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Ben Meiselas
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Michael Popok
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Ben Meiselas
In normal times, impeachment would be the worst of the worries of a vile and pathetic president who engaged in the behavior that is happening in our plain view. The felon, the fraud, the sexual abuser. Donald Trump is bragging on social media about getting a $400 million gift from Cutter in the form of a 747 jet with gold plated walls, gold plated toilets, gold plated beds. Not just for Donald Trump to now use as Air Force One. Can we say massive security threat and massive security breach? Oh yeah. As part of this gift, Donald Trump gets to keep the 747 after he leaves office as part of his hypothetical presidential library. So just a $400 million at least. I think that's understating. A gift from Cutter to directly to Donald Trump to use as Air Force One. Are you kidding me? If that doesn't make you well, then Donald Trump goes around and says we fixed inflation. Everything is great. Prices are so much lower. Aren't you rich now? Don't you feel great again? No Donald, you're a scammer, you're a Ponzi schemer. And what you're doing with your trade war against the world, reckless and careless, going around and disparaging the United States is reputation across the world while enriching yourself is obvious for all to see. Take a look. Donald Trump's posting about it. Here was his post last night. So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift free of charge of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One temporarily in a very public and transparent transaction. So bothers the crooked Democrats that they insist we pay top dollar for the plane. Anybody can do that. The Dems are world class losers. Maga. As our editor in chief Ron Philip Kowski writes, Trump's quote, very public and transparent transaction on the Cutter jet grift only came to light after confidential sources told ABC and others about it. So Donald Trump then needs to distract from the fact that he's done another deal to enrich himself. And by the way, we could get into it as well. In addition to the $400 million plane, Donald Trump is building resorts in Qatar. Donald Trump is building resorts in Oman paid for by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund using $2 billion of Trump crypto. Donald Trump Jr. Creating a club called the Executive Branch, which costs $500,000 to join, which Don Jr. Leads with the quote, unquote, crypto czar, a guy named David Sachs, and they throw parties at five star hotels for access. With all of that going on, how's Trump going to distract? Well, his next one is claiming that he is lowering prescription drug prices by 30% to 80% based on price controls that he is unilaterally implementing. So here's what went down yesterday. First, he posts the following. My next truth will be one of the most important and impactful I have ever issued. Enjoy. Exclamation point. And by the way, we should not ever neglect how Orwellian is to call his lies truths. I just want to point it out there. And then he sends this big blob of a paragraph. I'll go through some of it, which he basically says that he's going to implement something called an M, F N, a most favored nations clause against pharmaceutical companies. He says that if a pharmaceutical company is selling a drug at a price that is lower than in the United States, that pharmaceutical company has to do that not just abroad, but also in the United States. Now, in theory, that is great. In practicality, Donald Trump said he was going to do that in 2020, but did not do that. And rather than addressing, I think the systemic issue first of making sure there is access to health care, ensuring universal health care, that everybody gets the best health care, what I see is this is another gimmick where Donald Trump, via an unlawful executive order is going to do more Ponzi scheme, more, more rug pulling where his people believe, oh my God, if I just wait a little longer, 30% to 80% off my prescription drug prices, that's going to be incredible. I think that would be incredible. Like, let's be real. I think that Trump is a vile fraud, felon, sexual predator. He is all of those things. If he got 30% to 80% reductions in prescription drug prices and health care costs, I would celebrate that. That would incredible and a massive accomplishment. But what Trump is doing with price controls via an executive order is he's dangling hope and carrots in front of his base. That's never going to actually occur, but they think it is. And then he's just going to drag it out, drag it out and blame others for not achieving it. So let me just show you what it is that he posted. He goes. For many years, the world has wondered why prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals in the United States of America were so much higher in price than they were in other nations. I agree with that sometimes being five to ten times more expensive than the same drug manufactured in the exact same laboratory or plant by the same company. I agree that's insane. It was always difficult to explain and very embarrassing because in fact there was no correct or rightful answer. So stipulated. I agree, but pause there. Then why did all of these MAGA groups and right wing groups sue former President Biden when he tried to implement policies to reduce prescription drug prices? Why did your people, your MAGA Republican leaders block this stuff from being implemented if you're being genuine? But go on. He goes on to talk about how, he goes, how he's gonna implement these price controls. He says by implementing a most favored nations clause. He says, and he goes, prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 30% to 80%. They will rise throughout the world in order to equalize n for the time bring fairness to America. I will be instituting a most favored nation's policy. By the way, do I think that if you can reduce prescription drug prices and make them lower in America than they are in the rest of the country, it would be great. The MAGA Republicans are the people who say that they're against price controls. All of this stuff is price controls. My view is if you want to repair our health care system, you have universal coverage. You make health care a human right. You make it accessible and affordable. The reason why health care costs are cheaper in the rest of the world is because mostly all other countries other than the United States have a form of universal health care where the prices are low because the government negotiates with the healthcare providers. If you want to enter the market, you have to pay, you have to make your drugs cheaper. That's what, let me be very clear. That's what President Biden did to have a have the government negotiate down Medicare prices. He wanted to do that across the system and the Trumpers voted against it. It's why I know this is a gimmick. And it's just one of those things where he goes, I'm going to try to do it 80%. And what's the timing of this? The timing of this is the cutter jet. So Trump wants to distract from his $400 million jet. Look what I'm doing, I'm going to get you 80% off. And the problem is it's not true. And people are going to hold out hope and it ain't going to happen, although I hope it happens. Let's talk about this other, I think big piece of news from the weekend, although I think it is important that we always have to look at what the details are with everything and then we have to also ask what is the policy behind it. So there were two days of negotiations between the United States and China over the 145% tariffs that the United States imposed on China. And America imposed tariffs on the rest of the world as well. After day two, the United States issued kind of two different statements. One from Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who said substantial progress was made. Then the United States Trade Representative, Jameson Greer, said that there was actually an agreement reach. Separately, China's Commerce Department and their lead negotiator in China described that there was some consensus that was formed to lead to other, to lead to other talks. We'll see what develops today. But here's my overall question, right? The Trump regime says that tariffs are amazing, that they're incredible, that everybody's going to get rich. That's why over the past, you know, whatever, since that liquidation or Great Recession Day, which Trump calls Liberation Day, he said that solves everything. We get rich. So I'm just trying to be logical here. If tariffs are great and makes everybody rich and everything's amazing, then why would they be negotiating in Switzerland to remove the tariffs? And why is the media referring to this as a deal when it is simply Donald Trump removing either all or some or pausing the problem that he created? We need to speak accurately on these events and stop acting like these are some five dimensional chess deals. When it's Trump as the arsonist creating the fire, everybody recognizes it's a fire. He puts out some of his own fire. That's not a deal. It's not a comprehensive trade policy at all. And if you want to just take a look, for example, at what the S and P looks like over the past year or so, you'll see that it is still trading down, still overall with all of this. That's not what winning looks like. Okay, and if we remove and pause the tariffs, what was the point of doing all of this? Stopping the ships, stopping containers from getting here, causing longshoremen jobs and truckers jobs. Americans suffered because of this. Americans are suffering because of this. Inflation is not going down. Inflation is going up. The economy's not doing good. The economy contracted in the first quarter. What was this for? Oh, lots of market manipulation so the rich can get richer and the rest of Americans can get screwed over in this chaos. And amongst all the chaos, Trump and his oligarchs can feast and exploit we the people, as I've said before, keep this simple. If setting aside, if you're a Democrat, an independent, whatever, keep it simple. Okay? Americans are getting screwed over by deca millionaires and oligarchs and people who want to hoard their wealth. If you are working a job, you should be paid with dignity. You should be able to afford a home and you should not be worried that you're going to get kicked out, that you can pay your rent. To me, that's what we should be focusing on rather than gimmicks of. I'm issuing an executive order on healthcare. We should make sure every American has healthcare, that healthcare is cheap. When it comes to education, education should be a right. Every American should get top notch education. Not see a Trump regime cut education and cut libraries and cut universities and cut things that really matter to help people. I'm not okay with that. And we should feel safe when we get on an airplane. We should feel safe in our country. We shouldn't have to hear stories like this. Breaking a new air traffic control equipment outage was at Newark again. FAA advisory show the ground stop lasted for about 45 minutes. This comes after a 90 second long radar and radio outages on May 9th and April 28th. And I don't want to see a public servant. That's what a president is, a public servant. The word is servant in there. Serve the people. That's your priority. Doing deals with country after country. The Trump branded projects have 20 open or in progress deals with various countries across the world to enrich Donald Trump. Donald Trump and his family got over $4 billion richer over the past 100 days. Meanwhile, they've destroyed the lives of veterans, they've destroyed the lives of hardworking Americans. They've ripped apart our government. And now we have to wait till what, hurricane season and then find out that FEMA's understaffed. We have to see other natural disasters take place only for the Trump regime to deny emergency relief like we saw in red states and blue states. We're going to have to see a budget prepared where Medicaid gets cut and people can't access healthcare. But I'm glad that I'm being sarcastic here. That Donald Trump gets a golden 747 airplane paid for by cutter. Okay, we're going to have to what? In a normal times you would have to rip that plane apart, check for bugs. Do you think they're going to do that? No. Because Donald Trump doesn't even think it's a big deal when his Department of Defense head secretary of the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth is having conversations about classified information on signal, and they don't think that's a problem. And there's at least 20 other communications like that taking place that we know of while Predator drones are getting shot down over Yemen while two F18s were lost in the Red Sea. That's the status here. Let's keep this conversation simple. And that's what we try to do here at the Midas Touch Network each and every day. Thank you so much for watching. 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Summary of "Trump Freaks Out Bad as Massive Bribes Surface" The MeidasTouch Podcast – May 12, 2025
Introduction
In the episode titled "Trump Freaks Out Bad as Massive Bribes Surface," the Meiselas brothers—Ben, Brett, and Jordy—delve into recent allegations and controversies surrounding former President Donald Trump. The discussion is led primarily by Ben Meiselas, who provides a critical analysis of Trump's actions and their implications for American democracy.
Massive Bribes and the $400 Million Cutter Jet
Ben opens the conversation by addressing the alarming news of Donald Trump boasting on social media about receiving a $400 million gift from Cutter—a private entity. This gift includes a 747 jet adorned with luxury features such as gold-plated walls, toilets, and beds. Ben criticizes Trump’s flaunting of this gift, highlighting the severe security risks it poses.
"Donald Trump is bragging on social media about getting a $400 million gift from Cutter in the form of a 747 jet with gold plated walls, gold plated toilets, gold plated beds." [04:15]
Ben underscores the absurdity and legality of the situation, questioning how such a substantial gift could bypass standard security protocols.
"Can we say massive security threat and massive security breach?" [05:10]
He further points out that Trump plans to retain ownership of the jet as part of his hypothetical presidential library, emphasizing the potential conflicts of interest and misuse of power.
Trump's Personal Enrichment and Conflict of Interest
The discussion shifts to Trump's extensive business dealings, including the construction of resorts in Qatar and Oman, funded by sovereign wealth funds and utilizing Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures. Ben argues that these activities are clear indicators of Trump's ongoing efforts to enrich himself and his family at the expense of the American public.
"Donald Trump and his family got over $4 billion richer over the past 100 days." [16:45]
He also criticizes the creation of exclusive clubs like the "Executive Branch," led by Trump Jr., which require hefty membership fees, further illustrating the perpetuation of wealth within Trump's inner circle.
Prescription Drug Price Controls: A Diverting Gimmick
Ben scrutinizes Trump's recent claims of lowering prescription drug prices through the implementation of a "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) clause. He expresses skepticism about the feasibility and sincerity of these promises, labeling them as mere distractions from Trump's financial misconduct.
"Trump is dangling hope and carrots in front of his base. That's never going to actually occur, but they think it is." [12:30]
Ben acknowledges the high costs of prescription drugs in the U.S. and agrees with the necessity of lowering these prices. However, he criticizes Trump's approach as an unlawful executive order that lacks a sustainable framework.
"If you want to repair our health care system, you have universal coverage. You make health care a human right." [14:20]
He contrasts this with Trump's "gimmick," suggesting that genuine healthcare reform requires comprehensive policy changes rather than superficial measures.
US-China Trade Negotiations and Economic Impact
The episode proceeds to discuss the recent developments in US-China trade negotiations. After imposing 145% tariffs on China and the rest of the world, the United States is now engaging in talks to ease these restrictions. Ben questions the efficacy and true intent behind these negotiations.
"If tariffs are great and make everybody rich and everything's amazing, then why would they be negotiating to remove the tariffs?" [19:05]
He argues that the initial tariffs were detrimental to the American economy, hurting industries and workers, and that the ongoing negotiations suggest a lack of confidence in Trump's trade policies.
"Americans are suffering because of this. Inflation is not going down. Inflation is going up." [21:40]
Ben also critiques the media's portrayal of these negotiations as significant deals, asserting that they are merely attempts by Trump to mitigate the fallout of his aggressive trade strategies.
Economic Decline and Governance Failures
Ben provides a broader critique of Trump's administration, linking his policies to the nation's economic struggles. He highlights the decline in the S&P index, rising inflation, and a contracting economy as direct consequences of Trump's decisions.
"The economy contracted in the first quarter. What was this for? Lots of market manipulation so the rich can get richer and the rest of Americans can get screwed over in this chaos." [23:50]
He emphasizes the detrimental effects on ordinary Americans, who face job insecurity, unaffordable housing, and inadequate healthcare, all while Trump and his associates amass personal wealth.
Security Concerns and Public Safety
The conversation also touches on recent security lapses, such as air traffic control outages at Newark Airport. Ben uses these incidents to illustrate the broader negligence and incompetence within Trump’s administration.
"We have to feel safe when we get on an airplane. We should feel safe in our country." [27:30]
He criticizes the lack of accountability and the prevalence of classified information mishandling, which he believes endangers national security.
Conclusion and Call to Action
Ben concludes the episode by reiterating the need for accountability and systemic reforms. He urges listeners to focus on substantive issues like universal healthcare, quality education, and economic fairness rather than being distracted by Trump's superficial promises.
"If you are working a job, you should be paid with dignity. You should be able to afford a home and you should not be worried that you're going to get kicked out." [29:15]
He calls for a collective effort to prioritize policies that genuinely benefit the American populace and safeguard democracy.
Final Thoughts
Throughout the episode, Ben Meiselas provides a passionate and critical examination of Donald Trump's actions post-presidency. While he acknowledges certain issues affecting Americans, he firmly attributes these challenges to Trump's policies and personal enrichment efforts. The discussion is marked by a strong stance in favor of democracy, economic fairness, and accountability in governance.
Note: The views expressed in this summary reflect the content and opinions presented by Ben Meiselas on the MeidasTouch Podcast and do not represent an objective assessment of the events discussed.