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- [00:01]
Ben Meiselas
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [00:21]
Brett Meiselas
Potential savings will vary.
- [00:23]
Ben Meiselas
Not available in all states or situations. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. During tax season, your personal info travels to a lot of places between payroll, your tax consultant and the IRS. If your W2 gets exposed, that's just the ticket for identity thieves. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't let identity thieves take you for a ride. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply when you think about businesses that are selling through the roof like Ello or Allbirds or Skims. Sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the business behind the business making selling simple for millions of businesses. That business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with Shop Pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sal going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com try all lowercase go to shopify.com try to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com try after vacationing in Mar a Lago this weekend, once again Donald Trump went back to Washington, D.C. and said, you know what? I'm going to just further tank the markets in the United States of America. The dow was down 1.48%, the S&P 500 down 1.76%, Nasdaq down 2.64% and it started crashing significantly when Donald Trump held a press conference talking about how he was going to impose the tariffs on Canada and Mexico and other places. He was a total mess during this press conference. And let me just show you a clip right here. Watch what's happening at the stock ticker as he's talking here.
- [02:37]
Jordy Meiselas
Play this clip the United States has been taken advantage of for 40 years. The United States has been a laughingstock for years and years that's why this gentleman is built in Taiwan instead of building here. Would have been better if he built here. If we had a president that knew what they were doing and we had a lot of them. Very bad on trade.
- [02:56]
Ben Meiselas
For those listening on audio, it literally just started going down at a rapid pace. At one point it was down close to 1000 and ended up finishing really, really poorly. Here. Donald Trump talks about the tariffs on Canada, 25%, 25% on Mexico. Here, play this clip.
- [03:15]
Jordy Meiselas
But so we're going April 2, but very importantly tomorrow, tariffs, 25% on Canada and 25% on Mexico. And that'll start. So they're going to have to have a tariff. So what they have to do is build their car plants, frankly, and other things in the United States, in which case they have no tariffs.
- [03:33]
Ben Meiselas
That's not what they're going to do. These factories are going to shut down. It's going to be devastating for our economy here. Although Donald Trump is making posts like this today to the great farmers of the United States, get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold inside the US tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun. I guess Donald Trump just thinks this is all one big game. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Federal Reserve is Now projecting a GDP contraction of about negative 2.8% in the first quarter. It was expected to grow about two and a half, three percentage points. And now it's expected to contract. Many economists believe we are heading into a significant recession and perhaps, perhaps something even worse right now. All of this follows, by the way. We've covered it a lot on our channel, of course, this horrific meeting between Donald Trump, J.D. vance and President Zelensky, where Trump and J.D. vance humiliated the United States in front of all the world media by wagging his finger at a war hero, President Zelensky attacking Zelensky, just doing Putin talking points over and over again. Dmitry Peskov, who's basically Vladimir Putin's Caroline Levitt Peskov is Putin's press secretary, says the United States foreign policy and Russia's policy are directly aligned right now, that the US And Russia will vote together on everything. And the US Policy now matches Russia's policy from that same press conference earlier today where Donald Trump was tanking our economy here in the United States. Donald Trump says that he thinks Zelensky just needs to be more appreciative and thankful. Here, play this clip. What do you need to see from President Zelensky to restart these negotiations?
- [05:33]
Jordy Meiselas
Well, I just think he should be more appreciative because this country has stuck with them through thick and thin. We've given them much more than Europe and Europe should have given more than us because as you know, that's right there, that's the border. This, this country really was like the fence on the border. It was, it was very important to Europe. And I'm not knocking Europe. I'm saying that just they were a lot smarter than Joe Biden because Joe Biden didn't have a clue. He just gave money hand over fist and they should have been able to equalize with us. In other words, if we gave a dollar, they should have given, well, we.
- [06:07]
Ben Meiselas
Gave Europe, gave more money than the United States of America. Every single thing that Donald Trump says is false and is a lie and just utterly pathetic. We'll talk later in the show about some of these town halls and ruby red Republican areas where people are just so livid at Donald Trump supporting Vladimir Putin and bring the United States to join the access of evil with Putin and North Korea. And of course, people are pissed with Donald Trump taking away their Medicaid. You had Elon Musk over the weekend going on the Joe Rogan show to say that Social Security is a massive Ponzi scheme. They are gutting workers in the government and as you see, destroying our economy. But folks, Melania Trump was on Capitol Hill. She had an important message about wants to stop all of that bullying going on and in digital spheres. Here, play this clip. Thank you so much, Senator Cruz.
- [07:12]
Jordy Meiselas
I think that should be on. It is on.
- [07:18]
Brett Meiselas
It's not very loud.
- [07:20]
Jordy Meiselas
Good afternoon. I'm here with you today with a common goal to protect our youth from online harm.
- [07:28]
Ben Meiselas
Want to protect our youth from online harm. Donald Trump during the campaign would post all of these AI like deep fake images of Taylor Swift having the Swifties give him fake endorsements. Fake AI images of Taylor Swift Swifties for Trump. Donald Trump also attacked. There's some of the images there. For those on audio, I'm showing the AI images Donald Trump made of fake women and Taylor Swift endorsing him when she never endorsed him. And then Donald Trump also attacked Ted Cruz's wife and said that she was a very ugly person. And you know, that's why Ted Cruz was with her. But Ted Cruz was fine having Melania there. Let me show you how Fox is trying to spin this all Larry Kudlaw. I mean, again, the Fox state regime media at this point would make North Korea's state regime media in Russia's state regime media blush. Here's Larry Kudlaw saying that the reason that it's all crashing is we're seeing what is left of the Biden economy slumping so badly. Here, play this last one.
- [08:32]
Jordy Meiselas
What's left of the Biden economy is slumping so badly. It's just slumping. This is the legacy of the Biden economy. Will we hear? I want you to tell me, Caroline Levitt. I want you to say, larry, we're going to have lots of talk about.
- [08:45]
Ben Meiselas
I mean, so utterly. I mean, I'm not going to even play the rest of it. It's so pathetic. Let me bring on Brett and Jordy. Brothers, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast.
- [08:53]
Brett Meiselas
Welcome, everybody. Welcome, brothers. And welcome, everybody. Listening and watching. It's just the whole thing, it's all beyond parody. And I remember, you know, when we would be hitting stock market record after record after record, and they'd cut to Kudlow on Fox, he would step in and say something hard. The economy in shambles. It really is state, regime, media. And not enough people realize that. Like, I know this audience realizes that, but a lot of people watch Fox and think because they' on a set, because they have, you know, business shows and all this other sort of the iconography of news channels, that it's actual news, but it's completely fake. The thing that really just bothers me the most right now is we could have been chilling right now, fellas. We could have been working, building on the success of the economy, working our way on up. GDP was predicted to be somewhere between 2 and 3% in 2025 with Biden's policies. We could have just, you know, been. Been hanging out, not destroying our alliances overseas, not threat to invade other countries, just enjoying what we've built over the past few years and continuing to build on that progress in order to make things better for Americans. But instead, it's just Donald Trump and these just lunatics inflicting pain on everybody. But the good news, we see folks rising up across the country, including in deep red areas, as Ben was alluding to earlier. And you could tell they're afraid about this because of the lies that they are trying to come up with around this. They're fake protesters. These aren't actually Republicans in these Republican districts. These are paid Soros protester, man. That's Soros guy. All over the map, according to these people. I like how the Democrats are also the most incompetent party on the planet that cannot put two and two together, cannot organize a single thing, yet they're able to brilliantly organize all These protests across these countries, small districts, big districts everywhere, they're actually brilliant geniuses. Right. That was the strategy they use with Biden. Right, too. He was both senile and a mastermind who masterminded every single criminal prosecution against Donald Trump, no matter the state, no matter the district. These people are utter clowns. We're going to break it all down. First, I got to toss it over to Jordy. Jordi, what's new?
- [11:03]
Michael Popak
I am super excited to get to the show. What's up, everybody? Yeah, Brett, These. These fake protesters. This is their new antifa. It was Antifa January6.
- [11:12]
Jordy Meiselas
That was.
- [11:12]
Ben Meiselas
That's.
- [11:13]
Michael Popak
That's what they're doing there. And it's even worse than you remember, Brett and Ben, about the economy. As the economy was soaring under Biden and we were hitting record stock market highs day in and day out, remember what they. They also said, oh, this is because Donald Trump is getting ready to take office. So how can it be that the Biden economy, that the legacy of it is what is happening right now under Trump's leadership? However, when Biden was actually in office and the stock market was hitting record highs, and you could actually look at your 401ks without wanting to vomit. It's unbelievable. What's happening.
- [11:49]
Brett Meiselas
Let me draw a flowchart for you, Jordy. Stock market good.
- [11:52]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah.
- [11:53]
Brett Meiselas
Line goes to Trump. Trump's.
- [11:55]
Michael Popak
Oh, okay. Got it.
- [11:56]
Brett Meiselas
Stock market bad to Biden's fault.
- [11:58]
Michael Popak
Biden. Okay, I see.
- [12:00]
Brett Meiselas
I think Fox has that chart in there in their bathrooms, actually, without any.
- [12:04]
Ben Meiselas
I think what you have to look at sometime are any of the corporate media's predictions and just say the exact opposite is going to happen. Right. Under former President Biden. What were the headlines? They literally said 100% chance of recession under Biden. That's what they said. You remember the headlines when Trump took office? They were basically saying. The headlines literally said, 0% chance of recession. That's actually what the headline said. And I was saying, well, that's interesting, because if he imposes the tariffs like he says he's going to do, if he implements Project 2025, if he does what he and Elon Musk said they were going to do, which was literally. This was their words, inflict severe economic hardship on the American people to break the country down and then rebuild it in the image of Elon Musk, like Musk said that, I said, well, I'm going to tell you what the outcome of that's going to be. The outcome's going to be recession, or more likely, even Depression, because that's what happens when you do these things. And then even right now, while you're seeing a lot of headlines predicting really bad things now happening in the economy, because they're actually now happening, they still try to, like, normalize it. They go, yeah, but with all of this, we still see potential for. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Donald Trump is a freaking madman. Like, he's literally a crazy person. Like, he was at Mar a Lago, like, golfing and like, doing weird YMCA dances over the weekend while Europe held an emergency summit of presidents and prime ministers throughout Europe, the leader of Turkey show up. The leader of the Prime Minister of Canada showed up because they recognize that the United States has now become an ally of Vladimir Put Putin, and that they need to join together and create a strong security apparatus because they've already recognized, although they're not going to say it out loud yet, that NATO is basically done. So Trump's destroyed NATO right away. He's destroyed all of our alliances. He's destroying our economy, he's destroying our federal government. He attacks our closest allies and neighbors. He. He attacks Taiwan. If whether Donald Trump is actually an agent of Russia, a useful idiot of Russia, whether Russia has something over Donald Trump or for something else that is not one of those three, I don't know. But what I do know is everything he's doing seems to be directly benefiting Russia the way Russia would want to script it for them. So in many ways, even if you don't have the paperwork to be an official agent, if you're out there promoting Putin over and over again and attacking Zelensky and attacking NATO, does it even matter? If you're an official agent, you are doing the work of one that. That's who all of these things seem to benefit.
- [15:23]
Brett Meiselas
Russia is overjoyed right now, and they can't even contain their excitement on their propaganda networks and in the statements coming out of the Krem. And we have Donald Trump, J.D. vance, Elon Musk, all these people. And Elon Musk, by the way, throughout the weekend kept tweeting all these bad things about NATO along with these Republican Congress people saying that we need to get out of NATO. NATO has been a tremendous success, an incredible defensive alliance that has resulted in the longest era of peace amongst these European nations in the history of like the world. And they want to get rid of this because why? Because it's Vladimir Putin's wet dream that he has had now for decades and decades and decades. And Elon Musk wants to make that a reality for him. And it's just dangerous. Like the stuff they're doing is just reckless and dangerous. And I guess that's the point of it. But real people are getting hurt. And as I've said on the show, and I'll say it again, I'll say it every single episode, that they could only outrun reality for so long. And reality is quickly catching up to them. Ben, as we see the stock markets collapse, the way they're collapsing, as these Trump supporters are going to look in their bank accounts, as they're going to see their 401ks every single day, just, just the money just pouring on out their accounts, as these farmers are going to wake up and they're going to realize that they're not able to export their goods anymore. They're not going to import any goods that they need anymore. As these factories are going to close down, especially the auto industry is going to be hit super hard. These tariffs that he moved, the China tariff up to 20% now that's going to be devastating for Americans. The 25% in Canada and in Mexico is going to be devastating for Americans. Whole industries may be wiped out. And you know what? But Elon Musk did say before the election that he was going to inflict pain on the American people. So I guess in that regard, a promise is made, promises kept from this administration because people are feeling the pain. And whether they want to try to claim these people are fake protesters and aren't really angry or not, the reality is that they are. And this is going to come back to haunt them. The American people are going to continue to rise up. And Ben, just going back because I don't want anybody to think like, oh, there's no way the Media predicted a 100% recession under Biden. Who would make such a bold prediction of not even couching it in like 99%, 99.9%, 100% means that sounds pretty definitive if you ask me. Literally. Bloomberg. Here's the forecast. This was October 2022 on the left. For those listening, I have an article up from Bloomberg. Forecast for U.S. recession within year hits 100% in blow to Biden. Hits 100% in blow to Biden. 100%. They were very confident of that. And it was articles like this. This, by the way, is, is kind of around the exact same time that Biden's approval rating started to fall.
- [18:14]
Michael Popak
Actually kind of August, September 17, 2022. That article.
- [18:18]
Brett Meiselas
October. Yeah, October 2022. So this kind of coincides with around that time. So think about that now and think about the narrative that was set with the Biden economy. As the Biden economy was growing and ended up growing significantly throughout those four years, 100% chance of recession never ended up happening. In fact, the economy ended up having a great deal of growth over those next few years. We had some months of 4% growth, 3% growth, hitting stock market record after record. Now here's the article on the right. This one's from Business Insider. This is an article from December 2024. The probability of a US recession in 2025 is 0%. Once again, not couching it in 2 and a half percent, 5%. Not even giving them any bit of room for error here. They said it was 0%. Here's what to worry about instead. Well, here we are. It didn't take a rocket scientist, didn't take a genius. Three months later and we are in a place now where economists are predicting a full blown recession later this year. We're looking at these, the Dow Jones having absolute collapse. We saw it in real time. I think Donald Trump today was actually trying to, to pump up the markets because the market started out not so good. So he held this kind of press conference. He started speaking about some investments in Arizona. He saw the markets kind of coming up a little bit. You know, they were still down, but they were rising just a little bit. Then he's got to the tariffs. And in real time, they just started tanking and tanking so hard that we showed you that Fox clip earlier. Fox put up a Dow watch, the Dow watch to show people. And I'm surprised that they even did that, to be honest, to show people how it was collapsing. And so now we're dealing with the real realities of this, of these tariffs, of the stock market, of people losing their jobs, of these government jobs going away. People are filing jobless claims every week. They're going up. We're in a really bad place as a country and they're not going to be able to outrun this reality for long. I think we're already at that point.
- [20:14]
Ben Meiselas
I'm really glad you showed the receipts there too, so people know. I do a painstaking job to bring you the actual facts and the evidence. And I really try to avoid hyperbolic rhetoric and it may seem sometimes, Whoa, they said 100% or 0%. I wanted. Brett, that was, I'm really glad that you showed people those actual articles because they were shocking to me. And when former President Biden was in office, despite there being like record GDP growth, growth, energy independence at the end of the Biden administration, the lowest border crossings, really, in a very, very long time, the largest job growth ever. The constant barrage of disinformation made people who were actually living in a time where a lot of the economic data was trending in the right direction feel like they were in a recession or a depression. And I understand. I don't want to undermine the fact that prices were up, but we have to also be real about who kind of lit the match that started that fire with the higher prices, and it was caused by the first Trump administration. And again, I don't do hyperbolic rhetoric. You can go back and watch a lot of the videos that I do where Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, Maga Guy, said that that's what caused higher prices. Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, she said that in the Republican debate because Trump added $8 trillion in debt. That's inflationary. Trump printed money recklessly after handling, or I would say not handling at all, Covid. And then you have to fix it. So when you fix it, that causes a shock in your economy, and you have to deal with it the way Biden dealt with it. And that was inflation. That was inflationary. And so right now, Brett, you had all the corporate media, they were doing all they can to help Trump with all of this, this, you know, propaganda about how great his policies are. And I'm like, what are you talking about?
- [22:18]
Brett Meiselas
Across the board. And you have all, like the, you had them pushing also this idea like, oh, you know, whatever happens with Trump, though, you know, the stock market's going to go crazy. And you know who's really excited also? Crypto people. Crypto people are super psyched. Well, how excited are they now? I think bitcoin is down below where it was when Trump took office. All these markets are crashing, and we're going to get into his bitcoin scam in a little bit that he tried to pull where he was pumping all these, these, these meme coins and these coins crazy.
- [22:45]
Michael Popak
Brennan. Ben, it's the fallacy, once again, of this Trump is a businessman and that's why I'm gonna vote for him argument. Those folks, those voters, so much more disingenuous than the voters that would just tell you straight up, no, I like Trump's racist rhetoric and I like his awful policies. Like, if that's why you voted for him, it's disgusting, and I don't agree with it, obviously, but at least I could begin to understand, okay, you're just a shitty person, but the Trump is A good businessman, and he's gonna do great things for the economy. I mean, you're lying to yourself. You are lying to yourself. And now you get to reap the benefits. And I'm not spiking the football. I'm an American. I have to reap the consequences of this alongside with you. So thanks a lot.
- [23:24]
Ben Meiselas
Here's what I want to do. Sorry I started. I was going to say when we come back after our first break, I want to pull out some receipts. To that point, Shorty, I want to look at Donald Trump's filing that he made recently with the sec because he has a publicly traded company called Trump Media that runs Truth social that lost $400 million last year and only made about 3.7 million in total revenue, not profit in total revenue. So your local boba shop, your local coffee shop is probably doing more revenue than Donald Trump's Trump Media company that controls Truth Social. But I'll show you. I'll show you the amount of bankruptcies that he's had. Okay? So you can see it. Like, I, it's like, almost like it's difficult to do so many bankruptcies. I'll show it to you in his own words. So if you have someone in your life, like, but he's a good businessman, I'm going to say show him this right here. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the reaction that we're seeing in Europe to Donald Trump's support of Vladimir Putin. I want to show you, Brett, to your point, I want to talk about all of these scams that they're doing now. The Trump gold card, sell to Russian oligarch, $5 million for visas and citizenship. And if you st 10 million out of $5 million, you will get $50 trillion. Hey, you know, and they just keep doing these ridiculous scams because they realize they're about to add 20 trillion to $50 trillion to the deficit. So they're going to act like, but we're going to make it up in Trump gold cards. Like, literally snake oil crap. Talk about that and more. I want to remind everybody about a few things. We have Midasplus.com, which is our substack. It's our editor in chief, Ron Philipkowski does some of the best daily summaries there. Midasplus.com if you want to meet Brett, Jordy and myself, we'll schedule one soon. A meetup@patreon.com Midas Touch. Check that out. P A T r e o n.com/midas touch. Make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel, which I think will hit 5 million subscribers per pretty, pretty soon. And also make sure you're subscribed on our audio. Look, Joe Rogan put Elon Musk on that episode to try to he was pissed that he was not number one. So he and Elon tried to, you know, try to get back that number one spot. So make sure you're subscribed on audio. And for all our audio listeners, tell anybody you know right now to download this episode to make sure our audio remains number one.
- [26:00]
Brett Meiselas
Yeah, like if you want to like steal your buddy's phone and just add the M Such podcast, like no one's going to, you know, no one will be mad about that. No one's going to know.
- [26:07]
Ben Meiselas
No one's going to know anyway. Hit hit. Subscribe here. We'll be right back after our first quick break.
- [26:15]
Brett Meiselas
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- [27:30]
Ben Meiselas
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- [29:22]
Michael Popak
Let'S go. Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors links in description of the YouTube and the audio. Click the links, use the codes, let them know we sent you. And just real quick too, one more thing on the audio podcast front, if you're able to please leave a five star review and a comment that would be very helpful. Nothing less than 5 stars. 5 stars only. I'll tell you why the Roganites are out there. You could see it in the comments downvoting this podcast and leaving really really sad bad reviews. And so I mean this Midas mighty community I know will step up to the plate and see what they're doing as a personal assault on our on our pro democracy group right here and step up. So please five star and leave a comment would be really helpful. Thank you.
- [29:57]
Ben Meiselas
Let's talk about the things that we know about Donald Trump, right? He bankrupts a lot of things. He hates paying contractors, he hates Ukraine. He Loves Vladimir Putin and he loves talking about himself. And he does a lot of scams. So he's kind of acting consistent with the way he's acted his entire life. Like, this shouldn't be like, oh, my God, he's doing a Trump card scam. He. That's like, all he knows how to do. It's like, you know, if, if you. The basketball players out there, right? There's some players when you're growing up who only know how to dribble with their right hand. So you go, there's going, right? That's all they know how to do is go, right. Trump only knows to do one direction, and he's just doing the same routine that he knows how to do over and over again, which is to, like, destroy things. I mean, look, this is from his own 10K. I just, I just want you to see it. I'm not going to read the whole thing. You could take a screenshot of this. So you can see this is Trump's disclosure that says a number of companies that were associated with Trump have filed for bankruptcy. So there are no assurances that the Trump Media will not also become bankrupt. So it talks about all the companies that went bankrupt, like the Trump Taj Mahal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991. The Trump Plaza, the Trump Castle, and the Plaza Hotel, all owned by Donald Trump, filed for chap 11 in 1992. Then another company called thcr, which was founded by Trump in 1995, that filed for bankruptcy in 2004. And then you had a new name that was given to it, declared bankruptcy in 2009, Trump Hotels and Casino. So, bankruptcy, bankruptcy, bankruptcy, bankruptcy, bankruptcy, bankruptcy. Like, it's right there. Did the Deep State go back in time using a time machine to achieve this? Is that, what, is that what happened happened? And then it goes. A number of companies that do licensing deals with Trump also failed. So there are no, no assurances that Trump Media will also not fail the way these companies failed. So it talks about Trump Shuttle, Trump University, Trump Vodka, Trump stakes, Trump mortgage, gotrump.com and so on and so forth, ceased operations and failed over time. So between the bankruptcies and the business failures, look, I get, you know, sometimes things don't always succeed, but this whole idea that this guy had, like, good business acumen. I mean, you see right there that he didn't. So he brings in this guy, Howard Lutnick, as his Commerce secretary. Howard Lutnick, a billionaire guy, Wall street guy, and, and is treating our economy, in my opinion, like, like a pump and dump scheme. Now, I just want you to. I'll show you this clip of Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, as he kind of goes on TV and it looks like he's selling. No offense to like. Like a shamwow. Yes, offense to my pillow. But he's out there like, it's like an infomercial. All right, so here's what we're going to do, everybody, okay? We got the Trump. I know the economy may be in the tank right now. I know that everything's going in the wrong direction, okay? But I got a secret for you. If you order a trump card right now, Russian oligarchs, here's what we're going to do. Watch. Like, I'm not really exaggerating that much here. Play this club. There are a lot of questions about that. And he wants to get rid of the irs.
- [33:39]
Jordy Meiselas
Of course, if we could have the outside. I mean, that's a big objective, right? The big objective objective would be to have enough money come in from the outside sources selling, you know, visas, the ability to have a green card to come to America. Imagine if you sold a million of them. You'd pay off our deficit and have 15 trillion to spare. And that's only 3% of America. It's nothing. So the concept of replacing us, paying, we're like, we have Stockholm syndrome. We just are so happy to pay. Pay. We forgot that maybe other people should pay and we should have the benefit of living in the great America.
- [34:17]
Ben Meiselas
Let me tell you how we make America great for the simple price of $5 million. If you are a Russian oligarch and you are watching this, Chinese oligarchs welcome as well. If you would like to purchase your citizenship here, buy a Trump Gold Card. Now, a Trump Gold card comes with a very fancy picture of Donald Trump. And you could even get a picture of Donald Trump golfing everybody or Donald Trump doing the YMCA dance. Nothing says America like an oligarch purchasing a Trump YMCA Trump Gold Guard. Brett. I mean, it's, it's, it's. It's the stupidest shit that. Excuse me. It's the stupidest stuff that we're watching play out. Like, it's just dumb.
- [34:57]
Brett Meiselas
It's just dumb when you watch that, too. Like, I know everyone doesn't have street smarts per se, but I don't think you need a lot of street smarts to listen to that and go, oh, I'm being scammed. I'm being scammed right now. Like, and it's all these people in the Trump administration. Every time they open their mouth, I'm like, it's so obvious a scam that how it isn't 95% of the country catching on to what is going on. Like, I'm thinking even about the Kudlow clip. And by the way, Kudlow was in the Trump, the previous Trump administration. He's now the Fox host who covers, like, the economy and has been wrong, literally, about everything. Like, I think if you go back to Kudlow during, like, the 2008, 2009 market crash, he's like, like, things are about to be great. Everything's about to be awesome. Get ready for prosperity, folks. Economy crashes. Like, you could definitely make, like, a super cut of Larry Kudlow throughout the past, like, four decades. And he will say the wrong thing right before a major economic catastrophe like, every single time. These guys are fraudsters, they're scammers, and they're all built in the image of Donald Trump. And it's just so disturbing that people aren't catching on to these scams. But, you know, but like I keep saying, though, they're not going to be able to outrun this reality for long. Trump's approval ratings are plummeting quickly. His handling of the economy is a disaster as approval rating amongst independents is an absolute disaster. Like, people are pissed off and you're also taking away, like, people's jobs. A lot of Republicans. Jobs. Like, there have been programs, and I feel like a lot of people forget this. There have been so many programs throughout the past few decades in order to help veterans that have prioritized veterans getting jobs in the federal government. Some may call it part of DEI initiatives. Oh, yeah, they don't like those. Guess what? The I stands for Inclusion. And including veterans in our government is part of that. Including disabled people in our government is all part of that. These are the policies that they got rid of. And now they are firing the federal workforce, which contains a large number of veterans, a lot of them who are Republicans. So we're seeing this play out over and over and over again right now. Just the ruthlessness in which they are handling our economy, the callousness in which they are treating the people. And I just cannot even imagine if even the fringiest of fringe Democrats, I don't even know who that would be, went on TV and said that their constituents, the things that they are saying, that they're fake, that they're imposters, ignoring the will of the people. I saw one of these Republicans, I think it was in Tennessee. I think it was. Posted by Tennessee Holler who does incredible work. The people in the crowd in this deep red district were pissed off because they were giving all these giveaways to billionaires and making Elon Musk richer and doing all these things instead of leveling with the people and saying, you know what, you're right, we need to be doing more things for working class Americans. The woman went on a rant defending the rich, saying, well, the 1% actually are responsible for the growth in our country and the 1% actually pay the most in tax. Like, like, how could you possibly say that to your own constituents? They trickle, trickle, they never go full trickle. They really just do not care about their people. And there is just such incredible brainwashing that is happen, happen thanks to outlets like Fox and thanks to social media outlets that are controlled by these same billionaires that are putting their thumb on the scale of these algorithms in order to control people, in order to push them to support policies that screw them, but help the billionaires who are, who are controlling them. It's just, it's obvious. And I just urge everybody to constantly be on guard anytime you hear these people speak. Because I just feel it like I feel it in my bones when I hear a Lutnik speak.
- [38:31]
Michael Popak
Absolutely. And what do we say about Donald Trump? He's a wmd, a weapon of mass distraction. That might work early on. It might be cute for your, you know, most loyal of loyalists.
- [38:40]
Brett Meiselas
Donald. Right.
- [38:41]
Michael Popak
Oh, what are we gonna do? We're name it Gulf of America. Look over here, everyone. We're gonna, we're gonna take over Greenland. We're gonna take, make Canada the 51st state. Everyone look over there. Keep looking over there. Sooner or later people are gonna stop looking over there and start looking back at their 401ks and realize that they're also out of a job at the same time. Time the chickens are going to come home to roost sooner rather than later. And we are seeing that play out.
- [39:03]
Ben Meiselas
Such a great point, Jordy, because people have been living in their rage algorithms instead of their actual real life. Right. The manufactured rage and the propaganda was so powerful, and you've talked about it, Jordy, that to some extent you feel bad for some of the people who have fallen prey to it because it's tens of billions of dollars or even trillions of dollars being used by corporate media and right wing media to infect their minds and get them pissed off about things that frankly really aren't impacting them directly. So what you kind of see and look, I think there'll be 20 25% people who will be MAGA until the very end. But for another group of people, it seems that the spell is, like, wearing off, like, a little bit. And when you see some of these town halls, when you see what's happening in ruby red districts, like, you don't get more ruby red than Texas's third Congressional District. I mean, KE self like this, this guy, I think won by like plus 30. Like, this is a, a massive Republican district. And I'll show you what went down when he held his town hall recently. Link. Let's play this clip. This is very closely a camp. This is very closely account. And then there's another clip where the, they were yelling, do your job. Do your job. Here, watch this. Let's take a look too, at New York's third Congressional District at Hofstra University, which is a plus five Trump congressional district. It's actually represented by a Democratic Congress member. The Democratic congressmember won the district, but then Trump beat Kamala in this district. In the plus five, you know, Trump district, Tom Suozzi, he held a town hall in this area. And when Suozzi talked about, he goes, look, you know, I'm, I'm in a, I'm in a reddish district. I'm a Democrat. So, you know that I'm someone who tries to bring everyone together. He goes, what I saw in the Oval Office with what Trump and J.D. vance did to Putin, and I'm not ever going to try to find common ground with that. And then the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Watch this. Listen, everybody's freaking out.
- [42:09]
Jordy Meiselas
Everybody's like, you know, I'm Mr. Like, let's work together. Let's try and find common ground. And what happened in the White House yesterday, I was so pissed off. I wanted you to get that out.
- [42:41]
Ben Meiselas
Of your system, you know. And now the line that's coming from the White House, from Trump, from J.D. vance, from, you know, anybody from the NSA director is Zelensky needs to apologize. Zelensky needs to say thank you. Have you said thank you? Have you said thank you? Here we got this photo of JD Vance that you made. Brett. As the economy is crashing, I think this kind of perfectly sums it up. This meme that you created of JD Saying, have you said thank you once? Have you said thank you? You need to apologize. You need to go on tv, Zelensky, and you need to say how thankful you are to dear Leader Donald. And you need to, and you need to just, just say how great he is and how important he is to you in your life. And, and Zelinsky's like, look, I've said thank you a hundred times. I mean, by the way, Trump's given Zelinsky, like, no money at all. Like, he's basically cut off all of the money. So let's be clear, former President Biden gave Zelensky, you know, and the American people, people and our government. And frankly, before Trump made this a pro Putin government, it was a bipartisan, largely bipartisan. A lot of the MAGA Republican Congress members and about a dozen or so MAGA Republican senators were not. Were very pro Putin. But this whole idea of, like Zelensky always says, I'm thankful, I'm grateful, thank you, I'm grateful. Like, what else do you want the guy to. Like, what else do you want the guy to do or say? And all they want is that it's a pretextual way to beat down on an ally, the same way Trump wants to beat down on Canada and Greenland and Denmark and Europe and Mexico. And Trump never says anything negative about our allies. I mean, this is Pete Doocy from Fox. Here's what he's hearing from senior White House aides and that they. Trump won't even start any type of discussions at all until Zelensky goes on TV and says how sorry he is. Here, play this clip. I have been told by a senior official here that nothing's going to happen.
- [44:45]
Jordy Meiselas
With this minerals deal until Zelensky goes.
- [44:48]
Ben Meiselas
In front of cameras and makes an explicit public apology for the way that he behaved himself, behaved in the Oval.
- [44:56]
Jordy Meiselas
Office with that meeting.
- [44:57]
Ben Meiselas
First off, he behaved himself exactly as he should. He should apologize for nothing. Also, what are you, five years old? You need to apologize to me.
- [45:06]
Brett Meiselas
These dudes are losers.
- [45:07]
Ben Meiselas
And then also, what the hell are we even talking, a minerals deal? The United States wants to steal. They're meant that that's what this is about. They want to give most of Ukraine to Russia and then the rest of it. United States wants to steal the minerals of an ally that's under invasion from a invading force in. In Russia. What Trump said on day one is that prices would go down, that there would be a peace deal in 24 hours. And in this weirdo, demented, sicko, wannabe, fascist mind of his, he's warped this whole thing into. If you want the deal where America steals your minerals, you need to say you're sorry to daddy. You need. And like, the hell are you talking about? And Zelensky's like, I'm not going to say that Putin is good. Like, he's killed, like, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people and lawfully invaded. I'm not saying Putin's a good guy. Like, don't you want the minerals deal? No, I don't want. This minute. You said you were going to think. You said you were a great negotiation. I want the minerals deal. Why would I want you to steal our minerals for. What are you doing?
- [46:19]
Brett Meiselas
It's, it's, it's all, it all makes more sense when you view it through the lens of. It's basically, it's. I mean, it is, it's Russian propaganda and it's, it's the Trump administration's version of Russia propaganda. I mean, it's the same way that they operate. They invent these new narratives that don't actually reflect reality. Like this reality. This narrative that Zelensky was the one who misbehaved during that meeting is just so preposterous, it doesn't even deserve, like, a fact check. But you all know how ridiculous it is that they're turning it into that. Zelensky was the one who was acting up, but not Donald Trump screaming like a madman at this war hero who's here just asking for help and has expressed his gratitude numerous times. Just coming from it, for a normal meeting. Zelensky has went, visited all the world leaders as we've, you know, been reporting on in this episode. I just had a summit in Europe with the world leaders as well. Guess what? This has, has never happened before because none of these other leaders are maniacs like Donald Trump are maniacs. I mean, it just, it's absurd that we have to watch this, this clown show every single day as our alliances just get completely destroyed. And like all Russia propaganda, these lies just get repeated over and over and over again. One of the lies that I frequently see on social media, anytime you show any bit of support for Ukraine now on social media, the comments that you get are, okay, so I guess you're going to sign up and you're going to go over there and you're going to fight for Ukraine, then pack your bags, get on over there, sign up. This is actually the reason why we actually give aid to Ukraine, is so that Americans don't have to ever risk their lives in a war in Europe. That's the whole purpose of the aid. You think we're just doing this out of the goodness of our hearts? I mean, yes, it's a good thing that we are helping our ally Ukraine in this fight against Russian aggression, but you think that's the reason or do you think the reason is because once Putin, if he were to take Ukraine, he would go and he would try to take Poland, he would try to take other nations throughout Europe that would embroil the United States in a world war? What we are doing are taking preventative measures against a war. We're taking preventative measures against your sons and your daughters having to go overseas and fight against Russia as they try to do what Hitler did back in the 30s and expand their territory. That is the whole reason for these alliances. That is the whole reason for these aids. And once again, like the good little Russian propagandists they are, they try to take the. The concept which is, we are trying to prevent these wars, we are trying to prevent further aggression. We trying to prevent Americans from having to go overseas and fight these battles. And they go, oh, so you want to go to war? And then they try to pretend like they are somehow the peace candidates and the party of peace, when actually President Biden was the one who actually kept us out of entering any new wars. President Biden was the one who actually removed us from the war in Afghanistan, even if it was a little sloppy. He removed us from the war in Afghanistan, which, which no president has been able to do in decades and decades and decades. And so that. Those are just like the facts. They could twist all they want, but that is actually the reality of what is going on. And they just continue to twist reality.
- [49:25]
Michael Popak
And let's be clear, there's nothing that Zelensky could have done in that meeting that would have actually appeased Trump or Vance because they were full on Russian propaganda talking points from Jump. You know, they wanted Zelensky to go in there and to use a Trump verbiage here, like beg like a dog. That's what they wanted him to do. And even then, because we all know this, when you give the guy an inch, he takes your life. It still wouldn't have been good enough, but at least for the them, they would have had documentation of it. So that would have helped flatter their egos a little bit more and a little bit better. Going back really quick because I just want to address these two clips that we played earlier. The Keith Self clip from Texas Brothers, please explain to me those talking points. They play so well over. Over X for, for Keith, they do so well over X. Why when he's talking to real people in real life, they don't, they don't, they don't work as well. That's so befuddling to me. I just truly don't Understand it. But you understand it when you look at a guy like Swazi in New York talking to his people and just standing up for democracy, standing up for normalcy. And how the people of New York's third actually love that and how they stand up and they say, yeah, that's our guy. You know why? Because he's not kissing the ring of some oligarch. Because he's actually standing up against that nonsense. And we don't stand for that here.
- [50:34]
Ben Meiselas
You know, a few things. The way that Zelensky would have done What Trump and J.D. vance wanted would have been to give up and just said, I'll give up Ukraine to Russia and I'll give you the mineral deal. That's what they wanted. Anything short of America steals the minerals, Russia steals the land would be insufficient for Trump and J.D. vance and Putin, because that's what the access of evil wants. That's why Zelensky says there needs to be security guarantees. That's why they held an emergency meeting in London. Shout out to the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, former for arranging this. I think he's shown to be a statesman of the highest caliber in history. Bringing all of these countries together, prime ministers and presidents, to stand with Ukraine. I think it sent a really powerful message that you ain't cutting Europe out of this. Europe has Zelensky's back. Brett, to address something you said, the only reason why the Afghan withdrawal sloppy is Trump cut the deal with the Taliban and then didn't do what him himself, he cut a deal with the enemy. He cut out the actual Afghan government at the time, released 5,000 Taliban soldiers, and then they conquered and took over Afghanistan. And then Trump was too big of a coward to make the move to move American troops out after essentially getting the troops surrounded because Trump shut down all the other bases and basically had the United States troops surrounded on all sides. Sides. And former President Biden was left to hold the bag and try to figure out a solution. Finally, what Donald Trump is also doing as well is threatening to send your kids to go to war against Canada, against the European Union, against our allies, against Mexico. When Donald Trump and J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth make these threats about sending military into Mexico or making Canada the 51st state, these are war words. These are things that are being taken seriously. These are the. This is the language of Vladimir Putin. And what that means is that when Trump's saying Canada is going to be the 51st state, what Trump's saying is he's going to take your kids. Anyone of fighting age and he's going to send them to fight Canadians in a war and people are going to die. What we're seeing in Ukraine and Russia from Russia's unlawful invasion, so spare me the same. This is someone who's trying to do peace while talking about annexing countries.
- [53:08]
Jordy Meiselas
No.
- [53:09]
Ben Meiselas
Donald Trump is a wannabe dictator. His corruption is matched by his cowardice and his incompetence as well. That's what we're seeing. When we come back, I want to show you a few things you have. The agriculture secretary announced the plan to bring the prices down. You need to buy chickens and harvest, harvest your own crops and you need to get your own eggs like you got to do chickens in your backyard. I'm not making this up. That's what they're saying. Elon Musk says that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and more. We'll take our last quick break of the show. Remind everybody as well to go to midasplus.com me I-p l u s.com our editor in chief, Ron Philipkowski has the best daily summaries. Make sure you subscribe there. It helps us grow as well. Also patreon.com Midas Touch if you want to meet Brett, Jordi or myself, we'll be doing a new Zoom meetup soon. It's a more kind of private meeting with with you and the Midas mighty and us. We look forward to that. And remember, subscribe on audio, subscribe on YouTube. We need you to subscribe. We need to keep this growth going and share this with everybody. You know, the more you share it with people, the more this network grows quicker and we need to have unapologetic, pro democracy, fearless voices now more than ever. We'll take our last quick break of the show. We'll be right back. What does the future hold for business? You ask nine experts, you get 10 different answers. Bull market, bear market. Will rates rise? Will rates fall? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future proof their business with NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, management, inventory, HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions like we need to do at the Midas Touch network. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. You know I love data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. That's why I use this and you should too. So whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to the immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com midas the guide is free to you at netsuite.com midAS that's any T S U-I-T-E.com midAS One more time go to netsuite.com midAS thanks Netsuite. Your nighttime bedroom temperature has a huge impact on your sleep quality. If you wake up too hot or too cold, I highly recommend you check out Miracle Maids bed sheets. Miracle made sheets are inspired by NASA and use silver infused fabrics that are temperature regulating so you can sleep at the perfect temperature all night long. I get so many emails from the Midas Mighty saying how great Miracle made sheets are and how it's changed their lives for the better. Here's why it uses silver infused fabrics inspired by NASA. So therefore Miracle made sheets are thermoregulating and designed to keep you at the perfect temperature all night long no matter the weather, so you get better sleep every night. Now these sheets are also infused with silver as I said and that prevents up to 99.7% of bacterial growth, leaving them to stay cleaner and fresh three times longer than other sheets so no more gross odors. Also, Miracle sheets are luxuriously comfortable without that high price tag of other luxury brands and it feels as nice to me if not nicer than the sheets used by some five star hotels. So upgrade your sleep this year. Go to try Miracle.com Midas that's T R Y M I R A C L to try Miracle made sheets today and whether you're buying them for yourself or as a gift for a loved one, if you order today you can save over 40% and if you use our promo code Midas at checkout you'll get a free three piece towel set and save an extra 20%. Miracle is so confident in their product it's backed with a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you want you aren't 100 satisfied, you'll get a full refund. So upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made, go to try Miracle.com Midas and use the code Midas to claim your free three piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's try Miracle.com Midas to treat yourself. Thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode.
- [57:55]
Michael Popak
Shout out to Our sponsors links in description of audio and the YouTube user. The links use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Please do me a favor, if you're in the chat right now, the live chat, if you have the miracle made sheets, let everyone know what you think. I've outfitted my whole, you know, place with them. They're fabulous. And please, one more time, on a real serious note, for all the audio listeners out there, and if you're watching this live, go download the Midas Touch podcast on audio. Subscribe to it, leave a five star review and comment. I'm not kidding about these, you know, Roganites or the, these people with Trump fanatics were leaving these bad comments on our off. It's a little bit frustrating if I have to, you know, be honest. I appreciate y'all coming and having our backs and leaving that five star review and commenting. So thank you. It means a lot.
- [58:35]
Ben Meiselas
No, absolutely. Jordy, let me show you a few things, you know, because look. What. It's just so funny that, you know, these people, like the Roganites or whatever these people are, it's like, you have Elon Musk.
- [58:49]
Michael Popak
You guys like my branding on that?
- [58:50]
Ben Meiselas
I like that. Well, maybe I. You have Elon Musk show up on Rogue Rogan and he calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. And we know Elon Musk, right, objectively, is someone who's running our government now, whether he's a co president pulling Donald Trump's strings as a puppet, whatever it is, right? Like, this language needs to be taken seriously. It's like what I said at the outset of the show when he said he was going to inflict economic hardship, he's doing it, right? So when he says that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, scheme and it's a fraud, you know, then where do you think they're going next? After they got your Medicaid, where do you think they're going? I mean, he's, he's telling you. So, so then to have like Roganites.
- [59:36]
Brett Meiselas
Go, yeah, man, get rid of Social.
- [59:38]
Ben Meiselas
Security, it's like, okay, like, are you that brainwashed that now you're going to get rid of you? Like, like you're gonna take everything from you, like, like literally, you're just gonna kind of be there, like all, all alone. You're gonna be like, but what, but, but there's no transgender volleyball player in San Jose State. Well, yeah, and it's like, that's, that's your motivating factor. That's kind of weird. You know, that's, that's kind of a weird thing.
- [60:04]
Michael Popak
That.
- [60:04]
Ben Meiselas
That's. What's your, your energizing focus that you're gonna now go on to our comment section and, and write negative reviews? I mean, look, it was a 3 hour and 11 minute, incredibly boring interview, but I'll just show you the portion where Elon Musk refers to. To Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. Here, let's play it.
- [60:21]
Jordy Meiselas
Well, I mean, the government's one big permanent scheme, if you ask me.
- [60:24]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, well, you can tell me better than anything.
- [60:26]
Jordy Meiselas
Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
- [60:30]
Michael Popak
Right?
- [60:30]
Ben Meiselas
Explain that. Oh, so well, people pay into Social.
- [60:34]
Jordy Meiselas
Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately, but the obligation for Social Security is your entire retirement career.
- [60:44]
Ben Meiselas
All right, so you heard him there. I mean, I don't need to hear him go. Tell me about it. Tell me about it.
- [60:50]
Brett Meiselas
I gotta say, for an allegedly very smart person, he's not very good at explaining things because that was not. He did not. What he described was not a Ponzi scheme either. I don't even know what he's talking about still. And I've heard the extended clip as well. It's.
- [61:05]
Ben Meiselas
So you have Rogan, who launders the oligarchs. He's not beating the allegations under the subterfuge of comedy. And there's nothing funny about that. I mean, you're going to lose your Social Security because of, because of, you know, because of that guy, because of those, those billionaires. I mean, their, their new line as they're tanking the economy is you, is the American people need to buy chickens, and that's how you can get your eggs. You need, you need to do chickens in your backyard. Like, that's, that's their plan. I mean, here's Donald Trump's Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, saying the solution to high egg prices is for Americans to get some chickens and raise them in your back backyard. Here, play it. I think the silver lining in all.
- [61:49]
Jordy Meiselas
Of this is how do we. In our backyards, we've got chickens in our backyard. How do we solve for something like this? And, and people are sort of looking around thinking, wow, well, maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard. And it's awesome. I agree with you. Yeah. I think everyone who isn't a farmer right now wants to be. So you're in the right department, Brooke.
- [62:06]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, I mean, these people are actually crazy. You know, I don't say that light like, like this is looney. Tunes idiocracy to you thought. Oh, Ben, you're just saying that, right? No, no, they're saying that the solution to the fact that inflation is going to be soaring again in egg prices. You can even find eggs, which I can't anymore. Maybe you can find them.
- [62:30]
Brett Meiselas
I couldn't.
- [62:31]
Ben Meiselas
You can find him this weekend? Yeah, I can find him out here. Is. Is that you?
- [62:36]
Michael Popak
One of the crazy things I've been seeing too, the local shops around me, real quick thing, the local, you know, breakfast shops, because I try and go, you know, weekly with, with my son and my, my wife, empty and like so much more empty because they rely so heavily on an egg first menu that folks just aren't showing up because they've had to increase the prices. So now imagine at a scale what that's doing, you know, to, to local shops and restaurants and take a look.
- [62:59]
Ben Meiselas
At what these MAGA Republicans are doing. I mean, you have Daryl Issa, MAGA Republican. Today I will nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. No one deserves it more. You've got Congressmember Brandon Gil. I'm introducing the Golden Age act to put Donald Trump on the $100 bill. America is experiencing an historic rebirth under Donald Trump. His legacy deserves to be immortalized. Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Trump, it's time to make history. And by the way, I wonder what Ronald Reagan would think of Donald Trump doing whatever Vladimir Putin and, and Russia wants. I think Reagan was atrocious in most respects. If there's one thing that he did, was he said he stood up to Gorbachev, at least in a public speech. Tear down that wall. So, I mean, so Trump's like the exact, the exact opposite. And by the way, if you got deja vu and you're like, come on, guys, I thought you reported on this last week. No, last week we reported on one of the Republican Congress members, Joe Wilson, who introduced the $250bill with Donald Trump's face on it. And that post said that you need to have the most valuable bill with the most valuable president on it. I think we have this. I mean, that's what they're doing. And then you have MAGA Mike Johnson, who was on Meet the Press this weekend, and MAGA Mike Johnson, with a straight face said, here's what we're doing, everybody. We've got Elon Musk, who's crawling through the Social Security information with his algorithms. I think we've got this clip. Let's cuts plate. You say there won't be any cuts.
- [64:40]
Jordy Meiselas
To entitlements but on Friday, Elon Musk, who President Trump has of course put in charge of making cuts all across the government, called Social Security, quote, the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Mr. Speaker, is that a sign that.
- [64:56]
Ben Meiselas
Social Security is Elon Musk's next target?
- [65:01]
Jordy Meiselas
No. Well, I've met with Elon about that, this multiple times. We, we meet late into the night in his office and we've looked at that. What he's finding with his algorithms crawling through the data of Social Security system is enormous amounts of fraud, waste and abuse. So it's a target the American people want us to. No, no, Kristen, do not, don't, don't, don't put words in my mouth. What I am saying is we have a moral responsibility to ensure that those programs are conducted in a, in a way that does not allow for this, this massive fraud and abuse. And that's what he is finding.
- [65:35]
Ben Meiselas
Don't put that fraud in my mouth. Don't put that, don't put those words in my mouth that came out of my mouth. You said those words. Let me, let me try to make this very simple. Okay. We all agree that fraud is a crime, right? So where are all of the arrests? Right? I mean, the, the tough guy FBI, DOJ with all of this fraud that Elon has found. Where are the fraud arrests happening since Doge found all this fraud? Oh, wait a minute. There are literally zero, zero fraud related arrest. And if you look at the types of people who've in the past been investigated and who invoked the Fifth when it comes to things like Medicaid fraud and other fraud like that. I mean, you want to, you want to know the biggest one in history? Pretty much the MAGA. Republican senator from Florida, Rick Scott invoked the Fifth Amendment close to 100 times. Biggest Medicaid fraud I think in like American history. He then like left that company, got a massive golden parachute. Hundreds of millions of dollars when he got paid. And he invoked the Fifth. And I think the, the company settled a criminal case and, and for the biggest Medicaid fraud scam in history. So that's who's actually doing it. And so when you start to look a little bit deeper, you know what's one of their scams, Brett, that you talked about about the, the crypto. This crypto scam where they're talking about. You want to talk about that, Brett? That it's just coincidentally is the crypto czars portfolio of crypto.
- [67:25]
Brett Meiselas
David.
- [67:27]
Ben Meiselas
Of coins that are being bought.
- [67:29]
Brett Meiselas
Yeah, I mean, there's not much more to it than that. But Donald Trump. Donald Trump announced that crypto is going to be great again and that we're going to have these crypto reserves, and America's crypto reserves is going to be the first of its kind. And we're going to start start with these five crypto coins. And the five crypto coins that Donald Trump picked just so happen to be the exact five crypto coins that make up the portfolio of a company that David Sachs is a major investor in. David Sacks being the Donald Trump's crypto czar who's big into crypto. He hosts a podcast, and, you know, he's definitely been a big Trump propagandist over these past few years. But now I even see a lot of these crypto people kind of freaking out because all the value of, you know, every time he does this, it might, like, pump, like bitcoin and might pump some of these other coins that Donald Trump is, you know, kind of picking and choosing, kind of picking and choosing winners. They might pump up for a little bit, but then they end up crashing. It's like just another pump and dump scheme that we're seeing from the administration. Just scam on top of scam on top of scam. And, you know, I think, you know, that it's getting bad when, when you start seeing the language of the propaganda shift. And we pointed out a few weeks ago when we noticed how bad prices were getting under Trump and that we started seeing all those propagandists kind of in unison, say stuff like, it's patriotic. Patriotic to pay more, folks. Patriotic. Pay more. It's more. It's patriotic. Get those tariffs. It's like, y'all are the same people who complained when eggs were 299. Now they're like 12 bucks, 15 bucks in some cases. And you're saying it's patriotic, like, at least show some consistency. Geez, have some dignity. Well, now I'm seeing a lot of people going out there and they're saying, so what if the housing market crash crashes? So, so, so what if. If the US Economy collapses, that'd be a good thing. We could use a correction. We could use a big economic collapse right now. Guys, this. This is actually. Let me explain to you why this is good. And, and I'm, like, already seeing that start to percolate on these MAGA propaganda accounts. And it's just. It's just so obvious the direction things are heading when you see them start to kind of plant their flags in those regards. But, hey, this was Elon Musk's this is what he said, right? He said pain. He said he's going to inflict pain. And that's exactly what now. And, you know, I think we tweeted out like, right after the election, things are going to get a whole lot worse. That was the Evergreen Post of the century. Every single day, things just continue to get worse.
- [69:57]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, I'll talk about this as well. Two things to focus on as we head until tomorrow, where these tariffs on Canada and Mexico will be in place. The premier of Ontario, Premier Ford says he will be cutting off electricity exports to border states if Trump's tariffs go through tomorrow. If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything, including cutting off their energy with a smile on my face. And that's just on the electric grid. We're not even talking about auto manufacturing, lumber. Right now, the futures markets for lumber is at a record high, which means homes aren't going to be built. So remember Trump promised housing would be more affordable. Remember Trump, Trump promised prices would go down on day one. And that he had such a great relationship with Zelensky and Putin that peace was going to happen in 24 hours. The guy's a con artist. He just is. He is a con artist. So snap the hell out of it if you're still under this trance. He is a con artist, okay? And everything he does is a lie. We're learning tonight as well, of course, that he's ordered, and obviously this was coming, the pause in all further military aid to Ukraine. Ukraine, with a senior administration official telling Fox News that the aid will be halted until the Ukrainians show a commitment to good faith peace negotiations. The Ukrainians were invaded by a hostile invading foreign force, by the Russians, who are the bad guys? This isn't a hard equation to figure out. Russia was the bad guy guys who invaded our allies, Ukraine. And you're attacking Ukraine and saying that they're not involved in good faith negotiations because they're not saying they like Vladimir Putin in Donald Trump's infantile, hostile, vile mind. Again, that's why all of these people were meeting in, in, in Europe, all these world leaders to stand up for Ukraine. They, they know where this is headed. They're not the United States corporate media, which tries to sugarcoat this. They know that Trump is allied with Russia, that Trump has put the United States in a group with North Korea, Russia, Belarus and Hungary. I mean, it's the most, it's the most despicable thing imaginable. And you want to know who knew this as well, let me show you who knew this as well. Let me show you a montage of first, I'll show you. J.D. vance. I think this is a good way to kind of sum this up nicely. This is what J.D. vance, by the way, not like 20 years ago. J.D. vance said these things, like five or six years ago, before changing his identity to run for the Senate seat in Ohio and then be Donald Trump's VB Pick. This is what JD Vance had to say about Trump during the first administration and thereafter until he ran for the Senate seat. Let's play it. I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him. It makes you think that at a fundamental level, this is sort of a he said, she said. Right? And at the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump, who always tells the truth. Just kidding. Or do you believe that woman on that tape? I cannot stand Trump because I think he's a fraud. Well, I think he's a total fraud that is exploiting these people, who is a total fraud. Like I said, I agree with you on Trump because I don't think that he's the person. I don't think he actually cares about, folks. Definitely there is definitely an element of Donald Trump's support that has its basis in racism or xenophobia. I think there's a chance, if I feel like Trump has has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. I think that I'm going to vote third party because I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place. I'll show you. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, here's how he once compared Donald Trump to a Third World strong man. And I'll just let you hear, in.
- [73:57]
Jordy Meiselas
His own words, Donald Trump to a Third world dictator. Yesterday in an interview with the New York Times. How so? Well, I don't know about a dictator. I said a Third World strongman. You know, he's running for president. So no matter what, he won't be a dictator unless our republic completely crumbles, which I don't anticipate it will. But yeah, here's what happens. In many countries around the world, you have a leader that emerges and basically says, forget, don't put your faith in yourselves. Don't put your faith in society, put your faith in me. I'm a strong leader and I'm going to make things better all by myself. This is very typical. You see it in the Third World. You See it a lot in Latin America for decades. It's basically the argument he's making that he single handedly is going to turn the country around. We've never been that kind of country. We have a president. The President is an American citizen who serves for a period of time constrained by the constitutions and the powers vested. The president works for the people, not the people for the President.
- [74:49]
Ben Meiselas
I think that sums it up where we're at and how cowardly and spineless those individuals are. When you go back and you look at history and you wonder how did someone like Hitler rise? How did someone like Mussolini rise? Where were the people standing up? How could human beings just sacrifice their own free will and their own logic to a strong man or want to be strong man? I think you see the psychology play out right there. And I don't want history to repeat itself. And I don't know or don't think there is any analog to what we're trying to build in independent media during the times of the past to what we're trying to do now. I want us to be that other variable that didn't exist then. Because if you look historically, corporate media, media is one of the first to fall and kiss the ring. It followed that pattern here when they all went to, all the corporate media leaders went to Mar a Lago, kissed the ring, entered into their deals or settlements or pacts with Donald Trump or whatever and gave away the game. But here we stand, the Midas, mighty together, stronger than ever, growing, educating the American people about what's up, coming with the receipts, seats and letting you see for yourself. That's what we're going to do here each and every day. Brett, unless you want to say anything else.
- [76:15]
Brett Meiselas
No, I think that sounds great. Well said. And you know, I'm thinking back to the town hall that Keith, Keith Self town hall in that Texas district where the people were shouting at him, do your job, do your job. I love seeing that energy. I want to see it all over the country. But I'm also going to put it back on you, the listeners, and I'm going to put it back on all the Republicans and independents and if there are Democrats in those districts as well in those red districts, you also people, we all have to be doing our job as well, which is to Ben's point, informing the public, making our voices heard, never letting anybody gaslight us into pretending that this is normal, pushing back against that garbage and when the time comes, making sure that everybody shows up at the polls and does their thing. I love seeing the reckonings in these towns town halls, it's going to mean nothing if people don't actually show up and take action. And so we need to convert this into action. We need to look inward at ourselves rather than just looking at all the spineless politicians we see out there and demanding action from them. Let's also demand action from ourselves and from our friends and from our family. And let's keep this fight alive. That's all I wanted to say.
- [77:23]
Ben Meiselas
Thank you everybody. Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Subscribe on Audio Audio. Subscribe on YouTube YouTube subscribe on Audio. Check us out at Midasplus.com m e I-a s p l u s dot com. You can check us out as well at patreon.com Midas Touch and I'll give a little shout out to my guy, Michael Popak, who started the Popoc firm. I love to see Michael Popak be entrepreneurial and I know he's taking big catastrophic injury cases and I'm proud of him. I know it was a big risk for him to start his own, own firm and he's one of my best friends and so I want to give him a nice shout out here too. You go to the popoc firm.com or his number is 1877 popak af. So shout out to you, Michael Popak. I'm glad you're, you're, you're, you're doing something you always dreamed about. And to our mods, thank you to the Midas mighty. Stay strong, stay tall. We're here with you every step of the way. We're grateful for you and, and thanks for being there by our side as well. I know you got our back. We got you're back. Jordy. Take it away.
- [78:28]
Michael Popak
I think Brad wants to chime in real quick.
- [78:29]
Brett Meiselas
I just want to say one thing. Now that we're talking about Michael Popak. Just because we have so many new audio listeners lately and the audience continues to grow every single day. Michael Popak, Ben Karen Friedman, Agnifolo who used to be the number two at the Manhattan District attorney's office. Dean Adal, incredible lawyer, legal analyst. They all do a show called Legal AF which is on the Midas Touch network. I know a lot of people constantly ask us for updates on the various, various cases that are happening. The various legal cases at all levels of the courts, up all the way up to the Supreme Court. We have a show dedicated to all the legal and it's great. It's called Legal af. Look up Legal AF by Midas Touch. You'll find it on Apple and Spotify. And I know that all of you who love this show are going to love nerding out with all the legal stuff and staying up to date on all that stuff. So. So check it out. And then on that note, now I'll hand it over to you, Jay.
- [79:14]
Michael Popak
Shout out to the Midas mighty.
- [79:19]
Ben Meiselas
Standing.
- [79:20]
Michael Popak
Strong.
- [79:23]
Brett Meiselas
Against the fascist. We sing our song.
- [79:34]
Michael Popak
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