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- [00:00]
Ben Meiselas
This episode is brought to you by Meundies. While Meundies can't totally help your love life, this Valentine's Day they can offer you insanely comfy undies and loungewear to buy or gift. Meundies has so many awesome Valentine's Day prints and styles. Plus you can match with your partner, friends or even your pets. This Valentine's Day, give the gift that'll keep them thinking of you and score huge site wide savings@meundies.com Spotify that's meundies.com Spotify Meundies comfort from the outside in the PC gave us computing power. At home, the Internet connected us and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift, a new podcast for Microsoft Azure. I'm your host Susan Ettlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us, listen and subscribe wherever.
- [00:59]
Brett Meiselas
You get your podcasts. If you love your phone but not your carrier, just switch to T Mobile. You can keep your phone, keep your number and we'll help pay it off up to $800 per line. You can also use our savings calculator to compare our plans and streaming benefits against Verizon and AT&T. So switch and keep your phone, keep your number and keep more of your moolah. @t mobile.com up to four lines via virtual prepaid card allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption. Requ card has no cash access and expires in six months. Everything Trump touches dies. ETD so over the weekend and today, what's Donald Trump pretty much been doing all day? Golfing, golfing and more golfing. And while he was golfing, guess what? He was killing our stock markets. The NASDAQ tank today. And so did the S P. Remember last week when Donald Trump brought those AI tech bros, the Prologarchs to the Oval Office to announce Stargate, a $500 billion so called investment into American AI. Despite the fact that a lot of that was being built over the past several years Anyway. Well all of a sudden we heard that China was releasing its own AI. They released something called Deep Seek, which was an open source based AI and because it was open source, the American proprietary version of the AI and all of the companies that spent billions of dollars investing in it, they started to tank. So look, that visual image right there of the AI Roligarchs in the Oval Office and now China. Just very subtly but powerfully undercutting everything that took place. ETD everything Trump touches dies. How about Trump's meme coin? Well, that continues to crash. It's lost over 50% of its value. Who would have thought that when you look at Trump's stock, Trump's failing businesses, Trump's failing meme coins, that when he would start touching our economy, which he already screwed up the first time, it would screw up again? Epiphany. Wow, that was so hard for us to all figure out. Come on, people here. Everything Trump touches die. Speaking of which, a literal person died a January six or died who was someone who was pardoned by Donald Trump in Indiana, someone who attacked police. Guess what he did when Trump released them? He attacked police. And guess what happened? The police shot and killed them. Who would have thought that if you release people who kill police and attack police and try to do it, they would do it again? I don't know, maybe everybody with common sense literally. ETD everything Trump touches dies. You had that Friday night massacre where Donald Trump unlawfully fired all of those inspectors generals. Somewhere between 14 and 17 of these inspector generals got fired. So many people are losing track. Like, was it 12? Was it 14? Was it 17? Was it 20? They're saying, look, we ain't leaving. You violated the law in how you terminated us, so prepare for litigation, Donald. Also, Donald Trump unlawfully firing all of these civil servants and Department of Justice prosecutors who were in any way involved with any of the Trump cases. Trump has fired them. He's also ordered the Department of Justice to do a, quote, special project. Where is he borrowing that name from Putin, with Putin's special operation? I mean, do they only have, like, one move, these authoritarians? The special project. And what's your special project? It is investigating and criminally prosecuting the prosecutors who were involved in January six cases. And in Trump cases. But guys, how about them? Lower prices, Lower egg prices. Is housing more affordable? Are groceries more affordable? No, quite the contrary. Egg prices are rising and through the roof. That's if you can even get them. Housing is less affordable. Mortgage rates are through the roof. Quite literally, every one of his promises about prices was a total and utter lie. And then what does he do? He has MAGA Mike Johnson do interviews, and JD Vance do interviews, and they go, we never said that. Or, look, it's going to take a lot of time. We Never said it was going to happen. Right away on Fox, they're saying, look, this is good. We want higher prices. All the MAGA influencers. Yeah. For our freedom, we want higher prices. This is great. All we have to do is pay more for groceries and then we can kick out all them illegals. That's literally what they're saying. That's their shift right there. Trump started a trade war with Colombia. He then made a fake deal and pretended they came up with some great solution, which was basically the prior status quo. But that's still going to impact the prices of things like coffee and your landscaping and other things as well. But what's Trump doing? Don't worry, folks. He is out there golfing, giving unhinged speeches, wearing brown high heels to meet with Gavin Newsom. As Gavin Newsom shook his hand so hard he didn't even know what to do, and then got embarrassed and then kind of tilted over. The whole thing was very weird. Oh, and by the way, is Elon Musk, is he still in the White House? Did they kick him out of the White House? There's all this reporting that Susan Wiles, who they call the Ice Maiden. The Ice Maiden, that she kicked Elon Musk out and made him work across the street at the Old Executive Office Building. This and more. This is the Midas Touch podcast. What. What in the world? How are you guys doing?
- [06:56]
Ben Meiselas
You know, you know, I. I kind of feel like I entered the Upside Down. Nothing quite makes sense. But, you know, we're working through it. We're working through it, people. But here's the thing. When Donald Trump does all these crazy things, as these Republican politicians just so brazenly go along with his most illegal actions, the most important thing that we could all do as a community is hold the line and stay strong and not buckle to these authoritarians. By the way, the one thing that the media is absolutely failing at and a lot of politicians are completely failing at right now, but if they're not going to protect us, we need to be the ones here on guard, doing the work, putting it in every single day, calling out this bs, calling out the lies, calling out the propaganda, because it's right now at its largest level that we have ever seen. And not only that, we now have a complicit corporate media who parrots Trump's propaganda as the truth. And that's probably the most dangerous part of all. So we need to be beacons of the truth here. We need to be the protectors of, of all of that.
- [08:03]
Brett Meiselas
We need to be fighting back.
- [08:04]
Ben Meiselas
And it's great to be able to do that with everybody here on the might of such podcast. Jordy, what's new on your end?
- [08:09]
Jordy Meiselas
Excited to get into the show? Just first off, got to say shout out, Elijah, Elijah. My son turns one today.
- [08:15]
Brett Meiselas
Happy birthday. I love you.
- [08:16]
Ben Meiselas
I can't believe it's been a year.
- [08:18]
Jordy Meiselas
Lies by Bonkers yeah, I echo all those sentiments and more.
- [08:23]
Brett Meiselas
Brett.
- [08:23]
Jordy Meiselas
So why don't we just dive into the show? Benji, where do you want us to start off?
- [08:27]
Brett Meiselas
Tonight, a quick programming reminder. After this show ends, we will be holding our live Zoom meeting on patreon.com Midas Touch if you ever wanted to meet me, Brett and Jordy, meet us at that Zoom meeting. The secret link is at patreon.com Midas Touch Check it out and we will see you right after the show. It may take a few minutes for it to load so we can actually get into the room. We don't have outside investors, so it helps our network grow and you get to meet us. Why don't we start with what Donald Trump and corporate media is trying to distract us from? Right, let's bring right into focus what should be leading everything that all of Donald Trump's campaign promises were broken. There's been no peace in Ukraine in 24 hours. That's not even a talking point. They're not talking about it even at all. They want us to just pretend that that was never something that happened. We're not going to pretend and we're going to bring it up at the top of the show. Also, lower prices, they said instantly. That's what Donald Trump said. Not you're gonna have to wait for it. He goes on day one, the prices are going to be so low, you're not even going to know what to do. You're not even going to want them to be that low. Well, that's not happened, actually. The contrary. They're now rising and rising and they're heading to the direction where they were when inflation was at its top. And they're moving there pretty, pretty quickly. Even quicker than most people suspected. Not us. We told you this is what was going to happen. You have egg prices are so. And you have grocery prices soaring. You have mortgage rates soaring things coffee prices soaring.
- [10:06]
Ben Meiselas
Ben. And then that especially pisses me off as a coffee guy. Very, very upset about these coffee prices spiking right now.
- [10:14]
Brett Meiselas
And here's the thing, because people don't necessarily understand that these goods are traded as commodities on commodities marketplaces. There's commodities marketplaces for tomatoes, for coffee, for soybeans, the same way like oil is traded. And when you create instability in the market, say by starting a trade war with Colombia, because Colombia said, look, we'll take the migrants back, just don't put them in handcuffs on military planes. You have to treat the people with some modicum of dignity. And then we'll take the migrant who are Colombian back, but just don't trot them out like they're criminals and put them on military planes and bring your military jets onto our sovereign territory. To which Donald Trump said, trade war. How dare you. Trade war. 25, 50% tariffs. We're sanctioning your bank accounts. We're throwing out your diplomats from the United States. By the way, those measures sometimes don't even happen when you're literally at war with the nation. You would keep some of the diplomats there. So Trump, based on feeling disrespected over whether it was military jets or commercial flights, imposed that, that then Colombia responded with its own tariffs and then they tried to, like, figure out a solution. To be honest, it's still a little bit unclear where it even is. Is, is it here, is it there? The B, they claim to have reached a deal, and the deal is basically the same thing that was happening when Biden was in office. So there's really no actual change in the status quo, which is a typical Trump move to say, I did it, look what I did. It's like, okay, you literally did nothing different other than you now caused chaos. And causing chaos harms the futures market for coffee beans and it impacts the price of it, regardless of whether the tariffs hit or not, because the market is pricing in the instability into the cost of it for the future. So it's anticipating what the cost will be, and that causes volatility. So, Brett, to your point, even if the tariffs don't get implemented, the act raises the price.
- [12:41]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah. Arabica coffee beans reach their highest levels in history today because of this. And that's without the tariffs. So imagine, you know, if this fight continues to develop and Trump does impose the tariffs and the Colombian president does impose his tariffs, say that all happens, then you're going to see just a complete, a massive escalation in the prices. But we're already right now at the highest point. I mean, the previous highest point happened because of a bad harvest, like because the beans were destroyed in a bad harvest, not because of a self inflicted wound by the President of the United States causing instability in these markets. And this is the one thing I want people to Take out of this, because this was a fast moving situation. Yesterday there was update, it felt like every 10 minutes on the subject. And like Ben said, like, we still don't know exactly where this even quite landed out. But. But I'll say this, this is maybe page one of Donald Trump's playbook. It's like his go to move every single time. And that is create a problem. Create a fake solution to that problem. Immediately spike the football and declare victory and have the messaging be that you solve some sort of problem that you created. And so I want to be clear about this as well. We have been doing deportations in this country forever. President Biden did a lot of deportations in this country. President Obama did a lot of deportations in this country. Think even more than Trump, actually. But the difference here is that Trump is running into trouble with these deportations, his signature policy. He's actually the one president who's unable to actually execute these deportations. Why? Because he is going about it in this showy way where he is treating the people like they are not people. He is treating them inhumanely. He is shackling them, he is putting them in cuffs. He is treating them like they are criminals and like they are garbage. And so these countries are rightfully offended to see citizens of their countries being treated in this sort of way. And so they are pushing back. So yesterday, as we saw this kind of story unfold, the first story was, you know, I felt a little like the Colombian president, Ted, bent the knee a little. But when you looked into it, what he was really saying was, I'll send my plane because I want to watch over these people. I want to make sure you're not treating them like crap because these people deserve to be treated with dignity. Then he imposed the 50% tariffs on Trump, which are not in effect. I just want to be clear currently, because they worked out this, this deal. Then there was all this chaos, this back and forth, the saber rattling between two leaders, and, you know, it just all basically back to zero at this point. But the thing that ended up happening was Trump immediately, once he basically got the Colombian president to go back to what we were doing under President Biden, like the same things that we've been doing forever, just treat the people with dignity and you could send them here. When we, when he got back to that, Trump spiked the football and the media ran with that instantly. They treated Donald Trump's press release. By the way, many of his press releases didn't even spell the country of Colombia the correct way. They spelled it Like Columbia University. Like when he had initially did his social media post with the press release on, on Truth Social, and all of his people posted it and tweeted it out. But what you see here is the media initially grabs onto Trump's narrative. They then parrot that out. That becomes the story even before you heard the Colombian side of the story. And so when the Colombian president, when they released their statement, their statement was quite different than Donald Trump's statements. Didn't quite say that they agreed to all the things that Donald Trump said that they agreed to. It seemed like it was more of a resetting, a going back to zero in this situation. And so I just want to caution, I would, I would say this to the media, but they're not going to listen. But I'll say this to all of you. We can't. I hate, I hate that this is true. We can't trust the press releases that come out of the White House anymore. We need to treat them like we would treat any other truth social posts. And I'm sure many of them are just dictated by Donald Trump, like truth social posts. So when Donald Trump goes runs out to spike the football to announce a victory, to put something out there, your first kind of interpretation needs to be, okay, what is this propaganda? What am I looking out for? I need verification before I believe this to be true. And you need to look at all sides of it. And so it's going to be a tough thing to approach in this administration, but it's going to be something we're going to have to readjust to, that these messages coming out of the White House are probably not true at all times.
- [17:14]
Jordy Meiselas
And look, Trump no longer has the upper hand. And like, I think maybe he took some of these world leaders by surprise during his first term, but now everyone's used to his shtick, you know, except corporate media, who just falls for the press releases every time and just, you know, reports it as fact. People are suffering because of Trump's actions. He's too emotional to lead. And you know who's paying the price? The American people time and time again. I mean, these tariffs are no joke. What just happened over the last 24 hours. And now you're going to be seeing this play out time and time again. And what, Trump then gets to spike the football and say he won and he did something great and just corporate media is going to run with that headline and meanwhile, it just can be.
- [17:51]
Brett Meiselas
Further from the truth.
- [17:52]
Jordy Meiselas
It's absolute insanity. I'm glad we're here where the collective we Might as mighty. Everyone here to call it out.
- [17:58]
Brett Meiselas
Jordy. Tariffs are a tax on American companies. So what Trump is saying is, I got so offended at what Columbia did, I'm imposing taxes on American corporations. It's like, what. That's what you're going to be doing. And let's talk about strength, the weakness for a second as well, because you have all of these countries, whether it's Mexico, whether you go more south to Central American countries or South American countries, they're all standing up to Donald Trump. I believe it's the president of Honduras is calling an emergency meeting of Central American, South American and Caribbean countries to join forces together about how to respond and collectively retaliate against Donald Trump. You have Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, whose approval rating is 80%. She's saying, you will not send military planes into Mexico. You've got the president of Brazil also saying that he is. He intercepted one of the flights to Brazil by America of Brazilians who were also kind of shackled and treated like crap. And the president of Brazil is out there making a lot of statements as well, and investigations being called into the United States treatment of, of Brazilians. And you know who is actually gaining so much power right now? China. Xi Jinping. You have the Chinese ambassadors to all of these countries. The moment Trump does something, they're out there saying China just wants to reinforce the fact that we respect the sovereignty of Panama, of Honduras, of Peru, of Colombia, of Brazil. We think our relations have never been better. This is a relationship of mutual cultural respect. This is a bilateral relationship where we respect the sovereignty of the nations. We look forward to investing more and being shoulder to shoulder. And in these countries, you literally, while they're burning the American flag, while they're holding protests against us, they're doing events with the Chinese flag and the Brazilian flag side by side. And Xi Jinping's being invited to all of these countries, strengthening the relationships. All of these countries, Central America and South America, they want to join the BRICS bloc, which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, because they know that America is not protecting them, and they want to be part of alliance that is protecting them. So you have all of that happening as well. And then our media here is reporting on Trump's behavior, like WWE wrestling and acting like this performative nonsense is somehow tough, while America's strength is decreasing more in a week than 80 years. I think Trump threw out in one week with our international relations. It couldn't have gone worse. And do you hear any corporate media at all? Saying it could not have been worse for America. What went down this past week. China didn't have to fire a single shot. And it has achieved hegemonic influence of its wildest dreams as these countries, like, yeah, we're not going with crazy. You know, whether you're the, Whether you're on the north or the south, this is a meth lab. You know, that's what they look at us like. We need someone who's at least a little bit more stable. That's how they're viewing this right now. Brett, Jordan, Midas Mighty. And by the way, don't look at the statements coming out from these countries. They're literally saying it. And our corporate media, like, is like, I don't know, I guess Donald Trump is powerfully doing the. Oh, my God.
- [22:03]
Ben Meiselas
President Biden used to always say something. I think even said it in the interview that you did with him. I'm paraphrasing, but something along the lines of, if America isn't there to lead the world, then who is? Well, we're finding out who is. Because during Donald Trump's plan to be, quote, America first, I say that with the utmost sarcasm, of course. What he is really doing is he is just. He's not putting America first. He's removing the United States from the conversation entirely. Once that vacuum is there, once that void is there, you know what it needs to happen, somebody needs to fill it. So these countries that have previously been able to rely upon the United States as allies, as trading partners, you name it, they now need to find other sources for those things. And then China comes out with an outstretched arm and they say, hey, we're fans of you guys.
- [22:51]
Brett Meiselas
How can we help?
- [22:52]
Ben Meiselas
What can we do for you? And these countries are more than happy to take their support, whether it's Mexico, whether it's Colombia. And I saw the messages being shared by these world leaders, from China, by these ambassadors, to the people of Colombia, to Mexico over these past few days. The United States of America under Donald Trump is already completely abdicating its leadership on the global scale. And it's amazing how quickly after Donald Trump decided to take office that China now has this, like, re emergence, this resurgence of power in the world that we have never seen before. I mean, think back to President Biden's presidency. It seems like a while ago. I know wasn't that long ago. Under President Biden, remember, the pace of the American economy was growing faster than China's for the first time in over 40 years. That had never happened before. And that was because of, of President Joe Biden's steady hand, his global leadership, him bringing together these allies, his increasing the power of NATO, his investments in technologies like semiconductors. Trump comes in, all of a sudden China has like the top AI model. The entire industry is in collapse, like overnight. Everything is kind of suffering. Our allies are going to China for, for help. China has established itself as a global leader and it's just really, really stunning the long term damage that Donald Trump is already doing in this short period of time.
- [24:19]
Brett Meiselas
Absolutely.
- [24:19]
Jordy Meiselas
When in any moment in history has isolation been the North Star? It's absolutely pathetic what Donald Trump's doing. It's not even that we're not, you know, taking the bull by the horn and leading as America. No, it's, it's, we're completely isolating ourselves from these other countries. And as, as we go further into this presidency, that's what Trump wants to do. He wants to keep us isolated and insulated in this MAGA madness. And all of his MAGA cohorts are going to just go along with the nonsense. It's bizarre to see it play out the way it's been playing out. And we're only a week in. Ben.
- [24:49]
Brett Meiselas
Make no mistake, the way China rolled out this deep seek AI model, open sourced it to undermine American AI industries right after Donald Trump invited the AI Tech Bros into the Oval Office was a shot across the bow. It was an effort to humiliate Donald Trump. And it's because they smell blood in the water, they sense the weakness. And had there been some level of mutual respect and there would have been a broader diplomatic channel, they would not have done it in such a way. In my view, that absolutely was humiliating. And one of the things though that's so wild is the way our corporate media reports on things so ignorantly and the way Trump in this administration is just so freaking dumb, they could be utterly humiliated and not even sense the power dynamic that just shifted. But I'll tell you who recognized it, the markets did. Because remember all those days with the Biden administration where I would go, a new record with the Nasdaq, up another 2% today, a new record with the S P. And then Fox would try to like downplay the success of it. Well, now it's a new record. A pretty crappy day on the NASDAQ, down almost 3%. That wasn't a record. But that's. We got hit. I'll put it this way.
- [26:21]
Ben Meiselas
The tech stocks in particular, because of this new Chinese development in AI got hit really, really hard. That sector Got absolutely destroyed on Monday in a big way, like Nvidia. I could, you know, probably look it up now, but they lost like incredible amounts of market share. Their stock went down nearly 17%, nearly a trillion dollar market share in the tech industry. Boom. Poof. Gone overnight. Because China released this Deep Seq. And why. I'll just explain it very briefly. This Deep Seq app, this new AI company that China did, first off, they developed it in like two months, which is like completely unheard of. And they did it with I think, fewer than 200 employees and for something like $10 million. I want to remind you, and I'll pull back up the screenshot of Donald Trump and this AI investment that the US Was touting just last week with Sam Altman, who founded OpenAI, who does ChatGPT. They were touting this investment by Sam Altman by these tech companies of $500 billion in AI infrastructure, while China just developed a platform, an AI platform that by all accounts people are saying is better, more effective, more efficient, uses less computing power, requires less people to operate, requires. You could do it on just gaming CPUs instead of those big graphics processors that Nvidia makes that people thought you needed these really expensive GPUs in order to conduct AI. They did it for like $10 million. While the US is talking about this $500 billion investment, which now seems just absurd and ridiculous because you see how effic the Chinese are, are doing this right now. And the technology seems like leaps and bounds above what any company in the United States is doing. I mean, it's totally egg on the face of all the people who are involved in these AI investments because they were blinded by doing whatever they were doing that they didn't even see this coming. They just got completely sideswiped. And whether it's Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or people like David Sachs, who's what Donald Trump's eyes are or cryptos are, and all these people, I mean, they look like fools. They look like incom competent morons right now. They look like they are setting the United States back. If this is like the modern space race, China just leaped ahead of us. Leaped ahead of us. Donald Trump allowed it to happen. David Sachs allowed to happen. Elon Musk allowed it to happen. Sam Altman allowed it to happen. And then doing it open source, basically saying, check my work. You know, in a way you could see the code for yourself. You could modify the code. You get the code. That's an open source me. We're gonna put the code out there, see it for yourself. And all these companies who have relied on AI as the foundation for their business models and these high powered GPUs and everything looked at it and they went, oh shit. Oh, this is way better than what we're doing. Way more efficient, way cheaper. Like we're screwed. And so there was panic in the tech industry, which I think is going to persist because now they got to catch up to what they're doing out there.
- [29:19]
Brett Meiselas
Well, here's the thing. The Broligarchs were spending all of their time in Mar a Lago. They were out there sucking up to Donald Trump while the people in China who were developing the counter technology were out there outworking them basically and outsmarting them while they spent all this time at Mar a Lago with their knee pads kissing the ring of Donald Trump or whatever else. Look, we've got a lot to discuss on this episode. I want to talk about what's going on with prices not being lower. I want to talk about the litigation against Donald Trump for his unlawful Friday Night massacre of the Inspector Generals and now his firing of all of these DOJ civil servants, all while Donald Trump is out there playing golf all of the time. He had the MAGA Republicans fly out to him in Doral in Florida, whereas, you know, which he now just again uses his Trump properties to hold all of these events. Grifty Moore of the American people. We've got a lot to discuss, folks. A reminder. Patreon.com/midas Touch There's a secret link if you want to meet me, Brett and Jordy afterwards. Click the link. We'll see you there. It'll probably take us a few minutes to get there after the show ends, but we'll see you there soon. Ask us any questions. We've got a lot more show though. Let's take our first quick break of the show.
- [30:40]
Ben Meiselas
Okay, I got to tell you about this game changing product I use before a night out with drinks. It's called Zbiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic drinks drink. Let's face it, after a night out with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I used to feel like I had to choose between a great night out and a great next day. Until I found Zebiotics. Zebiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. Zebiotics produces an enzyme that breaks this byproduct down. Just remember, make ZBiotics your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. I won't lie, I was skeptical at first, but I gave it a shot before a night out with friends at our favorite spot downtown, and I could not believe the difference. The next morning I woke up ready to tackle a packed schedule. No sluggishness, no regrets. Now I use Zebiotics every time I know I've got plans the next day. Go to ZBiotics.com Midas to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use code MIDAS at checkout. That's me I D A S Zebiotics is backed by a 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason whatsoever, they will refund your money, no questions asked. Again, that's zbiotics.com/midas and use that code Midas. That's M E I D A S at checkout for 15% off. Cheers to feeling great tomorrow. This episode of the Midas Touch podcast is brought to you by Graza. Everyone knows I love food and what's been taking my meals to the next level lately is Graza. It's my olive oil of choice because it's top notch extra virgin olive oil at an affordable, everyday price. Graza is super fresh, never blended, and made from one kind of olive, the Picual Olive from Hayen, Spain, where over half the world's olive oil is produced. Graza has two incredible olive oils, both in a convenient squeeze bottle for ridiculously easy cooking and finishing. Sizzle is their everyday cooking oil with a smoke point of 410 degrees Fahrenheit, perfect for baking, sauteing or really anything you cook. Then there's Drizzle, a punchy, vibrant finishing oil. Use it for salads, dipping bread, or even drizzling over ice cream. It's seriously the best olive oil you'll ever taste. I'm a big home cook and Graza has become essential in my kitchen. I love how Sizzle's clean, rich flavor elevates my cooking, while Drizzle's bright, grassy notes add a final touch of flavor that makes my dishes shine. And the squeeze bottles? Total game changers. No mess, no stress, just amazing olive oil right where you need it. Seriously, like no other olive oil on the Planet and I was using Graza even before they came on as a sponsor, so I was thrilled to welcome them to the show. Here's the deal. You could get 10% off your first order of any olive oil on their site, but I highly recommend Graza Starter Kit. It comes with two squeeze bottles, Sizzle for cooking and Drizzle for finishing, plus two refill cans so you could keep your bottles full without buying new ones. You could also find Graza at Whole Foods or Target, but don't miss this online offer. So head to Graza Co and use Code Midas Me I D A s to get 10% off your Graza Starter Kit and get to cooking your next chef quality meal. This podcast is sponsored by Deleteme. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. The incoming administration has made it clear they're going after political rivals, journalists and activists. But it's not just government surveillance you should be worrying about. Data brokers profit off your personal information, turning it into a commodity that anyone online can buy. This leads to real world consequences like identity theft, theft, phishing scams, harassment and those non stop spam calls that we all dread. Deleteme is the best way to keep your personal information secure and out of the hands of data brokers. I recommend Deleting Me because I didn't know how much was out there about me until I used it. As someone with an active online presence, I felt vulnerable until I started getting personalized reports from Deleteme showing exactly what data they removed. It made a huge difference in my peace of mind. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete Me plan when you go to join delete me.com midas and use promo code Midas at checkout. That's me I D A s. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com midas me I d A s and enter that code Midas at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com Midas code Midas Protect your privacy today with Delete Me.
- [35:40]
Jordy Meiselas
Let's go. Links in description of audio and YouTube. Use the links use the codes delete me zebiotics Graza huge fans of the Midas Mighty of the Midas Touch podcast. Definitely show them some love if you're interested in that stuff because it is Fantastic, Benji. Where to next?
- [35:56]
Brett Meiselas
A reminder, subscribe to patreon.com Midas Touch after this show ends, we will be having a meeting with our patrons. If you ever wanted to ask us questions and see us in a more private setting, I suppose. Patreon.com Midas Touch Also, we don't have outside investors, so it helps us grow. Look, I know the media is giddy that Donald Trump constantly wants attention, so he invites them into the Oval Office and he invites them onto Air Force One and, and they're always there asking him questions and he's always speaking all of the time and just kind of just stream of consciousness. Here's the thing. There's a reason why you shouldn't do that. Your mere words as the president of the United States move markets, right? Regardless of whether the tariff is actually imposed on Colombia or if Colombia imposes tariffs on us or any country. That almost isn't the point. The mere statement of it moves the markets because the markets have a futures component to it. And that disruptive behavior causes chaos and harms the economy. The economy abhors chaos. International relations abhors chaos. The media loves it because they're like, oh, this is great. This is a reality show. Oh my gosh. And it's like, no, that's not what. If you want to get that, if you get off on that stuff, then maybe watch this reality shows, you know, watch movies, okay? This is the real world where you need to behave at a bare minimum, like a grown up, like an adult. Then maybe we can take a step up and behave like a professional. And then maybe we take a step up and say behave like a leader. And then maybe you take a step up and then it's like a leader of a large organization. And then maybe we can just graduate to behaving like the leader of a major company and then like a leader of the country. Maybe we do that. And so, you know, we'll show you clips in a bit too of Trump's speech in Doral earlier where he's like, I'm doing tariffs on semiconductors. Okay, so you've now, like screwed the whole market already when it comes to, like, coffee beans. Already this deep seek is impacting American corporations very negatively. And now you're doing tariffs on the semiconductors. And as President Biden was shifting strategically the semiconductor industry here to the United States. Now Trump's announcing, you know, tariffs on American corporations that are already being hit by this bad news of deep seek, undermining them from China. Like, this stuff is idiotic. And again, the corporate media, you turn it on for a second, I turn it right off because I'm like, what are they even Focus on what is actually happening right now, people. And we'll get into in a little bit. Prices are not getting lower. They're going up and they're going to go crazy high because of Trump's psycho behavior. Bruh.
- [39:18]
Ben Meiselas
This is going to destroy the tech industry. I mean, his comments alone, like after the stock market today with those tech stocks losing like a trillion dollars in value to then go around when like the thing that these AI companies, the companies like Nvidia, these companies rely on parts to build semiconductors, or they rely on getting the semiconductors. And most of the semiconductors, despite all the investments that we've made, we've been making great progress. Most of them still come from Taiwan and other places overseas, but mostly Taiwan. So if Donald Trump is now making it more difficult for those companies and more expensive for them to get their hands on materials to make semiconductors or semiconductors, he is now giving China yet another massive leg up in this AI race. It's just so baffling. And what we're realizing kind of every day is that Donald Trump's like a fascist, just, you know, loser, wind up doll who has one thing programmed in them. You pull the string and he just goes, tariff, tariff, tariff. And it's all these, it's like all he knows how to say. And so like, no matter the situation, he's a, he comes up with the same solution. And I say that in quotes to the problem. And it just ends up screwing United States businesses every single time, or the United States consumer every single time. These are going to add up. Because yesterday, you know, Ben, the one thing that was crazy that I was showing you yesterday were these comments from Maggie, influencers, comments from people like maga, Mike Johnson and, and fox. And they're all now trying to shift the propaganda. So the new lines are they're basically trying to put it in people's heads, starting with, you know, the MAGA people that, you know what higher prices are actually good higher prices. That's patriotism right there. You got to pay some higher prices. That's America. Are you not American? You got to pay those higher prices. And it is just so obvious, this propaganda. And especially after the past four years where they blamed everything on President Biden, you know, they blame bird flu on President Biden, they blamed, you know, Covid on President, they blame everything that affected prices on President Biden. But now that prices are literally rising As a result of Donald Trump's direct actions, all of a sudden it's, oh, no, it's patriotic.
- [41:27]
Brett Meiselas
This is good stuff.
- [41:28]
Ben Meiselas
This is exactly what America needs. So let me just show you, like, some of these comments that we saw over the past couple days. And these are just like a few of them. There are plenty more than just this. But we're seeing these comments from maga. I gotta, I gotta find. It's hard to produce and speak at the same time.
- [41:44]
Jordy Meiselas
Very impressive that you are able to do both.
- [41:46]
Ben Meiselas
But I'm looking at them right here. So here are some, like the top MAGA influencers who, you know, these guys always support Trump no matter what. You know, they're, I'm sure they are group chats together, coordinating stuff like this because their messages are always the same. And here's like this Gunther Eagleman, he writes, I'd rather have Lincoln Riley alive than cheap Colombian coffee. They're just acknowledging now that, that they're going to have higher prices. This person, Scott Pressler, who's Ben, has done numerous videos about, he did a lot of those get out the boat efforts for Trump in Pennsylvania. He wrote, I'm willing to limit my coffee consumption if it means deporting criminal illegal aliens for our country. I voted for safe streets and a secure border. This D.C. drano character wrote, I think this guy was at. I think all these people are pretty much at like all of Trump's, like, inauguration parties. He wrote, wait, you're telling me all I have to do is pay an extra dollar for my coffee and all the illegals get deported?
- [42:41]
Brett Meiselas
I'll take it.
- [42:42]
Ben Meiselas
And so you see this new messaging kind of filling the MAGA ecosystem, that high prices, we're great with high prices. We want high prices. And MAGA Mike was asked about. So, like, any of the things that you're doing now, are they going to target lower costs? Like, what's your plan here? Because this is kind of what you guys tried to run on, right? So what's going on here? Here's what MAGA Mike had to say when he was asked about lowering costs.
- [43:06]
Brett Meiselas
I'm not going to predict the outcome of, first of all, which tariffs will be enacted and how it will affect prices, we'll have to see. I think you're seeing a measured approach by the President. Tariffs clearly is going to be a.
- [43:18]
Ben Meiselas
Part of the policy agenda from the White House. All of that he's said to us.
- [43:23]
Brett Meiselas
Will be in the executive branch and not the legislative branch.
- [43:26]
Ben Meiselas
So they'll have unilateral authority.
- [43:28]
Jordy Meiselas
Over it.
- [43:28]
Ben Meiselas
But I think he's going to be.
- [43:29]
Jordy Meiselas
Wise in how he does that.
- [43:30]
Brett Meiselas
I don't, I don't think you'll see.
- [43:32]
Ben Meiselas
Across the board tariffs and, you know, whole countries or whole industries. I don't believe that's what will happen.
- [43:37]
Brett Meiselas
I think he's going to deal with the unfairness that we see out on the world stage. China, for example, is a terrible trading partner.
- [43:44]
Ben Meiselas
They abused the system. They steal our intellectual property.
- [43:46]
Brett Meiselas
They're now.
- [43:49]
Ben Meiselas
And, you know, it's obviously not just MAGA Mike.
- [43:51]
Brett Meiselas
Right.
- [43:51]
Ben Meiselas
It's we, we started with the mag influencers and you got MAGA Mike. And of course, you need the propaganda arm, you need the state tv, you need Fox News and them pushing this sort of stuff. So let's see what Fox had to say. Spoiler alert. They said, you know what, maybe Americans should just be making their own coffee. They should be growing their own coffee beans. Coffee from Colombia. We actually make our own coffee here, too, in Kona and Hawaii. Right there. There's, there's multiple things coming out of our neighbors countries that aren't sort of reducible to one thing. But I think that's part of what the media has been articulating this entire time, arguing that the GOP reduces humans to an identity. But really, it's them shoving these countries into boxes. President Trump sees them as partners.
- [44:33]
Brett Meiselas
Yeah. What's interesting is Trump's trying to bring about a world where he'll drop the rate for companies that actually come here.
- [44:41]
Ben Meiselas
And make some of that stuff to 15% tax rate.
- [44:44]
Brett Meiselas
So we might not have to miss.
- [44:46]
Ben Meiselas
Coffee or whatever they think they're going.
- [44:47]
Brett Meiselas
To miss, that we can clearly make our own. But maybe not as much of. Because maybe some of those countries will.
- [44:52]
Ben Meiselas
Come here and they'll package their stuff.
- [44:53]
Brett Meiselas
Or distribute it from here.
- [44:56]
Ben Meiselas
Okay, let me just, let me just make it clear as the resident coffee nerd. I just got to do a little fact check for Fox on this. More than 99% of the coffee consumed in the United States ain't from the United States. It's from Colombia, it's from Ethiopia and other places in Africa. A very small percentage, I think it's like 0.35% or something, actually comes from the United States itself. And so if you think that's gonna be enough coffee to satiate Americans coffee habits, take that argument to the people. Keep it. Let's, let's see how that works out for you. Coffee.
- [45:37]
Brett Meiselas
She goes like, coffee. Who wants coffee? Like, it's like just. I'm watching absolute craziness. Like on there, they're saying now we shouldn't have, like, we don't even need coffee. Let's just grow our own coffee. Like, why do we need anything? You know, you know, why don't we under Trump just be entirely self sufficient. Who needs any goods, right? We should all just be like nomadic individuals. Who needs homes under Donald Trump or apartments? Who needs anything actually at all? Let's just, let's just figure it out. Let's. Survival of the fittest. Let's just, let's just figure it out. By the way, did you notice, like they're saying the dumbest freaking things in the world that they're injecting into the arms of their audience and the audience.
- [46:22]
Jordy Meiselas
And you get hit from it, Ben. You get hit from it in all three aspects, right? You have the, you have the chronically online influencers, the DC Dranos polluting everyone feeds on their phone. You have MAGA Fox News propaganda arm just injecting it, Ben, into the TV sets. Then you have MAGA Mike Johnson just going unchecked. He's sounding an awfully lot like Kevin McCarthy these days. I'm talking about the tone, that soullessness of the, of his voice leaving his body every time he speaks. Trying to defend Donald Trump and bending over backwards and he. It's just getting absurd, man. Like cooked as a nation. Unless people could just stand up to these bullies.
- [46:59]
Brett Meiselas
Weirdo.
- [47:00]
Jordy Meiselas
Like, just call it weird like what they're doing and say, and they're being so freaking weird about it.
- [47:07]
Ben Meiselas
Maga, Mike, soulless.
- [47:09]
Brett Meiselas
If you read the bottom chiron, what did it say? It said, Colombia, President caves to deportations. Like, let's be clear, Colombia is a sovereign nation. Like, why are you mocking your trading partners? They didn't cave to anything. They embraced what the status quo was under Biden and they act like, look, Trump dominated them. Then you have all these other MAGA Republicans out there being like, we are the apex predator nation and it's manifest destiny for us to crush them. Like, that's literally what these MAGA Republican members of Congress, they're calling themselves the apex predators of the world. And that manifest destiny means we should crush these other nations. And meanwhile all China's out there doing is saying, hey, we respect your culture, we respect our bilateral relations. Can we help you build something? And whether you're like that CCP propaganda or not, how do you think Colombia is looking at this right now? On the one hand they're being nice. On the other hand, you're talking about crushing Us and being a predator towards us and just beating us into the ground while we're a sovereign nation. Like, what in the world are you talking about? But what's Donald Trump doing while all this happening? Golfing, of course. He's posting memes of himself. He posted an AI meme of himself looking like a mobster because that's normal behavior. I mean, again, you won't hear any of this from corporate media. That's just, that's Trump being Trump. He posts photos. How about Donald Trump posting not the American flag, but himself on the American flag saying, Save America 2024? Dude, it's 2025. Are you going to keep running the 2024 campaign like it's over? Biden's not the president anymore. Unfortunately, Kamala is not the president. Unfortunately, it's you. You are running it. So all of these things that are happening, guess what? They're your fault. And they're quite literally your fault when you're out there making these absurd and ridiculous statements like this. When we go back, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the chaos that's there. I want to talk about Trump's Friday night massacres of these inspector generals embroiled in all of this litigation. Now, by the way, these people who Trump fired, they were the people who Trump hired. They're Trump's people. Like, I don't think that's getting enough attention. Biden couldn't fire these people because he didn't follow the law. And Congress passed laws saying you can't fire these people. MAGA wanted them in because they're like Trump appointed them. So these inspector generals will hold Biden's feet to the fire. Trump fired him without giving them the 30 days notice under the law that's needed and without providing specific justification to Congress in writing. That is very clearly stated in the law. If you're going to do those terminations, Trump fired his own people because he said his own people weren't sufficiently loyal enough. Okay, that's what went down. We'll talk about that and more. I want to take our last quick break of the show. Want to remind people as well, we've got Midasplus.com and we've got Patreon.com check out Midasplus.com it's where our editor in chief, Ron Philipkowski, gives a lot of great insight. Just so you know, it is a membership Midas+.com but you can subscribe for free at first. You could test it out, see if you like it. Ron Philip Kowski's breakdowns are incredible. So maybe you subscribe for free and then you see, hey, I like this. And they don't have outside investors, so maybe we help out, maybe you don't. But check it out. Midasplus.com Also if you want to meet us after the show, patreon.com Midas Touch let's take our last quick break of the show. Think about this. Your business, established in 2025, it has a nice ring to it, right? I remember what five years ago, me and my brothers had this audacious idea to start a media company called Midas Touch. And we wanted to have pro democracy content and change the way news was delivered and consumed. And here we are. I want you to think about your idea for 2025 and start that business that you always wanted to start. And when you do, you have to have it powered by Shop. Shopify is the tool that will actually help you make it happen. Let me explain to you how the best time to start your business is right here, right now. And Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business and get your first sale. Get your store up and running easily with thousands of customizable templates. No coding or design skills are required. All you do is drag and drop. Their powerful social media tools let you connect all of your channels and create shoppable posts and help you sell everywhere people scroll. Shopify makes it easy to manage your growing business. They help with the details like shipping, taxes and payments from one single dashboard, allowing you to focus on the important stuff like growing your business. And what happens if you don't act now? Will you regret it? What if someone beats you to that great idea? Don't kick yourself when you hear this again in a year because you didn't do anything. So with Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think. Established in 2025, it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com Midas go to shopify.com Midas lowercase M E I D s to start selling with Shopify today. One more time. That's shopify.com Midas Today's episode is brought.
- [53:19]
Ben Meiselas
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- [55:28]
Brett Meiselas
Welcome back. Welcome back. I think Jordy got a little bit disconnected from the WI fi, but we wish Jordy the best and let's. Let's get right into it. Brett, we've got a lot to discuss and special thanks to our pro democracy sponsors. So a few pieces of news that I think are really important. Of course, by now you've been watching the Midas Touch YouTube channel. You've seen our reporting on Donald Trump terminating somewhere between 14 and 17 Inspectors General these are individuals who are appointed by a president, confirmed by the Senate. They can only be fired under specific instances. You have to. For circumstances that require some sort of justification that you have to state very specifically, and you have to give justification to Congress. These are individuals, they're sometimes called watchdogs. They're embedded in different agencies and departments, and they're there to investigate crimes within the agency, fraud within the agency, waste within the agency. Many of these individuals were appointed during Trump's term, and they remained on because Biden couldn't fire them because there was no reason that you had to give. You had to follow the law. You had to give specific justification. And these individuals, despite being brought on by Donald Trump, they were taking their jobs seriously. And, you know, not. Not all to the what we would like, but they were at least handling it enough with the job description that Trump said, we got to get rid of these people. So Trump basically fired his own people on Friday night after Hegseth was confirmed. It was notable that he waited until after Hegseth was confirmed because you had certain inspector general hawks, whatever the heck that means, Republicans, certain Republicans like Chuck Grassley, who may have voted another way, who knows? With these Republicans, they have literally zero spine. But on the Hexith nomination, which was a 50, 50 tie, first time that it ever happened with a defense secretary. Defense secretaries are always, like, usually, like, overwhelmingly agreed to, because you don't pick somebody with zero experience who's never like, led an organization before or never let a military command. I think he led a nonprofit exit, but then was forced out of both due to a lot of serious issues in his judgment. That's an understatement right there. But anyway, Trump fired them, then they fired back and they said, okay, well, we're not leaving. We're going to sue you because you didn't follow the law, which required 30 days notice, and you never provided any justification to Congress. So these are unlawful terminations. And, you know, we're not leaving. To which I think Donald Trump's going to say, Supreme Court gave me absolute immunity. I can do whatever. You can't sue me for any of this stuff. Good luck. And they're going to go file litigation, I think soon, for their wrongful terminations against the government will be fighting that. And by the way, they have massively valuable lawsuits. So even if they're forced out, they're going to get tens of millions of dollars, I think, in verdicts when they sue the government because it's a patently, on its face, unlawful termination. And you know, they're going to sue for money and they're going to say, you fired me illegally. And I think they're going to win that. Also, Donald Trump has fired all of the DOJ prosecutors who were involved in his cases, January 6th related cases as well. And he's ordered his Department of Justice to investigate criminally. All of the prosecutors were who were involved. So he wants to, to prosecute the prosecutors. So he's actually implemented that. Talking about these January 6th insurrectionists, Ben.
- [59:06]
Ben Meiselas
How could, how could Joe Biden possibly offer pardons to people around him? How dare he? How could he, how could he think of even doing that? Can he think about our democracy? That's what the media was saying after Donald, after President Biden issued pardons for people like Liz Cheney and other people on the January 6 committee and the officers who testified. And that was what had us here pulling our hair out going, are these people just like idiots? Like, are they doing this on purpose? Like, what is their deal? Because he has stated quite plainly throughout the campaign that he is going to make these people's lives hell, that at minimum he will investigate them in order to bleed them dry financially. And at the worst case scenario, he literally wants to lock these people up who are just doing their jobs, following the law. But Donald Trump has stated for months and months, if not for years, that he wants to inflict retribution on his political enemies. So here we are. Donald Trump is now doing that against all these people. And I feel like the people who are criticizing President Biden for the few pardons that he did are silent on this issue, treating it like it's normal. Sorry, I just had to jump in because it just enrages me so much.
- [60:16]
Brett Meiselas
This. I don't know how you could view the past week objectively as not the biggest failure ever. From starting unnecessary trade wars, ceding America's role internationally to pardoning Oath keepers and proud boys, like actual terroristic groups and individuals who tried to kill police. And we're hearing all of these stories now about people who tried to kill the police. Guess what? They tried doing it again. And because that's what happens when you let out cop killers on the street. So this guy, Matthew Huddle, a 42 year old who served time for his role on the January 6th Capitol attack and was pardoned by Donald Trump, was shot and killed by a Jasper county sheriff's deputy during a traffic stop in Indiana following an altercation with the officer. Police say Huddle was armed and resisted arrest. Who would thought that armed people who were going after cops on January 6th would just continue to go after cops. And that's the thing with all of these, you know, like, the Fraternal Order of Police that supported Donald Trump and all of these police groups that, you know, that supported Donald Trump. It's like, first off, Trump hates unions, okay? So for all of these unions, I know that President Biden didn't bring you cold pizza, and President Biden didn't color the American flag blue, you know, and do performative crap like that, but he gave you the resources and tried to give you more resources and more money, which Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans blocked. Like, imagine being a union where your goal is to have more overtime, more money, you know, more rights, more safety, more protections. Biden was giving it to you, but Trump gave you cold pizza while taking away it. And you're like, oh, I'm gonna go with the cold pizza. I guess I'm gonna go with the cold pizza. Because he painted the flag blue and he said thin blue line. So I guess because he said thin blue line, I'm. I'm with him. And because Trump, like, supported some of the cops who engaged in acts that I think other cops should objectively look at that as problematic. But because Trump is like, we're with them, so he's with us. He's with us. It's just a very strange. It's a strange concept to me. Like, when you're, like, a lawyer or you're a doctor and there's another lawyer or doctor who behaves horribly in your profession, you usually have your organizations try to get rid of them from the professions, not make them the heroes of your organization. But I'll save that for a completely different topic and a whole other rant, by the way. And no one supported the blue or firefighters or first responders more than President Biden. Quite literally, anything he can do, he did. But again, Trump gave him cold pizza. Donald Trump pardoned the people who tried to kill him. That was enough for a lot of these groups. Oh, by the way, I think we have this clip of Trump on Air Force One going from Vegas to Miami for all of the Muslims who voted for Donald Trump and the Palestinians for Trump. Trump talked about what, like, we need to. We just need to clear it all away, he said. That's what he said about clean it out. Just clean it all out. Just get rid of it. Clean it all out. And he's given other speeches about how he thinks it's, like, a great place to build things. Here. I think we have that clip just so you can all hear it. I don't like showing a lot of Trump clips, but there's some stuff you just gotta hear. So, you know, I'm not blowing smoke here. Place this clip.
- [63:51]
D
I'm talking to General El CC tomorrow sometime, I believe. And I'd like Egypt to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people. I could. I mean, you're talking about probably a million and a half people. And we just clean out that whole thing. It's, you know, it's over the centuries that's had many, many conflicts. That's like, and I don't know, it's. So something has to happen, but.
- [64:20]
Ben Meiselas
Clean.
- [64:20]
Brett Meiselas
Out that whole thing. I think using the language of ethnic cleansing is probably a massive red flag. But folks, that red flag was there before. And every time Vice President Kamala Harris was out there saying, look, we need to make sure we give all of the aid to Gaza. We need to make sure we do whatever we can. We want a two state solution. You know, all, all I heard from a lot of people were, they're just the same. They're, they're really just the same. And let's face it, they, they were not the same. I'll leave it at that. Let's show you this. This is from Doral in Florida. This is Trump's resort where he now has all of the Republicans kiss the ring, put on knee pads and show up to his hotel, pay his hotel. And here, Donald Trump announces he's putting tariffs on semiconductor. So that'll, I'm sure I'm being sarcastic here. That's going to be great for all of these American tech companies. They're the ones who are going to have to pay this massive tax now. And whether Trump implements it or not, this is going to rock the markets here. Play this club.
- [65:26]
D
Plans put together. In particular, in the very near future, we're going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductor and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States of America. They left us and they went to Taiwan, where, which is about 98% of the chip business, by the way. And we want them to come back and we don't want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has. Give everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars. They've got nothing but money, Joe. They didn't need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is going to be they're not going to want to pay at 25, 50 or even 100% tax. They're going to build their factory with their own money. We don't have to give them money. They're going to come in because it's good for them to come in. They're giving them money. They don't even know what they're going to do with it. I had people tell me, we have no idea. We didn't need money. They don't know.
- [66:21]
Brett Meiselas
Okay, so now he's attacking the Chips act, where President Biden is giving $55 billion for people to move the semiconductor industry back to the United States so the United States can lead the industry. Because even though Taiwan is our ally, we realized during Donald Trump's mishandling of COVID that if you have the semiconductor industry overseas and supply chains break and you don't have the semiconductor industry here, you literally can't transport the materials that are needed, the literal chips, and the infrastructure you need to build it here in case something happens. And so Taiwan is our ally. So if you're now going to tariff Taiwan, at what point does Taiwan just say, we're going with China? I mean, at what point do they say, you broke us like, like you were supposed to be our ally? You're not. You're now screwing. You're going to impose more tariffs on Taiwan than you are on China because Trump has some weird fetish for Xi Jinping. I mean, just, just think about the. The reckless words spewing out of this idiot's mouth.
- [67:48]
Ben Meiselas
And I want to remind everybody, too, that the CHIPS act is, like, one of the most successful pieces of legislation from the Biden administration that people now from both parties acknowledge that is a very good piece of legislation. The CHIPS act is what. Remember, Mike Johnson was asked by a reporter, I believe he was in Buffalo. It was a r. It was a Syracuse reporter who asked. Who asked Mike Johnson about the CHIPS act. And he said that he was going to get rid of it and immediately got a whole ton of backlash right away. Why? Because a lot of these factories that are building these chips are in Republican districts, Republican states. And so Mike Johnson got. Got massive backlash. He very quickly came out with a statement saying, you know, pathetic Mike Johnson, typical empty vessel, soulless, tiny man saying, oh, I didn't. I guess I didn't hear the question.
- [68:38]
Brett Meiselas
When it was asked.
- [68:39]
Ben Meiselas
I didn't mean that I. I didn't hear the question. Classic Mike Johnson move. But he needed to back away from that line because the CHIPS act is popular. It's helpful. It's bring tons of jobs to the United States and especially in Republican areas. You know, and Trump's strategy here is just, it's just, it's so dumb. It's one of the reasons why we're already seeing the US Use the lose the AI race so quickly into his administration. And as he does actions like this, the US Only going to fall further and further and further behind. And those broligarchs, as you call them, Ben, these tech prologar who are sucking up to Donald Trump and are spending all their time rather than focused on their companies, but hanging around Mar a Lago with Donald Trump, they were taking their eye off the ball while all these other countries overseas are completely dominating us with China being leading the pack.
- [69:30]
Brett Meiselas
I'll show you just a few more of these super quickly. Donald Trump referring to his bloody mass deportations as. Have you ever seen the movie Con Air? Well, I'll just, I'll let you hear it for yourself. Play it.
- [69:45]
D
How would you like to be the pilot of a plane? You got two pilots up there and you got 300 people sitting in a plane. Every one of them either a murderer, a drug lord, a kingpin of some kind ahead of the mob or a gang member. And you're flying that plane. It's not going to end well. You ever see the movie Con Air? That's what. Yeah, except here's the difference. The people in Conair were actors. They weren't nearly as tough as these guys. I would say that that plane would be gone before it ever, ever left. Those pilots would be gone before it ever left. So they don't want us to shackle them. I don't want.
- [70:22]
Brett Meiselas
Look, these deportations were happening so much so under the Biden administration that Biden had less border crossings than Trump did, right around the same that Trump did in April of 2020 during COVID These types of deportations, though, were happening via plane before on commercial flights or less expensive military planes. I think the cost for some of these planes is like close $852,000 for Trump's, you know, trying to show in these kind of propaganda images, it's costing us like literally millions of dollars to send 80 people. And when you speak about who they're targeting for these mass deportations, look, everybody agrees criminals, terrorists should be deported. It. That's always been the policy. That's, that's, it's never been. Let's bring the criminals and the terrorists here. That's not what it is. By the way, Americans commit crimes at a higher rate than migrants, like at a significant higher rate. Right. The issue here is you've Got Donald Trump and Tom Homan and his whole crew, they're out there targeting, like, elementary schools. And then when they're asked, okay, well, why elementary school schools? You know, you got Tom Homan saying, well, there's MS.13 in the elementary schools. And I'm not suggesting that that may never be the case. I don't know. But what I am suggesting is they are specifically doing work site raids right now. They're at shopping centers. They're at, you know, locations where migrants hang out, and they're trying to hit quotas. And they're not just targeting the bad guys. Okay. They're targeting anybody who they think doesn't have papers. And one of the things we have to be very vigilant about is this plan that they have, and I want to start talking about it now, where Trump and in his administration is trying to create this deal with the leader from El Salvador. And El Salvador has all of these jails and does. He did sky does this relentless propaganda videos where I'm sure he's got a lot of gang members in these jails, and a lot of the people are tattooed and have. And have, you know, tattoos all over them. And they certainly look like bad people. But if you look at these images of El Salvador and these tattoos make.
- [72:48]
Ben Meiselas
You look like bad people, but maybe.
- [72:50]
Brett Meiselas
Well, I'm saying, like, the way the people like the visuals of it with how the, the, with, like the jail guards and the people, the images make it look like, whoa, this must be just all of these bad people here. When you start hearing from people from El Salvador, the story starts to shift a little bit, that sometimes people are taken without their rights and they're thrown in there, and they never know if they're going to get a family member back again. But Trump wants to bring people not from El Salvador and then bring them into the El Salvador jail system. So what if Trump doesn't like you or Trump thinks you look a certain way or whatever, he sends you on a trip to El Salvador.
- [73:32]
Ben Meiselas
Americans, like, not even.
- [73:34]
Brett Meiselas
Yeah.
- [73:34]
Ben Meiselas
Not even illegal immigrants or any, you know, he's talking about sending Americans who are in jails instead of putting them in American jails, deporting them to El Salvador and putting them in these prisons. That's literally what Trump said today in part of the 1. In one of these speeches.
- [73:50]
Brett Meiselas
Yeah. And that plan, we should highlight what that is, how dangerous that is, and kind of outsourcing to these, you know, things that look like concentration camps over there. You know, I think it's. I think it's a big deal. I think it certainly, you know, needs, needs to be discussed. I'll say this as well. You know, you just see weird nepotism stuff as well, Brett. Like Tucker Carlson's son, Buckley. Tucker. It's funny that Tucker sons Tucker Carlson, Buckley. He now is working for J.D. vance. I mean, like these are the people who attack dei, so. So they attack a black four star general who was leading the Defense Department, bringing hegseth with zero experience and you know, now bring in like Tucker Carlson's kid gets a job at the VP's office. I mean, you're gonna see things like this all over, you know, over and over and over again. I don't think. I think people get the clip. There's all these clips of Donald Trump talking about Elvis and the Beatles. And I'm like, Elvis and the Beatles. And Trump saying, you know, on a speech where he's supposed to talk about no tax on tips, you've got Trump saying things like, you know, he does the same story that he would do on the campaign trail. There's a beautiful waitress and she was so beautiful. And I want to call her a beautiful girl, but they say I can't call her beautiful anymore. It's like, dude, just are you going to do the policy or you're not going to do the policy? But notice Trump's pivot with no tax on tips, because that's not really what his focus was on. He doesn't really give a crap about service workers. He cares about their bosses. And as I said during the first Trump administration, Trump's policy was literally no tips. It was that the business owners own the tips of the service worker. So people just paid a little bit attention to what he was doing. They would have figured that out. And I said this whole no tax on tips thing is a tax avoidance scheme so that employers can then claim the tips of their workers. And then people could say, these are my tips. I don't guess I don't have to pay the taxes on it. But notice what he's saying now. He's like, but what if we did just no taxes in general. No taxes. And everything came from Brett. You said it. The fascist wind up doll. Tariffs. Taxes anymore. Why should anybody pay taxes? We can just deal with tariffs because he says America was at its most powerful in 1870. In 1870, he says that's when America was at its most powerful. Look, folks, all this stuff is ridiculous. But I want you to know this. We're not scared. We're not backing down here at The Midas Touch network. We're going to keep reporting. We're building international alliances. You see our reporting in Canada, in Europe, South America, we are building bridges to expose this stuff. And we'll be here every step of the way. We're not scared. We're not backing down. It's why, if you can, check out midasplus.com and again, we'd love for you to become a member, a subscriber. You can subscribe for free and decide ultimately if you want to become a paid subscriber. But the content there is so good. Philip Kowski's daily reviews, to me are the gold standard or the platinum standard out there. Midasplus.com. i mean, look.
- [77:01]
Ben Meiselas
And for those wondering how to sign up, like, when you go to midasplus.com, it'll just say, like, what's your email? You put in your email, you're signed up. And you could see most of what we put on there just right off the bat that including, you know, Ron will paywall his daily recaps, but you could still see a lot of them, even get a taste for them and all that. They're really good. They're honestly, like the best bulletins of, like, if you just want to be like, all right, at the end of the day, you know, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be watching the news all day, but at the end of the day, I just want to catch up on everything that happened. Those bulletins. Nobody does it better than ron on.
- [77:31]
Brett Meiselas
Midasplus.Com by the way, thanks to everybody here, in 48 hours, we're now hitting close to 22 million views or so every 48 hours on this YouTube channel. And that's thanks to you. We have to keep everybody informed. So even if you don't want to subscribe to anything, just do me this favor. After the show, just tell a few people about this network in your life. Just say, hey, have you heard about. Have you heard about these guys? Have you heard about this network? Check it out. Are you a Midas mighty? That's one of the best things you can do to help us, and we would be so grateful for it.
- [78:03]
Ben Meiselas
Ben, you know how I know the views are getting up and going out there? And now this is reaching a lot of people. When MAGA starts targeting us with cyber attacks, that's. That's when I know that this is really reaching a lot of people. That is a true thing that happened. Nicaragua. Read about it on Midasplus.com.
- [78:16]
Brett Meiselas
Something fun.
- [78:16]
Ben Meiselas
We got to deal with over the weekend.
- [78:18]
Brett Meiselas
We'll see everyone. We'll see everybody who wants to be in our meeting@patreon.com Midas Touch. That's where we hold these zoom meetings. So we hope to see people there. We have zero outside investors, so we got to be scrappy. You know, there's no oligarchs. We're 100 independent. So we just got to figure out creative ways to try to grow this independent media platform. So we'll see you there. And Brett, anything else you want to say?
- [78:44]
Ben Meiselas
Can we do tariffs? Does that help us? No.
- [78:47]
Brett Meiselas
Can I tariff? Tariff free? No. You don't have to worry. We're never going to do a Midas meme coin. You don't have to worry about any of that. Okay. Thank you to our mods. They put in a lot of work. I want to just, you know, tell them we appreciate their effort in trying to keep these chat rooms, you know, above board. So thank you to all of them and Midas Mighty. Thank you. I know a lot of this stuff can be overwhelming. I really do. But I want you to know we're in this together. This community's in this together. I know it may seem hard now, but I promise you, it's going to feel so sweet when together we're able to get through this. I want you to think about what we're able to do together as a community and never lose your joy, your compassion, your love. We'll be with you every step of the way. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I want to just again wish you all well. Make sure you subscribe, make sure you turn notifications on shout out to the Midas Mighty. Thank you so much for watching again.
- [80:07]
Jordy Meiselas
Love this video. Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram. It's touch and help US blow past 750,000 followers.
- [80:22]
Brett Meiselas
If you love your phone but not your carrier, just switch to T Mobile. You can keep your phone, keep your number and we'll help pay it off up to $800 per line. You can also use our savings calculator to compare our plans and streaming benefits against Verizon and AT&T. So switch and keep your phone, keep your number and keep more of your moolah. @t mobile.com up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days with device into eligible carrier and timely redemption. Required card has no cash access and.
- [80:51]
Ben Meiselas
Expires in six months.