MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 9/1/26

22:25Brett Meiselas:Well, you know, like the president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit. He would be the first to say, he doesn't make announcements about military actions on social media, but I think that he's sending a message to the Iranians, look, we know that they continue to shoot a commercial shipping. We continue to have a lot of tools at our disposal to prevent them from doing so, or at least cut down on them from doing so. And that's what the president is saying is, Look, you guys are shooting at commercial shipping. You guys are behaving like a terrorist country. You've got to stop or there are going to be some consequences.

22:54Ben Meiselas:Oh, that's what he was doing with the AI slot video of Cargo. Oh, like the interpretation.

22:58Jordy Meiselas:By the way, he does announce military action on his social media account all the time. He goes at my direction. No, no, no, no, no, like all the time, all the bombings. He does all the time.

23:09Brett Meiselas:JD's excuse was, oh, Trump, that rascal. I mean, that's that's what that just summed up. It is unbelievable that we have a commander in chief right now who is so clearly cognitively added like Donald Trump is that we can't even really come to a strong conclusion whether or not he knows what he's posted is AI and mean it. Like that's the scary landscape there. And then you have JD trying to run cover for him. And he goes, oh, rascal. You know, he wouldn't, you know, you know how Trump is Trump being Trump.

23:38Jordy Meiselas:That's to me why the Natalie Harp story is such an important story, you know, beyond the kind of palace intrigue kind of, you know, is it an affair? Does she do his diaper? You know, you see all the various things. But the fact that this unelected individual is controlling what goes on the most powerful person in the world's social media account that could move markets, that could lead to insider trading, that could start wars, that could announce wars, that could cause a whole number of issues. This person has so much power over Donald Trump, and she's just putting these things in front of him, whether it's this AI video or a tweet of him on Mount Rushmore, whatever stupid thing it is, and then they're posting it out.

24:26Jordy Meiselas:And so this person, this unelected individual actually has an outsized amount of power in this country. And I think it's important the same way that we're now just kind of finding out the very tip of the iceberg about who the Trump regime is paying as these MAGA influencers that you see on Twitter and other social media. I think it's important that we have a greater understanding of what is this person putting out? What are the approval protocols? How is this entire thing working? Because contrary to what J.D. Vance is saying, Trump does announce a lot of stuff from his social media account. And he has made that a means of communication with world leaders, threatening Iran with total obliteration.

25:10Jordy Meiselas:And so when those are the kinds of messages we're seeing, I think it's actually extremely important we know who's behind him.

25:16Ben Meiselas:Of course. But two points. One, obviously, the buck stops at the top. I mean, Donald Trump surrounds himself with these people. He's unfit. Yes, Jordy, he is cognitively and physically addled and deteriorating rapidly each and every day. But look, this guy has been a loser his whole life. He's been a bankruptor. He's never been a builder. If you just go through his life, he's scared. He's weak. He's pathetic. He hides. He runs. He never had the fitness to be in positions of leadership. He's always been a fraud and a phony. And these qualities are now pronounced even more. And they're really destroying this country.

25:53Ben Meiselas:They have destroyed this country. But this guy's always been a loser. And it's now at a geopolitical level where, you know, he's he's a weapon of mass distraction, but a weapon of mass destruction also against the United States. I mean, the damage he's causing is irreparable. And frankly, it's just embarrassing. I don't know how any self-respecting American, any person who wants to call themselves patriotic or who loves this country can look at this and on matters of war and peace, see someone in the Oval Office behave like such an utter buffoon, like such an utter clown. You know, really sick stuff.

26:27Ben Meiselas:All right, let's take a break right now. We come back. We've got a lot more to discuss. A reminder, our book's called WTF America. It comes out October 20th, but pre-order it right now. The pre-order momentum is great, but we've got to keep up that pre-order. If you intend to buy it in October anyway, and you're able to buy it now, it really helps if you buy it now versus waiting until October. So just wanted to highlight that. All right, let's take a quick break.

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30:02Brett Meiselas:Restrictions apply. See rep for warranty and promotion details. Shout out to our sponsors, y 'all. Links in description of both YouTube and the audio. Use those links. Use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benji, where to next, big bro?

30:15Ben Meiselas:Yeah. So I woke up Donald Trump ranting and raving like a lunatic. He says, Iran is officially a failed nation. It is dead. Interesting, because the Iranian president, Pazeshkian, is currently in Kyrgyzstan, which Trump probably doesn't even know where that is on a map, but he's been meeting with everybody from Xi to Putin to Modi. He's like, Iran is getting a hero's welcome at this Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, and they're going to have a prominent role also during the BRICS meetings that are going to be taking place.

30:54Jordy Meiselas:I'm not being facetious, but Ben, objectively, I do not understand what Donald Trump's strategy right now in this war is, other than tweeting that Iran has lost the war or posting AI slop of himself bombing Iran. I don't even get the strategy at this point. He just wants to pretend? Like it's just so pathetic.

31:15Ben Meiselas:It is a market manipulation play. What you have to recognize is he doesn't care about national interest, right? He doesn't understand it. That's why he can't fathom why sovereign nations will stand up to him, right? He can't fathom why Canada is not submitting. It's sovereign. It's proud. It's independent. Prime Minister Carney he's not working for Prime Minister Carney. He's working as a public servant for Canada, pursuing national interests over there. Similarly, when it comes to a country like Iran, they have their own national interests. If you attack and go after them, they're not going to be like, oh, that actually makes us want to now work with you.

32:04Ben Meiselas:It's like it makes any ability of ever wanting to do with you or deal with you not going to happen. And Trump is not trying to make America great again. You have to recognize that everything the guy says is always the opposite, right? I've rebuilt the military. What does that mean? He destroyed the military. Make America great again is make America as weak as can be. His interests are purely himself. So he's just trying to find the arbitrage, the deltas between the dips that he creates in the markets and when it goes back up with his other market manipulations so he can grab for himself. So, Brett, two points.

32:50Ben Meiselas:Jordy, you're right. The guy's cognitively deteriorating. Both can be true at the same time, right? So there is that aspect of it. But Brett, to answer your question, it isn't about the United States because this, everything that he's doing couldn't be more damaging, right, for the United States. But it's not supposed to be, you know, in our interest. It's whatever he's doing to steal from us, to take from us, to pillage the United States. That's what this is all about. So then he goes on to say Iran is a failed nation. It's dead. It isn't. They have no military. He goes on and says that. Then he goes and says, the only thing they have is fake news from USA, a willingness to kill their protesters.

33:32Ben Meiselas:Now over 100 ,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity and a good line of bullshit. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump, a good line of bullshit. I mean, what are you even talking about? But then this exaggerated death count number. First, they said it was 30 ,000 in the protests in January, where Donald Trump says, we're going to help you. We're going to send our troops to save you. And then Trump didn't do anything when there were these protests. protests. And by the way, what Iran had said is that these protests were actually done by the United States and Netanyahu.

34:07Ben Meiselas:And there were a lot of people who were like, come on, that's getting into conspiratorial territory. Don't go there. And then the Trump regime put out the number and they said 30 ,000 people got killed. And that was a number that was kind of accepted. Okay, there's 30 ,000. That's what everybody was saying. There's 30 ,000 people that the Iran regime killed 30 000 and then donald trump said it was 42 000 then he said it was 50 000 then he says it's a hundred thousand and then you have to go and ask yourself these very serious questions you know no doubt there were protests we saw the protests we're aware and they appear to be protests leaning towards democracy it's also i've spoken with people who are professors in iran you've seen my interviews, there's no doubt that there had been a movement in Iran towards younger leadership, a more openness to the West, to the United States before Trump and Netanyahu launched their second invasion in late February.

35:08Ben Meiselas:So there's no doubt there was a sentiment. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who the Trump regime killed along with his daughter, his granddaughter, his son-in-law, his whole family while they were eating dinner at their house on the first night of the war. And then the Trump regime proceeded to engage in war crimes and slaughter little girls in Manab and little girls playing volleyball. It's kind of the MO of Donald Trump, little girls killing, killing little girls. And the coverup as it relates to the Epstein files, what's the coverup about the coverup involves what Epstein was doing with little girls.

35:42Ben Meiselas:I mean, that's part of that. So is it shocking that when you say, oh, that's what you're covering up and this is who you're going after over there. But in any event, you make up a number 100 ,000. It's like, oh, got it. This is you're a liar. And then it calls into question the whole thing. It called, right. And it's like, actually.

36:00Jordy Meiselas:Yeah. How am I supposed to believe any of the numbers if you're just making up the numbers? And unfortunately, I guess you got to look through independent, you know, independent sources. And when you look at independent sources, and it's not that it's a competition, and of course, I'm not defending this in any way, but the numbers are far lower than anything Donald Trump has ever said. They're far lower than what Trump said months ago, and they're far lower than this 100 ,000 number. So then you realize, okay, so this guy is shoveling propaganda down our throats as well, while he accuses the other side of spreading fake news and bullshit.

36:29Jordy Meiselas:And he's doing so in order to accept the fact that we're in this prolonged war where American soldiers are dying, where we're bombing innocent people and all the other disasters that are happening right now. And I think it's just really, really foul. Not to mention that I think it's a betrayal to those people, to the protesters that Donald Trump has completely abandoned them after telling them to take to the streets and everything that they did. And we'll get into this when we speak about Venezuela. But you see, that's the theme of Donald Trump. The theme of Donald Trump is use these innocent people who may be fighting for their freedom or for their country, use their stories and use that narrative in order to justify U.S.

37:12Jordy Meiselas:intervention, in order to justify Donald Trump coming in there and bombing a country, killing innocents. And then what happens? Does Donald Trump end up helping those people? No. Donald Trump then tries to take as much as he can for himself. And that's what we're seeing in Iran. That's what we're seeing in Venezuela. That's why Donald Trump is comfortable with the Maduro regime remaining in power in Venezuela. That's why Donald Trump is seemingly okay with the Iranian regime remaining in power so long as they basically relinquish control to him and try to cut deals with him. Remember a few months ago, Donald Trump was like, oh yeah, we're doing a JV.

37:50Jordy Meiselas:We're going to do a joint venture, me and the Ayatollah. We're going to work something out together. We're going to have a business together. That's all he cares about. It's not about these other people. It's about himself. It's about enriching himself. It's about lining his own pockets. It's about enriching his family. That's what it is now. That's what it's always been.

38:05Brett Meiselas:And there it is right there, Brett. Exactly. Once you start to view things through the lens of why Donald Trump, this isn't going to help America. Obviously, right? Donald Trump is doing things to help him. The top 0.0 % that hang out with him at Mar-a-Lago and his children or his adult children, I should say. And that, that, that's how he leads. How can this in my best interest benefit me, Donald Trump? That's what he's thinking. You know, I want to take a quick step back, looking at this political landscape at large, right? So you have Donald Trump just lying, throwing random numbers out there, right?

38:39Brett Meiselas:Hyperinflating things, making things very confusing where, you know, you look, you're like, well, he said a hundred thousand. So the truth has to be somewhere, you know, in the middle, right? So it's, it's gotta be a lot like, like he, he wouldn't lie about a hundred thousand. That's an egregious number. Well, he is, he's line. Then you have Fox News who carries his water also and starts to report on their end. Then you have other Murdoch properties like the New York Post who do stuff over there. Then you have Barack Ravid, the his stenographer. And then you have literal feds on Twitter who are tweeting and amplifying Donald Trump's messaging as if they're, I don't know, independent journalists or independent voices who are literal feds.

39:14Brett Meiselas:Again, carrying the water for Donald Trump. I can understand why people are so damn confused and so vulnerable and susceptible to the misinformation and the propaganda. At a certain point, people have to take their own damn accountability though, and look into things just a little bit further. But like, for example, in the case of literal feds operating on Twitter, like that's evil, man. And not disclosed, like all of this stuff right now.

39:40Jordy Meiselas:And again, why is Twitter the preferred platform? Because Elon Musk bought it and Elon Musk is able to control the algorithms. He's able to boost people. I've been around people, friends, family members. And you could do this test for yourself if you'd like. I don't recommend it, but you could do this test to show that I'm telling the truth here. If you make a Twitter account and don't use it, but keep your notifications on, you know what notifications they send you? They send you the notifications of the feds. They send you the notifications of these MAGA influencers as if they are legitimate breaking news because they see, oh, this is an apolitical person.

40:15Jordy Meiselas:This is somebody who, you know, maybe they're looking at reality TV stuff. Maybe they're talking about music. Maybe they're not talking about anything at all. They're just lurking or they just have the app. And they are beaming these messages at them so that when they read the headlines, they see the headlines that are now, ironically, we're finding out are crafted by the Trump regime, not independent news or influencers or anybody. And they're being beamed into people's phones. It's just really.

40:42Ben Meiselas:I want you to think about this, though, too. the number 100 ,000 as it keeps creeping up. What is that number right around? Around the amount of people who were killed in Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza, right? Where that's actually a real number, right? And so when you have the real number, right, which may be even more than that, but when you have the real number and then you have this other 100 ,000 number, which they're saying, well, Donald Trump, there's 100 ,000 here. When numbers don't mean things in war and peace, in major issues regarding the economy, right, what happens? Everybody is lost.

41:25Ben Meiselas:And that is the vacuum that the strong man wants to fill. You're just making up numbers about 100 ,000 people who were killed. And when there actually is 100 ,000 people who are slaughtered as part of a systematic genocide taking place, it's like, that didn't happen. No, that's not the right number. And then you find out it is the right number, or we knew it's the right number, but then it's like, no, no, it's just a number. And when Trump announces the Venezuela situation, it's not even a real deal. For me to see a deal, I need to read it. I need to see it on paper. I need to know the players i need to know the terms then there's a deal whatever this fake fraud framework is what do they do right away boom shocking all you with big numbers 65 million barrels of provable potential reserves provable potential reserves right there red flag okay what does that really mean provable can you extract it can you refine it what what does that look like then you learn the history and you go, got it.

42:29Ben Meiselas:It's tarry. It's bad. Donald Trump once said that it's really bad oil that nobody can actually do anything about. It's why nobody, he once made that comment when he was saying that they're narco traffickers and they're a terrible country. And now he's like today, it's great. This is the best oil. You know what you can do with it? You can make asphalt with it. You can replenish the strategic petroleum reserves with it. No, you can't. No, you can't. like 65 billion barrels 100 billion dollars in investments he said uh in venezuela they said it will bring 220 billion dollars of economic recovery to venezuela okay let me ask everybody this what the hell has happened since the trump regime has taken over venezuela where has the money gone to already.

43:20Ben Meiselas:It's gone to a Qatari bank account with no oversight. No one knows what's actually going. Is that Donald Trump's bank account in Qatar right now? That's where$8 billion has gone. In terms of the actual production of oil since the Trump regime has taken over Venezuela, it's either at the same or it's less than it was the previous year. So there's not some massive of oil gushing kind of taking place right now. And as you look deeper, what you find out, and I'll just address the Venezuela situation right here, is that this tarry, dense, it's called sour because of its sulfur level. It's interesting.

44:02Ben Meiselas:If you go back and look at the history in the 1800s of oil, people would taste it. And the sulfur content would tell you, is it sour or is it sweet? But this very high, sour, dense, tarry stuff, it's almost unusable, okay? And it certainly, certainly can't go into our strategic petroleum reserves, which are in salt caverns, which mix this kind of water with more of the light sour to kind of medium sweet kind of oil that's brought in to replenish it. And so this stuff doesn't go there. Now, you can build potential refineries that deal with this issue or you can deal with technology that can make it capable of going into the salt caverns or to be refined for other uses.

44:55Ben Meiselas:But that would cause billions and billions and billions of dollars. And it's violative of the U.S. Constitution. OK, and when there's a new administration, this is not going to be a deal that people are going to abide by. That corporations know that right now, that once Trump's up, this deal is done. And then on the Venezuela side, it's against their constitution. You can't give access to a foreign country with this level of degree of control. So it's against their constitution. also what does this do for all of the people who pretended that there was going to be democratic elections which we knew is not going to be the case if there ever was an election and the opposition party takes over this entire arrangement will be voided right away so all this deal does if you're delcy is it entrenches your power because if you lose power and and this incentivizes trump to keep our power.

45:52Ben Meiselas:The deal would, the fake deal would obviously go away too because it's unworkable. It should also be noted that Venezuela owed billions of dollars to China and Russia when they went in there and tried to have somewhat heavy handed arrangements with Venezuela that did not work out because of some of the issues with the oil. And so they are fine to now deal with their spheres of influence why haven't you heard a peep from china or russia about this because don't you think that the unwritten rule or the unwritten deal or you know or the framework in trump's mind is china taiwan russia ukraine united states venezuela and russia and china know that this is tarry oil that they can't even utilize anyway so they're like take it i mean And that's what you want to do.

46:45Ben Meiselas:And it undermines U.S. legitimacy and it strengthens their claims on Taiwan and on Ukraine, because if it is now the world is the jungle law prevails, then the United States can't step up with moral authority or moral clarity. And then you just take a quick look at like who we're even doing this purported deal with. And it's this guy, Bentecourt, part of the bully chicos, these people who got really rich under Hugo Chavez. He did this electricity deal is how he first kind of got rich. And what if you know some of the basic stuff about the electrical grid in Venezuela, it didn't work. They're rolling blackouts while this guy got rich and he was under investigation in Europe and elsewhere.

47:35Ben Meiselas:And, uh, he, he, this is the kind of guy that Donald Trump wants to, you know, that, that is, he's doing business with. So the Pentagon is entering into a, the Pentagon is forming a Trump oil company to do a deal with this bentacourt guy, you know, who's this shady, you know, not good guy in general. And they're going to extract hypothetical oil that, you know, is not the kind that can be refined. And what is Trump saying? this will replenish the strategic reserves. Gas prices are going to go down. Absolutely freaking not. I'll leave you with this on this point without totally geeking you out further on oil and gas discussions.

48:17Ben Meiselas:Even if everything Donald Trump said was true and we had 65 barrels and it was light, sour, kind of like the Middle East stuff, and it was stuff that we all could be utilized easier, it would take five to 10 years before we were able to really even utilize that, even if it was true. And it's not true. So this is never going to happen. It's all bogus. It's all a fugazi. And it's about dominance. It's about market manipulation. It is about raw power. And it's about Trump and people like Bentecourt enriching themselves at the expense of Venezuela, at the expense of the US, at the expense of a more stable world order.

49:01Ben Meiselas:All right, let's take our last quick break of the show.

49:03Jordy Meiselas:Wait, while we're on this, let me say, I want to say two things about it before we lose the plot here. One, I worry about something like this creating such instability in a country like Venezuela, because I think nothing creates more instability, anger at the leaders, and overall chaos and potential civil war than kind of a humiliation like this, basically saying that, no, you're not even like a sovereign state essentially, but you are a vessel, a vessel of the United States in our pocket. And the fact that you have a leader in Delcy Rodriguez who was going along with all this, I kind of view there being, I kind of have a feeling that when these people who, you know, you may have seen images of them dancing in the streets when, you know, when Delcy took over, I don't think they're dancing anymore.

49:54Jordy Meiselas:And I think they're going to be furious about all of this. Also, I think Donald Trump is setting himself up for just another failure and another thing for people to point back to as we head into the midterms by saying in his post and saying how quickly now gas prices are going to shoot down, oil prices are going to shoot down. We've literally only seen them go up even since Donald Trump made this announcement. If anybody viewed that with any legitimacy, you would have seen a sharp decrease in the oil prices right away. And this is going to just be another thing that people campaigning for the midterms are going to be able to hang over Donald Trump's head.

50:24Jordy Meiselas:And it's another kind of, you know, phony promise, another lie heading into the midterms.

50:30Ben Meiselas:Let's, by the way, this is why when that thing was announced right away, we pounced on it. I mean, we did the story right away, dissected it. And I wanted to create a permission structure for other people to rapidly respond and say, you know what, we don't just regurgitate and we're not stenographers. When there's a deal like that, call it out. So within what, 30 minutes of the deal, we were out. Now we're seeing people who are far more knowledgeable than oil than me. And I study them. I want to know what they're saying. That's how I give you the analysis. But I think it's been actually, to the extent there is a refreshing aspect that right away, this normally you would just have the lies spread.

51:14Ben Meiselas:And there was boom, like a barrage of truth calling this out right away for what it is. And it was a powerful tsunami of information also that was out there. All right. Last break of the show. Make sure you subscribe. Big subscriber boost recently on this channel. And also get your copy of WTF America. Preorder it right now. You can click the QR code. I'll put a link in the description below. It's the book I wrote with my brothers.

51:41Brett Meiselas:Preorder it. I got it. You can't click the QR code. That's confusing. That's a confusing instruction. You You could scan the QR code. It's even easier than clicking it, but don't tell people to click because we're going to have people clicking. They're going to be like, why doesn't it scan the QR code?

51:53Ben Meiselas:We'll take our last quick break of the show. Scan it.

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55:56Brett Meiselas:Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, that's what I sent you. Benji, where to next?

56:00Ben Meiselas:Let's talk about the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. Earlier today, before we went live, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation to the White House following months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Reuters reports, citing a source familiar with the matter. It's probably Driscoll who's the source familiar with the matter. there. He's been leaking or people around him have been leaking that he was going to leave sometime in the next few months. I just think the last straw was when it was exposed that Hegseth was running this influencer scheme where you had all these big Twitter right-wing influencer accounts were actually feds.

56:42Ben Meiselas:They were actually the deep state and they were on the payroll of the United States government at the defense department. So while Hegseth purged out all of the kind of top reporters from being near him in the Pentagon, and he declared the press room and the areas surrounding him a perpetual skiff, a sensitive compartmented information facility, to try to block reporters from being near him. and then he brought in those propagandists, they went a step further. Not only did they bring in right-wing propagandists to replace the actually really good defense reporters who have been doing a great job, even though they've been pushed out of the Pentagon.

57:23Ben Meiselas:Separately, you had all of these MAGA influencers who were actually feds undercover, basically pretending to be influencers and writing stories like this one from cynical Publius, the war on Pete Hegseth. Hegseth is facing a calculated smear campaign because he threatens the entrenched establishment, reshaping America's military into something weaker and more political. Fed, deep state. This guy works for this. He's a government employee. He's a special government employee. People like Kurt Schlichtler, Rob Maness, the Data Republican account. We talked -

58:03Jordy Meiselas:By the way, let me say, Ben, and these are a lot of the people who go after us online all the time. All the time. All the time. Like these are the people who will quote tweet us, who will try to like slip into our DMs to try to quote unquote fact check us, to try to slam us, to try to whatever. And finding out that these people who are actually Trump regime cronies, Trump feds here who are attacking the Midas Touch network, it really just, really just once again, it's a moment of clarity. And I'm telling you, and I am speculating here. However, I feel pretty sure, in my opinion, that this is just the tip of the iceberg here.

58:40Jordy Meiselas:And that the more you start peeling the layers of this thing, the more you're going to find that virtually all these people, virtually everybody pushing this stuff every single day, every single minute of every single day, are paid by either the government or are paid by dark money forces. More is going to come out. Just you wait.

58:58Ben Meiselas:I want everybody at the macro level, though, to understand what Musk did, right? His acquisition of Twitter was funded a lot with foreign money and foreign debt. He's able to take it over. It's losing money. It seems like it is failing. On the other hand, he's got SpaceX, right, which is getting a lot of money. He spends all of this money on the election, like the most ever, to help Trump get elected. There are all of these government contracts that work their way to SpaceX. Then Musk does this IPO where he basically merges, and I believe this was going to be the plan all along, SpaceX with X, right?

59:43Ben Meiselas:And why Twitter rename X? Well, he had SpaceX. Think about what the plan was. And so he had SpaceX and X. He merges them together into one entity. And then they change the rules for nasdaq so that immediately it gets put into the nasdaq 100 so that mutual funds and etfs are required to purchase it based on its pumped up valuation on day one so whether you like it or not your fund may have had to purchase it to keep it elevated It then pays off all of the people who funded the acquisition in the first place when it took over Twitter. And then it's being used with a rigged algorithm to pump up all of these accounts to spread this disinformation.

1:00:35Ben Meiselas:Folks, it's at a very sophisticated level. I don't want us to lose track of that diagram, though, that I just built out. Because on the day-to-day level, you have these people who are feds, right, who are pretending, though, that they are these influencers. Their accounts are getting supercharged. They're pushing out all this stuff that's going super mega viral about all these things. And these people are working for the regime. That's how it's being done. And so it was interesting because earlier in the day, and I give a hat tip to the Washington Post here because the defense reporters, that is, their editorial board, not great right now under Jeff Bezos.

1:01:18Ben Meiselas:Let's be very clear.

1:01:18Jordy Meiselas:That's the guy's name. Dan Lamothe, I think. Dan Lamothe.

1:01:21Ben Meiselas:But there was a bunch, you know. That whole team is amazing.

1:01:25Jordy Meiselas:That whole team.

1:01:26Ben Meiselas:The editorial stuff is horrific. It is great. So they broke a story in the morning about this highly classified report that Hegseth, you know, and all defense secretaries put out, the Secretary of Defense Orders book, and how in it all of the top admirals and generals had a unified not concur, do not concur with the war plans currently and future in this catastrophic and unlawful war. Some people have said, well, do not concur has happened before. Yes. On minor things, you know, I don't think we've ever seen a unified do not concur on the actual war. Okay. Like Persian Gulf War or Operation Desert or do not concur.

1:02:07Ben Meiselas:That's not what happens. And maybe do not concur. Should we do this weapon over this weapon or not the overall war strategy? So people actually do not concur. It's not like, and not unified in that way. So they reported on that. Then all of these MAGA influencers swarmed. And then the Washington Post dropped their story and said, ah, you're all feds. And they were all caught. It was actually kind of a brilliant chess play. And they waited and then they dropped it. Turns out the Washington Post had gone out for comment though earlier in the week to these people. So it wasn't just like they dropped it because the attack so happened.

1:02:45Ben Meiselas:But once that attack happened, I just think the Washington Post people - By the way, yeah.

1:02:49Brett Meiselas:And look, by the way, can I just say this too? It's shocking, but not shocking, right? Like we've seen the Trump regime do this throughout the entire administration so far in the second Trump term here, right? What was one of the first things they did? They brought in those right-wing grifters to the White House, gave them all the white binders with the Epstein files. Oh, look at us. We got the Epstein. Well, that didn't work. That didn't work. Egg on all of those people's faces, what utter buffoons that white binder crew ultimately is. We already knew they were, but oh my goodness, looking at it through it now too, like you absolute shill.

1:03:24Brett Meiselas:And then the press briefings, right? What do they do? They get real media out of the press room. And what do they do? They bring in all these right-wing propaganda mouthpieces to there to get more favorable questions, to get more favorable, I don't know, whatever out into the ecosystem. system and I guess take some of the pressure off of having to answer real questions. And so it doesn't surprise me that there are feds on Twitter working with Donald Trump and the regime. I want to get on a mountain on a roof and just scream it so everyone could just understand like this is crazy, but it's actually happening.

1:03:58Brett Meiselas:And it's all the other stuff is happening right in front of your face. And it wasn't until this report came out that everyone now gets to see it and read about it and fully understand the depths that it goes. And Brett, to your point, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

1:04:11Jordy Meiselas:All of these people are astroturfed. I am telling you, it's all astroturfed. It's all BS. And I know there are some people with very close connections to Trump world, people who have worked in the White House, people who have worked in Trump kind of campaign space, who have these kind of dark money firms. And they act as intermediaries. And what happens is somebody wants to get a message out. Remember, people were caught doing this also. Remember those influencers, those other MAGA influencers were caught being paid like by a Russian company, the Tim Pools and them in the world. They claim that they didn't know that's where the money was coming from, but they were getting an exorbitant amount of money literally from Russia to push certain messages.

1:04:50Jordy Meiselas:Benny Johnson was one of them. There was like a handful of them. Well, there's another operation that's going where there are these firms run by Trump world people, and they take big money from people who want to get a message across. And the message could be to influence a politician into voting a certain way. It could be to influence other officials in the White House. It could be to spread propaganda online just for the masses. They get a lot of money. They pay this intermediary to post about this topic in a specific way. That influencer does it. They promise them X amount of impressions or whatever.

1:05:23Jordy Meiselas:And that kind of repeats and repeats and repeats. And you've also seen, you know, some of these figures online because people have exposed them in this way is where people reach out kind of pretending to be some of these special interest groups to the MAGA influencers and ask them, how much is it if you want to, how much does a retweet go for these days? How much to post about my whatever? And they will do these undisclosed posts. They'll post about things, not say it, and they'll say some people might charge 500 bucks for a retweet or 5 ,000 bucks for a retweet or whatever it is. But this is a whole financial operation that's happening right now in MAGA world.

1:06:03Jordy Meiselas:And it's just coming at you in all these different ways, whether directly from the government, whether it's from dark money organizations, whether it's from foreign money like Russia, or just people, you know, doing this as their own kind of little side business or main business, if you look at how much these people tweet on a daily basis. But it's something. And it's something that really, like, I think this is actually a super important issue that if Democrats were to take control of the House in the fall, I think they need to subpoena all these people, quite frankly. I think we need investigations.

1:06:35Jordy Meiselas:I think we need to kind of blow up this entire operation and see who's really pulling the strings here, see what's really going on. But I think all these influencers need to be subpoenaed, brought into Congress, questioned about all these arrangements.

1:06:47Ben Meiselas:Dan Driscoll, interesting guy, veteran, who's friends with J.D. Vance and Usha from Yale, private equity guy, lived out in California, spoke out at first against Zelensky. And then when he got this position as army secretary, he became very impressed with the Ukrainian military and the drones and the anti-drone technology. So he went from being a critic of Zelensky to actually saying that the U.S. needed to innovate the way they've innovated in Ukraine. And he was working very closely then with people like Randy George, the former army chief of staff, General Donahue, and others who were spearheading these types of modernization things.

1:07:39Ben Meiselas:And then Randy George was pushed out, beloved. Randy George and his wife, Patty, were like the most beloved people in our military. Four-star general, like literally like the best our military had to offer. He was pushed out and basically fired by Hegseth. We learned one of the reasons for that is he wanted to keep the investigation ongoing into the Apache helicopters that flew by Kid Rock's home. And also Randy George was objecting to the fact that Hegseth was refusing to promote Black people and women to one-star generals and then allow them to rise through the ranks based on merit, simply because they were Black and women.

1:08:26Ben Meiselas:That's who Hegseth was targeting. And Randy George wasn't cool with that. And Driscoll wasn't cool with that. And so ultimately, Hegseth wanted Driscoll gone and saw Driscoll as a rival and ultimately Hegseth won that battle and pushed out all of these top generals. You know, we only have at this point less than half of the four-star generals that we've had right now. We had the best team. We had the all-star team of generals and military leaders, and the top people were pushed out in their place are Hegseth sycophants. I'm not to say there are still some good admirals and generals out there. I don't know if there's none.

1:09:09Ben Meiselas:But, you know, you have some shady people like this Laverne guy who was working with Hegseth to fire Randy George because of the Kid Rock situation. and what's one of the first things that Laverne is pushing? Basically the equivalent of Japanese Bushido, which was one of the main, among many critiques of the actual fighting of Japanese, of the Japanese during World War II. It was so rooted in the samurai spirit and Bushido and the code and the warrior ethos versus modernizing. Lots of people said they lost an edge to some of the Western military that had focused on technology. And so what's fascinating is to see history repeat itself in the form of this imperialistic Trump regime, where like, we need to restore the warrior ethos in the United States, the World War II's warrior ethos.

1:10:07Ben Meiselas:And it's like, okay, I mean, we get that, but like, stop saying the word lethality over and over again and recognize that war has fundamentally changed. We are in a situation of drones, anti-drones, unmanned submersives, robotics, and this is the future. And there needs to be investments on that versus Trump-class battleships, nuclear battleships, and things that are where hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted that could be going to things like healthcare, could be going to things like making things more affordable and programs that help people, but they're going to these horrible, catastrophic wars and weapon systems that aren't relevant to today.

1:10:53Ben Meiselas:And we're just flushing taxpayer money down the toilet as the debt increases to over$40 trillion. All of Besson's market manipulation schemes have failed. You know, he failed to bail out the Japanese yen. His bond buyback scheme is a complete failure. He's been, you know, lots of these people, most of these people around Trump have the loser MAGA arc. And they've all found each other because they're losers when they went out on their own. Besant is one of these people who was a loser. He had like 90 % redemptions or so from one of his funds. He had a$5 billion fund, very unsuccessful. successful he worked decently when he was with smart people who oversaw him but when he was on his own he flowed that he was a loser and you can see why he's got loser qualities and I'll just give you an example of Besant from today so Besant is at the G20 Finance Summit meeting it's the G20 meeting but of the finance ministers and the Treasury Secretary he's banned the New York Times Times, Bloomberg, and Wall Street Journal from being at a lot of the meetings.

1:12:01Ben Meiselas:He was asked a question about Canada. And I want to show you how he answered this question about Canada. I could show you so many other Besant clips, and they're all equally bad. But I'll just show you this one because I think it highlights what just an arrogant loser he is. Here, play this clip.

1:12:18Jordy Meiselas:What was the setup for this one?

1:12:19Ben Meiselas:Oh, just while we do it, Brett, you can keep on talking, but I'll find it in a moment. It was the one on, it was Besant on Canada. I'll go and find it though and give you the better setup. The question was, anyway, you go talk, Brett. I'll go and find it. I don't have it in front of me, but it was the one on Canada.

1:12:38Jordy Meiselas:Yeah. I mean, but what you're seeing is over and over again, you're seeing people like Besant and Trump trying to gain control over a situation that they don't have any control of. And the problem is they're just not being honest with the American people. And they think that they could continue to trick the markets. The thing is like, there's really only so much that you could trick only with so much time that you could trick the markets for until things really start to unravel. And that's why we're seeing all of this volatility, you know, in the regular markets, you know, despite the fact that they are at highs, but the oil markets, you know, are something to watch.

1:13:12Jordy Meiselas:The bond yields are something that you really have to watch. This is something that is a huge, huge, huge, huge problem. And I think as you see people, you know, continuing to now deal with the affordability crisis and they're trying to figure out, you know, what am I going to pay for a mortgage rate? What am I going to pay when I take out a loan? What am I going to do when I go to a grocery store? Those problems continue to get worse and worse and worse for regular people. But it seems like despite all of that, that you have, you know, Donald Trump and Scott Besant and and all of them still trying to pretend that everything's great, that the war is going great, that the economy is going great.

1:13:50Jordy Meiselas:And the problem is people just know that that's not true. And the more they lie about it, what worries me is that it's kind of building up almost like a pressure valve, right? Just building up a lot of pressure in these pipes and the pipes. Yes, they keep expanding with it, but eventually what's going to happen, the thing's going to, the thing's going to pop, the thing's going to implode. It's going to explode. It's Isaac saying,

1:14:11Ben Meiselas:markets are wondering where in Canada, if that helps you, well, Jordi, answer.

1:14:14Brett Meiselas:I was going to say, and those pipes are going to explode, Brett, and not with oil. And I just want to emphasize kind of what you're saying there, too, is they could only run this scheme so many times, Trump and Besson and the entire Trump regime here trying to run this Groundhog Day play on the economy, on the stock market, until sooner or later, things are going to get really bad. And you know who's going to be left holding the bag? The American people. That's who's going to be left holding the bag. Sorry, what'd you say, Brett?

1:14:40Jordy Meiselas:Yeah, here's the clip.

1:14:42Ben Meiselas:Mark, it's wondering if we're now in a tit-for-tat trade war with Canada.

1:14:44Brett Meiselas:Well, I don't think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who's 13 times larger than you are. They say they're doing okay. What else are they going to say? Look, I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match. I mean, we're not at war with Canada. How are we going to be at war with Canada? What are they going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton Mall and stick them on us.

1:15:08Ben Meiselas:Okay. I just want you to see how, what a loser quality that is, right? You wonder how these people are such losers and you see that behavior right there. It's rude. It's abrasive. It's disrespectful. It's filled with lies. And by the way, Canada has seen increased employment. Canada has actually seen GDP growth. Canada has a leader in Prime Minister Carney, unlike Besant, who has been a very successful central banker, who's done major moves during very difficult circumstances. And Carney's a very accomplished person outside of being the prime minister. The guy ran Bank of Canada and Bank of England during two separate crises and got him out of it.

1:15:56Ben Meiselas:And Besant's only found his way into crises. and just in general too, even if what I just told you wasn't the case, you know, you underestimate people and entities at your own peril. It's this level of just unmitigated arrogance and what you saw right there, which is setting, it's not like a political thing that I'm even saying. It's just, it's right out of like Aesop's fables, right? It's like right out of, again, Oedipus, you know, a Homer's Odyssey, like to see the Shakespearean, if you will, right? And you see the, it's such a parody of the human defect that's so obvious in him and Trump and all of these people, it almost feels so poetically tragic.

1:16:45Ben Meiselas:And it would have this parody quality and almost this surreal, you know, aspect if the people weren't suffering. The pain that American people are feeling now is so damn real because you have these malignant, narcissistic, stupid humans who have hijacked the United States of America, dividing with these culture wars, and they're trying it again. I mean, I'll show you right here, like, what are they talking about at these rallies today in Michigan, just so you can see it for yourself. I mean, you've got people like Mike Rogers out there saying, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get the trans flags out.

1:17:26Ben Meiselas:That's what we're going to do. We're coming from the, we're going to get the trans flags out here. Play this clip.

1:17:31Brett Meiselas:So when you all help me get to the United States Senate, I'm going to make sure that we bring costs down. We're going to pass the save act. We're going to get trans flags out of our classrooms and American flags back in.

1:17:44Ben Meiselas:American flags are in classrooms. What are you talking about? Get the trans flags out. You see what they're doing. And you had the opportunity to lower costs. You are the ones who raised the cost. Or what about what about what's Lisa McClain saying? MAGA Republican congresswoman from Michigan. Michigan's particularly hit hard by Trump's dangerous trade war and idiotic trade war against Canada. Checking in on the Republican midterm messaging right here let's play the democrats who are running for for congress are flat out communists and now contrast that to new york city mayor zoran mamdani what was he doing today fixing broken swing sets and saying here's our crew to do repairs for parks to make people's lives better in new york this is what he's focused on and this is their big enemy right now in the Maghreb.

1:18:34Ben Meiselas:This guy is who they want you to be scared of. Here, play this clip.

1:18:37Jordy Meiselas:New York, are you tired of waiting for your neighborhood park to get fixed? How long does this typically take?

1:18:42Ben Meiselas:To do one board would probably take an hour.

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1:18:57Ben Meiselas:I'll leave you all with that. Ooh, the parks and rec music, I love it. i'll i'll leave everybody with that right there thanks everybody for watching we preach pre-order wtf america now it's out october 20th but if you can order it now it goes a long way um the pre-orders are so important they say and if they say it i say it and they say it's very important um we appreciate you let's keep on building let's keep growing this together we're thinking about you always jordy take it away shout out to the might is mighty

1:19:31Jordy Meiselas:mighty standing strong.

1:19:36Jordy Meiselas:Against the fascists, we sing our song.

1:19:47Brett 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. Thank you.