MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 3/6/26

17:28Ben Meiselas:And now that's being shattered. And even if Iran is decreasing its ballistic missile strikes and Shahid drones, which I believe it is decreasing, I think that the American aerial strikes are having that impact. It's not totally obliterating it. There are still lots of strikes that are occurring. We saw strikes in Bahrain recently. We saw strikes in Azerbaijan by the airport there recently. We saw strikes in Jordan again recently. And these strikes continue to happen. But as long as you can create kind of a strategic uncertainty and instability in the region, that's enough to close the Strait of Hormuz, which is what's happening right now, right?

18:12Ben Meiselas:The oil, the liquefied natural gas, the crude is not getting out. I mean, the Brent crude price per barrel around$85 a barrel going up. That could be$100 a barrel. The price of gas right now approaching what,$3.50 or more. The largest increase kind of day over day that we've seen in recent history as well there. As I mentioned earlier, jet fuel prices going up double in the past day or two. This is going to lead to inflation surging. And Iran has selected a new Ayatollah, Manjaba, the son of the old Ayatollah, the old Ayatollah who was becoming increasingly unpopular, but who was still a spiritual leader to 300 million Shiites.

18:56Ben Meiselas:And they were kind of turning against him naturally. And if you probably just let him, you know, die naturally, you know, it's possible that the younger population would have rejected the new Ayatollah or new extremist government. But when they tried to have an uprising last month, Trump said, go out and do it. And then he said, I'm going to protect you if Iran does anything to you. Trump did nothing. Iran massacred 30 ,000 to maybe even more, 40 ,000 protesters. Now Donald Trump says he wants to use the Venezuela model of Delcy Rodriguez in Iran, meaning find somebody from the Islamic Republic who will give him money, right?

19:36Ben Meiselas:Delce just did $150 million gold deal with Donald Trump the other day, right? In Ecuador, you have a MAGA stooge there as well, who's allowing Trump to launch a ground invasion of Ecuador. I don't know if you know this, we're in war in Ecuador right now. I know with all the news that hasn't been reported, but Trump and the MAGA stooge in Ecuador are doing quote unquote narco trafficking missions with our troops on the ground there. And of course, Donald Trump created a Qatari bank account with Delcy Rodriguez so that Trump makes the oil money for himself. Remember that story about the DOJ potentially indicting Delcy Rodriguez, and then the DOJ denied it, which seems like what actually took place is we held an, or Trump held an indictment over Delcy Rodriguez's to get$150 million gold bricks is what he wanted, and then praised her and said, she's great, she's an amazing person, after he got the$150 million gold brick.

20:35Ben Meiselas:So that's Trump's plan in Iran. And there's a lot of suppression of democracy voices and free speech voices and freedom voices in Venezuela right now. The Chavistas are in control. The same brutality by Maduro still taking place right now inside Venezuela. So even if you are a democracy protester in Iran, when Trump is signaling he's not going to support you and he's going to support someone from the Islamic Republic, you know that even if you protest, Trump is going to make you die again. He's going to allow another massacre to happen. And then meanwhile, you know, Trump betrayed the Kurds last year in Syria.

21:15Ben Meiselas:He allowed al-Jelani, the leader of Syria, who was the former al-Qaeda leader to basically conquer or take over the autonomous regions that the Kurds controlled in Syria should be noted. We talked about Kurds. There's lots of different Kurdish groups. It's not like the Kurds are like one specific group, different factions over different areas of land in the Middle East. But one thing they want is this kind of democracy-leaning autonomous state, But Trump allowed Jelani to destroy that in Syria. In Trump's first administration, he allowed Turkey to basically go after the Kurds. Trump has consistently, personally betrayed the Kurds.

21:54Ben Meiselas:And by the way, he betrayed him again in the past 48 hours. Trump and Netanyahu leaked that the Kurds were engaged in a ground invasion against Iran because it was Trump and Netanyahu's plan to announce that, then have Iran attack the Kurds, and then have the Kurds go, oh, man, we're under attack by Iran now. Now, our sovereignty is being threatened. Now we're drawn into the war. So that was the plan by Trump and the CIA, which, you know, looks like it was concocted from some, you know, B-list movie. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to say the Kurds are invading. Who are you going to leak it to?

22:28Ben Meiselas:Leak it to state regime media and Barack Ravid over at Axios. Netanyahu, who are you going to do it? Let's do it.

22:35Jordy Meiselas:News 12. Everything that they do seems like it's from like a B-action movie, though, or even worse. You know what I was thinking when I was watching Pete Hegseth deliver, like he's been doing these press conferences and each of these press conferences is more deranged than the next. And by the way, when I watch this whole thing unfold, I can't help but in my head, make a comparison to the situation that we're seeing with this war to the way Trump handled COVID, just the way it's such a disaster and the increasing timeline. It's going to be done in two weeks and four weeks and eight weeks in September.

23:06Jordy Meiselas:These press conferences every day that are more deranged than the next. Like I know it's a completely different situation but in so many ways in my mind I don't know about you it feels that way but the other thing I was thinking Ben aside from a B movie is do you remember those video games we used to play command and conquer red alert there are these video games and they were like war video games where you had attacked there would be like World War two kind of things and they had these interstitials in the in the middle of them where they'd have like generals and people giving you your mission and the acting would be not so good and it would be kind of corny and they'd be, here's your mission.

23:41Jordy Meiselas:And they'd speak like in that, you know, machismo weird way. I can't help but think of that when I see Pete Hegseth. It's just so embarrassing. It's so cringy. And he's just so in over his head with all this. And let's face it, like at this point, the guy's like a total mass murderer. He's responsible for so much blood. We're seeing now new reporting confirming that the United States was responsible for bombing that girl's school in Iran, which a lot of people tried to deny. A lot of people tried to spread this other fake story that it was Iran that actually blew up their own school. That was a tactic also that we saw throughout Gaza a lot.

24:22Jordy Meiselas:When an atrocity would be committed, they would say, oh, they did that to themselves. And that would be the propaganda that would be spread. Well, we're seeing that again with this war. And now it's been confirmed that it was a US missile that killed those children in Iran. And we're going to see a lot more of that. We already see U.S. troops dead, at least six U.S. troops dead. We're seeing over a thousand Iranian civilians dead in these strikes. We're seeing now a more hardline leader about to ascend to power in Iran. And what all these analysts are saying is that if Donald Trump and this regime, the Trump regime, hoped to overthrow the Iranian regime and weakened them and hoped that they would get an uprising of the people against their government by killing Khamenei, all they've done is the complete opposite.

25:12Jordy Meiselas:They've actually fired up a lot of the people to view the late Ayatollah now as a martyr. And instead of rejecting the regime, they are going to the regime's side. So this right now appears to be a complete and utter backfire by the Trump regime. and it's something we have seen historically in the region. Donald Trump thinks that he could do what he did in Venezuela here, and Venezuela is a mess, mind you, but Donald Trump thinks the Middle East is the same. It's not the same. Ben was speaking about the Kurds before, how he was hoping to get the Kurds involved and basically stoke the civil war.

25:49Jordy Meiselas:I want to show you this statement right here, because this came after yesterday, after we heard these reports, which were false about the Kurds invading Iran from Iraq. Well, the Iraqi first later, who is Kurdish, released this statement today, and she said the following. And this, to me, was an absolutely scathing statement to see. It doesn't seem like it wants to load. But she basically said, leave us out of this. We are not mercenaries. We are not guns for hire. And did this just incredibly scathing message basically saying, leave us the hell alone. And we're seeing that. Ben mentioned the Emirati businessman before, but we're seeing all these voices in the region speak out because they don't want anything to do with the United States' war.

26:34Ben Meiselas:I'm going to toss it to Jordan. The one thing I wanted to bring up though, right, is that what she says, she's the first lady and she's a Kurd first lady in Iraq. And what she's saying is, we finally in Iraq have some semblance of peace and autonomy in this one area in Iraq, basically. And in Syria, the US already screwed them in Syria. The Kurds were one of the most helpful in eradicating ISIS and Al Qaeda in the region. So we just screwed over the Kurds, essentially allowed the previous leader of Al Qaeda to take over, to take over the area there and to take over the Kurds autonomous area. Now, the one like little area where the Kurds are living their, their best life, right?

27:32Ben Meiselas:Then Trump's like, you're either going with us or you're going with Iran. You're like, what are you talking, like, just let us live, man. Like, like, okay, That's how you want to do it. Boom, leak and say the Kurds are invading. And then the Kurds had to be like, we're not invading. That's not happening. That's not true. And Trump did that. And Trump's regime did that with Fox and Axios. And Netanyahu did it with his version of that in Israel. And so it's like, how do you trust anything this regime's saying? I mean, like we learned before that there was an airplane that was struck over Iraq. And then in Basra, they were saying in Iraq, they were saying there's a mission to try to find the pilot, but there's definitely a plane that crashed.

28:20Ben Meiselas:And then the Trump regime posted, it is absolutely false. Fact check. It's absolutely false that a jet was shot down. And then they, you know, no, their first one, no, it's the reverse.

28:36Jordy Meiselas:They at first said that it's absolutely false that a jet crashed. And then they edited the tweet to say that it's absolutely false that a jet was shot down. And I think that difference is notable because I think the implication there is that it did in some way crash. Now they're denying it was specifically shot down. They've removed that specific detail, but they're leaving. They did not deny now in the edit of their tweet that it crashed. And so it's the issue with everything. Frankly, going back to my COVID analogy, it was the issue with COVID. They fucking lied about everything and millions of people died.

29:10Jordy Meiselas:Now they're lying about everything here. They're lying. Donald Trump today, when he was around those players, was like, and they want to make a deal. They want to come to me. They want to deal right away. They want to be here. They're begging me. They're begging me. And we know from reporting that that's just not the case. On the contrary, what we've heard is that the Trump administration, the day after the initial strikes, they were the ones who, via mediators, tried to get to Iran and say, all right, we good now? Game over? Ceasefire? We good? And that wasn't the case, you know? And they were done.

29:45Jordy Meiselas:The Trump Trump was actually they were the ones who were actually trying to get a ceasefire and get a deal, not Iran. Now they pissed off Iran. They've overthrown their leader. They've fired them up. They've made the guy a martyr and they want nothing to do with negotiations because the last negotiations proved to be complete bullshit. The last negotiations proved to be nothing more than, in my opinion, a decoy and a delay tactic so that the United States and Israel could get all of their military in place to attack the place. It was like a Trojan horse plan that they carried out. So why the hell would you go into negotiation with the United States after that?

30:23Brett Meiselas:We have a credibility issue here in the United States and with our president. And that's as nicely as I could put it. When we have these types of leaders here in this country, and you can't even call them a leader, but for the sake of this, when you have these types of leaders here in this country, our word means nothing. And our word will forever be damaged because of what's happening right now. Brett, to your point exactly, look, there is no plan. There is no exit strategy. This is pure chaos. It is. And people are dying. Soldiers are dying. Troops are dying. And it's scary to see that there is actually no plan to wrap this thing up and that's all falling on donald trump and his entire regime they are clueless absolutely clueless for all these people out there that like to say and like to pretend that donald trump is this this great businessman this great negotiator i mean just like shame on you like what are you talking about this guy's out of his damn mind out of his day every step of the way we look like clowns because of the guy in the office that that's just that that's the reality of it as we look down i don't know 12 months a year five years that stench going back going back to that that's not going to come off of us ever we are stuck with this permanent stench now and i don't know i i collectively i i just don't know what we can do other than just you know continuing to to to fight in the metaphorical sense for pro-democracy ideals and have those values and ethos win the day.

31:53Brett Meiselas:Have truth actually matter. That's the only thing. That is really the only way. And hold people accountable when they lie, when they spread conspiracies, when they are so disingenuous at the highest levels of government that are leading to people dying in this country. It's terrible. Ben, what do you think? It's terrifying to me.

32:12Ben Meiselas:I mean, just think about this. So during an interview Thursday with ABC News, Trump marveled, this is how it's being reported by ABC, marveled at the success of the military operation so far this year against Venezuela and Iran, telling Jonathan Karl, I hope you are impressed. How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela's obvious. This might be even better. How do you like the performance? The performance. Then Karl said, nobody questions the success of the military operation against Iran. The concern is what happens next to which Trump responded, forget about next. They decimated, they are decimated for a 10 year period before they could build it back.

32:53Ben Meiselas:Okay. So first up, Trump is lying, utterly deranged. Also Jonathan Carl saying nobody questions that it was a success. This is not a success. But by the way, if we just had corporate news and not independent media, like the Midas touch network, that's what would be prevailing out there that this was such a success. Nobody's questioning it. No, no, no. It's actually not a success. What's a success? While we were recording this video shows a large fire at the joint US Kuwaiti Al-Sim air base being struck by Iranian ordinances to two hotels and a residential building in Bahrain's capital, Manama, were damaged in an Iranian drone and missile attack within the last few minutes.

33:35Ben Meiselas:that what's a success about all of this? Iran still is shooting ballistic missiles and drones while attacking targets and US air bases are getting hit. And this idiot in the Oval Office is like, do you love our performance? And then ABC is like, nobody's questioning this. I'm questioning it. I'm questioning it.

33:58Jordy Meiselas:A lot of it is eerily feeling to me. and I'm by no means whatsoever comparing the country of Iran and their leadership to Ukraine. But a lot of this, the way a lot of the media speaks about this and the way the Trump administration and the Republicans speak about what's happening reminds me of the way Russia speaks about Ukraine. The way you even hear like the same exact phrases coming from certain people in the GOP and in the Trump administration when they say things like, this isn't a war. This is a special military operation. Oh, in fact, we didn't start this war. They started this war. In fact, we've always been at war.

34:38Jordy Meiselas:It's also incredibly Orwellian. Isn't there the line in 1984? Like, we've always been at war with East Asia. Like, they are ripping pages right out of 1984 with their propaganda, and the propaganda is utterly horrifying to witness. But you see right now Donald Trump's polls completely decimated. You see right now his administration falling apart with Kristi Noem now. I know they moved her to some new bullshit made up position, but she was fired from the Department of Homeland Security. Let's be clear about that. But you see this administration in shambles right now. And you see a lot of the kind of diehard people who have previously supported this administration now breaking away because the lies have just become too much.

35:21Jordy Meiselas:They're affecting people now personally. And going back to the gas thing, just one of many examples, gas is now more expensive in the United States than it was during either Trump term. And it's more expensive right now than it was when Trump took office. All of this is going to have a ripple effect on the economy. As Ben said earlier, we are now bracing for massive inflation, not only from these tariffs that Trump keeps going. It's 10%. It's going to be 15%, even though the Supreme Court struck it down. But now these high fuel prices, the gas prices, it's the perfect storm of kind of every horrific thing that you could imagine might happen during a Trump administration.

36:00Jordy Meiselas:It's happening right now. And we're witnessing that COVID-esque catastrophe that happened under Trump's first administration happening right now with this war. This is his COVID-19 now in 2026, and he's handling it the same way, which is horribly, and people are going to die. The economy is going to crash over it. Nobody's going to be better off. And it's just going to continue to build this distrust against the government as they keep lying to the American. These are worse liars than the Bush administration was who lied our way into Iraq.

36:33Ben Meiselas:It's not. I mean, the Bush, Bush is conventional neocon liars, right? This is stratospheric. I mean, this is a group of people who once again, just sided with Russia in a United Nations vote. While we are begging Zelensky, begging Zelensky for help with the Shia drones, the United States joined Russia, China, Niger, and several other adversary countries in opposing a resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors denouncing Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, including offsite power supply plants for the Zyprisian nuclear power plant as a threat to nuclear safety.

37:14Ben Meiselas:Just think about how deranged that is. Begging Zelensky for help. And then we joined Russia, China, Niger, and other pro-Russia countries against Ukraine while asking Ukraine to help us. But this is what Trump is. He's a nightmare. He's a loser. He's a bankruptor, a destroyer. He was never a dealmaker. He's the opposite. Like with all of these authoritarian influence. They say they're a dealmaker. It's the opposite. They are destructive. Take our first quick break of the show. Reminder, hit subscribe here. Let's go to MidasPlus.com as well. That's our sub stack. First quick break of the show. Subscribe to our audio podcast as well.

37:56Ben Meiselas:We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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41:46Brett Meiselas:Save more than 50 % on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash Midas today to get started. that's selectquote.com slash Midas 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 Benji before I toss it back over to you wanted to say this real quick as well if you're not a member of the Midas Touch YouTube channel please consider becoming a member you can also gift memberships to others if you if you are a member you get access to like exclusive podcasts and videos on this channel right here and also all the really cool emojis that people have been thrown in the chat.

42:23Brett Meiselas:I don't know if you guys see, we have that 6 million emoji now for the 6 million subscribers to honor that. So become a member, give memberships to others. And Ben, before I actually toss it over to you now, in the words of the great Tyra Banks, there are no sacred cows. What happened to Kristi Noem, Benji?

42:40Ben Meiselas:Kristi Noem has been canned. She got a new fake position. Mark Wayne Mullen, MAGA Republican Senator from Oklahoma, will now be the Department of Homeland security secretary i saw one commentator say that's like finding out you took a in your pants and then going home and changing your shirt um that's good it's really graphic it's really graphic i want to make sure i capture the uh vividness of such a quote but um yeah i mean mark wayne mullen sycophant he's the one who goes on state regime media fox every day and just you know spews a bunch of nonsense and how great donald trump is dear leader this dear leader that i even

43:19Jordy Meiselas:better that that was a retired Air Force colonel who made that comment. Mo Davis is the person who said that. Oh, wow.

43:25Ben Meiselas:Yeah, give credit. Give credit where credit is due right there. That's good. And so, yeah, Donald Trump fires her via a social media post. The post says the following, I'm pleased to announce that Mark Wayne Mullen is the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, the current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well and has had numerous and spectacular results, especially on the border, will be moving to be special envoy for the shield of the Americas, our new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere. We are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Christie for her service at Homeland, the new special envoy for the shield of the Americas.

44:05Ben Meiselas:I suppose that's going to be part of Donald Trump's conquer the Western Hemisphere thing or like what he's doing in Ecuador right now where there's a ground invasion. And it's Trump's plan to invade, I think, everywhere. They talked about invading Cuba earlier today with all of those soccer football players in the background, as you know, where we're currently in Ecuador with a MAGA puppet there. That's Donald Trump's vision, I think, is just to put our ground troops everywhere. I guess the question is, where are we not at war with right now? And then Christine Ohm responds, thank you, Trump, for appointing me as the special envoy for the Shield of Americas.

44:47Ben Meiselas:What incredible leaders. I look forward to working with Rubio and Hegseth to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren. So the same pretext that they use in order to blow up those shipping boats or those fishing boats, rather, off the coast of Venezuela that have resulted likely in hundreds and hundreds of innocent people being killed or people who probably shouldn't have died. At the very least, people who shouldn't have been killed, more likely innocent people as well. And we're doing the same in the Pacific. So Donald Trump is going to be doing a lot more ground invasions in the Western Hemisphere.

45:25Ben Meiselas:And so it seems that that's going to be what her role is going to be there. I'll just remind you kind of, I thought the two, some of the key moments that were kind of like bye-bye, Kristi Noem. There was that great moment when Congresswoman Kamliger Dove cross-examined her during the hearings this week and asked her about her relationship with Lewandowski. And I think Lewandowski basically gets fired also or he's pushed out. But here's what Kamala Gerdov had to say here. Play this clip.

45:56Jordy Meiselas:Trump knows that this guy is shady. Corey has a decades-long record of physical batteries, sexual harassment, illegal lobbying for a Venezuelan oil company, and bringing a loaded gun into a federal building. Despite being fired or removed from virtually every position he has ever held due to misconduct, he now wields unchecked, unconfirmed, undisclosed power over your department. This person has no experience running anything close to Department of Homeland Security or even advising someone in your position. He is unqualified, which again has left my constituents and I wondering why he is your top official.

46:41Jordy Meiselas:So, Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure as Director of Department of Homeland Security, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski? Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today. And ma 'am, one thing that I would tell you is that he is a special government employee who works for the White House. There are thousands of them in the federal government. So reclaiming my time, Secretary, it is okay for you to be offended by the question. It is okay for you to be offended by the question. But it is also a real question. So what I would say to you is that what we do at the Department of Homeland Security every single day, every single day is to protect this country and to make decisions.

47:28Jordy Meiselas:If you or any federal official is sleeping with their subordinate, that should be the easiest. You should be wanting to answer that question. As garbage? Because it is not about your sex life. It is offensive that you have brought that up. It is about your judgment. That kind of garbage has been refuted for years. It is about reclaiming my time so that I can hear myself.

47:45Ben Meiselas:You know, that was the same thing that we saw. Pam Bondi do during her hearing. And by the way, the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Pam Bondi on a bipartisan basis. There are five Republicans joined with the Democrats in order to subpoena Bondi there. But there was also the moment, too, we don't need to play the clip because we've shown it a ton, where you had Republican Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana Anna basically asked her about the$200 million ad campaign that featured her riding around in horses and all of her kind of images of herself. And he was like, you know, that's a big Hollywood budget right there.

48:29Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump approved of this. And she was like, yep, he approved of this. And that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, or I guess in that case, the horse's back.

48:41Jordy Meiselas:The thing that gets them fired is always so crazy because they do so much horrific shit on a daily basis, but they like that stuff. But it's once you cross Trump, once you put words in his mouth, or once you accuse him of agreeing with something that ended up being incredibly unpopular, that's when you get yourself into trouble. And so when she said that, that was kind of the thing that stuck out to me when I was watching these congressional hearings where I was like, oh boy, you know, she's in trouble. And so for all the people who watch these hearings and say, like, you know, what's the point?

49:15Jordy Meiselas:It's all theater. There's never any, nothing ever comes of these things. I agree with you in a lot of respects. Like it is a lot of theater. It is a lot of, you know, people getting up on their soapbox and ranting. And a lot of it is very unnecessary, but there are good moments. We're getting people on the record. You're catching them in lies and contradictions that, by the way, can be prosecuted later on as well. And in this case, we're seeing finally, finally, finally, Kristi Noem get out of this position. Now, Mark Wayne Mullen isn't exactly a welcome person to be in this position. Mark Wayne Mullen is not exactly a bright human being, I will say, being as respectful as I can.

49:58Jordy Meiselas:Remember, he's just incredibly unhinged. Remember when he threatened the president of the Teamsters when there was a hearing a few years ago, like in 2023? He said, all right, tough guy, you want to fight? You want to fight? These are not the people who you want in charge of anything. Just this week, I went over this in my report that I did on the Midas Institute channel earlier, but just this week, Mark Wayne Mullen was like, that's what happens when you're at war. This is what happens when you're at war. And then the reporters were like, so you're admitting we're at war. And he was like, oh, no, no.

50:29Jordy Meiselas:Did I say war? I mean, combat operations. I mean, come. It's just the whole thing is so clownish. And the administration, the Trump administration strategy always right now is to just act like everything's great. Everything's amazing. Trump said today, oil has stabilized and the economy is great. Inflation is down. None of these things are true. Oil's going through the roof right now. Gas prices are going through the roof right now. And when you just lie to people in such a brazen way, especially about the things that they know impacts them. It's one thing when you're lying about a faraway place, right?

51:03Jordy Meiselas:You could get away lying to your red state voters, lying about what's going on in California. It's chaos. It's riots. It's insane. When you're lying about things that are impacting your voters' lives, like in this situation, when you're telling them everything's great, what are you talking about? This is the golden age. And they're out there unable to get jobs or getting laid off or spending tons of money on everything. It's a real slap in the face. And I think that's why we're seeing so many people right now be like, nah, this is not what I voted for, you know?

51:35Brett Meiselas:Exactly. It's what we always say. If the Trump regime, if their mouths are moving, they are, they're lying. that that's it once you start gaslighting your supporters especially around issues of the economy something that they feel on a daily basis you know but but bondi say but the dow's over 50 000 not anymore no pam inflation not going away in fact gonna keep ticking up pam and so for me at all it always comes down to this sort of central theme is that you need real adults in the room handling these serious issues. And so when Mark Wayne Mullen comes in, right, replacing Christy Gnome over here, it's worse to worse, right?

52:20Brett Meiselas:He just replaced one sycophant with another sycophant. And ultimately, it comes down to just saving face for Donald Trump, right? The decision, it's so Trumpian in the sense of what he actually, why he made this decision, right? If you think about it, the arguments over the marketing budget or the ad budget that like had these christy gnome fluff pieces or around ice and that got tremendous amount of backlash and so donald trump didn't want to be feeling like he was left to hold the bag as this great marketer and businessman that he is he didn't green light that there's no way not his genius bye christy hi mark wayne mullen i mean these he's not choosing these leaders quote-unquote leaders because they're good at these positions that they'll actually do the job that they should be doing no they're gonna be doing the job that Donald Trump wants them to do and for me ultimately it comes down to this are we gonna sit back and just kind of you know allow this to happen and go unaccounted for it's like when they go and gaslight their their followers and their supporters that everything is so great that the economy is so great that the United States right now we've never been better right I mean it's all such BS but what they do know is they They have control over the media right now.

53:32Brett Meiselas:They have absolute control over the media. So they know that Donald Trump, all he has to do is say those things. And then the MAGA media out there, it will prop that up. It will put that on headlines. It will do everything it can to give cover to Donald Trump. What they weren't expecting in 2026 is independent media rising and channels like the Midas Touch Network and supporters like this community and other great independent pro-democracy outlets out there that are reporting the news with facts, data and receipts and bringing to folks every single day. Trump is living in this sort of 2016 era that he could just lie and gaslight and put out all of this misinformation, knowing that he's got this hold over the media.

54:11Brett Meiselas:But it's a different landscape. So my message here to everyone is just like we all have to collectively hold his feet to the fire and continue to put the facts out of truth, receipts, video clips, whatever we need to do to put it out there, because what's happening right now is not normal. And don't be gaslit by Donald Trump or corporate media into thinking that any of it is, because it's absolutely not.

54:33Ben Meiselas:The parallels between COVID and this, Brett, you pointed out, it's like right out of the same script, right? Like a miracle, it's all going to go away from a scale of one to 10. What would you rate it? I think Donald Trump said with COVID and 11, right? Or how would you rate yourself? A plus. And I mean, when it comes to the Iran war, Donald Trump on his own said, I've been asked to rank it on a scale from one to 10. I rank it a 15. We have the clip where Donald Trump says, I rank it a 15. I think we got it.

55:07Jordy Meiselas:Yeah. Let me pull it up. Give me one sec.

55:09Ben Meiselas:Yeah. Pull that clip of him saying, I rank it a 15. And, uh, you know, but that's how he, that's how he approaches everything. Do we have that or.

55:20Jordy Meiselas:I'm looking for it. I'm looking for it.

55:21Ben Meiselas:No worries. We'll, we'll, we'll pull it up when we come back from our last quick. I got it.

55:24Jordy Meiselas:I got it.

55:25Ben Meiselas:on its plate.

55:26Jordy Meiselas:And we're doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly, I would say. Somebody said on a scale of 10, where would you rate it? I said about a 15.

55:37Ben Meiselas:And we're going to continue to do what we have the greatest military in the world by far. I mean, a 15, I mean, it's just the stupidest things that come out of the guy's mouth. Then you've got the people who surround him and sit next to him. And you saw the energy secretary there. It's enough of this nonsense, enough of this fraud. It's just American soldiers are dying. The Middle East is on fire. Let me ask you this. Do you even think, Brett and Jordy, we'll talk about it when we come back, you know they're just going to stop doing the inflation reports altogether, right? When it gets really bad, they're just going to say, they're going to start doing the, we're in a war so we can't do X, Y, and Z, right?

56:23Ben Meiselas:They're already opposing war powers resolutions and things like that and blocking it in the Senate, demanding$50 billion of supplemental funding that the taxpayers are going to have to pay for more munitions because we're out of FAD and Patriot missiles. And that's going to go to defense contractors while Americans lose their health care. That's just the reality of where we're at. Anyway, let's take our last quick break of the show. We'll be right back. Let's hit subscribe. As Jordy mentioned before, become a member of our YouTube channel. Also check out our sub stack at MidasPlus.com.

57:00Brett Meiselas:Don't sleep on the emojis, Ben. People like the emojis. Don't sleep on the emojis.

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1:00:32Ben Meiselas:Just look at what's happening at the Mufak Salty Air Base in Jordan. Satellite imagery from Airbus Defense and Space appears to show one of these transportable radars having been damaged and possibly destroyed by an Iranian drone or missile strike. According to an investigation by CNN, the satellite imagery and others from the bases in the region, buildings housing similar radar systems were also hit by Iran at two locations in the United Arab Emirates. And this is something that like the Trump regime is just like hiding. The estimated cost of a single one of these radar things is$500 million to a billion, with the United States only operating a total of 13, the 13th being delivered to the US missile agency Raytheon in 2025.

1:01:23Ben Meiselas:We know similarly at the Al-Udad ad base. There was ballistic radar detection systems there. We've heard so much of this, not because the Trump regime has mentioned it. They're covering up everything. CENTCOM is just like a Trump propaganda social media channel. You're not getting accurate information about anything that's going on, which is just terrible. I usually would think that, okay, CENTCOM is going to publish the actual data. I don't know if we really only lost six service members. That's what they're telling us. But who really knows how many people are seriously wounded? Do we really know the true amount?

1:01:59Ben Meiselas:I don't think we really know the real amount. How much damage has already been done here in the United States and in Israel? How much damage has really been done? What's really going on? We have to find this stuff from open source intelligence, like Telegram chats, because the Trump regime literally lies about absolutely everything. It's hard to even know what the hell is going on. So I want to share this moment, though, with you, because I don't think it's getting enough attention. And I think it's very alarming and it needs to get more attention. So you have this Republican Congress member, Mike Turner, who tries to pretend that he's like a moderate dude.

1:02:36Ben Meiselas:He's not a moderate dude. And Turner is out there. This hearing that took place today with this guy, Elbridge Colby, Elbridge Colby, neocon, far right wing guy. He's the number two at the Defense Department. like a lifelong Washington guy. He's always been in those kind of neocon right-wing circles. You know, his whole thing was also like the decoupling of China. And, you know, he had all these kind of very, kind of very strong views about like America was going to go after China and all these things that now that he's actually, you know, the number two at the Defense Department, the guy just doesn't do any of that stuff, but regardless.

1:03:19Ben Meiselas:So he was being questioned by Congress member Turner about why during this entire hearing, Elbridge Colby, again, he's the number two at the Defense Department, why he continued to say things like, we interpret what the Trump administration to mean, or we believe, or it is our understanding that the Trump regime or the Trump administration has said this. So Mike Turner's like, the Republican Congress, Why do you keep saying that? Like, why aren't you the Trump administration? Why are you acting like you're interpreting his words? Watch this, because I want to talk about why I think it's additionally important.

1:03:57Jordy Meiselas:And I want to just say, I want to agree with the chairman. What's been so difficult and which is really kind of gross sitting here listening to you is the chairman has said he feels like you're dishonest. Right. And you have been so disingenuous. Every time you answer a question, you feel this need to just continue on in these clarifications that are really very unnecessary. And that this clarifications that you give make us all concerned about your commitment to the truth. And I want to give you some of those clarifications that make me uncertain and really very concerned about the policymaking within the department.

1:04:40Jordy Meiselas:You talk about the Trump administration when people ask you questions about the president's decision making. When we're asking about President Trump, you redefine it as the Trump administration. You say our decisions are aligned with the president as if you're reinterpreting the president's decision making. I want to know about the president's decision making, not you being your interpretation about being aligned. So tell me you're not trying to make decisions where you're just divining an alignment with the president and interpretation that President Trump is the one making decisions. Because up here, we're losing confidence as to whether or not Mr.

1:05:18Jordy Meiselas:Colby's going into a room and trying to decide whether or not he's aligned with the president or whether or not President Trump's making decisions.

1:05:25Ben Meiselas:Let me be very clear. Elbridge Colby is not a good guy. He's actually a very bad guy with very dangerous thoughts. but I don't know how Mike Turner says that without realizing what his words are, right? Elbridge Colby's saying that because he doesn't know what the hell Trump's plan is. Nobody knows what Trump's plan is. So what he's doing is he actually is reinterpreting what Trump says when Trump spews word vomit or word salad and Elbridge Colby's trying to say the Trump administration and they're saying, well, what is Trump saying? Well, the Trump administration's view on this is because, and this is the scary aspect of it, but you heard it right there.

1:06:12Ben Meiselas:Trump has no clue what he's doing. Nobody knows what the guy is saying. So they're all looking at his social media posts. They're looking at his deranged, unhinged statements, and they're trying to divine and figure out, okay, well, I guess he means this. I guess he means that this is what he's trying to do. I mean, look at him today where he was out there looking at the Miami soccer team and telling them that they're good looking. I don't like good men. I don't like good men. I mean, this is what he's doing while we're in a war right now. Here, play this clip.

1:06:48Jordy Meiselas:These are good looking people. Marco, I don't like good looking men. you don't feel so good about yourself standing up here good looking people okay then he says on

1:07:02Ben Meiselas:iran they are calling to say how do we make a deal and i said you're a bit too late you're too late iran here play this clip i said what's left but they're tough and they want to fight and uh they're

1:07:19Jordy Meiselas:They're calling, they're saying, how do we make a deal? I said, you're being a little bit late and we wanna fight now more than they do.

1:07:26Ben Meiselas:We wanna fight more than they do? What are you even talking about? We do? That's news. We wanna fight in Iran more than the Iranians want to fight in Iran and they're too late. And they're calling, who are they calling up? They're calling you up? That's news, that's interesting. Remember how Donald Trump makes up fake conversations with Xi Jinping? By the way, while he's doing this hearing or this press conference, he starts whining about the election is rigged. Here, play this clip, what he said about the election.

1:07:53Jordy Meiselas:I didn't know that I'd be the president during this because the election was rigged and stolen and I had to do it all again. And then I said, hey, wait a minute, I just got soccer slash football and I just got the Olympics that we got most important. I took credit for those two. Then I tried to take credit for 250 years and it didn't play well at all with the press.

1:08:14Ben Meiselas:Or then you have Treasury Secretary Scott Besant going on TV and saying, yeah, you're seeing all these hotels in the Middle East blown up and American military bases blown up and airplanes are crashing and service members are dying. You're seeing oil interest destroyed, as I mentioned before. You have basically the Strait of Hormuz is closed. You have Qatar's liquefied natural gas infrastructure destroyed. Bahrain, Ukrainian air forces and bases destroyed, United Airways and UAE, Jordan air force bases and stuff being destroyed and hit. But the Trump regime wants you to know the region is not on fire.

1:09:04Ben Meiselas:Okay? Not on fire. You understand? What's happening is that someone with an iPhone is taking videos. region not on fire, someone's got an iPhone camera. That's actually just so you all know, it's not like a war.

1:09:18Jordy Meiselas:Here, listen to what he says, here play this clip. Becky, I will tell you the region is not on fire.

1:09:23Brett Meiselas:What is happening is that someone with an iPhone, and look, it's terrible when a hotel gets hit in Bahrain, when there is a drone that hits the airport in Doha,

1:09:36Jordy Meiselas:but those are one-offs. The Iranian attack capabilities have been substantially degraded. The U.S. is getting stronger and stronger every day.

1:09:47Brett Meiselas:And the most fulsome part of our campaign is just starting. So there are the people in the market willing to look through this.

1:09:55Jordy Meiselas:And that's what I think everyone should do because President Trump has a vision here. And I think everyone should just step back and think about what does the world look like?

1:10:05Brett Meiselas:You know, if we go back and think the conflict in Syria, there's new leadership there.

1:10:13Ben Meiselas:Yeah. The reason why you can't get the Kurds to help you out here is because of the new leadership in Syria. You're an idiot. You know, and the thing is that he's actually not. I mean, he's actually a smart guy who's doing this shtick to basically rob and steal from you for the Epstein class. he just with the arrogant there's no real issues it's fantastical it's just someone with an iphone camera if they're one-offs one-off hotel one-off military base one-off aircraft jet one-off what does that even mean they're one-offs yeah usually think one-off one-off word right i can't just do words. The way Donald Trump does one off everything to some extent is one, one, one, one, one.

1:11:02Ben Meiselas:It's, you know, like, what do you mean one off? I mean, what is, what the hell are you even talking about? I mean, the, the arrogance on these people. And then finally you have Donald Trump praising again at a, at this press conference where he's got the Miami soccer team behind him I'm talking about the war, using them as props. He uses them as props to cover up child sex trafficking, saying, Bondi, she's going to be good for the next three years, which to me is basically saying, you better cover up those Epstein files for the next three years. Don't release the ones I don't want you to release.

1:11:39Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip.

1:11:39Jordy Meiselas:I'm not going to let anything bad happen to this country. Also with us, our Attorney General Pam Bondi, who's a terrific person and fan.

1:11:51Jordy Meiselas:And she's proving how tough she is. And I think the next three years she's going to really prove it, right?

1:11:58Ben Meiselas:Huh? Like these people. Huh? Huh? I mean, it's also like so demeaning. It's so bizarre. Like to the attorney general. Pammy? Huh?

1:12:07Jordy Meiselas:Occam's razor, right? Like you have all of these MAGA people who have been calling for Pam Bondi to be ousted, right? You would think that with all of that pressure and with the horrific way she's handled everything. I mean, the DOJ has like the worst record of prosecutions in its history. And that's before you get to the Epstein files and the entire cover up. And you'd figure with all the pressure out there, that's really kind of bipartisan now, because the MAG people hate her, that she would be ousted. So Occam's razor, sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. The only thing that you could really surmise is that he needs to praise her any needs to keep her in that position and make sure everything's okay with her because she's seen everything in those files and she knows far too much.

1:12:51Jordy Meiselas:She knows where the bodies are buried. She knows everything that Donald Trump has done. She knows everything that's in the Epstein files. And so at this point, Donald Trump can't get rid of her because she's an accomplice in covering this up with him. And so that's my opinion. But I think it's kind of obvious because you would think in any other circumstance, she'd be thrown the hell out of that building. She would have nothing to do with this job. But in fact, you have Donald Trump going out of his way to praise her. Reminds me of when after the files dropped and one of the big revelations was just how close Steve Bannon was with Epstein and how Bannon was almost being used with Epstein as like an intermediary between Epstein and Donald Trump.

1:13:31Jordy Meiselas:And what was Trump's thing? Did Trump criticize Steve Bannon for his proximity to Epstein and his very close relationship to Epstein during Donald Trump's first term in office? No, the contrary. Trump went out of his way to praise Steve Bannon in that very moment. And it is those actions by Donald Trump to me that speak far louder than anything else.

1:13:54Brett Meiselas:Absolutely. There's like this certain like aura of smugness, not aura in the cool way, the way the kids use it, but like this smugness that hangs over everybody in the Trump regime and especially Scott Fesson. He is like king of smugness aura, in my opinion, right there next to JD Vance, obviously like those two battle back and forth. Every time I see Fesson up there, just like spewing like these nonsensical regime talking points all the time. He actually bent to your point because he is smart. He looks uncomfortable. Now he's still doing it, but he looks uncomfortable because deep down, you know, he knows because he is smart that it's all bullshit.

1:14:42Brett Meiselas:What he's saying, this smugness about them. It's so infuriating to me to how you just get up there and spew these lies again for an audience of one. And that's Donald Trump. He honestly, he reminds me of that creature too. Like when you see him just totally uncomfortable speaking, the creature from men in black who like where the first men in black movie who like where the alien that wears the skin of the human that's him that's who he is in all of his mannerisms and the way he's speaking it is it's disgusting to me and that's why again we just need real leaders we need people who actually love this country who want to put their best foot forward for the country and not for a man not for a maniac not for one person, but for all of the people.

1:15:32Brett Meiselas:And I just, I hope we could get there because seeing who Trump has aligned himself with, this regime, all they care about is protecting Donald Trump. They don't care about making this country better for its citizens.

1:15:44Ben Meiselas:Absolutely. We covered a lot on today's episode. Keep checking back in for continued coverage here on the Midas Touch YouTube channel. We're grateful for you as always. Thanks for making the Midas Touch podcast that you're watching right now the number one podcast in the United States. According to the YouTube charts for all of February, we were first place beating. Yeah, we beat Rogan, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson the entire month and we stayed number one. Let's keep it that way in March. Again, thank you, everybody, for all that you do. And we will see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast.

1:16:25Ben Meiselas:a reminder subscribe to our youtube channel become a member if you can gift memberships if you can go to our sub stack over at midasplus.com check that out and uh again we're just so grateful for you and the support of this community and we will see you next time shout out midas mighty and jordy

1:16:42Brett Meiselas:you can say it as well don't steal my line i don't say much i want that's my line shout out to the

1:16:55Jordy Meiselas:Against the fascists, we sing our song. We will get it right whenever...

1:17:05Brett Meiselas:Want to 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.

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