MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 7/7/26

23:34Jordy Meiselas:And Donald Trump gave those people a lot of false hope. Remember back in the day in February when he said, take to the streets, I will have your back. And then he did not have their back. But just like in all countries, right, there are people who don't like – I mean think about our country, right? Think about the United States. There are people who don't like their government and there are people who do like the government. And there's versions of that dynamic that exist throughout everywhere. And so if you are just getting one side of the story here, if you are just being fed one narrative, you are not being told the truth.

24:09Jordy Meiselas:And so I think this really breaks through that BS and breaks through. And I even saw a lot of MAGA people today saying, wow, I feel lied to. I feel lied to. I'm looking at these crowds in Tehran, and this is not what I was told about the Iranian regime. I was told we were going to be able to overthrow this regime in a night. I was told we were going to be able to walk in and it was going to be done. But no, it's a country of what, 90 million people, I believe. And they had something like 15 million people out there, not protesting, but out there. I guess they were protesting Donald Trump with those signs, very graphic signs about Donald Trump and J.D.

24:43Jordy Meiselas:Vance. And they had signs about Laura Loomer. Like when you see the signs about Laura Loomer, I'm like, oh, they're very red. They're paying attention. This is not someone I would say would be a household name if you ask people even in our country. But you're like, oh, they're deep in it. They're educated on what's going on in the United States here. It's just eye opening. And as you see also, the stuff that Donald Trump was posting about Maloney in Italy, the Italian prime minister, like Ben said, that's somebody who Donald Trump should be best friends with. Right. Somebody they share a lot of ideology.

25:17Jordy Meiselas:uh you know a lot of people don't like maloney because she has a lot of these kind of maga-esque beliefs but donald trump is attacking her and he's attacking her on a on a personal basis because she didn't want to i guess get involved in donald trump's war and she had a stern talking to him we all saw that footage um at the g7 a couple weeks back and so donald trump wants to act like she's obsessed with me she's obsessed she can't get enough of me it's sick and it's very predatory by the way, from somebody who is an adjudicated sexual predator. And you could see the way that he acts as a predator, even on female leaders across the country.

25:55Jordy Meiselas:But I think it gives you some more insight into Donald Trump, insight which you probably know. And that's that Donald Trump, even though he does have this very horrific ideology that is toxic and fills the political landscape both here and abroad, at the end of the day, Donald Trump is a selfish human being and everything to him is personal. It doesn't even matter if you align with him on nine out of 10 things. If you make him look bad or you go against him on one thing, he will go after you the same way that he has gotten rid of all these other people in Congress who decided to vote to release the Epstein files, even though they voted with him 99.9 % of the time.

26:35Jordy Meiselas:They became his public enemy number one, because to Donald Trump, it's all about you must respect me or you must flatter me. You have to constantly stroke my ego 100 % of the time and you fall out of line. I am coming for you. And that's the message that he's sending to Maloney and frankly, other world leaders while he's doing this. But that's really where it comes from. This very selfish, narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic mindset of Donald Trump, where he just has to attack, attack, attack when he feels threatened, even if it's something incredibly reasonable or just a disagreement?

27:13Brett Meiselas:Absolutely. Look, the biggest reckoning in our lifetime, Midas Mighty Brothers, is going to be this idea of championing truth as a society again, and not allowing yourselves to get played, not allowing yourselves to be lied to, and then not being willing participants to make the lies even louder. What's so frustrating, I think for so many as Donald Trump has lied to his base so often and so many times and so loudly now that they're finally starting to wake up. It's just this whole idea that the Trump regime just, it doesn't deal in reality, right? Why for the Trump regime would you acknowledge that there are that many people, you know, attending the funeral for the Ayatollah?

27:57Brett Meiselas:Don't acknowledge it, then it won't exist. Why for the Trump regime should he acknowledge that China and North Korea have been testing nuclear weapons. Don't acknowledge it. It doesn't make it real. Just don't acknowledge it. It's the same reason why Trump wouldn't sign the Housing Act, in my opinion. That would make the affordability crisis very much real. But if he doesn't sign it, doesn't acknowledge it, not real. He lives in his own MAGA reality that he's crafted by putting all these yes people around him, right? Why not test for COVID in 2020? That would make it real. Donald Trump is all about just keeping his whole MAGA universe so pristine and pure, his MAGA universe, the golden age for Donald Trump and his regime and the people at Mar-a-Lago.

28:42Brett Meiselas:It might be the golden age for them, but not for the American people. It is so obvious to me that his refusal to acknowledge that these things are existing is so intentional because then he has to try and address it. Then he has to answer for it. Then it becomes his problem. And he's the laziest person in the world. He doesn't want to do the work. He doesn't care about the American people. That's not why he's president. He became president to stay out of jail. And now he's using the office of the presidency to continue to grift and line his pockets with money. That is what he's doing. That is what he cares about.

29:12Brett Meiselas:That's why last year he walked away with 1.4 billion in crypto earnings. Why? Because he doesn't care about you. This isn't the point. Is you the MAGA base, you the American person, he could care less. It's all about how can I use this office and this power to benefit himself, his family, and those around him. If he doesn't acknowledge these things are happening, it doesn't exist in the MAGA reality, Ben and Brett.

29:36Ben Meiselas:Yeah. And he uses the same tricks. And so we'll talk about this when we come back from our first break, but his post, he goes back to the Walmart trick, right? Remember during Thanksgiving when prices were significantly higher and he says, Walmart, 25 % down under Donald Trump versus Joe Biden. Then he calls him sleepy crooked Joe Biden. We all know that for Thanksgiving, that was not the case, but he just goes back to it right now. Walmart bringing down the price of beef, at least 15%. Other prices going down 25%. Everybody else time to join. What did he say two weeks ago? Freedom Gas Centers.

30:15Ben Meiselas:I never heard of these in Eastern Philadelphia. Freedom Gas Centers, everybody. They brought down their prices 25%. It's going to be great for you. We all know inflation is rising and it's rising at an alarming rate. Not only is inflation rising at an alarming rate, you have jobs being lost at an alarming rate. So you have both aspects of what's called the dual mandate of the Fed under attack. You're losing jobs right now while you're having inflation rise. And that's a very, very serious issue that's taking place right now. That's the reality of what's happening out there. While Donald Trump says we're in a golden age, right?

30:56Ben Meiselas:Let's take our first quick break of the show. A reminder, as Jordy said at the outset, and we'll keep on reiterating, subscribe to the Midas Touch audio. It really is an important initiative that we're pushing right now. We're trying to rise up those audio charts again, and we need your help. So So just wherever you get your audio podcast from, or if you don't, just go find out where you have audio podcasts available and then just find Midas Touch, subscribe, and we appreciate that and leave a five-star review. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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34:28Brett Meiselas:Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors links and description of both the audio and the video use the links use the codes if there's an exit survey let them know we sent you real quick benji those sponsors hex lad and smalls have been big friends of the network for quite some time now if you are in the market for those products definitely show them some love there's some great discounts and some great offerings benji where to next you know i often tease what i'm going to show in the next segment

34:51Ben Meiselas:like walmart's the post about walmart then i just end up saying it and i'm like man that's not a good tease if you just give the answer right away but i'll just bring it up one more time that you know donald trump posting great news everybody i've just been informed that one of the biggest best smartest retailers at america walmart will be lowering its prices to celebrate america's 250th they're going to reduce the price of a pound of ground beef by almost 15 % amongst many other products. This is a huge deal for the many millions of Americans who smartly shop at Walmart, which is a truly patriotic company.

35:30Ben Meiselas:What are you trying to pump up their stock like you did with Dell today? You had Michael Dell standing behind him today. Dell stock rose. I'll have to check what it is. I wasn't following it all day, but while Trump was there, the stock rose where the guy probably made quite literally billions and billions of dollars to then say, how many times has he announced that he's doing this now?

35:52Jordy Meiselas:It ended around like 4.43 % up and hit like 8 % up right after Trump said that. And it should be, you know, in Trump's financial disclosures that he himself released by law, he has, what, over a million dollars in Dell stock. And this is not the first time that Trump has done this. Before we even knew that the financial, that was on the financial disclosure. Remember a few months back when Donald Trump was giving, I think he made it in the Rose Garden or the whatever it is now, the concrete slab where the Rose Garden used to be, or he was outside somewhere. And he made a comment, you know, buy Dell.

36:23Jordy Meiselas:Now's a good time. Buy Dell. Buy Dell. And then it was revealed that he had all this Dell stock. I mean, the corruption that's happening is just mind blowing.

36:30Ben Meiselas:By the way, I'll go back. I think it was over the same announcement. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was about the account. It was about the Trump investment funds that he's calling. It's literally the same. And it goes back to my Walmart point, right, which is he did the Walmart announcement Thanksgiving. He just brings back the Walmart announcement. I don't even know how many times Dell has been in the Oval Office where they've talked about a philanthropic investment by Dell where he's putting in X amount of dollars into the Trump investment account. So it's going to be a tax write-off at a corporate level, maybe even individually, for Dell, depending on how it's structured.

37:11Ben Meiselas:The so-called Trump investment accounts by S &P and NASDAQ ETFs, exchange-traded funds. So companies like SpaceX, when they're applied to the exchange-traded fund because they got them to, like, waive the 100-day requirement. You know, so so the companies are putting money into accounts that invest in exchange traded funds automatically for kids that then pump up the market for the companies. You see what they're doing there, because when they invest in these exchange traded funds, those funds that have to buy the companies that are at the top of the exchanges and then that pumps up the company.

37:55Ben Meiselas:So it's like Micron gave$250 ,000. So they get a deduction and they're putting it in something that should boost their own stock price down the line. That's part of the situation that's going on. You know, it's$1 ,000. I don't think, I want to be clear. I would like to see and make sure, first of all, it shouldn't be called Trump accounts. I'd be interested to actually see how young people and babies can make more money or get money and be able to thrive and live. But if you talk about some of the major issues right now facing the American people, I don't think it's babies investing in the stock market right now.

38:36Ben Meiselas:I mean, I think it's homes and affordability and dealing with the crises that most Americans are confronted with. That isn't for me to say I can hold a complex thought and think to myself, how, you know, are there smart investments that you can be doing for children that grow over time so when they're adults that they can, you know, also participate in the market? potentially. I want to know more about, but I think about what's needed right now. And I also think about the market manipulation taking place before our eyes. But then you have the Walmart announcement. Here's what's going to happen.

39:09Ben Meiselas:Walmart's bringing down its prices. And then, you know, it's like what he says with drug prices, right? You know, that they're down 800%. It's the same. It's the same shtick. They're down 800%. Okay. So the drug companies are paying you $800 if the product's$1. Most favored nations. That's not happening. You're telling me that the drug companies are now reducing their prices so it's as cheap as the cheapest price of that same drug in a foreign country. That's just not happening. He could keep on saying, we're doing most favored nations because most people don't know what that even means. Most favored nations means the same price as the lowest price that drug gets charged in another country.

39:51Ben Meiselas:Objectively, that's just not happening here. And over and over again, I can go and talk about, you know, each one of these schemes that he runs. And it just lies. So you see that, you get your hopes up, and you're like, the manufacturing boom is taking place here. The manufacturing boom isn't taking place. Quite the contrary. We've had some of the biggest job losses lately.

40:13Jordy Meiselas:I remember, you know, we were reporting on the manufacturing boom that was actually happening under the Biden administration and all the investments. And if you remember those charts, I don't have one on me right now, but like it was like a steep increase in manufacturing investment under Biden. And Donald Trump just reversed all of it, like just shut it all down. And now he tries to claim some sort of victory over that and tries to claim manufacturing gains when there really aren't. Right now, the entire economy, like all the economic growth is basically what? Like hospitality and – or medical, I think.

40:43Jordy Meiselas:It's a medical, right? It's straight. Hospitality is losing. They're losing. It's basically just medical, medical health care, which is probably a result of, you know, having a lot of older people, you know, in the country right now.

40:55Ben Meiselas:And so that's a lot of private equity investing in health care companies that that actually then charge the government for Medicare and Medicaid related services. And interestingly, where you want to know where the waste, sorry, Brett, interrupt you, but where the waste, fraud and abuse in these systems come from is not at the individual level of people getting the treatment. It's oftentimes the private equity firms and people like like Rick Scott's company, who's now he's now the senator of Florida that would send and submit incorrect statements to the government for reimbursements in order to make all this money is where actually a lot of it.

41:40Ben Meiselas:And that's one of the areas where, you know, where anyone gets us.

41:43Jordy Meiselas:Yeah, Rick Scott's Medicare fraud was something like$1.7 billion in fraud, just a massive, massive number. And so you should remember that as people like Trump and these Republicans work to remove coverage of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and all these services from people. And they try to claim, oh, we just got rid of it for those illegal immigrants. It's not you. It's not you. were just taking care of the fraud. Even if that were true, and let me reiterate, that is not true. That's a lie to cover from stealing healthcare from human beings. But even if that were, it pales in comparison to what the Rick Scots of the world are doing, the people who actually own these conglomerates who are quite literally stealing from you.

42:26Jordy Meiselas:But that's the oligarch class, right? That's the class of people who they are working to protect. And I think that's a big issue that I have with so many of the things Trump does, because I truthfully, personally, I don't have an issue with the Trump account stuff, honestly, like really at all. It kind of stems from an idea that was actually put forward by, if you go back, like Cory Booker and Senator Bob Casey had a similar idea. Like it's not a bad idea in and of itself. But one issue is that what Trump ends up doing is he always picks winners and losers. And so on the one hand, you have these Republicans who are trying to put forward and just capitalism is amazing and we need unfettered capitalism because that's what makes prosperity.

43:08Jordy Meiselas:On the other hand, they're not actually, they don't actually don't want that at all. They actually want crony capitalism. They want a capitalism that is just, they essentially want socialism, but socialism for their rich buddies. And so you have Donald Trump constantly picking and choosing winners, trying to hurt and come after companies that he doesn't want to succeed. And then striking all these deals and corrupt deals and making all these efforts to pump up companies that he does like, like in that Walmart post, this great, incredible company. You've got to go to Walmart. This is how business is done.

43:43Jordy Meiselas:Same way he treats everybody, right? Because going back to the Maloney example, what does Donald Trump want? He just wants people constantly to be praising him like a dictator, like people do in these regimes across the world. That's what Trump wants. That's the energy he wants and he doesn't want anybody to do anything else. So Dell, go buy a Dell, go to Walmart, go get your, I don't know, whatever these other MAGA companies are. I'm not going to give them free advertising.

44:07Brett Meiselas:Can I just say this though, Brett, because I think you're onto something. I think at the baseline, like the Trump accounts thing, it could be a good thing, but I just think anything that Donald Trump touches and brands himself, you just have to be highly skeptical of it. Also, what does every good Ponzi scheme need to keep going. It needs more suckers. And unfortunately, these suckers are sucking on their pacifiers and thumbs and aren't really willing participants in this as their parents opt them in. So again, I am highly skeptical of anything Trump does, even if it seems like it's a good thing.

44:40Brett Meiselas:And all of a sudden now he's starting to prop up all these other companies. Why is he doing that? You just have to investigate.

44:45Ben Meiselas:I don't mean to interrupt, but let me give you the answer. It's what I said before. So what he's now encouraging these companies that many are worried are in a bubble, right? The semiconductor AI, you know, and lots of these companies that are propping up the market, take some of your money and do a philanthropic investment into the so-called Trump accounts, right? So it will be a tax write-off for you or a deduction for you, depending on how it is classified. You put them into these accounts. The accounts then are forced to invest in the S &P 500 to which you're listed on. So then those accounts then put those$1 ,000 or whatever into the market.

45:34Ben Meiselas:And then these exchange traded funds, these ETFs that buy the market, then buy your company. And when you do it at scale, it props up the market. So that to me is one of the schemes behind it. And one of your kind of late stage capitalism red flags, if you will, is that a lot of these companies got a lot of American investment in it from the CHIPS Act, which was a Biden initiative, seeing that our semiconductor industry was basically non-existent compared to what was taking place in Taiwan and other places. So what was it? $40 to$50 billion were invested in these companies, if they hit certain metrics, they would get lots of money.

46:18Ben Meiselas:Like look at a company like Micron, which just gave$250 million as a philanthropic investment to a so-called Trump account. It's gotten subsidized to the tune of three to five. I'll have to go back and look at what the number is. But like$3 billion of taxpayer money went to them, which helped the company go from 60 billion market cap to like over a trillion like market cap. Go look at markets like, you know, and where do you think that those years came from? In my opinion, it was chips act investment, which, by the way, could be good if you have the semiconductor industry, you know, actually being sustainable and doing the right thing.

46:58Ben Meiselas:But then I think they do these Trump account things to focus on pumping up the stock versus pumping up the company itself to begin with. So anyway, that's what I think is also behind it, Jordi, in my opinion.

47:10Brett Meiselas:I think that aligns exactly with kind of what I'm saying here, right? It just feels like there are more shady pretenses around this. And again, something that could be good, anytime Trump touches something, it turns to shit. So I think just anybody has to be highly skeptical of what this looks like. Well, this is a segue, then we'll go to the break,

47:29Ben Meiselas:because I don't want to belabor this point, because look, obviously, as an American, and I still root for Team USA. My wife's family is from Mexico, so I would root for Mexico as well. And they live here, obviously, now. They're citizens here in the United States, but they were born in Mexico. And so it was a disappointing loss, obviously, to England, although England played great. And I'm enjoying the World Cup. I enjoy watching it. I hate when the politics are infused into it. I don't like the... I want to just watch sports and not make it weird. And, you know, when Donald Trump did the all of the bad comes from like the peace prize and the weirdness and the personal aggrandizement.

48:13Ben Meiselas:But if you just let sports fans be sports fans, people want to form bonds and be together. Like, I hated when you had Mark Wayne Mullen, Homeland Security Secretary, said I was dancing around when Iran lost in the world. Like, why are you dancing around? And why did you treat the team that way? Or why did you treat all of those teams that way when they when they arrived here? But, you know, when Donald Trump has so overly politicized this and then he calls up Gianni Infantino and, you know, and then tries to put his finger on the scale, you see the outrage internationally with Flo Balogin being, you know, being allowed to play after the red card.

48:54Ben Meiselas:It was the first time. By the way, I don't think it was a good call to begin with, but it was reviewed on instant replay. But you now, but because everything Trump touches, he infects with that. And then they were bragging about it today and like laughing about it. And Ted Cruz like, thank you for doing that, Donald. Thank you for doing that. And and you see why the rest of the world is absolutely livid. And I'll just say, obviously, if it happened in another country to against us and I got

49:23Jordy Meiselas:I got to say, the only thing I'm going to say is I think it's very interesting that Donald Trump has spent his entire term railing against birthright citizenship only to call up the head of FIFA in order to help out the guy who is only on the USA team right now and only a citizen due to birthright citizenship. So thank you, Donald Trump, for your endorsement of birthright citizenship. Glad that we could clear that.

49:48Brett Meiselas:And by the way, for the record, too, I am stoked Flo is playing in the game. I think it gives us a huge advantage to win. That's not the point of this though, is just Donald Trump's, his own corruption, just knows no bounds and it just gives up.

50:01Jordy Meiselas:Jury, as you said, he gets a stank all over.

50:03Brett Meiselas:It gives us this kind of stank like internationally. I do want to say that anyway.

50:07Jordy Meiselas:Can I say something positive though, just to go off the, I do think, I think the World Cup has been incredible though. And I love these international events where everybody is tuned in because I think, you know, sports and whatever, even take away like all that stuff, just the idea of people from all over the world, all kind of focused on one thing. And I think it's, I think it's very special actually. And it's one of the reasons I love the Olympics, no matter where the Olympics is. And I think we, you really actually see the best of humanity. That's why I hate all the stuff that Ben was saying with the Ted Cruz and all these obnoxious people and Trump getting all their stank all over this.

50:44Jordy Meiselas:But, but I think it's really cool. And I think it's also cool that, uh, you know, there are all these people from all the, all these countries all over the world right now who are in the United States, who are in Mexico, who are in Canada and, and are getting to experience, you know, things that they never had before. And there, you see these videos online of them, you know, being amazed by things that we take for granted, right. And, and things that are kind of quintessentially American, even though if we joke about them and write them off like fast food places or Costco or things like that. And so I think it actually is like incredibly, you know, special and a unifying experience.

51:23Jordy Meiselas:And to me, it's been one of the kind of bright spots in a very dark time, quite frankly.

51:29Brett Meiselas:We know, which is why when we come back from your last year. I want to add this one thing. Sports are the ultimate unifier. There's nothing like sport in this country. There's nothing like sport in the world. The fact that these things exist are incredible. Also, Flo should never have had the red card to begin with. I'm stoked he's playing. Let's go, USA.

51:46Ben Meiselas:Well, look, and it reminds me, though, of how perverted Donald, I think that's the right word, the perversion of the July 4th celebration, which he ruined. I mean, he ruined America's 250. I mean, every aspect of it was odd and weird in the rallying against communism. I mean, you had the so-called Great American State Fair, which wasn't great, and it wasn't even a state fair. And then the heat exhaustion, the bizarre fireworks just to set a Guinness book of records and to blow them all up at once without any rhythm or patterns or colors, right? It was just all white and just blowing stuff up, you know, which is probably a parable for the Trump regime itself.

52:27Ben Meiselas:You know, while talking about vandals and reflecting pool and tearing things, it just, you know, it turned something that could have been actually very unifying into something that was, you know, ugh, ugh, you know. And so there you have it. All right. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, subscribe to Midas Touch on audio, wherever you get audio podcasts, make sure you subscribe on audio. All right. Let's take our last quick break of the show.

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56:01Brett Meiselas:IQ Bar and Miracle Made, along with our sponsors from earlier, have been big friends in the network. So definitely check Check them out, especially if you're in the market for those types of products. Benji, where to next?

56:12Ben Meiselas:Something I probably should have mentioned at the outset about these stories that are not getting the coverage they deserve, we should also be focusing on what's happening in Venezuela. Obviously, a few weeks back now, two weeks back or so, the back-to-back earthquakes there, the forequake and then the main quake, it's so rare to have those happen right after each other that way. And then I think a very slow search and rescue operation that was held back by the authoritarian regime there of Delce Rodriguez and Diestato Cabello. Lots of people on the ground were trying to, you know, get their loved ones or be able to actually, you know, do work.

56:55Ben Meiselas:The United States said it brought in$100 million or$150 million, and they made that the big announcement. $150 million for search and rescue. But again, it's like when we talk about Micron giving$250 million to these so-called Trump investment accounts after getting billions of dollars in subsidies from the taxpayers. You know, it's also like, how much money did Venezuela give to these opaque accounts that Donald Trump has opened up regarding Venezuelan oil? Billions of dollars, right? That we've taken, or Donald Trump's has taken. I'm not really sure where the money is, right? But we know they've taken billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil.

57:33Ben Meiselas:And then it's like, we'll give you$150 million, but we took billions of dollars. Why wouldn't we rush billions of dollars of resources there and marshal everybody? And it seemed that what was most focused on by Delce Rodriguez and Diastato Cabello was the show. And I think the people in Venezuela know this, that a lot of the attention was like giving, and this was the other day, they gave medals to the American search and rescue team, you know, because they know that Donald Trump likes medals. And so you literally had Delcy Rodriguez and Díaz Dado Cabello who are in the Maduro regime. And the Trump regime labeled the Maduro regime narco-terrorists and that the leaders of the narco-terrorist ring, this is what they said about them, were Delcy and Díaz Dado Cabello.

58:23Ben Meiselas:I mean, we have a most wanted sign, Díaz Dado Cabello,$25 million. He was labeled this by the Trump regime. This is what they labeled him and the Biden administration. and this guy and her were given medals. While there's still tens of thousands, what are you celebrating? Even if you think that the search and rescue team did a valiant job or a valiant effort, there are tens of thousands of people who are unaccounted for, over 3 ,000 dead, tens of thousands injured. And when the death toll is counted, I mean, it could be in the tens of thousands, potentially. I also think an investigation is needed into some of the underlying causes of the earthquake.

59:06Ben Meiselas:And again, I don't want to veer into a conspiratorial area. So I'm very careful with, you know, it's a natural disaster. I do want to say that drilling activity, fracking activity, increasing that has been known to increase or enhance seismic activity. That link has been proven before. I don't have the data to suggest, and I'll be very clear, a cause and effect here, although I will say it is very rare to have a forequake and then an earthquake back to back like that. But regardless, why are you doing, you know, there are tens of thousands of people likely dead. We know 3000 are dead. This is a time of mourning, and you're out there giving medals like it's the FIFA?

59:53Ben Meiselas:Or like it's, you know, like the Olympics? And in Dias Dado? And obviously, why is Delcy having Dias Dado do it? Because it legitimizes the leadership in Venezuela when you have basically the U.S. ambassador now to Venezuela there, and Dias Dado is doing it. So think about how difficult it would be now, what you're going to bring a criminal case against Diasdado in the future when your own ambassador is right there as part of the award ceremony with Diasdado. So do you see how that was a move by Delcy and Diasdado to also insulate themselves from prosecution in the future or from any accountability there?

1:00:41Ben Meiselas:And meanwhile, you have the Trump regime saying Maria Machado is doing some grotesque PR stunt and that she's trying just to show up there. And they've basically prevented her from getting a visa. They stopped her. I think she traveled somewhere to then stop there and then fly into Venezuela. And she was stopped from doing that. so I think that's again that story's not getting enough attention which is why I'm covering it

1:01:10Jordy Meiselas:also no I was gonna say you know add Maria Machado to the list of people who put their trust in Donald Trump and ended up getting screwed over by it and Maria Machado if you know you remember she won the Nobel Peace Prize Donald Trump was bitter about it and and remember I I mean, she's a very impressive individual who, yeah, and unfortunately, she really sold out all of her credibility. She took a big gamble, which I think clearly has not paid off on kind of just going to suck up with Trump and I'll give you my Nobel Peace Prize and all these things. At the end of the day, she ended up just humiliating herself.

1:01:50Jordy Meiselas:and now as she tries to see if she could even go back to Venezuela and have some sort of impact or do anything, now she's just getting iced out by the Trump regime who's just like, no, we're cool with the Maduro regime now. We're tight. We're in business together. We're hanging out. We're having fun. We're friends. I mean, that just shows you, again, what Donald Trump values more than anything. Donald Trump will screw you the second he gets the chance to as long as he thinks that is going to be better for him personally, not better for the Venezuelan people, not better for the American people.

1:02:22Jordy Meiselas:And it's why we were sounding the alarms when, you know, the people were pushing those images of Venezuelans celebrating in the street after Chavez's ouster. And they were like, look, they're so happy. How could you be upset? Look how happy they are. And I said, because I know how this ends. I know how this ends with people. I know what Donald Trump is going to do here. And now if you look at all those polls, the people who were dancing in the streets, they're not so happy anymore. They feel oppressed. They are very disgruntled with their government right now. The Maduro regime, the same oppressive regime.

1:02:53Jordy Meiselas:The Trump regime, right? It's a puppet. It's Trump runs it now, basically. Yeah, they're Trump puppets. And so they're now furious. A lot of them are furious at Donald Trump. This is building resentment. And in my opinion, this is a powder keg that will explode in the future. There's always a reaction to an action, right? There's always something that is going to happen. There's a butterfly effect, so to speak. And when Donald Trump does these things, you may not see it right away, but down the road, you are going to see a lot of unrest and you're going to see a lot stemming from this. I mean, because what more of a humiliation is there for a country than for you to let your country become a total puppet of the United States of America?

1:03:33Jordy Meiselas:You don't think that's going to build some opposition? You don't think that's going to enrage people against the United States, against leadership. And we're already seeing more than the seeds now. We're seeing that already starting to grow.

1:03:45Brett Meiselas:Brett, you just said something right there. I don't know how you didn't just belt out laughing. Well, I guess I do know because of how serious the topic, but you go, she as a Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize and Trump was bitter about it. Like that was verbatim what you just said. I mean, what an insane frigging timeline that we're living in, that that could be a true statement. She won a Nobel Peace Prize. So Donald Trump got super, super mad at her because he thought that Nobel Peace Prize should have went to him. I mean, just out of this world bonkers that we've just -

1:04:12Jordy Meiselas:At least Trump got the FIFA Peace Prize. We know that organization's on the up and up, so.

1:04:16Ben Meiselas:I think, look, Donald Trump is a dystopian reality TV president or dictator. And what happens in reality TV shows? Outcomes happen fast. There's like a challenge. There's an outcome. It looks, it appears to be real, but it's fake, right? It's usually scripted by the producers in advance, but it has the trappings of reality and something happens. And so when we talk about the cause and effect, Brett, where you actually play something out to its logical conclusion, maybe it doesn't happen that day, but in Trump's reality show, that episode is over. We move on to the next episode, but the world hasn't moved on to the next episode, right?

1:04:57Ben Meiselas:Like, we're now a year and maybe more out from Trump's so-called Liberation Day. And yes, the inflation didn't surge on day one, right after the disastrous announcement. But now we're experiencing it because things in real world, not reality TV, in a real world, they take time to develop. And that lag is often what MAGA has kind of used to attack the other. I mean, if you think about the most significant example is that a lot of the impact of COVID financially, economically, hit when Donald Trump left, right? He destroyed the economy. The PPP program, where they printed all of this money and they gave it out to mostly rich people, the way supply chains were destroyed, and of course, the deaths taking place, when you had to reopen the economy with all of that and you had to take the bandage off, it turned out it was gross.

1:05:57Ben Meiselas:It was ugly. and there was a lot of inflation. And that's why lots of people predicted great recession. And it was tough for Biden. And Biden was old school and he really couldn't message it. You know, he was about uniting and let's get past it. And while he was taking the steps to fix, then he was being blamed as the firefighter for what the arsonists were actually doing. The same thing here, Brett, you look at Venezuela. Okay, on day one, yes, Trump did the invasion. He put Delcy in. But now we're feeling the systemic impacts and the consequences of what's actually happening. And that's going to be felt long term.

1:06:39Ben Meiselas:And outside of Venezuela, what it has enabled, going back to what we talked about, is the law of the jungle, the law of the strong, where China feels a certain way about Taiwan now in a different posture. and China's doing nuclear-capable ballistic missile tests, where Russia feels completely free to say, OK, we'll do whatever. I mean, you're just invading Venezuela. We got this. North Korea feels a certain way. Other countries feel a certain way. We're not even talking about, I mean, look at what they're now rebranding as the African Corps that's in Mali right now. I know people don't give a lot of attention to the developments in Africa, but Russia has a lot of troops in Africa right now where it's out there, you know, working with, I mean, you have to think more globally and geo strategically about these things that, you know, about these, these things that are happening.

1:07:30Ben Meiselas:A few other points I'll mention though, you know, it's interesting as you also see these MAGA Republican Congress members from Southern Florida, many of them come from families that are Cuban and they're there and they've been basically saying we need Machado, why, you know, Delce Rodriguez needs to go. And it's like, you're out there pumping up Trump. Like, where do you think this is coming from right now? I mean, obviously, that's where it's coming from. It's your guy in Donald Trump. And then to make the episode go full circle, because I know my dogs want the episode to go full circle as well.

1:08:04Ben Meiselas:You think about Machado and Machado thought, OK, the way to endear myself is I'll give him the Nobel Prize. I'll suck up to him. My path is through obsequiousness to Trump. And what she saw is nope, he'll just take and take and take more from you when you do that. Like that's not the way to whatever. The same thing we saw with NATO. NATO appeased Donald Trump for the first year. And what did he do? Betrayed NATO every step of the way. And you look at someone like Georgia Maloney also as well. And you can make these parallels everywhere. So if you're Iran, which model do you follow? North Korea?

1:08:49Ben Meiselas:Do you follow China? Do you follow those models if you're Iran? Or do you look and you're like, oh yeah, I'll make a deal with him. It'll be great. It's interesting because you have Whitcoff and Kushner who are saying to Iran, look, look, look, you're going to be super rich you just can't do tolls in the strait of hormuz just trust me you don't want to just give up control over the strait and things will be great and iran's like you killed our leader the ayatollah you every time we've been in negotiations you've blow you've literally started invasions during negotiations not only do we not trust you we were not even in the same universe of even thinking about trust.

1:09:32Ben Meiselas:What are you talking about? You know, and then you start to read and research your history about Iran. I've done videos on this over the weekend. And you start to also look at incidents that probably don't get enough attention anymore, like Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988, when a United States tanker that was in the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran and Iraq war, this tanker, the Vincenzi, shot Iran Flight 655, killed 290 90 passengers, innocent Iranians aboard, and then just did not blame the pilots when we just blew up an Iranian flight in the Strait of Hormuz. And I bring that up because I'm sure a lot of us don't even know that.

1:10:13Ben Meiselas:But of course they know. What do you think? They know that in Iran that happened on July 3rd, 1988 as well. And so they don't trust. And when it's like, just trust us, man, We'll be good. We'll be good. I just want us all, and I'll throw it to you, Brett, just to have a realistic understanding of the world and here to be better informed about everything. That's the goal that I want to empower everybody to do here with this network is to be informed

1:10:42Jordy Meiselas:about everything. Brett? You need nuanced perspectives on things, on everything, even things that may seem simple. Oftentimes, when you look below the surface, they're a lot more complicated. And what Trump tries to do is he tries to simplify everything into these catchphrases and to Ben's point, these reality TV kind of moments that he thinks sounds good and he knows are easy to propagandize the people, but aren't actually good and they don't actually work. And that's why things keep falling apart. You think it's by accident that the pool turned green? No, we told you that it was going to turn green weeks before the thing turned green.

1:11:17Jordy Meiselas:It's not because we're psychic. It's because when we analyze the situation, when we spoke to scientists, they told us the pool is going to turn green due to the conditions that Trump is creating. It doesn't make us brilliant or clairvoyant, but Donald Trump tries to package these things in these statements. And then he just knows that he could just lie about it after the fact and go, oh, it was vandals who did it. It was vandals. He does this about everything, the fireworks show. When we heard about this fireworks show for July 4th, which were actually like July 5th fireworks, because Trump rambled on for so long and ended up speaking to a nearly empty crowd, despite Trump claiming that there were over 150 ,000 people there.

1:11:55Jordy Meiselas:We did reports. We showed you the footage. We showed you the receipts of all the empty seats there because people had to return back through security after they evacuated the premises. But during that fireworks show, the July 5th fireworks show, it was a disaster. And we knew it was going to be a disaster because we knew Trump's plan was just to blow a bunch of stuff up all at once and that it would look ridiculous. It would look ridiculous. You wouldn't be able to see anything. I'll play you this short clip of the fireworks first, which also, by the way, resulted in the air in Washington, D.C.

1:12:27Jordy Meiselas:being more toxic the next day than anywhere in the entire world. But watch how just stupid this looks. This is idiocracy in real life. It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I've already given you a few examples, but here's another example of Donald Trump trying to say things in platitudes and not taking a nuanced approach to anything or trusting experts. I mean, this was like back-to-back days, okay, where Donald Trump one day, his energy secretary, was bragging about getting rid of renewable energy. I don't know how this is a brag. How is it a brag that you are making things more expensive for people?

1:13:09Jordy Meiselas:But he proudly posted, Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote, as we approach peak electricity demand in the 13-state mid-Atlantic region, at 7 a.m. this morning, less than 6 % of electricity generation was coming from renewables. Over 91 % of generation is coming from gas, nuclear, and coal, keeping our air conditioners blasting. Our air conditioners blasting. Keep them blasting, folks. Keep them blasting. We don't have any of that silly renewable energy. We took that away. You got gas and oil. Keep those ACs blasting. This is the worst messaging. It obviously flies in the face of science. So they post that one day.

1:13:48Jordy Meiselas:Then literally the next day, oh, by the way, and then he was specifically, he showed a chart of the PJM energy grid, which powers these 13 states energy. And the following day, literally the next day, the Trump administration had to alert PJM to cut their electricity use because outages, overloaded transmission lines, and extreme heat were pushing the system towards blackouts. And so as a result, Reuters reported that PJM escalated their emergency actions as a result. I mean, that's a direct cause and effect right there of the Trump regime saying we don't need that stinking renewable energy. We're getting rid of it.

1:14:34Jordy Meiselas:Proudly, essentially saying that they're raising your bills and and relying on non-renewable energy. And then the next day, the next day, a federal alert, we need to conserve. And by the way, remember they were saying every day they were going on about Mamdani's repeating the same request that is made in every single state and city virtually across the country to keep your ACs at 78 degrees to conserve energy. And then when the Trump administration does it, suddenly it's not socialism, but it was socialism and communism when Mamdani was urging people to conserve. I don't understand. And meanwhile, you know who gets screwed?

1:15:13Jordy Meiselas:The American people, because they're paying higher bills, and also the United States of America as a country, as a global power, because Trump continues to lie to people also about what other countries are doing in this space. Trump tries to pretend he goes, oh, China learned long ago that they shouldn't do anything with wind. They don't do anything with wind. It's not even remotely true. China is the world's largest wind power producer, over 220 ,000 wind turbines in operation. Yet Donald Trump says, this is an exact quote, China makes almost all the windmills and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China.

1:15:52Jordy Meiselas:Do you ever think of that? No, they actually do use them. They use them much more than the United States. They also use solar. China has installed thousands and thousands and thousands of Heliostat mirrors across an 8.61 million square foot field at the world's highest solar thermal plant, and Duo Tushow scheduled to commence operating in October. That's just one solar project out of many solar projects that they've been doing because China understands, even from a selfish level, that this is going to make our energy grid stronger. This is going to make us less reliant on non-renewable energy.

1:16:29Jordy Meiselas:It's actually a tool to have in our arsenal. It's going to allow us to provide a better quality of life for our people, make us less reliant on the Middle East with all these disruptions with wars in the Middle East and everything that's going on. takes that off the table when you have this there. So Donald Trump's attack on this and the fact that they are like brag about it, they brag about the idiocracy of it all as they're hurting people and they get the MAGA people to cheer them on. Yes, my bills are going to be more expensive. Thank you, Energy Secretary Wright. Thank you for taking away renewable energy.

1:17:04Jordy Meiselas:It's just, you got to point it out and you got to really just explain to people what's actually going on here. And when you look, the thread between so many of these things is that it's all to enrich the oligarch class. It's all to enrich this Epstein class. And you see this coordinated effort across all of Donald Trump's schemes to get people distracted on lies and kind of branding and his cons while he pickpockets them and gives the money to the wealthiest Americans. You're seeing wealth distribution quite directly from the people who need it the most to the people who need it the least. I mean, even when you look at Donald Trump's stock and crypto earnings, right?

1:17:50Jordy Meiselas:It was literally like almost a direct one-to-one line between the amount Donald Trump made off his meme coin and the billions of dollars that people lost investing in Donald Trump's meme coin. I don't think I've ever quite seen it. Wealth transfers appear that direct to the American people. um but yeah that's uh it's crazy crazy stuff absolutely look and i'll just end with this we just celebrated our 250th anniversary as this country if we want 250 more heck if we want 50 more

1:18:21Brett Meiselas:we have to do exactly what breccia said there and again that's this reckoning within our lifetime about uh propping up people who tell truth who use facts and data to assert their arguments and get these lies and these liars and these grifters just out of here, man. It just cannot be the way of the future if we ever expect to continue this great experiment that we're all living through right now. I know there's a trillion dollar propaganda operation out there that is infecting our loved ones and our neighbors and the people of our communities. And it's very hard to get them out of this zombification that they're all kind of going through.

1:19:01Brett Meiselas:But I just think it is so necessary that we as a community, we as the mightest mighty, and just people who love this country, these pro-democracy folks out there, champion and truly, truly champion truth, honesty, integrity. These should always be the qualities that we look to instill in the next generation within ourselves as we go forward here. Because again, we just celebrated the 250. If we want 50, if we want 20, if we want 15, five more, those are the qualities that we're going to need together as a country in order to make sure that that happens.

1:19:35Ben Meiselas:Everybody, it's been an honor to be here with you today, whether you're watching on video or listening on audio. Thank you for all of your support. We're grateful for you. We'll keep on fighting for you every day. For those who watch on YouTube, can you try to subscribe on audio as well? It helps. Even if you don't plan on listening on audio, you never know. so go to whatever audio app you have subscribe to Midas Touch and leave a five star review on audio it'll take you 30 seconds it's free and we'd be really grateful for it thanks everybody for watching we'll see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast Jordy take it away shout out to the Midas Mighty

1:20:30We will get it right whenever we go.