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Welcome to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Meiselas, and we're talking about breaking news. Let's get into it, folks. It's been a busy day here at the Midas Touch Network. I interviewed Governor Walls in Minnesota. I interviewed Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. I did four other interviews as well with different candidates who are running for office at state and federal levels and have done a lot of, a lot of videos that we've released today. I did an interview before, actually with tmz, of all places, where they were asking me about my view of the Department of Homeland Security sending ICE agents to the Super Bowl. And while it's not a typical audience I would speak in front of, to be blunt, I think it's important, especially right now, to break through some other potential echo chambers where you're seeing that Americans, whether you're Democrat, Republican, or Independent, are not supporting what Donald Trump is doing on mostly all issues at this point. A new Reuters Ipsos poll shows that Donald Trump's overall approval is absolutely in the gutter right now. It's like at historic lows. Donald Trump's overall approval is at 38%. Trump's approval on immigration, which is supposed to be his strongest issue, which I never thought was the case, and I always found it ridiculous when people like Republicans, it's immigration and the economy. I'm like, they're the worst I on these issues. But Donald Trump's immigration approval now falls to a record low of 39%. And by far a majority of Americans are saying that Donald Trump's ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo are going way too far. I thought it was important that I deliver that message there. But most importantly, I want to keep delivering the message here to the Midas Mighty and we'll keep growing this channel together. In addition to doing all of the interviews we did today. Just a reminder, we've been expanding our Washington D.C. bureau. I've heard that since the Midas Touch Washington D.C. bureau launched, where we are making sure that Democratic Congress members are showing up to vote on these important issues. There's been like 100% attendance right now on the House since we built our Washington D.C. bureau because our reporters have been saying who's voting and who's not voting on these existential issues. And Pablo Manriquez and his team on Capitol Hill working for the Midas Touch DC Bureau have done incredible work there. Shout out to them. We have reporters in Nuke, Greenland right now. Ken Harba and his team are out in Nuke getting and we Posted that to our sub stack, getting you exclusive coverage and firsthand responses from people in Greenland about what's actually going on there. And we have an on the ground team through our partnership with Status Coup News in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and they've been reporting on the ground there, streaming here on the Midas Touch YouTube channel. And so as this network has continued to grow in 2026, we've been building out all of these pieces. Thanks to all of your support and I'm proud of the expansion of our team and I hope you feel that we are doing justice right now for you. Katie Fang is also in Minneapolis right now doing on the ground reporting with the Midas Touch Network. So shout out to Katie Fang as well. And then we get to do things here like linking Katie Fang with Status Coup or we find out that a Congress member like Rona is going to be in there in Minneapolis. We could link him with Status Coup and get you lots of different perspectives by making all of these connections. So, anyway, I wanted to put that out at the top. Let's get into breaking news. The new show is called Ben on Breaking News, although I may have just made that up, that that's the title, but I'm going to run with it. Ben on Breaking News. Donald Trump's in Iowa right now and he's holding a rally there. Why is he holding a rally in Iowa? He's going to be talking about how great he thinks things are for Iowa farmers, how great he thinks the economy is doing for people in Iowa, how much better their health care is. And unless you are completely delusional or you are in a cult, which I'm sure there's going to be people there, all of those things aren't happening in Iowa and they're not happening in the rest of the country right now. So that's why Donald Trump's in Iowa. He's been doing these bizarre rallies at like, small casinos. Right? He did one in Pennsylvania at a casino there. I think it was the Mount Airy casino. He did one at like a really small venue in North Carolina. Low energy speeches. He makes the weird noises. My health is great. Cognitive exams. Greenland, Greenland, Canada, you know, it's, it's usually that crap. No, but the American people are sick and tired of it. And the American people are sick and tired of Trump's ice and Border Patrol Gestapo. I mean, the very fact that I was being asked about whether I thought ice was going to be inside the stadium during the super bowl or outside the stadium terrorizing people, the fact that that's even a question I pointed out when I was being interviewed. Doesn't that tell you everything? All of our constitutional rights are being trampled on by this regime, every one of them. And, and the ones that the Magas claim they cared about the most. Oh, I'm a First Amendment absolutist. I'm for free speech. Okay, well, there are people protesting and saying, ice, get out of Minneapolis. Whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that with the MAGA Republicans. Like where Second Amendment absolutist, that right will not be infringed. The right to bear arms. Hey, MAGA question for you. In the second Amendment it says well regulated militias. So should there be any regulations like, I don't know, not having AR15s near schools to maybe stop school shootings or maybe enhance background checks to make it more difficult for maniacs to get their hands on weapons, especially those inclined to engage in school shooting? No, the Second amendment lets us do anything we want. Just watch us. And then like the MAGA cult members march into the Michigan Capitol building over the past years, remember? And they'd have their ars out and they go, look how tough we are. Second Amendment. Yeah. Okay, well, Alex Pretty was someone who supported the Second Amendment. He had a lawful permit to have a concealed carry handgun which was properly concealed where it was allowed to be, by the way. I believe in Minnesota it doesn't even have to be concealed. But he had the permit to conceal carry the weapon. The gun was removed from the holster by Trump's Border patrol Gestapo. They bludgeoned him. They basically pistol whipped him, they pepper sprayed him because he was helping out a female protester and then they executed him. And then they said he shouldn't have brought a gun, he shouldn't have concealed carry. The fact that he carried a gun showed even though it was concealed carry and he had a permit and he didn't brandish it, he's a domestic terrorist. Terrorist. He was there to massacre the border patrol in ice. Gestapo. This was a massacre we avoided. That's not what happened. That's not what happened at all. And if there was any way to actually read the Second Amendment of how it's supposed to be carried out, it's the way Alex Pretty was someone who was following the Second Amendment. And I haven't really heard any politicians speak so negatively about the Second Amendment as these MAGAs. Right. I've never heard Democrats say. Could you imagine if Democrats were saying any of these things that the magazine, he shouldn't have had a gun. He's not allowed to have guns. Could you, could you imagine? And that's the thing. We'll cover all of this on the Midas Touch show today on Ben on breaking news. But you can't actually have logical debates and discussions with these MAGA people. They're not engaged in good faith in logic. And so if you're trying to in good faith understand positions, these MAGAs are just shape shifters. Or another way to say it is they're just liars. They're liars. They just make things up in order to hoist up an authoritarian regime that terrorizes people and sucks up the wealth and hands it over to Trump, Trump's family and right wing oligarchs. That's what all of this is about. Stealing your money, ruining your life. You know how like in the super villain movies, the super villain often like sucks up all of the energy so that they can have it all for themselves, right? That's kind of the plot of a lot of the movies with the bad, bad guys in superhero movies. That's what, that's all it is. It's, it's taking away all of your resources because it's never enough for these people. It's not enough that Jeff Bezos is worth $500 billion. He wants to be the first trillionaire. It's not enough for them. And so Jeff Bezos now funds Melania Trump's movie, gives her $40 million for a movie that nobody wants to see. The Melania movie, if you look at the theaters that it's in right now across the country. Because not only did Bezos give Melania $40 million, but he's also doing a marketing, promotional and theatrical release for another 30 to 40 million dollars. So he's like 80 million dollars in on this. The theaters are having this Melania movie there. It's like one seat per theater or three seats per theater. Nobody wants to watch this movie. We've been following this and tracking this on the Midas Touch network. And it's often somebody who buys the seat like in an exit row. And I swear the people who are buying the seats are just doing it like probably to mock the whole thing and to take a photo that it's. That it's empty. But, you know, but who the hell knows? But Bezos is doing that, right? You have Melania making posts about the party in the White House that she had over the weekend while American citizens are being murdered, while people in this country are being sent to concentration camps and made to dress like they're in the freaking Squid games. You all see this? This is in the Delhi Detention center in Texas. They dress the people up, the migrants up. And who knows if there are citizens there in like squid game outfits in the most horrific conditions where what, seven to nine people have already died in detention centers in addition to the killings of people like Renee, Nicole Good and Alex Pretty. You've had all of these deaths at the detention center. Last year it was over 30. It may even be more than then the Trump Gestapo lies about it. They're like, someone died by suicide and then you have to wait to the autopsy. Like, no, somebody strangled them, it seems like. And Ice Gestapo strangled the person. And I mean, you had these individuals who were at these, at these migrant detention centers, concentration camps, screaming at that one in Texas. And we've seen this in other places. Help us. Help us. Get us out of here. Help us. There's some drone footage above capture that. Please save us. I mean, that's what's happening in the United States of America right now. But Melania is out there with Tim Cook and all these people out there, you know, these right wing oligarchs at the White House debuting the Melania movie while Americans are suffering, while Americans are being psychologically tortured, living paycheck to paycheck if they're lucky enough to have a PayCheck, while their CEOs are making 10,000x what they are making and they can do an honest day's work, but they can't afford a home. You can't afford health care, you can't afford education, you can't afford groceries. That's if you're getting a paycheck. Because also we know that long term jobless rates are basically at all time highs in modern history right now. We know that the dollar is absolutely tanking right now. Although Donald Trump's like, the dollar's doing great, the dollar's doing horrible right now. And I'll tell you, go back and look at the interview I did with Professor Justin Wolfers over at the University of Michigan. He's an economics professor and he's like the long term damage of what Trump has done with the United States, which used to be the envy of the world in terms of its economy, a place where other countries viewed was a stable place to bring money into. Just look at what's happening right now. And as Professor Wolfers points out, we won't even know the future Googles or the future apples or the future entrepreneurs who could build big corporations and big companies and make big, big differences here, who aren't going to come here anymore. The inventors, the scientists, the doctors, all, not just monetary wealth, intellectual knowledge, science all being destroyed. And that's going to fall on future generations. And Professor Wolfer said, ben, there's a message that we can get out here is don't even focus on the next quarter, because really, Trump's trying to manipulate the next. He goes, focus on what's happening on a systemic basis. Because we see it. If we open up our eyes, we see a shifting of the global order, whether it's Canada with Trans Pacific partnerships now with China and its transatlantic relationships with the eu. The EU announcing what Ursula von der Leyen, who's the president of the European Union Commission, calls the mother of all trade deals with India. Right? Donald Trump attacked India. Donald Trump attacks EU, EU, India, create a free trade zone which was 20 years in the making. That they said, all right, we got to do this. EU making trade deals with South America. We're seeing all of this form right now as a result of Donald Trump selling out our allies. Donald Trump sucking up to Putin. He's a Putin bootlicker. Donald Trump wakes up a few days ago and he's like, okay, 100% tariffs on Canada. Today we're doing that. It's 100% tariffs on Canada Day, which would be a massive story, other than the fact that then the Trump regime murders Alex Pretty. And so that becomes a big focus. And then you have Donald Trump and people like Scott Besant and other sycophants in the Trump cabinet once again lie and once again say, oh, we spoke with Prime Minister Carney and he apologized to Donald Trump. Prime Minister Carney said that he's so sorry, Donald, for what he said in Davos. He didn't mean any of those things. And that's what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said, to which Prime Minister Carney basically laughed at that and said, I didn't walk back any of my statements when I talked to Donald Trump. I said word for word. Let me be absolutely clear, Donald. I meant every word I said in Davos is what Carney told the cbc. Now, who do you believe, Prime Minister Carney or Donald Trump? Obviously, Prime Minister Carney. It's not even close. Right? We all know Donald Trump's lying. But let me give you another one. Who do you believe? Xi Jinping or Donald Trump? Who do you think is more truthful? Xi Jinping or Donald Trump? Can you believe that we've gotten to a place in American history right now where most people would answer that question? I believe Xi Jinping more than Donald Trump. Absolutely. You know, that's wild that in the United States, the words, the words of Donald Trump do not matter at all. So let me show you what's happening in Iowa right now. Here's what's going on. A reporter asked Donald, do you agree with the assessment from some of your own officials that Alex Pretty is a domestic terrorist? Let's play this clip.
