MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 7/4/25

23:07It's every budget modeling organization with any credibility. Do you agree with the Yale Budget Lab that your bill will add trillions of dollars to the deficit, even when accounting for growth? Yes or no? I probably disagree with most of what's coming out of Yale University. Do you agree with the Penn-Worton budget model, that your bill will add trillions of dollars to the deficit, even when accounting for growth? I disagree. Do you agree with the right-leaning tax foundation, that your tax cuts will add trillions of dollars to the deficit, even when accounting for growth? I disagree with every organization you've mentioned because of the growth rate assumption.

23:41Well, and they account for growth. Do you agree with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute that your bill will add trillions of dollars to the deficit even when accounting for growth? May I make a clarification? I mean, you're running through a pretty good list, but I think what – I'm almost done with it. I think what – I'll let you finish. I mean, do you agree with the tax policy center that your tax cuts will add trillions of dollars to the deficit? No, I don't. And what about the House Freedom Caucus, that these tax cuts will – they have a law estimate, but will add over a trillion dollars to the deficit.

24:11and is way more expensive than the House pass bill. Here's my position. I don't think Democrats or Republicans have gotten serious about addressing the cumulative deficits into the future.

24:29Ben Meiselas:It's your budget, Bill. They listed every group, right-leaning, left-leaning, your own members who ended up voting for something that they said was going to crash the economy. me. What are we doing here? And by the way, it was the same thing that people were saying about all those things I listed, all of those Trump businesses. People were saying, this is going to fail. What are you doing here? And Donald Trump would say, nope, nope, nope, because you know who it benefits? Donald Trump. When people suffer, Trump didn't suffer. Trump just did a deal with Vietnam for himself, not a real trade deal.

25:05Ben Meiselas:Trade deals are comprehensive, of 500 pages, a thousand pages. Trump's getting a building in Vietnam. Okay. Trump is getting a building in Ho Chi Minh city or a resort over there. He's happy. He's going to throw his name on it, make a lot of money. Uh, he says with Vietnam that there's going to be a 20 % tariff or a 40 % tariff. If it goes from China to Vietnam into the United States. So we're taxing ourself 20 % to 40%. And then Trump's like, I've opened up Vietnam. They're going to buy all of our products. Vietnam's still like a developing country. There's a deficit because they can't afford our products and they make cheap products that we can afford.

25:45Ben Meiselas:That's what a deficit is. It's not like Vietnam's going to say, I'm going to go and start buying what IBM microprocessing chips. They can't afford these things. Fundamentally, what they're saying about these things are just ridiculous from the most basic aspect of they don't know what a tariff is. And Trump thinks a trade deficit is a form of a tariff in America losing when it's actually America winning. But I know you have something to say, Jordan. I know you have something to say. Let's take our first quick break of the show. We've got a lot of topics to discuss, including Trump's conversation with Putin, where they agreed they want to make movies together while Putin says he's not going to stop invading Ukraine.

26:24Ben Meiselas:How about a deal in 24 hours? Oh yeah, Donald Trump's now said that was sarcasm. He never meant that. That's not real. He was joking about all of the peace stuff. Absolutely, absolutely ridiculous. I want to remind everybody, become a member on our YouTube. Our YouTube memberships are surging right now, and that's really helpful. We don't have outside investors. It helps us grow. It unlocks the emojis. There are special features like my chats that I do with Ron Filipkowski. you can gift as many memberships as you want to people. So sometimes people are like, hey, I really want to make a big contribution.

27:00Ben Meiselas:What can I do? Just go and gift as many people memberships as you want. And YouTube delegates those memberships out. So become a member. Also check out MidasPlus.com. That's our sub stack. Let's take a quick break. We've got a lot to discuss. We will be right back.

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31:04Ben Meiselas:When Donald Trump makes a social media post and says there's a deal, that doesn't mean there's a deal. So corporate news needs to just cut the crap and stop saying a deal has been made. It's not. Where is the deal? Let's see it. We live in a democracy. Show me the deal. I get to see it. You know who's supposed to approve the deal? Congress. If there's a trade deal, show me the terms. A deal isn't we're going to tariff Vietnam 20 % to 40 % deal. That's not a deal. That's not what a trade deal is. Stop calling it that. That's not what it is. We didn't do a deal with the United Kingdom. That's not a deal.

31:41Ben Meiselas:I mean, what? We just said that we're going to give preferential treatment to Land Rover, Jaguar, and Rolls-Royce over American car manufacturers. That's not a deal. That's not a comprehensive trading relationship. There were deals. There was a deal like AUKUS, Australia, UK, US trilateral defense agreement that this guy Colby Eldridge in the Pentagon is trying to rip that deal to shreds. There was a deal somewhat, I suppose, with Ukraine where Ukraine was going to give us rare earth minerals that Trump insisted on. But then what does Donald Trump do? Rips it apart, not a real, because he didn't treat it as a real deal, allowed Russia to basically reclaim the lithium fields in Ukraine.

32:28Ben Meiselas:And now Donald Trump is defunding Ukraine and not, it didn't tell Ukraine, didn't tell Europe, didn't tell anybody at the G7, didn't tell anybody at NATO, but is not giving Ukraine the weapons that Congress approved that they need to survive as Putin's assembled his biggest forces yet 50 ,000 strong in Sumi and is bringing 30 ,000 conscripts from North Korea. You can't do deals with this guy. Social media posts, or he just says he's doing something and absolutely doesn't follow through at all. So here we are. We're about to actually hit day 90. Remember, 90 deals in 90 days. He's done no actual deals.

33:09Ben Meiselas:He's done two fake ones, one or three fake ones, maybe. Vietnam, fake deal, UK fake deal, China completely fake deal, just a capitulation. But I see no difference really in China and Vietnam. It's just a restructuring of the tariffs, which is a tax on Americans. And now if China sends goods to Vietnam, it's now taxing Americans at 40%. And this is impacting our economy. Despite Donald Trump saying gas prices are$1.98, They're not. Despite saying we've cured inflation, we haven't. Core inflation's on the rise. The fundamentals of the economy are not doing well. Construction is decreasing. Manufacturing is decreasing.

33:53Ben Meiselas:May construction spending month over month significantly lower. Housing less affordable right now. You take a look at the dollar, which I think is significant because it's showing that the world is moving away from the United States as a reserve currency. The US dollar has suffered its worst first half of the year since 1973, as Trump's trade and economic policies prompt global investors to rethink their exposure to the world's dominant currency. You know how we know that data is accurate? Because it's also aggregated relative to the rest of the world. So we have other baselines, the other countries, that's how we know.

34:34Ben Meiselas:but right now the United States data seems to be complete and utter trash. We've warned people about that. And here, I don't want to go into an area where we go, oh, Ben, you're being conspiratorial, this or that. But I want to break it down so you can all see that I truly believe that the jobs report that came out on Thursday, it literally defies logic for me. And you could disagree with it, but there's something in here that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. One of the first red flags to me is the number, right? Because Donald Trump always picks bizarre numbers or numbers that have some symbolic meaning to him.

35:11Ben Meiselas:So the number was$147 ,000 or 147 ,000 jobs that were added. The jobs report shattered expectations, 147, 47th president, 147. That's a bit of a red flag to me right before July 4th. He's all about making this fake propaganda the symbolism. So that was a red flag. But then the day before, Fox reported that the ADP private payroll data, so all of the private jobs, that there was a loss of 33 ,000 private sector jobs that ADP reported from its payrolls. ADP is pretty accurate on that. They have no axe to grind. They just accumulate their payroll data and then they post it. Here was the moment on Fox when And Maria Bartiromo was speaking with MAGA Republican Senator Kramer, where she thinks there's going to be a job gain in the private sector.

36:04Ben Meiselas:But there's a job loss. Watch what happens. Let's play it. Of course, President Trump is talking about this bill leading to growth in the economy. We are waiting any moment now to get the jobs numbers for the month of May. The expectations call for the ADP numbers to be up 95 ,000 for the month of June. Rather, it's the June jobs data. And we'll, of course, right now, seeing seeing the number actually show a decline in jobs down thirty three thousand on on ADP. The bill includes twenty five billion dollars for the Golden Dome, the missile defense system. Senator, you introduced a bill supporting the construction of that system.

36:44I want to get your take on on defense.

36:47Ben Meiselas:Everybody expected quick change the subject. Yeah, I'll show you one more of those in a minute where they start bringing up Mondami and all of these things. But everybody expected, wow, if private sector was down 33 ,000 and we thought there was going to be a gain of 100 ,000, holy crap, this jobs report that's going to come out on Thursday is going to be a disaster. Why? Because we all know intuitively that government jobs have decreased. If anything, they thought that the private sector jobs would help balance out the government jobs that are being cut off. Why? Because if you've lived in the last six, seven months of existence, you know the government's firing everybody.

37:37Ben Meiselas:And you know that state governments are being defunded. You know that the Department of Education is defunding all of these things. You know that government is not funding government jobs. We know those stories. That's one of the main things the Trump regime has been talking about. And we know people in our lives who have lost their government jobs. So everybody thinks that the job report that's going to come out on Thursday is going to be an absolute disaster. But what happens? 147 ,000 jobs created. So how is there basically a 200 ,000 job swing in the positive direction from where we were yesterday with this dynamic?

38:17Ben Meiselas:And then they tell us the big job gain were teachers. In the month of June, almost 100 ,000 teachers being added when school is out and other government service-related jobs, that's where all of a sudden a massive burst in government jobs. And then when you even look at the way Bloomberg's talking about it. They give Donald Trump the benefit of the headline, but they say that the Bureau of Labor statistic model, they say it basically, we don't think this suggests the labor market is in solid shape as the unemployment job was due to exits from the labor force while payroll gains were exaggerated by a Bureau of Labor statistic model.

39:04Ben Meiselas:Exaggerate, That's the language exaggerated. Do you mean exaggerated like Donald Trump exaggerated the cost of Mar-a-Lago or the value of it? Do you mean exaggerated like Donald Trump was a fraud and found liable for fraud because he exaggerates the price of his things and the valuations of things? And that's what he's done his whole life. Is that the exaggeration that we're talking about? You mean fraud. That's what you mean. And what we're seeing right now, and that's why I wanted to start the show by showing the casinos and the shuttles because he's doing it with the economy. And that's why I'm like, I don't want to sound like a conspiratorial person who's like, well, those job numbers.

39:43Ben Meiselas:But I want to say to you, you're telling me the growth happened in the area that Trump bragged was the cut? Doesn't make sense to me.

39:53Brett Meiselas:Yeah. And that was Bloomberg saying that the numbers seems exaggerated. And so I don't think Bloomberg is going to be going out there on some crazy conspiracy. And here's the thing. We're dealing right now with this regime and these Republicans who are clearly comfortable lying about anything, even the most basic things. They lie straight to your face. And one of the things about Trump is that he does give away the game quite frequently. We remember this during his previous administration when COVID happened, and he was mad about all the testing. And he said, if you don't test, there won't be any cases.

40:26Brett Meiselas:He was mad because these numbers were being reported and it was showing just how bad COVID was getting, something that he said was a hoax, something that he said would go away, would never reach our shores. And the lies went on and on and on. But COVID was here. COVID was raging. People were dying. There were mobile morgues. And Donald Trump was not mad about that. Donald Trump was mad that the numbers were being reported. And Trump also, I should mention, gets these employment, gets this jobs data before anybody else does. He gets this the day before. So he already has it. He's able to look at it.

40:58Brett Meiselas:He's able to do what he wants with it prior to anybody finding out publicly as to what these numbers are, which is just something I think we should also throw out. But you see this entire party right now and Donald Trump and Caroline Levitt, this whole regime, they say things like we said in the beginning. They are so brazen. They go, no tax on social security is in this bill. It's in this bill. It's not in this bill. It's not anywhere to be found in this bill. If they're willing to lie about something that is that clearly a blatant lie, they're willing to lie about anything. And that's the thing you have to realize anytime we're getting numbers from this government, anytime we're hearing anything from Donald Trump.

41:37Brett Meiselas:And as Ben mentioned earlier as well, what were all those court cases about that we covered over the past few years? Donald Trump has had civil fraud cases, had criminal fraud cases. And what were those about? They were about him fudging numbers. They were about him making up numbers. Now this guy has the weight of the White House and a whole regime behind him of sycophants and people who are willing to do his bidding. He's been gutting these agencies of all their key people who were kind of actual, you know, longtime government employees to put in his goons in these positions. You have people in power leading the Republican Party in all types of positions across that entire party who are willing to parrot these lies, who are willing to say, I heard Mike Johnson today.

42:22Brett Meiselas:He gave his speech after Hakeem Jeffries' speech today, and they were celebrating that the vote was about to happen. Mike Johnson was like, and this bill is for all Americans who want to bring down the deficit and bring back fiscal responsibility. How do you say such a thing when it is so obviously false? This is the biggest deficit and debt bomb in the United States history and it's happening under Mike Johnson, under Donald Trump. But the way they always do it, they just say the opposite. They just lie to go back to what I said in the beginning. And you know what doesn't lie? The data. And we could pull this chart up right here.

43:02Brett Meiselas:Here's the deficit that you can see, deficit chart since the year 1900 in the United States. Let's go to modern history. Let's focus on this last bit for our audio listeners. It's a chart of the deficit going up and down. What happens under Clinton? That deficit became a surplus under a Democratic president. What happened under Obama? The huge spike in the deficit that occurred during the Bush administration was a lot lessened under Obama. You can see it's a very drastic shift down. Yes, there was more added to the debt, but the deficit was cut quite a bit because the deficit exploded under Bush.

43:36Brett Meiselas:Then you see the Trump presidency. Surprise, surprise, what happens again. The deficit skyrockets again. Biden takes over. What happens again? Like clockwork, the deficit is once again slashed by a significant amount. Now Republicans are back in power. And guess what? The chart is going to do the same exact thing that it always does. We are going to see a massive spike here. And once the Democrats, if they were to win the midterms, if they were to take power again, these same people would all of a sudden start caring about the deficit again, caring about the debt again. But these people who call themselves fiscal conservatives, fiscal hawks, whatever they want to name themselves, they are just completely full of shit.

44:17Brett Meiselas:Because every time they have the power, what do they do? Increase the deficit, increase the debt, screw over Americans, give handouts to the rich, spread these lies that giving more money to the rich is going to trickle down to the poor while income inequality explodes across the country. Say we don't have money to give people healthcare while they give billions and billions of dollars to ICE, to Alligator Alcatraz, to all these horrific things. The lies are consistent. They are always there. The data is there. But the propaganda is very strong. That's why they need to spend so much money on their propaganda.

44:53Brett Meiselas:That's why they need Fox News pumped into everyone's home every single night. That's why they need this regime. That's why they need these people who just hold the line and say these lies every day because they can't let this house of cards fall. And it's a very precarious house of cards that they have built, built on lies. I know you all are not duped, but I think it's important that we call them out now because we know over the next few years, a few weeks, a few days, a few months, a few years, whatever you want to say, they are going to continue to lie about these things. And when the pain starts to hit people, like after the midterms, when these Medicaid cuts start to kick in, what are they going to do?

45:28Brett Meiselas:They're going to blame Democrats. They're going to pull out all the usual stops Their propaganda machine is going to ramp up in order to try to twist their own actions to blame them on other people. But the blame falls squarely with this one group. And I think it's important that we point that out. This is not an issue of both sides at all. Well said. Well said. Fiscal conservatives, these fiscal hawks, they're fiscal clowns. They lie, Brett, to your point, as easy as they breathe this regime. It's absolutely disgusting. And I don't want to harp on this, but Bloomberg, grow a spine. This is the coming to life of like the big strong dog, little puppy meme, where when Joe Biden's president, Bloomberg's line, do you remember that?

46:14Brett Meiselas:The headline? 100 % chance of recession under Biden. They were a real big dog with their chest puffing out. And now with this, oh, excuse me, Trump may be potentially exaggerating about these job numbers. It's fraud, like Ben said. Call it out. This is absurd to me, and we're going to scream it from the rooftops every chance we get.

46:39Ben Meiselas:We absolutely are. When we come back, I want to discuss what's going on in Florida, the United States, sending the Marines into Florida. That alligator Alcatraz is already flooded because it's in an area where the tropical storms and hurricanes hit. And that's what happens when you put it in an area that clearly will get flooded. I mean, you know, this is, again, this is a concentration camp. And it reminds me actually of the early concentration camp. Charlie Angus said this to me, you know, he's like, Hitler didn't start with Auschwitz. He started with Dachau. And he said, this reminds me more of that, but it's the first step to getting there.

47:19Ben Meiselas:And now when we see the imagery of alligator Alcatraz with the White House doing jokes about the alligators tearing apart the bodies of migrants and eating their flesh, that's not a funny joke. The dehumanization, exactly what we saw in Nazi Germany. Sometimes you don't want to make the comparison, but it's a very clear comparison to me. And it's why during the election we showed Trump and Hitler side by side with their language. And we'll talk about that. I want to talk about the Marines that are going to be in Florida as they take away temporary protected status from Venezuelans and Haitians and Cubans.

48:02Ben Meiselas:Like, yeah, like they're coming for you and they're going to throw you in alligator camps. Like that's, that's what they're doing. But you still say, well, we disagree with him on immigration, but on the other issues, when it comes to transgender volleyball players, you know, But when it comes to throwing us in the alligator camps where we can get eaten alive, I'm going to have to say respectfully. I'm going to disagree. But when it comes to transgender, I feel very strongly about that. What are we talking about here? What are we talking about here? We're talking about our democracy on the line.

48:33Ben Meiselas:That's what we do here at the Midas Touch Network. Become a member to our YouTube channel. We built this with zero outside investors. We need your help. Become a member right now of our YouTube channel. Gift memberships to others. You can gift unlimited memberships to people. We're trying to grow those memberships here on our YouTube. Not sure if you notice as well, I've been able to sit in a chair now for about hour plus length. So starting next week, we will do a Patreon meeting with everybody as well. Now that I'm able to actually sit down for extended periods of time, because after we do the show, I have to go in like usually like like rest on a bed for like an hour.

49:09Ben Meiselas:But now I can actually do it. Let's take our last quick break of the show. we will be right back after this quick break.

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53:37Brett Meiselas: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 that. Olipop brothers, I'm telling you, drink of the summer. Benji, where to next?

53:49Ben Meiselas:Take a look right here. This is the fundraising by the Republicans. This is official. This is how their congressional campaign is raising money. Alligator Alcatraz. And it is, it says ice with a bite. And they're selling t-shirts with alligators with ice hats on ice with a bite, meaning they're making jokes about alligators mauling migrants to death. And the official White House account is also posting AI Trump with AI alligators wearing ice hats saying, make America safe again. Why would alligator Alcatraz be making America safe again? Why is it making America safe again when you have ice agents in masks where people feel they're being kidnapped and patrolling the streets like an authoritarian regime?

54:40Ben Meiselas:because that's what it is. Attacking people at Home Depots and inside restaurants and at department stores and vendors outside or at Dodger Stadium. You saw, because the Dodgers donated a million dollars to a migrant group, you saw Stephen Miller's group, their legal group, sued the Dodgers for DEI. You're suing the Dodgers for, dude, they're like Asians on the Dodgers, white people, black people, like quite literally, like baseball teams are pretty different. The Dodgers are diverse, everybody. I mean, they're suing the Dodgers and a baseball team for diversity. They want baseball teams with all white people.

55:24Ben Meiselas:I mean, what is going on here? Okay. And when I say what is going on here as well, you know, Brett, you show those images before the break, and you could just throw the B-roll up so people can see, I'll describe it for our audio listeners, is that there's flooding already, and not even that big of a storm, like a 30-minute storm that took place in the Everglades area. And the Alligator Alcatraz that they're called, the Concentration Camp, is already flooded because where it's built, this is what natural there's a reason why it was an abandoned airstrip but 450 million dollars has gone to build this up right away so that they can have all of their t-shirts and their merch that they're out there joking about migrants um getting mauled and eaten to death by alligator

56:16Brett Meiselas:spread yeah somehow the merch makes it like a million times worse like i'm taking something that's really ugly to begin with and makes it just even more just abhorrent um and then to see the people who are like spiking the football on this, you know, it's, it's always the usual suspects. So every time something happens, you know, Trump rolls out his little MAGA propagandists who have to prop them up on websites like Twitter. I'm talking about people like, uh, Benny Johnson and Charlie Kirk. And they're like, they, they go to this place. Like I saw, I think it was a Benny Johnson post yesterday.

56:46Brett Meiselas:And, you know, the guy who was literally, uh, being funded by Russia. Remember that whole report that slipped out of the news cycle. And Benny was like there, He's smiling. He's wearing like an alligator Alcatraz hat. He's like all thumbs up. Like these are the people who I have fireworks behind me, I guess. These are the people who position themselves as, you know, we're Christian conservatives. You know, this is what Jesus would do. Okay, really? You're going to act like you're the epitome of Christianity here, and you're out there celebrating a facility that has the intent purpose of sicking alligators on migrants if they don't behave the way you want them to behave?

57:27Brett Meiselas:I mean, this is just like sick, sick, sick stuff that they are celebrating. And kind of, you know, I think all that joking, all that mockery is also designed to kind of make it seem less bad in a way. Oh, well, we're joking about it. It's alligators. It's silly. It's funny. Check out my hat. Check out my T-shirt. Isn't this cool? This is so based, guys. This is so cool. It doesn't make the United States safer. If we saw this happening in every other country, like we'd probably invade them. Let's be real. Like we'd probably send the troops in to try to free the people because it's that deranged what we are experiencing here in the United States.

58:00Brett Meiselas:I've never seen this in our country except when you go back to like the internment camps we had during World War II. This is just the latest in a series of horrific things in our history that will leave a black mark on our history, like the internment camps, like slavery, like other things that we've done in this country. It's truly horrific. It's horrific and it's just heartless. These are people. These are human beings and you're going to put a swamp around these folks filled with alligators? And so if they were to escape, they'd get eaten by alligators? Look, human beings, what are we doing here as a society?

58:41Brett Meiselas:How did we get here is my question because it's just that close we're looking at, Ben.

58:48Ben Meiselas:You're very right, Jordy. And I want to talk about just a few other things. I mentioned the Marines are being sent in that are going to be working with ICE in Florida. The Marines have announced that they're showing up. And I guess they're going to be supporting the ICE raids. They issued an official release on that. I wanted to share this clip earlier. Here's the official United States Northern Command. Let's pull it up one more time. In accordance with the June 17th Department of Defense statement, U.S. NORTHCOM announces 200 Marines are going to Florida to provide administrative and logistical support to immigrations and customs enforcement.

59:30Ben Meiselas:Now, remember when we told you that the order in California affects other states? That's what saying that they have unlimited power to put Marines in any States that they, that they want to, um, and that they'll activate the national guard if they want to. And now they're going to

59:49Brett Meiselas:have like a limited budget with this bill. Like this bill gives them billions and billions of dollars to do this.

59:54Ben Meiselas:Ice will have a bigger budget than basically any other military in the world, essentially, other than the United States military. The ice budget will be bigger than the budget for the United States Marines is what ICE will have a bigger budget than. I wanted to give you two data points as well, though. The first one is, just so you see and hear the clip, was when Donald Trump was talking about the 90 deals in 90 days. He goes, yeah, I'm just going to send him letters. I'm just going to do letter deals. What does that even mean? It means, I guess how he interprets it, he wasn't unable to do deals, real deals with countries.

1:00:32Ben Meiselas:So he's just going to give a tariff number. But by the way, even if he came up with a tariff number, here's our tariff number between the United States and Canada. Here's our tariff number between the United States and Mexico. That's not a deal. That's not what a trade deal. The USMCA was a deal over a thousand pages. It basically plagiarized NAFTA, modernized it a little bit because Trump said he was going to stop NAFTA and USMCA sounds like YMCA. But that was at least a trade deal. What we had with Japan was a trade deal. Trump just wants 20%, 30 % tariffs on these countries, and he wants to make them submit and embarrass them.

1:01:12Ben Meiselas:And these countries don't even know what the hell they're dealing with with him. But here he is earlier talking about, he's going to send letters. Here, play this clip.

1:01:19Brett Meiselas:Sir, you signed a trade deal with Vietnam yesterday. Great deal, 40 % on transbipping. Can we expect any more of that before next week, sir? So we have a couple of other deals, but my inclination is to send a letter out and say, what tariff they're going to be paying. It's much easier. We have far more than 170 countries. And how many deals can you make? And you can take good deals, but they're very much more complicated. I'd rather, and I've been like this from the beginning, I'd rather send out a letter saying, this is what you're going to pay to do business in the United States. Why would you rather send out a letter than do a deal?

1:01:57Ben Meiselas:Because it's easier. How many deals do you expect that we make? At least 90, I guess, if you said 90 in 90 days. If there's 170 countries, I think then 170, I don't know, but maybe start with what you said, 90 deals in 90 days. But as we went back, and it's why, again, I started showing you the casino. It's why I talked about all the Trump failed businesses and the fraudulent numbers and all of these things. because when you live in a Trump world, you're living in a world of losers. I think that's an important point. He is a loser, a lifelong loser. He's not a winner. He's a con artist, a fraud, a felon, a sexual abuser.

1:02:43Ben Meiselas:For reasons that are entirely unclear to me, he gets groups of people to believe this shit. I don't know why. It makes no sense to me how you could go and believe somebody who has failed and lied and committed fraud so many times. This time it's going to be good. I bet you this time. And there are so many examples. The gas is 198. No, it's not. You said 90 deals in 90 days. Now you say you're going to send them letters. You said there was going to be peace in Ukraine in 24 hours. It would be easy. And now you go, I was just being sarcastic. You know how he talks about everything is rigged. This is rigged.

1:03:24Ben Meiselas:The only thing that's being rigged for him is the way that media outside of the Midas Touch Network and some other independent media cover this. Because every time he has a massive loss, they go, oh, he was being sarcastic. What are we talking about here? That was clearly a joke. What do we mean here? By the way, before we go, I got to show you two other things. I want to show you this clip right here of Congress member Schaaf. It's just so, because I told you, they were never even arguing that this budget bill was good or here's why people should should pass the thing. What Congress member Schaffetz was going while he was going while he was doing TVs, basically like you've taken photos with him.

1:04:07Ben Meiselas:So there are two clips I want to show. First, where he where he goes, shame on you if you don't vote. Shame on you. Not defending the bill. Just we're going to shame you. Let's play this one first. And so you can either vote with AOC or you can vote with Donald Trump. So don't tell me that you're a conservative if you're not with Donald Trump. That's not going to fly. You're never coming back. And shame on you. And you get on that plane and try to go home and try to tell everybody, oh, I stood tough. Yeah, I got these big Instagram muscles. Look how tough I am on Twitter. Well, you don't support the president.

1:04:43Brett Meiselas:That's that's not going to click, Jason.

1:04:46Ben Meiselas:Everyone's looking for a click. You all are looking for. What do you talk? What are you doing for your constituents?

1:04:52Brett Meiselas:Very revealing, though, by the way, right? Schaffetz admits, and former Congressman Schaffetz, right? Now he's just like a goober who goes on Fox and does weird stuff like that. Goober. It's very revealing how he defines what being a conservative is. He doesn't say conservative is defined by wanting to conserve traditions of the past or conserve the environment or lower taxes. He says, how could you call yourself a conservative if you're not supporting this president? It's an allegiance test. That is what the whole party is. Another word for it, it is a cult. That is what this whole thing is. You don't support Trump, then you are not a true Republican.

1:05:27Brett Meiselas:That is exactly how Scientology works. You are a suppressive person if you do not support everything we do. That is how the Republican Party operates.

1:05:37Ben Meiselas:and they go, but you took photos with him, man. How could you not vote for, this is what they were saying. This was their way to extort and coerce or pressure these MAGA Republicans to vote for. You took photos with the guy. He goes, when has the guy ever been wrong? Trump has been there less than six months. He's been right on anything, on everything. Then he lists the things that Trump's been wrong against. And he goes, you took photos with him. You have to, if you take a photo with him, you have to vote for it. Now you may think I'm, come on, Ben, he couldn't possibly say that. Word for word, bar for bar.

1:06:14Ben Meiselas:Watch it. That's the best the Senate could do. And you're going to hold up the president's agenda. President Trump, you rode every single coattail he had. You rode President Trump's wave to get into office. You took pictures with him. You bragged about him. You've touted him. Now the president is saying, this is my signature piece of legislation. He's been there less than six months in this term, Sean. Has he been wrong on anything? He hasn't been wrong on anything. What he's done in terms of tariffs, tackling inflation, all the safety and security, going after, trying to lock down and secure the border.

1:06:52Ben Meiselas:This is real sick, thick. Did I say sick stuff? That there's an audience that watches that, which is worse than North Korea regime media. That's worse what you saw there than Russia regime media. Has he been, inflation is up. The trade war has been a disaster causing inflation to go up. The dollar is down. Jobs are actually down. He's been wrong about it. How about Iran? Has he been right about it? What is the Pentagon spokesperson? You see, when you lie all the time, you can keep your lies together sometimes. So watch when the Pentagon spokesperson lets it slip. Total obliteration. And then he can't help himself.

1:07:45Ben Meiselas:He goes, and the funny thing is, when we talk to, you know, our intelligence is like the foreign intelligence, one to two years, I think it'll be back. So the report is like, so it's not totally obliterated. You're saying they'll be able to have a nuclear weapon in a year. Well, we think the thinking that we think the thinking is the thinking that we think. Here, just watch this as the Pentagon spokesperson ties himself into a knot as he lies and then admits that the nuclear program is actually not destroyed. At the same time, Donald Trump's like, no more sanctions against Iran. China, you can trade with Iran.

1:08:21Ben Meiselas:Be good. We'll see you later. We're done. Out. Play it. First, our assessment of the battle damage around Fordow, Nantes, and Estefan remains unchanged. I mean, we we believe and certainly all of the intelligence that we've seen have led us to believe that Iran's those facilities especially have been completely obliterated. And the interesting interesting kind of side point about this, Tara, is that all of the conversations that we've had since Operation Midnight Hammer with our allies all around the world, but certainly also in the region. you know they say a couple of things they share our sentiments about you know the degradation of iran's nuclear program and and and the fact that we have degraded their program by one to two years at least intel assessments inside the department assess that and i think their intelligence

1:09:11Brett Meiselas:shares that conclusion assessments by this department think it's been degraded or delayed by one to two years i think we're thinking probably closer to two years like degraded their

1:09:22Ben Meiselas:their program by two years but but like broke the fourth wall you know we think we think we think and did you see he was like struggling with his conscience it was like a wild it's a wild clip to watch because like he actually has this moment was like uh and he trips himself and he doesn't what's saying and he goes and just admits the thing but look there's serious issues here because who does this all benefit also it all benefits putin because putin's getting the shahed drones from Iran as Iran gets funded. The alliance is Iran and Putin and China and North Korea. That's the group. While Peskov, Kremlin's Caroline Levitt, Putin's Levitt is this guy named Peskov, welcomes the fact that the U.S.

1:10:09Ben Meiselas:just stopped shipping a lot of the critical weaponry that is needed to Ukraine. The U.S. doesn't tell Ukraine. The U.S. doesn't. I mean, Trump was with Zelensky at the NATO summit. Trump was not with Zelensky at the G7, but he was with the G7 partners. We don't tell them. This guy Colby Eldridge from the Pentagon, he's the one who wants to pull us out of the Australia, UK, US trilateral nuclear deterrent against China. He wants us out of AUKUS. People of Australia are absolutely pissed. We have a deal. What are you talking about? You're going to try to pull out of AUKUS? We need nuclear suburb.

1:10:55Ben Meiselas:The whole thing is we got to work together. What are you doing here? So this guy Eldridge is pulling us out of AUKUS, not giving the weapons to Ukraine. He claimed to be like the hawk on Asia. He's like the China hawk. But now you're letting the China-Iran-Russia relationship thrive. I don't No, it seems that the main beneficiary of what went down in Iran was Russia. Donald Trump wanted to do his propaganda and Benjamin Netanyahu got his criminal trial in Israel delayed. If you want to look at who were the winners over there, it seems to be not the American people, certainly. So I'll leave you with all of that.

1:11:35Ben Meiselas:We'll still have our programming July 4th and in the weekend, Keep checking back on the Midas Touch Network every 90 minutes or so. That's when new videos are posted on the YouTube channel. Please consider becoming a member of our YouTube channel right now. Your memberships really are a big, big difference maker here. And we've seen a big growth in our YouTube memberships lately, which has been a massive help. We've got big news next week about Midas Touch Canada with Charlie Angus. I'm excited about that. Our sub stack's been posting a lot of great pieces. The president of Wesleyan University chose the Midas Touch to publish an op-ed about what's happening with university presidents.

1:12:16Ben Meiselas:You know, we're expanding. We're bringing on more editors. So one of the ways, the best way you can help is tell others about the Midas Touch. But we know economic times are, I don't want to pressure you into becoming a member if you can't afford it. So the best thing you can do is just share the network. If you can give people memberships who can't afford it, that goes a huge way to help. And if you can become a member, become a member. You could also become a member at MidasPlus.com. But become a member of our YouTube. It's easy. It's one click away. It makes a big, big difference. That's what I got to say.

1:12:48Ben Meiselas:Brett, anything else you want to say?

1:12:49Brett Meiselas:Yeah, another way to support that's totally free. There's a lot of people watching us live right now. Please go ahead to Apple Podcasts, to Spotify, and subscribe to the Midas Touch podcast on audio. Super helpful. Send some episodes to friends and family. You know, we've never spent a single penny on marketing dollars here at the Midas Touch Network. It's all via word of mouth. It is all built by you. So let's keep spreading the word. I get that around. If you've already added the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please consider leaving a five-star review when you go to an app like Apple Podcasts and go to the podcast.

1:13:19Brett Meiselas:You just scroll down. You'll see the five stars. You'll see a little option to write a little something. It truly helps to get the word out there. It helps continue to keep us on the top of the charts. And we're truly just so grateful for your support. Let's keep spreading the truth. Remember, this starts with you. You are the people that the folks in your life trust the most. So we may be providing information right here, but now you go on, you take it. If you're with family for the 4th of July, let them know what this bill actually does. Let them know what actually happens with these Medicare cuts, how they don't kick in until after the midterms.

1:13:50Brett Meiselas:Let them know what's happening between Putin and Trump. Let people know about things that are going on. You don't have to be annoying about it, but you have these conversations with your friends and family because you are the most trusted voice in those people's lives. And so thank you so much for listening. Excited to continue to deliver you all the content that you know and love over the rest of this weekend. Hope that some of you get to have some time off and spend it with friends and family. Thank you, as always, for your support. Shout out to the Midas Mighty!

1:14:32We will get it right whenever.

1:14:36Brett 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.

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