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MeidasTouch
American progressive online media network From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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MeidasTouch is an American progressive[4][5][6] media company. The network describes itself as doing "pro-democracy" journalism.[7]
Previously, the MeidasTouch name was used by its founders for a liberal American political action committee formed in March 2020 with the purpose of stopping the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election.[8][9][10][11] The SuperPAC aligned with the Democratic Party in the 2020 United States presidential election, the 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia, and the 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia.[12][13][14]
The PAC changed its name to Democracy Defense Action in 2023.[7] The MeidasTouch name continues to be used by the MeidasTouch Network, the news organization.[2]
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The committee was founded in March 2020 by three brothers from Long Island while in quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[15][16] One of the brothers, Ben Meiselas, is an attorney who represented former NFL player Colin Kaepernick.[17][18][19] Another brother, Brett Meiselas, is an Emmy-winning video editor who worked for The Ellen DeGeneres Show.[20] The third brother, Jordan Meiselas, is a marketing supervisor living in Brooklyn, New York.[20]
The group name and slogan come from their mother and father, combining their surname and their mother's maiden name, Golden,[16] alluding to the mythological Greek king Midas known for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold.
On July 21, 2023, MeidasTouch filed paperwork to rename itself to Democracy Defense Action,[21] and later that year, news reporting indicated the MeidasTouch name was being used for a news network called MeidasTouch Network.[22][23][2]
Political Action Committee
2020 U.S. presidential election
On April 22, 2020, the committee released their first video, titled "Are You Better Off?", an allusion to Ronald Reagan's famous line in the 1980 general election presidential debate,[24] which criticized Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States;[25] The committee shared the video in a Twitter reply to George Conway, which was then retweeted by him.[16]
On June 6, 2020, another video was released, called "Bye Ivanka"; it took parts out of her commencement speech and focused on her relation with China and criticized Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.[26] Her Wichita State University Tech speech was canceled due to student and teacher pressure.[27][28]
On June 17, 2020, another video was released, "Gop Cowards", which accused Republican senators of being cowards. Near the end of the video, followers are urged to vote 11 Republican legislators out.[29]
On June 23, the committee released a video called "Trump Kills US".[30] The video focuses on Trump's comment at his Tulsa rally which urged doctors to "slow the testing down".[31] MeidasTouch called it "Mass murder on a national scale".[32]
On July 8, a new video was released called "Creepy Trump". It compiled Kellyanne Conway's comments on Joe Biden and put it together with Trump statements.[33] The ad uses clips of Conway's comments and remarks Trump has presented about women, and was played on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.[34]
On July 14, another video was released called "#ByeDonJr". It takes Donald Trump Jr.'s comments on Fox News about Biden and applies them against Trump. The video also further criticizes the older Trump's handling of the pandemic.[35][36]
The group continued its activities after the November 3 elections. On November 27, it claimed credit for making #DiaperDon the top Twitter trending topic in the US, via a tweet that mocked (as summarized by The Independent) a "press briefing ... which saw [Donald Trump] furiously assail a reporter from behind a surprisingly small desk", and provoked Trump into calling for the immediate abolishing of Section 230 "for purposes of National Security".[37]
2020–2021 Georgia Senate elections
The SuperPAC targeted Republican candidates in the 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia and the 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia with several televised attack ads, billboards, direct mailings and door-to-door canvassing efforts.[12][13][14]
Most notably, MeidasTouch aired an advertisement called "The Grinches of Georgia." CNN said of the ads, "Humor is the chosen route for Democrat-backed Meidas Touch. Their television ads show Perdue and Loeffler with green faces and Grinch-like features. A nursery rhyme narration includes the verse, "Their stockings were stuffed from the stocks that were sold, when they heard Covid was coming, before we were told."[38] The Hill credits MeidasTouch as framing the Republican candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue as "Looting Loeffler" and "Chicken Perdue," respectively. "The ad takes aim at the senators—dubbed 'Looting Loeffler and Chicken Perdue'—and highlights the controversies surrounding their stock purchases," The Hill said.[39] The "Grinches" ad campaign also included matching billboards and mailers.[40]
News network and podcast
On July 22, 2024, shortly after JD Vance was named Donald Trump's running mate, MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski posted a clip from a 2021 Fox News interview in which Vance stated, "we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too." The resurfaced remarks from Vance sparked viral outrage against the candidate across social media, with many celebrities weighing in, including Jennifer Aniston and Taylor Swift.[41][42][43] Swift, referencing Vance's comments, signed off her post endorsing Kamala Harris as a "childless cat lady."[44]
Following the 2024 presidential election, prominent Democratic politicians such as Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have made appearances on the podcast. As of March 2025, the network had 12 full-time employees and 30 regular contributors.[6] Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen hosts a podcast on MeidasTouch.[6] Charlie Angus of Canada's New Democratic Party is a regular guest commentator.[45]
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Political action committee
In April 2021, Seth Hettena of Rolling Stone magazine said MeidasTouch's campaign fundraising was "nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections" and that "MeidasTouch's grandiose self-promotion doesn't match reality".[5]
In February 2022, singer-songwriter India Arie shared a compilation of podcaster Joe Rogan saying the racial slur "nigger" on The Joe Rogan Experience on Instagram.[46] Rogan apologized, calling his past language "regretful and shameful" while also saying that the clips were "taken out of context" and he only quoted the slur to discuss its use by others.[47][48][49] The footage in question was first published by the political action committee PatriotTakes,[50] an affiliate of MeidasTouch.[51] This resulted in allegations of a defamation attempt by MeidasTouch, which the founders denied in an interview with Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy, instead attributing the source of the footage to Alex Jones, who was a recurring guest on Rogan's show.[52] Rogan described the video compilation as a "political hit job".[53][54]
News website and podcast
In June 2024, MeidasTouch was described in the Columbia Journalism Review as being made for social media, unlike a lot of more traditional left-leaning media outlets, and does a better job than most of exploiting the perception that the mainstream media was too sympathetic to Trump.[7]
In February 2025, Podscribe listed The MeidasTouch Podcast as the top podcast in its rankings of monthly downloads and plays for the period of January 1 – February 12, beating out The Joe Rogan Experience.[55] Downloads and plays increased by 141% for the period of February 12 – March 12, making The MeidasTouch Podcast the top podcast in that ranking, and the MeidasTouch Network the #2 podcast publisher by downloads and plays behind only Spotify.[56] While the number of listeners per episode and YouTube subscribers remains significantly lower than Joe Rogan due to MeidasTouch releasing so many 10-20 minute episodes, its growth since the reelection of Donald Trump has mirrored other progressive podcasts and online shows like Pod Save America and The Young Turks.[55]
In March 2025, Media Matters identified MeidasTouch as the 4th most popular progressive online show across the most popular streaming and social media platforms, with 6.4 million total viewers.[57] That month, John Ross and Nathan J. Robinson, writing in Current Affairs, unfavorably compared the podcast to The Joe Rogan Experience and said, "Even though it is targeted at viewers who think Trump is dumb, the content is remarkably shallow, by which we mean that it doesn’t dive seriously into topics like health care, criminal punishment, foreign policy, and inequality. It's the National Enquirer for Trump-haters." They also criticized MeidasTouch's lack of coverage of environmental issues and the Gaza war, as well as its close ties to the Democratic Party.[58]
The MeidasTouch Podcast was awarded Podcast of the Year at the 29th Annual Webby Awards in April 2025. Journalist Molly Jong-Fast presented The MeidasTouch Podcast hosts with the award.[59][60]
Virginia Heffernan, writing in The New Republic, attributes the news group's success to embracing the kind of masculinity that stands up to bullies and speaks truth to power.[61]
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