MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 7/22/25

24:34Jordy Meiselas:And so I know they weren't too pleased about that, but they're just trying to distract. And it's it's like, okay, so if you could release those files, guess what? I guess you could release the Epstein files as well. So Caroline Levitt was asked about this and she's trying to constantly shift the blame right now. And so guess where they're back to right now? They're back to blaming the FBI. The president has said if the department of justice and the FBI want to move forward with releasing any further credible evidence they should do so as to why they have or have not, or will, you should ask the FBI about that.

25:13Jordy Meiselas:So you see, they're trying to pass the buck right now, pass the blame, right? They're trying to throw it to, oh, this court needs to decide. It's the FBI's turn to decide anything to make it so, oh, it's not Donald Trump making the decision. It's all these other people. Meanwhile, there was a report that came out as well over the weekend, over the past few days, that the FBI had been instructed, they had put thousands of agents, over a thousand agents, sifting through the files in New York on the Epstein case. And they were instructed to find any incidents that included Donald Trump's name on this list and flag them for the top leadership in the FBI and at the DOJ.

25:52Jordy Meiselas:I mean, to me, that alone is quite the incriminating thing to ask for. And we already know Trump is in the list because we've seen Trump all over the, in the files, because we've seen Trump all over the files. We've seen him in the little black book. We've seen him on the flight logs. He's in there seven times. He's in court depositions. But they specifically had the FBI go through this thing, waste a ton of taxpayer resources in order to try to locate Donald Trump's name. Caroline Levitt was asked about that as well. And here's what she had to say. There are reports that President Trump or the FBI agents going through the EPS files were told to flag President Trump's name if it came up.

26:30Jordy Meiselas:Is that something the president was aware of or something that he directed those agents for the Department of Justice to do? I don't believe that's something the White House was aware of. You'd have to ask the FBI. Oh, you'll have to ask the FBI. The White House just wasn't aware of this whole scheme to flag stuff. Now the cover up goes even deeper, right? You got Caroline Leavitt. Now you got the House leader, the majority leader. You got the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. He was appearing on Fox on Mark Levin's show. Ben would have a great Mark Levin impression right now. Mark Levin. I could do the Mark Levin impression.

27:02Jordy Meiselas:Ben could have done a mean Levin impression right now. I'm not going to do it myself. But here is what Maga Mike had to say on Mark Levin's show. He said, we can't waste time on this Epstein thing. We have a lot to run on and you have a lot to run against, given the other party. But I will tell you this. We better be united. We better be strong. We better be focused. We better be articulate. We can't waste our time on Epstein and other stuff that are going on here that some people want us to focus on. I'm about had it with all that stuff. We better focus on who we are, what we're doing, where we want to take the country and what they want to do to the country.

27:38Mr. Speaker, God bless you, my friend.

27:40Jordy Meiselas:I appreciate you very, very much. You too, Mark. Thanks for all you do. God bless. Maga Mike nodding along to that. And so, you know, that was Mark Levin saying that to him, right? Well, today, Maga Mike Johnson was asked about, OK, so will you hold a vote to release the Epstein files before the August recess? And his answer was no. So here's, here's what I would say about the Epstein files. There is no daylight between the house Republicans, the house and the president on maximum transparency. He has said that he wants all the credible files related to Epstein to be released. He's asked the attorney general to request the grand jury files of the court.

28:19Jordy Meiselas:All of that is in process right now. My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing. And if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we'll look at that. But I don't think we're at that point right now because we agree with the president. So no vote on this resolution? No, no. So let me just chime in here for a second. They just need to give the administration some space. They're so close, Brett, to just saying in two weeks, we'll hold the vote or in two weeks, we'll release the documents. I mean, how many times have we heard that from this administration?

28:46Jordy Meiselas:But I want everyone to listen closely to that Mike Johnson response. And you could play it back if you wanted to, if you're listening. But what he says there is we want to release all credible files. Like we want all the credible files to be released. And I want to be very specific about that sentence right there. Of course, we all want credible files. We don't want any bad reports coming out. They have the files though. The files are there. They're there. And so when he says, I want all the credible files to be released, he's essentially saying, If you add up what Brett had said about the folks flagging Donald Trump's name in files, they're essentially saying, we're going to release the files that don't include Donald Trump.

29:27Jordy Meiselas:Whenever we release files around this situation, you bet your bottom dollar that Donald Trump is not going to be tied to it because the files that we release will not have his name. And so they're trying to buy as much time as possible right now in order to get to that spot. And that's why we always say, you can't trust anything that comes out of this administration right now. The Epstein files, I want them to come out in their entirety, in their entirety. But now my biggest concern is whatever eventually does come out is already going to be tainted. Because we know that this administration, that this regime has a history of lying, Brett.

30:06Jordy Meiselas:Yeah. And Jordy, you hit the nail on the head. They've also used the term, we're going to try to release all the pertinent files, right? They're using all this terminology to say we're going to be very selective about what we release because we don't want to incriminate our dear leader. And meanwhile, I want to talk more, Jordy, about this Wall Street Journal case. Obviously, we've been speaking about this alleged letter that Donald Trump had said to Epstein years ago. Donald Trump's suing the Wall Street Journal, suing Rupert Murdoch. And they just got some very bad news about this case. And it seems like it is already backfiring.

30:37Jordy Meiselas:And this whole thing does not bode well for Donald Trump. And it's important that the press stands up to the bully because you notice every time they stand up to the bully, they win. You could fold or you could win. Those are your two options. But you should not fold. In that note, I also want to get thoughts on this Bob Woodward case, a journalist who did stand up to Donald Trump in one of these cases. He just got a big win over Donald Trump. And who better to discuss these legal cases than Michael Popok of Legal AF, the Legal AF podcast and the Legal AF YouTube channel. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube and make sure that you add the Legal AF podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

31:18Jordy Meiselas:We're going to take a very quick break right here. Then we're going to be back with our legal expert, resident Midas legal expert, Michael Popok, to break it all down for us. I am super excited to have him on this crossover episode of the year. It's going to be a whole lot of fun. don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after this.

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34:32Jordy 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. Brettster, where to next? Well, we got a lot to talk about it for those just tuning in. Ben is out for a little medical thing, but don't worry. He is doing just okay. Thank you for all your kind comments, and we'll send all your love his way. But it allows me and Jordy to take over the show, and that doesn't suck. And it also allows us to bring in some special guests, and we've got a lot of legal news that is happening right now.

35:02Jordy Meiselas:And we've got to bring in legal experts for stuff like that. So who better than Legal AF's own, Midas Touch Legal AF's own, Michael Popok. Michael Popok, welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. Oh, I am. Thanks, man. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm sorry that that is sidelined, but I am thrilled by you guys taking it over and inviting me to join and play the Ben lawyer role. You know, it's great. But I don't know what you guys are complaining about. There's big news before we kept before I came on the air. The files have been released, everybody. Sixty years in the making. The Martin Luther King Jr. assassination files.

35:40else yeah that's what Tulsi Gabbard's been working on because they're out that's what everybody's that's what's been on everybody's lips the people were clamoring for that MLK yeah yeah his family

35:51Jordy Meiselas:didn't want it but uh but the Trump admit but everyone else apparently now I mean you could hear it right you could hear Trump get release something fine what's laying around release it what I was saying to Jordy is it also exposed the hypocrisy because you're like oh we would release the files, but the FBI is doing this and the this is doing that. But you seem to be able to do this one pretty easy. So I think you actually just kind of exposed yourself. Wait, wait, go with that. Go with that. The director of national intelligence, responsible for 17 intelligence agencies, took time out of her busy day to release the MLK files.

36:27And I listened to you guys, of course, leading into my big appearance. So you're so right, Brett about so many things. You too, Jordy. Thanks, Pope. All right, I'm off. We should have these down more often. That's it for me. Donald Trump publicly announced that he, not the attorney general, not Pam Bondi, was the chief law enforcement officer in his administration, responsible for setting law, enforcing law. I mean, it's a scary thought, But he said it out loud. He also said, as part of the Project 2025 Federalist Society manifesto, Heritage Foundation manifesto, that there would be no independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI from the executive branch.

37:15That was the big mistake that the Democrats always made, having an independent attorney general, an independent FBI, which, of course, ever since J. Edgar Hoover and Watergate, we've always wanted that. So you can't have it both ways. You can't. There is no separate entity called the FBI or the Department of Justice that Karen LeVette can legitimately claim is holding things up because this is a holistic. right? There is no independence of these agencies by design. So how can you then point to their independence as holding up a process?

37:54Jordy Meiselas:It's such a good point. You can't be Mr. Only I could fix it. I control everything. I am all knowing. I am all powerful. Oh, I would, but those pesky folks over at the FBI, you just aren't doing. It's like you can't handle those two things. Anyway, when I saw this lawsuit that Donald Trump filed against the Wall Street Journal last week for this alleged letter that he had written to Epstein back in the day for Epstein's 50th birthday, I believe. When we were speaking, all of us were like, that was a mistake by him because, A, this guy's never going to let this get to discovery because it would be absolutely devastating.

38:28Jordy Meiselas:And nothing good could really come of this for Donald Trump. He's clearly just trying to threaten them. Well, flash forward just a few days, and he's already gotten some bad news in the case with the judge assignment. Bobak, what's the latest here and what could folks expect going forward? Yeah, great. And it's funny, you, your brother and I on the Saturday legal AF, I said, I don't understand, although I have a working theory I'll share with the Midas audience, as to why when on the civil cover sheet, I'm going to get down to the minutiae now of how you play the game being a federal practitioner and one that practices in Florida for the last 35 years.

39:05When you file a case as the plaintiff, you have to check the box for the nearest division of that federal district that's closest to where you live or where the injury happened or the incident happened. Donald Trump lives in Palm Beach County. He lives in Palm Beach when he's not in the White House at Mar-a-Laco. The closest division to that is just over the bridge about three miles, the West Palm Beach Division of the Southern District of Florida. You check that box, you have a one in three chance of getting Eileen Cannon. You do, because Middlebrooks, the other judge, is senior status. And Judge Rosenberg is that one judge.

39:46And Cannon, who sits up in Fort Pierce, but also does some work down in West Palm, would be the other judge. But they didn't do that. They checked the box from Miami, which is 70 miles south of Mar-a-Lago in a whole different world, one where I live and now work. And so I understand the lawyer for Donald Trump, Alejandro Brito, who keeps filing all these defamation cases, ABC, CBS, and now Michael Cohen, and now here against Rupert Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal. I get that his office is in Miami, but that's not the reason you filed there. And I said on Saturday, they could get Darren Gales, who's the judge in the Michael Cohen case, where the Michael Cohen case for$500 million in defamation damages and breach of contract, of course, got dismissed by Donald Trump right before his deposition, after he voided his deposition two or three times.

40:38So they get Gales. This is the breaking news. And let me talk about Darren Gales, because I happen to know this judge particularly well. Darren Gales, first of all, an amazing judge, started on the state court. We're in federal court now, but started on the state circuit court in Miami-Dade County. It's an elected position. He gets appointed, and then he has to run for office. Full disclosure, I and my law firm at the time supported Darren Gales. when he pulled up an opponent. We circled the wagons around him and raised money for him. I know Darren Gales personally. He's a remarkable human being.

41:15You guys are remarkable human beings, as your appearance at MSNBC just attested to. He is a remarkable human being, good human being. He's also, he's either the first openly gay or first openly gay black judge on the Southern District of Florida and takes pride in his diversity, if you will. He also has a temperament very similar to Judge Mershon, the judge in New York who presided over the 34th count felony conviction of Donald Trump. Just low key. I mean, can seethe and boil if he's crossed. But in terms of his temperament, just what you want in a judge. Of course, Donald Trump doesn't want that in a judge.

41:56And what I think what this Obama appointee learned in Judge Gales in having the Cohen case is all the tricks up Donald Trump's sleeve about trying to avoid discovery. See, here's the thing that Donald Trump always miscalculates when he files. The other side is entitled to have him sit down for a deposition under oath. And he played games with Michael Cohen several times. And then the case got ultimately dismissed. this, but he's going to have to sit for a deposition. Now I will tell you.

42:28Jordy Meiselas:And sorry to interrupt, but didn't that, he dismissed it like the day before he was going to have to, hours before he was going to have to sit down. So this is the game of chicken that Donald Trump plays. He acts all tough guy. Right. And then the second it's like, okay, bet, let's get in the room. It's deposition time, time for us to question you. He runs away scared. Yeah. And, and I just said, Michael Cohen on legal AF, we'll be putting it up tomorrow. And Michael takes a different position than I do. Michael thinks that the Wall Street Journal miscalculated that they're going to fold and stroke a check.

42:58I said, I don't see that at all. There's no way that Rupert Murdoch, who is on record as saying he wants to make Donald Trump a non-person and wanted his career to end with Jan 6th and paid$787 million because of his close involvement with Donald Trump through Fox, did not think this through when they decided to run the front page three days ago article that said, and I don't know how they ignore this story once it was dumped in their lap, that in a scrapbook birthday album created by Jazane Maxwell, she solicited different people to contribute things to paste into this scrapbook. And one of them was a, I don't want to say bawdy, that sounds so, I don't know, like Rynvaudville or something, some obscene pornographic sketch, along with comments about Epstein being an enigma and leading a secret life, signed in pubic hair with a Sharpie pen by somebody that looks like it's Donald Trump.

43:58Now, others that contributed to that scrapbook, including Alan Dershowitz, have not been able to deny that they also put in comments and little things in this book. Now, Donald Trump claims this is defamatory. He didn't make the card. It's not his card. He didn't cut and paste it. Michael Cohen just told me that he's reasonably sure he knows who in the Trump Organization sketched that for Donald Trump and had it submitted for the book. In other words, he knows who, apparently all the executive assistants around Donald Trump were tremendous artists. This is Michael Cohen. And he knows who probably drew that on behalf of Donald Trump, right?

44:37But the point is not that this is a criminal, you can't prosecute Donald Trump for this card. But it puts a lie to Donald Trump's argument that he had no knowledge that Jeffrey Epstein, his wingman, his BFF for 15 years, where they ran in Palm Beach and ran and ran and chased women and girls in New York. It puts a lie to the story that Donald Trump had no idea what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. Then why do you call him an enigma? And why do you call his life a big secret. And that's why I think the Wall Street Journal, and that just gave license. The New York Times is now running articles every day against Donald Trump.

45:19But all they're doing is playing catch up with Midas Touch and Ben. Ben's been running these exact same stories. There's only two people in this world that matter to me about the Epstein story. Julie K. Brown of Miami Herald that blew this story wide open with years of dogged reporting. And Ben Fisellis on the Midas Dutch Network.

45:38Jordy Meiselas:Yeah, Julie K. Brown has done absolutely, you know, fantastic, fantastic work here. I also fail to see, you know, what's defamatory? It's obviously very damning. What's defamatory about a birthday card, like a birthday card that someone, like it's not, it's to me, it's like the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. And Pope, I just feel like time and time again, over the past few months, we've seen instances where people fold to Donald Trump, they pay those big checks to the Trump presidential library or whatever it is. And then we see the opposite. We see kind of the law firms who stand up, the media companies, the journalists who stand up.

46:13Jordy Meiselas:And it looks like we're also getting more information about instances like that right now, which could also provide a bit of a blueprint for how the Wall Street Journal may handle this. I agree with you. I don't think Murdoch's the guy. I hate the guy, obviously. I think he's an evil man, and I think it's an evil empire that he runs. But I don't think he's the kind of guy who's going to back down here um but we saw legendary journalist bob woodward uh just prevail in a case where donald trump was trying to threaten him and i think it ties in with all this so pope what happened in that case yeah we have a win we have a win for journalists for journalistic integrity donald trump not a first amendment case it's a money grab case donald trump sued bob woodward after bob woodward wrote a book um and in making the book he also interviewed Donald Trump 20 times in 2016 and then later 2019 and 2020.

47:06He kept the audio recordings, of course. Donald Trump asked him at one point, according to the suit that Donald Trump brought against Woodward, he said, you're using this for the book, right? He goes, yeah, I'm using it for the book. Like, I'm not writing an article about it. I'm using it for the book. Okay, great. Donald Trump then claimed after Simon and Schuster, and there's an interesting connection between Simon & Schuster and Paramount I'm going to make in a minute, because this would be a different story if Simon & Schuster was still owned by Paramount. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, then repackaged the audio tapes as the Trump tapes and made like$50 million, selling it at like 25, you know,$25 a pop, 2 million copies.

47:47And Donald Trump said, well, my audio, I have the copyright in my own answers to my own interview. And they were like, what? So he sued in Pensacola, Florida, because he wanted to pull a MAGA Republican judge. The case gets transferred back to New York where it belongs, gets assigned to Judge Gardafee. And Judge Gardafee, who's really good but really slow, takes him years to make decisions, finally made the ruling. Donald Trump argued, I own half the copyright of my own interview. He ran to the copyright office and filed a notice of claim that he was the author, along with Bob Woodward, of his own interview.

48:28And that's not how copyright law works. Copyright, fundamentally, I could bore our audience with hours about it, but fundamentally, the first to fix in a permanent medium some creative expression. So the first to get it down on paper, to put it down on digital, to put it down on video or audio, that's who owns the copyright. And so Simon & Schuster files the copyright claiming authorship by Woodward. Trump comes in five days later and says, no, I'm the author. Copyright office says we don't fix, we don't settle these things. You go to court for these things. So finally, the judge ruled based on the complaint that there is no ability for Donald Trump to argue that he owns part of that copyright and therefore owns some or all of the$50 million that was owed.

49:18He did give, Gardafi did give Donald Trump one more chance. This would now be his fourth attempt at a complaint. That's how he hasn't, his complaints have not survived three prior motions. He has one more shot. The judge said, I think it's futile that you're never going to be able to make the allegations necessary because the copyright law is is both a shield and a sword here. What I mean by that is this. Donald Trump claims that he owns it under the Copyright Act. The Copyright Act does apply to everything that is in dispute in the case, which means all of Donald Trump's other claims for contract breach or quantum merit or unjust enrichment fall by the wayside because the big fat Copyright Act stamps them out.

50:07And so the judge is like, I don't see how you get around the Copyright Act and you are not an owner. I'll give you one more shot. I'll give you one more month to do it. He's going to lose. He's going to lose at the Second Circuit. and Simon & Schuster is going to be able to keep their$50 million. One little twist Easter egg here. Right before Donald Trump filed its case, Simon & Schuster used to be owned by Paramount, which owns CBS, and they sold to a hedge fund. If Simon & Schuster was still owned by Paramount, they would have cut a deal in this case, just like they cut a deal about 60 minutes and paid tens of millions of dollars in order to bless that transaction.

50:50But just completely out, just dumb luck. They sold it. And so, and KKR doesn't, the owner of the Simon Schuster has, there's no love lost between the owners of KKR and Trump. And so they're not settling.

51:04Jordy Meiselas:That's bonkers. That's actually wild. I didn't know that fact. And it really like adds, you know, and it's almost shows you like, you know, you could kind of map it out in your head, like the what if, but you know, what if they did fold? What if they didn't fold, right? And we've seen, though, now many examples. It's not really hypothetical, I think. And are you seeing this pattern that I'm seeing as a layman here, Popak, and the lessons that others could learn about actually standing up to Donald Trump before you decide to go and fold and give him a bunch of money? I think we've seen it quite consistently.

51:34And not just domestically and lawsuits, internationally. I was away for a couple of weeks, although hopefully people didn't realize that as much video content as I made while I was away. Our co-producer said, he looked at some of our numbers. He's like, were you on holiday? Look at these numbers. Yeah, I was. But I was reading a lot of international newspapers and media. And, you know, the way they're reporting like the tariffs, like every country is folding to Donald Trump. I don't know why I'm doing this voice. Every country is folding and paying billions of dollars and there's no resistance.

52:10I'm not sure that's actually true. They keep bragging about the tariffs. Howard Lutnick is bragging about the tariffs, the Commerce Secretary, as recently as Sunday, while his own company, his former company, is betting against the legality of those tariffs by buying people's – Yes. I just did a hot take on it. Hold up, hold up, hold up.

52:32Jordy Meiselas:Yes. Rewind. Popak, I want you to just say that again and explain it for the people because this is truly nuts. It's Hannah Fitzgerald, which Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, who is the chief ambassador for tariffs. His own company that he sold to his 28-year-old former DJ son is running a business now where they're buying people's potential refunds for tariffs once the tariffs are declared to be unconstitutional. So you come to them, I had to pay$10 million in tariffs. They'll say, we'll give you$2 million for that. Give us that piece of paper and that claim, and then we'll benefit when the tariffs are struck down.

53:16So people affiliated with the inner circle of Donald Trump are already betting that his tariffs will be struck down by the courts and benefiting from it.

53:27Jordy Meiselas:watch what they do, not what they say. And I think it tells a tremendous story. Pope, before we let you go, I want you to let the folks know what you are doing with this Legal AF channel, because it's my favorite. It's where I go for all my legal updates. And I just love seeing this Legal AF brand that we all started now years ago, just blossom into this own kind of massive network of its own. And you guys have so many of like the best legal minds out there every single day doing all these takes. And before you get into what's going on on the YouTube channel, everybody, make sure you add the Legal AF podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify.

54:05Jordy Meiselas:Of course, make sure you add the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify. If you like this show or that you're watching and listening to right now, you will love the legal show, Legal AF. So check that out. But Popak, what's going on in the Legal AF YouTube channel right now? So we're doing 12 new videos a day, at least at the intersection. We used to say law and politics, but it's really the defense of our democracy. And I've got, along with me, I've got about a dozen contributors. And look at this lineup. It's like, you know, CBS used to be the Tiffany network. Of course, they trashed that by making the settlement with Donald Trump and throwing 60 Minutes into the wood chipper.

54:41I consider us to be the Tiffany channel when it comes to law and politics. We've got Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz, who run a show on our channel called Court of History. The guests that they bring on is just phenomenal. Julie K. Brown is going to be a guest for them. They just had Michael Wolff on there. Sidney Blumenthal, of course, was in the Clinton administration and an amazing author and journalist. Sean Wilentz is a presidential historian and they're just our resident historians. We've got Court Accountability Action led by Alex Aronson and Lisa Graves. They bring on a lot of politicians, a lot of public interest groups like the ACLU and other groups for interviews as well.

55:25We just added two new, I don't know if you call it, I hate using labels, Gen Z. All right, two new people, Rachel Cohen, who stood up against big law and then joined one of the major firms that's up against the Trump administration. She and Tiara Mack, who's a state senator from Rhode Island, do a show called Pragmatic Optimist. Optimist. We got Asha and Renato who joined us to bring their show. It's complicated. They're both national security experts. One at Yale, a Yale instructor, the other one, a former FBI agent and federal prosecutor. And they do that great show. We got Shan Wu, former general counsel for the attorney general.

56:04Dina Dahl doing regular work for us. Dave Arenberg, Florida lawman. I mean, And the list, oh, we just added Civil Action, Chant and Brian, who are doing like four videos a day. Boom. Yeah, it's crazy. It's just crazy. We're so excited. We crossed the 200 million view barrier about a week ago. We're up to 720 ,000 subscribers in much less than a year. It's really been my distinct professional privilege and honor to curate that show and do a lot of the videos there and still doing, of course, all my work for Midas Touch.

56:39Jordy Meiselas:Well, let's get that to 1 million subscribers, everybody. YouTube.com slash the at symbol LegalAFMTN. Go and check that out now. Make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Make sure you check out the Midas Touch podcast as well on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Popok, thank you for filling in with this legal segment. Very informative. A lot of bombshells. Love the vaudevillian accents that you bring into it. Loving it all. Thanks so much. And speaking of those tariffs that you were talking about, Popak, when we get back, I do want to talk about some of the backtracking that we are seeing on the tariffs from the administration now.

57:15Jordy Meiselas:That so-called August 1st date, well, doesn't seem like it's all of a sudden all that important. We're going to talk about that and more. Don't you go anywhere, Michael Popak. Thank you so much for joining us. We will be right back. Don't go anywhere.

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1:00:42Jordy Meiselas:Let's go. Links in description of the YouTube and the audio. Shout out to our sponsors. Use the links. Use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. And Brett, I just wanted to add one thing. I didn't want to interrupt Popak's flow, man. He was on a roll. So don't you see the theme here too? It's like the folks that stand up to Donald Trump in the courts continue to find success, whether that be Cohen or E. Jean Carroll or Bob Woodward. And it's the folks that give him an inch, right? What do we always say on the show? You give Donald Trump an inch and he takes your life.

1:01:12Jordy Meiselas:I mean, there's no greater example than this than with Paramount right now, right? They settled what the 60 minutes lawsuit. That was a totally frivolous lawsuit. Then they caved on Colbert. Like he just, he's a taker. Donald Trump is a taker and he wants to see how much he can get away with. He's no different than any high school bully, if you will, right? What happens when you stand up to the high school bully? He backs off. He backs off. And so it's the folks that are showing that fight, that resistance that are continuing to see success. And the folks that are caving, i.e. Paramount, they're going to continue to lose and lose and lose.

1:01:50Jordy Meiselas:And it's going to be at their own expense, Brett. Yeah, 100%. And like what Popak was saying, It's not just even these court cases. It's internationally. People are realizing that when you stand up to the bully, you win. And we are seeing this in this tariff situation. And so Donald Trump has been unable to secure these deals, heaps trying to tout things that aren't deals as deals, whether they're like intent to discuss possible trade in the future or whether it's just Donald Trump literally sending really poorly worded letters on his social media app and posting them and saying, it's a deal. My post on Truth Social, that counts as a deal.

1:02:28Jordy Meiselas:No, it doesn't. But you're seeing now Europe wising up. You're seeing Asia wising up. You're seeing countries all over the world being like, this guy is not an honest broker. We're not going to participate in this mess. Meanwhile, the economy continues to have troubles. And basically the only person right now who's kind of keeping this thing afloat seems to be Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which is why now you also see Donald Trump and his allies now trying to attack Powell in various ways, trying to demand he decreased the rates. Of course, everybody wants lower interest rates, but not at the expense of collapsing the economy.

1:03:04Jordy Meiselas:But Donald Trump and his allies don't care. They need another villain as they see the economy continue to crater, as all these warning signs continue to develop. So they are looking to create an enemy. They are looking just like during COVID, Donald Trump needed someone to blame and he blamed Dr. Fauci. Well, now he is blaming Jerome Powell. Now, let me go back to some of these polls that we discussed earlier in this episode, Jordi. As we see everybody souring on the Trump economy, the approval of the economy, disapproval is at 62%. 64 % of Americans say the national economy is getting worse. 52 % of Americans say the US is in a recession.

1:03:40Jordy Meiselas:That's up 10 points since January. And if you look at the trend lines of all this, it's all going in a very particular direction. More warning signs for the economy linked in as now processing 11 ,000 job application submissions per minute. That is a 45 % surge since last year per the New York Times. Not a good sign when the job market is being flooded by unemployed people trying to seek employment. We are seeing all of these signs all over the place, but the White House, the Trump regime wants to just continue to deny reality. So these tariff things aren't working out for them, right? Trump sets this August 1st date.

1:04:17Jordy Meiselas:And I also want you to take note, I'm going to play you a couple of clips of the contradiction between these two statements that I'm about to show you. So first, I want to show you Howard Lutnick over here, who we've obviously talked about a whole bunch on this show, Howard Lutnick and the Trump administration. He says that they're going to be trade deals. Remember that 90 deals in 90 days? Well, that may have passed. There may be no deals, but guess what? There are going to be some deals in, you guessed it, two weeks. They're going to open their markets or they're going to pay the tariff. And if they open their markets, the opportunity for Americans to export, to grow the business, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, this is going to be the next two weeks are going to be weeks for the record books.

1:05:00President Trump is going to deliver for the American people.

1:05:03Jordy Meiselas:Just scam on top of these are going to be weeks for the record books, weeks for the record books. As long as they all open their trade, it's going to happen in the next two weeks. believe me, you're all going to get very rich. You're all going to get very wealthy. Oh, you're all going to get these dojo. It happened to those doge checks, huh? Everything is a scam with this administration. And as Popak saying, he was talking about Lutnik before in his firm. His firm is literally betting against the tariffs from actually going into effect. He's betting that the courts are going to knock down the tariffs.

1:05:29Jordy Meiselas:And so you actually see, once again, what they say versus what they do. So you have Howard Lutnik right there. He's saying two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. The fact that they could even utter the words two weeks, and not just - It's embarrassing. Yeah, just die of embarrassment. You know, I don't know. But let me show you Scott Bessent now, the Secretary of the Treasury. And he's saying, because he was asked about this August 1st deadline that is now rapidly approaching, the new deadline that Donald Trump has set. Scott Bessent says that that date is actually not important. It's not, we don't actually care about the dates anymore.

1:06:02Jordy Meiselas:Any progress that you can report on some of our big trading partners? Look, Joe, talks are moving along, but the important thing here is the quality of the deal, not the timing of the deals. And President Trump has created maximum leverage, as only he can do. And what we are seeing is these imbalances built up over 20, 30, 40 years, and we are more concerned with high quality deals than getting these deals done by August 1st. Our trading partners were told that the rates could boomerang back toward the April 2nd levels. We can continue talking then. But again, we're proceeding at pace with the negotiations, but we're not going to rush for the sake of doing deals.

1:06:56Jordy Meiselas:Jody, the man just exudes confidence, doesn't he? You know, he looks pretty stiff up there. Let me just say, you could tell he's kind of lying about something, just the way he speaks. Everything. Everything, just everything. We said this about McCarthy. He gives off a very similar vibe. Every time he opens his mouth, it just feels like a little bit of his soul is leaving his body, having to do this weird damage control for Donald Trump. It's utterly embarrassing and humiliating. and to see, again, the top folks in our government just string people along in such a pathetic way that maybe in the past people would have bought it, the two weeks thing.

1:07:36Jordy Meiselas:Yeah, okay. Yeah, we'll see you in two weeks too. Yeah. Okay, great. Oh, it's coming? Oh, awesome. Oh, you guys, oh, you're just planning because you need it to be perfect. Oh, okay. Okay. And then nothing ever materializes from these things. Again, that's why Donald Trump's approval ratings now are tanking at a rapid pace, it's because even his most loyal supporters are sick and tired of getting gaslit every single day over every single issue. The European Union is calling bullshit on all this as well, and they are preparing for retaliatory measures. Here's a new article from Reuters, EU to ramp up retaliation plans as U.S.

1:08:11Jordy Meiselas:tariff deal prospects dim. It says the European Union is exploring a broader set of possible countermeasures against the United States as prospects for an acceptable trade agreement with Washington fade, according to EU diplomats. An increasing number of EU members, including Germany, are now considering using wide-ranging anti-coercion measures, which would let the bloc target U.S. services or curb access to public tenders in the absence of a deal, diplomats say. Accordingly, the move has pivoted among EU countries, EU diplomats say, and they are more ready to react, even though a negotiated solution as their preferred option.

1:08:45Jordy Meiselas:The EU has one package of tariffs on 21 billion euros of U.S. goods that is currently suspended until August 6th. The bloc must still decide on a further set of countermeasures on 72 billion euros of U.S. exports. Discussions have also increased on using the EU's wide-ranging anti-coercion instrument that allows the bloc to retaliate against third countries that put economic pressure on member states to change their policies. Brought in more with China in mind, it would now allow the bloc to hit trade in U.S. services in which the U.S. has a trade surplus with the EU, limit U.S. companies' access to financial service markets and to public tenders in the EU.

1:09:21Jordy Meiselas:Public procurement in the EU is worth around€2 trillion per year. Possible measures also include restricting U.S. investment and limiting the protection of intellectual property rights and restrictions on the ability to sell U.S. chemicals or food products in Europe. So they are considering some serious action here that was designed for their adversaries, But I want you to think about that, that they have all this in their back pocket in case a China tries to screw them over, right? In case an adversary of the EU tries to screw them over. But I don't think they ever expected that they would have to use these things right now in order to go against the United States.

1:09:56Jordy Meiselas:But that's where we find ourselves. And that stresses me out there too, Brett. It's because it's not only, you know, is Donald Trump gaslighting his own supporters and gaslighting Americans, but the ramifications of this entire Trump regime on a global level, like the United States standing in the world has never been this low. And it's just it's utterly pathetic that we are where we are as a country. And I get personally stressed out because forget this regime and forget this administration for a moment. I'm like, I have kids and I want to expand my family. I'm worried for the America that they're going to be living in with us, the United States of America, just looking like absolute clowns on just such a global stage.

1:10:40Jordy Meiselas:Like we were once such a reckoning. And I'd love it. I'd love it if we could get back there. There's nothing I want more than to get back there. But where Donald Trump is leading this country, I mean, it is just utterly embarrassing. And this party, you know, there's this Trump and the Republicans. They've just taken – I've honestly just taken the economy off a cliff. And they're like, you know, they pretend to care about spending and fiscal responsibility. And then the second they get into power, they increase the deficit by a ton. They increase the debt by a ton. They do everything that they accuse Democrats of, right?

1:11:10Jordy Meiselas:It's always projection with them. But then they act like they don't. Like they just try to create their own kind of, you know, version of reality, which just isn't true. So you had Maga Mike on the Mark Levin show from the clips we saw earlier, same interview. And he was just touting how the Republicans are the fiscally responsible party. I mean, check this out. Check out this gaslighting. But as I said, we're just getting started. There are multiple steps to what we're doing here. We're trying. We're the party. The Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility. And we are demonstrating that day after day because of the president's leadership in the White House and what we're doing here.

1:11:43Jordy Meiselas:We just passed just on Friday, of course, on Thursday night, late Thursday night, early Friday morning after midnight, we passed the first rescission. Okay, the rescissions packets barely made any cuts, but it did totally destroy funding for public information like PBS and NPR and things people actually care about. You took out a very small amount of funding from the budget for that. But you know what you did do, Maga Mike? You added$3.4 trillion to the debt, and this is new information as of today. They just redid. The Congressional Budget Office just redid the estimate based on the final version of the bill.

1:12:20Jordy Meiselas:They are projecting that the bill will add$3.4 trillion to the debt. So miss me with the gaslighting, MAGA Mike Johnson. But like all regimes, this needs to be the line that everybody around the regime has to tout over and over again. So Caroline Levitt today, she was also talking about how this was such a fiscally responsible bill. Watch this. Thanks, Caroline. The Congressional Budget Office released updated estimates today about the big, beautiful bill now that it's law. They estimate that the deficit will grow by$3.4 trillion by 2034 and that 10 million people will lose health coverage by 2034.

1:12:56Jordy Meiselas:I know you guys are critical of the CBO. More broadly speaking, is there any concern from the administration that this bill, now that it's law, will increase the deficit in any way or remove anyone from health insurance that they have legal citizens? No. Look, this bill was a great bill for the American people. It was the largest tax cut for middle and working class families in our nation's history. And the president wants to see this country get our fiscal house in order. That's why this was a fiscally responsible bill, one of the most fiscally conservative pieces of legislation for its size that has ever crossed through Capitol Hill.

1:13:30Jordy Meiselas:And the president wants to cut our deficit. That's why he's effectively using tariffs to bring more revenue into the United States to ultimately pay down our debt that has been created by by presidents on both sides of the aisles for many, many decades. The gaslighting. This is a fiscally responsible bill. Let me flash this on the screen one more time. Trump's big, I'm going to say disastrous, horrific bill is projected to add$3.4 trillion to the debt. Budget office says$3.4 trillion. Remember that rescissions package that Mike Johnson was bragging about? Do you know how much that cuts? $9 billion with a B.

1:14:09Jordy Meiselas:$9 billion compared to$3.4 trillion. And did you know what they felt the need to ram through Congress? You know what they felt the need to remove while it doesn't even make a single dent at all in the debt and deficit? That cut$7.9 billion from programs like developmental assistance, the economic support fund, global health programs. I'm sure that'll be great. Migration and refugee assistance and international disaster assistance. I'm sure none of that will end up backfiring. I say that sarcastically, obviously. They cut$1.1 billion from public broadcasting, effectively ending federal funding for NPR and PBS.

1:14:46Jordy Meiselas:And the list goes on. But you could see right here that they are trying to pretend like they are actually doing things when the things they're doing are just things that hurt people. And they're not actually doing anything to lessen the deficit, lessen the debt. On the contrary, they are putting the burden of all this debt and increased deficit on Americans for years and years and years to come. That's what we are seeing. So as they set all of these time bombs, all of these traps in the economy, right? Because this is just data, right? This isn't going to end well. I'm sorry. It's just not going to end well for things.

1:15:19Jordy Meiselas:They're already trying to pick their villains. We were talking about this earlier, but I want to show you some specifics. By the way, listeners of the Midas Touch podcast know that we've been calling this out here for months, that their villain was Jerome Powell, and they were going to make stuff up about him, and they were going to try to do things to try to force him out. There was a rumor last week that Trump was going to fire Jerome Powell. The markets went down. Trump then said, I'm not firing him right now. The markets went back up. There was a lot of trading that happened in the period in between those announcements that I think is quite fishy, in my opinion.

1:15:51Now we're seeing, though, Trump, while he seems currently

1:15:55Jordy Meiselas:too afraid to actually try to fire Powell, which many say is out of his authority, which he should not have the right to do. They're trying to force him out by other measures. And like the Banana Republic that we live in right now, they are threatening Jerome Powell with criminal charges. I kid you not. Like I said, this is a stuff out of Banana Republic. So we're seeing this kind of full court press right now. We're seeing Treasury Secretary Scott Bennett saying, we need an investigation. We need to review the entire Federal Reserve. So that's the language that Bessent is using. Then you have Representative Anna Paulina Luna, whom, by the way, was one of the leading voices to push for the release of the Epstein files until they kind of realized, oh, this is actually going to hurt Donald Trump quite a bit.

1:16:39Jordy Meiselas:Maybe we shouldn't be asking for these things. Well, she's found her new cause right now, and she has formally referred Jerome Powell to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation, accusing him of lying to Congress, accusing him of overusing taxpayer funds. They They just throw all this garbage at the guy because they are trying to do everything they can to try to force out Powell so that they could put in one of their stooges who will go in and not look at the data, but will just do what Donald Trump says, will lower the interest rates and will essentially crash the economy. I think that's what everybody is worried about.

1:17:15Jordy Meiselas:That's what everybody is watching. And that's what you see Trump and his allies trying to do. So I just want to put together the pieces for you as you see all this stuff come out and you see they lie about everything, right? They always lie to distract and they lie to try to kind of just push their ideas across to try to force people to do what they want to do. So we discussed all the distractions in this episode, or a lot of them. We discussed the Obama thing. So now you see the fake stuff they're saying about Obama and the 2016 election. And if you talk to MAGA right now, they're like, oh, what Epstein files?

1:17:48Jordy Meiselas:Obama's getting arrested. Like these people are completely deranged. You have Anna Polina Luna basically calling for Jerome Powell to be arrested. You have Donald Trump yapping about the Washington commanders, complaining about the team name. You're just saying all this stuff. But that's why we here at the Midas Touch Network, you all continue to remain focused on what's important, on what's going on. And we are not going to get off these stories. We're going to continue to report on the Epstein story, Donald Trump's ties to it. We are going to do that without any fear. We're going to go back.

1:18:17Jordy Meiselas:We're looking through every piece of footage we get. We are following every lead we get. We're going to follow every disastrous part of the Trump economy, everything that he's doing, the effects of it, the things that he is lying about and gaslighting about, because you deserve to know the truth. Jordy, any other thoughts? Hey, I just want to thank everybody for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. If you haven't already, please make sure you subscribe to the Midas Touch podcast on audio or wherever you get your podcasts. And seriously, thank you guys for showing up every single day, every time we put the show on.

1:18:49Jordy Meiselas:Thank you for showing up. Thank you for sharing these receipts, the videos and the tweets and the stories that we bring here with your communities, with your closer knit communities as well. It goes such a long way. It goes such a long way. And we're all in this together. Like Brett said, we're not backing down. This community, this pro-democracy community, it stands the test of time. Y 'all are the absolute greatest. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. The Midas, Midas, standing strong.

1:19:24Against the fascists, we sing our song. We will get it right whenever we go.

1:19:34Jordy Meiselas:Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com. We'll see you next time.