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Ben
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Brett
No, silly.
Ben
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Brett
To drizzle all over their crispy chicken. But dragon bees would be so cool. Try it now for only $7 or share a box with friends for 25.
Ben
Prices and participation vary while supplies last. Taxes, tips and fees extra.
Jordy
Have I Got News for you Is back for another season. Roy Wood Jr, Amber Ruffin and Michael.
Brett
Ian Black are finding the funny in.
Jordy
The week's biggest stories.
Brett
Have I got news for you? Return Saturday at 9 on CNN and stream next day on Max. You found your person. Now let the knot help you with everything else. The knot connects you to the wedding inspo, vendors, venues and planning tools you need to make your day. Totally. You Having helped plan 25 million weddings, we've got your back when it comes to every little detail like RSVPs, budgets and more. Because your wedding comes to life with the connections that matter the most. Get started@theknot.com audio the knot let's plan your wedding together. We've got a lot to discuss. Midas Mighty let's just get right into it. Donald Trump keeps giving these disastrous Oval Office press conferences where he is upending American foreign policy, crashing our economy locally in the long run. We're already seeing inflation starting to surge. Let's just take a look at everything he's saying. Let's break it all down. So Donald Trump is asked about rising prices, the recent inflation numbers not good. Here's what Donald Trump says. Let's play it.
Ben
Mr. President, because of these tariffs, who do you think voters should hold responsible?
Jordy
Oh, I think what's going to go up is jobs are going to go up and prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down. And I think the farmers are going to be helped by this very much.
Brett
Prices will go up short term, but then they also will go down. And farmers will be helped by this. I mean, if you know anything about Trump's recent history of tariffs, the farmers got absolutely screwed. There had to be subsidies paid to the farmers because it led to foreign countries not buying America. It's exactly what we're going to see. Again, we're already seeing farmers being screwed, not just in the form of Donald Trump's tariffs and the harm that that's causing but by Donald Trump's destruction of government entities that help support farmers who voted for Donald Trump. I guess the leopards are eating their faces or they're effing around and finding out right now. Here Donald Trump talks about prices going up. It just may be a short term disturbance is what they say. Play this clip.
Jordy
They'll do it without tariffs and therefore prices won't go up. There could be some short term disturbance, but long term it's going to, it's going to make country a fortune.
Ben
So Americans should prepare for some short term pain.
Jordy
You said that. I didn't say that the prices go up. Let's see what happens. Nobody really knows what is going to.
Brett
Happen other now this is at the same time the MAGA Republicans released their budget resolution. They are going to add $4.5 trillion in new deficits for tax writing. Ways and Means Committee, $4 trillion debt limit hike. In addition $880 billion in deficit reduction as it relates to energy and commerce. That means Medicaid cuts, 330 billion in deficit reduction for Education Committee, that means education cuts, 230 billion in deficit reduction. For the Agriculture Committee. That means nutrition cuts and then about a 4.5 to 5 trillion dollar T trillion dollar tax cut for the billionaires. So just so you know their priorities, cutting Medicaid by billions, cutting education by billions, cutting agriculture by billions. But Donald, I thought you said you were helping the farmers and giving the billionaires $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. Let's go back to more of the Oval Office developments. You had Donald Trump with the leader of India Modi in the Oval Office. And Donald Trump has asked a question whether he thinks that USAID was interfering in the 2020 US election and the 2024 India election or the 2024 election generally. Play this clip. May I?
Ben
Yeah.
Brett
President Trump, first of all, congratulations for the fantastic 24 days of your presidency. Historic and unprecedented decisions that you made.
Jordy
Transformational reforms.
Brett
I am particularly impressed by the expose on usaid. And I would like you to share with us if you think USAID had a role in election interference in the US in 2020 and Indian elections in 2024.
Jordy
So it could have had a role. There were a lot of bad things that happened in 20. I think bad things happened in 2024. But it was too big to rig. We won by a tremendous margin. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions of votes. So it was, it was too big to rig. But yeah, I think they probably tried. We're Looking to go to a system now much different where one day voting voter id and you just, we have to do that. And paper ballots, we want paper ballots. And when they do that, we're going to clean it up very, very well.
Brett
But want to call in my brother Brett right now. Jordy couldn't be on it today. Jordy's on daddy duty. Got me and Brett today. But Brett, I think that shows, number one, you had the reporter manipulate him with flattery and then number two, pose just a ridiculously absurd question. You could have basically said, do you think that responsible? I mean, she could have said anything at that point, right? She could have said, do you think USAID was responsible for Covid? Do you think USAID was responsible for the first? And Donald Trump was like, yeah, I, I think so. I, I definitely think it has a role. It's so reckless, so dangerous. It makes McCarthyism look like a, like a little ant. Right. The way that Watergate doesn't even look like a thing compared to the massive criminality we're seeing every day.
Ben
It's so true, Ben, it's such a good point. And great to be here with you. Great to be here with everybody. And sorry, Jordi, that you couldn't make it to this one. We miss you. But, yeah, you know, I think it's, it's stunning how, how quickly the United States has basically fallen from democracy hanging on by a thread to basically flipping into an all out oligarchy overnight. And we are seeing the results of that with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who throughout these past few days has honestly appeared to be acting more as the President of the United States than Donald Trump. Very odd visuals, very odd dynamics of power at play. But we'll get to more of that in this episode. But you see this weaponization of disinformation, we've never seen anything like this. And truthfully, one of the things that frightens me is that I don't think the public in the United States or overseas are necessarily equipped to handle this level of lying, this level of gaslighting, this amount of disinformation that is being flooded every single day. And you have to remember, most of these lies originate where, from Elon Musk or from Elon Musk's Platform X, formerly Twitter. That's where the disinformation starts and spreads. That's where they take snippets of information without context, try to make organizations, actual hardworking civil servants look as bad as possible. They gather their algorithms to push everybody to content that smears These people, and then they use these lies in order to attack them, try to prosecute them, and to continue to just beat them down. As we see here with Donald Trump apparently accusing USAID of rigging elections and all this other stuff. You have a sizable amount of the population now that is believing this crap. It's one of the biggest dangers of our time that I don't think gets nearly enough attention. It's that we have this propaganda machine that is so outpowering what the corporate media is saying is so outpowering any of the information people get. And there are a lot of people there walking around right now thinking that these crazy things that we think are insane, what Donald Trump is saying, taking them at face value, taking them as truth. And there are a lot of people who maybe aren't as tuned into politics, who don't believe that people would just lie to them in this sort of way. They would just tell these big lies every single day. Where there has to be. There has gotta be a kernel of truth to this, right? There's gotta be a little truth. No, there's no truth to this. We are now living in a propaganda regime that looks no different than North Korea, that looks no different than Russia, that looks no different than the Nazi propaganda of the past. And so that's why this independent community needs to remain vigilant at all times, and we need to be calling this out and every single day, because if we don't, what we've learned in the past is a vacuum forms, and that's a vacuum for more disinformation to flood the zone.
Brett
Even weirder and more of a pariah state than North Korea. In many ways. North Korea condemned Donald Trump for talking about wanting to acquire, take over, Occupy Gaza. When you have Kim Jong Un making statements that resemble a more moderating voice than the President of the United States, you know, there are major, major issues there. I'll show you this as well, though. Let's talk about Elon Musk for a second in the Oval Office. You know, Elon Musk wears his little child like a prop on his head. You know, it reminds me of. You know, I forget that meme. Or.
Ben
Yeah, what. What is. What is going on with that? And, and by the way, the child's mother. And honestly, it's one of the reasons why I don't like showing these clips because it's unfair to the child, quite frankly. And I've seen the child's mother speak out and. And she's very upset. I think it's Grimes speaking out and Saying that she's horrified that her son is being paraded around in the Oval Office. And through all these things. What's your take on, like, do you think he's literally using this child as a shield during these various meetings and everything that he's doing?
Brett
Well, you know, I saw Elon Musk's dad being interviewed for one of these podcasts and they asked Elon Musk's dad, do you think that your son is a good father? And Elon Musk dad said, absolutely not. He's a horrible father. And Elon Musk's dad said, you know, their first, you know, Elon Musk's first kid died under the care of a nanny is what the father said. He goes, and all the other kids don't want to be around him at all. So he's got this kid who he wears literally as part of his costume to kind of prop up and prop around. You saw that moment where the kid was even like, seemed like he was trash talking Donald Trump. And whether he was saying shut your effing mouth or shut your mouth or something like that, it looked like he was saying things to Donald. And I think it was Lawrence O'Donnell who said it was one of the most powerless images of the presidency he ever saw. With Elon Musk dressed up just like in everyday attire though, but with that, you know, black pea coat that kind of looked like Darth Vader as his five year old son is like taunting Donald Trump. And Trump's like, like looking away as the kids making all of these statements.
Ben
It sounded like he was like, you're not the president. He was like yelling at him like, the kid is pretty, pretty wild.
Brett
So let me show you this from the Oval Office where Elon Musk is asked by a reporter, so you talked about, for example, giving condoms to Hamas, because that was one of the ones that were repeated all the time, right? And you know, all of the senators and Congress members, Maga Republicans, that is, they were out there saying, look how hard look, look what we uncovered. And then they took it a step further and they were like, oh, Hamas would use the condoms to make condom bombs. And that's what was going on there. And look what we uncovered. Totally false. And by the way, you can go through all of these, but at some point you have to realize essentially everything they're saying is a lie, because otherwise you end up chasing these things like whack a mole and go, that's not true, that's not true, that's not true. That's not true. And they're doing that while distracting you from the fact that inflation is once again surging, that egg prices are at record highs, that gas prices are up, that your groceries are up, that there's not peace in Ukraine in 24 hours, that housing is less affordable, that the business community feels, that there's utter chaos right now as Donald Trump wakes up one day. I'm tariffing you. I'm not tariffing. I'm tariffing this. I'm tariffing this country. So let me just show you this clip, though, of Elon Musk being asked about the lies that he was saying and Elon Musk's responses. I'm going to be wrong a lot. Like I'm going to say things that aren't true, but whatever. Here, play the clip. You said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza. But after fact check this, apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to protect them against hiv. So can you correct the statements at. It wasn't sent to Hamas, Actually, it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms was sent there. And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say? Well, first of all, some of the.
Jordy
Things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected.
Brett
So nobody's going to bat a thousand. I mean, any, you know, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. So, you know, if the. I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere. Frankly, I'm not sure that's something Americans.
Jordy
Would be really excited about.
Brett
You notice the pivot right away, you know, again, and the gaslighting, which he.
Ben
Follows up a lie with another lie as well. Yeah, like he doubles down on the lie while saying, we'll admit when we're wrong. And that's one of the most difficult things. And that's why they hide behind this kind of fake. Oh, look, we're just, we're being honest. We're being transparent. If I mess up, I'll, I'll gladly say I was wrong. But he's never apologized for that lie. He moves right on to the next lie and then he goes right on his social media platform and he spits out 50 other lies that I guess he could be asked about three days later and make the same comment. And then this whole cycle repeats. So it's, there's, they're disingenuous people. And that's why it's incumbent upon all the media out there and people not to take them at their word ever, because their word doesn't mean anything. Their word means zero. So he says, oh yeah, you know, I'm never going to, I'm never going to bat a thousand. Your purpose, your whole, the whole concept of what you're doing is quite frankly to spread disinformation, to create these false pretenses, to gut these agencies, to fire people. And they're important things. Ultimately, we're already learning about people who have died overseas because hospitals have shut down because of their federal funding freezing cuts. We're finding out about all these ramifications throughout the government. We're finding out that the national like weather service may, may go under because of Donald Trump's cut.
Brett
We may not have a weather service. It's like people know that like no weather, we won't be able to get weather anymore.
Ben
Yeah, and I'm sure that'll be great for the farmers as well to not be able to have a public weather service to alert them of, of issues and stuff. Just all this is going to have such massive effects because he is making these cuts and, and doing these purges a obviously without any regard to the rule of law or anything like that. But also it's just complete disregard to the effects they're gonna have on actual people's lives and on the country. And we're gonna be feeling the rippling effects of this, I think for decades and decades and decades to come.
Brett
Yeah, you mentioned for example, the weather service, because that's handled by the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the noaa, which is one of the things that Elon Musk and Donald Trump also gutted and attacked. But NOAA also does things like, you know, if you're by the Great Lakes, you know, they tell you are safe for you to go out in the water or are you going to potentially drown? Like is it safe to be out there? And these are government workers who work very hard every day at kind of thankless jobs that just quietly in the background are saving people's lives and making our lives all better. And these are the people who are being attacked every day by the Trump authoritarian regime and their state run regime media, with Fox and with X and all of these other platforms. Now let's pull up those budget numbers because this is what this, the bait and switch here is that what Republicans want to do is give people like Elon Musk and billionaires a $4.5 trillion tax cut. They want to run out this isn't about fiscal responsibility. This isn't saving money. It's just making sure that the billionaires and the big richest of the billionaires don't have to pay taxes. So what they're doing is they're saying, look, we saved you $8 million here. We saved you $30 million here. We served you, not saved you $9 million here. Which is like 0.00001%. Like, even if you took the entire USAID and gutted it, I think it would be less than 1% of everything. If you. If you gutted the whole thing, if you said, we're just shutting it down, I think it would be less than like, 1%. So while that's happening, they're saying 4.5 trillion. That basically goes to the DECA millionaires, the billionaires, and the DECA billionaires. So they're hoping to fake people out. And it's, you know, by and large, with a large part of our population, it's working while they're picking your pockets, basically. And then they go, oh, but guess what? Gulf of Mexico is now Gulf of America. America, yeah. And while all of this is going on, they're also attacking our allies, and they are weakening NATO, they're weakening the G7, they're weakening all of our alliances, and Donald Trump is propping up Putin. And so with some of the things that Trump's doing, the damage kind of has been done, like economically right now, Canada's boycotting the United States of America. That data is not going to show up overnight, but in a few months, we're going to see when our tourism industry in the United States is crashing, It'll start to show up. The economic data slightly lags. So the fact that we already got, in a short period of time, inflation surging, which, by the way, Trump is trying to blame on former President Biden. That's why it was a little unexpected for economists, because they thought we'd pick this up more along the lines of April and May. The fact that it's already starting in January, February, they're like, whoa, that's sooner than expected. Wasn't sooner than we expected. I expect Donald Trump to cause a recession or a depression pretty soon based on what he's. I mean, just look at what he is actually doing. I mean, these reckless tariffs are gonna cause complete havoc.
Ben
And by the way, Ben, if Donald Trump came out and he said, because if he was an honest broker of things, and he said, listen, inflation's been a sticky issue, you know, we're gonna work on it may take months, may take years, but he didn't say that. He explicitly said a billion times during the campaign and in writing on a social media, on day one, they will come crash down. On day one, the prices are going to go so quickly down, it's going to make your head spin. He made comments like this all the time and now he's telling people that they need pain. And in that first clip, he was like, well, I didn't say pain. You said pain. I didn't say that people were going to experience pain. No, you literally explicitly, like a week ago said that people were going to have to experience pain before the election. Elon Musk, the day, like a couple days before he said that it was your. While you were lying about it to people, Elon Musk admitted that people were going to have to feel pain under your agenda. So you have the pain agenda, you have the screw Americans agenda. That is it. And the whole idea here to give four and a half trillions dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while you're taking away their Medicaid, while you're stripping away their Social Security, while you're gutting the VA and humanitarian aid, it's like, it's beyond what any villain could even come up with anything. It's beyond villainous.
Brett
What Trump and horrific human beings realize, and oftentimes they are authoritarian leaders, is that you can compound the lie with other lies. And people who get duped by the lies just keep getting duped by the lie and lie and lie until they're either just dead or broke. Right? Like that's part of the Ponzi scheme, is that you bring the person along on the journey until you basically have taken everything and then by the time they realize that they're either too weak or they're dead to stand up to you. Like, I want everybody to realize that that's what he's doing. I don't want you to think that this is all doom and gloom, though, because in this episode, we're gonna talk about how people are fighting back. We're gonna talk about the resistance growing. We're gonna talk about the protests that corporate media refuses to cover and how I think we're gonna see more people take to the streets peacefully Protestant in the coming days, weeks and months. We're talking about the international resistance. And by the way, we're talking about federal judges, both Democrats, Republican appointed judges, even Trump appointed judges, who have been almost consistently and universally ruling against Donald Trump and his administration's unlawful conduct. And earlier today, we Learned about even someone by the name of Daniel Sasson, who was the acting United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. Kind of a MAGA lite, a MAGA esque lawyer, someone who took the oath to work in the Trump administration. So someone who MAGA thought was gonna be loyal to them. She was running the sdny. Donald Trump, through Emil Bove, the acting Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice, ordered Danielle Sasson to dismiss the case against Mayor Eric Adams. And she goes, no, that's. I would be violating my oath as a lawyer if you forced me to do that. She goes. In her letter, she goes, I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams counsel. And by the way, Adam's counsel is Elon Musk's lawyer. I want you to know that connection as well. Adams and Elon Musk share the same lawyer. That's not a coincidence. And members of my office, Adams attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during the meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion. In other words, the DOJ is destroying evidence of a crime whereby Eric Adams is essentially saying, if you dismiss the case against me, I'm going to help Donald Trump's priorities. Let's do a quid pro quo deal. Even if I committed crimes, let's do a bargain. Let's do a let's make a deal. By the way, what did we learn that also happened in New York Immediately after that quid pro quo deal? Donald Trump used the federal government to literally steal money that was allocated for FEMA or by FEMA for shelters in New York to help vulnerable people. $80 million was literally stolen from a bank account in New York by the Federal. They just took it. They took the money. Like literal theft is what was going on. Or at least that's what was alleged by the New York Comptroller as well as Governor Hochul. But the Trump lawyer resigned, and then the Trump DOJ tried to give it to Central DOJ to dismiss the case against Eric Adams. People in the Public Integrity section at the DOJ resigned. And now one of the things we're seeing is, is there going to be this mass exodus of DOJ employees, basically gutting the entire Department of Justice. And look, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, she's out there making a fool of herself. She gave some press conference yesterday talking about how she was pressing charges against the governor of New York and the attorney general, Letitia James. And so people like, are you charging them criminally? Then it was like a civil lawsuit based on a law on the books in 2019 that was basically upheld over and over again against the handling of migrants. And so it was just a civil action that was filed, not a criminal case. Anyway, Brett, I want you to talk about that all Brett, we got to take our first break of the show. We've got a lot going on. I want to hear your thoughts on that. We'll talk about Donald Trump capitulating to Vladimir Putin. What a mess this Pete Hegseth Fox host turned defense secretary is. But when you lack experience and integrity, what else would you expect? We'll talk about the international resistance as well. Want to remind everybody to hit subscribe here. We're doing it. What? Brett, next week we're doing our Patreon chat.
Ben
A week from today. It's going to be a week from today. So it's going to be next Thursday when we're live right now. So next Thursday on Patreon patreon.com Midas Touch. Meet me, Ben and Jordy there. Sign up for one of the paid tiers. You get to meet us. Looking forward to that very much. Also, everybody, you're making the Midas Touch podcast, the top podcast on the news charts, on the Apple charts. So let's keep us up there. So please, I'm asking you right now, if you haven't done it yet, go to Apple Podcast app, go to the Spotify app, add the Midas Touch podcast. And if you have an extra, by the way, it's free. If you have an extra second too, give us a five star review. Send us some nice words. We'd appreciate that as well.
Brett
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Ben
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Brett
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Ben
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Brett
Welcome back. Welcome back. That's where Jordy normally comes in and goes. Everybody, we've got the link to the discount codes in the description below. Make sure you check it out. We really appreciate our pro democracy sponsors. You know, we have zero outside investors on the Midas Touch network and so we've been able to build this network based on the support of those pro democracy sponsors. Thanks to everyone@patreon.com Midas Touch. And while you're at it, check out MidasPlus.com where we've been hosting a show called Midas Meetups every Thursday. And we've got a lot of great content@themitasplus.com that's our substack, by the way.
Ben
All right, let's get into the bearing the lead. Today we spoke to former U.S. congressman Adam Kinzinger, had a great conversation about many of the issues that we're speaking to right now about basically Donald Trump's complete destruction of the global world order. Adam Kinzinger, a true patriot, a true fighter, was great to speak to him. And you could watch our entire conversation that we had recorded live with adam kinziger@midasplus.com it's free to check it out. Just go to midasplus.com and, and check it out. And Ben, speaking of Donald Trump blowing up the entire global order or the entire world order, what is the latest?
Brett
Let's talk about a Donald Trump in the Oval Office attacking Canada. Again. We, we've been used to this now. It's why Canada's boycotting. Here, play this clip.
Jordy
We're in for more than Europe. I mean, think of it. Or NATO. I mean that's just call it NATO because Canada is in, by the way, Canada is just about the lowest payer. Also just, you know, they shouldn't be that they are just about the lowest payer in NATO in addition to everything else. So Canada has really been taken advantage of. And if they had to pay just something modestly fair, they would be able to succeed as a country. And that's why, that's why I feel they have to become a state. Yes, ma'am.
Brett
He already said at the end. That's why I feel they have to be a state. And let me be very clear, Canada has a very proud history as well of defending democracy and standing up to fascism and fighting in wars to preserve democracy and freedom. And so to just the belittling and degrading treatment of Canada every day from Donald Trump just goes to, what a psychopathic, demented freaking idiot. I mean, there's, there's really no words to describe how contemptible Donald Trump is. So while Donald Trump was doing that, attacking our allies, or I suppose former allies now because Trump has alienated them all, Pete Hegseth was in Germany. There was the Munich conference that was taking place. And you had Hegseth saying that as a, this is what he was saying. So he goes, as a start, as a precondition of the negotiation with Russia, he goes, we have to recognize that Ukraine should not get its pre2014 borders back and it should not become a member of NATO. We must start with that premise. That would literally be the way Russia starts the negotiation, not how you start the negotiation, because you've now literally given Russia everything that they had asked for. Let's play the clip.
Ben
We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine.
Brett
But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.
Ben
The United States does not believe that.
Brett
NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non European troops. Then Donald Trump goes speaks in the Oval Office about the phone call that he had with Vladimir Putin before ever even speaking to Zelensky, where Donald Trump reiterated those points. We're learning more about that phone call, which I'll go over in just a little bit. But here's Trump blaming Ukraine for Russia's unlawful invasion. Here, play this clip.
Jordy
Probably good today. They're a little bit softer perhaps. But I thought his comments from, yes, I thought his comments yesterday were pretty accurate. I don't see any way that horizon country in Russia's position could allow them just in their position could allow them to join NATO. I don't see that happening. And long before President Putin, Russia was very strong on the fact that I believe that's the reason the war started, because Biden went out and said that they could join NATO and he shouldn't have said that. As soon as he said that, I said, you know what? You're going to have a war now. And I was right about that. This is a war that would have never happened if I were president.
Brett
You don't think it's President Biden's fault, not President Putin?
Ben
I mean, he's.
Jordy
I think Biden is incompetent. And I think when he said that they could join Naito, I thought that was a very stupid thing to say.
Brett
Well, and then here's Donald Trump. While saying that Ukraine shouldn't join NATO, Donald Trump says Russia should join the G7 and make it the G8 and that Russia should be welcomed back into the G7 as the G8. Here, play this clip.
Jordy
High level people from Russia, from Ukraine and from the United States.
Ben
Russia back to the G7.
Jordy
Sir, I'd love to have them back. I think it was a mistake to throw them out. Look, it's not a question of liking Russia or not liking Russia. It was the G8. And, you know, I said, what are you doing, you guys? All you talk about is Russia and they should be sitting at the table. I think Putin would love to be back. Obama and a couple, couple of other people made a mistake and they got Russia out. It's very possible that if that was the G8, you wouldn't have had the problem with Ukraine. And if I was president, you definitely wouldn't have had the problem with Ukraine. Russia would have never attacked Ukraine. But, but you ask a very good question. The G8 used to be the G8 and then these people threw them out. And I was arguing with Trudeau and with, with numerous of the people, actually, Prime Minister Abe, a great man, notice.
Brett
He goes and tax attacks Prime Minister Trudeau again while saying all these things about Putin that are favorable. And one of the things that we're learning as well is that according to many Kremlin insiders who are now just laughing at this whole thing, we've been covering a lot of this. I want to give a hat tip to Julia Davis. She does a great job covering Russian media and what the Russian oligarchs are saying. Laughing. Kremlin insiders say Trump has given Putin the green light to expand the war. And what this article says is that basically, you know, the thing holding Putin back was the belief that if he expanded the war and used more weapons on Ukraine, the US Would continue to fund Ukraine and would continue to build the coalition that would then attack Russia, but that Russia's basically been given a green light if they want to to just wipe, you know, just demolish it. And it talks about how that's sent European leaders into, you know, a complete panic. Although I, you know, I think the. The part of me, though, Brett, that is just kind of wondering here is that, you know, this was obvious that this was going to be the outcome. Right. Like. Like, if you knew and followed Trump's relationship with Russia and everything, this shouldn't all of a sudden come as like a. Whoa, he's doing that. He wanted to do it the first time. He was held back, and now there's no one to hold him back. And Trump's weak, but Putin's going to go and, you know, and do the things that we think he's going to do. Yeah.
Ben
And watching this press conference, the one on Ukraine and Russia that Trump held yesterday, I couldn't help but be reminded of Donald Trump in Helsinki saying that he trusted Vladimir Putin more than he trusted our own intelligence agencies. And just like back then, this is a very much a history repeats itself moment. Although this is possibly even worse. Donald Trump, quite literally, everything he said, whether it was that Russia should join the G7, or the lies about how the invasion, which he blames on Ukraine, Ukraine began, that was all quite literally, word for word, Kremlin propaganda. 100% of it was straight from the mouth of Vladimir Putin. So much so that in her confirmation hearing and. And, you know, I'm sure everybody knows, knows by now that Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed that as dni, as the Director of National Intelligence, she was asked to disavow those very same statements and was basically forced to during those hearings that Donald Trump then repeated verbatim from the Oval Office. It's just such an absolute disgrace and such a abdication of our duty as the United States of America and retreating from all the promises that we have made to our allies. Why should anybody ever trust the United States of America's word? If there was one thing in the past that you could trust, it was that the United States would stand by its word that we would uphold our values. And if we told you that we would offer you protection if you did X, Y and Z, that we would be there to do that now. We're in a space, though, where I was looking through all the comments from the Ukrainians yesterday. My heart was breaking as they were speaking about the cowardice of Donald Trump, speaking about the betrayed, the betrayal of the United States of America for their country. Remember, they had to, back in the day, meet a big list of preconditions for the United States to offer this kind of support to NATO, and that was basically disarming themselves and all these other things, only to get thrown under the bus by the United States. It's the ultimate betrayal. And I feel their pain. And. And it really breaks my heart to see those comments and to see that we have this guy right now who, instead of being allied with the free world, has turned the free world against the United States. And now the United States is in some weird alliance block with, like, I don't know, with. With Putin and. And. And who else? I don't even know. Hungary. Who else would. All the dictators.
Brett
Benjamin Netanyahu, maybe Putin, I don't know about. I mean, does he like Xi Jinping? There's really no rhyme or reason to it. And just, you know, I guess there is. Whatever Putin wants is the rhyme or reason, but other than that, it's Donald Trump's psychotic madness mind of literally dismantling industry. I mean, this man hates America. Like, we got to call it out. This man hates America. And this. The betrayal of all of these MAGA Republicans, the Republicans in the Senate, the Republicans in the House of Representatives, who always were like, we need to be tough on Russia and we need to protect Taiwan and we need to support NATO. I mean, these people are just the ultimate traitorous human beings who I hope when we all get through this together, history will scorn them and their families will be humiliated to even be affiliated with these spineless pieces of crap who masquerade as being leaders in a political party. I mean, I would love to see their faces spread out in history books literally under the word traitor for what they've done to our country. And then they still go around and gaslight us like, this is some normal things that are happening. Oh, actually, I think that this. No, it's going to happen is. We know it's going to. By the way, where is Keith Kellogg, the special envoy to Ukraine? Right. There was a Lou. He was a former lieutenant general. He was the person tasked with the negotiation. And go back to my videos from two months ago. What did I say? I said, this guy is the first person they're going to isolate and they're going to kick this guy out. Why? Because the things he said actually were traditional US Policy vis a vis Ukraine and Russia. He was toeing the line, knowing which administration he was working for as the special envoy, but he was, by and large, standing up to Russia. And I was like, that's an interesting guy. No way is this guy gonna make it and sure enough, in Trump's statement where he capitulated, he mentions, like, literally, like, 80 names in the statement of, like, all the people who are going to be dealing with the negotiation. Not one of them was Keith Kellogg, literally the person who was the special envoy. So I'm just waiting for the news to drop that Kellogg's resigned or he's officially out. But I think, by all accounts, he's really isolated. Just think about it, too. You bring Tulsi Gabbard in as the Director of National Intelligence. What that basically means is that America has no national intelligence anymore. There are no foreign government intelligence agencies that will share information with the United States, period, because they know it's a direct route to Vladimir Putin. So we've now cut off all of our intelligence. Trump's tried to do buyouts of all CIA members, the FBI, and the Counterterrorism division. Trump's attacked all the FBI agencies, gutted all of our government agencies. While they're supposed to be an injunction stopping Trump's freeze on the government entities and agencies, we're learning from all of these entities that they're not getting the funding programs. Whether it's Head Start or whatever, they're not getting the funding that they need. You had Governor Shapiro, for example, of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He had to file a lawsuit because the federal resources were not making their way to Pennsylvania, despite the fact that there's an injunction saying that the money needs to go to the places that it can't just stop. So you have people having to file lawsuits. So the question is, because this is where we're headed, what happens when the federal judges, the Trump judges, too, the judge. What happens when their orders get defied? One of the judges, by the way, who they attack more than almost any judge, but they'll never list the name on FOX and maga. They'll just. They'll act like, oh, it was so absurd that the judge allowed the websites to be put back on. What websites? Hhs, fda, nih. Like, literally websites that people rely on to get services that save their life. The judge ordered that because money's been appropriated for the purpose, and the agency has to behave like an agency. Elon Musk can't just take down web pages. That's the judge that they attack relentlessly. But notice they never really mention his name. Why? Because it's Judge Carl Nichols, the judge who Donald Trump appointed. The other judge who they attack a lot is this judge, John Bates. And they go, this judge needs to be fired. Judicial dictatorship. Judge Bates. George W. Bush appointee, the Washington state judge who ruled against Trump's birthright citizenship ban or tried to overturn the Constitution. A Reagan appointee, Judge Lamberth, who said, no, Donald Trump, you can't take transgender women in prisons who have female genitals and move them into the male cells and take off their clothes and force them to shower with the men. That was a Reagan appointee. Judge Lamberth, you can go around the country almost equal amount of Republican judges as Democrat judges who are issuing these injunctions against Donald Trump. When we get back, I want to talk about the resistance, judiciary, internal resistance, people taking to the streets, federal judges resistance. We'll talk about all of that and more. I want to remind everybody next Thursday is when we have our Patreon meeting. We don't have outside investors, so one of the best ways you can help patreon.com Midas Touch join me, Brett and Jordy on our Patreon Zoom meeting. We're so looking forward to meeting you then. And then also, you could check us out@midasplus.com as well. M E I-A S P L U S.com that's our substack. We've got a lot of cool features there as well. Subscribe to this audio podcast subscribe on YouTube right now and we'll be right back after our last quick break of the show.
Ben
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Ben
How dumb do those people look right now? Imagine putting all your chances chips in the Trump basket, thinking you could cozy up to him and that it would end well for you. But as the saying goes, everything Trump touches dies. You have all those conservatives in Canada right now with egg on their face and they are rushing, most of them at least rushing to get away from the Trump stench and to try to join with Trudeau and others in order to unite because they realize, oh, crap, now we look weak. We look weak because we want to give our sovereignty up to Donald Trump. We want to, we're going to sell out our country to Donald Trump. I guess, other than what Danielle Smith in Alberta, everybody else has, has basically gotten on board with this. And it's just such a betrayal, honestly, by those people to, to Canada to do that. I, I truly wonder, I wonder if there's been, I'm sure there have been polls if, if those, if that vote was held today, would Trudeau remain as, as Prime Minister? I bet he would.
Brett
It's interesting. You know, I've seen a lot of polls showing that the Liberal Party may be able to end up prevailing after the next snap elections and be able to form a government which nobody thought possible before. Also, our Alberta fans want me to be very clear that it's Alberta, not Alberta, you American Prime Minister.
Ben
Justin, we do our best. We got America and I, we got the United States and we got, got our New York accents and we got whatever kind of oddly shifted from us living in California. So we got a whole mishmash stuff. So, so, so, so bear with us.
Brett
Prime Minister Trudeau saying, not a snowball's chance in hell will Canada become a 51st state. Let's play it. I've said unequivocally from the beginning, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that Canada will ever be the 51st state. He is again talking about Donald Trump's threats of annexation and conquest to conquer Canada. Play this clip.
Ben
You previously said that it's a real thing that Trump wants to annex Canada. How serious or urgent would you classify that threat?
Brett
Let's be very clear, conversations around a 54th state are a non starter. It's never going to happen. But we have to take seriously what the President is saying and fold that into our thinking. And as we continue to stand up for Canada, among the many reasons why Donald Trump is just a very stupid individual is he views that as weakness. Let's be clear, as our Canadian fans and friends and almost become like family at this point, say, look, we're very nice in Canada, but once you push us a certain level, we're going over the boards, okay? Don't mistake our kindness for our inability to punch you in the face when we want to. And if you look at the history of Canada fighting in wars, when Canada fights, Canada wins. And as I've always said, American foreign policy used to be rooted in this concept of walking soft or speaking soft and carrying a big stick, not walking like a maniac, but ultimately being weak at the end. It's been an inversion of what this American policy should be. And so Trump looks at these bloviating strong men, these Kim Jong Uns and these, you know, the guy Victor Orban's and Javier Malays and people like that who were loud and obnoxious, whose populations, by the way, are suffering. And Trump views that as strength, when in reality strength is being deliberative, reflective. And when you need to punch somebody in the face, you freaking knock them out. And that's what Trump never really understood or he did understand, but he's an idiot and he prefers, he's in the image of everything America, you know, wasn't. And again, shame on spineless Republicans and shame on everybody who's, who's enabled this. Let's go to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who, you know, let's, I'm not a big fan of, but he said something witty here every now and then here. Let's, let's play this clip if we got him. Brett I was, I actually happened to be giving a speech in Florida the other day and I looked at the beach at Mar a Lago and I thought this absolutely fantastic place if you wanted to resettle, you know, millions of people from, from the Middle east, absolutely beautiful. Lots of, lots of space here. But it's not going to happen because somebody else owns it. And Gaza is in, in law, right? Owned and occupied by, by people who have a right to be there. So that, that is not going to, but it's destabilizing to suggest it.
Jordy
When you've got, for example, King Abdullah.
Brett
You'Ve got the Egyptians and you're threatening aid. Whether or not this is just open thought gets. Have a, let's have a wonderful thought about what might happen. It's destabilizing. Well, but what Hamas did, frankly, was destabilizing. So the Egyptian President Al Sisi says he's not going to go to Washington D.C. and sit with Donald Trump the way King Abdullah of Jordan did, where Donald Trump talked about conquering Gaza or occupying it. And King Abdullah had to like, sit there and just be like, oh, we will, we will have chats further. And you could see, you know, King Abdullah like literally grimacing as Donald Trump was saying these things that Abdullah knows back in the Middle east that could cause like a coup in that, like a violent coup, you know, and Abdullah's life could be jeopardized by him even entertaining, you know, some of these ideas. So let's take a look at Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, what he had to say, let's play it today. I mean, humanitarian situation. So we have the ceasefire, we have to preserve it, we have to restore humanitarian operations and we have to save maximum number of people. But now the right answer is not a real estate operation, this is a political operation. Just because this is not a free land. This is a place where 2 million.
Jordy
People live and want to live.
Brett
And just because international rights and a lot of treaties and agreements were negotiated and even the US did recognize this right.
Jordy
So you cannot say to 2 million.
Brett
People, okay, now guess what? You will move.
Jordy
So whole story of humanity is made.
Brett
Of tiny part of places where Even less than 2 million people were ready to go till the end because they wanted just to stay. So I think we, we have to, to stick to our principles. Sometimes in this world you have the feeling to be so old fashioned when you speak about principles. Yeah. And just I want to be clear what the international resistance is looking like. What's forming with America being this isolated pariah country, kind of like a North Korea. But even North Korea has some allies at least in its region. Like North Korea is least allied with like Russia and China to some extent, like Donald Trump attacks Mexico and, and Canada. And really they're just kind of in a holding pattern as they're trying to figure out which alliances they're going to form with America now being this, you know, pariah state. So you have that going on, you have the federal judiciary and then you have what's, you know, what's growing Is, you know, despite corporate media trying to, again, as we're experiencing this lie to us and gaslight us and, you know, pretend that, you know, oh, things are just fine and normal and this is just crazy. You know, politics is crazy. No, no, no. This is a coup. This is authoritarianism. It's here. It's not. Will it be here? And, you know, people are being pushed to a point where I think especially as the weather starts getting a little better, you'll start also seeing as naturally happens in movements like this, I think you're going to start to see the scale and scope of protests get larger, especially as a lot of the things that we're seeing. The, the impact isn't going to be felt the day after or even a week after. But when you start adding up the economic data and you start seeing inflation go up, up, up, up, up in the wrong way, Trump will always make the wrong decisions in response to those things and make the things worse. You're going to see all this showing up, the Canadian boycott, the tariffs, the instability. You know, you're going to see that, yeah, the stock market's up, the level of inst. The market right now. It's, it's like the wild, wild west of just up, days down, days up. You know, and I think I saw the small business index has never been more volatile in the history of it. You know, that than, than it is right now. And you know what it's like every day Trump wakes up and talks about tariffing this, tariffing that, tariffing this, tariffing that, what he set a deadline for, for Hamas, that if Hamas doesn't return all of the hostages, he's going to unleash hell on Saturday, which, by the way, is a holy day for the Jews in Israel as well. But that's the day Trump picked because he goes, why else? I'll just make it on a, on a Saturday. But you've already just said, no matter what, you're going to ethnically cleanse Palestine and you're going to force the people out and you're not going to let them ever return and go back. So you've made a ceasefire less stable. You've placed the hostages, lives at risk. You've disincentivized the counterparty to the negotiation of, of cooperating. Because even once they cooperate, you say you're going to do the same thing you're going to do if they don't cooperate. So that's the, that's the status of where we're at there, Brett.
Ben
Yeah, no, it's chaos every day. People are going to get screwed as the world unites against us. But, you know, I think, I think one of the interesting things is to see this, if you want to use the word resistance, resistance forming. That's not just in Europe, but also amongst kind of governors in the United States. We are seeing kind of prosecutors, we are seeing various legal groups throughout the United States. And I feel like a lot of the countering of Donald Trump's autocratic movements are going to have to be in the courts. They're going to have to be these judges, whether they are Trump appointed, Bush appointed, Reagan appointed, Biden appointed, Obama appointed. I don't care who appointed you. Those are the people in the safest positions. It's going to be up to them to uphold our laws. That's why Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to destroy the judiciary. That's why they're making these threats. That's why they're saying that they want to impeach these justices. They want a world where they could just operate and do what they want without any repercussions. They are systematically destroying the United States, the very fabric of our government. And I want to remind everybody too, it's a lot easier to destroy than it is to build. It's easy to tear things down. It's a lot harder to build them back up. And so at the end of the day, if we're able to get out from under this, and I think we will be able to, it's going to be going to be very hard to repair the damage and it's going to be a very lengthy process. But for now, we need to stem the bleeding. We need to work with all those out there, our true allies, to push back. And whether those allies are here in the United States, in the court, whether they're people in our Congress, whether they are international leaders or our friends internationally, we need to all unite as a pro democracy movement to fight back against what we are seeing here. And it's great seeing those instances of people fighting back. And there are some Dems now also stepping up, you know, doing some good things. I think Chris Murphy's been a very effective voice. I think Dan Goldman has been very effective. I think Jasmine Crockett's been great. I think there are a lot of folks out there right now who are pushing back. Let's continue to put those people on the front lines of this movement and have them unleash everything that they could possibly unleash right now to protect us. Because people are afraid Rightfully so. This is a totally illegal encroachment on all of our personal rights. The party that likes to dub itself the party of small government is now leading the charge of the biggest government imaginable, the biggest big government takeover of our systems imaginable, destroying our checks and our balances in the process. And so we need to fight back and we need to make it clear.
Brett
Yeah, I saw. Even to your point, Brett, during the confirmation hearing of Linda McMahon, the WWE co founder, along with her husband, she and he are both under. There were some investigations regarding sexual harassment cover ups there as well. Her role as Donald Trump said as the Secretary of Education, is to destroy the Department of Education. Literally. Trump said the goal is to destroy it. But one of the things she said in her confirmation hearing on Thursday, which deserves to get more, more attention is, is that she would like to see the government examine the different clubs that are at schools. So if there are schools that have Vietnamese clubs or African American clubs or Asian clubs or clubs that are built around kind of helping minorities or marginalized groups, you know, just through the process that, that would subject a school to losing their federal funding. And she said she'd like to investigate, use the government to investigate what it is that those clubs are doing. To which Senator Chris Murphy says, I find that astonishing that that's how you want to use the government to see what the African American club is doing or what, or what's being taught in African American studies. So I just wanted to bring that up as well. I want to say this, too. We're going to be by your side every step of the way, okay? As I've said before, until they rip this microphone from my hand, we will never obey. We will never kiss the ring. Okay? I want to be very clear about that. And we will be fighting by your side, especially as the protests start to pick up, especially as the international resistance starts to pick up as corporate media fails us more and more. We will be here each and every day providing robust coverage of the news to you and making sure you have all of the facts. We're not scared here at the Midas Touch Network, we understand what our obligations are to this country and to the world in this moment right now. And we are going to meet this moment with you each and every single day. I want to thank you all so much for watching this episode. A reminder, next Thursday, we will be Hosting our live patreon.com Midas Touch our live Zoom Meeting. It's an exclusive Zoom meeting for our patrons. It's a fun way. We try to get to meet you, get to see your face and also when you become a member of Patreon, when you become a patron and helps grow our independent platform. Remember to check out Midasplus.com as well. M E I-A S P L U S.com don't forget to check out our Pro Democracy sponsors, all of those great discounts that Jordyn negotiates with them and we use all of those sponsors and Jordy spends a long time with those sponsors vetting them. The discount codes are in the description below. Make sure you subscribe not just on YouTube but also to our audio so audio listeners be on YouTube. YouTube listeners subscribe to our audio. Keep us at the top of all of the charts and remember to keep checking in throughout the day on the Midas Touch YouTube channel as we have new videos every 90 minutes or sometimes even every hour giving you updates that we think you need to hear. Thank you all so much. Have a wonderful day. And as Jordy would say, shout out to the Midas mighty standing strong.
Ben
Against the fascist. We sing our song.
Brett
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The MeidasTouch Podcast – Episode Summary: February 13, 2025
Host/Authors: Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas
In the February 13, 2025 episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, hosts Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas delve into the tumultuous political landscape shaped by former President Donald Trump’s ongoing influence on American democracy. Combining sharp analysis with their signature brotherly banter, the trio explores Trump’s economic policies, the spread of disinformation, judiciary resistance, and the international fallout from his administration’s actions.
The episode opens with a critical examination of Donald Trump’s recent economic decisions, particularly his implementation of tariffs and their immediate effects on the American economy.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Ben (01:50): "Americans should prepare for some short term pain."
(Timestamp: 01:50)
Notable Quote:
Brett (03:06): "Donald Trump keeps giving these disastrous Oval Office press conferences where he is upending American foreign policy, crashing our economy locally in the long run."
(Timestamp: 03:06)
A significant portion of the episode focuses on the alarming rise of disinformation, likening the current state of media manipulation to authoritarian regimes.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Brett (09:45): "We are now living in a propaganda regime that looks no different than North Korea, that looks no different than Russia, that looks no different than the Nazi propaganda of the past."
(Timestamp: 09:45)
Ben (04:46): "It's so true, Ben, it's such a good point. [...] we have a propaganda machine that is so outpowering what the corporate media is saying."
(Timestamp: 04:46)
The podcast underscores the judiciary's pivotal role in countering Trump’s attempts to dismantle democratic institutions.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Brett (15:49): "We may not have a weather service. It's like people know that no weather, we won't be able to get weather anymore."
(Timestamp: 15:49)
Ben (62:04): "We are seeing various legal groups throughout the United States. [...] It's up to them to uphold our laws."
(Timestamp: 62:04)
The episode explores the strained international relations resulting from Trump's foreign policy decisions, particularly his antagonistic stance toward Canada and Russia.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Jordy (33:02): "Canada is just about the lowest payer in NATO [...] So Canada has really been taken advantage of."
(Timestamp: 33:02)
Brett (35:18): "You don't think it's President Biden's fault, not President Putin?"
(Timestamp: 35:18)
Ben, Brett, and Jordy discuss the growing resistance both domestically and internationally against Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Brett (38:21): "But watching this press conference [...] it's just such an absolute disgrace."
(Timestamp: 38:21)
Ben (58:07): "We need to fight back and we need to make it clear."
(Timestamp: 58:07)
The episode features a conversation with former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a vocal critic of Trump’s administration.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Brett (31:42): "He already said at the end. That's why I feel they have to become a state."
(Timestamp: 31:42)
Ben (35:44): "Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed as DNI, [...] it's an absolute disgrace."
(Timestamp: 35:44)
In their concluding remarks, the brothers urge listeners to remain vigilant and active in defending democratic institutions. They highlight the importance of collective action, legal resistance, and international solidarity in countering the threats posed by Trump’s administration.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Ben (64:47): "We will never obey. We will never kiss the ring."
(Timestamp: 64:47)
Brett (53:40): "Prime Minister Trudeau saying, not a snowball's chance in hell will Canada become a 51st state."
(Timestamp: 53:40)
The MeidasTouch Podcast provides a fervent and comprehensive analysis of the current political climate, underscored by a passionate defense of democracy and a critical stance against authoritarianism. Through detailed discussions and incisive commentary, Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas offer listeners an in-depth understanding of the challenges facing the United States and the global community.
Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content segments to focus solely on the substantive discussions presented during the episode.