Welcome to another edition of the schmid Storm.
You've got questions, and I'll do my best to give you some answers. And the first question is that whatever it is that passes the Big Beautiful Bill, as Trump calls it, will pass.
In some form after it does.
How should Democrats campaign against it?
This is a great question.
And unfortunately, the Big Beautiful Bill an obscenity without precedent. And I say this with no hyperbole, no exaggeration can back this up. Is the singularly most corrupt piece of
legislation in American history, and it will pass now. The fact that the odious Mike Lee had a backup and backtrack and retreat on his plan to sell off one hundred and thirty two million acres of public land just because a good thing happened because a bad thing was stopped, does not reduce in total the evil of this bill, which betrays no group of Americans more broadly as a political constituency than the Trump voter, who will.
Pay a heavy, heavy, heavy price if.
You live in a rural area for trusting and entering into a business deal of sorts with Donald Trump.
He said, vote for me. I'll make America great. Again.
And the reality is is he took your Medicaid away, he took your access to a doctor away, and he closed down your rural hospital, and he slashed your VA benefits, and he cut off the parks, and he shut down the national parks, and he fired the park rangers, and he abused the land.
That's what he did.
And so Democrats will just have to communicate clearly because the things that will happen.
The checks that won't come.
For example, the Social Security Administration because of Musk's vandalism, is in a stage of near collapse. As all of these things accumulate, as people feel it. The anchors on Fox News who are making fifty sixty million dollars a year, well, all of the bullshit will start to stink a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And the reality is the images of the bezo sweating.
That is the image of Maga. That's what this all is.
And Democrats simply need to put a question on the table on their journey to redemption, which is, shouldn't there be a check on Donald Trump? And the answer to that question, and every day between today and the election, it will intensify with the answer being yes, yes, please, yes, there must be a check. The next question has to do with the settlement by Sherry Redstone, who directed CBS to settle Donald Trump's demands in his lawsuit against them
over the sixty minutes interview with Kamala Harris. And the suit, of course, is meritless, and Elizabeth Warren is entirely correct to call it what it is is a bribe. It's a corrupt act, and Sharry Redstone, who paid the bribe, should be investigated for bribery. This is a corrupt transaction between billionaire now Shary Redstone, David Allison, the billionaire son the owner of Skygance, the production company that makes the
Tom Cruise movies. He is the kid of Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest men, a man who's given tens of millions of dollars to the Maggot cause. David Ellison will now run CBS News and he is a Trump oligarch in firm standing. Now some will say David Allison has given money to Democrats, or that David Allison is a Democrat.
Nonsense.
David Allison is the man who broke CBS News by making clear this had to be settled before the deal could go through, so we.
Set the conditions.
Cherry Redstone has no character, and what she has done to Edward R. Moro's network is fundamentally to poison it, to shatter its credibility. So the institution has been set ablaze. While there's still some good journalists there. It's just the devastating day. And one more reason why you've seen such a rise in independent media, where there are places that are unafraid to tell you the truth, that have a
higher value as an institution than just making money. And the warning is one of these places will tell you the truth. Never settle anything like that. And it's a shame that it was settled to CBS. And the next question is what are the implications for journalism writ large with this settlement.
They're not good.
What you'll see is more punch pulling in the corporate newsrooms. In the corporate television newsrooms, you see a real crisis of integrity, and a great many of them. Of course, there are stallwarts. There are people that will hold the line, that do hold the line.
People like my friend Nicole Wallace.
Being one of them, doesn't pull punches, tells you the truth and does so courageously. But the truth is across the broad spectrum of all of this, reporters are afraid, people are intimidated. There is a chill in the air, there is a fear in the air that you don't say anything about Mega, you don't say anything about Trump, maybe you'll get the dime drop to Ice, who will come knocking on the door, even though you're an American citizen.
What we know know in this moment is that people are scared, and we know the remedy to fear is fearless ness. So political leadership requires to communicate to the American people to not be afraid, and that includes to the journalists because everything collapses without truth tellers. Now, truthtelling
in America is not collapsing. Corporate journalism is collapsing, and there's a rise of a new form of journalism, independent journalism that's fearless, and it is not so very different than the type of journalism that rose during the Gilded Age. The muckrackers were the ones who exposed child labor, who exposed the abuses of the labor force, who exposed the unsafe working conditions, who exposed the greed of the people who are the precedent of the people who swirl.
Around Jeff Bezos.
So that is what's going to happen in America. Thank God for the First Amendment, because even though corporate journalism at some level is like a glass that has been smashed against a brick wall, each shod that falls into an American soil of the First Amendment has the potential to regenerate and grow into a news organization that has the ability to hold this administration, this regime, and all of its.
Corruption to account.
The next question is what is my reaction to Elon Musk declaring that he will form the American Party. Well, it's not good because Elon Musk is a Nazi. Elon Musk endorsed the German AfD, which is run and filled with Neo Nazis. In fact, no small number of AfD numbers scar their faces. They cut themselves with knives to show their loyalty to the party. This is the party that Elon Musk says is indispensable for Germany's future, and so that's what this party would be. Elon Musk is
the greatest welfare queen in American history. Taxpayers, including me, including you, have given him thirty eight billion dollars in subsidies. He's a drug added billionaire who went into politics for the power of it and because he's unhinged, because he's unbalanced.
It all fell apart.
In a few months, and now he's at war with Donald Trump, who he elected with three hundred million dollars, and the corrupt corporate media says, oh, Elon's good now, because well, he's against Trump, when in fact Elon and
Trump are forever together. Because the vandalism, the damage of Elon Musk, the security breaches involving Elon Musk, the fact that the data that Elon Musk accumulated on all of us is nowhere and everywhere, but nobody seems to know anything about it, is still happening right now in this present second. And so Elon Musk is not a political leader.
He's an American pancreatic cancer. There will be no Elon Musk third party, and if there is, it will simply be an extension of the fringe Nazi parties that already exist.
Elon Musk is a person.
Whose companies should be boycotted, whose defense contracts should be obliterated, whose partnership with NASA should be ended, and whose rockets should never carry from American soil, an American product or satellite on them to space ever again.
Elon Musk was an grant.
To this country who took an oath to the Constitution and has set about trying to burn it to ashes. The contempt that we all feel for Elon Musk is the exact same contempt we all feel for Donald Trump.
Because Musk and Trump are won.
They are they and them together forever joined two polls on the fascist line that have brought misery and this unprecedented assault on our liberties to the United States, on all of us together, and that is their enduring legacy.
I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning.
I invite you to join this community, where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel and on substack.
Thank you.