republican leaders mock him for that. And they're preparing. They see blood in the water for them to take over leadership when MAGA Mike costs the Republicans the House of Representatives in the midterm. So by way of example, you've got MAGA Republican Congress member Jason Smith. He went public with his criticism of MAGA Mike. It wasn't just a criticism. As Raw Story says, Mike Johnson was shamed by MAGA lawmakers over his leadership problems. fix it or else. And this as the MAGA Republicans are in a full-fledged revolt against them. Let me show you what Jason Smith, MAGA Republican Congress member, he's like the number three top ranking Republican in the House of Representatives.

4:38Ben Meiselas:He went on State Regime Media Fox, and here's what he said. He said, we don't need you recessing. Stop sending us home. You're making us all look dumb Mag and Mike here playing this clip. Is there something more that Johnson can be doing here? Because out of the last seven speakers, Johnson has had the most failed rule votes at nine. Next behind him was Kevin McCarthy at three. And before that, there had not been a failed rule since Dennis Hastert. Johnson's defense is always that he's got the slimmest majority in history. but you know in the rule vote on the ndaa the skinny version of the save america bill failed last week it's not like he was you know keeping members at home and twisting arms and having the president make phone calls um he sent you guys home at what point does this become a leadership problem more than a function of a slim majority you know uh we do have a slim majority i knew that going into the big beautiful bill i knew i could only lose two votes in the house and three in the Senate.

5:42We only lost two in the House, three in the Senate, but we were able to thread that needle. It's all about bringing people together. I truly, truly believe that we have to figure out what a team is. We don't need to be recessing when we hit a bump on the road. We need to have a conference meeting, go and hash it out, fix the problem. And that's what Speaker Boehner, Speaker McCarthy, Speaker Ryan would do. And I strongly insist that let's get the job done for the American people. And I think that that you'll see that with less than 30 seconds.

6:22Ben Meiselas:So that was on state regime media earlier. And then thereafter, MAGA Mike goes on and MAGA Mike just goes right out of Donald Trump's playbook. And MAGA Mike's like, OK, OK, OK, I hear what he's saying. But folks, We're dealing with communists right now. We're dealing with Mom Donnie and people like that have killed. Hundreds of millions of people have died because of the beliefs of people like Mom Donnie. What the hell are you talking about? Rent stabilization boards not raising rent for two years, the horror. Giving people free healthcare, universal healthcare, single payer, the horror. Making sure that all Americans receive education that they deserve.

7:09Ben Meiselas:The horror to make sure that Americans can afford rent, can live the American dream, can afford to buy and own their homes. the horror to make sure that there can be universal pre-K, to make sure that there can be universal child care. Oh my God, is this what they're really asking for? To make sure that people can work with dignity and get paid, not just a minimum wage that is not enough to afford the basics of their life, but to be able to actually live a thriving life, have people get paid a wage with dignity, the horror. Here's what Maga Mike has to say. Let's play it. Mom Donnie got elected in New York.

7:56I've been out on the campaign trail country wide across coast to coast, every swing district, the blue states, red states saying the same thing. There are many Mom Donnies popping up, running for Congress around the country, and you better be very serious about this. This is a serious threat to our whole system of government. These are Marxists. It's communism, socialism. Those are deviations of Marxism. Begins with the opposite premise of America, and it is a serious threat to us. These people want to say, they're saying it out loud, they want to abolish all borders. They want to abolish all prisons.

8:27They want to defund the police. They want to abolish the U.S. Senate. They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want the government to take over control of all production. This is communism, and it has led to the murder of innocent people, tens of millions of them in the 20th century alone. We have to fight this. We're no longer just in an election cycle. We were saying it was common sense versus crazy. Now it's common sense versus communism and everybody needs to wake up.

8:50Ben Meiselas:And then you have Mag and Mike say, okay, okay, okay. But here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna come up with a reconciliation package. It's gonna be big. It's gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be irresistible to Republicans. And this way we're gonna do this voter suppression Everybody's going to be happy with MAGA Mike, and we're going to suppress people's votes because, yeah, Donald Trump doesn't give a shit. Donald Trump doesn't care about affordability when it comes to housing. He hasn't even signed that housing bill. Donald Trump doesn't care about health care. He'll just lie and say, your health care prices are down 800%.

9:26Ben Meiselas:Just make up numbers. But when it comes to voter suppression, that's what we're going to focus on. Why? Because these people are losers. They have loser fascist ideas. People like Maga Mike and Donald Trump are not patriots. They hate America. They hate you. They hate this country. All they want to do is take and take and take and steal and cheat and commit crimes. That's what they want to do. Here's what Maga Mike has to say. Let's play it. What we're planning to do is send over a bill that will be irresistible for any Republican. Really incredible piece of legislation that will get the job done, meaning that we will continue to increase affordability.

10:04We'll reduce fraud, waste and abuse in government and we'll secure elections. Every Republican would vote for that if packaged correctly. And that's what we're planning to do right now. All right. So that's where Save America Act is going to move to the Senate is probably through that plan.

10:16Ben Meiselas:I want to bring in right now, I want to bring in Democratic Congress member Chris Deluzio from Pennsylvania. True patriot. Let me bring in Congress member Deluzio. I interviewed him just before. Let me bring in the interview I just did with Congress member Deluzio from Pennsylvania. Bring it in. I want to bring in Congress member Chris Deluzio from Pennsylvania. Congressman, great to see you. You know, these economic reports that are coming in are very dire. I mean, we're seeing no job creation revisions from prior job reports, you know, showing that even when there were bad job reports in the past, it's even worse than we expected, you know, in prior months.

10:58Ben Meiselas:You know, when Donald Trump's out there saying this is the golden age, he's got his national economic advisor, Kevin Hassett saying hope is right around the corner. The stage is set for the, and it's always right around the corner. And you know, what's going to happen as they keep on crashing this thing, they're just going to then find their target to blame and say, we were about to do it. We were so close. And then the Democrats and then this person. So, so, so how do we, how do we deal with it when people in your district and across this country are suffering? And they are right. People in Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania all over are getting hammered by high prices.

11:39Ben Meiselas:Gas. Yes. The place you see every day. And Donald Trump starting the Iran war has driven up gas prices tremendously. They're still north of four dollars a gallon in my part of the world. So it wasn't just the war in Iran he started that made life more expensive, right? He started all these trade wars that have been pounding small businesses, especially pounding farmers. I go on and on and has done nothing, frankly, to address this heavy consolidation of industries, this like corporate monopolization of our economy. Even the very weak action that the DOJ and the Trump administration took on the meat packers.

12:15Ben Meiselas:You're all, what's he talking about the meat packers? beef has gone up tremendously in costs and there is heavy, heavy consolidation. And the Trump administration did nothing about it. So we see this roll up. It might be private equity. It might be just overwhelming corporate power. We see it squeeze people on prices, kill small businesses. I mean, we're all paying for it, whether you're in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. Donald Trump has made so much of this worse. The scale of his grift and self-enrichment, you know, and I believe criminality while the American people is suffering is the scale is so big.

12:54Ben Meiselas:I think that's what he's relying on, hoping that people just can't even comprehend these numbers. I mean, people can understand, wow, you did 10 trades and you manipulated markets during this period of time. 21 ,000 trades, 22 ,000 trades during one year. I mean, you're talking about 80 to 100 trades every single day and timed around critical events where there were either kind of, you know, massive, you know, massive tanking of the economy or, you know, buying dips when the economy, you know, when you had the market rising, you know, and then the crypto ventures, you know, bringing in the foreign money to World Liberty Financial and just seeing all that.

13:43Ben Meiselas:I mean, how do you talk to your constituents about that? Because, you know, what Trump will do, the pivot is, you know, politics is corrupt in general. You know, there's corruption here, there's corruption there. They did it. We did it. Everybody does it. This is on such a different level, though, that it is beyond comprehension. This corruption and the level of corruption from Trump and people around him is unprecedented. I mean,$1.4 billion through crypto ventures alone should just shock your conscience, and it does. I think the reporting is that he and his family took in north of$2 billion analyzing these financial disclosures.

14:22Ben Meiselas:And as you said, it's crypto schemes, it's foreign government and foreign government-backed business deals, It's the stock trades. I mean, look, when I'm doing stuff, it could be a town hall, whatever. And I talk about corruption. I talk about banning members of Congress and people like the president from trading stocks. You know, the folks even with the MAGA hats are clapping along because they're right. This is corrupt stuff. It should gross you out. And by the way, the corruption comes at a cost. Because when you are defrauding people, when you are engaged in these pay-to-play schemes, it doesn't just have no victim it it it erodes trust on our whole system and there's somebody else on the other side of that trade especially this meme coin scheme and these are supporters and deep believers in donald trump who he just took money from in this scheme it's just nasty stuff right i mean when you look at what his crypto ventures earned i mean you're it looks like earn two plus billion dollars.

15:22Ben Meiselas:Then you look at the people who bought into it. They lost two billion dollars. By the way, it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, even if you were going to do a venture, you know, people would think, OK, you know what? I'm in a business. I have shareholders. I have stakeholders. My job as a fiduciary is to create shareholder value. Even if you thought in those terms, you know, yes, the leadership can make money. That's no one saying the leadership can't make money, but it should be based upon bringing everybody along for the ride. And to me, it's a perfect analog to what's happening in this country where Trump has viewed the country as a zero sum game.

16:03Ben Meiselas:I believe he didn't want to sign the housing bill because he believes if we give new people housing, we're taking away housing from the private equity firms and we're harming people to help people. And everything I think he just sees through the lens, if we're going to help the American people, we then must be hurting my rich oligarch friends and my friends, the oligarchs, me, my family, we've only made money our life when we take from other people. I mean, you look at those, the charts of the Trump investments, how he does versus his investors or how he does versus the people who buy the meme coins.

16:40Ben Meiselas:It looks like the U.S. economy. It's that K-shape thing that everybody talks about. where he's made all the money and everybody's lost all the money. Yeah. And look, as I say, doing this, fine, you're a private business person. Okay. You're not. You're the president. You occupy the highest office in the land. You have access to so many levers of power that you can abuse, that you are abusing to enrich yourselves at the public's expense, right? The kind of information even a member of Congress learns, we see members of Congress abuse that power and trade stock. That's like on steroids for what the president and people around him can do.

17:16Ben Meiselas:And in a bunch of ways you just pointed out, they're doing it and they're not shy about it. And they're making lots of money just like pigs at the trough, man, ripping off the public here. You know, you talk about, you know, who this Trump regime is looking out for, the right wing oligarchs, private equity. You know, one of the things that we've seen, when I'm not doing Midas Touch Network, I'm a sports law professor and I've talked about this, in my class where you now have private equity trying to kind of gobble up rights to children's sports, to kids sports and kids sports leagues. And for people who are like, well, there's so much to focus on right now.

17:59Ben Meiselas:Should we be focusing on these vulture practices and kids sports? I say yes, because it's also symptomatic of a broader issue. If the private equity is going after your child's little league, it tells you that there's nothing off limits in where they're going to try to take away the American dream and take away the refuge that we have in family and fun in order to extract profits. And I know you're fighting against that. Talk about it. Yeah, I introduced this Let Kids Play Act with Senator Murphy and some others to get private equity and vulture investors out of youth sports. And let's start with the problem.

18:40Ben Meiselas:They have turned youth sports into a luxury item. Think about that. In America, sports are supposed to be the great equalizer. Every kid should be able to show up on a field, on a court, whatever, and have their shot. You learn about discipline and hard work. I'm from a place where we bleed black and gold in Western Pennsylvania. Sports matters to us. They matter all over the country. But man, they have rolled up so many different parts of youth sports. They've jacked up the cost for families. This is now like a$40 billion industry making money off of parents who want their kids to play. So we go right at some of these nasty practices in the bill.

19:15Ben Meiselas:We're trying to kick out these vulture investors. Remember, this isn't just like some other part of the economy. We're talking about youth sports where there is a good and there's an interest here that is bigger than just making money. Kids having a shot to play matters for society. It matters for the country. And I see these vulture investors, I think they should have nothing to do and be nowhere near making money off the backs of kids. Chris, I know you're running for re-election right now as well. Talk to us, though, about what you're seeing in your district and what you're seeing in Pennsylvania.

19:50Ben Meiselas:And if you're seeing the vibe shift that appears to be kind of taking place, you know, from my vantage point, but I never want to, I just spoke with someone out in Iowa. I just spoke with someone out in Indiana, you know, and they're saying, you know, we've never seen anything, you know, like it. I mean, you know, Pennsylvania Commonwealth view generally purple, very swing state. What are you, are you seeing, I mean, you saw what went down in 2024. Are you seeing differences right now? What do you see? Yeah, Pennsylvanians have turned against Donald Trump. His numbers are imploding. But let me be clear about something that does not automatically translate to Democrats are going to win.

20:35Ben Meiselas:It's an opportunity. I'm going to say this as a guy Donald Trump threatened to imprison and to call for my hanging. Just opposing Trump is not enough. Democrats have to seize this moment to frankly restore the American dream. I mean, people are tired of getting ripped off and working hard and their life doesn't line up to what their hard work should give them, should earn them. And I think this is a chance because Donald Trump has failed so remarkably for Democrats to frankly dream bigger than just meeting this affordability crisis. We got to put juice back in the American dream to build out a good life for people to make hard work pay off.

21:11Ben Meiselas:And this is a real opportunity to do that given his failure. So I sense the voters have turned against Donald Trump. They've turned against these Republicans who are so weak and doing whatever he wants. Democrats have to offer more. And I see so many of us in that economic fight, but it's a moment for us to seize it. Congressman Deluzio, appreciate you coming on as always and appreciate the great work you're doing. And I think it'll be enlightening to a lot of our viewers what's going on. I mean, I'm sure a lot of them know what's happening in kids sports like that, but you know, you should really look into it because it is a horrific, horrific practice.

21:48Ben Meiselas:And then you know what happens next? Then these private equities want these tax breaks relating to it and they want exemptions because now they're saying, look, we're doing it in the public. The slippery slope kind of continues, right, of how they then want to use children as kind of a kind of cludgeon against other taxes and things like that. Yeah. And thanks for having me on, man. All right, everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.