MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 6/16/26

Summary

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The MeidasTouch Podcast – Full Episode Summary (6/16/26)

Overview

This episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast features Ben, Brett, and Jordi Meiselas breaking down the latest developments in U.S.-Iran relations under the Trump administration, focusing on a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran. The brothers employ their signature blend of lawyerly insight, sharp political critique, deep concern for democracy, and comedic brotherly banter to explore the implications of the MOU, the broader consequences of the Iran war, Trump's leadership style, and its embarrassing fallout for the U.S. at home and abroad.

Primary Themes:

• The controversial MOU between the Trump administration and Iran
• The perceived capitulation and international humiliation for the U.S.
• The persistent use of symbolic gestures ("paint it blue") over substantive policy fixes
• Media coverage, propaganda, and the role of transparency in government
• The ongoing erosion of U.S. global reputation

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Iran MOU—Not a "Deal," But a Surrender

• Ben introduces the episode by explaining that Trump has touted a supposed agreement with Iran, but in fact, it's a non-binding MOU, not a full peace deal ([02:27]).
• The MOU allegedly involves massive financial concessions—potentially up to $300 billion—to Iran, exceeding the amounts involved in the Obama-era JCPOA ([02:27], [09:50]).
• Brett and Jordi characterize the MOU as a document of surrender, not a negotiation from strength:
  • Brett: "I've never seen the United States of America in such a place of weakness as it is throughout this entire Iran war... This is a surrender do document from Donald Trump." ([06:58])
  • Jordi jokes, "Memorandum of a deal is giving off...the Office...Assistant to the regional manager." ([08:33])

2. Lack of Transparency and Shifting Narratives

• The Trump administration refuses to publish the full text of the MOU, stoking skepticism from allies, opponents, and even the MAGA base ([08:33], [28:33]).
• MAGA talking points built around exaggeration and propaganda are again on display, with claims of victory and shifting justifications for the war moving as facts get in the way ([24:44], [44:49]).

3. The Cost of the Iran War—Economic and Human

• Ben lays out how Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA led directly to war, catastrophic costs, and diplomatic isolation, as former President Obama predicted ([09:50]).
• The cost projections: trillions spent, hundreds of billions in direct/indirect payments to Iran, and blowback both economically and in diminished U.S. global standing ([09:50], [40:12]).
• Brett critiques the result: “It’s a total humiliation for the US...” ([19:55])
• On the lost opportunity: "You cannot tell me with a straight face...what we are getting now out of this deal is better at all than what we would have gotten without the war in the first place. In fact, it's worse." (Brett, [48:50])

4. Reflections on Trump's Leadership Style

• Widespread ridicule for the administration’s focus on optics over substance—a recurring "paint it blue" metaphor. Instead of tackling underlying problems, Trump’s team is accused of covering up, deflecting, and feigning success ([02:27], [52:33], [63:17]).
• Examples:
  • Painting the Reflecting Pool blue as a culture war ploy, which led predictably to an algae outbreak—a metaphor for all of Trump’s “solutions” ([02:27], [63:17], [79:28]).
  • Brett: "The reflecting pool is perhaps one of the biggest metaphors that we have seen for this entire Trump administration, for this entire Trump regime. The fact that you could go in, brute force...just try to paint over it and then hope for the best..." ([52:31])
• Trump's cognitive and physical decline is ridiculed as media and Fox News offer fawning coverage of him managing to stand or walk ([18:55], [29:12], [30:08]).

5. Media, Transparency, and Propaganda

• Demands for the deal's text echo across the spectrum—Ben notes even Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro want to see the MOU, albeit for different reasons ([30:10]).
• The podcast criticizes both mainstream and right-wing media for softball interviews and for spinning Trump's performance ([18:55], [54:42]).
• Brett and Jordi point out the administration's willingness to "throw JD Vance under the bus" to deflect blame as necessary ([19:55], [38:22]).

6. The “Paint It Blue” Metaphor: Policy as Performance

• The brothers frequently return to this metaphor—a symbol of government-by-appearance, masking deeper failings ([02:27], [63:17], [80:01]).
  • Ben: "You can't just paint something blue. You can't just paint over it. The algae comes back." ([31:21])
• Related stories are used throughout the episode—covering up Trump’s name at Kennedy Center, the literal and figurative “Covid up” approach to scandals and policy failures ([63:17], [71:34]).

7. Implications for Global Standing and Future Challenges

• The episode tracks the U.S.’s waning international reputation, specifically at the G7, where other world leaders view America as weakened and unreliable ([52:31], [63:17]).
• Discussion of the rising influence of mid-powers like Canada and European nations forming new blocs as the U.S. falters ([56:10], [63:17]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the deal’s opaqueness:
  • Jordi: “Why can't we read it? What are they trying to hide?...If it is so great...why can't we read it? What are they trying to hide?” ([26:50], [28:33])
• On U.S. humiliation:
  • Brett: "It's a total humiliation for the US that upsets me, but it's just a fact...Iran has won this thing." ([19:55])
  • Ben: "...America lost this war. And when you lose the war, you have to make concessions. That's part of losing the war." ([40:12])
• On the shifting rationale for war:
  • Brett (quoting Trump): "Yeah, we don't really care about the nuclear material. You know, well, it's really, it's harmless..." ([24:44])
  • "That was the whole justification for going into this war." ([24:44])
• On the MOU as cover for failure:
  • Brett: "To me, any deal is better than no deal at all...But I am happy to acknowledge that a deal is better than no deal. And given the circumstances. Yeah." ([19:55])
• On "paint it blue" as a motif:
  • Ben: "You can't just paint something blue, okay? You got to deal with the systemic issues. You got to deal with the truth and you gotta be honest with people if you really want to fix these problems." ([81:16])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:27 | Introduction to the Iran MOU and its implications | | 06:13 | Trump’s surrender and desperate approach | | 08:33 | Lack of transparency; “Assistant to the regional manager” joke | | 09:50 | Ben details the cost and history of the Iran War; Obama’s warnings | | 18:55 | Media coverage of Trump’s decline | | 19:55 | Comparing deal’s reality to propaganda | | 24:44 | Trump’s shifting justification for war; dismissing regime change | | 26:50 | Why the MOU text is hidden; doubts about Trump’s involvement | | 28:33 | MAGA’s tendency to overhype (pilots, missing text, spiking the football) | | 30:08 | Fox News’ absurdly low standards for Trump’s health | | 31:21 | The burden of criticizing the deal while rooting for peace | | 38:22 | J.D. Vance as deal scapegoat/"architect" | | 39:43 | Vance dodges questions about $300 billion in CBS interview | | 44:27 | Vance on intention to “build a friendship” with Iran | | 47:18 | Vance claims “unconditional surrender”—semantic manipulation | | 52:31 | “Paint it blue” analogy; reflection on failure of Trumpian policy | | 56:10 | Complex feelings on Vance’s role; U.S. at the G7 and global stage | | 63:17 | Ongoing war hawk and neocon efforts to undermine peace | | 71:34 | Symbolism: painting, algae, and covering up Trump at the Kennedy Center | | 73:44 | MAGA denial, blame-shifting, and the green Reflecting Pool | | 79:28 | “Ninja Turtle green” and the state of the Reflecting Pool | | 80:01 | Policy by performance—COVID, spy balloons, cover-ups | | 81:16 | The solution: unity, honesty, and rebuilding trust |

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Tone and Style

The brothers maintain a lively, sometimes irreverent but deeply engaged tone—mixing sharp political analysis with personal vulnerability and humor. They are unapologetically critical of Trump and MAGA, willing to name failures directly and with memorable metaphors ("paint it blue", "Ninja Turtle green"). Throughout, the podcast urges listeners to seek truth, transparency, and unity beyond partisan divisions.

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Final Thoughts

• The MOU, rather than representing diplomatic triumph, is viewed by the hosts as an embarrassing capitulation that will have lasting consequences for U.S. global standing and internal politics.
• The episode’s recurring “paint it blue” metaphor crystallizes the show’s core critique: stop prioritizing superficial fixes and tackle real, underlying problems head-on.
• The episode closes with a call to action: seek unifying truth, demand transparency, and engage meaningfully as citizens to help rebuild democracy and dignity.

"You can't just paint it blue, okay? You got to deal with the systemic issues. You got to deal with the truth and you gotta be honest with people if you really want to fix these problems." – Benji ([81:16])

Transcript

[Benji]

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[Jordi]

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[Benji]

You're among fans. We have a lot to discuss on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. A memorandum of understanding was reached by Donald Trump with Iran and it is a member of Under a memorandum of Understanding that may be signed on Friday that provides for a framework to potentially negotiate technical details of a future framework and involving multiple preliminary discussions at a future time that may involve a deal sometime in the future. But what we gather is that the Trump regime has agreed to give billions and billions of dollars to Iran, potentially more than $300 billion, which J.D. vance, who MAGA Republicans are now attacking as the architect of this deal, didn't deny when he gave interviews early this morning. But folks, all you gotta do is just pay paint it blue and say it's good and say there's no algae and say it's amazing and just say it's a great deal and just try to sell it to the American people, right? I mean, the reflecting pool analogy, the reflecting pool metaphor is so apt to everything this Trump regime does. They said that they were going to fix everything in the reflecting pool by not actually addressing the issues of where algae comes from, but just pick, paint the bottom blue, American flag blue, because then we can turn it into some sort of culture war type issue if you're against painting it blue. And then voila, it's going to be amazing. As we warned about on the Midas Touch network in early May when we heard about this plan, basic science, basic facts would tell you that it was going to become infested with algae and be far worse than it ever was before. When frankly, this was not a top issue or a major issue or really an issue at all that Americans were focused about. And sure enough, painting it blue didn't work. And the algae is back. But the significant point I think I want to bring up on this episode is that the algae comes back. You can try to hide what you're doing to the economy when you tariff the world. You can try to hide the damage you're doing to America standing in the world, but ultimately it turns out you didn't do $21 trillion worth of deals last year. It turns out that tariffs have the impact that people who know this stuff told you was gonna happen. It's gonna rise, it's gonna lead to rising inflation and it's gonna weaken your standing in the world. When you head to France right Now for the G7 and the world has kind of moved on from you and you can claim you controlled the Strait of Hormuz, or that your deal is so much better than Obama's non nuclear JCPOA deal, but. But when you ultimately take a look at it, eventually you see the algae and the COVID up goes away. And the American people see it for what it is, and also see the kind of oddity and the grossness of it, like the algae that we see right there. You know, this Trump doing this UFC event again, falling asleep there, then flying to France where, bizarrely speaking to Macron about the UFC fight and holding Macron's wife's hand and just looking lost and delusional. We're going to cover it all and more here on the Midas Touch podcast. Great to be here with everybody. Brett and Jordi are here. We've got a lot, a lot to discuss, including how this purported, I say purported, it's not a deal, a memorandum of understanding that may be signed on Friday that will lead to technical negotiations in the future, how this all kind of came about and what the reaction is.

[Brett]

Well, some might call this a concept of a plan. Brothers, it's good to be here with you guys. Good to be here. Midas Mighty. Everybody watching us live, everybody listening on audio podcasts. It's just always great to be breaking down the news with you, man. When I saw that Donald Trump wanted to get this deal signed and he made his deadline, it was so clear what was about to happen, because we had seen the tea leaves leading up to this moment, right? We had seen the utter capitulation, we had seen the desperation flowing from Trump and this administration. And at the end, before this kind of memorandum of understanding was announced, what did we also see? Donald Trump essentially just bribing Iran. Whatever you want, take it. Take it all. Please, please, please, please. What can we do for you?

[Benji]

What can we do for you?

[Brett]

What could you. I've never seen the United States of America in such a place of weakness as it is throughout this entire Iran war. And I would say more than a memorandum, right? This is a surrender do document from Donald Trump. And I think it's pretty clear when you look at just what's coming out right now, you know, and it's. And it's a little hard because they're not really haven't released the text yet. So we're now going off what the Iranians are saying and what J.D. vance and U.S. officials are saying. And there's some overlap with those statements, and there's some odd phrasing that J.D. vance uses that hints that a lot of the things the Iranians saying are actually correct as to what this deal is and to how much of a disaster this is for the United States. You know, and I think it's a good point that you made up top and too, that this is not a deal. Everybody acts like this is the deal. He did it. He signed it. Peace deal. It's not, it's not a deal. It's an intent. Intent to work on a deal. In effect, it's a. It's an extension of the ceasefire that already exists with a couple interim terms that are non binding as they then try to figure out what the heck they're actually going to agree on. And when it comes to the very basic parts of the deal, like the control over the straight of Hormuz and tolls in the straight of Hormuz, it's clear that they are still so far apart on those issues, which should be the first issues to address the most. The big, the big issues, but the most basic of issues that you could have in any agreement. We're going to go through all of it, but, you know, first I got to check in with Jordy. Jordy, what's the latest?

[Jordi]

Brothers Midas. Marty, pleasure to be here tonight. Excited to get into the show. Thank you all for downloading and subscribing to the audio version of the show. It's really helped us. Please, if you haven't already, subscribe to the audio version of the Midas Touch podcast, wherever you get your audio podcast. Super easy and also super free. So definitely check that out. Memorandum of a deal. You know what that's, that's giving off. Y' all have seen the office, right? Assistant to the regional manager like that, that's the same energy memorandum of a deal is giving off. If the text of this memorandum of a deal that Vance has been going out talking about really reflected. I think a lot of the conversation that MAGA wants you to believe is in this was actually reflected in, in the physical text. Why not release it? You know, they would be the first people to release the actual text so folks can understand what's in this memorandum. What, what is. I'm just going off of your word. And then when the person asks you the question on, on TV and you dance around it, I have to kind of interpret what's in the deal. That's pretty shady. I think we have a couple of clips that will show about that. I think that kind of points to the fact that maybe this isn't all great. Maybe, maybe this isn't a win. Maybe this is more of what Brett was alluding to, a surrender, capitulation, however you want to put it. I'm excited to get into the show though. Benji, where are we starting off?

[Benji]

You know, I think I want to say at the outset though, doing this deal of all of the Options was probably the only option that existed. And so, you know, I want to be very careful when I talk about this because I don't want any misunderstandings about what my overall views of this war were to begin with. Right. This was a catastrophic and unlawful war that Trump went into with Netanyahu. They made a bunch of promises about what was going to happen. They lied about everything. They engaged in more war crimes on top of war crimes they've already committed. And we should never have been in involved in this at all. Iran did not pose any imminent nuclear threat. And everything that was being sold to the American people by Trump and Netanyahu was an utter lie. And including the fact when they said we're winning this, don't worry, they're going to be total surrender, total capitulation. So when I'm being very critical of the deal, it is in the sense that there was a deal that existed before in former President Obama's non nuclear deal, the JCPOA that Donald Trump pulled the United States out of. This was by the way, kind of certified and blessed by the United nations and Congress. And it was done on a multilateral basis, the jcpoa. And when Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA in 2018, I did a video on it earlier this morning. Former President Obama on that day in May 2018 predicted everything that was going to happen. America losing its credibility internationally. That if you don't stand by your deals, especially when they go in front of the United nations in Congress, people won't trust you, that it'll ultimately just lead to a war and a worse deal, and that not everything needs to be accomplished via military force and that there is a place for diplomacy. And so when you look at the terms that we believe exist in this deal, they give more money to Iran than former President Obama did. I mean, we could be talking somewhere between 300 billion to $500 billion in a investment fund that Iran will have access to and it's being dressed up as an investment fund. So it doesn't seem like American taxpayer dollars are going to go directly to Iran or it's being dressed up as Qata to be giving tens of billions of dollars to Iran. And the United Arab Emirates is going to be giving tens of billion dollars to Iran and money is going to be unfrozen and given to Iran or all of the sanctions from every entity against Iran will now go away. United nations sanctions, IAEA board resolutions against Iran, US Sanctions, all related sanctions that the US Is a part of go away. And so what you could be talking about, when you add up the costs of this war already, the money that will be directed and funneled to Iran, either directly or indirectly, the remaining costs of exiting, and then you want to talk, I mean, if you want to look at second and third level consequential costs, about how this has impacted our market, you could be talking in the terms of trillions of dollars. You know, how Donald Trump likes to pretend that we brought in trillions of dollars, which we did not. This war likely cost the United States trillions of dollars, both in terms of money outlays, future promises, opportunity costs, and the hits to our economy, not to mention the future military budget of $1.5 trillion, which has a lot of hidden costs in there to replenish stockpiles that were expended for the United States to lose this war again. So you look through some of the terms that have been published, and I'll just get to the point. It looks a lot like the framework that Iran put forward when there was the initial ceasefire negotiations, when Vance and Witkoff, you know, all went to Pakistan originally and the US Rejected it. It's basically those terms which you rewind and were the terms that Iran was saying, you know, late March and early April when they talked about their framework and Donald Trump reposted Foreign Minister Iraq cheese framework. It's basically those terms. We will apparently at some point get to see what this document looks like. But in Iran, they're claiming it as a major victory right now. Yes, there are some hardliners in Iran who are pushing back and saying, why did we enter it? But, but overall, Iran's IRGC leadership at this point has information comes out. They seem to be happier about it. And as more information comes out here in the United States, people seem to have more questions. So the IRGC says the Iran, and this is Tasnim, they have different, you know, media agencies. This one is closely aligned with the irgc. They say what this deal shows is that the Iranian nation was able to impose their will on coward enemies as Tehran confirmed finalization of the memorandum of understanding with the US to end the war. I guess why this is different than past understandings and why I think there's more of a belief that this is actually going to have, not necessarily a deal, but it'll at least have some repercussions, is that Iran is now acknowledging the existence of this. You have lots of Middle east nations acknowledging the existence of this. And you kind of have in a different way, the international community saying that this is a real thing. From our understanding, this was signed by M.B. golubov, Iran's parliament leader and lead negotiator, J.D. vance, and Trump, so that there is a signed document of written terms somewhere. And I will just reiterate at the outset that it's not normal for this not to be produced immediately. It's not normal to talk about frameworks and MOUs that lead to potential future talks where technical negotiations take place, where maybe pre negotiations happen for deals in the future. This is just, I want you to know that this is not normal, but this is kind of Trump's behavior his whole life. And it's part and parcel of a plan to not live by your word if you don't have written words and you kind of feast on the ambiguity. But Iran's been able to outplay him and checkmate him in those avenues as well. So Donald Trump, he has this UFC event which is very weird. I mean, you, you've heard all of the offensive stuff that's come out of it. You have these UFC fighters who are out there saying on stage at the White House, Michelle Obama's a man. And it's like, that's not funny. I mean, it's like, what are you, like a weird third grade bully? Like, it's not even, it's not humorous, it's not witty, it's not edgy. It's just, it's rude. It's pathetic. And this is the White House that you're desecrating. Donald Trump was also sleeping through most of it. He then gets aboard Air Force One, and then he, for those on audio, we're just showing photos of Donald Trump sleeping at the UFC event. Like, Dana White had to like, nudge him. And then he goes to France and then Fox, state regime, media, when he gets to France, because there's a G7 meeting, Fox is like applauding the idea that he's able to walk. And, you know, he looked horrible in France. He looked like he wasn't even there in the room, like he was physically there. But Fox was acting like, oh, my, this is incredible that he's even able to walk and be awake. Like, that's our standard right now for the President of the United States. Let me show you how Fox was describing his arrival in France. As though it's a major accomplishment that the guy's alive and that his eyes are open and that he was able to like, I guess, walk a little bit. Not good. But here, let's play what Fox had to say. They're Talking about something.

[Jordi]

My main observation so far is that this is the first time I've seen

[Guest/Interviewer]

a world leader photo where the other

[Benji]

leader, not Donald Trump, gave a thumbs

[Jordi]

up and the President just kept his

[Brett]

hands at his sides.

[Benji]

The fact that he could even walk, Peter, given all he's been through in the last 24 hours, I think really is quite remarkable. He's got to be beyond exhausted. Fact that he can even walk after all he's been through in the past 24 hours is really unbelievable. He did some bizarre UFC events and then because of his weakness and his lies, he dragged us into a catastrophic war and then has some MOU that

[Brett]

was announced that it's very hard to sign a DocuSign. You have to first open up the website, type, click the button, it automatically does your signature, and then you have to click sign. And so I have a real question

[Benji]

for you though, Brett, and I'll toss it to you. And Jordi, you can maybe answer after. Do you think he's even. I mean, I'm being dead serious and I think he hasn't. What I'm about to say, I don't think he's even read the document. I don't even think he's looked at the document and I don't think he ever will look at the document.

[Brett]

I don't think he's much of a reader. I doubt that he actually read the full document, which is, I think only like a couple pages at this point. But he was probably told by people what's in it. You know, that's how I interpret it. I mean, we've heard, you know, throughout the years, even when he was at Saturday Night Live, he. He couldn't like, read the sketches that he needed people to explain it to him and to read it to him. And so this has been a thing with him in forever, even before his old age. So, you know, I kind of completely agree with you, but I think when we try to analyze, you know, this deal and Ben, I could not agree with you more of that. To me, any deal is better than no deal at all. And, you know, I don't think, I think we could walk and chew gum at the same time, so to speak, in that we should be very critical of the deal. I mean, it's. And say it's when it's a disaster for the United States and, and be very critical of this war, which from day one has been horrific for the United States. And it's very clear that Iran has won this thing. It's a, It's A total humiliation for the US that upsets me, but it's just a fact. But I am happy to acknowledge that a deal is better than no deal. And given the circumstances. Yeah. You know, as I've said on this show before, as I've said on social media, yes, you're going to have to make some concessions in order to end sort of war like this where that you started and that backfired this badly. It's just, just, just going to be a fact of things. But I'm happy our soldiers should not be in harm's way. I don't want to see any hostilities in the Middle East. I want to see peace in the Middle east, even though there are a lot of people who do not want to see peace in the Middle East. And I think when you reflect and you look around at the various reactions throughout that region and throughout the United States, it also kind of provides some insight because you see Israel is like, apoplectic about this deal. They think it's like the worst deal ever. They think that Trump completely sold them out. I think that's one data point. I think you have Iran, other than maybe. And this has been actually moving in the direction of people in Iran liking the deal more and more the more they learn about it. But I think you see the Iranians celebrating this deal as a huge win, as a huge victory over the United States. Then when you look at the, in the United States, you see the kind of warmonger folks like the Mark Levins and people like that are livid at this deal. They think that it was a complete capitulation to Iran and a complete surrender to Iran because ultimately they want to see more fighting. They would love to see Donald Trump drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. Quite frankly, people like Mark Levin and the like Lindsey Graham, you know, people like that. And so I think you kind of look at all these things and you get a little bit of a sense of, of where this deal actually is, even without being able to read the text. But I think even that's another data point, as Jordi was hinting at earlier, the fact that they didn't rush it out and actually release the text before signing this, I think that shows something. The fact that the person they seem to try to be hanging this all Right now, J.D. vance, somebody who we've heard Donald Trump has not been the biggest fan of lately, the fact that they're trying to be like, yeah, JD's deal. JD, explain the deal. Go on, CNBC, go on. I think that says a lot Also, you know, they're kind of throwing JD under the bus with this whole thing. You know, once the reaction, once people actually see what's in this thing, they're going to go, it's. It's Vance's idea. It was terrible. And so I think when you take it all together, you can. You kind of see the picture that's taking shape here. And we're going to learn more, I guess, over the next few days. But, you know, I think when you take it, though, from what we know right now, this, it seems like Iran's surely getting a lot out of it. And the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars, at least on this war already. Hundreds of billions of dollars on this war already, and now is going to be spending billions and billions of dollars more to help Iran rebuild what we destroyed. Whether that's funneling that through other Middle Eastern countries like Qatar and whatever they want to call it. I mean, that's, that's what's happening. Let's, let's face it here. Or whether it's one of these payments of unfreezing the Iranian funds, which is looking like it's going to be to many more billions than, you know, Obama ever did back in the day when they were complaining about Obama doing it. And I remember them constantly saying back then they would say, oh, yes, they have Obama and froze their own funds, but money is fungible, and therefore he's actually giving them money. I mean, if you want to run back those same arguments with Donald Trump here, you could run back the same arguments. It seems like Donald Trump is giving the Iranians far more money, this regime. And you also see the shifting rhetoric of Trump throughout this process. I mean, there was a quote that, like, I don't mean to say blew my mind because nothing honestly shocks me so much anymore with this guy. But in the Wall Street Journal last night, one of the quotes that came out from Trump was like, yeah, we don't really care about the nuclear material. You know, well, it's really, it's harmless. It's harmless. We'll go, we'll go in, you know, in a few months, maybe. We'll, we'll talk about it.

[Guest/Interviewer]

We'll.

[Brett]

We'll figure out what to do. It's hot. That was the whole justification for going into this war. So he said that. And in the same article, he also said, yeah, you know, I don't really care much about regime change. Not really. Not really a big deal. Not really something on my mind when it comes to this deal. We'll Work with the new people. You know, I just want to have a relationship with the new folks. It's the same regime, but more hard line folks who you're dealing with right now. So, you know, and I had somebody respond to me on social media, media the other day when I was speaking about this deal and they went on a whole thing. Oh, so you don't care about the Iranian people. So you're okay that the regime killed X amount of Iranian protesters back? I said, no, I'm not okay. That's why I think going in there promising them that you were going to do this regime change war and then trying to become buddy buddy with the regime is not how you help the people. You're screwing the people and you've killed the people with these strikes. You bombed a girl school, you've done everything possible to alienate those people who you pretended to help. And now at the end of it you go, yeah, never really cared much about that anyway. And that nuclear thing, man, I don't know. Maybe we'll figure something out. Hopefully we can open the straight though. The straight's been open. The street was open before all this, this and now it's still in limbo. We still don't know who is going to control the strait. Iran is saying that they and Oman are going to be controlling the strait. They're saying that there's going to be this period, the 60 day MOU period, the memorandum of understanding period, where there, you know, maybe won't be tolls, but after that they're going to figure out a way to implement tolls and Iran will make far more money than they've ever made by even unfreezing their own funds. Like, like Donald Trump has set Iran, the Iranian regime up. The oppressive Iranian regime that he acted like he wanted to overthrow in the beginning. He set them up to be richer than ever. He set them up to be a major player. He set them up to show that they could assert economic dominance not only over the United States, but over the entire world by simply shutting down the straight. At the end of the day, Iran showed that they had the cards and Donald Trump showed that he was a people paper tiger.

[Jordi]

Well said. Be really well said, Ben, to go back and answer your question too. No, I don't think he's read the text. I think it's well documented that he doesn't like read long things. If there's a lot of words on paper, he won't read it. What he does get are those bullet points. I think more so and more concerning over the second Trump regime that we're seeing now is that he's kind of dictating by vibes, right? He's letting a lot of the social media chattering class, like, get into his ear if it's a good deal or if it's a bad deal or kind of. It feels like that's how he's dictating policy this time around. This time around. Not that he ever did any sort of critical thinking, but this, now more than ever, as his cognitive ability and as his own cognitive decline continues to take shape, it feels like he's just kind of leaning on more of the people around him. Hey, how are people. How are people thinking of this? Am I great? Are people loving this? And then when he doesn't get the answer he wants, he, like, blows the whole thing up and starts. Starts from scratch again. So. So I still don't feel like we're close again. This memorandum of understanding, this assistant to the regional manager, if you will. Where is it? If it is so great and does all of this great stuff and it's such a victory for us, why can't we read it? What are they trying to hide? It reminds me of the pilots. Where are the pilots? Right? We had this great heroic rescue mission where we recovered our pilots and we took them home and they're safe and sound. Where are they? We know time and time again from MAGA that any time that they could spike the football, like, really spike the football on a win or the perception of a win. They pimp out everyone and everything that they can, right? They'll have them show up to the big speeches. They'll.

[Brett]

They'll.

[Jordi]

They'll plaster them on social media. They'll have, you know, press conferences about it. They're just sending out JD Vance and being like, answer for this, dude. Like. Like, go ahead, answer for this and try and convince everyone. This is so great. Meanwhile, like, all we're asking for is, where's the text? You could say it's this great thing or whatnot. Where is it? We want to actually physically read it. I don't understand what you're hiding, but I do get what you're hiding because it's probably not as great as you're trying to get the country to believe it is. And then, just the last thing, going back to that box clip. It's amazing he's even walking right now. He said that so earnestly. What was he. It's not like he just ran a mile or ran a triathlon, right?

[Guest/Interviewer]

Is.

[Jordi]

Oh, my God. It's amazing he's even walking around. What? What a stud. No, he was at his own birthday party that the UFC decided to throw on the White House lawn, you know, and have this fight in front of him and everyone, which he fell asleep at, and then he jumped on a plane, likely fell asleep the whole time on the plane, and then got up and started shaking hands and walking. And Fox News is like, it's amazing. He's in a walking right now. That is like, what, what strength, what power? But you know what? I think it's actually alluding to Brothers and Midas mighty more is that Trump's own cognitive decline in physical ability, as it's seen to the public, is clearly in his head. He knows he has to overcompensate, or at least in the people immediately around him. So I feel like as if the people closest to Trump are sort of giving talking points because they know he watches so much tv. Hey, talk about his energy, talk about how good he looks, talk about how strong he is, make him feel a little bit better about himself. I mean, it's the kid gloves they treat this man with.

[Brett]

Absolutely. It's all part of the propaganda operation,

[Benji]

you know, oh, wow.

[Brett]

And even the New York Post the other day ran the most ridiculous headline like, Trump defying aging at 80. It's like, all right, guys, all right, enough, enough, enough, enough. But you know what? Know who agrees with the Jordy about the mou, the Memorandum of Understanding? Like, you're an interesting company, and I think we all are an interesting company with this one, because, you know, who's demanding to actually see the text of the document? People like Mark Levin, people like Ben Shapiro. I saw Senator Thune before he was asked, so what do you think about this so called deal? And he goes, I don't know, I. If I can't see it, it I have nothing to say about this. And so when you would put those pieces together, you also see the reaction coming from even the right in this country, from these Republican voices, from MAGA voices, from some of the most MAGA commentators out there who are going, okay, if it's everything you're trying to sell me, then just show me what it is and look.

[Benji]

Well, we want to see it for different reasons than they want to see it, though, right? They want to see it because they know they want to rip it apart and they want to use it to throw Vance under the bus because they're neocon warmongers and they want to basically say, we need more war and we need more Genocide and we need more destruction.

[Brett]

Right.

[Benji]

I. I guess naively, but for the love of the country and the fact that I know people are suffering, I truly want this to work. Like the, the complex thing about me reporting on such a vile regime and such vile people like Trump and J.D. vance is I know how on the brink we are as a nation to a massive depression. And I know that most Americans are actually feeling that right now worse than they felt in a great recession. So from my own point, I want to be constructive and I want to try to figure out what we can do or how we can look at this, because I truly want to. I want whatever this is to work. I want. I'm glad when I heard that US tankers, at least from the satellite imagery, have left the immediate vicinity of the kind of the Persian Gulf Strait of Hormuz, and it's the first time they've done that. I think that's a good thing. I don't want to root again. You know, I root against Trump and Vance because of how horrible they are. But then the complex part of me is I know that people are suffering and I don't want to root against America getting the hell out of there if that ultimately benefits the people, if that makes sense. And that's what I'm opening up to you in the vulnerability that I'm trying to share is how hard sometimes it is to kind of COVID this. I know they're con artists, I know they're scammers. I know this MOU is yet another kind of of Trump fraudy thing. But I want it to work because I want people to get relief. I don't want. People can't afford anything right now. And I think when the history is written, if we somehow manage to get out of this, this piece of it, I think we'll see that what was also a driving factor here, and Iran knew this, is we are, if not days or hours, like we're days away from tank bottom conditions that could result in some of the most catastrophic conditions ever. And you know that by following the facts and the science the same way we reported. Look, I'm going to tell you what happens if you just paint the bottom of this thing blue. It's in a hot, humid summer reflecting pool. It's going to show the algae even more. And you're not going to focus on the filtration. And what you're doing may be damaging and it may be causing more harm. You can't just paint something blue. You can't just paint over it. The algae comes back. Let's talk about that and more when we come back from our first quick break. A reminder, make sure you hit subscribe at our YouTube channel. Help us get 7 million subscribers. But as I've been trying to push for lately, please help us grow the audio are because we've been pushing the audio. We've seen massive growth lately in those audio numbers. And it's because I know all of you have been helping and subscribing to the audio. So wherever you get audio podcasts, please just search right now. Midas Touch Podcast or when the show ends, it'll take you maybe 30 seconds. Subscribe to Midas Touch on Audio and leave a five star review. It's free and it helps us a ton. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. We will be right back.

[Jordi]

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[Brett]

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[Jordi]

Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors links in description of both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links user use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know he sent you. Benji, real quick before I toss back to you this shirt right here. Brothers Midas Mighty Fair harbor shirt. One of my favorites of the summer so far. Definitely check them out. Fair Harbor Sundays for dogs. They've been good to us for a long time. If you're in the market for those products, give them a shout. Benji, where to next?

[Benji]

Yeah, let's just bring out the receipts right here. I mean, J.D. vance has been the person kind of thrown out there by the Trump regime to kind of defend this agreement. He's been labeled by Lindsey Graham and others as the architect of this deal. And you can just see the language though, of the Lindsey Grahams and the Mark Levins and kind of all of these neocon war hawk type of people is to frame this as a JD Vance thing to try to build a wedge there between kind of Trump and Vance. And interestingly, it was about 45 days ago or so where Donald Trump I think literally said during one of these press conferences, if the deal isn't good, I'm just going to blame J.D. vance for it. He actually said that. I'll try to pull up that clip.

[Brett]

I forgot about that.

[Benji]

Yeah, I'm going to, while I'm showing this, I'm going to try to find that clip and just to put out the data point. But so J.D. vance first. Here he is on CBS and they go, the Iranians are saying they're going to have access to $300 billion. True or false. And by the way, you know, I give CBS a hard time on a lot of things, rightfully so. This is the right way to ask the question, right? Yes or no, Is this what's happening? Let's play this first clip, walk through some of this. The Iranians are saying that they're going to have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund.

[Brett]

True or false?

[Guest/Interviewer]

Well, Ed, that's the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf Coast Coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation. I think that one of the things you're going to see, Ed, and people have to be skeptical of this, is that the hardliners in the Iranian system will overemphasize the benefits that Iran gets while underemphasizing all the things that they have to concede and all the things they have to provide in order to get these benefits.

[Benji]

Okay, well, that goes back to a very basic point. Publish the agreement. Just show us what it says. And if it says it, it says it. If it doesn't say it, it doesn't say it. And ultimately, if it says it, we should come to terms with what this really means and understand it. You know, if, and I'm not, and I'm trying to be, you know, ultra realistic right here. I mean, look, America lost this war. And when you lose the war, you have to make concessions. That's part of losing the war. And when I say we lost, Trump promised X, Y and Z were going to happen. Regime change, obliteration. We're going to get their ballistic missiles, knock out their conventional weapons that serve as a shield for the nuclear weapons. None of that stuff, none of that stuff happened. Okay? So, but the question is, and we're adults, we're grownups, we can handle this. If you told me, hey, there's a $300 billion fund, here's the mechanism for it. This is part of, of the kind of Gulf countries that are building X, Y and Z, and here's part of the plan that's going to hopefully develop other areas in the region. And that Money, could, that 300 billion can lead to $3 trillion in economic growth that America can also take part in. And it's part of a comprehensive peace strategy that we never had before. And could this potentially lead to a two state solution where Palestine can exist and the genocide can end? Like you, you can, you can, like I can handle it, right? Like, you know, I can handle it. But if, if you don't and it seems like just a bribe or a payment and you're being shady about it, then I think, wow, you're being shady about it because there you haven't thought through these second and third and fourth level consequences. When Obama unfroze $1.7 billion in funds as part of the JCPOA, it was part of a broader mechanism of multilateral inspections that ensured, and this is an important point that people forget about the jcpoa. It created the mechanism not just for Iran, but for North Korea. And when Donald Trump pulled out of the jcpoa, it sent the message that this template that was going to be used for North Korea would never work because the US Would never keep its word. So Kim Jong Un viewed Trump's withdrawal of the JCPOA and say, got it. This guy is an easy mark. Let's do the love letter thing and drag this out and build the nuclear weapons. So part of Obama's thinking behind the JCPOA was North Korea as well. And it was reducing proliferation of nuclear weapons and the kind of law of the strong law of the jungle as an international governing principle and keeping kind of a multilateral aspect. So, and Obama told us, here's why these funds are being unfrozen. And that was used by Trump relentlessly to attack Obama. Obama, because it's easy to tear apart deals. It's easy to criticize, condemn and attack. It's hard to balance all of these stakeholders in a complex world and do a tough, and do it and do a deal that works. And Trump seeing that and his plan to all of this is, well, let's just paint it blue now. That's to me, that's the. That's the symbolism of all of this. Just say it's good while degrading the actual ability of America to be America. J.D. vance said the following on Iran also. He said what Trump really wanted to do over these last six weeks, what this was all about is kind of like building a friendship with Iran. Like, that's what we really were, like, what this was all about. And we did that. We're now cool here.

[Brett]

Let's play this clip.

[Guest/Interviewer]

Economy to lift some sanctions and to turn over a new leaf in that relationship. What the President really wanted to do, not just with the last six weeks, but really the last year and a half of Iran policy, is to get us to a place where we could change our relationship fundamentally with the Iranians and ensure that they never have a nuclear weapon. We feel that we're at that place now. We're, of course, going to continue to verify that.

[Benji]

I mean, do you want to date them? Like, I mean, you know, do you want to date Mojtaba Khomeini? I mean, you're saying the whole point of this war, war and the bombing last June of their nuclear facilities and then this whole war. We did all of this to be your friend. And it reminds me of the Hamilton song, right? Where the king, you know, you know, I'm gonna send my whole battalion to remind you of my love. Like, we did this to show our love. We love each other now. And it's like. Like that's. It's a real demented thing to say.

[Jordi]

Sorry, Britain, beautiful voice.

[Brett]

I was saying the real deal was the friends we made along the way. You know,

[Benji]

send a fully armed battalion just to remind you of my love. Da, da, da da. I mean, when you think about in the future, the character of the sleepy. I mean, it's like the script is written, the sleepy, demented guy yelling about ufc, you know, like, can't even walk straight, you know, saying these absurd. We're friends now. We're cool now. And it's like, what? I did a video on this over the weekend also, that part of the Iranian negotiating team consulted with the top psychologist and psychiatrist in Iran and diagnosed Donald Trump as being a clinically mentally ill person. And, you know, frankly, you didn't need all of that to see it. But they had to negotiate clinically as though they were dealing with a patient in a psychiatric ward. And they had to send messages with that clinical diagnoses that they made. And so I'll show you this one, then I'll toss it to Brett and Jordi, you then have George Stephanopoulos who said, so Trump said that there would be no deal unless there was unconditional surrender. That's what you all said, unconditional surrender. So how is this that? And you'll see J.D. vance says this is it. This is what unconditional surrender is. Let's play it. Thank you for joining us this morning. You know, back on March 6th, about a week into the war, President Trump put out a post on Truth Social saying there will be no deal with, with Iran except unconditional surrender. So why did he reverse course and agree to this deal now?

[Guest/Interviewer]

Well, George, I don't think he reversed course. I think fundamentally the president's argument was we are going to use the military to exert pressure on Iran and we're going to get something that is good for the American people. And now we have that.

[Benji]

Oh, God. That's what this is. And by the way, again, I don't want to, I don't want you to think that I supported this unlawful and catastrophic war and that I support unconditional surrender and invading the sovereignty and engaging in these war crimes that have. I'm just trying to point out that they said unconditional surrender was what they wanted and now they're selling that the better relationship is a form of unconditional surrender. And it just, they all think that we're just stupid. Like, they all just like that's the whole approach is that everybody is, you know, you know that the same people. And I don't mean to be offensive, but it was offensive. What took place that the people who were cheering when a UFC fighter said Michelle Obama is a man is how the level of thinking of most Americans are. And that you can just tell them, you know, you know, this, this was what we want. And they go get, hell yeah, Michelle Obama. And it's like, okay, guys, guys, guys, guys. You know, all of the problems that you're facing right now and suffering from are being caused by this. Wake up and see it. This isn't a political. Just recognize what the hell's happening.

[Brett]

Brett Jordan. And when you listen, even way the way that Vance frame things right there, you see kind of the rhetoric, you know, because the basic question that I think every American should have at this point as the deal terms come to light, right? And as you don't see that unconditional surrender from the Iranian regime, and in fact it looks kind of like the opposite of that, quite frankly. But you look at what's the deal is here, at least what we're seeing with this memorandum of understanding for a future deal is here. And then you look, you go back into the past and you try to think, okay, what was the negotiation negotiated? What were they negotiating back in the day, before war even broke out, when Oman was mediating this thing and we were hearing what was going back and forth between the Iranian regime and the Trump regime, and what were they saying? And the thing you cannot tell me with a straight face, I'm sorry, is that what we are getting now out of this deal is better at all than what we would have gotten without the war in the first place. In fact, it's worse. And so you're seeing the shifting of rhetoric, and you heard it from Vance there, and you hear it now every time Hegseth is asked about this war and this memorandum of understanding that they go, well, yes, you know, we're making this memorandum of understanding, or we're making the Great deal, whatever they want to call it. The only reason we're doing that is because we showed them that we're tough and that we showed them how forceful we are. And they saw the might of the American military. Yeah. And that's just not the case. I mean, in fact, you showed the opposite. You showed that, yes, we may have a very powerful military and our soldiers and are certainly second to none, but the strategies deployed here by people like Pete Hexeth in the Middle east and Donald Trump in the Middle east were a complete and total disaster. And they've left our. They left our bases destroyed in the Middle East. They've left our munitions to depleted. And essentially, Trump ended up being kind of forced into doing this deal because he had to keep pulling from our reserves, including from today, our reserves, our oil reserves are lower than they've been going back to the Reagan administration. And so they basically put the United States and the global economy in a really bad place to get a memorandum of understanding of a future deal that looks worse than they were negotiating before war broke out, something that they could have done without, without losing the lives of American service members, something that could have happened without killing hundreds of innocent girls at a school in Iran, something that could have happened without killing hundreds and thousands of other. Not hundreds of thousands, but hundreds and thousands of other Iranian people and people across the region. All the things that have come from this war, it all could have been avoided by just skipping through all the fighting part and engaging in the diplomacy part, which was the point of these negotiations in the first place. But they have to show, oh, look, we're macho. Look, we're fighting. And I think the UFC comparison that Ben made is incredibly apt in this scenario, because that's kind of the lizard brain that is coming from this government. It has nothing to do with logic. There's nothing to do with. Let's follow the actual evidence, let's follow the facts. Let's use that and use what is in black and white here. Let's use the actual data points to try to form an opinion, to try to come to something that works for the American people, works for the Iranian people, works for the entire world, but instead to try to go with that, oh, we're macho. We're going to bomb them into submission. We're going to. We're going to paint the thing blue.

[Benji]

We're going to cover up the.

[Brett]

None of that stuff works. It's all patchwork stuff that actually reveals your weakness underneath it. I think the. The reflecting pool is perhaps one of the biggest metaphors that we have seen for this entire Trump administration, for this entire Trump regime. The fact that you could go in brute force, you roll over the thing in a motorcade, you have your people not look to actually fix the problem, just like they didn't fix the problems that are here with Iran. Instead, just try to paint over it and then hope for the best. Even as while you're doing that, all the experts are telling you the same thing. All the experts are telling you the algae is going to come back, and the algae is going to be even worse because you made it dark and it's going to attract heat. You could really. You could apply this to everything that every crisis that Trump has handled, like, in history, probably far before he was president, but could also go back to Covid, all the scientists telling him exactly what was going to happen, and him saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're good, we're good, we're good. You can't wish this sort of stuff away. You actually have to follow advice. You actually need people who are discerning. You actually need people who can follow the facts, and they just don't care about that. They think that they could get everything done with brute force. And we have seen now that that is just not how these things are solved. And if they were solved that way, we would have won this war dramatically, and we'd be in a very powerful position here. We would have won all these past wars going back before Donald Trump, and Iraq wouldn't have been a disaster, and Vietnam wouldn't have been a disaster, and all these other conflicts that we've seen wouldn't have been disasters. But brute force is not always the way to get your way. We're just like, we, we have to learn that as a country and other countries need to learn that as well. We need actual smart people getting in the room, following the facts and actually engaging in diplomacy in order to come to agreements that work for the public at large, not just feeding the egos. And this sort of look at me, I'm macho sort of mindset.

[Jordi]

Really well said, V. I just want to comment quickly on Stephanopoulos and just how like the media is treating this Vance sort of parade. And look, I'll give Stephanopoulos like credit. He asked the question. It's wonderful. The other gentleman asked the question too. True or false. But then when you allow Vance to not answer the question and just filibuster and say a bunch of non sequiturs and then, and then, I don't know, just, just continue to just say things that don't line up with the question and he's not even giving really logical answers to the questions being asked. I get frustrated. I get frustrated because it's like, okay, what are we doing here? What is the purpose of this? And also, wouldn't you feel a certain amount of shame if you tried true or false? And then he just goes on and starts speaking just random sentences. As the host, don't you like, aren't you up? He didn't answer your question. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't think you're a strong interviewer. He thinks he could just bully right over you. But okay, you.

[Brett]

My counterpoint would be that is an answer. And, and, and the fact that he doesn't answer the true or false, that he won't be direct actually speaks volumes. And so I think you are actually getting a lot out of somebody like J.D. vance in those scenarios. I actually personally actually think, I think all those interviewers actually do really, really good job with the.

[Jordi]

Well, I want answers, I want real answers and I want to read the answers. And I think it's being, I think

[Brett]

it's very shitty dance. Just look like another clown.

[Jordi]

Honestly, I think he declines himself every chance he gets. Every time he gets up there, he just knows he has to go up there and kind of eat it and he looks ridiculous.

[Benji]

But this is where my thoughts are complex. What I have to admit, the vulnerability in my reporting, if he was the voice in there that truly was, we need to do this. I also support that, you know, I don't support him Let me be very clear. But if he was the lone voice that prevailed over Hegseth and Rubio and other neocon warmongers, I don't like Vance. I do appreciate, though, the human being that pushed us in a direction of at least temporarily, not escalating this war and not rising through the escalatory trap. We're still in it. We're not out of it. And it's painting blue a complex situation. But that's where I struggle with it because I don't feel, let me be clear. I don't feel bad for Vance. But if he's the voice out there that's trying to sell something that ultimately we need because our country ain't going to be able to survive when oil hits tank bottom right and if gas prices hit $10 a gallon. So if this stops that, I also am very, you know, I have these complex feelings based on my desire to say I just want to get out of this. We need to get out of this thing. And if he's the only one fighting for it, good, you know, and I'm not supporting him. So anyway, I just, I want to share that. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about what's going on in the Trump regime, this Donald Trump trip for the G7 where the United States has never looked weaker. I mean, in advance of it. You've got Prime Minister Carney of Canada given these powerful speeches about a restructuring of the of the world order. Carney's already been to France. He's in Ireland. We see the changing world order, if you will, of mid powers, as they call themselves, Canada. These European countries uniting to form blocks major powers to deal with with the changing dynamic of the world with America going it alone. America first, America alone. Let's talk about all of that and more. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder. Help us get to 7 million subscribers here on our YouTube channel. I hope you've all been liking our new Sunday show. It's called On Sunday with Jack Cucciarella. It's been really, really good and it's been I've seen a lot of viewers with our new Sunday show. Check that out. But please subscribe to our audio podcast. Help us get to help us get to number one on the audio charts and your subscriptions have made it. It's free to subscribe to audio just wherever you get audio podcasts. Just search Midas Touch Subscribe. Even if you don't plan on listening to us on audio, you never know if you will. So hit subscribe. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show. We had a lot more to discuss

[Brett]

when we come back.

[Jordi]

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[Brett]

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[Brett]

Where'd you next?

[Benji]

You know, so it's obvious that what's going to happen, and is happening already, is the neocons, the war hawks, Netanyahu's government who's linked inextricably with them here in the United States are going to do everything they can to try to disrupt this deal. They are so heavily invested in these perpetual never ending wars. You know, in the Middle east the that we're going to see an unrelenting effort to try to undermine this memorandum of understanding. And we're already seeing at the CIA level, Ratcliffe, Rubio, Hegseth turning strongly against Vance. We've seen the defense minister in Israel saying Lebanon is ours. Who says that Lebanon is ours? I mean, that's what they're saying. We're not getting out. Smutrich Ben gvir, all those people in the Netanyahu government are all saying that we are going to just continue to relentlessly they said the homes in Lebanon are ours. We're going to continue to attack in Lebanon. And the security guarantees that that won't happen in Lebanon is a major part of this deal. And when Israel struck in DIA in Beirut over the weekend and Iran was about to respond and retaliate with strikes in Israel, from all of the reporting, that's when Iran, through the mediators in Pakistan and Qatar basically said to Trump, you have to put in this draft text security guarantees for Lebanon or Iran's going to strike and things are going to get so much worse. And that was the final outstanding issue to actually put security guarantees inside Lebanon in the text itself. And Iran has made it clear that we view Israeli attacks inside Lebanon as United States attacks inside Lebanon. On we think that you're linked at the hip and we don't trust at all that if Israel attacks that that's you're going to just distance yourself from that. We think that there's no deal if that takes place. So what I'm obviously very concerned and deeply worried about, you know, happening, you know, almost to the point where I keep checking my phone because again, I want there to be a durable peace. And I'm thinking, you know, when is it that Netanyahu is going to attack and die if or tire or sir, when is that going to happen? Am I going to wake up to that again? And then Iran's going to launch missiles and then we're going to be back into this situation that Netanyahu wants us to be in. And so I just, we need to be cognizant of those dynamics taking place right now. We've been talking about this idea of paint it blue and, and I think it is a very apt analogy for everything. And I just, I want to give you again, a very short history to keep this analogy or metaphor, whatever, to keep it going, which is in 2012, Obama made a the Obama administered this wasn't, you know, the reflecting poll wasn't like an issue that was in the top probably 1,000 issues or 5,000 issues or 10,000 issues. It's something that, that you consider in terms of your Interior Secretary's role and the beautification of D.C. but it's not in the swing of all of the issues you're dealing with. But one of the issues was that it was using the drinking water in Washington D.C. and where there are water shortages, using the drinking water to fill a reflecting pool is not a great way to deal with water conservation. I mean, call yourself woke or whatever, whatever. It's, it's a waste of water. And when there are water shortages, it, it's, it become a major problem to people living in D.C. so they changed from basically the same water source that was being used for your kind of tap water or your water that was, you know, in the showers and whatever. And it was moved to basically get all of the water from the Potomac, from the Potomac Basin, which has algae in it. And so then they thought, okay, if we build a filtration system that could deal with it as much as we can because it's dark and reflecting, you know, does it really matter if there's that much algae? Because we're not going to paint it blue and we'll just deal with the algae and hopefully this filtration system work. I think they called it like a nano bubbler filtration system. And for those who study algae, how algae spreads and reproduces asexually and sexually, if you go study the way algae can spread, you know, microscopic algae can get through any good filter and then it could grow and grow and grow rapidly and very quickly through both forms of kind of reproduction. And it especially festers in high humidity areas, low water areas. And you can see it more obviously if the bottom is painted a certain type of color. And so it was obvious what was going to happen. And so because Donald Trump wants a way to attack Obama and attack Biden and attack whatever, he then went through this process. And you could have, if you wanted to fix the issue, I mean, you know, it would be very hard to fix it just, you know, in general, just based on the dynamic of it. Maybe we should have had a tough conversation about, about the idea of this reflecting pool and, you know, is the cost benefit analysis of it worth it and do we need to develop how much money should we be spending into it? And there may be tough conversations around that, you know, if there's always going to be algae and it's going to be a problem. But Trump made all of these grandiose promises that ended up, you know, that ended up Failing. So to me, that was one symbolism. And then we can't forget the other symbolism that I thought, which is when the court ordered he remove his name from the Kennedy center and he removed Trump from the Kennedy center, what did he do? We saw him build that scaffolding. That whole day, we're like, why are they building the scaffolding? Didn't they use the cherry pickers and just the easy cranes to build it? Just take it down the same way. It's easier to take it down than to put it on. To put it on, you have to measure it, make sure it's symmetrical. But pulling it down is relatively easy. So we saw them building the scaffolding the whole day, and it was like, you built the scaffolding so you can then put tarp over the scaffolding to hide the removal of the name Trump and then leave this, then leave the tarp up so that nobody can see what's even there anymore. And so I said, and we all said, this is the embodiment of a cover up. As they're covering up the Epstein files, as they're covering up Trump's fraud, as everything's a cover up, they literally put a gigantic cover up. They put tarp, a cover up over the Kennedy Center. And I was like, what? Yet another, like, direct symbolism of what is going on. Painting it blue. And the visualization of this, of this cover up. But, you know, ultimately, and for those on audio, we're showing what the COVID up looks like and the pettiness. If I can have my name on it, nobody can see John F. Kennedy's name on it. Like, why? Why? And it accentuates the problem even more. Kind of same thing with painting it blue. Now we all see the algae and yeah, may have been something that people may have, but now we're all focused on the algae. We're all focused on the. You've brought more. It's all backfired. Right. The same way everything in this regime backfires.

[Jordi]

Yeah.

[Benji]

You can say you had $21 trillion that you brought in, but you did it. And guess what?

[Jordi]

What?

[Benji]

The debt increases, the deficit expands. Treasury bond yields went up. We were running out of oil. We were going tank bottom. And then your failures were accentuated, were amplified. Right. The Epstein files, you know, you can. I mean, that Epstein file, Trump was using it for years and years and years. Right? Everybody else was in the cabal, this, that, and the other other. And then when his bluff was finally called, he stretched this out, stretched this out, stretched this out, until finally People like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Clearly you're covering this up in the worst way imaginable. And everybody then started focusing on the COVID up and paying attention to it. And the more you dug into it, the worse it got. The worse it got, the more algae you saw, the more blemishes, the more, the more inextricably intertwined. Trump was in this cover up. And speaking about the J.D. vance aspect of this all, at the end of last week, we hear this bombshell, New York Times reporting about these meetings in the situation room where J.D. vance was holding these meetings about Donald Trump engage, you know, these accusations or these emails and documents that made very serious accusations against Donald Trump. And should we release this email or that email? And what do we do with Ghislaine Maxwell and do we have her sit with Tucker or do we have Blanche be involved in the COVID up and do we move her to this facility or that facility? And so as we approach the midterms, we are really seeing the rapid collapse of this regime to the point where, you know, what was it, 16? I don't need to play the whole clip, but, but Harry Entin was reading a Fox poll and it was like only like 16% of Americans support what Donald Trump was doing with the UFC. He's at a negative 50% approval on the issue of inflation. I mean, people are just so over this regime.

[Brett]

Bretton Jordi and it's one of those things you've talked about on the show a lot, the rule of holes. And it's kind of what Trump does in all scenarios, right? When he's in a hole, he keeps on digging. He keeps on digging. He keeps on digging. It's like, you know, when a kid knocks over a vase and they decide that they're going to try to then glue the pieces back together. It only accentuates the fact that you broke the vase. Sounds personal.

[Jordi]

Did you do that?

[Brett]

Maybe, maybe not.

[Guest/Interviewer]

I don't know.

[Brett]

I'll have to think psychologically where that came from. I don't know. It is, it is awfully specific.

[Jordi]

You remember when we were in Sharper Image and you knocked over all of those robots?

[Brett]

I do, I do. They had a big robot in Sharper Image that was a very expensive robot, and I decided I would lean on it. And I didn't realize that it wasn't a table, but a little platform. And it crashed and broke everywhere. Luckily, I was a adorable little kid. And I think he let us off the hook without the workers, let us out without buying it. But you Know, I, like, I just have to say, like, the damage that has been done and, like, the amount of failure that we have seen in all of these. These different scenarios as Trump tries to do these kind of patchwork fixes for things that actually require effort and require decision making. Like, if we made this up in the most wild of Midas predictions, and we're like, I'm telling. And we did predict that this would be green, I don't think we predicted that it would turn green in, like, three days or two days or whatever it was. But if we were like, yeah, no, it's gonna look like. Like someone died. Biden. It's gonna look like, you know what Chicago. The Chicago river looks like during St. Patty's Day when they, like, dye the Chicago river green. It's got. That isn't even as green as this thing is gonna look. Right? You would have all the Twitter people, you would have all the various MAGA commentators going, tds, tds. How could you possibly say that? You just hate Trump. And it's like, no, no. But that's actually what happened here. I mean, this is actually just mind blowing when you look at these images. And I know a lot of the people listening, I'm sure you have seen the pictures that we keep showing on the show. But it's not only green, it's like neon green, it's bright. It's like Ninja Turtle. It's like Shrek. Like, it is. This is as green as green gets right here. And it just is such a clown show. And so. So of course, you see the MAGA people online, and this, to me, also just shows the psychology of the supporters, right? Because they refuse to acknowledge that anything is wrong. And so the first thing that the Trump regime does, they go like, like. And this was a joke I saw thrown around. But it's like, literally what they did, they're like, it's Biden's algae. It's Obama's algae. It's residual algae is the term that they used. Okay, it's not residual algae. Algae. What are you talking about? It's not residual algae. And then you saw the Trump people who. Their first step was flat out denial. And I saw them saying, oh, no, really? Because I saw this picture, and the picture looks great. And I'm like, okay, you saw Trump's AI picture that he posted a few days ago, or you saw a picture, ironically, of what it looked like two weeks ago before they embarked on this project. Yeah, it looked much better back then. And then when it becomes clear, like, they actually, some of these people visit it, the Reflecting Pool on their own to see what it's like and they see it's bright green. I saw a video of this MAGA influencer today that was like, it just doesn't make sense.

[Benji]

It has to be Democrats. Sabotage. It's sabotaged by the Democrats because they

[Brett]

don't want it to look good. It's like, no, dude, just be normal. Please be normal. We don't need UFC fights on the lawn. We don't need your, you painting the pools blue. We don't need you going out there and talking about out the military in these ridiculous WWE style terms. Let's actually just get experts in there. Let's get people to know what the hell they're doing. Let's follow science, let's follow strategy. Let's have some semblance of decency in this country. We don't need all of this chaos. And just enough with the bs. So many of the things that we speak about and so much of this stuff, it's not like the Reflecting Pool was not a Democrat or Republican issue. So many of these things are not even partisan things. It's just, you have these fricking clowns right now in power who just are. They're just morons. They're just really, really, really. They're moronic. They don't follow facts. And that to me is like one of the most damaging things imaginable. They've turned the White House into a trailer park. They've made it look just so, so, so low rent. They have just made a fool out of the United States on the global stage. And I know Bennett is going to do deep dives on this about the G7 and, and what's going on, what Mark Carney is saying in Canada, but you see how it's affecting the United States's global standing. Once looked as a beacon of the world. Once looked at. This is a country that may be imperfect, but they are fighting. And the ARC is bending towards justice and towards democracy and a fairer and more decent society. And they are trying to act as protectors of the world and of Europe and Canada. Now they're saying Europe is the future. Future. You. We need to be looking to Europe, we need to be looking to China. We need to be looking to all these other countries that are far more stable than the United States because whatever the hell is going on there, we do not want to be a part of it. And it's not good for us and it's not good for the United States either. And so, you know, that's. That, that's basically me tying it all together right there. But it's, it's just, it's just a frickin mess. But you know, we'll continue to dig our way out of it rather than using the rule of holes like Donald Trump does. We will actually dig our way out of it with logic and with reason and with facts and with science and with decency and get all of this MAGA BS behind us.

[Jordi]

Exactly. Ben, bread, real quick. I. I've never heard anyone describe the color green as Ninja Turtle green before you two. And so I just want to. That's how I am exclusively going to refer to, to green things that, that look Ninja Turtle green green from now on. I think it's a great way to describe the color green.

[Brett]

I mean, it's like a freaking glow stick. You know those glow sticks you get at like bar mitzvahs and weddings? It looks like a glow stick. It's, it's, it's that like I said, if I said that this is what it was going to look like, you'd be like, come on. That's.

[Benji]

AI.

[Brett]

It's ridiculous. It's insane.

[Jordi]

It's not the fact that it is insane and a glow stick and Ninja Turtle green, but it's just, it's a metaphor for the larger ethos of the Trump regime, which is paint it blue, which is I'll do whatever I want here. I'm going to paint the blue. You're not going to know any better. Covid happens. Stop the testing. Slow down the testing. No cases. Covid happens. Chinese spy balloons are in here. I'm not going to tell anybody that didn't happen under my presidency, only the other guy's presidency. So Chinese. No, didn't happen. Not here. And then tarp. Put up the tarp over the Kennedy Center Center. Do that. Do cover it up. That, that speaks to the children that are in charge right now. No offense to children. They're worse than children. And Brett, they're maliciously moronic. Is the issue is they know that they should know better and they do know better, but yet they still decide to do the dumbest and most evil outcome that I, I guess only benefits them, but I don't fully understand why they think. Think painting the reflecting pool blue and having it turn Ninja Turtle green as a side effect would be good play for them in the long haul when every expert was telling them, hey, don't do that, Ben.

[Benji]

Yeah, and this is what I'll leave everybody with though, because this is how I think we try to think about things is how do we get out of this cycle? Because when you fix these things with the appropriate degree of care, it could be very painful. When former President Biden had to address the reality that he was handed and he was transparent about the problems and he ripped the bandage off and had people fix it the same way. If you kind of COVID up the injury or you just put a lot of bandages over it, you don't see it, but it doesn't mean the wound isn't there. And it could be very painful to try to fix it when you see may immediately conjure certain reactions that can cause fear and panic. But you have to fix it it. And in four year political cycles or when it comes to Congress, two year political cycles, it becomes very easy for a concerted opposition to offer nothing constructive other than to purely tear down and to be against. And what Trump has been successful at, I don't mean this in a positive way about him, is he's been able to really attack, bully, divide, demean, oppose and spread lies and conspiracies. He's been very effective at tearing down and destroying under the ultimate fraud, in my opinion, that he is a builder and a deal maker, when he's actually the opposite. He is a destroyer and a deal ripper. So how do we, and I mean this, this is the true goal and it requires us not to think as Democrat, Republican, independent. It truly asks us to take a step back and to think holistically as Americans who simply want the best for future generations. How do we fix this system long term? And how do we push back and prevent the divisive tricks, chicanery, culture wars that truly prevent us from uniting and building a better future together? And that's what we think about every day in our coverage. And so you may go, well, okay, that's great, Ben, you identified the problem, but what's your solution? And the solution, though, to me is part of accurate news dissemination. And it is unifying around values and principles and enduring truths as Americans and as citizens of the world, to improve fundamentally our lives. It asks us to think critically about the motivations and intentions of people who want to divide us and why. It asks us to really reflect on what's truly going on and how we can keep a guard to all of that and unite together around common values and principles. And that's what we try to do here also is to encourage that, not as a political party, but as a organizing concept for how we live our lives. And how we can help each other and care for each other and love each other and support each other through this all. So I'll stop preaching and I'll leave you you with that. You can't just paint it blue, okay? You got to deal with the systemic issues. You got to deal with the truth and you gotta be honest with people if you really want to fix these problems. Thanks everybody for watching. Hit subscribe subscribe to the Midas Touch on Audio. It's one of the best ways you can help and it's free by subscribing to Midas Touch wherever you get audio podcasts and leave a five star review. Thanks so much. We appreciate you Jordi. I'll let you take it away.

[Jordi]

Shout out to the Midas Mighty. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our [e-mail] you'll get daily recaps from Ronfield, Cows, Whiskey, ad free episodes of our podcast and more exclusive content only [e-mail].