MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 7/29/25

18:01Ben Meiselas:I'll show one other clip of Trump talking about Epstein in this meeting with the leader of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer. Then I'll show you some other things that Donald Trump said. But he starts describing why it was that he stopped being friends with Epstein. And the kind of fake MAGA explanation is that, oh, Donald Trump thought Epstein was a creepy guy and said, look, you're banned from my you're banned from this locate from Mar-a-Lago. Get out. And Donald Trump was like the hero. He stood up to Epstein. But here Donald Trump says, he goes, Epstein did something really inappropriate in my presence.

18:40Ben Meiselas:Okay. What is it? And then he goes, he hired help that worked for me. Trump goes, he hired the help that worked for me and he stole the people who worked for me. And Trump calls the people who worked for him help. So that's what Donald Trump says was inappropriate about Epstein's relationship with him was hiring Trump's help. Here, play this clip.

19:03Jordy Meiselas:People keep writing stories by the time you threw him out of Mar-a-Lago. Can you settle that? What was it about? What caused the breach? That's such old history. Very easy to explain, but I don't want to waste your time by explaining it. But for years, I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn't talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I said, don't ever do that again. He stole people that work for me. I said, don't ever do that again. He did it again. And I threw him out of the place. Persona non grata. I threw him out. And that was it. I'm glad I did. If you want to know the truth.

19:41So if you want to know the truth,

19:43Ben Meiselas:that's always what people say who are telling the truth. If you want to know the truth. um okay let's talk about other things that destroys like the entire MAGA line about all of

19:53Jordy Meiselas:this it just like just and is he talking about actual like help around mar-a-lago or is he speaking is he using a euphemism for like taking virginia juffre uh from him like that's what i don't know either is it even darker than even that we are hearing from donald trump in that instance whatever whatever it is we know that this whole story that MAGA has made up where donald Trump is some sort of crusader against people who have been sex trafficked and women is complete and total bullshit. Even like Jeffrey Epstein's brother has come out and said that like Jeffrey Epstein actually was skeeved out by Donald Trump and said that Donald Trump was a crook.

20:28Jordy Meiselas:And they got into some, there's also all these reports that they got into some sort of feud about real estate where they were trying to bid on the same property. And Trump was upset that he was trying to get the property. I could tell you right now from everything we know, it had nothing to do with the fact that Donald Trump knew that he was creeping and sexually abusing and raping young girls. Nothing to do with that. Everything to do with the fact that these other ancillary stories that we keep hearing about.

20:53Ben Meiselas:I want to emphasize what you just said. Jeffrey Epstein's brother is on record saying that Jeff had to cut ties with Donald Trump because Trump was too big of a crook. Imagine how big of a crook you have to be for Jeffrey Epstein to cut ties with you. So when you know that part of the story and then you re-listen to that clip that we just played, he's a terrible liar. Donald Trump is a terrible liar. And when you watch that clip knowing that he's lying, I mean, you hear it in his voice and you see it in his mannerisms. Terrible. It's almost the concept, though, too, of the big lie that he's such a bad liar that all of his MAGA sycophants in Congress, like MAGA Mike Johnson, they pluck meaning from it and try to act like they've interpreted what he said.

21:44Ben Meiselas:But it's like, no, just listen to what he's saying. I mean, this is a liar who is also cognitively addled and who is humiliating the United States on the world stage each and every day. And so just shifting gears, he was asked about Russia. Obviously, there's not peace in Ukraine in 24 hours, as Donald Trump promised. And Putin continues to escalate, killing innocent Ukrainians using ballistic missiles and Shahid drones from Iran. Let me just tell you what Donald Trump, Donald Trump's response was, I'm just not interested in talking to Putin anymore. I'm just done. Done talking here. Play this clip.

22:21Ben Meiselas:But every time I think it's going to end, he kills people. Could a meeting help? And are you considering it? I don't know. I'm not, you know, I'm not so interested in talking anymore. He's he talks. We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations. And then people die the following night in a with a missile going into a town and hitting. I mean, recently, I guess, the nursing home, but they hit other things. Whatever they hit, people die. So, I don't know. We'll see what happens. And then Donald Trump continued on this trip to talk about how much he hates wind, and wind is a disaster, and that Europe shouldn't have windmills, and that he's banned windmills in the United States, and they're very ugly, and he looks out of his golf course window and says, I don't like those windmills, and then there are windmills by Aberdeen, and I don't like that.

23:13Ben Meiselas:Again, it's just, it's so incredibly humiliating. Here, play this clip. Wind is the most expensive form of energy, and it destroys the beauty of your fields and your planes and your and your waterways and look look out there there's no windmills but if you look in another direction you see windmills if when we go to aberdeen you'll see some of the ugliest windmills you've ever seen they're the height of a 50-story building. And you can take a thousand times more energy out of a hole in the ground this big. This big is called oil and gas. And you have it there, the North Sea, this big that nobody would even see.

23:58You can take a thousand times more power because the wind is intermittent. It doesn't work. It's extremely expensive.

24:06Ben Meiselas:He's just making up numbers too. Like you just like just saying random numbers that aren't even accurate. And actually, wind is very effective in Scotland and in Europe. And again, it just looks so ridiculous to watch that.

24:20Jordy Meiselas:It looks ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It's incredibly dangerous. And you see people in the Trump administration now going on TV and they also try, they like act stupid, right? They're either stupid, they're acting stupid. They think you're stupid, whatever you want, a combination of all the above. They go, yeah, wind, the energy actually can't even be captured. Once it stops, and you see like Trump saying that there, once it stops, the wind stops blowing, you just run out of energy as if like batteries don't exist and other ways of storing energy don't exist. And you just see at every step of the way, this administration is attacking our climate and they are doing just severe damage.

24:53Jordy Meiselas:You also see how kind of our entire infrastructure was built on having experts at the helm who knew what the hell they were doing and us putting trust in them and allowing them to do their thing. Trump is dismantling it all. And so I should just mention also one of the most dangerous things that the Trump administration is doing right now that isn't getting nearly enough attention is that they are preparing to eliminate the endangerment finding. So what that is, and this is probably going to blow a lot of people's mind, that's the 2009 scientific determination by the United States government that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

25:28Jordy Meiselas:So what Donald Trump is trying to do is he's trying to take away from the United States government the stance that greenhouse gases are bad for the environment and bad for people's health. And you might ask, okay, so why do that just as a nephew? Well, that finding, that proclamation by the U.S. government actually has legal weight. It's the legal foundation for regulating emissions of greenhouse gases. So that is the first step to dismantling all of our regulations on greenhouse gases and taking away all the safety precautions and guards that we have right now on all of this stuff. Lee Zeldin, who runs the Environmental Protection Agency for Trump, that former far-right Congressman, he calls that determination that greenhouse gas is not so good for the environment.

26:13Jordy Meiselas:He calls it the, quote, holy grail of the climate change religion. That's how these people sort of speak. And this all comes the same week. The United Nations top court, the International Court of Justice, issued a unanimous opinion stating that countries have a legal duty under international law to protect the environment from man-made greenhouse gas emissions. So you see the United States government here going right against that, doing something that's going to damage our health, damage our economy, damage our environment. And so I think there's just that I, people out there think that people don't care about these climate issues.

26:48Jordy Meiselas:So I'm just going to say, keep making noise about all of this stuff and don't let them get away with it. Even like leave comments in this very video on this podcast, let people know that you care about this issue because we have to continue to make noise.

27:01Ben Meiselas:Whenever Donald Trump makes one of these fake deals, the American media, whether it's the New York Times or the Washington Post or whatever network, right, they go, a big deal was made. Donald Trump says. Whenever you start a sentence with Donald Trump says, you probably should pull back and reflect on what does the counterparty say? And do we have a document, right? What does Japan say? What is European Union actually saying? And can we look at a document? Because it's never existed before that a trade deal is just a concept of a deal. They're usually written documents, very meticulously drafted.

27:44Ben Meiselas:Every word has a significant meaning. And so the biggest red flag on all of Donald Trump's fake trade deal should be that there's just no piece of paper around it. So basically, it is Donald Trump saying one thing, and then the other countries going back to their own parliaments or their own commissions or whatever and saying a completely different thing. There's no real understanding of what it is. And it seems that all these countries are really just waiting to see if the United States trade courts ultimately strike down Donald Trump declaring emergency powers. And so they're willing to give Donald Trump a temporary fake deal because 15 percent is better than 25 percent, even though a 15 percent tariff means America is taxing its own importers and passing it through to consumers.

28:34Ben Meiselas:So when we get back, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about Donald Trump's press conference with Ursula van der Leyen, the president of the European Union Commission. I want to talk about Donald Trump cheating in golf in Scotland. I want to talk about Donald Trump banning the president of Taiwan from entering into the United States and just the broader implications, too, with the World Cup and Olympics, you know, eventually coming up. As Donald Trump bans like baseball teams from Venezuela from showing up or as Donald Trump bans, you know, people from across the world from being here and nobody wants to come to the United States.

29:14Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump can brag about there are zero crossings. One, I don't even know if that's true. Number one. Number two, you know where there's zero crossings? North Korea. No one wants to go there. People don't want to come to the United States. Why would you take a trip to the United States and end up in alligator concentration camps? Like that's why we're seeing tourism down significantly. And we'll talk about that reminder. As soon as this show ends, we will be on Patreon and it's ask us anything. We'll do about a 30 to 45 minute lightning round. We'll take as many questions as we can. There's no question that's off limit.

29:50Ben Meiselas:If you ever wanted to meet me, Brett and Jordy in a more intimate setting, you'll join us on that Zoom. There's a secret Zoom link at patreon.com slash MidasTouch, and it helps grow this independent media platform. So since we've grown this without any outside investors, it's just a fun way to keep on growing. So we'll see you after the show, but don't worry. We've got a lot of show left. So become a member of patreon.com slash MidasTouch. We'll be right back.

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32:52Jordy Meiselas:Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors. Links in description of both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links.

32:58Ben Meiselas:Use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benji, where to next? Talked about the press conference with Prime Minister Kiara Starmer. Let's go to the one with Ursula Vanderlei, the president of the European Union Commission. This is where Donald Trump announced a purported trade deal, but it seems the trade deal is fake. We'll get into that. But a reporter asked Donald Trump if he thinks Israel should be doing more to allow food into Gaza. And then Donald Trump turns it into himself, makes it about himself, and says, why don't I get thank you? People need to be saying thank you to me.

33:34Ben Meiselas:I need more thank yous. Here, play this clip.

33:36Jordy Meiselas:Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?

33:40Ben Meiselas:Say it.

33:40Jordy Meiselas:Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? What did she say? Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? Well, you know, we gave$60 million two weeks ago, and nobody even acknowledged it, for food. And it's terrible. You know, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything. We gave$60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza. and nobody acknowledged it. Nobody talks about it. And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that. And, you know, you have other countries not giving anything. None of the European countries, by the way, gave.

34:26I mean, nobody gave but us.

34:27Ben Meiselas:That's not even true, number one. And he goes, it makes you feel bad, meaning it hurt his feelings. What? I mean, there are millions of people starving to death in Gaza right now. Innocent children, men, women starving to death. This is one of the biggest humanitarian crises, an avoidable one as well in human history. And Donald Trump saying that he's upset because he didn't get enough thank yous. And this says, we've also learned that Donald Trump has greenlit the plan by Israel to just annex and take over, just take it all over, take over all of Gaza and push Palestinians out. According to multiple reporting, Netanyahu has also made a deal with the far right members of his coalition government in order to stay in power.

35:31Ben Meiselas:And this is what they're pushing. And you heard Donald Trump's response for that. But by the way, Did you hear how Donald Trump answered the question at the beginning where he was like, say it, say it? And then he needed somebody next to him to explain what a very clear question was. And by the way, I'll just show you this clip today with Keir Starmer when Donald Trump was asked if he believes that the interest rates are going to decrease. And watch, he struggles to understand what people are saying. And he goes, cut taxes? Say it? cut taxes no no no interest rates what are you talking about here play this clip yes a rate cut meaning a meaning a tax cut no no no you expect the fed to cut rates oh um i think he has to you had 11 cuts you know in europe they had 11 cuts in other places they had 10 or 11 cuts and we had none but i'm not going to say anything bad you know we're we're doing so well, even without the rate cut.

36:39With the rate cut, it would be better. It affects our housing a little bit. Look, we should be three points lower.

36:47Ben Meiselas:And he consistently doesn't realize that Keir Starmer is not part of the European Union, right? He did that as well at the G7, where he rolled out a fake deal with the United Kingdom and said he's got a deal with the European Union, and he drops it on the floor. And it's just a bunch of blank pieces of paper and one has his signature on it. Again, could you imagine if former President Biden was there, say it, say it, huh? What are you saying? I mean, he should know also by the question and by what's happening this week that the Fed is looking to, this is when the Fed would determine if there would be a rate cut or not a rate cut, like the context of the question, tax cuts.

37:30Ben Meiselas:Why would she be asking about tax cuts? What are you talking about? But going back to the meeting with the European Union president, the president of the European Union Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Donald Trump talks about what he believes the trade deal is with the European Union. Let's play this clip first. Those things are$750 billion,$600 billion opening up the country. we are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else will be a straight across tariff of 15 percent. Okay, that means you're taxing your own people 15 percent. You're taxing the importers at the point of sale 15 percent, which does get passed on to consumers.

38:23Ben Meiselas:What do you mean you're opening up Europe? Europe is open. We sell things to Europe. Europe sells things to us. What world is it that you're living in where you think that Europe's trade has been closed to the United States? But then you go$750 billion,$600 billion. $600 billion, what are you talking about? And then shortly after that press conference, this is the pattern that we've seen, the Wall Street Journal reports. U.S. – sorry, Politico reports. EU admits it can't guarantee$600 billion promise to Trump. The extra investments pledged under the trade deal would come from private companies, which Brussels concedes it has no power to control.

39:10Ben Meiselas:So it's basically they would seek to try to do something, which is just the normal course of business between the parties. And then within that$600 billion, there was one of the language. We will also seek to try to import$250 billion worth of energy from the United States, but there's nothing – it's not binding. It's not like a contract that they're required to do anything at all. And the$250 billion of imported energy, it makes no sense. The United States just doesn't even export that amount of energy. The numbers literally don't math out to make any sense. Europe doesn't have the capacity to purchase that amount of energy.

39:56Ben Meiselas:The United States doesn't have the capacity to export that amount of energy. And so again, it's just all fake. And what was it, Brett and Jordy like a week ago when they announced the Japan deal and everybody was like reporting on it. What was our report on the Midas Touch Network? I was looking at what they were saying in Japanese media because I'm reading the local media. And I almost had to like reread it. I'm like, I'm like, guys, am I reading this right?

40:21Jordy Meiselas:Well, I remember just to bring people like behind the scenes a little bit into kind of how we approach topics like this. When Donald Trump announced the deal, the first thing that we do not do at the Midas Touch Network is send out a tweet and headlines that say, a deal announced between the United States and Japan. You know, CNN might do that. All these other networks might do that. That's not how we do it. We try to say, OK, well, what is this purported deal? And then we quickly start going, OK, well, let's look at what the Japanese are saying about it. Surely their finance minister or prime minister or whoever, somebody over there should be talking about this, right?

40:54Jordy Meiselas:When there's a deal, traditionally, there are statements that are released in tandem with two countries at the same time that outline the same actual – there's a statement that is prepared by both parties. It's released at the same time detailing the deal. And so our first step was let's see what the Japanese government officials are saying. They were saying nothing at this time. We're like, well, that's odd, right? You would say that's odd. It's all coming from Donald Trump and Truth Social, and all these reports are coming from Truth Social, and we're just accepting this as fact. Weird. Perhaps we should wait till more information develops here.

41:27Jordy Meiselas:And then as the more and more of it came out, we begin learning through people in the Japanese government that this deal was no deal at all. There was nothing binding about this deal, that they had no intention of going through with any of the things that Donald Trump said, that they were in no rush to make a deal with the United States at all. And suddenly you realize, oh, so what all these other news organizations have been reporting has been complete BS. And they've now just done two days of PR for the Trump administration, rather than first trying to find the facts. Then when we did our report, it was like, what, then I ate probably like a 24 hour lag before we started seeing these other more mainstream publications, I guess, if you want to call them that legacy publications coming out with their stories, basically regurgitating the stuff that we were reporting about on the Midas touch network.

42:16Jordy Meiselas:And it's just like, don't, let's not jump to trusting Donald Trump. How have you not learned this yet, that everything he says is a lie and that you need to verify anything before you start reporting on it? I just cannot fathom how editors let that stuff slide.

42:35Ben Meiselas:Well, a deal exists. So if there's a deal, then the same way I could read what's in the United States, Canada, Mexico agreement before Donald Trump reneged on that, I should be able to read the deal. It should have a lot of points and there should be obligations and it should be binding. And we should understand, okay, well, what are the terms? I don't know how you keep reporting on social media posts or concepts of plans that aren't deals. And the thing that alarms me the most is that this is like a just a gigantic Ponzi scheme. And what we're going to see is the economic data continue to be bad and it's going to keep happening.

43:20Ben Meiselas:And then one day the floor is going to break on something and then the media is going to report it like it's a shock. Oh, my God, how did this happen? Oh, whoa, what's going to happen? I'm like, well, it's here in front of our eyes. Y 'all kept on reporting about deals that were social media posts. I mean, Donald Trump claims that Japan was going to give America, the United States of America, a signing bonus of$550 billion that the United States would keep 90 % of the profits and Japan would keep 10 % of the profits. It's like you should look at that as ridiculous from the outset because Japan's entire GDP is$4 trillion, which is less than California, which Donald Trump attacks.

44:06Ben Meiselas:So how is Japan going to invest like almost a huge portion of its GDP and then get 10 % back? They're not going to do it. It makes no sense. I mean, it would topple the government. It would crush their economy. They already hold$1 trillion of American treasuries. They already do about$783 billion every four or five years in direct foreign investments. In terms of employing Americans, they're the country that employs the most Americans of any country in the world. Why would this? It makes, and of course it makes no sense. And the way Japan is now framing it is The$550 billion could be like a loan potentially.

44:52Ben Meiselas:Maybe less than 1 % will actually be direct investment and the rest of it will be loans. And it's at our discretion to give the loan or not give the loan. In other words, there's literally no difference about what's taking place. So it's just another fake deal. And then Donald Trump will be like, all right, Australia is opening up their markets to American beef. This is a big win for our ranchers here in the United States. And it's like, you're an ultra MAGA rancher. You think Australia is going to be buying your beef? What are you talking about? Japan's not buying our cars because they don't like American cars.

45:34Ben Meiselas:That's why. Not because there are tariffs. Australia is not buying American beef because Australian beef is superior. That's why. Just the most fundamental basic concepts of this are completely out of whack. And the media just goes along with this ride. And Donald Trump and his regime and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant and Howard Nutlick, the Commerce Secretary, and they're saying, no, no, no, the country is eating the tariffs. There's no inflation. We've solved everything. I'm like, there is inflation. It's going up. The countries aren't eating the tariffs. American companies are. And American companies are then passing it on to the consumer.

46:16Ben Meiselas:So either the company is going to go out of business or the American consumer is going to buy more. And we've all gone into stores. We've all shopped. We've all bought food recently. We know the prices are going up. And Donald Trump said he would end inflation on day one. But you always have to go back to his character. And his character is he's a sexual abuser. He's a felon. He's a fraud. He's a bankruptor. And so he bankrupted Atlantic City in the early 90s. Well, Las Vegas, you're next in 2025 as tourism goes down. His behavior that we're seeing is consistent with someone who bankrupts things.

46:55Ben Meiselas:And he somehow with his company has got people to go along with some of this stuff and make horrible investments. And then he ruins their lives. And so just trying to call it out. And a lot of this stuff shouldn't be red versus blue or Democrat versus Republican. It should just be facts versus lies and good versus evil. Some basic, basic stuff right here. So Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, that's your issue. You're dealing with facts, big bro. When Trump says he has a deal, man, just report the headline. Just go. Trump said deal, everybody. It's so much easier. The market goes up that way, Ben. It's not built on a house of cards.

47:30Ben Meiselas:That's all just going to come. You know, and that's the thing, too, Jordy. It's like, you know, the Ponzi scheme market right now, based on Trump's announcing fake deals, when you actually look at all of the data coming in about the country, about job creation, not good, about prices going up, new home construction, you know, you go through the, You go through the gambit, losing manufacturing jobs. Like all the fundamentals are not strong. Consumer confidence is very, very low. CEO sentiment is at like all-time lows. Worker sentiment is at all-time lows. Just this gaslighting, Ben and Jordy.

48:10Jordy Meiselas:When you see Lutnick going out there and he's saying like – sorry, I slip a slip of the tongue. When you see him going out there and he says, like you were saying before, inflation is actually coming down. And you see all these various people in the administration, these right-wing influencers who continue to beat the drum of the experts were wrong. There is no inflation. Actually, if you look at any chart, you see that inflation has been on a very steady rise since these tariffs. And by the way, Trump has reversed many of these tariffs, which may have slowed that trend, but the trend continues.

48:44Jordy Meiselas:And you always have to look what they are doing and at the data and what is happening, not what they are saying. You could even look at this data point that I'll show you right here. Donald Trump says he's bringing in all of this money from tariffs. By the way, anytime he says that, remember, that means it's a tax increase on you. That's money he's taking from you. But anyways, we're bringing all this money in tariffs. We're going to bring down the deficit, right? This is going to make a big difference to the debt. Well, then why is the US Treasury boosting their July through September borrowing estimate to$1.01 trillion?

49:16Jordy Meiselas:I thought the tariffs were going to cover all of it. Oh, I guess that was just another round of bullshit. Just like the Doge rebate checks were bullshit. Just like we're going to find gold in Fort Knox was bullshit. Just like what happened to the prison.

49:30Ben Meiselas:Now they're doing tariff rebate checks. They moved on to tariff rebate.

49:33Jordy Meiselas:We got new rebate checks now. I got it. So what happened to the Greenland annexation? What happened to the Panama Canal? What happened to all these schemes that Donald Trump keeps throwing out? He says it, and then he moves on to the next thing. It's all a scam. It's all dangling a carrot in front of his base. They fall for it. And then he acts like it just never even happened. Enjoy those Doge rebate checks, everybody.

49:57Ben Meiselas:So when we get back, you want to talk about Mr. Tough Guy, Donald Trump, and who holds the cards? Okay. China just got Donald Trump to ban the president of Taiwan from entering into the United States. I mean, talk about utter weakness right there. So if you want to know, again, you think China has the cards or Trump has the cards, just even think about the ask. The very fact that Xi Jinping thought that he could ask Donald Trump, hey, I need you to prohibit the president of Taiwan from landing in New York on a trip to Central America should be the most offensive thing to begin with. But Donald Trump was like, sure, I will grant you that, Xi Jinping.

50:41Ben Meiselas:Also, you have these people who come into the regime who are like, we're China hawks. We are going to decouple from China. Well, then why are you attacking Taiwan? Why are you weakening our relationships with Japan and South Korea and countries in Southeast Asia. What are you doing here? Talk about that. Talk about more. We're going to take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, when this show ends, sign on to Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash Midas Touch. I know a lot of you have asked for us to hold one of these meetings where you can ask us anything. We'll call it the State of Midas Touch.

51:28Ben Meiselas:The State of Midas Touch is strong, our friends, but feel free to ask us any question that's been on your mind.

51:35Jordy Meiselas:We will have a link to access that Patreon post that has the secret zoom link in it is in the description of this video. If you're watching this video, sorry, if you're listening on audio, sorry, you already missed it, but you could rewatch it and join us next time. But, but descriptions link is in the description of this video. So just click on it. It'll bring you to the zoom link and you can check it out. Let's take our last quick break of the show.

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55:15Jordy Meiselas:Let them know we sent you if there's an exit survey. Benji, where to next?

55:18Ben Meiselas:It's one of those headlines that I had to reread and say, no, I must be reading it wrong. He could not have possibly done that. We're not allowing the president of Taiwan to enter the United States. Our ally, this is how we're treating them. But yes, Donald Trump is blocking Taiwan's president, Lai, from a New York stopover. We're not even talking about a state visit. Trump is preventing the president of Taiwan from landing in the United States on a trip to Central America after China objected. Now, Donald Trump's regime is supposed to meet with Xi Jinping's team in the coming days in a meeting in Europe.

56:05Ben Meiselas:And China basically said, if you allow Taiwan in, we're not going to meet with you. And Donald Trump pulled it. Donald Trump capitulated and isn't letting the president of Taiwan in. This was being discussed earlier today. And some people commented like, no, that's not going to happen. Yeah, no, it did happen. Senator Andy Kim from New Jersey wrote, denying President Lei a transit is a deeply concerning break with bipartisan precedent and sends a reckless signal to Beijing that our partnership with Taiwan is on the negotiating table. American leadership is now seen as deeply unreliable with Trump's fits and starts with Ukraine, NATO allies, and other key partners.

56:49Ben Meiselas:I urge President Trump to reverse course and do what presidents of both parties have done and allow transit and ask my colleagues in Congress to join me in that call. It's just one of those issues that MAGA Republicans in their disinformation campaigns would weaponize against Democrats for years, right? The Democrats are selling out Taiwan. The Democrats are weak on China. The Democrats, oh, you're supporting this and that in China and the Uyghurs, you're supporting, You're doing all of these things. Republicans never cared what China was doing to the Uyghurs at all. They didn't care what was happening to Taiwan.

57:32It was just another wedge issue to use in their disinformation war.

57:40Ben Meiselas:And then like with the Epstein files, like with a lot of other things. And then when they're in charge and the bluff gets called, they're doing all of the things that they sowed fear that was actually not happening. They're the ones doing it. They're the GOP, the guardians of the pedos. They're the GOC, the guardians of China. I got to be more creative with that. Over Taiwan, G-O-C-O-T. Guardians of the People's Republic of China. Do you know why GOP works, though? And the others, I get what you're saying with GOP, but I don't fully understand where you're going with the other acronym there. Guardians of China over Taiwan.

58:27Ben Meiselas:But P, the People's Republic of China. You could have kept it. Yeah. So, okay. So I wanted to cover that because again, that to me just shows utter weakness to our allies. It was a test by Xi Jinping of Donald Trump and Donald Trump completely capitulated right then and there. So what do you think China is going to, how do you think China is going to deal with Donald Trump at the negotiating table? So I want to talk about that.

58:55Jordy Meiselas:I'm just worried about the Olympics, man. I just don't know what this country is going to do. I'm certainly not rooting against our country having the Olympics. I think it'd be great for – it's in Los Angeles. I think it'd be great for the city. I think it's an exciting thing. But now you can't help but worry about what's going to go on and why would any of these world leaders come here? Why would any of these citizens of other countries come here when they've already said ICE has been going through World Cup stadiums? stadiums, they're going to be going through, you know, the Olympics, like if you could come here for an event like the Olympics and risk ending up at an alligator concentration camp or risk getting sent to South Sudan or El Salvador, like, is that risk really worth it?

59:38Jordy Meiselas:And I think there are going to be a lot of athletes and a lot of people in these countries who are really kind of thinking about that before they actually come over here. Oh, a thousand percent. And Olympics,

59:47Ben Meiselas:the World Cup in 2026 here in Philly. So that's going to be also an interesting, you know scenario as well it's insane you know we're talking about sports there uh the midas touch research team was the team that located that footage which showed donald trump cheating in scotland donald trump's caddy dropping the golf ball to give a better lie a better position of the ball closer to the hole and then donald trump looking like this is just kind of i'll use the pun par for the course for Donald Trump. He then goes and approaches the cheating ball and then goes to hit that ball. Now, this isn't new data.

1:00:24Ben Meiselas:We know that Donald Trump's cheats. A guy by the name of Rick Riley did an entire book on Donald Trump cheating in golf back in 2019 and showed how Donald Trump's golf cheating related to his cheating in every other aspect of life that you can tell a lot about someone by the way they play golf and the fact that Donald, I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm sure there's a lot of truth to it, but there's probably other ways. Well, hey, I'll say this, Ben. I played basketball growing up. I could tell someone's personality who they are at such a core level within five minutes of stepping on a court with somebody.

1:01:01Ben Meiselas:Are you yelling at the ref? How are you interacting with your teammates? What's your overall? Are you getting back on defense? So I buy that 1 ,000 % that you could tell someone how they behave in the real world based off how they're behaving on the golf course. I buy that. I agree. But I guess my point, I wasn't clear on what my point was. The bigger tell was probably that you were Jeffrey Epstein's best friend. Okay. Yeah, good point. That's a fair point. That would probably, when your best friends are Jeffrey Epstein and John Casablancus, you know, and Casablancus cheated on his first wife by sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl and cheated on his second wife by sexually assaulting a 17-year-old.

1:01:39Ben Meiselas:And then his entire modeling agency was filled with predatory conduct of sexually assaulting underage girls. And that's who partnered with the Donald Trump pageants and that Donald Trump worked with. I admit that's a bigger red flag than what Donald Trump does here. But we showed our audio listeners, we showed the video of Donald Trump being caught cheating. But let me just remind you what Rick Riley said in 2019 when he released that book, Commander and Cheat, I think it was called or something like that. Here, play this clip. Wait, which clip is this? oh of rick riley talking about the cheating uh it was do we have that one of rick riley i don't

1:02:13Jordy Meiselas:have this one i i have michael wolf but i don't know that the rick riley one oh god i don't know

1:02:17Ben Meiselas:i mean it's just it's just rick riley saying um he cheats like a mafia accountant he cheats like crazy he cheats whether you're watching or not he cheats whether you like it or not and the book was called, Commander and Chief. Finally, let me talk about Alina Habba. So her term, Jordi, this is like one of your point too. Like you could lose with grace and dignity and you could like bow out. Like Alina Habba, your term expired as the United States attorney in New Jersey. Like you could have, you didn't deserve that position at all, but you could have just tried to prove everybody wrong, right? And act normal.

1:02:57Ben Meiselas:But instead you filed charges, then dismissed them against the Newark mayor. And you behaved, you know, like, like someone who has very little character and frankly, who shouldn't be a lawyer. You behaved like someone who was indeed sanctioned over a million dollars in other federal courts throughout the country. You behaved like someone who the judge in the New York sexual assault cases against Trump, the civil cases and the defamation cases were like, do you even know how to cross examine people? Like, do you know the rules of evidence? So she's refusing to leave the position right now, even though she's done.

1:03:39Ben Meiselas:And the federal judges in New Jersey could have extended her term, but they voted not to because she's not competent or qualified. So a very competent and qualified, just lifelong Republican who had been working at that office since 2016 became the first assistant United States attorney and then got gets the job as United States attorney because we need a functioning office to go after the bad guys. I mean, there's over 1 ,500, 2 ,000 cases in New Jersey against people engaged in terroristic threats and people engaged in serious violence and sexual predators and people engaged in embezzlement and other very serious federal crimes that are prosecuted out of that office in New Jersey.

1:04:24Ben Meiselas:And she refuses to leave. So what are the criminal defendants now doing in those cases? They're filing motions to dismiss their charges. one by one, they're filing motions and saying, we have an unlawful United States attorney who refuses to leave and I can't be prosecuted if she's still there because the office is acting criminally. So you can't prosecute a criminal if you're the criminals. And that already delayed a criminal trial and other criminal defendants are going to flood that court now with those types of motions. So that's what it invites. And it's like, just step aside. What are you doing?

1:05:05Ben Meiselas:No one wants you there. You're not qualified to be there. You know, it's just an overall really, really bad look. Brett, you mentioned the Michael Wolff, you mentioned the Michael Wolff clip and Michael Wolff was going to be the biographer for Epstein and then never ended up doing it. And then he was a biographer for Donald Trump as well. So he knows them very well. This video that Wolf made about being haunted by this idea of how Epstein was prosecuted after Epstein spoke to Wolf about his relationships with Trump during the first administration. This is very revealing. Watch Michael Wolf's video that he made today.

1:05:47In 2007, Jeffrey Epstein entered into what's called a non-prosecution agreement with the federal government. He agreed to plead guilty on sexual abuse charges in the state of Florida with the understanding with the federal government that they would not also prosecute him. This is not that unusual. What is unusual, actually completely unique, is that the federal government in 2019, when Epstein was arrested, reneged on this non-prosecution agreement. The federal government has never done this before. I'm a little haunted by an aspect of this because my book, Siege, the second book I wrote about the Trump White House came out in June 2019.

1:06:43And in that book, this was the first time that Epstein had spoken about his relationship to Donald Trump. Epstein was in Paris at the time and immediately called me with some alarm and said he had thought that he may have said much too much. When he returned from Paris, and that was some 10 days or so later, he was immediately arrested, arrested on the tarmac of Teterboro Airport. Epstein immediately and logically wondered if he was being shut up by Donald Trump, by Donald Trump's Justice Department in this arrest. But equally, and this is what Steve Bannon thought at the time, Bannon believed that the Southern District, which was the prosecuting department of the Justice Department, the Southern District in New York, in a prosecution team bizarrely headed by the daughter of James Comey, Trump's bitter enemy hadn't arrested Epstein precisely to get him to talk about Donald Trump.

1:08:12As it happened, Epstein's lawyers in mid-July, late July, actually started to have a discussion with the Southern District, with the Justice Department, about Epstein talking about what he knew about various people, including Donald Trump.

1:08:42A week later, 10 days later, Epstein was dead.

1:08:46Ben Meiselas:I think that puts it in a whole new light, by the way. Right? Right. That's what Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal that she filed with the United States Supreme Court earlier today is about. She says, look, Trump, your labor secretary, when he was the United States attorney in Florida, made a deal with Epstein and because I'm a co-conspirator with me. And it was a non-prosecution agreement. It says the United States is bound by this, that Epstein may not be criminally prosecuted and his co-conspirators may not be, and that this has the force and effect on binding the US government across the country from prosecuting Epstein, Elaine, or any other co-conspirator.

1:09:31Ben Meiselas:So she goes, how could you prosecute me? You entered a deal. Now, people may not like the deal, and Epstein's an awful, awful person, criminal, but you made the deal, so you should honor the deal. The district court in New York, when it agreed to allow the prosecution of Ghislaine to continue, said, we will not honor a deal from the Southern District of Florida, that that just relates to the Southern District of Florida. We're the Southern District of New York, so that is a state-specific deal. And Ghislaine's argument to the Supreme court. Whether you like, I mean, look, I think that she should, personally, I think she should rot in prison for the rest of her life.

1:10:16Ben Meiselas:My view, I think she's a liar. I think she's a sex trafficker. She's convicted as such. I think she's done the most despicable things imaginable. But her argument is, why would that make any sense at all? These Republican lawyers, sure, they wanted to protect You want to hold anyone accountable? Hold those United States prosecutors. They made the deal. So now you're saying the deals don't matter when they're made by the DOJ. That's basically her argument to the Supreme Court. Trump's guy, Acosta, Alex Acosta, Trump's guy, who was brought

1:10:53Jordy Meiselas:in to Trump's administration immediately after cutting this sweetheart deal. When you hear her argument, you almost can't help but say like, she might get off on this because of what Donald Trump did here. And I think it's also when you look at the timing of all this also, how she filed this reply brief today with this specific information about how the Department of Justice prosecuted this case immediately after meeting with the Department of Justice in the federal prison, immediately after meeting with Donald Trump's former personal criminal attorney who is now the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, my kind of conspiratorial brain starts running wild and going like, did they discuss this strategy?

1:11:37Jordy Meiselas:Did they discuss poking holes in how they made this agreement with her in the first place and saying, look, here's your out. Remember that sweetheart deal we gave Jeffrey Epstein where we said, if you take this deal, we won't prosecute you or your co-conspirators? Well, that should apply everywhere. Shouldn't it, Ghislaine? Maybe you should take that now to the Supreme Court, see how your argument works out. I mean, remember, the attorneys here are very good friends also. You have Maxwell's attorney, very good friends with Todd Blanche. And so you could be sure that they're talking about all of this.

1:12:12Jordy Meiselas:And when they meet up, they're buddies. We've showed the clips of their podcast. Todd Blanche, I think, was the, at least at the time, was the guest who appeared the most on Ghislaine Maxwell's Lawyers podcast. They were very chummy with one another on that show. Like it's hard not to look at what is going on here and be like, this is why I've been saying like he doesn't even need to do the pardon. The pardon question to me is like an afterthought. He has given Ghislaine Maxwell the golden ticket to get out on her own in a way where he could claim that he had nothing to do with it, even though we all know exactly what is going on.

1:12:44Ben Meiselas:Well, think about what her retrial motion is going to be. it's going to be that Donald Trump has said that the FBI and DOJ tampered with my file and that it was all a hoax. I never had that information. The president of the United States is saying that the lead prosecutor, Maureen Comey's dad, was the one who tampered with evidence. Now, the only way the federal court rejects Ghislaine Maxwell's motion is by saying, we don't believe what the president of the United States says. So Trump has no credibility. So no, We don't believe it. But if you if you believe that the presidency is a position that has access to these things, she would absolutely get a retrial just based on on that basis.

1:13:26Ben Meiselas:And you don't have to get conspiratorial because to me that the bigger issue is staring us right in the face. And I think it was an obvious argument for her to make about the non-prosecution agreement. She made that argument originally when she was first being prosecuted. but the fact that they gave her immunity for future prosecution, lots of people go, but why does it even matter? Sure, you give her immunity. She's serving 20 years plus in prison anyway. So don't you want to hear what she has to say? Give her immunity. But now you've just given her immunity. Let's say the Supreme Court lets her off, right?

1:14:03Ben Meiselas:And now she's been given immunity. Remember the 2007 sweetheart deal, non-prosecution agreement? they basically just redid it with sex trafficking stuff that she was involved in. Do you get what I'm saying? 2007, 2008, non-prosecution agreement. Now they basically gave her a form of a non-prosecution agreement in the form of immunity. And this was the deal that I believe her lawyer cut. Hey, look, we'll deal with the pardon issue at the end of the term. We think we have a great argument with the Supreme Court. So Trump doesn't have to worry about that. Let's bring back that up. Give us the deal happened.

1:14:41Ben Meiselas:Like, do we get it? Like it happened already. They gave her the immunity. So now what the, what Todd Blanche probably said is, look, I can't give you these guarantees. I'm going to give you immunity. I can justify that behind the scenes. Go make your argument to the Supreme court. We think you, the DOJ in their brief to the Supreme court, Brett conceded that there is a circuit split on this issue such that the Supreme court should read it here. Do we have her brief? Because on her brief, she says in it, the brief, she says that the government, even more remarkable, where does it say this?

1:15:20Jordy Meiselas:Even more remarkably, the government advances an interpretation of its non-prosecution agreement that flips its plain meaning on its

1:15:27Ben Meiselas:head promising not to - Most significantly, the government concedes a circuit split on this issue, effectively admitting that defendants' rights hinge on the happenstance of geography. That's the key line right there, right? So the government concedes the circuit split. It goes to the Supreme Court. They give her immunity regarding all of the statements she makes about the sex trafficking stuff, thus immunizing her from prosecution there. She identifies other people, says what Trump wants to hear. And then you hope the Supreme, I mean, she hopes and the Supreme Court grants her appeal on that.

1:16:07Ben Meiselas:That's what happened. You don't have to be conspiratorial. It literally happened in front of our eyes, what went down. And so I wanted to bring that up. Finally, I want to leave the show on a very positive note as well. You know, the Midas Touch Network is embedded with the AFL-CIO and their bus tour across the country where they are meeting with union leaders and members of unions and just workers across the country advocating for workers' rights. This bus tour has been, I think, inspiring. This bus tour is the type of grassroots, shaking people's hands, things that are needed in this moment.

1:16:47Ben Meiselas:And the AFL-CIO just does an incredible job, and we're honored to be embedded with them in everything that they're doing here as well. So I want to show you this clip right here. This is Darren Kelly, one of the union leaders out in Pennsylvania on their stop holding the American flag. Here's what he's got to say. Let's play it. When you take this American flag and you say that you stand behind it, you stand for what this symbol is. It's not that easy to wave it and say you're an American. You have a duty to protect those that can't protect themselves. You have a duty to stand up to see to it that all Americans retire with dignity, access to good health care, protection on the job.

1:17:32This isn't something you wave without having it deep in your heart. And there's a lot of people in D.C. that forgot what this symbol is. So I promise you, we will remind you every day. You say you stand with veterans, then how can you cut like you have at the VA? You say you stand with workers' safety? How come NIOSH, MSHA, we go on and on and on? Uh-uh.

1:17:55Ben Meiselas:That's so powerful right there. I want to give him and the AFL-CIO a special thanks for allowing us to follow them on that tour. Keep checking our socials. We post a lot of clips from that tour and tell the folks at AFL-CIO, if you see them in your city or state, that you saw them on the Midas Touch and feel free to reach out to them on their social media channels. Thank you everybody for watching. We covered a lot of topics. I'm excited to meet all of you now on Patreon. So the secret link is on patreon.com slash Midas Touch. If you ever wanted to meet Brett, Jordy, and myself, go meet us at that Zoom link.

1:18:34Ben Meiselas:It also helps support the growth of this independent media platform. We'd love to see you there and excited for answering your questions. Brett, anything I left out? No, I think we covered a lot.

1:18:45Jordy Meiselas:Trump, Epstein, Ghislaine, the Supreme Court, climate issues, Gaza, the truth about the so-called EU deal, the Japan deal, Russia, Ukraine, Congress, Taiwan, the AFL-CIO. I think that's a pretty action-packed episode. I want to thank everybody for listening. And please remember to go also at the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you've already done that, leave us a five-star review. Send these episodes to friends. It really, really, really helps. So please go ahead and do that. Jordy, take it away.

1:19:15Ben Meiselas:Shout out to the Midas, Midas!

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