Tiffany Muller
Appearances
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Yeah, that's exactly where they want to go. They want to both weaponize the powers of government to attack their perceived enemies, right? We see them doing that day in and day out. And they also are using it to line their own pockets. I mean, so much of this is a grift for them and their cronies to get rich. And so, look, we have to do a few things.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Number one, we need a check on Trump and this corrupt administration. And we can get that by winning back the House in November 2026. And so at InCitizens United, there are three big buckets we work in. One is electoral. One is on the Hill trying to pass good legislation or at the States trying to pass good legislation.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And the third is calling out the corruption and raising these issues up in the day-to-day narrative. And so on the elections front, we absolutely have to win back the House. And I think that we can do it, but I don't want anyone to think that this is going to be an easy fight. The battleground map is hard. And despite what we see every single day,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Too many Americans out there right now aren't sure who to trust or who is fighting for them. So we have to go tell them every single day how corrupt this administration is, how much it's hurting them, and how we as Democrats have a plan to change it.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Number two, we have to win elections in these battleground states for these key constitutional offices, governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general. It matters who sits in these seats because it's going to be the very people who are administering and certifying the next election, the next presidential election in 2028.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
We know how important it was that in 2022, folks like Jocelyn Benson beat election denier Christina Karamo in Michigan for Secretary of State. We know how important those wins were, and we have to go do that again.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And then every single day, the folks watching you, the folks out there, we have to join together and raise our voices to make sure that we are pushing back on this corruption that we are seeing just day in and day out. So that is what we're doing every single day, Ben.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Please come join us. We need all the help we can get. We are at endcitizensunited.org, endcitizensunited.org. And you can follow us on Blue Sky at endcitizensunited.org. So looking forward to having you all join.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Thanks so much.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Well, first, Ben, thanks so much for having me on today. Even though these aren't always fun topics to talk about, they are critically important topics to talk about, and it's so good to be here with you. I mean, I think that what we're seeing right now in this moment in our country is exactly what 15 years under the Citizens United ruling does to a country.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
where you have the richest man in the world who, as you said, spent almost $300 million to elect the president of the United States and then is rewarded with unprecedented access and power and the ability to line his own pockets with more government contracts and big data that he can go monetize in his private businesses.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
um and we're seeing that play out in cabinet position after cabinet position and with trump rewarding himself right this is about a hundred days of chaos corruption but continued rising prices on the american people so i think we've seen what they're prioritizing they're prioritizing themselves they're prioritizing who can write the biggest check
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
but it's all coming at the expense of the American people.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And our organization, to your point, is 10 years old and we are a grassroots powered movement that is actually just made up of everyday hardworking Americans, retired teachers, firefighters, folks who give $10 or $15 at a time because they care about the future of our democracy and they care about having a democracy that doesn't just work for those who can write the biggest check,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
but really is about everyone having the same power and voice in our democracy.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
They are absolutely doing nothing at this point in time. Look, you know, the Federal Elections Commission isn't one of those sexy agencies that's in the headlines every single day, but it's now 50 years old and it was formed in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And when our country took a bipartisan approach to cleaning up corruption and restoring faith and trust in in our government and in Congress in particular, And it was a bipartisan system. You have three Democrats and three Republicans, and it takes four of them to open investigations or to say that someone broke the law and have a fine or things like that.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And what Donald Trump has done is he has gutted the agency. But what we've seen over the past 10 years is an agency riddled by dysfunction anyway. So we have seen that it has been mostly stalemated with the three Republicans and three Democratic commissioners often voting 3-3 and having nothing move forward. But now they've gone even further.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And Donald Trump's trying to take over all these independent agencies. And what he's done in the case of the Federal Elections Commission is he said, well, we're going to just outright fire the biggest advocate who's taking on corruption, who's calling out the abuses of money in politics when he fired Commissioner Weintraub. And then they're just going to leave the other vacancies open. Right.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Because, again, if there's not at least four members on that commission, they can't do anything. They can't do any business whatsoever. And so this is one more step that Donald Trump has taken to really gut the watchdogs who are at the heart of our government trying to clean up corruption. We saw it with Federal Elections Commission. We've seen it with inspectors generals in independent agencies.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And we see it in weaponizing the DOJ time and time again.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
It is so crazy. And also, I think that you said, I mean, first you said that folks in other countries don't understand how our system is working. I mean, me too. Half the time, I don't understand what's going on with our system. But what we do know is that this amount of money and this dark money and corruption and just outright corruption that we see is absolutely undermining our democracy.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
There are reasons why other countries are keeping that money out. And it's what you said. It's so that they have a functioning democracy. They actually put rules around whether or not you can run TV ads or for what amount of time. They put rules around who can give money and who can't.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And we have this wild, wild west system at the moment that really has come down to one thing, which is how does money drive the policy outcomes that that the richest and the biggest corporations want to have happen. And, you know, you're absolutely right. Even the Supreme Court was talking about money in politics differently when they decided the Citizens United case than they do today.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And I'll give two examples. Number one, the court said in that opinion that money itself wasn't a corrupting factor and didn't necessarily lead to Americans not trusting their government. Well, I think we all know that was just flat wrong, right? Number two, they said that this money that flooded into our system would be disclosed and we'd be able to trace it back to where it originated from.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Well, what we know is that that's not true either. We have more dark, undisclosed money flooding into our system than we've ever had. There's actually about 75% of the money that was in this last election cycle in 2024 that we don't have full transparency into where it came from.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And that's letting in more corporate money, more foreign money, more foreign government money, and it is just completely corrupting the system. And one thing we haven't talked about, Ben, is also how this money impacts every single other policy priority that we have. I always think about climate change.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
Prior to Citizens United, there were 14 instances of Senate Republicans joining with Senate Democrats to try to address climate change and what it's doing to our earth. And then Citizens United happens. Big oil and gas becomes the number one spender in our elections.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
And would you like to guess how many times Senate Republicans have joined with Senate Democrats since then to try to fix this pressing issue?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
It is zero, Ben, it is exactly zero. And you can go down the line, prescription drug prices, gun violence, even reproductive freedom. We know that the right wing spent over $1.1 billion first to stack the Supreme Court and then to actually tee up the court cases to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
President of End Citizens United Tiffany Muller on Trump’s Attack on Elections
So even in reproductive freedom, you see the amount of money in our politics absolutely causing gridlock, dysfunction, and hampering our ability to make real progress.