MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 8/28/26

17:50Ben Meiselas:They've been good. They've been giving the weapons to Iran. Iran gives the weapons to Russia. In what world have they been good? They've helped Iran target and kill American service. members. Like it's pretty obvious, you know, that that's what's helping Iran find some of these targets. But, but, but no, in this narrative, Russia, good, China, good, Kim Jong-un, great. Canada, the nastiest people, Brett, the nastiest people to Donald Trump. I mean, like, but he's a demented, like you can't have, like, this is like when you watch these shows and you'll have like a Scott Jennings and then someone debated Scott Jennings on CNN.

18:27Ben Meiselas:You can't debate, like these are garbage humans. Like these people are absolute trash and they hate America. They're traitors, in my opinion, because they engage in behavior that in my opinion, it's like, what are you doing? If you support this, that means you're supporting people attacking America, in my opinion.

18:46Jordy Meiselas:Well, the thing is like those shows give credence to their point of views, which are just blatant lies. And then it leaves the audience to kind of think that the truth must be somewhere in the middle. I mean, it was something that Jordy said in the Pittsburgh paper, which is, you know, if someone looks outside and you see a blue sky and someone says the sky is blue, someone says the sky is orange, you shouldn't be led to believe that the color of the sky is somewhere in between blue and orange. It's blue. And you don't need to have somebody screaming at you, insisting that it's orange in the case of like a Scott, a Scott Jennings or whatever.

19:15Jordy Meiselas:By the way, I know I did awfully like busy lately and then we all been busy. Did I miss economic D-Day? I thought that wasn't supposed to happen on Monday. They forget it. Like what happened to economic D-Day?

19:24Ben Meiselas:They had Treasury Secretary Besant. He did an announcement. You don't remember? He did the announcement. He did a letter.

19:31Jordy Meiselas:An announcement, yeah.

19:32Ben Meiselas:He did a letter, then he did an announcement, and then he was asked, why are you not actually going to implement D-Day? Because actual D-Day, there was an invasion the day of, and there was a storm. You don't write a few letters in advance. And then he said, why would I destroy the global economy? I need to work with it. And then China responded. Good question, Scott. Yeah, good question, Scott. But he did write a very strongly worded op-ed in the Financial Times where he talked about Blaise Pascal's wager. And he goes like, Blaise Pascal's wager. What we need to... Okay, dude, you are...

20:13Jordy Meiselas:They didn't see Pascal's wager being brought. Once they saw Pascal's wager, Iran was like, shit.

20:18Ben Meiselas:Was that the 17th century French mathematician? Oh, shit. He went 17th century? Blaze? He went Blaze Pascal on me? We don't know what to do.

20:30Jordy Meiselas:Mr. Galaboff.

20:32Ben Meiselas:Mr.

20:32Jordy Meiselas:Ali Toll. Mr.

20:34Ben Meiselas:Ali Toll and Mojitaba. They are bringing out their secret weapon. Please do not say it's Blaze Pascal quotes. I have some bad news for you, sir. I have some bad news. It is a 17th century mathematician named Blaze Pascal. Jordy, pop it.

20:50Brett Meiselas:I'm just saying if jellyfish could comment on this, I'd be curious to get his thoughts too. It is, it's brutal, man. It's absolutely brutal. Like Trump's big three is, I guess, renaming a gulf, a lake and was going to do an ocean next. It is so pathetic where, you know, other presidents in the past, I won't even name them, probably focused maybe more so on the economy, healthcare, getting people jobs, affordable housing. Maybe that was their big three, big four. Trump laser focused renaming things. He can't stop renaming things. It is so absurd and just absolutely pathetic that we sit here, we watch that clip and like how serious, brothers, can you just describe for the audio listeners like just how serious Trump's delivery is, you know, when sitting behind that desk talking about renaming Lake America, it hurts me.

21:43Brett Meiselas:It hurts me as someone who deeply loves this country as there is an ongoing war of choice happening as our troops die because of this ongoing war of choice by Donald Trump that his laser focus, what is he focused on? Lake America. So pathetic.

21:59Ben Meiselas:Well, here's the thing too. It is his safe space because he's a loser and he's pathetic, which is blame, right? He blames everybody else. Blame Canada, quite literally the parody from South Park. Blame Canada for your own problems. And then what does he do? He's a fraud and he just names things. If you think about what he does, this is what he, I mean, the guy looks like, it's like ridiculous. It's the straight of Hermos. It's the straight of Hermos. No, I mean, this is someone, you know, Operation Midnight Hammer, Total Obliteration, Operation Epic Fury, Operation, or something like Project America, I don't know when it was, Operation America Project Freedom, now Operation Economic Outcast, Operation Economic Fury.

22:46Ben Meiselas:Okay, they just, you know, but you have to understand again, why are they, because they're losers, and they're losing, and they're failing, and they want to come up with a construct and a name and a thing that makes you go, ah, got it. That's what they do. That's how they behave. He can't do deals and he can't do the war. We should never have been in the war in the first place. But yeah, the guy who bankrupted casinos, bankrupted our military very quickly and we ran out of weapons. We hear now from our former allies across the world, be it in Europe and Asia and elsewhere saying, the US is done.

23:24Ben Meiselas:They can't protect us. The whole structure is destroyed. And these countries contributed to the U.S. economy. It wasn't as Donald Trump's projection. Oh, everyone's taking advantage of us. He's just a loser. This is what he's thought his whole life. And he just comes up with fraudulent names for things. And then he blames others. And I'll tell you what, though, the American people know that Canada isn't the bad guy. And it just shows you how demented Donald Trump is. And in all states across the country, and it just so happens, particularly critical states to Donald Trump heading into the midterms as well.

24:00Ben Meiselas:These states rely on trade with Canada. They know the importance of Canada trade. And whether it is lumber or whether it is aluminum or nickel or electricity, whether it is uranium, whether it's other critical minerals, whether it is hospitality, whether it is, I think I said electricity, whether it's crude, you name it. Canada is a vital, vital, essential, the most important trading partner. And as we've heard from Canadian leaders and they've explained this, they said Canada has trade deals with all G7 nations. We're the only G7 country that actually had free trade deals until the United States went on a rampage.

24:46Ben Meiselas:We're the easiest country to do business. And all Americans know Canada's friendly. They're our best friend. So Trump doing this right now just shows even more how demented he is. We're going to take our first quick break of the show. A reminder, everybody, if you can, please pre-order WTF America right now. The book comes out October 20th, but the pre-orders are very important. We got to keep the pre-order momentum going. So pre-order it now. Subscribe to this YouTube channel as well. We'll take our first quick break of the show. We will be right back with so much more.

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28:01Brett Meiselas:That's smartcredit.com slash Midas. Results vary. Cancel anytime. Shout out to our sponsors, y 'all. Links in description about the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's that exit survey, Let the Mo send you. Benji, what's your next, big bro?

28:15Ben Meiselas:Talk about what else was going down in the Oval Office right there. Reporter asked Donald Trump, like, why are you attacking America's allies? Like, what's the point of this? Like, why are you continuing to praise America's adversaries or who were thought of as America adversaries? And why do you just spend every day going after, you know, like NATO and Canada and all these countries? It's very bizarre behavior. And you'll see Donald Trump in this clip attacks Canada and praises Xi Jinping. It's like, when I speak with Xi, we talk about how pathetic Canada is. That's what I always tell him. By the way, Xi Jinping has increased his trading capabilities with Canada as a result of the Trump's weakness.

29:07Ben Meiselas:And they've been moving in more of their electric vehicles. And now more people in Canada view China more favorably than they view the United States at this point. And it's like, Donald, you think Xi Jinping respects you, thinks that you're strong? You think Putin looks at you and says strong? No, they think you're clowns. I mean, you have the Iranian leadership mocking you on a daily basis about how weak and pathetic you are. You have all of their Iranian embassy accounts like doing memes of you hiding in catering containers in Turkey with Natalie while you're too afraid to board the old Air Force one.

29:46Ben Meiselas:Like, you know, the laughingstock where you're like, oh, we were the laughingstock of the world. Well, amongst America's perceived adversaries or the traditional people we viewed as adversaries, they're actually laughing in your face. Like they've never thought this could ever so quickly happen to the United States like this. And our former allies are terrified. They're horrified. Now they are moving on. Like this year and even in these past few months, we've seen far more significant and tangible steps where other countries are like, all right, the America, America's out. U.S. is out. Like they're not like we have to really make sure we don't have anything to do with them anymore or just where we need to.

30:33Ben Meiselas:But we've got to phase it out and phase it out quickly. But anyway, here he is being asked, why are you doing this to your allies and not our adversaries? And he answers the question by attacking Canada and praising Xi. Here, play this clip.

30:46Jordy Meiselas:Things like this towards America's allies instead of doing things that... Well, they haven't treated us well. The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They're nasty people. They charge our farmers 400 % tariffs. They've been doing it for a long time. And I had them figured out in my first term, and I did some pretty strong things and had it getting pretty good. and then the election was rigged and now I'm coming back and doing it the way and finishing the job. But they treat us very badly. Canada treats us very badly. I would say that of all countries, as you know, we have President Xi coming in a couple of weeks.

31:22Jordy Meiselas:We have a lot of, we deal with a lot of people and people oftentimes, they'll ask me, who's the worst to deal with on trade? And I said, that's easy. Canada. They are the worst to trade. And they feel entitled and just we can't have that.

31:36Ben Meiselas:They feel entitled for what? What do they feel entitled to? I mean, again, Trump describes himself. He feels entitled. He feels entitled to take the sovereignty of countries and to take their resources, by the way, for himself, to enrich himself. That's what it is. Operation Economic Outcast. I mean, it's just the utmost projection. He's talking about the outcasting the United States. That's what the United States has become. You couldn't get more projection than that. I don't know. Did you see the post of MB Ghalibaf, Iran's parliament leader, mocking Treasury Secretary Besant? I think we have a photo of it as well.

32:21Ben Meiselas:And you had Besant say, This is what Besson posted in the morning. As the Iranian people struggle to afford basic necessities, the corrupt regime continues to squander enormous sums abroad. Instead of funneling billions of dollars to its terrorist proxies, the regime should spend that money for its people. Brett, if you're wondering what happened on Economic D-Day, it's just social media posts like that. And it's the ultimate projection. Just substitute in the United States for Iran. I mean, what do you mean as the Iranian people?

32:57Jordy Meiselas:I don't know how Iran is going to recover from another recent Trump post because this one is – I just don't know what they're going to do. Trump tweeted everybody, Iran is a failing nation. Oof. Oof.

33:12Ben Meiselas:I thought the Blaise Pascal 17th century mathematician from France quote was really bad. No, it's all over for Iran now. This post right here with American flag faced, Donald Trump saying Iran is a failing nation, exclamation point, DJT, that's really going to hit him where it hurts.

33:31Brett Meiselas:I think we just won the war. I think after that post, can you bring that back up? because I also just want to comment on, you know, we just kind of let this slide, but also just the president doesn't know basic punctuation these days. Iran is capital I, a fail.

33:45Jordy Meiselas:By the way, Jordi, if you remember when Natalie Harp's letters were revealed at the Daily Beast, Natalie Harp's letters were, had punctuation and grammar exactly the way Donald Trump's posts appear on social media, random letters capitalized. And I think it's actually probably, a bit of a sign that she's doing all these posts. We know that she writes his posts. And so I think it's a Natalie Harp signature. She just, you know, head down.

34:16Ben Meiselas:Then Iran's parliament leader, MB Galibov, responds to Besant, instead of funneling billions to its terrorist proxy Israel on 750 bases, this failing empire could spend that cash on its own people. But nah, that'd make too much sense for this regime. Scotty, man, question mark, your credibility is on the line. Do something. In Iran, they just mock the United States like that. But you also notice to the US approaches, if we torture you enough, if we make you suffer, that's what will make you want to do a deal with me, right? That's their approach to everything. And if you listen to what the heinous rhetoric coming out is about Canada, we need to inflict more pain on Canada because if we hurt them more, it's what the Trump regime says, that's what all their Trump cabinet people are saying, then they'll be forced to do a deal with us.

35:21Ben Meiselas:And you have to understand, Trump is a sexual predator, right? I mean, he is a predator and the Epstein class that forms his cabinet and the people he surrounds himself with also have a mindset of being predators, in my opinion. And their view is that if you say no, but they keep on forcing themselves upon you, eventually you'll say yes and that you'll want to do a deal because they're sickos, because they are truly sick, vile, trash humans. And that's what we have to understand about them. It's not political talk. These aren't Republicans. No, these are awful predators. These are demonic things that want to cause harm.

36:13Ben Meiselas:And their perspective on everything is if they hurt you enough, then you will eventually say yes to them and you will let them have their way with you. They're sick. they're sick they're sick and you have to understand that about them so i want to talk about what the response is in canada premier wab canoe of manitoba he responded here's what he had

36:38Brett Meiselas:to say moments ago let's play it you know when like a rock band is really over the hill and you see them like in a casino playing some song from like 50 years ago i think that's the part of Donald Trump's presidency we're at now. Like he thought he had a real hit, a real golden ole with the Gulf of Mexico and he's trying to bring back that. He's trying to play the hits for his base. But I think everybody here thinks it's a little sad and it's not his

37:06Ben Meiselas:best work charlie angus leader of midas canada make sure you all subscribe to the midas canada youtube channel charlie angus former member of parliament ndp party same party as canoe same party as david eby another of my favorite premieres from british columbia here is what angus had to say

37:26Jordy Meiselas:let's play but i would like to make an offer to uh the mega regime and those behind it i think you've got to move donald out i think he's i think he's decrepit i think he's creepy i think nobody believes him i think you need to bring lego man from iran uh we don't know that lego man has had anything to do with epstein sex cases but we know donald trump his name's all over the file so i would rather as a canadian negotiate with lego man at this point uh and as for the word of what comes out of the white house it means nothing this is this this guy was a criminal gripper from the get and it's all coming home now.

38:02Ben Meiselas:That is what Canada thinks about the United States. And the world just sees that this Trump United States, which hopefully won't be a Trump United States for that much longer, is like the Trump casino and the Trump steak and the Trump board game and the Trump vodka and the Trump university and the Trump shuttles and the Trump this and the Trump that, which all fail because the guy is pathologically a failure and a loser. And so now what they resort to, they give it all away. The game plan, the blame, the fraudulent names and the blame. Canada, blame Canada. It's literally right out of the parody.

38:51Ben Meiselas:It's the end of the movie. But then MAGA Mike was in Texas, and this is where they give it all away, where MAGA Mike says, if Republicans lose the midterms, then the nightmare scenario will unfold. The markets will crash, and America's power in the world will be destroyed, and everything we built will all fall apart. We've had it. We promised you it was all right. Your riches were right around the corner. 2025, that was the appetizer. 2026 was the banquet. 2027, we were about to give you the show. Farmers, ranchers, manufacturing industry workers, Americans, we had it. It was right here. We set it all up perfectly for you.

39:47Ben Meiselas:And then the Democrats took over and then it got ruined. So now we got to blame them. And then you got to elect us back because they broke it. You need to bring us back in and we'll fix it. This is their playbook. It's always been their playbook. The arsonist claiming that they're the firefighter. They are the arsonist. But listen, Maggie Mike just lays it out. The reason that we are doing that is because people like you understand the stakes are so high, right?

40:20Brett Meiselas:This is for all the marbles. We cannot lose this midterm. I want you to imagine a nightmare scenario with these insurgent Marxist Democrats taking over the Congress. They would impeach the president on the first day. They've already said what they're going to do. They'll convert every committee of Congress into an investigative body. They'll spend every waking hour investigating the president and his family and the cabinet and going on this lawfare exercise. It would it would royal the markets. It would undermine people's confidence in the U.S. and the economy. It would empower our enemies across the globe at the worst possible time.

40:50Brett Meiselas:We cannot allow them to do that. OK, the problem that we have right now is the people come behind us don't understand how dangerous these ideas are. They don't understand that socialism is a road to ruin. They don't understand that socialism is a step to get the communism. It's Marxist philosophy. They thought the communists, communism would be the utopia, the perfect society. They're dead wrong.

41:12Ben Meiselas:The communists and socialists, they're coming for you. They're going to destroy it all. We had it, guys. We did it. And then they took it all away.

41:24Jordy Meiselas:By the way, I think that can maybe hit a little harder if everything that you've warned that these scary, spooky Democrats are going to do if they take over after the midterms in the house is what's already happening under Donald Trump. He's like, they're going to roil the markets. They're going to undermine confidence in the United States. They're going to empower our enemies. Like, could you even imagine somebody who would do that? People who would do that? Yeah. The guy who's running things into the ground right now, who's literally doing all of those things. I think that's a pretty obvious.

41:50Jordy Meiselas:Also, by the way, he makes the Democrats sound pretty bad-ass. I'm like, I'm not going to lie. It's like they should, the Democrats could just run that ad as like, uh, you know, brought to you by the Democrats paid for by the Democrats. Johnson do their branding. Jeez. Right. Good messaging. They're going to impeach on day one investigations into Trump and his family. I mean, I think a lot of people hear that and they go, okay, bring it on. We've been looking for a check on this regime and okay, that's how we do it. Okay. Let's, let's try it out.

42:17Brett Meiselas:Absolutely. No, by the way, when Johnson's up there, it just always strikes me like, wow, this is the best that they could do. Like that, that's, that's their guy who they put in charge of all of this to be their communicator, to be there, to be their leader. Like he's so pathetic on so many levels. And he's just like watching him makes my skin crawl. I can't describe it. He's just creepy. That is my very astute analysis of continuing to watch Mike Johnson here spiral as we get closer and closer to the midterms. He is creepy, man. And he is definitely not the best person to put in front and start doing PR here for the Democrats.

42:52Ben Meiselas:This is who they are though, Jordan. I mean, if you look at Pierre Poliev in Canada, Maple MAGA, who likely would have been the prime minister, the way things were trending until Donald Trump demonstrated the dangerousness of MAGA and the Canadian people. And there's a lot of Canadian people who knew what was going on. And if you looked at the polls of what was happening before Carney, you had Maple MAGA on the rise. And most of the polls before Carney showed that you were going to have a MAGA in Canada. And Pierre Poliev is a weird dude just like, you know, I mean, he does these weird workout things.

43:28Ben Meiselas:He's a very strange human. And, you know, he also lost his writing, like his congressional seat. They call it writings in the last major election. But then he like, he respawned and he took somebody else's writing that basically doesn't belong to him, you know, but he took somebody else's and he's out there doing the same Maple MAGA playbook right there. And the people of Canada are like, dude, we're under attack right now. And let's be clear in Canada, they don't view this as like a trade war. They view it correctly as Donald Trump has declared war on the country, that this is part of a broader strategy by Donald Trump to take over the Western hemisphere.

44:12Ben Meiselas:And I'm going to drop a video in the morning that I did with an incredible reporter who's in Ecuador. So I hope you'll all watch it in the morning. But we talk about how Trump has installed these dictators who are people from Miami. They're like Americans with family in certain Central American, South American countries. But the MAGA has been interfering with these elections throughout the Western hemisphere, installing Miami guys who basically do Trump's bidding and drain all of the resources away. And we put the U.S. military in these countries and we're actually full-fledged like invading. Like we have U.S.

44:52Ben Meiselas:ground forces in places like Ecuador doing actual missions. We have boots on the ground and they go, we're going after the narco terrorists. And there's no evidence that that's actually what's taking place. If anything, you actually seem to be having more drug issues and drug trafficking and other trafficking happening, but they're going after their political opponents and they are in a war posture. And the U.S. military is involved in these war crimes in these countries as they drain the resources and they give them to Trump and Trump's oligarchs. And so we see that in Ecuador and we see that.

45:32Ben Meiselas:Why do you think they pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez? You know, someone like that. Like, why do you think they what do you think is going on now in Colombia, you know, over there and in Argentina? And, you know, there's so much that we that we get into in this interview tomorrow. So I hope you'll watch it all. All right. Let's take our last quick break of the show. We'll be right back. And, Jordy, you said, you know, Maga Mike is creepy. When we get back, I just want to show you what else is going on in that orbit right now, because it even gets worse than that. Let's take our last quick break.

46:06Ben Meiselas:A reminder, pre-order WTF America, if you can, it's the book I wrote with my brothers. It comes out officially October 20th. The pre-orders are available now. If you're going to buy it in October, pre-order it now. It helps with all of the preparation for the release. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show.

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49:19Brett Meiselas:shout out to our sponsors y 'all links in description of both the youtube and the audio use those links use those codes please we work hard on those discounts for y 'all uh if there's that exit survey let them know we sent you benji i think calling mike johnson weird honestly is like the nicest thing anyone could like i think that's a very pg mild take mike johnson weird

49:38Ben Meiselas:what do you say to that yeah well he's dangerous he but you know he is inherently this bootlicking sycophant of the worst kind. And you wonder how people like Hitler came into being and wonder no longer. I mean, as long as there are mega mics in this world, in my opinion, that have a mindset of bending the knee to anyone they view as a strong man and just going along with whatever, the human psychology aspect of it. And that's what I'm referring to. It's obvious that there are just enablers and MAGA Mike is just a horrible, trash, vile, pathetic thing. And again, I don't view this in a political way.

50:28Ben Meiselas:It's not like, well, the Democrats are here and the Republicans. These are loser people. And we've been too nice. We've been too accepting of while they've exploited this entire country. These people, as I've said, are there to kill you. MAGA Mike, the Republicans right now under this MAGA, they hate you. They hate our troops. They hate the United States. They hate our government. They hate democracy. They hate their voters. I truly believe that Trump and MAGA Mike actually, and I pass a lie detector on this, I wholeheartedly feel this way. And by the way, I feel wholeheartedly I'm right. They hate their own voters more than they even hate people who vote for the other side.

51:17Ben Meiselas:Like they view their own voters as the dumbest people. Look at their actions toward him. Look how he treats the farmers. Look how he treats the ranchers. Look how he treats all of his most loyal supporters are the people who he loves just giving them breadcrumbs and seeing them suffer and seeing them beg for the breadcrumbs. That's who they are. While they're out there saying like, you know what, if we don't get to put Donald Trump's name in an engraving in the Kennedy Center, and if we don't get to call the area around the Kennedy Center, the Trump pavilion. We're going to destroy it. We're going to blow it up.

52:01Ben Meiselas:Literally, I mean, in the past 48 hours, that was a filing. That's how Donald Trump and the regime is spending their time. Golden ballrooms, reflecting pool, hiding in catering containers with Natalie attacking Canada. And after losing a federal injunction, which said you can't rename the Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center, unless it's Congress approves. Donald Trump's like, okay, so you're not going to let me do that? Well, then I am going to put a giant tarp over it. And then I'm going to engrave my name into the Kennedy Center. And I'm going to say, it's not renaming it the Trump Kennedy Center, but instead I'm saying, this is in honor of Donald Trump Kennedy Center.

52:49Ben Meiselas:This is an honor to me. And then I want to do the park and the surrounding area, the honorific to Donald Trump so that everybody will now call this thing the Trump Kennedy Center, even though it's been banned, because you'll have to now say it's in honor of Donald. It's the Kennedy Center in honor of Donald Trump. And they're sick. And they said to the court, they said, we will have to tear down the Kennedy Center. Now, this comes at the same time that we learned the truth, which is board minutes leaked out. And since the name change that Donald Trump did, which was deemed illegal, the Kennedy Center lost$100 million in revenue.

53:31Ben Meiselas:It lost 25 to 30 % immediately of its donor base as well, in addition to the revenue. And it became decrepit because Trump broke it. And this goes back to what I said before. They break it. They're the arsonists. They destroy it. And then Donald Trump in his filing, like how he acts in this fascist capacity is like, it's destroyed. It needs Donald J. Trump to fix it. Why? Because he is a predator. that's why he's a sick evil disgusting thing and all of these people are who support this stuff they're gross they're gross people i mean look you have howard lutnik over here here's howard lutnik he is uh holding a press conference today what do you think what nick's press conference is on it's on the kennedy center that's what they're talking about and why we need donald j trump's name must be on it.

54:34Ben Meiselas:We have to engrave it because it's not possible without his greatness. Jordy, you thought Maga Mike was creepy? Watch this. The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts should be the greatest cultural

54:48Brett Meiselas:institution in the United States of America and possibly the world. And the president wants to do that. Right. But it's not there now. It's had decades of financial neglect. And the reason that happened is because Congress is good at a lot of things. But what they're not good at is putting out a little bit of money every year to renovate and restore a building. They're just not good at that. 10 million, 20 million necessary to fix this or fix that.

55:19Ben Meiselas:They're just not good at that. And so what happens is decade after decade, what happened was this building was neglected. It wasn't neglected. It was great. People like the Kennedy Center. They showed up. It was sold out. Hamilton was there. You had great shows. You had a great symphony. It was great. People liked it. What are you talking about? The same way people like Canada. It's a great country. They're nice. People like it. The same way we had allies. We liked it. Those were allies.

55:45Jordy Meiselas:And then the thing, the strategy they use also all the time is to act like, oh, everybody knew this, right? It's like everybody knew that the Kennedy Center needed renovations and was going to shit. It's like, no, it's what Donald Trump says about Canada. Everybody knew that Canada was taking advantage of us and they were very bad people. I don't think anyone has ever said that in the history. In fact, the stereotype of Canada that people have is literally about how nice Canadians are. It's the opposite of reality.

56:14Ben Meiselas:Yeah, I mean, look, you have MAGA Republican Congress member John James this morning going on the Benny Johnson show. And as Aaron Rupert says, these people are so effing weird. And they talk about circumcision and they talk about how it's a blessing from God. Let's listen to what they're talking about.

56:32Brett Meiselas:Let's play it. Well, the first thought that comes to mind is that circumcision is, has a sacred history. It's a covenant between man and God. It is setting yourself apart as chosen from Abraham. And this has been passed along in our Judeo-Christian values.

56:50Ben Meiselas:That guy is a congressman, a MAGA congressman from Michigan. And Michigan is going to face even more economic harm as a result of the escalating trade war that Trump launched against Canada and Canada's very precise and targeted and powerful counter tariffs, the retaliation by Canada to which the Trump regime then complains about. And they go, why are they retaliating? Why would you fight back? If you're going to keep on retaliating, we're going to have to respond. If you keep your retaliation, then we're going after your auto industry. Then they're going to retaliate against that too. They're going to cut off electricity because we depend on Canada for electricity in a lot of states.

57:42Ben Meiselas:And we depend on Canada for crude. And we depend on Canada for critical minerals. You want to see the United States economy crash? Just wait and see if Prime Minister Carney starts unloading some of the bonds that they hold, some of the treasuries. Canada does that. if you try to destroy their auto industry, as that's now Donald Trump, because you are retaliating and you're not taking it, we're going to, on January 1st, try to bankrupt your auto. Okay. Then they're going to bankrupt the US. Why is this something? Why is this with everything going on? No American want, we don't want this. We don't want any of this.

58:23Ben Meiselas:Even Trump's base doesn't want to be like, what are you doing? What is this? What in the world? And then you know, I'm showing you different people. I'm showing you, this is the stuff that they want out there, by the way. It's not like I'm cherry picking, like these are their press conferences. You know, I didn't throw a camera on them and go, all right, you know, and start asking them the questions for these ones. These are pre-planned press conferences that they held. So this is Hegsip. He was asked yesterday or it may have been earlier in the morning, um what do you feel what's your view on the u.s running out of munitions it seems that we're out of munitions and our allies are concerned here's what he says let's play it why would i answer i

59:10Jordy Meiselas:mean this is kind of stupid question i would never answer like why would i answer a question about whether we do or do not have certain types of munitions i would tell you we have 110 percent i'll tell you we have one i would never answer that question and the press is foolish to want to press an american press is foolish to want to press an american war department about where we may or may not be on classified.

59:30Ben Meiselas:And if you saw the way he even visually looked, like flailing at his arms and then this and that, why would I tell you about our exquisite systems? You know, because we want to know why the hell we gave you a trillion dollars of our money and you went into a catastrophic war with Netanyahu against Iran and you ran out of weapons? We know you ran out of weapons right now. And now the plan is to just call it economic outcast or economic fury and give it stupid names. And then you had Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby. He's the number two to Hegsif. He was at the NATO headquarters today.

1:00:17Ben Meiselas:and he spent his time attacking Germany and saying, how is it reasonable for the American people to be spending 3.5 to 4 % GDP on defense and project power all for everyone's benefit? And the German people only spend 1%. They're just attacking every country. It is go out and just attacking everybody here. Watch this.

1:00:39Brett Meiselas:I think president Trump deserves tremendous credit. No question, but it's also something that the Germans themselves are seeing is in their interest and seeing as something that's reasonable. How is it reasonable for the American people to be spending 3.54 % of GDP on defense and being able to project power for all our benefit and the German people to be spending 1 %? At some point, that just doesn't make sense anymore. We're beyond that. That's one of the key things.

1:01:02Ben Meiselas:We're beyond that, okay? We're done with that, okay? The American people don't want to be spending 4 % of our GDP. We want to spend it on healthcare. We want to spend it to help Americans get homes. We don't want to spend it giving weapons to Netanyahu to engage in genocide. We don't want to spend it to slaughter little girls in Manab or to have people slaughter people in Lebanon. We want the money for Americans to build things here. That's what we want. We would be so much better if we didn't spend 3.4 or 4 % of our GDP. Look what you've done with the 4 % GDP. You idiots ran out of our weapons.

1:01:40Ben Meiselas:You ran out of our weapons. You couldn't feed our service members, our sailors, and our Marines weren't getting food aboard the aircraft carriers. And now the ship's going into Thailand because not only could you not project power, you couldn't project food for our troops to eat. And that's systemic. That's, and then when people report on it, like Stars and Stripes, the independent news organization that reported on the military, the Trump regime fired all of their writers because they were telling stories about the horrible conditions that despite a$1 trillion military budget, the only people who seemed to be getting that money were Trump's oligarch friends and people in Trump's inner circle and Trump's orbit while our service members weren't getting food.

1:02:33Ben Meiselas:And the publisher and the editor in chief and the writer all got fired. They filed a lawsuit earlier today against the Trump regime because they got unlawfully terminated from their job in retaliation for telling the truth about our service members and their family as Trump and Hegseth defame our service members and their families and call them liars. And I've been reporting on this every morning. So I hope you appreciate some of the morning research that we do where we go deep into the weeds about Army Chief of Staff Randy George getting fired by the Trump regime, getting pushed out. One of the main reasons he got pushed out was because he was investigating the Apache helicopter flyover at Kid Rock's mansion.

1:03:20Ben Meiselas:And that was too much for the Trump regime. Also, he wanted to modernize our military and focus more on drone and anti-drone technology. And that conflicted with Hegseth wanting the warrior ethos. Also, Randy George and Dan Driscoll. Driscoll was the Army Secretary. Christopher Donahue, a well-renowned, beloved general also. They were focused on promoting the best within our military, but Hegseth didn't want to promote and doesn't want to promote women and black people. He's refused to promote women and black people to even the rank of one-star general and forced out a lot of other top military leaders, even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs because he's black.

1:04:04Ben Meiselas:CQ Brown Jr., who's got the most experience. And we moved in a guy because he's a white guy named Dan Raisin Kane who had to get waivers. He had to get waivers. And then our CIA chief is over in Moscow. And the Moscow intelligence chief says, this was just a normal meeting that we have now with the United States. There was some reporting, oh, that we sent John Ratcliffe, our CIA head, because he was going to warn. He's warning Russia, don't you attack NATO. Why do you think you believe that that's what's happening? Of course not. He was there because the U.S. works with Russia now, because they're who Donald Trump wants to be allied with.

1:04:46Ben Meiselas:Why do you think he's there? You think he's there to stand up to Russia? Come on, stop it. Stop it. Nonsense. So that's where we are right now. And Jordi, if you thought the Mag and Mike clip before the break, I've showed you that this is, I could keep on going. I could show you Navarro, this, that, you get the point. This is who they are.

1:05:03Jordy Meiselas:Yeah, it's just so much incompetence that then there's like a cover up of the incompetence that happens, like with the Stars and Stripes writers and editor in chief, like them icing reporters out of the Pentagon. You see a pattern here, and it's a pattern that you see in authoritarian countries throughout the world. You know, that's what Donald Trump is doing. That's what Pete Hegseth is doing. They're trying to shut down any dissent, and they're trying to cover up for just a really incapable regime. I mean, there was even a report earlier today from the New York Times that I remember there was that close call recently where Marine One came dangerously close to a commercial jet over Washington, D.C.

1:05:42Jordy Meiselas:Very dangerous situation could have resulted in a lot of deaths. They're saying the reason for that and the preliminary reports that are coming out that people are telling the press is because of Donald Trump's construction of the stupid ballroom, because it caused things to be moved around and made things more difficult for air traffic controllers. And it made for a dangerous situation where it almost killed people. I mean, we saw that during the UFC fight also, where they had those super bright lights shining and pilots were blowing the whistle and saying, this is dangerous. We can't fly because they're beaming lights in our face.

1:06:15Jordy Meiselas:Everything is for show. Everything is just so absurd and ridiculous. And everything that they do, and quite frankly, a lot of folks in the media and a lot of these consultants who go on TV, all they want to do at all times is distract you from the issues that really matter, the things that really affect your lives, the things that really affect your day-to-day, the way that you take care of your family, the way that we take care of our allies, all these actual issues that have a real impact on your lives. A lot of people don't want you to think about, but I do want to give a shout out to all those brave reporters who stand up to this regime, whether they're reporters, you know, at papers, even under a lot of stress, like the Washington Post, or if they're at the New York Times, or if they're under a paper like the Stars and Stripes, which is technically under the Pentagon, but is supposed to be an independent paper that is supposed to be allowed to report honestly.

1:07:02Jordy Meiselas:It's brave in 2026 when you're able to actually report honestly, and not what the regime wants to tell you. So I do want to give a shout out to them, and everybody who continues to stand up and continues to make sure that all these issues are grounded in the stakes of this moment and what Americans actually care about, not just Americans, what people of this world really care about. I think we're better than our leaders. And I hope Canada knows that. We're in elbows up with Canada. We're in great support with the people of Canada. A shout out to them, the way they've handled themselves through all these attacks, I think have absolutely been brilliant.

1:07:39Jordy Meiselas:I think Prime Minister Carney has been brilliant. I think all these premiers have been absolutely brilliant. Keep up the fight. Keep those elbows up. Keep going over the boards. And thank you for listening to our show as well and for spreading the word. We're going to do our best to keep getting this administration out there, keep getting the news about this administration out there. Thank you to everybody again who has pre-ordered the book, WTF America. Really, really appreciate it. Like we said, the pre-orders are super, super, super important. Our publishers tell us like the number one most important thing.

1:08:09Jordy Meiselas:So check it out. We have links in the description to this podcast. And also there is a QR code if you are watching this podcast. So be sure to check it out. Be sure to add the Midas Touch podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. Make sure it's playing for you. Make sure it works. Listen to the episodes, new episodes daily, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you name it, check it out. It's always such a pleasure to be here with the brothers. We love the brother show that we do here twice a week on the Midas Touch podcast. So thank you for tuning in and Geordi, I don't want to say, I don't know, is it could happen at any moment?

1:08:40Jordy Meiselas:This might be a last Geordi show until he's back. I don't know. I don't know. No one knows. That's why you got to tune in to every episode because it can happen on the air live. How would that be for ratings, Geordi? We got to figure out how to make that happen.

1:08:53Brett Meiselas:You're all the best. I can't wait for the next episode. Hopefully I'm here. How do you like that tease? Shout out to the Might is Mighty.

1:09:07Jordy Meiselas:Against the fascists, we sing our song. We will get it right when ever.

1:09:16Brett Meiselas:Before you go, our book, WTF America, is available for pre-order now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To pre-order, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.

1:09:35Thank you.