MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 11/14/25

14 Nov 2025 · 1 h 30 min · 33 chapters

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

The hosts argue the Trump administration is hiding or “concocting” economic data (CPI/jobs), discuss market fallout, and connect this to alleged corruption and missing records in federal prosecutions. The episode’s main focus is a deep dive into newly released Jeffrey Epstein estate emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee, which the hosts claim are highly damaging to Donald Trump and MAGA.

Guest backgrounds

The transcript names hosts Ben and Jordy (Midas Touch Network). No other guests are clearly identified in the provided text.

Key claims

(1) The administration may never publish credible CPI/jobs data; the CPI inputs are allegedly partly fabricated (40–50% “concocted”). (2) Democrats released Epstein estate emails after redactions; Trump’s name appears prominently. (3) Epstein emails allegedly show Trump connections to Epstein’s world, including alleged meetings, money/loans, and Trump being described as “the worst” person Epstein ever met. (4) The hosts claim missing grand jury transcript portions in a federal prosecutor case suggest unethical/illegal conduct.

Notable examples

Epstein obsessing over Trump in 2018–2019; Epstein advising Russian-related contacts tied to Lavrov and a Helsinki meeting; references to JPMorgan SARs; memes about “trust this man with your daughter”; alleged backdated Mar-a-Lago loan/mortgage requests; and a claim that Epstein said Bill Clinton was never on the island.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Epstein Emails and Trump’s Ties

2:12 to 4:50

Discussion on released emails from Epstein's estate linking Trump.

“20 ,000 plus emails from Jeffrey Epstein's estate were released.”

Economic Data Manipulation

4:50 to 5:56

Exploring the issues surrounding job and inflation data under Trump.

“We expect as many as 100 Republican defections, could be less, I think somewhere between 50 and 100 Republican defections who will vote to release the Epstein files.”

Epstein Files Vote and Trump Interviews

5:56 to 8:00

Analysis of the upcoming vote on releasing Epstein files and Trump's interview.

“That's what's going on in this country, the United States, everybody.”

Concocting Economic Data

8:00 to 14:01

Discussion on the implications of the administration hiding economic data.

“You might have watched the deep dive that I did earlier in the day, but I'll go over those.”

Trump and the Epstein Files

14:01 to 14:46

Discussion on the implications of the Epstein files and their potential impact on Trump and Democrats.

“Donald Trump would be the first person to say, let's release those Epstein files.”

Economic Data and Government Accountability

14:47 to 21:00

Analyzing economic data validity amid government shutdown and its effects on public perception.

“And look, I'm not doing a bit right now, but Ben, can you explain to me what Caroline Levy was even saying?”

The Fraudulent Nature of Trump's Administration

21:01 to 24:10

Exploration of Trump's history of fraud and its implications for his administration's integrity.

“to is the pull yourself up by your bootstrap party, right?”

Qualifications of Federal Prosecutors

24:11 to 28:00

Critique of the qualifications and actions of federal prosecutors under Trump, focusing on Lindsey Halligan.

“Where he's still in the regime one brought in some bad people, but he still had people who were like effective operators.”

Halligan and the Grand Jury Indictment

28:00 to 29:16

Learn about the implications of Halligan's actions in securing an indictment.

“But Halligan's in this grand jury room and the court reporter is either not there or not transcribing what's happening.”

Corruption and Accountability in Government

29:16 to 30:25

Discussion on the ethical implications of governmental actions and failures.

“We've got to take our first quick break of the show.”
Show all 33 chapters

Deep Dive into Epstein's Emails

30:25 to 32:19

An overview of the analysis of Epstein's emails and their significance.

“If you can also make sure you subscribe to our audio podcast, just search Midas Touch.”

Deep Dive into Epstein's Emails

32:26 to 33:52

An overview of the analysis of Epstein's emails and their significance.

“That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash m-e-i-d-a-s.”

Deep Dive into Epstein's Emails

33:59 to 35:04

An overview of the analysis of Epstein's emails and their significance.

“That's qualialife.com slash Midas for up to 50 % off your purchase.”

Examining Epstein's Estate Emails

35:38 to 38:23

A detailed exploration of the emails from Epstein's estate and their implications.

“If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you.”

Connections Between Trump and Epstein

38:23 to 42:00

Analysis of the relationships and communications between Trump and Epstein.

“He hadn't even gone through his criminal trial, right?”

Epstein's Connections and Trump's Involvement

42:00 to 48:30

Explore Jeffrey Epstein's emails and their implications regarding Donald Trump's connections and actions.

“But Brett and Jordy and Might is Mighty, let's just go through some of these together, right?”

The Psychology of Epstein's Obsession with Trump

48:30 to 55:10

Delve into the psychological dynamics of Epstein's relationship with Trump as revealed through emails.

“Obviously, like a well-connected guy, almost acting like a, I don't know, some sort of like foreign agent or consultant, like in the Trump world.”

Reflection on Epstein's Behavior and Its Ramifications

55:10 to 56:00

Reflect on the implications of Epstein's behavior and mindset leading up to his death and its effects on Trump.

“I can't believe you were able to work an eight mile into the Trump-Epstein segment.”

Understanding Epstein's Mindset in Emails

56:00 to 58:18

Exploring the psychological state of Epstein based on his emails leading up to his death.

“And so it's just that that's such an interesting point where that you bring up here is is the mindset of Epstein during these emails.”

Membership Reminder and Show Transition

58:19 to 58:38

Encouragement to join the podcast's membership program and teaser for upcoming topics.

“When we come back, we still have a lot to discuss, although we've covered a lot of ground already.”

Membership Reminder and Show Transition

58:39 to 1:00:29

Encouragement to join the podcast's membership program and teaser for upcoming topics.

“we do with Ron Filipkowski that's just available to members.”

Membership Reminder and Show Transition

1:00:38 to 1:01:53

Encouragement to join the podcast's membership program and teaser for upcoming topics.

“can leave you feeling and looking depleted.”

Membership Reminder and Show Transition

1:01:57 to 1:03:31

Encouragement to join the podcast's membership program and teaser for upcoming topics.

“That's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E dot com slash Midas to claim your 15 % discount and your bonus gift.”

Trump's Unusual Diplomacy with Al-Shara

1:03:52 to 1:09:44

Analyzing Trump's interactions with Syria's leader and the implications of such relationships.

“He had like a 10 million or$20 million bounty on his head from the United States because he was directing people to kill Americans throughout the Middle East.”

The Absurdity of Trump's Behavior

1:09:45 to 1:10:03

Critiquing the bizarre interactions between Trump and global leaders, specifically al-Shara.

“It could best be described as like, you guys remember going to malls?”

The Perfume Analogy

1:10:03 to 1:12:26

A humorous discussion using a perfume analogy to critique political figures.

“I would have been Trump pulls up Trump, all caps pulls off perfect stunt.”

Trump's Interview Dissection

1:12:26 to 1:15:54

An analysis of Donald Trump's interview and its implications on his approval ratings.

“If they asked me, if I was polled, do you approve of that move?”

H-1B Visas and MAGA Responses

1:15:54 to 1:21:17

Discussion about Trump's changing stance on H-1B visas and MAGA supporters' reactions.

“Like I'm looking at what the MAGA people are saying.”

The Death Spiral of Trump's Presidency

1:21:17 to 1:24:00

Exploration of Trump's political decline and the consequences of his decisions.

“It just kept going down, maybe a little up some days, a little up.”

The Dangers of Trump's Decision-Making

1:24:00 to 1:25:58

Discussing the catastrophic consequences of Trump's decision-making style.

“admit fault, and then try to fix it, be humble, bring in new people, right?”

The Shift in Media Accountability

1:25:58 to 1:26:24

Exploring how pressure has changed accountability in media reporting.

“Stay in there because the release of these files didn't just happen, right?”

The Shift in Media Accountability

1:26:46 to 1:26:57

Exploring how pressure has changed accountability in media reporting.

“Is everyone on our sub stack for the best damn political newsletter on the planet released every day by Ron Filipkowski?”

The Shift in Media Accountability

1:27:03 to 1:30:24

Exploring how pressure has changed accountability in media reporting.

“and you get a lot of other incredible content.”
Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Ben Meiselas:This summer, FanDuel is the best place to bet on goals. Including equalizers? Uh-huh. Balls? Yep. Headers? Every goal is worth more on FanDuel. So, let there be goals.

0:09Brett Meiselas:New customers get$350 in bonus bets guaranteed when you bet$5 for seven days.

0:13Ben Meiselas:21 plus in present and select states. First online real money wager only. Minimum$5 wager required for seven consecutive days. $5 first deposit required.

0:20Brett Meiselas:Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Ever wonder where Tropicana got its name? The tropics. And every time you enjoy a glass, you're not just drinking juice. You're taking a trip. Stepping into sunshine and embarking on a flavorful journey into the tropics where ripe fruit is crafted into wildly delicious juice. And the best part? No passport required. Tropicana. Give life some juice.

0:57Ben Meiselas:Ray-Ban Meta lets you explore the world without a screen getting in the way, so you can stay present in the moment.

1:03Brett Meiselas:Hey, Meta, tell me what kind of dessert this is.

1:05Ben Meiselas:That's a Stroopwafel, a Dutch waffle with spiced syrup in the middle.

1:10Brett Meiselas:Is it sweet?

1:11Ben Meiselas:Yes, perfect for a snack or dessert.

1:14Jordy Meiselas:Mmm, delicious.

1:16Ben Meiselas:Get answers on the go without interrupting your flow.

1:19Brett Meiselas:Ray-Ban Meta, iconic style meets Meta AI. Available at Walmart and other authorized retailers.

1:52Ben Meiselas:offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions.

1:56Brett Meiselas:I wrote a little song to remind you choice hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The can be a hotel's got it all a rooftop bar, have a ball bring a date, your squad or even your mom book direct at choice hotels.com.

2:12Ben Meiselas:20 ,000 plus emails from Jeffrey Epstein's estate were released. Donald Trump's name is all over them. and in devastating fashion. Great work by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee that got their hands on these emails from the Epstein estate. And they're not just bad, they're bad, bad, bad for Donald Trump. No matter what distractions Trump and MAGA try to pull, this is horrible for him. And we will dig deep into those emails and probably go over emails you haven't seen yet, which are even much worse than what's been publicly reported. Also, the Trump regime today said that we will likely not have and never have credible job or inflation data, perhaps ever again.

3:07Ben Meiselas:The stock market, guess what, doesn't like that. Businesses, guess what, don't like that the regime is saying that they're not going to be able to publish accurate data when it comes to jobs or inflation, which we know are both very, very bad at this point. The Dow was down almost 2%, S &P down almost 2%, NASDAQ down almost 3%, not a good day on the market and looks like rough days ahead as well. Also, we've learned that Republican senators snuck into the continuing resolution, a provision to pay themselves each or at least eight of the Republican senators who claim that they were injured. $500 ,000, perhaps even more, over a million dollars, according to Lindsey Graham.

3:55Ben Meiselas:They claim that they were injured by special counsel Jack Smith issuing subpoenas that turned up the digits of their phone number, not wiretaps, not eavesdropping, not their conversation. The digits, they say, ended up in the subpoena because of their connection to the January 6th insurrection. And in a continuing resolution that will take away potentially 20 million Americans' health care as the Affordable Care Act subsidies will not be extended, they're paying themselves$500 ,000, a million dollars more from the taxpayers. We're paying them. What the heck is going on there? Also next week, after the discharge petition was finally executed and will ripen, thanks to Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic congresswoman, now officially congresswoman from Arizona 7th Congressional District, being sworn in, discharge petition signed, there will be a vote to release the Epstein files.

4:50Ben Meiselas:We expect as many as 100 Republican defections, could be less, I think somewhere between 50 and 100 Republican defections who will vote to release the Epstein files. And let's talk about this disastrous Trump interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox, no matter how she tries to spin it. It was a disaster and has MAGA running away from Donald Trump. He says that American workers are not capable of doing the jobs that foreign workers do here, specifically high skilled jobs. Also, the Chinese college students are far better than Americans to fill those seats at American universities. And that's why we need to bring Chinese students here and not let American students go to universities here in the United States.

5:37Ben Meiselas:Oh, and by the way, while all that was going on, Donald Trump had the leader of Syria in the Oval Office, where he started spritzing the leader of Syria, the former Al-Qaeda leader, with like perfume and cologne and said, let me smell you. Let me smell you. You smell so good. Anyway, that's what's going on. Let's talk about it all. Brett, Jordy, how are you doing? That's what's going on in this country, the United States, everybody.

6:02Jordy Meiselas:Never a dull day. Unfortunately, I'm doing good. It's great to be here, Ben. It's great to be here, Jordy. It's great to be here, Midas Mighty. You know, this whole administration, this whole regime is just so incredibly Orwellian. I remember, you know, back in the beginning a few months ago when we floated the idea that they would be hiding the economic data or trying to concoct new data to replace the bad data, there were a lot of people who looked at us and were like, oh, stop with the conspiracy theories. They're never going to do that. Stop it. Be realistic here. And now we're at a time where they are literally hiding the economic data.

6:37Jordy Meiselas:They're not releasing the inflation report for the month of October as of now. And they're saying literally in their own words that they need to concoct the economic data, concoct the jobs data. One of the reasons why the markets are so fearful right now of what is going on, because when you actually look out there in the world and see what's going on, you are seeing mass layoffs across basically every sector except like AI or something like it is bad out there and they could try to hide it all they want. They could try to gaslight the American people all they want, but that only goes so far when people go to the store and they see that things are much more expensive than they were the week before the month before when they tried to apply for jobs and they're not having any luck when they get fired from their jobs.

7:20Jordy Meiselas:I mean, these are real things that impact people's daily lives. Donald Trump and the Republican party think they could lie their way out of it, but they cannot They also think they can lie their way out of this Epstein file situation. Well, the more they try to bury the Epstein files, the worse it gets for them. And it came back to haunt them in a massive way this week. I'm excited to dive into that, into the emails, into what they're saying, all the chaos. But it's great to be here. Jordy, what's the latest?

7:47Brett Meiselas:What's up, brothers? What's up, Midas Mighty? So stoked to be here tonight. I'm excited for today's show. Benji, with that, let's just dive into it because we've got a lot of ground to cover as you laid out so perfectly in the intro. Where are we starting off today, big bro?

7:59Ben Meiselas:I want to do a deep dive into those Epstein estate emails because I think there are a lot of emails that you haven't seen. You might have watched the deep dive that I did earlier in the day, but I'll go over those. But I think first, I just want to discuss what in normal times would be and should be one of the biggest scandals imaginable that the Trump regime is not going to publish the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation. It should also be noted that they fired a huge portion of their data gathering staff. They also fired the former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remember when they fired the commissioner for accurately reporting the data?

8:45Ben Meiselas:One thing that's been very much underreported is that the data inputs that go into the CPI, well, those have been based on concocting. That's the word that the Trump regime uses. They're just making up 40 % to 50 % of the inputs going in. That's not supposed to happen. What's supposed to happen is you go and you survey and actually find what the prices of products are and if they're going up or down or whatever. So right now, the Trump regime people who go and lie about everything, they just make up what the numbers are to begin with. But setting that aside, they're now saying, and Caroline Levitt said this, and it was reinforced by Kevin Hassett, the top national economic advisor in this regime, they're going to concoct or they're just not going to give information.

9:38Ben Meiselas:Levitt says there's no more credible jobs reports or inflation reports that may ever be released, not just for the month of October, but ever is what she's saying. Just think about that. Here's what she said. Let's play her clip first.

9:54Jordy Meiselas:Economists, investors, and policymakers at the Federal Reserve to receive critical government data. The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released. And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period.

10:17Ben Meiselas:Here's the thing. No one believes this. The Democrats did it. Okay. Everybody knows that Trump and the Republicans control all branches of government. They've asserted their authority as authoritarians now for 10 months. Ice on the street, disappearing people, throwing them into concentration camps. A whistleblower showed some video of what one of those concentration camps looks like, I believe, in Houston with the children lying on the ground, suffering, torturing. I think we have some of that footage that I'll show a little bit later. I mean, horrific sites there. We've seen the Trump regime do tariffs against the world.

10:58Ben Meiselas:Me, me, me, Trump. I'm doing everything. Look at me. I'm the only one who can fix it. Well, okay, you've asserted that. And now you want to blame Biden? You're blaming the Democrats? You said you controlled everything. You're the guy who said on day one, you know Putin and Zelensky so well, you'll end the war in Ukraine. You know this person and that person. And now all we get from Trump and them is just lies. I solved eight wars. I brought in$23 trillion. America's never been hotter. We've never been this hot. I mean, it's just lie after lie after lie. Just take a look at this survey, this poll from Navigator.

11:36Ben Meiselas:Who do you blame for costs going up? For healthcare premiums, 47 % of Americans blame Republicans, only 21 % blame Democrats. Costs generally, 46 % Republicans, 19 % Democrats. Electricity, 38 % Republicans, 19 % Democrats. You can go poll after poll after poll, and the numbers are either like this or even more people blaming Republicans than Democrats. Now, let me show you Kevin Hassett, National Economic Advisor. He talks about concocting the data, the CPI. He goes, oh, we'll never know what October's CPI is. Many people believe it's at least 3.1 % year-over-year inflation, but it could be more.

12:25Ben Meiselas:We don't know. I'll tell you my personal experience when I go food shopping or go to buy clothes or do anything that requires purchasing is it feels a lot more than 3.1 % than last year. That's what year-over-year means, 3.1 % more than under former President Biden, basically. To me, it feels a lot more. But Trump said he was going to make the prices less than Biden. So here's what Hassett says. Let's play it.

12:53Jordy Meiselas:And the household survey wasn't conducted in October. So we're going to get half the employment report. We'll get the jobs part, but we won't get the unemployment rate. And that'll just be for one month. But yeah, it is true that we probably will never, we'll maybe be able to concoct something that we'll never actually know for sure what the unemployment rate was in October.

13:10Ben Meiselas:Brett, Jordy, you never want to hear the National economic advisor use the word concoct, nor do you want to hear the press secretary say something different than what he said. She said we may never get credible data ever again.

13:24Jordy Meiselas:Let me somehow tie this into the Epstein files for a second, because I think this is actually very indicative of everything that's going on and very revealing of the moves going on behind the scenes in this Trump regime. If there was good economic data, if the economic data showed inflation coming down, jobs going up, if it showed a thriving economy, they would be the first ones to release it. They would love to tout those statistics. Look how great everything is. We said there was a golden age and guess what? We delivered. There are more people going to work than ever. Inflation is down. Look, it's amazing out there.

13:56Jordy Meiselas:They would love to tout that data, but the reason they're hiding it is because they know it's bad. Now to me, same thing what's going on with the Epstein files. If they knew that these Epstein files, if the Epstein files in fact, uh, you know, had all this evidence that showed that Trump actually was not involved at all, that he was a completely innocent guy, but that it actually incriminated all of these Democrats and, oh, Bill Clinton and this Democrat and Obama and all the various names that they like to throw out. Donald Trump would be the first person to say, let's release those Epstein files.

14:28Jordy Meiselas:I'm going to go to the DOJ. We're going to release that right now. But there is a reason that they are keeping all of this information hidden from the American public, and that's because it's likely all devastating for Donald Trump, the Trump regime, and all of the people who continue to prop up this house of cards.

14:45Brett Meiselas:Such an excellent point, B. And look, I'm not doing a bit right now, but Ben, can you explain to me what Caroline Levy was even saying? I genuinely don't fully understand what she was speaking words, but I don't know what she was saying. Can you explain to me?

15:00Ben Meiselas:Well, she was saying that in terms of the data that the government publishes on a monthly basis, sometimes once a month. There are other reports that are every few weeks, but this has been done regularly, basically forever. She goes, we can't do it anymore. She says, because of the government shutdown, she's blaming it on Democrats. They won't be able to print or publish any of their inflation data or job data in a way that is credible anymore. And the fact that after she said that. She didn't immediately clarify what that even means. The White House is saying, our data is all fake. It's fraudulent, and we may not ever produce data.

15:47Ben Meiselas:The reason, Jordy, why she's saying that is because, shocker, they know the data. They know what's going on. They have access to it, and they know it's bad. It's bad out there. I think it's worse out there than 3.1 % year-over-year inflation. I think it's worse than what these job reports have been showing. I mean, you can say anecdotally, but we at some point have shared lived experiences of existing right now. And whether it's the housing market, bad, credit cards, top defaults, I have a gever, right? Jobless claims, worse since the Great Recession or at the peak of COVID. Look at any metric that you want to look at industry sectors, construction, manufacturing, which was having a boom under Biden.

16:48Ben Meiselas:They're in recessionary territories right now. Tourism, great recessionary territories as people don't want to come to the United States anymore. You look at hospitality, restaurants, I mean, struggling. You look at freight. You look at shipping. You look at farming. I mean, remember Trump's like, oh, I did this great deal with China, soybeans. In addition to the fact that if you actually had a deal that required signatures and it was binding, which nobody signed any deals, there's no terms. It's a made up thing. But even under the terms that Donald Trump claims exists, U.S. soybean exporters export 2 million metric tons less of soybeans annually to China and 15 million metric tons less this year than under former President Biden.

Read the full transcript

17:39Ben Meiselas:Less is not as good as more when it comes to farmers wanting to export. But now what we're learning is China's not abiding by Trump's understanding of what it was. Why? They got all their soybeans already cheaper from Argentina and from Brazil. They've got it. So they don't need the soybeans, right? Duh, from our farmers at this point. So our farmers are like, don't you want this? They're like, sorry, we got it from, remember when your country bailed out Argentina for$40 billion? Well, they turned around and gave us the soybeans, so we don't need your soybeans anymore. And remember, Trump's like, well, I also got the rare earth elements being sent.

18:18Ben Meiselas:Well, you're the reason why they were stopped. being sent in the first place because under former President Biden, China was sending rare earth elements and they didn't put these export controls. But now China's also saying, well, we never said that we were going to release these rare earth elements. We only said that we would be open to the idea of perhaps doing it, but any American company that has a relationship with the United States military, we're going to have to keep the export control licenses in place. And guess how many of these companies that need rare earth elements have a connection to the United States military?

18:58Ben Meiselas:Mostly all of them have some form of a government contract, right? So Trump just got played there. So my point is, you look at every sector of the economy, and it's all really, really bad right now. And Trump's gimmick is the classic Ponzi scheme, Bernie Madoff gimmick to say, guess what? Wealth is right around the corner. Doge dividend checks. Oh, those didn't arrive. Tariff rebate checks. Oh, wait, those didn't arrive. How about tariff dividend checks? Those are coming. And guess what? We're going to replace healthcare with giving you a$2 ,000 check, and we're going to not pay insurance companies anymore, put them out of business, and now you get to buy your healthcare with$2 ,000?

19:44Ben Meiselas:Setting aside the fact that Trump's not going to give this$2 ,000 and it's just more made up Ponzi scheme type stuff. If you were handed a check for$2 ,000, how is that going to pay for the healthcare that you need? What happens when you need a procedure? What happens if there's a surgery that costs more than$2 ,000? The whole point of health insurance is to ensure with vast risk pools when people actually need it in certain circumstances. So you need some form of insurance, whether it's single payer, whether government is the insurer, whether it's universal healthcare, whether it's private insurance, whether it's the Affordable Care Act, which takes the existing private insurance, but tries to subsidize it and keep the price low, but then have the government step in in certain areas.

20:37Ben Meiselas:You have to have some sort of system, but Trump across the board, Brett and Jordy, is tear it down. Jordy, good answer to what she was saying.

20:45Brett Meiselas:You must be a lawyer or something and build by the hour because that was quite the explanation to what the hell did Levitt say. I actually feel bad that you speak such fluent Caroline Levitt. Thank you for breaking that down. That was really informative, B. For me, what it just comes down to is the pull yourself up by your bootstrap party, right? That's what the GOP, that's their motto, that's their thing. They always make excuses. They always have someone else to blame and they just never take accountability. It's like, y 'all control every branch of government. What are you doing blaming the Democrats, blaming Biden?

21:18Brett Meiselas:It sounds insane, but that's just their reflex. Their reflex is to lie. And that's why I say all the time, what we do here at the Minds Touch Network is easy, right? We bring the facts, the data, the receipts. When you're dealing with the truth and the data and the facts and all of that, that's an easy thing to show. What these Republicans are doing, just bending over backwards every single day to make up the next lie is banana land to me. And the thing is, the lies are so stupid. Like they could cherry pick any economic data that they want to try and show, oh, look, the economy, it's doing great.

21:49Brett Meiselas:We're getting right there. But at the end of the day, the people go into the gas pumps, the people go into the grocery stores, they're feeling it. They're seeing it. It is physically coming out of their accounts. So they can be gaslit by this regime all they want. But at the end of the day, people are seeing the true numbers out there because it's hitting home, literally.

22:11Jordy Meiselas:Well, they could say these lies at their own peril. Honestly, it's the worst thing that you could do. And even, you know, former President Biden would get criticized for trying to paint a rosy economy. And by the way, the economy was far stronger and more rugged under President Biden than it's been under Donald Trump by far, not even close, not even like the same thing whatsoever. But people were still very critical of Joe Biden when he would tout actual good economic data at the time. And they would say, I wish you would show more empathy with the people, you know, like the people are still struggling out there.

22:43Jordy Meiselas:There still is a, a wide gap right now between the rich and the poor. And he should acknowledge that. And he should acknowledge that the stock market isn't necessarily the economy, all that sort of things. Trump just says F you. Trump just says F you. The economy is good. And if you think otherwise, then F you, you know, it's really as big F you to his entire base. And that's why I think you see people even like Marjorie Taylor green and a lot of these MAGA voices going like, we can't gaslight our way out of this economy. We can't gaslight our way out of the facts. And the more they try to go with that messaging, the more likely it is that they are going to get blown out of the midterms.

23:14Jordy Meiselas:And the lower and lower Donald Trump's approval rating is going to get, the more unpopular these people are going to get. But it comes down to something that we discuss on the show often, and that's that Donald Trump is a fraud. He's been a fraud his entire life. He was held criminally liable for being a fraud. He had his company, his organization, they had to pay a lot of money. They were ordered to pay at least a lot of money for the fraud that they did by inflating numbers. Donald Trump inflated the numbers of the square footage of his apartments there. He has a track record of always being a fraud.

23:45Jordy Meiselas:And all these people who are around him right now, the Caroline Levitt's, the Hassett's, the you name it, you name the person. If this were Donald Trump's business, they would all be criminal or civil defendants in the many lawsuits that would be brought in the fraud cases against these businesses because it is the same exact pattern of deception that Donald Trump is engaging in. But this time it's on a national scale and it's affecting all of us.

24:10Ben Meiselas:This regime is slightly different than regime number one of Donald Trump, right? Where he's still in the regime one brought in some bad people, but he still had people who were like effective operators. I'm not trying to make excuses for their behavior, but they were more right-wing, establishment-ish people. Then they would get into fights, and then he would cycle through them. This time, it's basically the Trump org running the United States. The same people who bankrupted Trump casinos and all of those Trump products, he's basically assembled a team that looks like them to handle the very complex economy of the United States, or he's forced people to behave like that and lower their capacity like a Besant or a Rubio, who I'm not suggesting are good people, but I'm saying at least have an intellectual capacity to think that they've squashed and are just as bad, if not worse, than the Hegsiths and the rest of these lunatics at this point.

25:29Ben Meiselas:And this is why setting aside politics, often what we talk about on this podcast is moral character, qualifications, being effective, like operationally sound behavior. and to me that shouldn't be are you a Democrat or a Republican. I understand politics is everywhere around us, but for me it's like we'll talk about this later. Let's give you an example. Lindsey Halligan, the top federal prosecutor in Virginia, now Eastern District of Virginia, who had this hearing today about whether she'll be disqualified or not based on being an unlawfully appointed federal prosecutor. She was a beauty pageant contestant turned insurance lawyer who has never been a federal prosecutor before, who's never been a trial lawyer before, who went into a grand jury room to secure an indictment of James Comey.

26:31Ben Meiselas:I'll just address this now while I'm on this rant. James Comey, the former FBI director who himself was a top prosecutor, top lawyer. And then she also went after New York Attorney General Letitia James, top lawyer, climbed the ladder. She went after them. She was in the grand jury room securing an indictment of James Comey. And guess what? The critical portions of the transcript where she secures the indictment after like 4.50 p.m. Eastern time to when the grand jury signed off on her purported charges against Comey. Guess what? It's missing. It's missing. Judge Curry, the federal judge who had these incredible instincts many weeks ago, you'll remember we covered, she said, send me the grand jury transcript.

27:21Ben Meiselas:I want to read it. And then she responded after getting portions of it and said, wait a minute, the key section is missing where you sought the indictment. Send it to me with the full portion. Halligan and the DOJ send it. And guess what? It's missing. So today at the hearing on the disqualification of Halligan, because you're not allowed to have two interim United States attorneys, you're only allowed to get one shot at it. The prior United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was fired or forced out, Republican, by the way, because he said that the charges against Comey and New York Attorney General, Letitia James, were frivolous and would not bring the charges.

28:00Ben Meiselas:So that's why they brought Halligan in. But Halligan's in this grand jury room and the court reporter is either not there or not transcribing what's happening. So what did Halligan tell this grand jury to secure this indictment? How do we know that she didn't say, hey, grand jury, I just need you to sign there, please. And that's your job. Just sign it. Did she give accurate description of what the law is as required by her duty as a federal prosecutor. What did she do? Why is it missing? That's unheard of. That's not supposed to happen. Well, would any of you want to go on an airplane where your pilot has started their flight school on day one?

28:45Ben Meiselas:Would you want them to be your 747 pilot when you're traveling across the country? Of course you would not, right? That would be a horrifying. So why is Donald Trump doing the equivalent of hiring the day one flight school student to fly the airplane right away. That shouldn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, the outcome is going to be crash. And that's what we're seeing here over and over again. Brett and Jordi know we want to talk about that. We've got to take our first quick break of the show. Let me just say this before we go to

29:20Jordy Meiselas:break quickly. And I'll just say what you just described again ties into exactly what I was saying in the beginning of this episode. It's that absence of information I think is actually telling us more than the information itself. The fact that they are not providing those missing grand jury transcripts that they suddenly went missing, they don't have that part, to me is highly incriminating. And it shows that Lindsay Halligan either did something incredibly unethical in that grand jury room to secure these indictments or illegal in that room. If they had the transcripts that would exonerate her, they would surely release them.

29:53Jordy Meiselas:And by the way, Pam Bondi is also embroiled in all this because she retroactively decided to sign off on everything Lindsay Halligan did in the Comey case, which is also could come back to screw her as well. So you got all of these people right now signing on to these moves that are at minimum unethical, at worst, you know, highly illegal. And we are seeing this play out just in every sector of the government. It is so corrupt and it is because they are just failing in every single aspect of everything and they are

30:25Ben Meiselas:failing the American people worst of all deep dive into the Epstein emails when we return I'll go through them methodically I went through all 23 ,000 of those emails I'm going to show you we

30:40Jordy Meiselas:were up late last night going going back and forth we were sending each other like all the screenshots we found I was going next next next okay what's this what's right I mean holy crap Did you see this? Like it was bananas. Yeah. It was totally crazy.

30:52Ben Meiselas:First quick break of the show. A reminder, if you can join our YouTube channel and become a member and gift memberships to others, it's very helpful to the growth of this independent platform, especially gifting memberships to people who can't afford the memberships right now. If you can also make sure you subscribe to our audio podcast, just search Midas Touch. It helps as well. If you're just watching on YouTube, subscribe on audio. Audio listeners, subscribe on YouTube. First quick break of the show. We'll be right back.

31:26Jordy Meiselas:Cold mornings, holiday plans. This is when I just want my wardrobe to be simple. Stuff that looks sharp, feels good, and things I'll actually wear. For me, that's quince. And the bonus, quince pieces make great gifts too. This season's lineup is simple, but smart and easy with quince. $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury, and wool coats that are equal parts stylish and durable. Their denim nails the fit and everyday comfort, all at a fraction of what you'd expect to pay. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middlemen to deliver premium quality at half the costs of other high-end brands, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

32:05Jordy Meiselas:As for me, I just got a crewneck sweater for those chilly LA nights, and I love it. Quince even had stuff for my newborn. I picked up pajamas and a towel set, perfect for the holidays. Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince. Go to quince.com slash Midas for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash m-e-i-d-a-s. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash Midas.

32:39Brett Meiselas:Ever have one of those moments where your body reminds you it's not 25 anymore? Maybe it's the slower recovery after a workout or the way your joints creak like an old floorboard. And don't get me started on how much worse it is in the winter. It's like my energy goes into hibernation. Aging is a reality for all of us, but our actions determine how we age. That's why I use Qualia Senolytic to help keep my cells healthy and my body feeling youthful. Zombie cells are real and they're aging you. These senescent cells stop being useful, but stick around draining your energy, slowing recovery, and making you feel older than you are.

33:16Brett Meiselas:Qualyacinolytic helps your body fight back against aging. It's a powerful, clinically tested formula with nine vegan, plant-derived compounds that support your body's natural ability to eliminate zombie cells so you can feel sharper, stronger, and more energized. Take it just two days a month. That's all it takes. Take Qualia Senolytic for just two days a month and start aging better at the cellular level. After adding Qualia Senolytic to my routine, I noticed the real difference. My energy feels steadier, recovery is quicker, and mentally I'm more dialed in. Experience the science of feeling younger.

33:52Brett Meiselas:Go to qualialife.com slash Midas for up to 50 % off your purchase and use code Midas for an additional 15%. That's qualialife.com slash Midas for up to 50 % off your purchase. Your older self will thank you. And thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. Ever wake up sweaty, freezing, or just uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That's why I switched to Miracle Made Sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver infused temperature regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long miracle made sheets are crafted with nasa inspired silver infused fabric that helps regulate your body temperature hot sleeper cold sleeper it doesn't matter these sheets help keep you in the comfort zone all night long thanks to their antibacterial silver technology miracle made sheets stay cleaner and fresher up to three times longer than regular sheets that means fewer odors fewer wash cycles and way less laundry they feel just as good if not better than sheets you'd find at a five-star hotel, but without the steep price tag.

34:58Brett Meiselas:Smooth, breathable, and ridiculously comfortable. Upgrade your sleep or give the gift a better rest. Go to trymiracle.com slash Midas to try Miracle Made Sheets today. You'll save over 40 % and when you use promo code Midas, you'll get an extra 20 % off plus a free three-piece towel set. They make an amazing gift with a 30-day money-back guarantee. There's no risk. That's trymiracle.com slash Midas, code Midas at checkout. Thanks to Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode.

35:35Brett Meiselas:Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors. Links in description of both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. It's holiday season, folks. So a lot of great deals for you. Check those out. Benji, where to next? All right.

35:50Ben Meiselas:Buckle up. We're doing a deep dive into the Epstein estate emails. Let me say the following before we do this deep dive. How did we get these emails? How did you get these emails? How did the public get these emails? the Democrats in the House Oversight Committee, not the Republicans, they reached out directly to the Epstein estate. The Epstein estate is administered by a third party. It's almost like in a bankruptcy where you have someone who's appointed by a court to basically take over and be an administrator, right? So somebody's appointed here to distribute money, to address settlements, to handle the litigation.

36:39Ben Meiselas:They get paid for their work. They get paid out of money that's in the estate. And that's who you're kind of dealing with if you want to know like, well, who's the estate? So the estate generally is cooperative to working in conjunction with its stated purpose from a court to administer claims, to respond to things. So when people are saying, well, where did these documents come from? Or Todd Blanche didn't have access to these documents when he was meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. Of course he did. He could have reached out as well. He could have subpoenaed them or just asked for them and the estate would have turned these over.

37:23Ben Meiselas:So the Democrats asked for it because they want transparency. It took a little time because there had to be redactions of the victims' names. But these are emails and documents from the estate. This is not the Epstein files. If you told me this was the Epstein files, I would say, well, it's pretty damaging stuff. No wonder Donald Trump does. I can't even emphasize enough how damaging and devastating these documents are. But these are not the Epstein files. These are the emails that the estate has. And Trump's name is like the most prominent name in these 20, you know, there's other names that appear, Larry Sumner's others, but Trump's name is perhaps the most prominent name.

38:06Ben Meiselas:And then towards the end of Epstein's life, right? He dies allegedly by suicide, allegedly, although these emails make that seem even way more far-fetched than many people before because it did not seem based on those emails, like he was someone who didn't seem that he had, he had information and he had plans and ways to get out. He hadn't even gone through his criminal trial, right? But he dies August, 2019. He's arrested July of 2019. These emails go through pretty much all of that period. And towards the end, Epstein like gets obsessed with Trump. I mean, he's saying, I have information, like he literally says in an email, I have information that isn't it interesting that I'm the only guy who's got the information that can bring him down.

38:51Ben Meiselas:I mean, literally months before his death, Epstein in an email says, he's the only one who could take Trump down. I mean, that's a wild thing to say. And he gets obsessive with Trump too towards the end, right? Like he's monitoring Trump's tail numbers, like the Trump's flights. He's speaking with Trump insiders kind of pretty frequently leading up to right before Epstein gets arrested. The frequency increases. So these again, are the Epstein estate emails. And what was kind of surprising to me, Brett and Jordy and Might is Mighty, is that the initial emails that the Democrats posted about Epstein emailing Elaine in 2011, saying that he's the dog that hasn't barked yet, referring to Trump, and that Trump was at Epstein's house with one of the victims for a long period of time.

39:45Ben Meiselas:And isn't it interesting that Trump hasn't responded yet? the more that came out throughout the day in our analysis, I thought the emails got more damaging than the ones that they even posted. The email from Michael Wolff to Donald Trump was one of the ones that they posted. I mean, from Michael Wolff to Epstein was one of the ones that they posted talking about, well, why don't you come out with the information that you have? You've got all of this dirt on him and you can end him right now. Why don't you do this? The 2011 email, though, to Ghislaine is pretty devastating because the timing of these emails before Trump was political to me, you know, or was a national figure for president.

40:28Ben Meiselas:That's why a lot of these are interesting because they go back to periods of time where if you want to say, well, look, he was saying this in 2018 and 2019 because he was being opportunistic and Donald Trump was in office then. So, okay. But like in 2011, then remember there was that last document dump of far less documents from the estate, but like 2007, where it's an email from Epstein and Ghislaine, where they talk about the WPB documents, West Palm Beach documents. They say, is Trump probably speaking with the feds and Trump, Gossman, Pascal, WPB documents. And you'll recall, Trump bought a property from this previously wealthy guy, he's no longer alive, named Abe Gossman in 2004 for$40 million.

41:21Ben Meiselas:Then Trump sold it for$95 million to a Russian oligarch named Rybolev. Rybolev then demolished the property a few years later. Trump made basically a$45 million profit on the sale. Epstein introduced Trump to that Gossman property because Epstein wanted advice about where to move the pool. Epstein was going to buy it for$30 million. Trump bought it from underneath Epstein for$40 million and then sold it to Rybalov, the Russian oligarch. And Epstein always thought there was some shady thing going on, perhaps between Gossman, Trump, and Rybalov. So that was an August 23, 2007 email. But Brett and Jordy and Might is Mighty, let's just go through some of these together, right?

42:06Ben Meiselas:Jeffrey Epstein in 2015, he goes, have them ask my house man about Donald almost walking through the door, leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door. Or how about this email between Epstein and Thorben Jagland, the former prime minister of Norway, where Epstein says in emails that he had been advising the Russian government on how to deal with Donald Trump. Specifically, he said he was advising somebody named Vitaly Cherkin, but Cherkin died. And there was going to be a meeting, apparently, between Sergei Lavrov, Putin, and Donald Trump.

42:55Ben Meiselas:And Epstein was telling the former prime minister and a guy who had a top position at the United Nations, Thorgen Jaglen, the former prime minister of Norway. And he responds to Epstein, I'll meet with Lavrov's assistant on Monday and will suggest basically that you consult with the Russians leading to something. You know what was one month later? Trump's meeting in Helsinki. This was June 24, 2018. So Epstein is saying here, we don't know if it's true or not, but what he's saying, again, not just to a rando, to the former prime minister of Norway who's meeting with Lavrov's people, I've been consulting with the Russians about Donald Trump's past.

43:43Ben Meiselas:Lavrov should speak to me. And then the Helsinki meeting happens a year later. Just think about that. For those of you like, Lavrov sounds familiar. He was the guy wearing the USSR shirt in Alaska who was with Putin. He's Putin's number two right now today. He's the foreign minister. He's like the top guy in Russia. Lavrov, Epstein, Trump. And we know from these suspicious activity reports that JPMorgan Chase had to admit to after the New York Times and Wall Street Journal made recent public records requests, 4 ,600 SAR suspicious activity reports that Epstein was using lots of Russian accounts and that he was running a billion-dollar money laundering scheme adjacent to his sex trafficking ring.

44:32Ben Meiselas:I know. Mind blown. Jeffrey Epstein says this, I've met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump, not one decent cell in his body. And Epstein is writing that to Larry Sumners, both bad people. And they're saying that Trump is the worst person that Epstein's ever met. Also, Epstein and his brother were sending memes about Donald Trump to each other with a photo of Trump saying, would you trust this man with your daughter, Epstein and Epstein's brother. Epstein, who ran the biggest child sex trafficking ring ever, is saying, would you trust this man with your daughter? And it's a photo of Trump, and that's what's being sent from Epstein's brother to Epstein.

45:16Ben Meiselas:Messages from Epstein advising Steve Bannon that lawyers representing Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing should accuse Christine Blasey Ford of being on medications that cause false memories or memory loss. Epstein to Larry Sumner's about Trump's level of guilt. Your world does not understand how dumb he really is. He will blame everyone around him for bad results. Emails from the New York Times journalist or former journalist Landon Thomas tipping Epstein off about following up investigations by journalists and former NYPD detective John Connolly. Responding to a 2017 message that Trump was so gross, Epstein said Trump was worse in real life.

46:00Ben Meiselas:And up close, there were messages where Epstein writes to his lawyer, have one of your cronies ask to see the mortgage at Mar-a-Lago, cash from electricians unions. His driver, Matt, was the bag man, later made an exec at the Public Co. And the$30 million loan from the casino to Donald Trump backdated, backdated loans. And this email was sent on October 24th, 2012, between Epstein and his lawyer. There are messages in 2014 about Trump stealing a piece of Atlantic City casinos and a guy who was beaten up by Trump or beaten by Trump. There's an email from November 13th, 2016, Linda Stone saying, you still in Paris.

46:46Ben Meiselas:Epstein says Trump Tower. Is he saying he's in Trump Tower. And there's more, okay? Oh, how about this one? The lewd Epstein birthday book that included a joke about Epstein selling a fully depreciated woman to Trump. Now these new emails show Epstein telling someone that he gave Trump his 20-year-old girlfriend in the mid-1990s. I mean, think about this stuff. That was going down there.

47:16Jordy Meiselas:I want to make this one where we got to read this one. I mean, it's just Jeffrey Epstein in 2018 saying, I know how dirty Donald is. I mean, when you have Jeffrey fricking Epstein of all people saying how repulsed he was by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's brother sharing memes with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile, a convicted child sex trafficker saying, would you trust this man with your daughters? I mean, just how depraved does that make Donald Trump if this is coming from Jeffrey freaking Epstein? And it shows like, you know, I think it's kind of clear. You see almost a change in their relationship as you look through these emails kind of from close buds to like a falling out in the later years.

47:59Jordy Meiselas:And it's clear that Epstein new world bodies were buried, so to speak, and that people were constantly making allusions to Epstein knowing everything and Epstein constantly telling people, you should look here at Trump. You should look here. I mean, the whole thing is actually, it's incredibly kind of fascinating to see the psychology and the pathology of Epstein and what was happening during these kind of big moments throughout our history and politics and stuff. And one of the things that really also blew me away was how at least Epstein, because remember, to me, you got to assume someone's at a certain point, he's an unreliable narrator who wants to make himself seems super important, but you have Epstein constantly speaking with world leaders, speaking about the work he did with Russia, speaking about the work he did with Norway, speaking about the work he did with the Saudis and Israel and all these various people.

48:51Jordy Meiselas:Obviously, like a well-connected guy, almost acting like a, I don't know, some sort of like foreign agent or consultant, like in the Trump world. Like the whole thing to me is just completely weird. And I got to say, though, you know, to be fair, Bill Clinton was mentioned in these, right? I mean, we should we should mention what they what they said about Bill Clinton, right? Because the the Trump people surely want to know and the American people want to know, right? People should know, you know, about everything. Well, unfortunately for the MAGA crew, the one thing about Bill Clinton that was in these emails was Jeffrey Epstein saying, I can't believe people keep saying Clinton was on the island.

49:26Jordy Meiselas:Clinton was never on the island. This is the one thing that that came out. And obviously, I know a lot of people are going to say, you know, but we all saw the flight logs. His name was on the flight log. So that must be a lie. But remember, those flight logs weren't flights to the island. And that's why those flight logs were flights in general on Epstein's plane. So it could be going to New York. You know, we know that Bill Clinton would use the that plane to go to like charity events in Africa and things like that. So those are just people on the plane, not necessarily people who went to the island.

49:54Jordy Meiselas:And then you have Epstein in these private emails saying that Bill Clinton actually never even went to the island, despite that being kind of something that people commonly believe to be true and something that Trump frequently says. And so, you know, when you add all the various elements of this up, like it could not be worse for Donald Trump and MAGA and his refusal to come clean about any of this and his refusal to speak on it. I mean, we've seen now he basically went silent for like a 24 hour period on a social media refuse to like say anything, which if you follow Trump, that's highly unusual.

50:26Jordy Meiselas:And, you know, after this dropped, he did a couple of messages where he said, ah, this is the latest in the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. It's all a lie. It's all a hoax. Jeffrey Epstein didn't do anything with it. I'm not involved, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That only makes it seem guiltier. And then he was asked by the press yesterday, refused to answer the question, told the press to leave today. Again, during another event, he ran out when he was asked the question, refused to answer answer it, uh, refuse to say anything about this. I mean, the more, once again, I think we have the theme, right?

50:52Jordy Meiselas:The more that he refuses to give the information, the guiltier he looks because if the information actually exonerated him, he'd be the first one to say, okay, let's do this. In fact, if I were Donald Trump and I were in this situation, I think this has become such a huge problem for him. I would hold like a prime time event to speak about Epstein. Now, I don't think he's, he would ever do this in the world because I I think the information is actually highly incriminating, but I think it's at a point where he has to like, you ever see the movie eight mile, eight mile with Eminem, where like, I hate to run the movie for you.

51:23Jordy Meiselas:It's been out for a while, but he's got this great rap where like, you know, they're going to unleash all this dirt on him. And then he does a freestyle where he goes through all the various things that they could possibly unleash on him. You know, he outs himself for all the various things that they could possibly make fun of him for. I think Trump, you know, if he were smart, he would hold an Epstein press conference and he would just come clean on everything. You know, I think now he can't because I think what's actually there is incriminating. But if it's not incriminating, then come out, speak to the American people and say, listen, you know, I used to party with this guy.

51:55Jordy Meiselas:We were both wealthy people in the Palm beach area. Yes. We attended parties. Yes. There were young women there. You know, no, I didn't do anything. You know, a lot of people knew the guy as you see from the email, you know, just go if, if you didn't do anything, just come clean with the American people. This should be a way to clear things up. And I think he'd actually gain respect for people for doing that. But just like with the economic data, just like he tried to do with COVID, instead he goes, I'm not going to give you the information. In fact, it's a whole, the whole thing's a hoax, nothing to see here, folks.

52:24Jordy Meiselas:And that makes him look a billion times guiltier. And it's perhaps why he's not coming clean with the information, because if the reality was out there, and if this is what we're just seeing in these emails that were given, handed over by the Epstein estate and not what's actually in the files, not what's actually in the various FBI investigations and everything that we've seen over the past decade or so. It's got to be pretty bad. And I understand why he is freaking out the way that he is. And this whole Republican Party who was shielding him after making this their main issue. And by the way, I want to address something else because I always see, there's always people who are like, but why didn't Biden release the files?

53:00Jordy Meiselas:Why didn't Biden? And people love to use that line. First of all, these files were sealed. The Biden DOJ was prosecuting. They were prosecuting the case, okay? They were prosecuting. This case was still an active case. And I want to remember that Trump set the standard for releasing information like this. In investigations, you don't actually normally release files to the public because there's an appeals process, like Elaine Maxwell's appealing her sentence, right? There are things that you're actually not supposed to do as prosecutors, as law enforcement agencies. And Trump has also made it the norm where he is the guy who's now directing his department of justice to come out and, and to his weaponizing department of justice.

53:38Jordy Meiselas:I know the Trump people will say, Oh, but Biden weaponized the department of justice against Donald Trump, but it was all weaponized bullshit. The Biden DOJ was as careful as could be. The Biden DOJ was prosecuting people who committed crimes. And those people who committed crimes happened to be Donald Trump happened to be a lot of these Republicans who got caught up in January 6th. That's why they were investigating that. It didn't come from a political angle. I know the MAGA people would go, oh, F you, shut up. But that's just the reality of it. So you got to accept that. The Biden DOJ was not a weaponized DOJ.

54:10Jordy Meiselas:Biden was somebody who left everything for better or worse to Merrick Garland. It wasn't something like, okay, here's my election strategy. You drop the files, we destroy this guy. That's not normal. That's not what American presidents do. But Donald Trump made this his cause du jour. He swept his way into office at a big part by saying that he would release these files. Him and his team and the various MAGA people have consistently released fake versions of files and fake lists of names that happen to list all the celebrities they hate and all the politicians they hate completely made up. But when it came actual time to actually release the files and do the job, the files that they now have all the access to, it's pretty damn clear that they looked at those files.

54:52Jordy Meiselas:They saw Trump's name all over it and it wasn't too flattering. And they decided, we can't do anything with this. We got to just get the hell away from this and try to hide it and everything. I mean, it's very obvious what's happening here, folks.

55:06Brett Meiselas:Such a brilliant breakdown there, Pete. Well done. And you know what I'm most impressed? I can't believe you were able to work an eight mile into the Trump-Epstein segment. So kudos to you for being able to do that. You know, my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.

55:20Jordy Meiselas:There's vomit on my shoulder already.

55:21Brett Meiselas:but really good spaghetti i haven't even really thought about until you brought it up and that's the pathology of epstein when he's sending these emails i mean it's almost obsessive that he got with donald trump and yeah i i think a lot of people could sort of relate to this you don't get that sort of obsessive uh about something or somebody in this way if you weren't close to them Like if you weren't very close to them and you felt like they crossed you or wronged you in some way, that now this is the only thing that is going to consume your mind at all times. That this, that he's going to make his sole focus here now on Trump and the behavior that he witnessed and now can sort of help bring him down because Epstein was a part of it, obviously.

56:12Brett Meiselas:And so it's just that that's such an interesting point where that you bring up here is is the mindset of Epstein during these emails.

56:19Jordy Meiselas:You know, he's nervous, but on the surface, he looks calm and ready to drop bombs. But he keeps on forgetting, you know, what he wrote down the whole crowd goes.

56:26Ben Meiselas:Let me let me say this, because you never truly know what's going through someone's mind. And I want to be very clear and very sensitive when you hear stories of people dying by suicide. And so one can say, oh, well, that person looked very happy or how did that happen? I was just hanging out with them. You know, so you hear that all the time. My only observation is that seeing Epstein through these emails, he's a very narcissistic kind of sociopathic person. And leading up to his purported death by suicide, he's speaking to people at the highest levels in various governments, right? He's talking to prime ministers, defense ministers, other billionaires, presidents of universities.

57:15Ben Meiselas:He's speaking with the elite of the elite on all of these things. Then he gets arrested in July, and then he's dead a month later, purportedly dying by suicide. And my only observation is that somebody who believes they have all this dirt on Donald Trump, somebody who's speaking with all of these people, my only thought would be that before getting to the level of there's no hope in the future and I'm done, it just seems the personality type would be, let me exhaust every one of these contacts and aspects of what I have.

57:55Jordy Meiselas:He's not giving like, oh, I'm fucked and it's all over for me. He's giving like, oh, I got this, like this, you know, whatever.

58:03Ben Meiselas:And again, I want to be very sensitive to, beyond sensitive to this topic and approach it with the utmost care. However, that's what the emails, in my review of it, that's just a personality type that I identify. Let's take our last quick break of the show. When we come back, we still have a lot to discuss, although we've covered a lot of ground already. A reminder, hit join, become a member. If you become a member, It's a paid membership of the YouTube, okay? But it helps grow this independent media platform and gift memberships. There's no limit to the gift of memberships that you can give, and you can help people unlock emojis and get other bonus features like the exclusive podcast we do with Ron Filipkowski that's just available to members.

58:46Ben Meiselas:Last quick break of the show, homestretch. Don't go anywhere. We'll see you after the break. look starting a new business can be intimidating i get it midas touch network was not built overnight you need the tools to help you engage in the day-to-day tasks the growth and so that's why we use shopify it made things easy for us and i think you should use shopify too so shopify is a commerce platform it is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the United States from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands like the Midas touch network.

59:28Ben Meiselas:Get started with your own design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style, accelerate your content creation. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. Get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Even if you don't easily create email and social media campaigns, wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling to the Midas Touch Network. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert. And with its world-class expertise and everything from managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond, you can count on Shopify.

1:00:10Ben Meiselas:If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. So turn your big business idea in two. Boom, boom, boom with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Midas. Go to shopify.com slash Midas. One more time. That's shopify.com slash Midas.

1:00:36Brett Meiselas:Long work weeks and busy weekends can leave you feeling and looking depleted. Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet works at the cellular level to rejuvenate you from the inside out, providing real results that include fat-focused, sustainable weight loss with no injection needed. And now they're upping their game with the new next-gen five-day program, delivering the same science-backed benefits in a cleaner, more convenient, and more flavorful format. Prolon is a plant-based nutrition program featuring soups, snacks, and beverages designed to nourish the body while keeping it in a fasting state, triggering cellular rejuvenation and renewal.

1:01:14Brett Meiselas:Developed over decades at USC's Longevity Institute and backed by top US medical centers, Prolon has been shown to support biological age reduction, metabolic health, skin appearance, fat loss, and energy. NextGen builds on the original Prolon with 100 % organic soups and teas, a richer taste, and ready-to-eat meals. No matter the season when I'm craving a real reset, Prolon is the only nutrition program that works for me. It's convenient, backed by Nobel winning science, and it works. For a limited time, Prolon is offering listeners 15 % off site-wide plus a$40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five-day program.

1:01:53Brett Meiselas:Just visit prolonlife.com slash Midas. That's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E dot com slash Midas to claim your 15 % discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.com slash Midas. The holiday season can be stressful and the shopping travel parties every weekend. And when I need to slow down and actually relax, I reach for soul's out of office gummies, the perfect balance of CBD and THC that helps me find my calm place and my peace of mind. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious hemp derived THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind.

1:02:34Brett Meiselas:Their best-selling out-of-office gummies were designed to provide a mild relaxing buzz, boost your mood, and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe, from a gentle 1.5 mg microdose to their newest 15 mg gummy for a more elevated experience. And if you like their out-of - office gummies, try the new out-of-office beverage, a refreshing alcohol-free alternative that's perfect for winding down on the couch or socializing with friends. Soul also has a variety of products specifically designed to help you get a better night's rest, including their top selling sleepy gummies, a fan favorite for deep restorative sleep.

1:03:12Brett Meiselas:With wellness at the forefront, you can feel good about what you're putting in your body. All of Soul's products are made from organically farmed USA grown hemp and are vegan gluten-free low in sugar and federally legal. Take advantage of Sol's Black Friday Cyber Monday deal now. For a limited time, get 40 % off your entire order. Go to GetSol.com and use the code MIDAS. That's GetSol, promo code MIDAS for 40 % off. Don't miss their best deal of the year.

1:03:42Brett 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 an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benji, where to next? where to i will just start here just to show you that none of this behavior is normal by the trump

1:03:59Ben Meiselas:regime and then i want to pivot to other topics that perhaps more serious although i think this is serious as well because you have donald trump in the oval office having like a bizarre experience so strange for me to watch this with the leader of syria um al shara who used to be the leader of the Al Qaeda. He had like a 10 million or$20 million bounty on his head from the United States because he was directing people to kill Americans throughout the Middle East. He's now the leader of Syria. And Donald Trump rolls out the red carpet for this guy, treats him better than Prime Minister Carney or Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, you name it.

1:04:42Ben Meiselas:Trump loves this guy. And he may actually love, love, love the guy. It's like a really weird scene in the Oval Office in the White House, where Donald Trump, he said before that he says he thinks this guy is attractive, which I'm saying, I think this guy is really good looking. I think you're really attractive, very strong man. You're very attractive. And then when Trump gets to see him, Trump's kind of giddy around him, almost like when you see Trump's face, you've never seen him this happy before around anybody. And it almost looks like someone who met there, who they have a crush on. And I'm not trying to be weird here, just you could assess it for yourself.

1:05:18Ben Meiselas:And Trump's immediate thing to do with this guy is to start saying, you want me to spray you with my Trump perfume or my Trump cologne? You want me to do that to you and see if you smell really good? And just watch this. It's just a very weird interaction. How many wives do you have? How many wives do you have? I mean, it's a really weird interaction. It's weird that the leader of Syria, given that background, is there in the Oval Office. And I understand the importance of diplomacy and that Syria has an important role. And just the idea of geostrategic, its position is helpful. It should be noted that al-Shara also visited Russia though.

1:06:03Ben Meiselas:But it's kind of diminishing to the White House visit, which used to be an honorific of the highest honorific degree when you have this taking place? Like, why is the White House meeting from a foreign leader meaningful? In fact, I would argue that it's something to be avoided at this point at all. It is a scarlet letter or a stain if you have to show up there. It's shameful, right? Just watch this. Here, play this clip.

1:07:03Ben Meiselas:have you ever seen him that happy and did he spray himself in the face face. Like, it looks like he like, it looks like Trump like got it in his eye too. Maybe you saw like what he did with his because like, ah, and why would you like, why would an interaction ever occur like that? That you, I I've never thought of any interaction where another woman or man or whoever came in, just say another man came into my like house or place of business. And I'm like, you know, like, like, uh, you want me to spray you with this cologne like it looks like trump's actually attracted to the guy

1:07:39Jordy Meiselas:it's quite the analysis for sure and the craziest thing is that

1:07:44Ben Meiselas:what i'm trying to say here is i think that donald trump is attracted

1:07:51Jordy Meiselas:i totally get it let me show you this too because like one of the craziest things like i said this guy like ran a sect of al-qaeda like and if you look at photos of the guy you know and i really don't recommend you do this, but you look the guy up. You can't do this, Ben. Don't smile at me like that. If you look at photos of him, you see him holding heads like a people he beheaded. I've seen these pictures. They're horrific. It's as bad as it gets. And if you look at even currently, this is still up. They haven't deleted this. This is the US Embassy Syria still has this post up on Twitter, for example, on their social media that says, stop this terrorist, up to$10 million reward.

1:08:29Jordy Meiselas:we remain committed to bringing him to justice. Like this, this remains up right now. And this is the guy who Donald Trump had in the white house. And one of the things Trump said when he was in the white house, he was like, oh yeah, he said, he said, he said a bit of a rough past, you know, you got to forgive him. He's had a rough past. Don't we all have rough pasts? I mean, we all have rough pasts, right? Like to me, when you're saying somebody had a rough past, like to me, I don't know. It's like, yeah, you had it. You got a couple of DUIs, maybe you got bar fights back in the day. I don't think that you actually like ran a sect of Al Qaeda.

1:09:03Jordy Meiselas:I don't think that's what people mean when you had a rough past, we've all had a rough past, but Donald Trump just normalizes this the same way he's normalized all these sort of dictators and autocrats and just horrific people, these terrorist groups. And they have the nerve then to like, try to put that on Democrats and say the most horrible things about Momdani and things like that. While you have Donald Trump in the white house with the former leader of Al Qaeda, you You have them going into business with the Saudis. There's just no shame from this administration. And they try to whitewash this history of people who have committed the most heinous acts against the American people.

1:09:39Jordy Meiselas:It's just, it's unfathomable to me that this is just normalized right now.

1:09:44Brett Meiselas:The video that we played for the audio listeners is so bizarre of Donald Trump spritzing these people with cologne. It really is strange. It could best be described as like, you guys remember going to malls? i don't go to that many malls lately but you guys remember kids going to malls used to be malls used to be where you like go through macy's and then they'd have like people there who would spray you when you walk past them with the perfume to like give you a taste of what the perfume smell like hopes that i don't think you're supposed to eat it jordy i think you're supposed to smell it you know you smell it you eat it it's the same thing any that that's the best it can be described as so if you're an audio go to the mall and they'll be like would you like to sample they

1:10:25Ben Meiselas:would you like to sample this cologne and jordy would go yes ah i know i there's no way to even say could you imagine if obama or biden had the former leader of al-qaeda and started spraying perfume on them like i mean could you just even like um could you even imagine it would be in the

1:10:41Jordy Meiselas:front of the new york post they'd have some sort of witty headline about obama about biden spraying perfume on the former leader you'd be done 25th amendment this is just a little bit of a rough

1:10:51Ben Meiselas:past just a couple of crazy crazy human but i'll tell you what i would have game would have respected game if donald trump i would have let donald trump keep the 10 million dollars right if he was like hold the perfume right and then he's like you're you're under arrest mother effort

1:11:13Ben Meiselas:yeah no i want the 10 i would have said you can grift and you can take that 10 million I would have, I would have gone a whole day without doing Trump disaster videos. I would have been Trump pulls up Trump, all caps pulls off perfect stunt. Correct.

1:11:39Ben Meiselas:Arrest the leader of Al Qaeda. The old cologne trick would go down like, you know, like the world war two movies. That's screw these tariffs.

1:11:47Jordy Meiselas:Let's just let's have him keep inviting former terrorists in the White House. And then he just collects the money and he could give that in rebates.

1:11:54Ben Meiselas:He said the ultimate trap, you know, like the World War Two movies with the narration. And then there was a pivotal moment. He invited him into the Oval Office and he pulled out the cologne. He said, do you like this scent? And then when Alshara was not looking, Donald Trump pulled out the cuffs and said, we've got you, mother effa. I go.

1:12:14Jordy Meiselas:No, he's got to he's got to have a cool tagline, man. And he's got to be like, do you like the scent? Because it smells like prison. Or so, you know, he's got to be like some like, you know, smells like justice. Smells like justice. All right. Anyway, let's move on. Cuffs on. Whisk him away. Approval rating from 33 % to 73%. You know what?

1:12:33Ben Meiselas:If they asked me, if I was polled, do you approve of that move? I would have been like, yeah, that's gangster. I approve of that move. I would have given, not approve of him. him. That little move, the arrest, I would have said that was a good move right there. Yeah. But no, but no, he embarrassed us and shamed us. I say, by, by sniffing the leader of our former leader of Al Qaeda turned leader of Syria. Oh, you smell nice.

1:12:59Brett Meiselas:And then genuinely asking how many wives he had and try to play it off. Like he didn't know.

1:13:03Ben Meiselas:I just, could we just talk about his day bread and just get the clip ready. How many wives he had? Could he use one more? Get the clip ready where Donald Trump and Laura Ingram talk about the brass versus, you know like whatever the materials i just want you to think about his day like he's like the morning he gets hit with all the epstein files right like getting released or like the emails then you know it's a different day but i'll just conflate the days just give you a day uh but then he brings in the leader former leader of al-qaeda turned leader of syria starts spritzing him then he goes oh you want to see the ball laura ingraham does an interview with him and he's like, I love designing ballrooms.

1:13:39Ben Meiselas:Maybe I should just be a ballroom designer. He says that here. He's like, do you see this? Do you see that? He gives her a tour. And then he like talks about, do you see this? It's brass. No, no. I mean, it's just watch this clip where he just even lies about the material that it's made out of. Here, play this clip.

1:13:56Jordy Meiselas:A lot of people are wondering which child would be the best. In a certain way, they all could. Take a look at this, fellas. You want to see detail. So like this sign.

1:14:05Ben Meiselas:Most people would just do a sign. They painted on the wall. So that's half inch thick bronze carved

1:14:12Brett Meiselas:by a very talented person. And it's brass. It's pure brass. It's half inch thick brass. And you can't just do that. That's you know, you look at that. That's quality. Right. And then we start with George Washington and we go down to Trump.

1:14:29Ben Meiselas:Pretty cool. Right. This is like, he's like, folks,

1:14:33Jordy Meiselas:let's just repeating something that Melania said to him. Listen, it's half inch thick brass. Is that supposed to humanize him too?

1:14:40Brett Meiselas:Like, like, is that supposed to be like a relatable thing that people do is, you know, they just go to their bajillion dollar ballrooms and they point and they talk about the crafts and the brass and the craftsmanship of that.

1:14:51Jordy Meiselas:It's all so fricking bizarre. But honestly, like Fox tried to set this whole interview up with Laura Ingraham as this like puff piece for Donald Trump as they normally do. But Trump was so horrible in this interview that he, it ended up backfiring like the biggest way. And I think ultimately they knew that they were sitting on this footage that they decided to stretch out over two nights. You know, they could have just been one and done. The first night was devastating enough for Trump, but they stretched us out over two nights and had brutal questions, not even brutal questions for Donald Trump, brutal answers by Donald Trump.

1:15:22Jordy Meiselas:And they knew at that point that they couldn't even like edit it out because it would have ruined the whole flow. So they add in these other moments, right? Like the brass versus bronze BS and all that sort of stuff to try to, I guess, humanize them and try to take the damage off. But the damage has been done. I mean, I haven't seen MAGA and the one-two punch of the responses that Donald Trump gave during this Fox interview leading into more Epstein obstruction. I mean, it's one of the reasons why you're also seeing Donald Trump's approval rating right now be at like 33 % and dropping because even his own base, even amongst Republicans in general, you are seeing him start to fall off a fricking cliff.

1:16:01Jordy Meiselas:Like I'm looking at what the MAGA people are saying. They feel betrayed by the guy. Like you'll still have the MAGA propagandists and whatnot, try to say, everything's great. Everything's amazing. But some of the things that Trump said during this interview have really irreparably harmed his reputation with the MAGA crowd. And Trump tries to write it off by saying things like, I'm MAGA. Everything I say is MAGA. Well, you don't know MAGA. Anything I say is the MAGA movement. And they're like, actually, that's not what we signed up for. And so like one of these things, for example, is when Donald Trump was asked about H-1B visas, which is something that the MAGA people hate.

1:16:35Jordy Meiselas:Like they want to get rid of H-1B visas. Donald Trump used to say emphatically that he thought H-1B visas were a scam, but Trump changed his tune here. H-1B visas are, you know, like skilled, you know, employment. It's a lot of Tech uses H-1B visas. Trump's companies, a lot of them use H-1B visas. And here's what Donald Trump said about it and really offended people in the MAGA movement because he essentially said that Americans aren't smart enough to fill these jobs and therefore we need to go to other countries and have the H-1B visas to bring in the real talent because the Americans are not talented.

1:17:09Jordy Meiselas:But just watch this clip. There's never gonna be a country like what we have right now. And does that mean - The Republicans have to talk about it, Laura.

1:17:14Brett Meiselas:And does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration.

1:17:19Jordy Meiselas:Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can't flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent. We have plenty of talented people here. No, you don't. No, you don't. We don't have talented people here. No, you don't have certain talents, and people have to learn. Like, that was as bad as it gets. Like, you know, I think screwed up comments in general.

1:17:42Ben Meiselas:It's so interesting, though, right? Because yes, it's helpful to have a mix of foreign students, which by the way, he's actually harmed that process, hasn't helped. But then she asks the question, don't like the biggest soft belt, but don't we, like both can be true, right? Yeah. That we have the talent.

1:18:00Jordy Meiselas:He starts off with a position that's actually a position I would say, oh, wow. I agree with that. Yeah, of course we need, you know.

1:18:06Ben Meiselas:And I also believe that we have talented people here and we should emphasize and support Americans going to universities and getting the best education. And that's where he disagrees. Like, no, no, no. He's like, Americans clearly are not anywhere near as smart as a Shniki student.

1:18:25Jordy Meiselas:If you remember, Vivek Ramaswamy said basically the same thing verbatim a few months back, and then he turned into persona non grata in the MAGA movement, like didn't even tweet for like days, if not longer. And Trump said the same thing that he got basically tossed out of this movement for back then. I mean, there's nothing more harmful that Trump could say than that, other than I guess saying that in the same interview, we don't have to play the clip, but Donald Trump said that we need to bring in 600 ,000 Chinese students into the American universities, that it's essential for America to succeed, that also really set off the MAGA people.

1:18:58Jordy Meiselas:And so you combine that with the economic failures, with Donald Trump telling people that everything is rosy and everything's great and living in a golden age.

1:19:06Ben Meiselas:In the factories, Americans are not capable of high skilled factory jobs.

1:19:12Jordy Meiselas:Yeah. So it's just hit after hit after hit with Donald Trump and then obviously the Epstein stuff. But this is why if you're wondering why, why is Trump's support seems softer than ever right now? why is he losing support with Republicans? Don't they love all the chaos? Yeah, they actually like all the bad crap, right? They like all that good stuff. You know, they like all the bad stuff. But the fact that Donald Trump now has changed his position or has been more vocal on these issues like H-1Bs and Chinese immigration and shitting on American workers and ingenuity and obstructing the Epstein files.

1:19:45Jordy Meiselas:I mean, like you add all of this up. And especially now that you have a bit of an opposition on the right, actually coming in many cases further to the right. You're starting to see a lot of these, and it's a very scary thing that's happening right now in the Republican Party, the most virulently anti-Semitic, horrific voices coming out from the right, people like Nick Fuentes and the Tucker Carlson's, and they're almost co-opting this movement. They don't view Trump as extreme enough anymore. They're angry at Trump. And meanwhile, you also have this opposition like Marjorie Taylor Greene and other people who are saying out loud, you know, this Epstein stuff is bullshit.

1:20:22Jordy Meiselas:Like, this is upsetting. Like, release the files. Like, what are we doing? And saying, no, the economy's not good. The people in my district don't think the economy's good. They're struggling. And when Donald Trump says that everything's amazing and we're living in the golden age, it actually does the opposite of helping. It's actually hurting. It's a big F you in the faces of the people in my district. And when you add all that up, that's part of the reason right now why you're seeing the bottom fall out of this Trump administration. And as I wrote about a week ago, I said, I think right now we are in Donald Trump's Afghanistan moment.

1:20:54Jordy Meiselas:And for those who remember the Biden administration after the Afghanistan withdrawal, which I think was 100 % the right move in the long term, I'm so glad that we brought our troops out of Afghanistan. But obviously he was going by Trump's plan. Trump had pulled all the forces out of there. Trump had screwed over the Afghan government, and it was a rough withdrawal. And President Biden at the time, his approval rating took a hit, and his approval rating never recovered. It just kept going down, maybe a little up some days, a little up. It kept going down and kept going down. His presidency was never the same from an approval rating point of view.

1:21:28Jordy Meiselas:Well, that's why I said just about a week ago, I think we've hit that Afghanistan moment for the Trump administration. I'm not sure that he will ever recover from this. He'll have maybe some okay days, you know, but he's in bad shape right now. Unless things turn around fast, he just seems to be digging his hole deeper and deeper and deeper. And the reason why I don't think he's going to dig himself out of this hole is because of other answers that he gave to Laura Ingraham. Like when he said the issue with the GOP, the issue with things right now, it's not that things are bad. It's not that people are suffering.

1:21:59Jordy Meiselas:It's not that prices are high. It's that Republican politicians aren't telling their voters that everything's amazing and that everything's cheap. As I said in the beginning, the worst possible thing you could do is lie to people about their lived experience. They know you're a bullshitter. You can't bullshit them on the issue of prices. I'll just play this clip quickly. The Republicans don't talk about it. So they need to do a better job on Capitol Hill. The Democrats give false talk and the Republicans, and I say it all the time, Republicans have to talk about the fact that prices are down. The Walmart thing is very important.

1:22:33Jordy Meiselas:When Walmart says a Thanksgiving meal costs 25 % less. All right. And that's, of course, he's going on another lie. He's doubling down a lie with another lie. But that's the kind of reason why I'm like, oh, he's never going to dig himself out of this. He's just going to keep trying to lie his way out of this. But as we know, when Donald Trump starts lying about things like this, and we've seen it in his first presidency, we've seen it in his legal cases. Once he starts digging, he keeps digging. And he brings on this, There's nothing more I could call it than this death spiral. The issue right now is the whole country is going to have to go through this death spiral with him as he destroys everything and collapses everything.

1:23:09Jordy Meiselas:But right now, we're watching a panicked man in a death spiral, making one bad decision after the next to try to cover for the previous bad decision. And it only makes things worse and worse and worse. And right now, we are in the middle of that storm.

1:23:22Ben Meiselas:If you remember early on in this regime, we gave an analysis, Brett, that was just that. I said, the reason why Trump's companies have gone bankrupt so many times, why if there was probably a Guinness Book of Records of bankruptcies, I don't know if he would be number one, but he would certainly be someone who bankrupted a lot of things. I mean, multiple casinos, multiple times, and all of those products and all of the lawsuits. And you go, but how is that possible? How could someone just keep on having that happen? It's a pathology and it's like a decision-making tree where most people see the problem and then try to fix it, take responsibility, admit fault, and then try to fix it, be humble, bring in new people, right?

1:24:10Ben Meiselas:Ways to address it. Trump takes the bad decision and turns it into a worse decision and then turns it into a catastrophic decision and turns it into absolute obliteration and bankruptcy. And then in the chaos of the bankruptcy or the catastrophe, right? And the mass confusion and people suffering, then he goes, well, they did it. They did it. They did it. They did it. They did it. They did it. Their fault, their fault, their fault, their fault. And then he moves on and bounces to the next one. That's been his whole life. And that was the warning that we've been trying to raise, that it's not a policy Democrat Republican thing, although that exists.

1:24:55Ben Meiselas:Certainly. I said, and it's critical. I don't want to understate these issues. But I said, he's a bad human being. And he is a terrible business person who has run things into the ground. Just take that undisputed fact and you can set aside all of the other things. Look at the decision-making based on a warped pathology and it is the worst in the world. Quite literally, if you picked any other human being to be in this position, they would do a better job than him. Seriously, he's quite literally the worst of all seven plus, eight plus billion human beings. I literally believe he's the worst human being for this position because he has a sick warped pathology.

1:25:43Ben Meiselas:And I think he's the biggest loser that exists. And that's the problem. And so I'll leave you with that high note, or you can think about him spritzing the former leader of Al Qaeda who used to be beheading people who's in the Oval Office. And Trump said, oh, you smell good. You want my cologne? You want my fragrance? We'll leave you with that. Keep fighting. Keep fighting. Stay in there because the release of these files didn't just happen, right? It was the pressure that you forced, you caused, you, we've changed the rules of how this is reported, how we hold people accountable. And that's been one of the biggest stories as well.

1:26:24Ben Meiselas:This is a different game when it comes to reporting and media now that independent media is leading the way. So on that note, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Subscribe to Midas Touch Podcast on audio. Subscribe to become a member of the YouTube channel and gift memberships to as many people as you can. Thank you. Thank you.

1:26:47Jordy Meiselas:Thank you. Hold up. Is everyone on our sub stack for the best damn political newsletter on the planet released every day by Ron Filipkowski? Because you got to make sure that you subscribe to that. Free to subscribe. There are paid tiers, which unleash even more features, but go to MidasPlus.com right now, join our Substack, get the daily political newsletter straight to your Substack app or in your inbox or both, and you get a lot of other incredible content. I know you're all going to love it. So check us out, MidasPlus.com. Great episode, brothers. Great episode, Midas Mighty. A lot to discuss.

1:27:18Jordy Meiselas:We went through a whole lot. Hope everybody enjoyed it. Remember to add the Midas Touch podcast on audio platform spokes and now i'm going to toss it over to jordy jordy take it away shout out to the minus want to

1:27:47Brett Meiselas:stay plugged in become a subscriber to our sub stack at midasplus.com You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

1:28:48Brett Meiselas:to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.

1:29:02Jordy Meiselas:Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal. Invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. they feel seen by it, like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify Advertising. You're among fans.

1:29:33Brett Meiselas:Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set.

1:30:11Jordy Meiselas:Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up.

1:30:14Brett Meiselas:Oh, you need a new grill too? Alright, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's Room of Choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. Wayfair, every style, every home.

From the publisher

In this episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast, Ben, Brett, and Jordy break down a whirlwind of seismic developments: newly released bombshell emails from the Epstein estate exposing fresh details about Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump; the passage of the Epstein Files Discharge Petition that will now force a vote on the full release of the files; voters abandoning the GOP in droves as Republicans hold Americans’ health care hostage in the wake of their disastrous shutdown; and Trump facing unexpected backlash from within his own MAGA base after his latest unhinged interview on Fox. All that and much more on a packed, can’t-miss episode.

Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com

Get Meidas Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com

Deals from our sponsors! 

Quince: Go to https://Quince.com/meidas for FREE shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Qualia: Take control of your cellular health today. Go to https://qualialife.com/meidas and save 15% to experience the science of feeling younger.

Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/MEIDAS and use the code MEIDAS to claim your FREE 3 piece towel set and save over 40% OFF!

Shopify: Sign up for a one-dollar per month trial at https://shopify.com/meidas

L-Nutra Prolon: Just visit https://ProlonLife.com/MEIDAS to claim your 15% discount and your bonus gift.

Soul: Bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Soul today! Go to https://GetSoul.com and use promo code MEIDAS for 40% off.

Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts:

MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast

Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af

MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial

The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast

Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan

Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen

The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show

Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats

Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54

Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown

On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman

Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More from The MeidasTouch Podcast

All 2,222 episodes
MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 11/14/25The MeidasTouch Podcast · 1 h 30 min
Listen in VO