MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 10/2/26

19:16Jordy Meiselas:And so there's just some issue right there. That's kind of actually what was happening under the Biden administration. There was actually not, I'm not saying anything was perfect. There was certainly high inflation and all the things that really happened under the Biden administration, most of them were caused by these external factors like Russia invading Ukraine, by the supply shocks as a result of Trump's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of external factors that President Biden had to deal with at the time. And the media treated every little thing that happened under the Biden administration as a hair on fire moment, as this is it, this is a catastrophe.

19:53Jordy Meiselas:And so, you know, ironically, what Trump is describing is much more apt for like a Biden to complain about than for him to complain about. If anything, Donald Trump just has it too easy right now. People are going too easy on him with all the corruption and they want to try to normalize this behavior and pretend like it's normal and pretend like he's not an authoritarian who is actively subverting the constitution and taking over our institutions and everything that he's doing. And I think that is an absolute disgrace. I think it needs to continue to be called out. It's not a messaging issue. It's a Donald Trump issue.

20:29Jordy Meiselas:It's a corruption issue. And it's a corruption issue where you have Donald Trump, of course, at the top of it here. And then you have all of the people around Donald Trump, the employees around him who are enabling this. And then you have the kind of corporate structure of the United States when you see those CEOs going to the White House and fawning over Donald Trump and going, oh, you said SI, sir. Yes, it's SI. Oh, sorry, I should have said that. It's like, dude, what the heck are you doing? Can you grow a goddamn spine? You're a billionaire. I always thought when you became a billionaire, that was supposed to imbue some sort of sense of you have F you money, as you call it, and you don't have to be a marionette for somebody like a Donald Trump.

21:11Jordy Meiselas:You could do your own thing. But these people are just absolutely pathetic everywhere you look.

21:17Brett Meiselas:It's because one yacht is not enough for these CEOs, Brad. They need seven yachts. They need 14 yachts. So they have to keep Donnie happy, man. They have to keep him happy so they won't go after them. They won't look into his company. A lot to unpack here. I want to start off with vegan. Can I tell you what's happening there? He's trying to say vegan, obviously. Yes, well, yes. So he's reading from a teleprompter. He can't read, right? So he doesn't know the word vegan. So what's happening is they have it spelled out phonetically. This is what I'm guessing here. And when you spell it out phonetically, it's V-E-E.

21:49Brett Meiselas:And that's how he's getting vague. Like that's why he's saying he has no idea what he's saying in this moment. His closing argument to win Texas is that Tallarico is a vague gun, like something that not even a word. This is truly an utter, like we haven't seen just a level of incompetency at this level of - Sure, Ken Paxton is an actual criminal.

22:09Jordy Meiselas:Sure, he's somebody who is a serial philanderer whose own wife divorced him on biblical grounds. Sure, He misused his office in one of the biggest corruption scandals in Texas. But did you know that James Tallarico throws up his meat?

22:26Brett Meiselas:That's the other thing. He's also calling him bulimic. I just don't understand where this is appealing to and how this is truly the closing message. Other than maybe he just really doesn't want Paxton to win. But I'm not theorizing that. But I'm just saying he's called the guy ugly. He said, like, you hate the guy, but you got to vote for him. It is the worst campaigner that you could be or have on your side. Now I want to go to the 1929 thing. So Donald Trump is the president right now. Yes. He's also going to be the president two years from now. Unfortunately, that's just how it works, right?

23:01Brett Meiselas:Everyone gets four years, right? That's it. So Donald Trump is already sort of putting into the world that under his presidency, like we're going to live through this great depression. Should the Democrats win in November? Should they like regain the house during the midterms? Tell me like what sense that genuinely makes when you as the president, when you as the Republican party have controlled all three branches of government and in theory could have put the necessary precautions in place if you were truly scared of the scary Democrats coming into office. I don't know, it's maybe hopefully hold y 'all accountable from the MAGA grift that y 'all are doing from the$3 billion Donnie that you and your family have grifted since you've been in office this time around.

23:42Brett Meiselas:yet the thing is and the fear is oh democrats take power over the midterms now now i'm going to run on this campaign that the economy is so bad because of the democrats i my agenda was going to be fulfilled everything was going so swimmingly now i'm going to spend the next two years campaigning for my third term or whomever the next republican candidate is going to be saying the democrats ruined the golden age look around affordability is terrible and it's all the Democrats' fault. Again, Ben, to your point exactly, he's the arsonist trying to put out a fire, but he's not even putting it out. He's actually making more fire just for the sake of campaigning on it.

24:20Brett Meiselas:He's using the midterms as essentially how he would use a tax loss harvesting strategy for one of his companies that was going under so he could avoid paying taxes. He's trying to do that for his presidency saying, oh, don't blame me for this. It's all the Democrats' fault. Let's write that off and blame the Democrats as we go forward so I could win again in 2028. Just keep it going.

24:42Jordy Meiselas:He's like a Ponzi schemer. And so his only move is scapegoating and he always needs to find the next scapegoat. And he scapegoats one Ponzi scheme with the next Ponzi scheme with the next Ponzi scheme. So you have a liberation day, right? Then you have, you have Iran war. You have blame the Democrats. You just keep stacking all these things up to blame so that, hey, it's not me. I'm not the reason for all of it. It's the media. It's this person. It's that person. It's not Donald Trump.

25:14Ben Meiselas:And look, it's the biggest cell phone, which is why I always talk about leadership beyond really even ever talking about the day to day politics of this person and that person. I think it's important, Brett, we point out what an absolute, awful, vile piece of crap Ken Paxton is and how I actually believe that James Tallarico is an honorable person. I think that's important. I also think it's important that we ask a broader question about how are Americans doing right now? How are people in Texas doing right now? Because even if you took away all of those horrible personal attributes of Paxton, and And even if you took away what I think are the great attributes of Tallarico, but if you remove that, the question is, is your life better or worse right now under the Trump regime and under Republican control?

26:12Ben Meiselas:They had the opportunity to show you what they can do. Do you actually like their performance? If your lived experiences, you think it's great. I really need to meet you because most people I speak to and most people other than some of those AI billionaires who are out there at the White House who have made a lot of money under the Trump regime, most Americans are doing significantly worse right now. And that's when I also talk about leadership. Donald Trump, sadly, would still be the captain. You would be the leader of the team, which is what the executive branch is, to take care that laws are faithfully executed.

26:55Ben Meiselas:If Democrats took control of one house or both houses, the House and the Senate, which I think they're going to do. So if you are saying that you as the captain would not be able to steer the country in a direction of prosperity or success, and that by having members of the team who you disagree agree with would send us into a depression. Think about any sports team, the QB, or think about a sports team, a basketball team with the best player. If you can't work with your teammates and you believe that just not having the perfect teammate not only means you won't achieve your best success, but means that you will automatically lose, you're also calling yourself the biggest loser ever, that you can't navigate that situation.

27:46Ben Meiselas:Now, the situation he's creating is a total fabrication and a way to blame others. But I just want to put it in those terms as well, because just even removing the politics, which is hard to do, it's the most loser quality to say things like this. That's not how winners behave. And I hope when we elect people to the highest office, we elect people who are serious, competent, sophisticated, public servants who are then acting at the highest levels to benefit us. Let's never forget that. By the way, it's what we talk about a lot in our book, WTF America, The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy.

28:30Ben Meiselas:And one of the things I've been learning is we probably should have told everybody about the audio book because people are really excited that there's an audio book to it as well and that we're all reading the audio so bet so brett jordy and i we all read a bet we all read the audio together and um and it's not ai it's it's us reading we spent a lot of time doing that and once i said that everybody was really excited so i saw the audio book you know start to you know rise and so it's the same it's the same link by the way that you get the same link you just got there's an ebook and then there's a hardcover as well.

29:04Ben Meiselas:But yes, we all read the audio. And once we told that, why didn't you tell us that to begin with? Anyway, because we were working on it, probably because we were in the studio recording the audio book. All right, we have a lot more show to discuss. I want to talk about what's happening right now in Saudi Arabia. Yanbu is on fire. Abqiyak, other areas seem to have been hit by Ansarallah, the Houthis. Also, we're seeing St. Petersburg in Russia burning. We're seeing the main bridges in Kiev burning. I mean, war is escalating throughout the world right now. Putin's talking about nuclear weapons. If NATO moves on Kalinograd, you're saying NATO saying that Putin's planning hybrid warfare against NATO.

29:47Ben Meiselas:And Donald Trump's out there talking about Tallarico vomiting in his mouth. We'll take our first quick break of the show. We will be right back.

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32:25Brett Meiselas:Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors, y 'all. Thanks to the description of both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes if there's an exit survey of them that we sent you. Benji, right to you next.

32:34Ben Meiselas:By the way, I took a look at the latest polling in Texas as Donald Trump is out there right now. James Tallarico in the latest Fox. Yeah, state regime media, Fox and Beaconshaw poll. Tallarico leads 53 % to 46 % there. I also have been looking around Nebraska and South Dakota and Alaska and, of course, Michigan and Ohio. I've been looking in Maine and I've been looking in Florida. I've been looking in a lot of these states and you're seeing MAGA Republicans just losing ground. I mean, heck, you know, even in Florida, I'm seeing Democratic registration there beating Republican registration.

33:19Jordy Meiselas:I look in that first time last month since 2021 did Democrats surpass. And I'm not going to act like it's a significant amount, but it is significant that Democrats for the first time since 2021 had more voter registrations last month in Florida. You know, it's interesting because we've been speaking about this for months, how Donald Trump is a drag on the Republican Party and how everybody wants to run away from him. But Donald Trump, of course, has felt the need to try to get his stink over as many of these Republican candidates as possible, including Ken Paxton, who was his guy, right? They could have had John Cornyn, who would have been much more palatable to the people of Texas, but instead Donald Trump had to do what he did, and he had to get the corrupt Ken Paxton in because corrupt people stay together, and it's been a disaster for them.

34:07Jordy Meiselas:I think one of the most telling things was that leaked audio that came out on Wednesday where you actually heard Ken Paxton say on tape that Donald Trump was a drag not only on his own candidacy but on all Republicans. And when you look at the actual data, like I was looking at Nate Silver, he has a silver bulletin average of polls. And you could see the line and it goes, you know, kind of steady clip. You see the Democrats percentage increasing and increasing as the midterms approach. Then you hit that midterm convention, which we had said was likely going to be an utter disaster for the Republican Party.

34:43Jordy Meiselas:just a fatal mistake. And we were actually commending the Democrats for not trying to do a kind of rebuttal midterm convention, just let them hang themselves with this one. And sure enough, the day that that midterm convention happens, it goes from just kind of a straight lineup to like a vertical lineup for the Democrats. And remember, that was the night where Donald Trump tried his Hail Mary. I'm going to give$5 ,000 out to the American people. That ended up being so mocked and derided, not only by Democrats, but on all sides of the political spectrum. People looked at that as an act of desperation.

35:19Jordy Meiselas:And it also just reminded folks that this guy is a freaking liar. This guy has been promising me money now for years with the doge checks, with the tariff checks, now with this, and he's not giving me my money. So fool me once, fool me twice. F you, Donald Trump. I ain't falling for this crap. And so it's really just a slap in the face when Donald Trump does it. And a lot of these attacks, these culture war attacks, when they try to put down trans people because they think they could bully marginalized communities for votes, what an absolute disgrace. When they try to attack stupid stuff like veganism, which there's nothing wrong about veganism, shout out to vegans.

36:01Jordy Meiselas:When they do all that stuff, it might work if the economy is actually good or people are feeling comfortable in their lives. When people are suffering, people, they don't have time for that. They don't have time to get in those factional arguments. So what Republicans do and the reason why they always go to this, and it's been before Donald Trump, it's been going back. If you look at, you know, President Bush back in the day when he was running for his second term, very unpopular. They leaned very heavily into gay marriage back then. That was a big thing that they made an issue of that election.

36:35Jordy Meiselas:And so they always do this. They try to latch on to these culture war issues because they know they're failing on the things that actually matter to people and the things that people actually care about, the things that people will rank as their top 5, 10, 15, 20 issues. And they go to the bottom of that list to an issue that they know that they could get clicks on and they know they could rile people up on. And they try to do that. It's their only move. It's been their only move. Donald Trump just does it in the stupidest, most overt way imaginable.

37:05Ben Meiselas:We have to, though, recognize how are people susceptible to it, not just Americans, but people across the world and people historically. How do you have this dynamic where there's these information gaps or poisoned information? and how are people riled up against each other and then against their own interest? And what can we learn from, and I mean this sincerely, what I think is an incredible mayor, the way Zoran Mamdani is running New York City and kind of always in a constant campaign mode of getting out the information of here's how government's actually working for you. Not a day goes by where he's not releasing a video of addressing the potholes to the tennis courts in the Bronx to saying here is what we are doing.

38:07And I think that that is something that

38:10Ben Meiselas:lots of people need to understand that in this information age, it's not enough to just believe that people get it or people are seeing it. You have to make sure that you build a connection with the people you represent, show people you're fighting for them, regardless of what political party they're from, that you are fighting for them, that you stand with them, and that you're willing to take on these other forces that are out there. And so while I see a lot of this news of the vote now shifting very blue, very democratic in the House and the Senate, I think that it's going to be now incumbent upon Democrats if and when they take control of the House and Senate to not squander the moment and to learn and to see what's happening in New York City and gain lessons from it, to see how someone like a Tallarico is inspiring people in Texas, to see the broader dynamic out there and listen to what people are saying, what they're going through.

39:19Ben Meiselas:Why is it that these people even voted for Trump in 2024? I mean, the promises made about electricity prices being cut, no more never-ending wars. And I know he said a bunch of lunatic stuff and he would talk about Hannibal Lecter and Matt. He said so many hateful, deranged things. He's a sex predator. He was found civilly liable for sexual assault. He's a felon. He engaged in the January 6th insurrection. Everything he did should have made it very disqualified from the outset, let me be very clear. But when you listen to what voters were saying about the no more never-ending wars and that affordability was crushing them and they were feeling left behind in this broader environment, the Epstein class, these oligarchs, were there trying to convince the people that they were the ones who were going to help them when they were the ones causing the problem, when they were making this problem in the first place and exacerbating it.

40:16Ben Meiselas:And now the people see. So you can't just go back to the status quo. You have to show that you will actually create major change. Now I know. You got to be a doer, right?

40:26Jordy Meiselas:You got to be able to get stuff done. And you could speak in flowery language and you could message test and say, what did Zoran Mamdani say that helped him get elected? And why did those videos make him so popular? Is it because they were edited nicely or were they slick? Was it the filter they put on the video? Was it his, how charismatic he is? I mean, yeah, that's a large part of why those videos worked for sure. But then if he came into office and he said, I'm implementing a tariff on all New Yorkers and I'm going to make all your stuff more expensive and I'm going to go to war, obviously can't do that as a New York mayor, but you get the analogy I'm making here.

41:02Jordy Meiselas:then people would be like, F you, you said all that stuff. He wouldn't be at a 60 % plus approval rating in New York city. And that's what Donald Trump did. He sold all of that stuff to these people. Now, a lot of people like you all who are watching that, a lot of you who are watching, cause we do have a lot of, you know, former Trump voters who watch this as well. You'd be surprised. You know, a lot of people saw past it, but the people who voted for him believed that he was going to be the anti-war guy, that he was going to be the, I'm going to make your things cheaper guy. And then he got into office and he did the exact opposite.

41:32Jordy Meiselas:Mamdani is a great example of getting into office. And then you see every single day, it's like we filled 200 ,000 potholes. Boom, right? We got money, hundreds of millions of dollars going back to door dash drivers who were ripped off by the company. I got this settlement. This money's going back to the people who were screwed over. Boom. I'm holding landlords accountable. And I see videos all the time of people in their apartments now in New York City. And I've heard all these stories of people in New York City who go, I had this issue with my apartment for years and my landlord never did crap for me.

42:05Jordy Meiselas:Now, all of a sudden that there's actual consequences behind them not doing stuff for me, all of a sudden things are getting fixed awfully quickly. Universal child care. Universal child care, all this stuff, right? Pre-K. When you deliver for people, it builds trust. And especially on these tangible issues, it was something I actually heard Mayor Mamdani speak about recently. I forget where he was, but that's beside the point. But he was saying people were asking him, why do you think these things are so important to be filling potholes and to be letting people know that you're clearing the snow and doing stuff like that?

42:42Jordy Meiselas:And his response, I'm paraphrasing, was something like, well, people have to know that you have to build a trust with your community and you have to be able to let people know that government works for you. And when people see that government is working on their block, on their literal street, when they see that the people who they once could not get on the phone to fill a pothole or help them out are actually doing the work that they're supposed to be doing for them, then you could actually move on to these bigger initiatives. People go, I trust them to do this. Therefore, I could trust them to do that.

43:18Jordy Meiselas:It's one of the criticisms you often see that Republicans levy on programs like universal healthcare, right? They go, oh, you mean the government who runs the DMV, they're going to run your health, you're right. They point to something that isn't very efficient often. And then they try to say, that's why the government can't work for you at all. And then they do everything possible to make sure that government doesn't work for you at every stage so that they could use that as an excuse in a cycle of saying, look, government doesn't work. And so we can't do these big things. So we're going to spend all our money on all these endless wars, because that's the one thing we actually do good, not the actual fighting of the wars part, apparently, but the spending the money on the wars and keeping them going, this military industrial complex.

44:02Jordy Meiselas:And so that's the dynamic you have. And also, I think it's incumbent a little bit on people to also understand civics at a basic level and understand what folks can do and what they can't do. Like, you shouldn't expect Democrats winning the House and boom, everything's going to change overnight. You know, everything's going to get bad. It's that's not going to happen. But what you should be doing is demanding that these people do what they say, that they hold this regime accountable, that we see an intense confrontation between these Democrats if they were to take the House, interrogating, investigating, holding these folks accountable, at least making the case against all these folks so that when a Democratic administration comes in on the future.

44:46Jordy Meiselas:There's been all this work that's gone into holding folks accountable.

44:49Brett Meiselas:And that's it right there, Brad, because at its core, that's what people just want. They want government to work for them. They want government and their electeds to actually work for them and deliver on their promises. Right. We have too many politicians that quite frankly exist that just want to grift off their position of power. And it's, you know, it's disgusting and it's not good for it's not good for this country. But when you see someone like a Zoran in in new york doing what he's doing when you see someone like a shapiro out here in pennsylvania bridge collapses he has it back up in 12 days i mean that's a defining moment in someone's in in someone's uh elected career right there what we're seeing is that time and time again people are uh approving of the elected officials who are actually getting stuff done who are those gsd types who get it done day in and day out and just don't give folks lip service but actually deliver and That's what we see.

45:41Brett Meiselas:I think that's what I think separates a lot of people in the pact of, oh, this is actually a good leader.

45:46Ben Meiselas:By the way, I mean, you're seeing it at the prime minister level in Canada where you have prime minister Carney taking tangible steps, not doing fake deals. Just think about the contrast over here. You have Donald Trump in the Oval Office yesterday saying that he's got this$54 billion LNG deal with South Korea and South Korean companies are going to be investing in Alaska and it's going to be amazing. And you've got all of these people, these Alaska MAGA bootlickers of Trump, the governor and people like that. And we're like, it's going to be, we need this. This is so big. Then South Korea says today, their ministry, their industry ministry says not happening.

46:31Ben Meiselas:It's just, we never agreed to this. We're in very preliminary talks, very preliminary. So this isn't happening at all. So you've got that. And then you contrast that with Prime Minister Carney, who's already announced major actual LNG deals, and he's now diversifying their oil market away from the United States. You just think about that. I mean, it was such an obvious benefit to the United States and Canada, but Canada's like, okay, we are rich in resources. So here's what we're going to do. So Prime Minister Carney goes into Alberta. By the way, their premier is Danielle Smith, Maple Maga. She does everything she can to undermine Prime Minister Carney.

47:15Ben Meiselas:And he's there. And he's just, you know, standing up. Look, it's like I'm going to Alberta. I'll go to British Columbia. I'll go to Ontario. You tell me, where should I go? I'll go to Quebec. And I'll speak to the people about what we're doing tangibly. And here's what he says in Alberta. Here, let's play this clip.

47:35Brett Meiselas:A pipeline to the West Coast is part of our mission to transform our economy, to double our non-US exports over the next decade, to create tens, in fact,

47:44Ben Meiselas:hundreds of thousands of good jobs, to unlock the full potential of Canada as a global energy superpower, and to catalyze tens and tens of billions of dollars of new investment into the

47:56Brett Meiselas:Canadian economy to make Alberta and Canada more prosperous, more independent, and to do all of this in the right way.

48:08Ben Meiselas:Today, 90 % of Alberta's oil goes to the US. Pacific Link will materially reduce that dependence by allowing us to export an additional 1 million barrels a day to growing markets in Asia. That means more customers, more choice, higher prices for all Canadian energy producers. And it means greater long-term security of demand. Greater long-term security of demand. In other words, U.S. is unreliable. And so we need greater long-term security. Not just Trump destroying the United States short-term, but long-term. And when we look at the long-term bonds, the 30-year, 20-year, 10-year treasury yields, how they're seeing the United States, how that market is seeing the United States, it's a very grim picture.

48:58Ben Meiselas:I mean, there's a world where the 30-year yields could hit 6 % very soon. And the 10-year yields had its worst quarter, its worst run since 1994 or so. We had inflation data that came out yesterday and it seemed, whoa, it was actually pretty decent. And then we learned that the Trump regime has just changed the PCE inflation formula, basically to rig the formula so it drops inflation by about 30 to 40 basis points. And that's why we saw it drop 30 to 40 basis points from where we expected it to be. But you're not fooling anybody long term. I mean, you may trick the market for short periods of time where Trump and others seem to be buying the dips that they create.

49:49Ben Meiselas:But if you look at the bond markets, they're now believing that there's going to be four to five interest rate hikes. Brett, as you mentioned before, there were supposed to be three interest rate cuts. So we're talking about a swing of about 225 basis points in the direction of interest rate hikes versus cuts where we were expecting it to be. And you're seeing countries and companies that hold U.S. debt dumping it unless the Treasury Department provides these very high yields, which ultimately means we, the taxpayers, are paying to service the debt somewhere in the range of$1.35 trillion a year.

50:31Ben Meiselas:It's like basically the biggest line item right now of our budget is paying the debt, which actually causes more debt because the Ponzi scheme continues. And the debt that the United States has accumulated was never sustainable, but it was at least continuing to be able to be sustained on the basis that the post-World War II architecture was created by the United States. So all of the oil money was in dollars. The equity markets, really, the United States was paramount. The bond market, United States, everything was conducted in dollars. The U.S. would be able to wield that so you can print more money.

51:13Ben Meiselas:We shouldn't have. It's reckless, but it was at least somewhat able to continue. The Ponzi, because the U.S. created the architecture and created the rules, heads I win, tails you lose. But what happens when you destroyed the rules-based order and made the United States weaker? That's when the overall Ponzi scheme actually collapses. And this is what Trump is doing. We'll talk a little bit more about what's happening internationally when we come back. And this is what we talk a lot about in WTF America. What I'm excited about this book is for it to last beyond this election, the next election, the next 20 elections, because it is the Midas, Mighties kind of flag, if you will, in the United States literature of here is the way out of this.

52:06Ben Meiselas:And I hope people 20, 30, 50, 100 years or more will go back and look at this and see the ideas of the Midas, Mighty of you, that you helped inform this. So get the audio or the ebook or the hardcover. You can click the QR code right now or scan the QR code. You can click it, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. We'll be right back after our last quick break.

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55:01Brett Meiselas:Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors. Links in description of the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's that exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benji, I like your glasses today. They're very clean.

55:11Ben Meiselas:their new glasses were inspired by the Midas Mighty saying that the old glasses were very dirty and foggy and I'm a creature of habit it was true they were dirty they were filthy

55:25Jordy Meiselas:like smudges everywhere it was crazy did you just think the world looked like yeah did you

55:31Brett Meiselas:think you needed new glasses because you couldn't see out we're being mean Brett you're being too

55:35Ben Meiselas:I mean look I don't get out of the house that much I spend a lot of time working you know the

55:40Brett Meiselas:idea of even oh sorry you work too much the idea of even doing an eye exam it's like the job the

55:45Jordy Meiselas:question what's your biggest weakness i just work too hard you know a little more self-care defense though i mean he doesn't stop working so no he really it's true yeah the funny thing is the way i found out that i needed glasses was we were watching like finding nemo in the auditorium and so like middle school i don't know why that wasn't even a thing but we were and my friend who was sitting next to me, gave me his glasses, I put them on, all of a sudden the movie looked crystal clear, like it was HD. I thought the screens, like all screens, like projector screens were blurry. And then I put the glasses on and I had a huge revelation.

56:22Jordy Meiselas:Oh, it's not the screens. It's me. And I'm glad that Ben had a similar.

56:27Brett Meiselas:Fun fact, Brad's also colorblind.

56:29Jordy Meiselas:This is true. I never even knew that you're colorblind. You didn't know that?

56:34Ben Meiselas:Like you're badly colorblind or like.

56:36Jordy Meiselas:It's like a mild, no, it's like a mild thing, but they're like, if people out there are colorblind in the way that I am, it's red, green, colorblind. And there are certain shades of red and green that when they're side by side, my eyes can't tell the difference. So I see color, right? I see, I see colors. I could point to blue, right? I see colors. However, those specific shades, I can't see. So they have these number tests they give you where there are these circles with these dots in it and they'll be like, what's the number in the dot?

57:06Brett Meiselas:And I'll be like, what number?

57:10Jordy Meiselas:There's no number in there. And then they'll be like, what number is there? I'll be like 27. And they'll be like, oh, that's interesting because the number is actually 72. But colorblind people are able to see 27. And I go, okay, I get it.

57:22Brett Meiselas:You learn something new about your brothers every show, Ben.

57:25Ben Meiselas:You do, but I'll somehow link this to the show, which is do it. Let's do it. Moral clarity, clarity in general, being able to see the truth is all very important. But I'll just say this. Never would I ever think that when the United States government says that there are protests in Iran where 12 ,000 people were killed. and I see images on a TV screen of seemingly the protests back in January, and people seem to be killed or there seemed to be a location where people were killed. I, when that incident happened, despite me believing Donald Trump lies about everything, my view was it was clear from what I observed.

58:13Ben Meiselas:I thought, I mean, it's being honest with me, being vulnerable with you right now. That's what I thought happened. And to this day, I still believe that there was a protest, and I believe people were killed in the protest. Although the number of people who were killed in the protest, whether the real number is 3 ,000, 5 ,000, or 10 ,000, I don't know. But what I do know is that the Trump regime on an issue like that went from saying 12 ,000 to 30 ,000 to 50 ,000 to 60 ,000. And then in this deranged Times Magazine interview that Donald Trump gave that was released today, where he was like, I've got high IQs.

58:54Ben Meiselas:Do you know my uncle is MIT? Very high IQs, very high IQs. You know that Donald Trump said 72 ,000 people. He goes, that was the number, 72 ,000. So if you're going to make up 12 ,000 and then go to 72 ,000 and just do it so cavalierly and nonchalantly, and that this is just what you do and make up a number like that. It's just like, I don't know, is that like literally everything you say an absolute lie? What really went down? And it makes it very difficult when this regime lies about quite literally everything of what's going on over there, right? Then you hear about the Royal Air Force Fairford incident and the information that came out.

59:38Ben Meiselas:That's the US air base that's been used to strike Iran. There were apparently people who were involved in terroristic activity. That's the news that was coming out. And as soon as it happened, I had to say, this is what's being said. I don't know what's happening. So I just want to tell you, we have to be very careful in how we report this. I think we handled it very responsibly in how we reported it. But now we know that the five people are out on bail, that apparently one of the people or two of the people in that group were the individuals who called the police on themselves, that there were not any explosives.

1:00:19Ben Meiselas:They weren't like right by the Air Force. They were in a town that was close by. And they had, I guess, empty petroleum cans or kind of tanks that weren't filled with anything. And then the Trump regime and even the prime minister of uk and now netanyahu are saying that was iran that was irgc they're probably behind it and now we've got to make iran pay for it and i'm thinking all right if you're saying it's irgc and it's terrorists or whatever you're saying why would you let the people out on bail like what am i missing here and they called the police on their own and so there's that one you know then there's the fly dubai incident which again seems deeply serious i mean what they're telling us is that this plane that had an Indian pilot, an Omani co-pilot, was traveling to Tel Aviv and it was traveling from Dubai.

1:01:15Ben Meiselas:Then the co-pilot from Oman, this is the story, stabbed the pilot and tried to take over the plane. Then the pilot opened up the cockpit And then the plane started a descent, a straight down descent, 17 ,500 feet. And then a guy with no pilot training, who's a plumber, who was on the plane, he rushed into the cockpit and he had seen television shows about airplane crashes. And so he took the yoke, the control yoke of the plane, pulled it up as it was descending 17 ,500 feet to the ground and then pulled it up himself, stabilized the plane with no training as an Air Force pilot or a pilot at all.

1:02:08Ben Meiselas:And then there were two other individuals on that plane who were pilots off duty and they helped land the plane. And then now the Trump regime and UAE and Netanyahu are saying it was IRGC backed. And Trump's like, well, now that's a reason that we've got to make Iran pay. This, right, as we learn about the USS Theodore Roosevelt with this aircraft carrier strike group now heading to the Middle East, about 10 ,000 more service members heading to the Middle East, and Trump's saying he wants to escalate after the midterms. And then I reflect on the F-15 story where they said this F-15 pilot, dude, bravo.

1:02:49Ben Meiselas:We apparently saw the purported guy on 60 Minutes. He's probably like 50 years old. When the F-15 was shot by Iran. He apparently fell without a parachute onto the ground. He says 70 to 100 miles per hour. And then he fell to the ground and then he broke some bones, but he was okay to run five to 20 miles to the 7 ,000 foot mountain. And then he climbed the mountain to the very top. And that's where he was rescued, the 7 ,000 foot mountain. And then he was saved and he was rescued there. And then they're going to be making like a Hollywood movie about it. And then, oh, and then in the fly Dubai incident, the plumber who apparently saved the flight, he was waiting in his, in a bloody shirt.

1:03:37Ben Meiselas:They didn't have him change. And so when Netanyahu was there, he and Netanyahu hugged each other and he was in the bloody shirt. And, you know, then Netanyahu, I don't even want to play the Netanyahu club, but he went on. You could, I showed it in the morning. Netanyahu then goes on state regime media Fox. This is, you couldn't even believe this if they wrote it in Hollywood. You couldn't even believe this thing. And just the very fact, you know, I have to report on this. This is news. This is breaking news. And this is now being used by the Trump regime, Netanyahu, UAE, even the prime minister of UK, apparently, as a justification for potentially escalating a war as you have Pete Hegseth.

1:04:20Ben Meiselas:and I don't want to show any more Hegseth clips. Whenever I show the Hegseth clips, I see the chat. They go muting it now. But Hegseth is saying the book of Isaiah told him that we need to send our young men and women and people to war just based on whatever God tells Hegseth and Trump. Send me, send me, is what Hegseth said. And Hegseth takes great delight in cutting 20 % of our admirals and generals. He said they're unworthy of their positions. And so he bragged about it while he says, God and Isaiah told him that we command our service members, send me into war. And then I see this is now being used as the justification.

1:05:01Ben Meiselas:So I have to be circumspect and I have to be responsible in my reporting on all of this. But I put these pieces together for you in that way. And I just never thought, being candidly, going back to the beginning where I was like, I never wanted to talk about strain of Hormuz and crack spreads and treasury yields and things like that. But that this entire narrative out here seems to be filled, I'll just leave it at this, with many a question, with many a question. And the American people are like, just get us out of this war. We don't want to be involved in this never-ending war. The U.S. doesn't want to be working with Netanyahu to do all of these horrific wars.

1:05:46Ben Meiselas:And as Netanyahu continues the genocide in Gaza, let's just stop it. We don't want to be spending taxpayer dollars slaughtering little children in Iran or in Gaza or elsewhere in Lebanon or elsewhere. We want to spend that money to build schools in the United States and to help people here and to build hospitals here, not to blow up hospitals there. What are we doing? And so, you know, I hope piecing that together for you. And then this last piece, and I'll throw it to you, Brett and Jordan, because that's really, you know, this is my international beat that I always talk about. Then you just see the mass escalation in Russia, where Russia escalating on Kyiv, rather.

1:06:25Ben Meiselas:And then you see the response of Ukraine in Russia, bridges blown up and refineries blown up and logistical centers blown up. And this thing is escalating in a way that is absolute. You know, people are often go, well, why do you call your video all hell breaks loose? Because if there was a bigger word that I could use than the apocalyptic scenes, I would want that word. If you help me find that word. But what we're observing is the closest I think we can observe to hell. So that's what we're seeing. So that's what it is when you see that level of destruction and devastation. Brett Jordy.

1:07:10Jordy Meiselas:Yeah, I think it's quite the apt description. And, you know, when we speak about all these things and we speak about the kind of propaganda that we see out of governments, and I'm not saying this specifically tying it to any of the stories that Ben mentioned. You know, honestly, I just don't have all the details on these. We don't have all the details on these stories. We don't know what's true. We don't know what's not true, but we do know that the government has lied to us continuously and it's not new in the age of Trump. And I think that's also important to point out that while Trump is the kind of loudest force of lying and propaganda, and he's just so overt with everything he does, this has been going on for an incredibly long time.

1:07:54Jordy Meiselas:Of course, happens across many governments, all governments, but it's been going on in the United States for a long time. One of the examples I always think about first, there's the whole weapons of mass destruction, which brought us into Iraq. And why did we go into Iraq after the World Trade Center attacks never made any sense to begin with, but we relied into that war. Everybody knows and acknowledges today that that was a complete lie. And if you said that back then, people called you a traitor and they said that you were a conspiracy theorist and whatever names they wanted to give you. There were also other things that happened even back then that are worth revisiting today because in times of war, the propaganda that's used is potent propaganda, and they do it for a reason.

1:08:35Jordy Meiselas:Back in the day, there was a guy named Pat Tillman, and he was an NFL player. I believe he played for the Arizona Cardinals at the time. Chiseled jaw, big dude, looked like Mr. America, right? Like stereotypical looked like Mr. America. Captain America. Captain America. Yeah. Well, I'm not saying Captain America specifically. Like I'm saying like he looks like the embodiment of like, you know, America tough guy, army, military guy. Right. And so he is, you know, in the army and he gets, he gets deployed to Iraq and he's against the war. He actually opposes the war. And this was the guy who was supposed to be like this NFL player who was going to fight and he was going to be this hero.

1:09:19Jordy Meiselas:They were going to use him as propaganda, but he was against the war. And he ended up getting killed. And it turned out that he got killed by what they call friendly fire, also a name used to diminish what actually happened. He was killed by Americans. He was killed by American soldiers, theoretically, accidentally. And the government covered it up, and they used his death as propaganda. And this is well documented. It's not like this is my opinion on what happened. It's well documented that this is what happened. They used his death for propaganda to push the war, despite the fact that he was against the war.

1:09:57Jordy Meiselas:And his family had to try to speak out and say he actually hated this war. He was against it. He thought it was unlawful. He didn't want to be there. And there's a movie about it called The Tillman Story, which came out like in 2010, which is really, really good. And it just shows you how all these people in our government lied every step of the way. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, right? That entire administration back then just lied in order to make this individual's death war propaganda. And we're seeing today how they use these horrifying situations and how they embellish stories and make up stories and use whatever they can to push war propaganda.

1:10:38Jordy Meiselas:It's the same machine behind the scenes, right? With a different face out front. It's been going on for a long time. If you haven't seen that movie. It's a really powerful and horrifying movie. But even today, the NFL does, I believe, ceremonies where they honor Pat Tillman, and they do it in a kind of very war propaganda way to honor soldiers and things like that. Basically, the exact opposite of what Pat Tillman's message actually was back then. But they've turned his death into this kind of propaganda scheme that's now in NFL broadcasts that's feeding war propaganda to people via that. And it's just, It's just you have to be aware of it, right?

1:11:17Jordy Meiselas:And in the moment, you often don't, it's often impossible to know what's going on, right? Because there are cover-ups, there are actual conspiracies happening. And oftentimes, it's not until later on, until there's investigations, until documents leak or are unclassified or whatever, until you find stuff out. But my point, just to wrap it up, it was happening then, it's happening now. And technology is much more sophisticated now than it even was back then, even though that wasn't all that long ago. And so we have to kind of take each story as it comes and look at it through a very critical lens and not immediately try to yell at somebody if they express skepticism at something.

1:11:59Jordy Meiselas:Especially when you have an administration, or in this case, a regime that has quite literally lied about everything, even something as stupid as the reflecting pool. And by the way, I could say that David Hearn, his case dismissed with prejudice today, meaning the government cannot bring that case again against him. Donald Trump wanted to lock up a former Olympian, blaming him for the reflecting pool disaster that was caused by Donald Trump's own incompetence. And so just putting the pieces together, once again, it happens. It happens every day. There's a whole documented trail of it. And so I thought I would bring it up.

1:12:38Brett Meiselas:No, thanks for that, B. And I just want to add this really quick, Ben, is, Brad, to your points exactly it's why i'm so honored to be walking side by side brothers with you guys but also might as mighty with you guys interacting with you all in the chats when we can obviously and just hearing what's impacting your lives and what's on the top of your minds and so it's just i know we're all collectively going through a lot uh i just wouldn't want to be going through this with anybody else and in times that are difficult you know it's good to lean on communities and i'm just so honored to have this incredible community with you all here in the shared space as we march forward as we continue to be truth seekers and truth tellers and trying to just unearth you know all of the madness that we're witnessing day in and day out so truly from the bottom of my heart and i know for my brothers as well thank you guys for staying so plugged in every single day god knows we're going to need it especially you know post midterms and and all of that so thank you guys so much.

1:13:37Brett Meiselas:Super excited. This was a great episode. Benji, I'm just going to close right now if that's all right. Remember, WTF America. Scan the QR code, buy the book, audio book, ebook, however you could do it. We worked tirelessly on this. We dedicate it to y 'all. Thank you guys genuinely so much for tuning in every single day. Y 'all the best. Until next time, shout out to the Midas Mighty.

1:14:07Jordy Meiselas:Against the fascists we sing our song We will get it right whenever

1:14:16Brett Meiselas:Before you go, our book, WTF America, is available for pre-order now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To pre-order, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.

1:14:36Thank you.