January 25, 2025 • 11 mins
Rich's Leaving MAGA Insider Take on the Jan. 6 Pardons.
To view this video at the MeidasTouch Network, please visit the below link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6dfh9OSpps&list=PLX_rWdQSOcZMZjdaSQUkgFlegPNmGSdRk&index=14
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey guys, Rich Comin' to you here with Leaving MAGA
(00:01):
at LeavingMAGA.org here at the Midas Touch Network.
I wanted to give you a Leaving MAGA insider take
on all of the news about the January 6th pardons.
To give a little bit of context here,
the two primary reasons that I left MAGA
were first the acceptance of avoidable debts,
(00:25):
suffering, and trauma.
And second, albeit equally important,
the defense and justification
of Trump-inspired political violence.
And I wanna tell you guys what I would have said
if I were in the MAGA community right now.
I would have said, what about the summer of 2020 protests?
(00:47):
And I would have said, all of the January 6 felons
and those convicted, they're all politically persecuted.
I would have said exactly what you're hearing right now.
And there are some with whom I congregated
in my seven years in the MAGA community,
who in the immediate aftermath of January 6th,
(01:09):
all said that he should not run again.
And the reason that they said that
was because that they knew that Trump was partly responsible
for the Capitol riot.
And one of the common lamentations in the MAGA community
when I was there is that the Republican Party
never fights the Democrats, they never fight back.
(01:30):
The Democrats are tyrants
who are trying to seize permanent power.
And this kind of thinking in this life,
it just created these perpetual states
of panic and desperation.
And I think it's very clear
if anyone's paying attention objectively
that Democrats are not really capable
of being tyrants against anyone except themselves.
(01:54):
And after the announcement of the pardons yesterday,
I wanna read you guys some comments here
from some pro-MAGA message boards.
There's a professor I've recently gotten acquainted with.
Her name is Jen Goldback.
She's at the University of Maryland, College Park.
And I wanna show you here on screen
(02:16):
some of the messages she's captured.
If you take a look at some of what these say here,
you're talking about solitary confinement.
You're talking about hanging judges
and politicians using piano wire.
(02:36):
The GOP knows that what Trump did is an abomination,
but the GOP is afraid of these kinds of individuals,
Trump pardoned.
And it's not just because of the potential threats
against them or their families.
They're also afraid of them because they need their votes
in primaries and general elections.
And Republican officials and pundits,
(02:59):
the ones I used to follow, the ones I used to support,
the ones whose media I consume,
they plead ignorance about these individuals
and extremist groups,
even though they know what the truth actually is.
And they know that what I'm saying is accurate.
They just feign this ignorance
that these individuals don't exist.
(03:20):
And yes, it's true that the ones, for example,
in this message board I'm showing you here,
yes, it's true that I believe those are a minority
of the MAGA community, but even as a minority,
there are enough who warrant a different kind
of political hostage.
The J-6 convicts are not political hostages.
(03:43):
Now that they've been pardoned, law-abiding Americans,
all of us, we're held hostage to the possibility
that these individuals, through recidivism,
are going to commit violence,
especially politically motivated violence, yet again.
And Trump and any of these GOP politicians and pundits,
they would not hire a singular rioter who was pardoned.
(04:09):
And I have a clip for you here.
So this is my former senator, Marco Rubio, here in Florida.
He was just confirmed as our new secretary of state.
Here's Rubio refusing to answer questions
about the January 6th pardons.
What message does this pardoning,
nearly all of them, send to the rest of the world?
(04:32):
Well, we're gonna focus on what makes America stronger
and more prosperous and safer.
I'm not gonna engage in domestic political debates.
I can't in the rural state department.
My job is to focus on the president's foreign policy.
I hope you guys all understand.
I mean, my days, at least in the time I'm at
Department of State of engaging in domestic politics,
will be put aside as I focus on the affairs
(04:52):
that the United States has around the world.
I mean, who's to say that if a crowd of folks
who are displeased with something that happens
at the Capitol in the future,
who's to say that they don't just do it again?
Yeah, I know, and I understand.
But I'm not, I think it's unfortunate.
Our first engagement is I agree to come on this morning
with you, I'm gonna be working on foreign policy issues.
(05:15):
And you wanna revisit these issues
that are going on in domestic politics.
I'm just, it's not gonna happen.
I'm gonna, if you have questions for me
about foreign policy and engaging in the world,
I'll be happy to talk to you about those.
I will tell you guys that when we were in MAGA,
we took pride in being feared by Republican politicians.
We didn't even want a Republican party.
We wanted a MAGA party.
(05:36):
We looked at most Republicans as Democratic light.
We saw the miss squishy, Vichy Republicans
who would acquiesce to whatever it was
that the Democrats wanted.
And like so many other beliefs that I held,
sincerely when I was in MAGA,
I realized that I was pretty much wrong about everything,
(05:58):
including the fact that the Republican party doesn't fight.
If they've shown us anything over the last many, many years
is that they are very much willing to fight.
And it's why the Republican party is now the MAGA party.
And for all the viewers out there,
I want to personally apologize to you
(06:18):
for helping to make this possible.
As someone who was a devoted MAGA activist
and a volunteer and a pundit from 2015 to 22,
I know that I had a hand in all of this.
And some of you out there, you know, are great viewers.
You send us comments all the time saying,
(06:39):
you know, Rich, you should move on
and you've expressed your remorse.
And I have moved on from it.
I was able to find a way to forgive myself.
It was really necessary to do that
in founding this organization we have, Leaving MAGA,
which you can learn more about us at leavingmaga.org,
but it doesn't change the fact that I still have culpability.
And one of the non-negotiable ways
(07:02):
that some or one of the non-negotiable requirements
of Leaving MAGA is that you have to take accountability
for past actions and rhetoric.
So I've tried to do that.
I've tried to do that with our organization,
including our videos, our Leaving MAGA videos
here at Midas Touch Network.
And you know, there's something else that's nefarious
about all of this that I feel like is overlooked.
(07:24):
Trump didn't need really to pardon anyone
from an electoral standpoint
because he didn't need the votes.
He's already been elected.
He was already inaugurated.
And for those who will see this video,
who are still in the MAGA community,
I wanna first say that I actually disagree
(07:45):
with a lot of the rhetoric that's said about you.
I think most people in the MAGA community
deep down are good people,
but I wanna tell you what I came to discover,
which is that Trump does not care about you.
He does not care about any of his voters for that matter,
save for all of the gazillionaires.
He is someone who is transactional,
(08:06):
just like Elon Musk is transactional,
just like so many of the billionaires
who sat on the dais with him yesterday.
They are transactional.
And I painfully realized all this
while I was going through the tumultuous one-year process
of leaving MAGA.
So why would he do it then?
If he didn't really need the votes,
he didn't need to appease anyone.
(08:27):
It really comes down to what I see
as the long-term play in MAGA.
When I was in the MAGA community,
we thought about MAGA not just in the here and now,
but we thought about it as a many, many years long
second kind of founding for the country.
I actually saw Make America Great Again
as quite forward-facing, quite progressive.
(08:50):
So the long-term play for MAGA is to survive past 2028.
The GOP is all in on this
because they wouldn't have a future without MAGA.
It's why you're going to see Republican leaders
not answer questions about whether these January 6th felons
should have been pardoned,
(09:11):
just like Secretary of State Rubio didn't.
But they all know, all of these Republican leaders
and all of these MAGA media-friendly figures,
they all know that the people Trump pardoned,
even though they are not technically traitors,
they came pretty close, some of them.
And we know from the video footage
(09:32):
and we know from all the news stories
about their attacks on police officers and law enforcement.
So I think that the hypocrisy of Back the Blue
is quite obvious.
It has been that way for some time.
But even with these pardons,
I want to implore everyone out there,
(09:53):
for those of you who know people in the MAGA community,
you have to keep respectfully talking to them
because I'm telling you guys that there,
for many of them, for those in the MAGA community,
there is going to come a point
when there's going to be one lie too many
or one unnecessary death too many
or one pardon too many.
I can appreciate that it may not feel
(10:14):
exactly that way right now.
It was a depressing day.
Inauguration day should be a day of celebration,
even if we didn't support the candidate
who's being sworn in.
But clearly those norms have changed.
I think probably, if not permanently,
certainly for the long term.
But I want to just strongly encourage you to keep contact.
(10:38):
Don't give up with your friends and family in MAGA.
Empathy and education are the two ways, as I see them,
that really give us the best chance
and the best odds over time
of empowering people to leave MAGA.
So this is our little vignette for you here,
a Leaving MAGA insider take on the January 6 pardons.
(10:59):
Hey guys, if you liked this video,
make sure you subscribe to the Midas Touch Network,
as well as Leaving MAGA's growing YouTube channel.
And feel free to visit us at leavingmaga.org.
If you'd like to drop us a note or a comment,
also feel free to drop a comment down below.
As always, really appreciate you guys watching.
Thanks so much.
(11:19):
Love this video?
Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram,
at Midas Touch, and help us blow past 500,000 followers.
And we'll see you next time.
Hey guys, Rich Comin' to you here with Leaving MAGA
(00:01):
at LeavingMAGA.org here at the Midas Touch Network.
I wanted to give you a Leaving MAGA insider take
on all of the news about the January 6th pardons.
To give a little bit of context here,
the two primary reasons that I left MAGA
were first the acceptance of avoidable debts,
(00:25):
suffering, and trauma.
And second, albeit equally important,
the defense and justification
of Trump-inspired political violence.
And I wanna tell you guys what I would have said
if I were in the MAGA community right now.
I would have said, what about the summer of 2020 protests?
(00:47):
And I would have said, all of the January 6 felons
and those convicted, they're all politically persecuted.
I would have said exactly what you're hearing right now.
And there are some with whom I congregated
in my seven years in the MAGA community,
who in the immediate aftermath of January 6th,
(01:09):
all said that he should not run again.
And the reason that they said that
was because that they knew that Trump was partly responsible
for the Capitol riot.
And one of the common lamentations in the MAGA community
when I was there is that the Republican Party
never fights the Democrats, they never fight back.
(01:30):
The Democrats are tyrants
who are trying to seize permanent power.
And this kind of thinking in this life,
it just created these perpetual states
of panic and desperation.
And I think it's very clear
if anyone's paying attention objectively
that Democrats are not really capable
of being tyrants against anyone except themselves.
(01:54):
And after the announcement of the pardons yesterday,
I wanna read you guys some comments here
from some pro-MAGA message boards.
There's a professor I've recently gotten acquainted with.
Her name is Jen Goldback.
She's at the University of Maryland, College Park.
And I wanna show you here on screen
(02:16):
some of the messages she's captured.
If you take a look at some of what these say here,
you're talking about solitary confinement.
You're talking about hanging judges
and politicians using piano wire.
(02:36):
The GOP knows that what Trump did is an abomination,
but the GOP is afraid of these kinds of individuals,
Trump pardoned.
And it's not just because of the potential threats
against them or their families.
They're also afraid of them because they need their votes
in primaries and general elections.
And Republican officials and pundits,
(02:59):
the ones I used to follow, the ones I used to support,
the ones whose media I consume,
they plead ignorance about these individuals
and extremist groups,
even though they know what the truth actually is.
And they know that what I'm saying is accurate.
They just feign this ignorance
that these individuals don't exist.
(03:20):
And yes, it's true that the ones, for example,
in this message board I'm showing you here,
yes, it's true that I believe those are a minority
of the MAGA community, but even as a minority,
there are enough who warrant a different kind
of political hostage.
The J-6 convicts are not political hostages.
(03:43):
Now that they've been pardoned, law-abiding Americans,
all of us, we're held hostage to the possibility
that these individuals, through recidivism,
are going to commit violence,
especially politically motivated violence, yet again.
And Trump and any of these GOP politicians and pundits,
they would not hire a singular rioter who was pardoned.
(04:09):
And I have a clip for you here.
So this is my former senator, Marco Rubio, here in Florida.
He was just confirmed as our new secretary of state.
Here's Rubio refusing to answer questions
about the January 6th pardons.
What message does this pardoning,
nearly all of them, send to the rest of the world?
(04:32):
Well, we're gonna focus on what makes America stronger
and more prosperous and safer.
I'm not gonna engage in domestic political debates.
I can't in the rural state department.
My job is to focus on the president's foreign policy.
I hope you guys all understand.
I mean, my days, at least in the time I'm at
Department of State of engaging in domestic politics,
will be put aside as I focus on the affairs
(04:52):
that the United States has around the world.
I mean, who's to say that if a crowd of folks
who are displeased with something that happens
at the Capitol in the future,
who's to say that they don't just do it again?
Yeah, I know, and I understand.
But I'm not, I think it's unfortunate.
Our first engagement is I agree to come on this morning
with you, I'm gonna be working on foreign policy issues.
(05:15):
And you wanna revisit these issues
that are going on in domestic politics.
I'm just, it's not gonna happen.
I'm gonna, if you have questions for me
about foreign policy and engaging in the world,
I'll be happy to talk to you about those.
I will tell you guys that when we were in MAGA,
we took pride in being feared by Republican politicians.
We didn't even want a Republican party.
We wanted a MAGA party.
(05:36):
We looked at most Republicans as Democratic light.
We saw the miss squishy, Vichy Republicans
who would acquiesce to whatever it was
that the Democrats wanted.
And like so many other beliefs that I held,
sincerely when I was in MAGA,
I realized that I was pretty much wrong about everything,
(05:58):
including the fact that the Republican party doesn't fight.
If they've shown us anything over the last many, many years
is that they are very much willing to fight.
And it's why the Republican party is now the MAGA party.
And for all the viewers out there,
I want to personally apologize to you
(06:18):
for helping to make this possible.
As someone who was a devoted MAGA activist
and a volunteer and a pundit from 2015 to 22,
I know that I had a hand in all of this.
And some of you out there, you know, are great viewers.
You send us comments all the time saying,
(06:39):
you know, Rich, you should move on
and you've expressed your remorse.
And I have moved on from it.
I was able to find a way to forgive myself.
It was really necessary to do that
in founding this organization we have, Leaving MAGA,
which you can learn more about us at leavingmaga.org,
but it doesn't change the fact that I still have culpability.
And one of the non-negotiable ways
(07:02):
that some or one of the non-negotiable requirements
of Leaving MAGA is that you have to take accountability
for past actions and rhetoric.
So I've tried to do that.
I've tried to do that with our organization,
including our videos, our Leaving MAGA videos
here at Midas Touch Network.
And you know, there's something else that's nefarious
about all of this that I feel like is overlooked.
(07:24):
Trump didn't need really to pardon anyone
from an electoral standpoint
because he didn't need the votes.
He's already been elected.
He was already inaugurated.
And for those who will see this video,
who are still in the MAGA community,
I wanna first say that I actually disagree
(07:45):
with a lot of the rhetoric that's said about you.
I think most people in the MAGA community
deep down are good people,
but I wanna tell you what I came to discover,
which is that Trump does not care about you.
He does not care about any of his voters for that matter,
save for all of the gazillionaires.
He is someone who is transactional,
(08:06):
just like Elon Musk is transactional,
just like so many of the billionaires
who sat on the dais with him yesterday.
They are transactional.
And I painfully realized all this
while I was going through the tumultuous one-year process
of leaving MAGA.
So why would he do it then?
If he didn't really need the votes,
he didn't need to appease anyone.
(08:27):
It really comes down to what I see
as the long-term play in MAGA.
When I was in the MAGA community,
we thought about MAGA not just in the here and now,
but we thought about it as a many, many years long
second kind of founding for the country.
I actually saw Make America Great Again
as quite forward-facing, quite progressive.
(08:50):
So the long-term play for MAGA is to survive past 2028.
The GOP is all in on this
because they wouldn't have a future without MAGA.
It's why you're going to see Republican leaders
not answer questions about whether these January 6th felons
should have been pardoned,
(09:11):
just like Secretary of State Rubio didn't.
But they all know, all of these Republican leaders
and all of these MAGA media-friendly figures,
they all know that the people Trump pardoned,
even though they are not technically traitors,
they came pretty close, some of them.
And we know from the video footage
(09:32):
and we know from all the news stories
about their attacks on police officers and law enforcement.
So I think that the hypocrisy of Back the Blue
is quite obvious.
It has been that way for some time.
But even with these pardons,
I want to implore everyone out there,
(09:53):
for those of you who know people in the MAGA community,
you have to keep respectfully talking to them
because I'm telling you guys that there,
for many of them, for those in the MAGA community,
there is going to come a point
when there's going to be one lie too many
or one unnecessary death too many
or one pardon too many.
I can appreciate that it may not feel
(10:14):
exactly that way right now.
It was a depressing day.
Inauguration day should be a day of celebration,
even if we didn't support the candidate
who's being sworn in.
But clearly those norms have changed.
I think probably, if not permanently,
certainly for the long term.
But I want to just strongly encourage you to keep contact.
(10:38):
Don't give up with your friends and family in MAGA.
Empathy and education are the two ways, as I see them,
that really give us the best chance
and the best odds over time
of empowering people to leave MAGA.
So this is our little vignette for you here,
a Leaving MAGA insider take on the January 6 pardons.
(10:59):
Hey guys, if you liked this video,
make sure you subscribe to the Midas Touch Network,
as well as Leaving MAGA's growing YouTube channel.
And feel free to visit us at leavingmaga.org.
If you'd like to drop us a note or a comment,
also feel free to drop a comment down below.
As always, really appreciate you guys watching.
Thanks so much.
(11:19):
Love this video?
Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram,
at Midas Touch, and help us blow past 500,000 followers.
And we'll see you next time.
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