MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 9/30/25

Summary

The MeidasTouch Podcast – September 30, 2025

Hosts: Ben, Brett & Jordy Meiselas

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Episode Overview

In this fiery and fast-paced episode, the Meiselas brothers dissect the looming government shutdown orchestrated by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans. They call out rampant disinformation about everything from supposed “alien med beds” to bizarre budget lies, and highlight the dangers of right-wing propaganda dominating the media ecosystem. With signature banter, sharp political analysis, and a real sense of urgency, the brothers expose the Republican strategy of chaos, distraction, and scapegoating—while connecting these tactics to broader threats to democracy and the American public.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Looming Government Shutdown & Trump’s Role

• Closed-Door White House Meeting: Trump blocked press coverage of a pivotal White House meeting with Congressional leaders, then let MAGA leaders like J.D. Vance spin lies about Democrats demanding outrageous policies ("$1.5 trillion for illegal aliens and transgender surgeries in Peru").
• Shutdown as a Political Weapon: Trump and allies want a shutdown to halt economic reporting (like inflation data) and delay other politically damaging disclosures (e.g., Epstein files), while shifting blame to Democrats for the resultant chaos.
• Corporate Media’s Failure: The brothers highlight the absence of critical questioning by mainstream outlets in the face of obvious disinformation and Trump’s increasingly authoritarian moves.

“It’s the Trump-Jeffrey Epstein shutdown.”
– Ben ([03:06])

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2. Disinformation, Lies & Absurd MAGA Talking Points

• “Med Bed” Scandal: Trump posted (and left up for hours) a ludicrous AI-generated clip claiming miraculous alien health technology (a QAnon conspiracy) will cure Americans. The media barely covered it.
• J.D. Vance’s Outlandish Claims: Vance parroted talking points about “transgender surgeries in Peru” and massive spending for “illegals”—all proven false, but dominant in the right-wing media sphere.
• The Propaganda Playbook: Lies aren’t just about policy—they’re a strategy to confuse the public, scapegoat minorities, and get people to vote against their own interests (“noun, a verb, and transgender/illegals”).

“How demented do you have to be…for the President of the United States, to be posting that?”
– Brett ([06:38])

“They want transgender for everybody.”
– Ben ([14:45])

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3. Economic Reality vs. “Golden Age” Gaslighting

• Contradicting Facts on the Economy: Trump claims a “golden age,” while groceries, housing, and inflation reach record highs and farmers are teetering on bankruptcy.
• Budget Lies Debunked: Trump’s team claims $17 trillion in new revenue, ignoring the real $2 trillion deficit and actual funding cuts to programs like SNAP and Medicaid.

“So of course they lied in the meeting... Why is there even an issue with funding if we brought in $17 trillion? ...Because he is a freaking liar about everything.”
– Ben ([14:19])

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4. The MAGA Approach: Secrecy, Narrative Control, Bullying

• Refusing Transparency: Trump moves meetings and negotiations behind closed doors to avoid public accountability and to better control the narrative.
• MAGA as “Predators” and “Pushovers”: The brothers mock the MAGA leaders’ cowardice for refusing public debate, while noting their only consistent motivation is appeasing Trump—not their constituents.

“There’s no transparency ever. And it’s all about owning the narrative.”
– Jordy ([20:11])

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5. Manipulating the Media and Social Platforms

• Right-Wing Media Machinery: Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) and the Murdoch empire serve as outlets for pro-Trump propaganda—pushing outright fabrications and covering up damaging truths (e.g., cropping out Trump evidence from crime stories).
• Lies About Shootings & Cultural Events: Right-wing influencers Photoshop and invent false connections (e.g., Penn State’s “whiteout” honoring Charlie Kirk), instantly spread by compliant media like the New York Post.
• Suppressing the Truth: The noise of viral lies drowns out fact-based debate—and the truth becomes “unknowable for the average American.”

“Those lies are poison pills that are quite literally killing you.”
– Brett ([27:23])

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6. Mass Shootings: Root Causes and Media/Political Scapegoating

• Data on Mass Shooters: Most mass shootings are carried out by young, isolated white males with easy access to guns, yet Republicans always try to scapegoat minorities or leftists.
• Policy Solutions: The hosts advocate both mental health funding and common sense gun reform, criticizing the GOP for prioritizing political gamesmanship over real solutions.

“...the country is systematically failing entire generations of young men by just willfully ignoring clear warning signs of isolation or chronic online behavior...”
– Jordy ([34:33])

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7. Farmers, Trade Wars & Bailouts

• How Trump Screwed Farmers: Trump’s trade wars and ill-conceived bailouts have backfired—bailing out competitors like Argentina, which then undercuts American farmers.
• Leaked Texts & GOP Admission: Internal texts among Trump officials admit the bailouts are backfiring and giving China leverage.

“…China is completely outmaneuvering them…if you read this text message…”
– Brett ([65:35])

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8. Authoritarian Tactics & Aggression at Home

• Military Crackdowns: Trump orders “invasions” of American cities like Portland, sends ICE to Chicago to terrorize communities, and demands the military use “full force” at his vague discretion.
• Attacks Framed as “Security”: Fishermen off Venezuela are killed and branded as narco-terrorists with no due process, and any challenge is drowned out by a media environment awash in distractions and lies.
• Violation of Law: Lawsuits (such as Oregon’s AG against Trump’s federal intervention) are filed on constitutional grounds, but the administration is unrepentant.

“…Trump Gestapo walking around throughout Chicago…trying to scare you…like it was those horror nights…”
– Ben ([57:30])

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9. Strategic Distraction: Epstein Files & Congressional Maneuvers

• Delaying Justice: Part of the shutdown strategy is to prevent the swearing-in of Adelita Grijalva, whose vote would allow for a release of Epstein investigation files.
• Kicking the Can: Trump perpetually asks for “two more weeks,” using every “crisis” to stall and maintain his grip on the narrative.

“They want to shut down the government, not allow members to show up today. That’s why.”
– Ben ([56:41])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Donald Trump is the ultimate P word. He is a predator.”
  – Jordy ([09:10])

• “Everything they say is a noun, a verb. And transgender or noun, a verb and illegals.”
  – Brett ([19:47])

• “MAGA as a regime—because that’s what they are.”
  – Jordy ([20:10])

• “Smart people do not like him. Because when people understand the issues…they go, ‘Ooh, what Trump is doing is awful.’”
  – Brett ([18:09])

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Important Segments & Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Topic | |--------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:06 | Ben lays out the shutdown’s roots, Republican disinfo, and bizarre Trump behavior | | 06:38 | Brett eviscerates Trump’s “med bed” conspiracy and its implications | | 09:10 | Jordy on Trump as a “predator” and the manipulation of followers | | 14:19 | Ben debunks budget and shutdown lies, recounts GOP vacationing as shutdown looms | | 20:10 | Discussion of the “MAGA regime” and narrative control | | 27:23 | Brett: “Those lies are poison pills…” regarding the information environment | | 34:33 | Jordy on mass shooters, isolation, and the systematic failures leading to violence | | 56:41 | Ben explains the shutdown’s connection to the Epstein files and Congressional maneuvers | | 65:35 | Brett reads Trump admin internal texts showing the farm bailout failure | | 72:06 | Brett on killing of innocent fishermen and why we shouldn’t trust Trump’s “narco-terrorist” excuse| | 76:45 | Closing thoughts: “Ask yourself…” Ben’s three big questions |

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Final Takeaways

The MeidasTouch Podcast warns of a dangerous new normal: manufactured crises, information warfare, corporate media complicity, and authoritarian tactics imported into American governance. The hosts challenge listeners to look for the truth beneath the noise—by asking basic questions and expecting real answers. In their view, the only antidote to the poison of MAGA disinformation is a relentless, fact-based appeal to Americans’ decency and a willingness to call out fascism by name.

Ending questions for listeners:

1. Why did Trump hide the White House meeting from the press?
2. If the economy is so great, why are everyday costs so high and farmers struggling?
3. Why did MAGA Republicans cancel work right before a government shutdown?

“I think you come to a logical conclusion: Donald Trump wants a shutdown.”
– Ben ([76:45])

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To support the show or join interactive town halls, visit patreon.com/meidastouch and check out their daily substack at midasplus.com.

Transcript

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[Benji]

See mintmobile.com it appears we're heading for a government shutdown. Donald Trump blocked the press from attending the meeting in the White House between Trump, the Democratic leaders, Jeffries and Schumer and the Republican leaders, Speaker Maga, Speaker Maga, Mike Johnson and the Leader of the Senate, John Thune. After the meeting concluded, you had J.D. vance go out and spew all of the lies. That's why they wanted to keep it secret. Ah, Democrats want $1.5 trillion of funding for illegal aliens and for transgender surgeries in Peru. And their usual slew of lies. It seems the Trump regime really wants this shutdown so that they can close up all of the Bureau of Labor Statistics like reporting departments. One of the things they've said all right, if the government shuts down, we're never going to report inflation data, economic data ever again. It seems they also want to shut the government down to hide the Epstein files because they don't want to have to swear in the new Democratic congresswoman from Arizona's 7th congressional district, Congresswoman Atelita Grijalva. And it also seems they want to shut the government down because they know the economic calamity that they're causing on the American people and ripping away American health care. They know they're destroying the lives of farmers in a lot of Republican red states and blue states. They know they're ripping away people's healthcare. They know that things are less affordable right now. And they know that people are struggling, living paycheck to paycheck. So they want to blame the Democrats with all of that. It's the Trump Jeffrey Epstein shutdown. We'll talk about that. Now. What was Donald Trump talking about over the weekend? Well, he went to the Ryder cup, where it's frankly embarrassing to watch the Ryder cup. Not just because Donald Trump was there. Honestly, the behavior of a lot of the very Trumpy, like American fans there, cursing at the players, not rooting for America, like cursing at Europe. It was, it was really ugly to see that as a representation of America. But Trump was there. And then he was posting about super secret alien, like UFOs, like from outer space, healthcare beds called med beds, total fake, total lie. QAnon conspiracy. But that he was going to release secret alien. He posted a secret alien technology as his health care plan that that's going to cure all Americans because it comes from the aliens in outer space. He kept it up for quite some time. He eventually removed it. But do you think any weekend show questioned it? Do you think any reporter said, wow, while Donald, do you want us to believe you on your healthcare plans? When Donald Trump promised most Favored nations provisions back in May, which was a total lie, and now he's talking about flying saucer, UFO, secret area 51, med beds from QAnon. Like we're supposed to take you seriously? Not a single question on that. We'll talk about Trump screwing over farmers. New blockbuster. Reporting from the New York Times, a reporter went to Venezuela to find out who was in these fishing boats. It does seem based on some of the representations from family members there, that these were not narco terrorists. These were people who were just out there fishing. In an interview, one woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the dead men said that her husband was a fisher fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back. We the people have never gotten transparency about what the hell goes down as Donald Trump on a weekly basis now Posts ISIS style death videos of the American military killing people on fishing boats. And we're just supposed to believe somebody who talks about alien technology, med beds. That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to believe stuff from Pete Hegseth who's out there, based on the new report from the Daily Beast. Just in constant states of rage, like yelling at people and demanding tomorrow that all of the top military officers show up in Quantico in Virginia so he can lecture them about their grooming, their grooming tactics and the warrior ethos. That's who. These are the people that we're supposed to believe, the people who are now invading Portland, Oregon, who put out over the weekend an order saying that they are doing a military invasion. And Trump says, I've ordered the military to use full force on the people of Portland, Oregon. You may have been seeing the Midas Touch videos we posted over the weekend where we've been showing like the farmer's market people and people in parks, people walking around, even the ice facility, which they say is the area. Maybe a dozen people who are not being violent there. We'll talk about Trump's invasion orders. Portland, Oregon, Oregon's attorney general, who we had on earlier this morning, filed a lawsuit against the Trump regime arguing that it violates the Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act. We'll talk about that and more here on the Midas Dutch podcast. Let's bring in Brett and Jordy. A whole lot that I just said. There a lot going on, huh?

[Brett]

A whole lot to talk about. It's great to be here, everybody. Great to be here. Ben, Jordi. Great to be here. Midas Mighty. Thank you to everybody tuning in live on YouTube and thank you to everybody listening on Apple podcast spot, wherever you at your podcast. Hey, we got a lot of people watching right now live. I want to make sure all of you are listening to the show as well on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So go ahead and add the show now. I think a big thing we're going to be speaking about in the show is just the constant lying that we are seeing from the Republican Party, from Donald Trump and Ben, I don't think anything could really sum it up much better than that whole med bed scam that Donald Trump was pushing. Like to go on and elaborate on the absurdity. Absurdity of what Donald Trump was pushing. He posted an AI video of himself. So either he knew this video was a fake video or he was so duped by this AI video that he thought he actually made this announcement, at some point, a fake video of him and Lara Trump on a fake Fox News, Fox News segment, completely fabricated, completely artificially generated, where he made a big announcement about how Americans were going to get access to this great health care that the elites were keeping from you. This alien technology of med beds and cures everybody and actually it cured jfk. And JFK is actually living amongst us and nobody actually knows that, but that's what the elites are hiding from you. And everybody is going to get access because Donald Trump's healthcare plan is here and he's giving you med bed cards to access these secret facilities. I mean, just how demented do you have to be to post that as anybody on the planet? Like, if a, if a Trump supporter posted that, I'd be like, this person is pretty screwed up. But for Donald Trump himself, the President of the United States, to be posting that, especially at a moment where you have Republicans once again trying to rip actual real health care away from the American people, it's just such a disgrace. And it shows you how this disinformation campaign that they wage this, this disinformation war that they wage on a daily basis is not only about truth or lies. It is really about people's livelihoods. It's about the fact that they're going to be people going around as Donald Trump is trying to cut their health care, thinking that their cancer is going to be cured by Donald Trump, that their relatives diseases are going to be cured by Donald Trump in these bed beds, all while Donald Trump and Maga Mike Johnson are actually ripping away people's health care. I cannot think of anything crueler than that. It is just so sickening. There is such a war on the truth. And we're here on the front lines trying to combat that war on truth by bringing you the facts. And that's what we promised to do here on the Midas Touch podcast. Jordy, it's great to see you. What's the latest on your end?

[Jordy]

It's great to be here. I'm excited to get into today's show. I just want to add to that, Bret, because you're right, right. Donald Trump is the ultimate P word. He is a predator. And seeing what could have went a lot of directions. What do you mean? What do you think I was saying?

[Brett]

I don't know. Let the audience.

[Jordy]

Donald Trump is a predator. And seeing how he tries to manipulate his followers in the way he does, Brett, it's very intentional and very, very sick and disturbing. And the fact that this story actually crickets from corporate media over the weekend. It just. It blows my mind because it's exactly that playbook, Brett, as he is literally stripping health care away from his followers. He's like, look, look, you guys can have these magical med beds from alien technology. Wasn't like it was up for five minutes, Brett, to your point, it was up for a long time, Benji. Donald Trump, ultimate P word predator. Where are we going today, big bro?

[Benji]

I think I know the P word. You were trying to say he was a massive pushover, right, Jordy? That's where.

[Jordy]

There you go.

[Benji]

Massive.

[Brett]

I thought you were going in a different direction.

[Benji]

I know it's a massive pushover. All right, I want to talk though, about Donald Trump says that the American people are currently going through a golden age, right? That we're all experiencing right now. This renaissance.

[Brett]

Can you feel it? Everybody.

[Benji]

Everybody's doing good. That he's solved inflation, that the groceries, a new word. That he just discovered that all your groceries are much more affordable, that everybody can afford housing, and that everybody's doing great. I mean, the Data reflects that U.S. grocery prices reached record highs, that housing is less accessible than ever in American history. Right now, that inflation is surging, that American farmers are right on the precipice of bankruptcy, if they haven't declared bankruptcy already, and we're on the verge of a government shutdown. Last week, Donald Trump canceled the meeting that was supposed to take place between himself and the Democratic leaders. And the actual quote, this is real. I'm not. Go Google it if you don't believe me. That the actual statement from the White House spokesperson from Caroline Levitt's room. Why'd you do it? She goes, well, the Democrats can go fuck themselves. You know, I don't like to quote. I mean, I don't like to curse, but I like to quote direct quotes. That's actually the statement. They canceled the meeting last week. MAGA Mike Johnson, the Speaker canceled work for the House Republicans. Democrats showed up voluntarily, but the House is on vacation right now, and they're on vacation tomorrow. Just. I want you to think about that. The Democrats voluntarily showed up because they're treating it like a workday. But MAGA Mike Johnson said, actually, we're on vacation Monday, we're on vacation Tuesday, right before the government shutdown. I just want you to think about that. Does that like, I don't care what political party you're from. You worked. You probably work today, right? Like, they're just not showing up on the most critical days of what their job's going to be. And then Donald Trump, who, you know, loves those press conferences with the world leaders in the Oval Office. Loves, though, loves those on tape right in the room with all of the gold that he likes, all the gold that he talks about. He said no press were allowed in it today. Huh. So you're canceling Monday and Tuesday of work. You're not allowing cameras to be in the room when, when the Democrats are there. You know, honestly, as I think about it right now, I know the Democrats had to show up and be like, look, we're being there in good faith, but I actually think maybe they could have made a bigger deal, now that I think about it, saying, we only want to show up. We want this to be on tape because we don't want there to be any confusion or doubt about what transpires in the Oval Office. We want this meeting recorded because Predictably, Trump and J.D. vance and MAGA Mike, they leave and they lie so effortlessly. You know, you'll have Maga Mike say, you know, we just trying to protect people's supplemental Nutrition assistance Program. We love snap. We're just trying to help low income Americans with food assistance and with your health care. And Democrats are trying to remove it when literally, we know that in the, in the disastrous budget bill, they gutted snap, they gutted Medicaid, they gutted the rural hospital system, they took away a trillion dollars from health care to help Americans. Close to 200 billion of that are for rural hospitals. Then they do this. But yeah, you know, we'll take away 200 billion, but we'll give 50 billion back. And then we'll say we gave $50 billion more than Biden. No, you didn't. If you do the math. I know they're not good at math. I know they claim they brought in $17 trillion even though we ran a 2 trillion dollar fiscal deficit for the last fiscal year. But if you do the math, that actually means you decrease the funding to rural hospitals by about $150 billion. But they lie with the puny. They'll say, you know what, we thought the Democrats, they were going to come in reasonable, but they are demanding transgender surgeries in Peru. You know, like J.D. van says stuff like that and I'm like, what the hell is even in your mind? Transgender surgeries in Peru? Yeah, transgender surgeries in Peru. They want transgender for everybody.

[Brett]

They want what?

[Benji]

They want transgender. I don't even. What does that even mean, transgender? Actually, they want to fund all illegal. A trillion dollars for illegal immigrant health care. That's what they want to do. I guess one question that I have though is why do we even have a funding issue if Donald Trump brought in $17 trillion? Why is there even an issue with funding if we brought in 17 trillion? Shouldn't Donald Trump just be making it rain on everybody? And there's so much money to go, oh, wait a minute. Because he is a freaking liar about everything. So of course they lied in the meeting. I want to start off though by showing this. I want to show a MAGA Republican congressman. This was the talking points from MAGA this morning. The talking points are like, yeah, Donald's going to bring the Democrats in. It's going to be on tape and he's going to do a Zelensky on them. That's what, that's what they're bragging, mocking and belittling Zelensky in the Oval Office. That's what really gets the MAGA going. Right? We're going to do a Zelensky on the Democrats.

[Jordy]

Yeah, man.

[Benji]

Because everyone thought it was going to be in public. But then one of my big issues with MAGA is that they are a bunch of chicken shi. You know where I'm about to go with that? Because why wouldn't you do it in public?

[Brett]

They're a bunch of Jordi P. Words Predators.

[Benji]

And the other one.

[Jordy]

And the other one. And they're also a bunch of putzes. They're, they're all, they don't, they don't.

[Benji]

Right.

[Jordy]

They don't work for their constituents. And they're showing it again right here. They don't actually care about their constituents. What they care about is just appeasing. Dear leaner Donald Trump. Sorry to cut you off.

[Benji]

No, well, here is the MAGA Republican Congress member Mark Alford. He goes Valinskian, do it like Zelensky. That's a thing of pride that they attacked our allies Alinsky in the Oval Office to help Vladimir Putin. Here, play this clip.

[Experian Announcer]

This is what they wanted. All this crazy spending, going back to the woke policies and giving illegal aliens health care. Trump said there's no way. Why should I meet with them? I think over the last couple of days he's rethought that. Let's bring him into the Oval Office. Let's give them a little taste of what we gave Zelinsky back in spring. This is going to be live viewing, I believe, in the Oval Office like you've never seen before. Maybe an hour long meeting and the American people can see for themselves the ridiculous request and demands as the Democrats hold them hostage.

[Benji]

I was waiting. I was waiting for that. I wanted to see it live. The Democrats wanted to see it live. Guess who did it in secret. Oh, but Donald Trump had to do it in secret. You know, it's part of his super secret plan, everybody. Everything's a hoax. Part of his super secret plan. Didn't that just give away the whole playbook right there? 100%.

[Brett]

I mean, and it shows you once again that Donald Trump is a massive pushover. Donald Trump is a massive pushover is what I was going. I don't know what you thought I was going to say there, Jordy. Geez. Yeah, no, I mean, listen, the Democrats have had a very targeted approach to this whole entire shutdown. And they've said, said, listen, you need X amount of votes from us in order to pass this thing through the Senate, so work with us. And let's try to do this one thing. Can we do this one thing? Can we make sure that people are able to get their affordable health care tax credits and are able to actually afford their Obamacare? Or are you going to strip that away and further take away people's health care, punish the American people? That's their request. It's a very simple request. And the reason why Donald Trump did not want to air this meeting on the air live is because people would realize, oh, that's really. They're not asking for much at all. Like, honestly, like, if it were me, I'd probably be like, they should ask for a whole lot more. We have like this whole, like, authoritarian fascist government. But, okay, pick your battles. I guess healthcare, it's a noble cause. But the fact is, is they want to be able to go out there and they want to be able to lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Because Donald Trump, as we know, does not like an educated population. Populist Donald Trump, as he famously said, smart people do not like him. Because when people understand the issues, when people understand what's going on, they inevitably go, ooh, what Trump is doing is awful. And of course I want my health care. Of course I want my benefits. Of course I want X, Y, Z. And Donald Trump relies on the lies. He relies on the disinformation going back to the med beds. He relies on pushing all this bullshit and distracting people with all this nonsense. You know, I think back to, you know, that, that famous President Biden moment before he was president, when he was in the debates, and I think he said it to Rudy Giuliani and he goes, everything is Biden, right? He said, everything you say is a noun, a verb. And 9, 11. And it was like a crushing moment during the debates, which totally exposed kind of Rudy's entire playbook. Well, you could say that right now about the Republican Party, that everything they say is a noun, a verb. And transgender or noun, a verb.

[Benji]

And illegals.

[Brett]

And it's never true. It's always a lie. But this is how they extract things that their own followers and Americans all across the country rely on. This is how they take away their health care. They say, ooh, health care, right. That health care is actually going to illegals, so we better get rid of that. That health care is actually going to the transgenders, so we better get rid of that. It's never true. This is ever true. But that's often enough to get people to vote against their own interest, to go, oh, those pesky Democrats are at it again. And we see this playbook being used over and over and over again. And if people are educated and people actually know the facts, they know just how ridiculous and offensive that is. Which is why Trump and Vance and all these Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent the American people from actually seeing the truth.

[Jordy]

Exactly. Let me add two things really quickly. One, it's so weird when you listen to that MAGA representative talk about this Alinsky moment, like it was a win, like it was a big win. And for them, like it is in their, in their weirdo lizard brains, it is. But it's just so, oh, we want them to have the Zelinsky moment. I mean, you guys were such fools in that moment. J.D. vance on the couch, you didn't even say thank you. I mean, that was embarrassing to the nation at large. And this is so representative of where this Trump regime is. And I'm calling them a regime because that's what they are. There's no transparency ever. And it's all about owning the narrative. Right. Again, this dates back to everything they touch. It's never about facts and data and actually working for the American people. No, it's about owning the narrative. And I'm sorry to say, but the corporate media apparatus right now is not built for this moment. Because had there been cameras there, had everything been on full display. What the Democrats are asking for is really just, hey, don't strip away health care from, from millions of Americans everywhere. Can we just agree to that? It's not the funding of, of trans illegal surgeries. I mean, it's really banana stuff that they hit the airwaves with the JD And Donald Trump and all these mags. They all have their talking points. And quite frankly, it's humiliating and should deeply offend and upset every American that Republicans are just not going to work. As we're looming, heading towards and will hit in all likelihood a government shutdown, they're like, we're done. You know, we're just gonna, we're gonna tap out. Why again? To appease Donald Trump? Because Donald Trump told his people, don't talk to the Democrats. They don't want to help the American people. They don't. It's gross.

[Benji]

Here's the information environment that we exist in, and I think Governor Gavin Newsom frames it appropriately. He goes, you know, these MAGA Republicans, they flood the zone with all of this disinformation. And when there's no pushback, they bend reality. They bend it so we're not even seeing a reality. And they use their right wing controlled media and their social media platforms to push out the bending of reality. Now to combat it, Democrats, people who just care about the truth, whether you're Democrat or Republican, you have to flood the zone with the truth. Now, even if you flood the zone with the truth, though, there's always going to be a little bit of a disparity, though there, or a lot of a disparity. Because even if you flood the zone with the truth, sometimes you heard the expression the truth hurts. The truth sometimes isn't as easy to explain than making up a crazy lie. Donald Trump they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. They're eating the animals. Okay, that's not true. It's harder to explain. We need comprehensive immigration reform because there are vital functions that migrants play in our economy. Of course, we don't want migrants who are criminals in the United States. We have a concept called due process. In the United States of America, we have to understand that there may be legitimate asylum seekers. We're a nation of immigrants. We want to get out criminals. But we got to make sure we have a comprehensive immigration reform system that works for the American people and that's kind and compassionate. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. Think about the informational disparity of what I said versus they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. You know, for me to explain, let me explain to you what's happening to farmers right now. Donald Trump bailing out Argentina. Argentina, who they all said was going to be led by this Javier Malay, this brilliant master chess economist player. He knows how to do everything. We're bailing him out the moment we bail. Javier Milei in Argentina with your taxpayer dollars, $20 billion. They then undercut American soybean farmers who are already struggling because China's not buying our soybeans. Literally, they're buying zero. And that's the largest export market that our farmers rely on. Also, there was USAID and a bunch of other export markets that don't buy America anymore. But then Argentina screwed us. They then sold their soybeans at a cheaper price to China. So China could also justify not selling or not taking in American exports, further screwing our farmers. And then Donald Trump says, I'm going to use the trillions of tariff dollars to help bail out and save our farmers. So what I just described to you, I could flood the Zone with that truth. But Donald Trump says that he brought in $17 trillion. That's a big number. And so lots of people like, wait a minute, that's not true. 17 trillion? No, no, no. But it's got to be. Was it 15 trillion? No, no, no, no, no. What? What is it? A two trillion dollar deficit? A negative in the opposite direction. It went in the wrong direction. 2 trillion deficit. Higher deficit now than under former President Biden that they were whining and complaining about. So not 17 trillion, negative 2 trillion last month was a $345 billion deficit. But you see that there is an appeal to an easy answer, lie. So even where you flood with the truth, if you flood with the lie, the truth tellers have to figure out, well, how do I still compete with the lie? And I'll tell you, though, what my solution is. And it may sound corny and cheesy, but you have to appeal to people's core decency, core empathy, core right versus wrong, in addition to flooding the Zone with the truth. Truth. What you have to do is say that behavior is just not American. That behavior right there is grotesque. It is evil, it is authoritarian. You have to call the issue what it is. Just as Gavin Newsom said about Stephen Miller, you are a fascist. And then Stephen Miller and Don June like, oh, my God, they're calling me a fascist. What do you think he's trying to do? And Newsom's like, I'm trying to call you a fascist because you're behaving like a fascist. That's what I'm calling you. Moral clarity, being direct. But I think it was. I'm going to go talk more about, obviously, what's going on with the shutdown, but I think that's an important framing of the information environment we're living in. Sorry, sorry. I went on a Little tangent there.

[Brett]

No, I think it's a good point. And, and I think it could be summed up like this, right? There's a phrase that truth can be a bitter pill to swallow, right? But lies could go down a lot easier than the truth, I think, is what you're trying to say. The thing is, while those lies may go down easier and it may not be as bitter as actually taking a truth pill, those lies are poison pills that are quite literally killing you. And that's what we see here in the United States of America. We are seeing Donald Trump and these Republicans shoving poison pills down the American people's throats on a daily basis. We see them backed up by all of these algorithms. Like, let's not underestimate here the power of Elon Musk. Purchasing a platform like Twitter, turning it into X, turning it into a right wing propaganda platform that uplifts some of the worst, most heinous lies imaginable, puts the worst people's voices dead front and center, and basically silences the truth. That's like one of the whole big points. He doesn't care if he's making a profit off this thing. He cares that he's using this as a propaganda weapon. So, Ben, when you say that people need to find ways to be loud and break through that noise, I think that's one of the reasons why Gavin Newsom has been able to break through, because he is doing this all cap strategy, both literally and figuratively. And we are living right now in an all caps Donald Trump world where everything thing is, you know, five alarm fire, the littlest things get blown up as the biggest things, like a dumb crackle cracker, crackle cracker barrel thing or a Sydney Sweeney thing or whatever, you name it. There is this MAGA army online that's boosted by Musk, that's boosted by all of these Trump people that is pushing all of these lies, whether the situation is a silly situation or whether it's something deadly serious like a shooting. And we saw a few shootings over the weekend and we saw how once again the lies spread. Like once we found out that one of the shooters, the shooter in Michigan, when we found out that he was a big Trump supporter wearing Trump merch, constantly posting Trump things, a Trump family. What happened? Well, the MAGA people kept lying. They photoshopped the Trump images off of his clothes and then said that those, the real images of him wearing the Trump stuff was photoshopped. You see the New York Post masking what actually is the truth behind it. You See this, you know, both kind of mainstream information ecosystem in the New York Post and Fox and all these Murdoch properties backing up this kind of right wing, you know, whatever you want to call it, this, this propaganda ecosystem on X and on these other platforms and just boosting the most heinous lies imaginable. The entire point is to pollute the information environment, make the truth just unknowable for the average American. And then that way the oligarchs could get their way, they could do whatever they want. They could continue to consolidate and buy up things and own everything and control the flow of information and they get richer. People like the soybean farmers are getting absolutely screwed. And then they have, then Donald Trump has to bail them out. I mean, it's, it's like this, we see this same cycle repeat over and over and over again and we, we understand where it's coming from. There's a reason why the people who are screwing over the people are investing so much money in controlling the flow of information to make sure that those people who are getting fucked over the most do not realize who is them over.

[Benji]

And then in Ponzi scheme fashion, what does Trump say about everything? I just need two weeks, give me four weeks, give me a month, give me maybe 20, 27. What Trump likes about the shutdown is as he sees it, it buys him more time in his Ponzi scheme. He views it as confusing the turf. And it's, look, we were doing great. Golden Age 24 karat gold everywhere. But the Democrats, they screwed up. I was right there. That's how he, you have to understand what his pathology is, why he actually wants a shutdown to take place here. That's why we got to hold him accountable and come with the facts. Brett, you mentioned this, so let me talk about this quickly. Two mass shootings involving U.S. combat veterans occurred within 24 hours. You had a guy named Nigel Edge in North Carolina and Thomas Sanford at the Mormon church in Michigan. And again, over and over again, we're seeing that these people are either veterans or white people quite frequently. You mentioned we're showing for those audio listeners the Sanford, the Michigan shooter, white guy, veteran Trump shirts, Trump Trump signs at his home. The way New York Post reported it, they go Michigan church gunman's mom posted eerie message about someone avoiding accountability days before. They literally covered up the Trump sign with like a social media post blocking the sign. And so the real photo is her holding up a Trump van sign. And they also cropped it so you don't see her Standing behind one of those Trump mannequins. You know, the mannequins that Marjorie Taylor Greene grabs the crotch of. So the New York Post, they cropped it so you don't see the Trump mannequin and you don't see her posting.

[Brett]

I mean, come on, this is some evil shit. And this is the same paper that constantly. But you know, before anybody knew anything about like, like the, the other shooters we've seen over the past few weeks, every article, left wing maniac, left wing shooter, left wing shooter, leftist this, leftist this. And then a very obvious a Trump voter commits a horrific shooting. And then this. These are their stories and this is how they cover it. And this is how they cover it up. It's just, it's just so sick to me. And notice we're not blaming all MAGA people for this shooting. You don't see us in the Midas Touch podcast going, this is war. We're going to go to war with you. We're going to. No, because that's crazy. And that's not how we react to these things. But you have to remember that's how those people reacted to, you know, the other incidents that we've seen recently. It's the same thing as that. You mentioned it before when Gavin Newsom called Stephen Miller a fascist online. Oh, the feigned outrage from all these mag influencers. We need to criminally indict Gavin Newsom for calling Stephen Miller a fascist. I'm like, well, that sounds kind of fascist now, doesn't it? You want to take away Gavin Newsom's free speech and throw him in jail because he called you a fascist. Well, I think he's got a lot of good reasons for it. And then you saw once again, that propaganda pile on from all of those people. How dare you call them a fascist. You look at all those people's past posts. They kept a million posts calling Democrats a fascist, calling Biden a fascist. There's no consistency. It's all how do we control the narrative? It's how do we spread enough lies so that we could dupe the American people into taking away their health care, into taking away their snap, into taking away their benefits and taking away all the things they need so that we can consolidate power for the richest Americans. Same playbook every single time, every single day from these right wing grifters online.

[Jordy]

It's perfectly said, B. And I just want to add this to like, on a really serious note, the fact is, like, we will never be able to move forward as a functioning society until we, at minimum, just acknowledge the root problem with mass shootings in the US so I did some research. From 2000 to 2019, about 97, 98% of mass shooters in the US have been male. Now, according to the Violence Project mass shooter database, over 52% of those mass shooters have been white men. So yes, 100% it is the guns and yes, it is the mental illness. But yes, this country is systematically failing entire generations of young men by just like willfully ignoring clear warning signs of isolation or chronic online behavior or in some instances, ptsd. And constantly, to your point. Exactly, Brett, trying to scapegoat the other. I mean, look at how these Republicans have acted dating back to Butler from over the summer. It's the same story over and over again. The shooter, it's a trans. No, it's a leftist. It's this group. No, it's that group. And then time and time again, when the facts come out, it's always a relatively young white male with easy access to guns who spends a tremendous amount of time online and who has totally isolated himself from his peers and frankly, reality. And so when the facts and data are just staring you in the face and the best you could come up with is thoughts and prayers, that tells me that you don't actually want to solve this epidemic and you want to help these young men instead. What these MAGA Republicans are trying to do, they're trying to just use these massacres and tragedies to score their political talking points. It's really frigging gross.

[Benji]

Well, and then they defund mental health. They say we got to focus on mental health. Yes, we do have to focus on mental health, to your point, but we also need common sense gun reform, which over 85% of Americans support, which MAGA Republicans refuse to acknowledge that you pair gun toting people, you know, and no, it's a gun toting. But like with mental health issues and weapons of war proliferating, that's a recipe that makes America in this unique category for every single day it seems like there's a mass shooting. All right, we're going to take our first quick break of the show. That was a long segment right there, but we got a lot of information in that needed to be discussed. I want to remind everybody that when this show ends at around 6:15 Pacific, 9, 15 Eastern, give or take. When the show ends, go to patreon.com Midas Touch make sure you're signed up. We're going to be doing a 45 minute meeting, a state of Midas touch meeting with all of you. Ask us any questions. We're going to rapid fire response to all of your Questions go to patreon.com Midas Touch Sign up we're going to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. We've got a lot more show to discuss.

[Jordy]

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[Benji]

I just can't emphasize enough as we've been heading towards this government shutdown. You have the MAGA Republicans, they refused up until today from even speaking with Democrats. I've showed you the clip before so I don't need to show it again. But I've done it on like 50 videos now where I've showed the clip of Donald Trump on Fox a few weeks back saying I've ordered the Republicans do not speak with Democrats. We don't need the Democratic votes. When you do need the Democratic votes in the senate, you need 60. But by the way, even if you didn't need the Democratic votes, why would you behave that way? Why wouldn't you talk to the other side who represents tens of millions plus people, 60, 70, 80, 90, 150 million, maybe more. Maybe even closer to 200 million people. You know, especially with California being the biggest state. 200 million. You see, I was understating it. Trump overstates. I do understate. But probably close to 200 million Americans in, you know, are represented by Democrats. If you look at population, you know, unfortunately they didn't come all on a vote, but maybe they should have voted. But why wouldn't you want their perspective about like, you know what I mean? Like even if you don't have to speak with the other party, isn't that part of what our process is about? And but here you do have to speak. And then rather than talk about what we can do together to help America, Republicans frame their entire if you want to think of one common strand, it's, let's own the libs, let's destroy the libs. Destroy the other political party. I remember Stephen Miller's wife, I guess she goes on Fox a lot now.

[Brett]

She goes, he wakes up in the.

[Benji]

Morning and he goes, how am I going to beat the libs? Like, that's such a strange framing of America. Like, what is that even? Why, why wouldn't you wake up and say, how do we root for America? How do we help America? Right? Wasn't that also the perspective at that Ryder Cup? It wasn't like, let's cheer on the American team. It's how does the crowd. Very kind of trumpy golf crowd on Long island, which is where I grew up, right around that area, by the way. So rough one for me. But they were all like, how do we mock the players? They were calling one of the other golfers fat. They were screaming at one of the other players, you know, fu, fu, fu, while he was hitting. Because it was about. It wasn't about rooting for America. It was about. Wasn't that a microcosm of what Magus?

[Brett]

Oh, my God. It's the perfect representation of Americans today, of how we're viewed by the world. It was that on display, like, that behavior. I was watching so many videos of this last night, just going through them on TikTok, of all the crowds and everything. Just some of the most reprehensible, most vile behavior that I have ever seen. I was embarrassed as an American, as a New Yorker, as a Long Islander, to see that sort of behavior from these people in the crowds who are behaving like animals. Animals, quite frankly, the way they were just, like, yelling at the players. I mean, this is golf, right? Like, these golfers are not used to that sort of behavior from the crowds. They're not used to that when they play at the Masters. They're not used to. I mean, it was just like the sickest thing and such a microcosm of the issues with the United States right now. We become this just amoral kind of hellhole of Donald Trump maga. People who, despite being in the minority, are so loud and so obnoxious and just want to kind of yell and scream and blow everything up rather than actually try to make things better. And that's the issue. I can't think of a president in my lifetime other than Donald Trump who was only president for, you know, his voters. Like, I, we always. We had presidents from multiple parties growing up, right? Whether it was even George W. Bush or Barack Obama or Biden or, you know, you name it. They always, once they got into office, said, I promise to be a president for all Americans. That's not something that Donald Trump ever tries to do. That's not something he even pretends to do. He specifically is always trying to rile up this MAGA base and is trying to stick it to Democrats, stick it to like half the population. And I think those Representative Alford's comments that we played in the beginning of this episode are very indicative of that sort of mindset, that kind of bullying mindset. They don't care about actually getting things done, keeping the government operating, trying to make sure people have their health care, other benefits, making sure people are doing great, able to afford homes, homes, able to afford things. It's all a game to them. And they just want to kind of make their people feel good by punching down on other people.

[Benji]

1001.

[Jordy]

1000. No, I just wanted to add. So the Ryder cup, the fans there. Yeah, we grew up right around those parts. And so I'm going to drop a new term on the show that people might not be aware. Brothers, you may be. Yes, sir. Yeah, that's exactly where I'm going. So I was just. That is a throwback. So I went to Ohio State, which is in Columbus. And so when I went to Ohio State, the brief story here is like a lot of Long Islanders went to Ohio State that same year. And it was a lot for the folks in Ohio to see all this Long island energy. Now I'm not saying they referred to me as this, but they referred to sort of the group as all Long Islanders, as something called a flit, man.

[Brett]

Have you ever heard of flitz?

[Benji]

I don't know if I want to.

[Brett]

Know if Ben knows the term.

[Jordy]

Oh, he doesn't know it.

[Benji]

Genuinely no idea.

[Brett]

I've never heard the term.

[Jordy]

So a flid is a fucking Long island douchebag. And so that is just what you know. But that got casted on and I thought unjustly. So. So now I am looking at the Ryder cup and I am seeing these friggin flids just acting absolutely chaotic, like animal ish, disgusting. And there is no better word to describe those folks than flitz because. Oh, it just, it really upsets me seeing that. And. And by the way, a lot of those people that were grouped as the FL they, they all became MAGA from the ones that I went to.

[Brett]

Yeah, there's definitely a big overlap. FLID equals man. Like that's maga.

[Jordy]

Yeah, Concentric circles. There just might, might as well be one big.

[Benji]

Well, look, the whole thing is. But it's, it's the broader point that I don't mean to get into a writer cup all conversation, but the reality is, is that it's about. We should root for America, not rooting against one another. Right. And that was what was on display there. And, you know, I want to bring us back to this meeting that Donald Trump refused to do in public, refused to have the cameras there. I mean, what was he scared about? Or what did he want? He wanted this moment where then J.D. vance goes out and J.D. vance says, I think we're heading towards a shutdown because of the Democrats. And this is how they see it. And it's just not, it's not an accurate framing. All Democrats want to do is literally across the country say, if you are on an Affordable Care act direct plan, the tax credits that currently exist, just keep them in place. Just keep them in place and we're good. I think, Brett, to your point, I would actually want the Democrats to do more. I think they should say, we want ice off the streets. But Democrats said, okay, let's keep health care. That's the, that's, that's the fight. We. Because people are going to die. People are going to go into medical bankruptcies. But here's what J.D. vance says. Let's play the first one.

[J.D. Vance]

And the fact that they refuse to do that shows how unreasonable their position is. I think we're headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing. I hope they change their mind. But we're going to see. I'll let the speaker.

[Benji]

I mean, what a ridiculous thing to say. The Republicans aren't even in Congress today. Then JD Van says, if you look at the original thing they did with the negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package for illegal aliens, which is literally entirely false. There's not even a little bit that's true. Federal law even prevents that money from going to people who are not here in a document. Every aspect's a lie. But here, play it.

[J.D. Vance]

But if you look at the original, the original thing they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying to the American people, we want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills. That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd. We totally them it was absurd. And now they come in here as.

[Benji]

Saying, yeah, that's not true. Like, literally, like, but like, you're like, come on, there's got to be part of that's true. Because who lies like that? They do. A guy like J.D. vance, who's gone by three separate names once thought he was gay, now says he's not gay and doesn't like gay. And he's, he's, he's, he represents Appalachia but wasn't from Appalachia. The guy's whole life is just making up personalities and identities for himself.

[Brett]

Stuff.

[Benji]

Like a guy, like, literally just a total liar. Like, like, no, because no aspect of it's true. Then here's J.D. vance right here saying, yeah, you know, and then they go into ones that are just like, so, so wild to even think about. Like, like, yeah, you know, they really. What they were demanding was transgender surgeries for Peruvians. That's transgender surgeries for Peruvians. What the hell? Here, play this clip. Right, Mr. President.

[Brett]

So just to be clear, is there room for negotiation here with Democrats and you mentioned you believe that we are headed toward a government shutdown. Is the federal government preparing to fire federal workers if the government does indeed shut down?

[J.D. Vance]

Well, first of all, we have to keep essential services functioning as well as possible if the Democrats shut down the government. And Russ has been tasked with making sure that's possible. Now, you asked about negotiations. One of the things I admired about the president, but frankly, frankly, the entire team's approach during the conversation we just had with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries was, you know, yeah, they have some crazy ideas. Giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens for healthcare, that's a crazy idea. Funding transgender surgeries in Peru, that's a crazy idea. But they had some ideas that I.

[Benji]

What? Well, I mean, like, literally what, like, that's never been a demand, but in right wing media, they will push that out. And their MAGA base believes that, that that's a reality and it's just not even any relationship to the real world. It's like Donald Trump posting about super secret alien medical bed technologies that cure cancer and that it's. And that the government's been keeping it secret from you and that JFK was secretly cured by the med bed and you're gonna.

[Brett]

I just wish, Ben, I, I wish there would be one, like, moment, one moment of epiphany that some of these people would have that follow people like JD Vance or follow these right wing people online that would go, oh, wow, that they lied to me about that. Something so stupid. Perhaps if they lied to me about something as stupid as Peruvian transgender surgeries, or they photoshopped the Trump image, the logo off the shooter, to make it seem like he was. If they lied to me about that, perhaps they're lying to me about all this other stuff. I don't know. Like, I, I know that's far too much that I could ever hope for, but I really wish that this, like, that some of these things would trigger that emotional response in some people. I mean, they, they were people yesterday, guys who were spreading the lie that the whiteout game at Penn State, which is when it's a popular home game at Penn State football game every single year. This happens where all the students of Penn State wear white to the games. And all the right wing influencers yesterday were pushing that. They were wearing white in order to honor Charlie Kirk. And they pushed that New York Post pushed that out, all these channels pushed that out. And it's just like a total bullshit lie. It's like, if you're gonna lie to people about that, you're gonna lie to people about anything. I wish some of the people, like, if you're a Penn State, right. If you're a Penn State fan, if you're a football fan, I don't know if. And you're watching people push these blatant lies, at some point, don't you go, oh, I get it now. These people are fucking liars. Like, they, they lie about everything. Okay, if you're willing to lie to me about that, maybe you're lying about the Peruvian transgender surgeries. Maybe you're all the things as you try to take away my health care. I mean, you could go the entire list. And it's a lie after lie after lie after lie. I just wish people would kind of wise up to it.

[Jordy]

And Brett, it's also corporate media complicity. And I'm gonna beat the heck out of this drum because why doesn't anyone follow up and be like, who's asking for the Peruvian sex changes?

[Benji]

For who?

[Jordy]

Who, who are you specifically referring to? J.D. vance. But again, this is the, this is why they don't bring the cameras in with Chuck and Donald. This is why they're trying to keep you separate. They being MAGA and Donald Trump and Vance. They don't want you to see it because they don't want you to see the pushback from the Democrats on this. What Donald Trump and MAGA wants to do is once again, in this instance, control the narrative. And this is their way of controlling the narrative because to the Charlie Kirk Example Brett with the Penn State wideout. I've been to that game. I used to go to that. That game was sick. Shout out Penn State for, for doing those whiteouts. They're actually incredible. As someone who went to Ohio State, I could say it's awesome. But in no way is that connected at all to anything that happened around Charlie Kirk. However, if you're a frequent reader of the New York Post, you would see a headline, a big story headline about how this was in honor of him. It's really gross. And it's that corporate media complicity where no one has a backbone to stand up and be like, hey, this isn't true.

[Benji]

That's.

[Jordy]

No one wants the Peruvian sex changes for free. What are you talking about?

[Benji]

J.D.

[Jordy]

Vance sense. I mean, it's really bonkers stuff.

[Benji]

And anything though too, that the right wing influencer Benny Johnson showed up with the white shirt to then push this agenda also, right? Like, he showed like, like, who even thinks to do something like that? Like, wouldn't you just feel such a degree of shame that you'd be like, I'm, I'm. Am I gonna really pretend that the white out is the white?

[Brett]

Charlie Carson, let's take it one step deeper too. White shirts that said the word, word freedom on it, right? It just said freedom on the front of it. And so you have Benny Johnson out there and he's like throwing out these shirts. He takes this photo of his people. You can see we're showing it right here, like by tents, like by tailgating. And he's like, look, I'm giving out freedom shirts. And then the New York Post, they coordinate these headlines to say, thousands of Penn State fans wear Charlie Kirk iconic freedom shirt. And you look at the picture, there's not a single one of these shirts in the crowd. Like not, not one. I saw one video where they zoomed in on two people in the crowd where wearing them out of 110,000 people in the stadium. But this is like how fascist propaganda works. You know, it seems silly, it seems like, oh, who cares, you know, but. But this is how fascist propaganda works. And notice how they latch on to these big cultural moments in order to try to push this agenda. What the New York Post is trying to do there, the Murdochs are trying to do in coordination with the Benny Johnson's and Elon Musk and this whole kind of fascist crew online is say, look, the culture is with us. Oh, you want to be cool? You're into football, you're into golf, you're into ufc, you' Whatever. Well, Donald Trump is into that stuff, and that's what's cool. Right. And so if you want to be cool, then that means you're a Republican and you got to support the fascist takeover. It's all a part of this kind of fascist propaganda machine that we're seeing. And it's silly, and it looks very obviously silly, but it's very malicious. It's malignant, and it is very intentional, the things that they select.

[Benji]

And it's potent because people's defenses aren't really up to protect against it. So it's potent, it infects, it has an intended target. And it works unless you're able to point out the dangerousness and absurdity and let people know, here's what's actually happening. And that's part of what we try to do here on the Midas Touch Network. I mean, you talk about, you know, how they try to make you believe anything at this point. I mean, look, Trump's out there. He's done talking about Epstein. Right. Like, it's a to now Tamaga everything. Jeffrey Epstein was a gigantic hoax. It's part of the deep state. They attacked the victims somehow. Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker, she's like a hero in their story. And everything they said about the Epstein files, they're like, yeah, not true anymore. Donald Trump said it's not true.

[Brett]

Trump's.

[Benji]

I'm not going to turn over any more documents now. One of the things that I think needs to be mentioned. Right, right. Is one of the reasons they've shut down Congress today and tomorrow is because Congresswoman Elect Adelita Grijalva. She should be Congresswoman Grijalva right now because she won by 40 points. She should be sworn in immediately, but she becomes the 218 signature on the discharge petition by Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna and Republican Congressmember Thomas Massey. And then there should be a vote on the House floor. It should have taken place today or tomorrow to release the Epstein files because they got 218. So they want to shut down the government, not allow members to show up today. That's why. Because they don't want to swear her in. And then they'll be like, yeah, we'll just see where this shutdown takes us. And then we don't. We could just try to avoid the Epstein files that way. All right, when we come back, I want to talk about. For Trump. Trump, it's a golden age for American farmers and Americans, not so much. Then I want to talk about Donald Trump invading of Portland, Oregon, and Donald Trump sending hundreds of ICE officers through Chicago, Illinois. Did you see that yesterday? Just to, like, literally terrorize the community the way I want to just keep this thread quickly before we go to our last break of the show. Have you ever been to Universal Horror Nights or one of those things where they literally go around trying to scare you and pop up around the corner? That's actually what it looked like to be in Chicago yesterday. It looked like the Hollywood Horror Nights at Universal because they had their Trump Gestapo walking around throughout Chicago, and they would pop up from, like, around the corner, they'd be in the water, and they would literally try to scare you. Like, it was those horror nights nights to provoke you to do something. So go, aha. You see violent person. Let's bring in the troops. Let's bring in the Marines. That's what our cities look like. Except it's not the Hollywood Horror Nights. It's the American cities that Trump and MAGA is doing this through. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show. Reminder, Patreon. We're gonna right after the show. If you want to meet Brett Jordan, me, if you ever wanted to meet us, ask us questions. 45 minute power 40. It can't be a power hour if it's 45 minutes. 45 minutes power 45. We'll go through all your questions. I look forward to meeting you. Last quick break of the show. Home stretch.

[Brett]

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[Jordy]

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[Benji]

I want to talk about Donald Trump invading another American city, Portland, Oregon. But before going into that, I do again just want to highlight some of Donald Trump's big announcements over the past few days. Okay, 24 karat gold everywhere. It's what he's bragging about. In a social media post he goes I've Got so much gold, and it's real gold all over the White House that foreign leaders freak out when they see the quality of my gold in the White House. Okay, then he's got a 90,000 square foot ballroom that he wants to be all gold. Yeah, you guessed it right. Then Donald Trump was bragging about UFC fights in front of the White House. So there was that as well. He ripped to shreds the People's Rose Garden and turned it into a club for rich Republicans to attend. And he put those yellow umbrellas so it looks like Mar a Lago. And they bragged about bailing out Argentina because they love Javier Milei. That's what they were talking about. And then rather than focus on helping soybean farmers, corn farmers and cotton farmers and a ton of other produce that's being screwed. Donald Trump sacrificed all leverage in trade negotiations with China, by the way, including America protecting Taiwan. Remember when that was the supposed big issue of Republicans, Obama and Biden's weak on Taiwan. Okay? Donald Trump didn't let the president of Taiwan land in the United States in transit to Central America. Okay? That's the respect or lack thereof that Donald Trump showed Taiwan. But Donald Trump has focused with China on trying to secure a TikTok subsidiary in the United States for Trump's rich oligarch friends so that they, and apparently Benjamin Netanyahu, because Netanyahu said yesterday that this was a big priority for him, that Netanyahu and American oligarchs can control that algorithm. That that's very important for them. Yeah, you said that. He goes, what's Netanyahu said? What's most important for me, that Tick Tock algorithm. That's why we want to control that deal. And X with Elon Musk. So our United States Senate and Congress do very few things on a bipartisan basis. They agreed, like it or don't like it. You know, a few years back that TikTok was a national security threat on a bipolar. They did studies, they showed, they said, this is a national security threat. We're blocking Tick Tock. Create something else. Well, again, maybe you like it, maybe you don't like it. So what Donald Trump then does is begs China, can we have an American subsidiary in Tick Tock? Meanwhile, China's. This is a gift to China because now they're strengthened in their negotiation, knowing that that's what Trump wants for his rich oligarch friends. Because Trump's dream is, I'm going to control this and make it a MAGA algorithm or whatever, you know, and Help whatever my, my overall MAGA perspective is. And our soybean farmers are getting screwed. Like, like literally going bankrupt. So now we have to bail out the farmers, which is literally socialism, actually. Socialism. While Donald Trump, what, rails against mom Donnie in New York, who's trying to make buses more affordable and groceries more affordable and actually focus on Manhattan first. Like, just put that, put that.

[Brett]

Could you imagine if like we were looking at like France or something and we were like, Emmanuel Macron wants to send the military into Paris and Bordeaux and nice. Like, we'd be like, what the is this guy doing? Like, this a maniac. It's like, who attacks their own cities? Like, sometimes you need to separate yourself from the actual kind of. Everybody listening knows it's crazy, but sometimes you need to like, put it in the perspective of another country to go like, yeah, that is actually insane, man. Speaking of these bailouts and the soybeans and stuff, did everybody see this picture of Scott Besant? Like, they took it at the, at the UN General assembly of his phone. Somebody caught up a picture of him on text with Brooke Rollins, who is the Secretary of Agriculture, talking about this issue. And just so you know, like, it's not like, oh, the Midas touch guys are saying that, you know, China is completely pulling one over on Donald Trump and they're getting screwed. Like, that's what they're saying in their own text messages. Like, if you read this text message and I was able to get a high res picture of it, it says, and it appears to be from Brooke Rollins to Scott Bessant. Finally, just a heads up, I'm getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate. We bailed out Argentina yesterday, and in return, the Argentines removed their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices are dropping further because of it. That gives China more leverage on us. This, these are the messages that they are sending to each other. They are acknowledging that they are getting screwed, that China is completely outmaneuvering them if you just look at their own text. By the way, Scott Bess, could you get a privacy screen for your phone or something? What are you doing here?

[Benji]

You know, and could you imagine using that example of French President Emmanuel Macron? Could you imagine if he spent all of his time at the United nations and elsewhere talking about who's another French president? Sarkozy.

[Brett]

Right.

[Benji]

One of the previous French presidents, like, and Sarkozy was the worst. And Sarkozy, like, Dude, what are you. You'd be like, all right, this guy's. Why is he talking about Sarkozy? Or why is he talking about whoever? Like, the fact that Donald Trump goes up there and thinks to the international community that I'm going to trash the former administration and that that's going to make you look strong. All it makes you look like is that people can't do deals with America because there's no continuity and respect for the institution of the presidency. Let's just assume you despise the predecessor. You still have to keep some aspect of the institution. But Trump came in and Trump immediately shut all of that down. I want to give a hat tip to our, you know, to, to a lot of our team right here at the Midas Touch network, you know, who are out there across all of their, across all of the channels right now, you know, pushing back on this. Brett, what was it on. On cnn? What am I thinking of right now? There was this powerful moment on CNN where, where what's his name was like, I'm a 22 year old YouTuber and Scott Jennings. Yeah, it was Mockler and Scott Jennings on there. Like, I'm a YouTuber, man. Like, you're saying that I'm responsible. Trump's the one who set this whole tone. I'm just out here, here calling Donald Trump out right now. I thought that was, you know, such a good moment. But I do want to talk before we go about Donald Trump's invasion of cities right now. Right. We know that the lawsuit, of course, was filed to block what Trump is doing in Oregon. We had the opportunity to speak with the Attorney General, you know, who filed this lawsuit against Trump. We've seen these arguments now made before. Violation of Posse Comitatus act, violation of the 10th Amendment, states rights. Remember when maggot all pretended to be states rights, but now they have the federal government invading states right now. Obviously a violation of just executive powers in general and the separation of powers. So that lawsuit was filed when Donald Trump posted a message, though, and said, utilize full force. Force. People in the military don't even. Like, that's not a command. Like full force. So people at the Pentagon other than Hegseth were like, what does that even mean? You want us to use. If you want us to kill people, what does that mean? Use full force. While that's taking place, Hegseth has summoned 800 top generals and admirals to Quantico tomorrow. So Tuesday they'll be there because he wants to talk about the warrior ethos and hygiene and how people should groom themselves. Apparently that's, you know, it seems like he just wants to act like a tough guy. Notably when Trump was asked a question about it last week. Trump in his cognitively addled state as well, or just whatever. Trump thought that they were talking about meeting with world leader generals. I think you should talk to world leaders. Yeah, I think you should absolutely talk to the world leaders. And then J.D. vance had to step in. It was like they're talking about American generals. 800 of them across the world are leaving their positions right now. And we've signaled that to the rest of the world so that they could be there in front of Pete Hegseth. That Daily Beast article that came out talked about Hegseth just getting into these like, rages where he just yells and he paces around and he foams at the mouth. It's it, by the way, a good, good scoop, I guess. But like we see it like I see the guy in person. So like, you know, I, I, I'm aware that's his behavior, but people are, but, but the generals are concerned that that's his behavior as well. It's just these group of people, Brett and Jordy, they're just a mess and they're dangerous. And you go to a story like New York Times reported, you know, these fishing boats that Trump keeps blowing up off the coast of Venezuela, and New York Times reporter shows up in Venezuela and starts interviewing people. We're learning more about the identity according to family members, fishermen, not narco terrorists. By the way, Trump was the one who late created a label narco terrorists in order to say, well, if you're a terrorist and I call you narco terrorist, then I get to kill you no matter what, just because I declare you. And by the way, we know what Donald Trump has done to migrants here. He's called them terrorists, Ms. 13. And he's like, literally uses like scribble drawings on people's knuckles that actually are superimposed that don't say Ms. 13. And so look, it says Ms. 13. And they fired the ABC reporter for that by them for asking him questions about it, basically, and then saying Stephen Miller has hate in his heart afterwards, because, and he did have hate in his heart. But you get fired for saying that you have hate in your heart.

[Brett]

You get fired for telling the truth these days. But yeah, I mean, just like listen to this. And, and this is something that we, you know, brought up frequently on the Midas Touch podcast as these were happening. And they're probably continue to happen and we said, why should we trust Donald Trump's word that these were terrorists? And even if these are drug dealers, drug runners, whatever you want to call them, you can't just kill them. Like that's, it's not capital punishment. You don't get to be judge, jury, and executioner. You go on the boat, you extract what you need to extract. You held people responsible, legal. And we said, how are we supposed to trust the administration that says they're eating dogs and eating cats and what they did to Abrego Garcia, as Ben said, writing on the knuckles with like, Ms. Paint, Mississippi. 13. How are we supposed to trust that they're telling the truth here? You got to assume that they're always lying. And New York Times reports in this article, it says here, in an interview, one woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the dead men said that her husband was a fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back. And obviously it's, you know, talking about one of Donald Trump's strikes, one of these military strikes on these boats apparently killed just an innocent fisherman. And we are still waiting to hear some of the stories, you know, some of the other stories that are coming out. But this is horrible. I mean, this is actually horrible, horrible shit that the United States government is doing. And you see kind of just these evil people kind of connected all over the world and just they're inside our country trying to take over, you know, all of the media that we consume. They're trying to get the control of the tick tock algorithms. They're getting control of X. You saw Jared Kushner's group is getting control of Electronic Arts right now. They're buying it with the Saudis. We're seeing the Saudis pouring a ton of money into the country, trying to, you know, buy up properties, buy up things. Working with Donald Trump on his live golf, we're seeing what they're doing in, in Gaza, where you see kind of Trump and Netanyahu and Kushner trying to divide up Gaza so that, that they could do whatever the hell that they want with that land. Trying to basically make it like a Dubai and make it their own kind of a resort space is their kind of goal there. You just, you just see the way they're all trying to consolidate power in the most evil ways. And it's all staring us in the face. And we just need to keep screaming about all of this because it's horrible. It's horrible to have these people controlling all the information that you see it's horrible to have them, them controlling companies, entertainment, social media, but that's exactly what is happening right now. And it's also why it's more important than ever that we have a strong independent press, that we have independent voices speaking out, that all of you continue to speak out. And so, like, now is the time more than ever that you have to use your voice.

[Jordy]

Absolutely. And I want to add to that, the fisherman story is really, is really, really traumatic. I mean, when we saw that video that Al Qaeda, that Al Qaeda style video that Donald Trump posted, posted from his ex account or, or whatever, bombing those boats, we all looked at the boats at the time too. We're like, these are like little boats, like, and then from all the research and from all the sleuthing online, people speculated, hey, these could be fishing boats. And by the way, even if there were enough narcotics, not excusing any trade deals with, with drugs, there wouldn't be enough to one ever warrant an assault like that. Like you said, bro, you can't just put forward capital punishment because you, you're all of a sudden the judge or executioner. Literally. Literally. So this is a man now. I'm talking about the man on the fish, the fishing boat who's dead. Four children gone forever. And likely one of the videos that Donald Trump posted had this man on that boat. And now he never gets to go back to his wife and he never goes, gets to go back to his children. And I, I, I'm connecting some dots here. There's just a really gross theme of Donald Trump just doing a attack, attacks on, on fishing boats. Back in the 2019 Trump regime, there was a botched North Korea mission led by Trump and, and the Navy seals at that time where they gunned up just a whole bunch of fishermen. They were trying to plant recording devices on Kim Jong Z's property for, for whatever reason to gain some leverage in a negotiation or whatnot. And the mission went really bad. You could look it up. I'm not making this up. Google 2019 failed North Korean mission and you'll read all about it. It's really horrific. And unfortunately, the seals launched into an attack on what was apparently a fishing boat that had nothing to do. It wasn't the army, it wasn't anything. It was just fishermen. And so Fast forward to 2025, you see this story. And once again, Trump is just assaulting fishermen and claiming victory. It's really, it's bizarre and it's really disgusting stuff.

[Benji]

Stuff. I want to leave everybody with this. I think it's there's a lot of information coming your way about shutdown. But let's just go back to the basics. Donald Trump, who loves the press being there at all of the meetings with world leaders in the Oval Office, right. He loves bringing the sports teams into the Oval Office. Ask yourself a basic question. Why did Donald Trump not allow the press to be there in the White House to record the meeting with the Democratic leaders when the Democratic leaders wanted the press there? Ask yourself that question. Ask yourself another question. Why, if Donald Trump claims he brought in $17 trillion, are we even facing a crisis at all about the government shutdown? Because if he brought in $17 trillion, there's just so much money to go around that there's no even need to have these types of funding discussions. You know, I think you know the answer because there was a $2 trillion deficit in the past fiscal year and there's a major deficit it each and every month. And then finally ask yourself this question. Why did MAGA Mike Johnson and the Republicans cancel work on Monday and Tuesday, the two critical days before the shutdown? I think if you ask yourself those questions, I think you come to a logical conclusion. Donald Trump wants a shutdown. Then you can ask yourself, why does he want a shutdown? And I think he wants a shutdown because he wants to blame Democrats for the mess that he created. He wants to utilize a shutdown to behave even more as an authoritarian. He wants to get rid of bureau and labor statistics data reporting, which he can use the shutdown as pretext for. He wants to cover up the release of the Epstein files. Those are among a handful of reasons that I think he wants a shutdown. But I think it's important that you, you that we end it where we started. All right, everybody, we were two minutes over the time we told you we were going to do our Patreon. So we're rushing to patreon right now. Patreon.com Midas Touch Check it out right now. We'd love to see you there. Ask us any questions.

[Brett]

And so when you, when you go to patreon.com midas touch if you're already member of the Patreon, you're going to see a post there and it's going to have the secret link to get to the zoom. If you're not, once you sign up, you'll see a post right on, on the top of our feed that has the link to the secret zoom. You know, I'll also put it in the Description of the YouTube of this video so that you could just click it. Go right to that post. We hope to see all of you there. I'm really excited to chat with you. These are some of the most fun things that we get to do is speak one on one, figuratively with all of you on a zoom chat. So we're super excited. We got to get over there. I know we're already a little late. There's probably some people already waiting there. Thank you for a great episode. Remember to add the Midas Touch podcast as well on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Check out our substack midasplus.com for daily recaps every single day and so much more. A lot of information this episode. I know it's a lot to digest and we're going to keep bringing you though all the updates as we get them on the shutdown and more. Jordy, why don't you go ahead and take us away?

[Jordy]

Shout out to the Midas. My day.

[Brett]

Against the fascists we sing our song.

[Jordy]

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