MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 9/18/26

20:34Jordy Meiselas:And that's kind of Trump's concept here. It's like, okay, so I didn't spend money on this and groceries, but I bought this. Okay. But you don't have groceries. Now you don't have anything to eat. And so you're not going to be able to live. You're not going to have anything to do. Like you get things for trade, obviously. That's why we trade with countries because it's beneficial to Americans and it's beneficial to companies in America who need to get a diverse series of parts from various countries in order to make their products. And what Trump is talking about right there is economic suicide.

21:02Jordy Meiselas:And that's now his threat against the Federal Reserve and against the kind of entire American economy he's been threatening. You know, you keep raising rates. I'm going to just cut off trade with everybody because that will solve the problem. No, it won't. That will send the United States into a depression. and I will use a Trump terminology here, the likes of which you have never seen. It would be an utter disaster. But I think the helpful thing about Donald Trump going through all those issues is he's kind of clearly laying out all the various things that he has been an utter failure on. He brings up the war.

21:35Jordy Meiselas:He brings up gas prices. He brings up trade. He brings up every issue possible. And it just reminds you, oh yeah, the guy failed at literally everything. And that's why if you just go with what Trump says being the opposite of reality, it's kind of an easy way to do analysis and you're going to be right 99.999 % of the time. So when Trump gets out there and he says all these things and he says that he's kept every promise and all this stuff, you just have to know, okay, it's the opposite of reality. And people feel this sort of thing, right? People understand that we're not in the golden age. They see Donald Trump focused on all this garbage while everybody's suffering.

22:13Jordy Meiselas:They see him on the plane through the window with a big poster board that's where someone is apparently pitching him on demolishing the Kennedy Center or a post on demolishing the Kennedy Center to post on a truth social account. Like these aren't the things that Americans are concerned about right now. Americans are concerned about their lives. But Trump just keeps causing more chaos and more chaos. And quite frankly, when you look at what he's doing and you if you think about like, how would I, if I were like an evil individual, an adversary of the United States of America, who was hellbent on destroying this country from within, I don't think you would do really anything differently than what Donald Trump is doing right now.

22:52Jordy Meiselas:He is showing step by step by step how to dismantle everything. And it's another reason why the midterms coming up are so vital. And that's why everybody needs to get out there and vote, quite frankly, because there needs to be some sort of check on his unfettered power. And these Republicans are such cowards. They refuse to do anything.

23:12Brett Meiselas:They refuse to do anything. They refuse to work. You know, I'd fancy to guess that Congress has not been in session more days than they have been this past year. It's unbelievable what we're witnessing. And what we just heard Trump say by cutting off trade, right? Again, it shows perfectly the America first scam that Donald Trump has put over his followers, as Brett shows a calendar of actually how many days it looks like Congress has worked this year.

23:42Jordy Meiselas:15 days of legislative business in over four months. 15 days of legislative business in over four months, Jordy.

23:51Brett Meiselas:Dude, just truly, again, unbelievable when you see this right in front of your face in numbers like that. But again, it shows you, Brett, when he's talking about cutting off trade, that America first scam that he's put over all of his MAGA loyalists and just quite frankly, the Republican Party in general at this point. America first for Donald Trump just means America all alone. Let me isolate ourselves from our allies. In fact, let me go after our allies. Let me isolate ourselves from the world by not conducting trade with them. Let me make up numbers. 1.5 trillion. Look how smart I am by not doing trade with these countries.

24:25Brett Meiselas:Look how much money we're going to have. We're going to be so rich. We're in the golden age, actually. Aren't y 'all so rich now? By the way, if those gas prices, if they have to go up even a little bit more, y 'all be all right. You know why? Because we're in the golden age. If I say it enough times that we're in the golden age, you're going to believe it, right? And you're going to repeat it. It's so disgusting. And what frustrates me too is just like in general, we played four clips, five clips, just like from this rally in North Carolina alone, there were quick clips. That was crazy. Like WTF, that was already just insane.

24:59Brett Meiselas:And we didn't even get to half of them. And so how does corporate media coverage cover this to me is like equally more depressing and upsetting and frustrating. There was just like an NBC headline that caught my eye as I was doing some research. It was like, Trump bashes Democrats. See, even my dog's pissed off. Trump bashes Democrats on crime while campaigning in North Carolina. It's like, that's what y 'all took away from this. And by the way, I went ahead and read that article. There's no real fact checks in there. The fact check is from the opponents like staff, like seven paragraphs in of why that's BS.

25:32Brett Meiselas:Crazy to me how any sane network or news organization can look at what Donald Trump is doing up there and just continue to pretend that that's normal, that that's the president of the United States, that this is what we have come to expect out of someone in that position. Disgusting.

25:53Ben Meiselas:I want to take our first quick break of the show. A reminder, our new book is called WTF America. You could pre-order right now. It officially arrives in bookstores and officially will get delivered October 20th is when it comes out. But pre-order it right now. We would love for you to get a copy. And people were wondering, were we reading the audiobook? And we did. All of us have different sections of the audiobook that we read. And so if you were wondering, will we be reading the audiobook? We read for the audiobook and each of us took different chapters. So I think you'll enjoy the book. I think you'll enjoy the audiobook.

26:30Ben Meiselas:I just wanted to remind you of that. Let's take our first quick break of the show. We'll be right back. We've got a lot more to discuss when we're back. Thanks.

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29:14Jordy Meiselas:That's magicspoon.com slash Midas for$5 off. That's M-E-I-D-A-S. Check it out.

29:24Brett Meiselas:Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors. Link's 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?

29:33Ben Meiselas:Let's talk about what just happened with interest rates, right? Interest rate hike, 25 basis points. Interest rates are described in a range, and it's the amount that banks can lend banks, the interest that's charged on bank loans to banks. And that, of course, trickles down to consumers because that ultimately impacts the rate at which they lend to consumers. So this impacts people's ability, companies' ability to get loans from banks, and it makes it more expensive to get these loans. So the range right now is 3.75 to 4%. There's something called the dot plot that the Fed uses to show you how they may be voting on future rate hikes or keeping rates the same or decreasing rates.

30:20Ben Meiselas:Notably, Kevin Warsh, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, was against these dot plots, but we just got a dot plot out from this Federal Reserve board. And the dot plot shows at least one more interest rate hike that's going to take place this year, probably another 25 basis points, But we will see ultimately what it is. Possibly two more rate hikes, but mostly people are saying they'll at least be one more. But I should caution because if you looked at the dot plots from a few months back, you would have expected or at the beginning of the year, you would have expected there to be three interest rate cuts this year.

31:00Ben Meiselas:And so that's what mostly every economist and banker was believing. That's what the Federal Reserve Board did. But rarely, if ever, was the economy so dramatically impacted by the person in the White House. Usually they have to react, but they don't ultimately cause this complete reversal of a trend the way Donald Trump did. But Trump's tariffs against the world, trade wars against the world, catastrophic war in Iran, Trump's attack on the immigrant population, which also was a big problem for labor and for working workers as well. Trump's attack on our manufacturing base, his attack on farmers overall.

31:48Ben Meiselas:This created a situation where we're in very difficult economic times now. Some would say very catastrophic economic times. That's how most Americans see it. I'm not being hyperbolic when we talk about the lowest consumer confidence in history. in history. I didn't make that chart. It's the University of Michigan consumer confidence report that goes back half a century. And since they started, this is the worst consumer confidence that there is right now. Inflation is surging. And so there was a 12 to zero vote. It's unanimous. all board members of the Federal Reserve said rate hike. So it wasn't just this person or that person.

32:35Ben Meiselas:There were Trump picks, George W. Bush picks, Biden picks, people who were all on this board, 12-0, they all voted to hike the rates. And then you had Kevin Warsh, again, Donald Trump's pick to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He went out there and he said, high inflation. This is what our mandate is at the Fed. And when we see inflation elevated, we act. And there is elevated inflation caused by geopolitical stability. Say what you want. There could be a lot of criticisms for Kevin Warsh, and they're all fair. But I believe he actually, and I'll call it out when it happens, I think he acted responsible.

33:14Ben Meiselas:I'm not rooting for rate hikes, okay? But given the data, he made the right decision. And afterwards, he said basically mostly the right things because inflation is high because of geopolitical instability. They take the actions that they can control. He goes, I can't deal with trade policy. I don't deal with this. We deal with what the Fed deals with, our mandate. And this is why we acted unanimously like this. It is important to note, though, that Kevin Warsh's background, he was a member of the Federal Reserve many, many years ago. So he's not that old of a guy, but he was there when he was much younger, but he was there.

33:56Ben Meiselas:And he had a reputation as being called an interest rate hawk. So his background was someone who was more inclined to aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation. That was his reputation. Ironically, Jerome Powell, who was the prior chairman of the Federal Reserve, who Trump picked during Trump's first term. Trump picked Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell, again, very significant credibility as an economist, normal, kind of well-researched, kind of the right person. But his background was what was called an interest rate dove. And he was someone who believed that you can spur growth and bring down inflation by interest rate cuts more than doing interest rate hikes to rein in inflation.

34:47Ben Meiselas:So you had people on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Powell was an interest rate cutter. Warsh was an interest rate increase or hiker. And that's just a fascinating dynamic because Trump was livid at Powell for not lowering interest rates. And he called Powell too late Powell. And Trump was like, who would ever appoint this idiot? You, you appointed him in the first term. Biden just extended his term. Under Biden, we saw the rate increases for a little bit of that time because of Donald Trump's catastrophic handling of COVID. And so we saw everything that had to be done to bring the economy back to an area where there could be growth again and try to get inflation under control.

35:33Ben Meiselas:That succeeded as Biden gave the baton to Trump. Inflation was down to 3 % and it was heading towards 2%. All of the Fed board, all of them, again, unanimously felt it was heading in the right direction. And then Donald Trump demanded that Powell do the cuts and Trump was calling him too late Powell, too late Powell. Trump had criminal prosecutions initiated against Powell. Remember that? Because he said Powell was hurting him by keeping the rates where they were, even, not lowering it. And Trump said, lower it. So Trump came up with some phony pretext about the Federal Reserve building is over budget.

36:17Ben Meiselas:Yeah, of all people, Donald Trump is the one saying that. And that's why he was criminally prosecuting Powell. And Powell had to quash a subpoena. Then Powell's term ended. Powell's actually stayed on the board right now. And you had Kevin Warsh appointed. And lots of people, including us, were like, that's an interesting pick because Kevin Warsh is a hawk. He's the guy who's known to raise it. So is Kevin Warsh going to go against his entire career? It was just something we were all observing, right? And I think we were transparent in our reporting to guide you through that dynamic right there.

36:51Ben Meiselas:Kevin Warsh testified in front of Congress a few months back where he actually had a pretty decent performance. And he said, yeah, I mean, we're going to follow our mandate. But we all wanted to see, is that what he was actually going to do? But ultimately, the guy that Donald Trump picked to lower interest rates because the other guy who was the chairman of the Federal Reserve was keeping it the same and Trump wanted that guy criminally prosecuted. He brings in Warsh, the hawk. And what does Warsh do? Raises interest rates with the full board unanimously voting to do so. Then Warsh held a press conference where Warsh was asked, so what are you going to say to Trump?

37:26Ben Meiselas:How do you now message this to Donald Trump? Because he obviously brought you here to try to force the board to lower it. That's why he was going after Powell. Watch what Warsh says in response here. This was Warsh at the press conference. Let's play. I have to ask, what is your message here to President Trump, who has repeatedly called to cut interest rates, not raise them. I've got nothing for you on a discussion with the president. So, but I won't make that count as your question. Then you had Trump's top economic advisor, Peter Navarro, rush to the Bannon show. Let's take a look at what went down there.

38:04Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip. Why do you think I'm surprised? I was not a worse guy. I'm not a worse guy. I see him not as MAGA. I see him, let's call him Mara or Masa, like make recessions great again, you know, it's like or make stagflation great again. I just look, he sold himself and now he's selling us out. I think it's pretty much as simple as that. And I don't know. Here's what I don't know. I don't know whether it's a gap in his training or whether he's just one of them. And this is political. I fear it's political.

38:44Jordy Meiselas:You don't know much of anything, Peter Navarro. That's pretty stunning to hear from Donald Trump's own economic advisor, Peter Navarro, that he would say that about Trump's appointee, I will say. And the thing you want to know about Peter Navarro is something that I've said on this show quite a bit. Peter Navarro has quite literally, I think, been wrong about everything his entire life. The fact that this guy has any credibility whatsoever, he doesn't. But the fact that people treat this guy like he's a serious human being who deserves a title of economic advisor and deserves to be called on to shows, to be asked questions or to write op-eds for newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, which is supposed to be a prestigious paper.

39:24Jordy Meiselas:But let's see what Peter Navarro said in the Wall Street Journal just a few months ago. Let's see his incredible big brain prediction about the Iran war. Let me pull it up. Here's Peter Navarro, March 12, 2026. Are you ready for this prediction, brothers? and might is mighty, Iran war will lower energy prices. The risk of regime violence has long been baked into the global price of oil and gas and everything else. The Iran war is going to lower prices, lower energy prices. And the guy is a complete fool. The guy is a complete idiot. And I'd have to say, you know, respect for Warsh for not going along with Donald Trump on this.

40:00Jordy Meiselas:I think his actions in not being the lone vote, like a 11 to one vote in the Fed, I think that actually probably really helped actually calm some of the nerves people had about the rate hikes because people were watching and the investors were watching to see, is this guy, is he a serious human being or is he going to fold and do whatever Donald Trump wants him to be? Because that Fed position, it's independent for a reason. It's independent because the entire global financial system relies on the decisions of that board. It affects so much. And so if you see the chair of the board acting in a way that is irresponsible, that is untrustworthy, then you lose the trust of the entire system and the entire system, quite frankly, can collapse.

40:46Jordy Meiselas:And so thankfully for now, Kevin Warsh has at least retained his credibility on this issue because if he went and did what Donald Trump wants to do and if we didn't have this independence of the Fed and Donald Trump went in there and he said interest rates should be 1%. So I hereby decree like Jordy, I declare bankruptcy. I declare interest rates 1%, right? If Donald Trump did that, you know what happens? The dollar gets super weak. Imports get super expensive. You might have a short-term jolt to the economy where the stock market rises and people get this sugar high, and then everything will freaking collapse.

41:22Jordy Meiselas:And inflation, you think inflation's bad now, you will be dreaming of the inflation we have right now if Donald Trump got his way. But that's why he has a history of bankrupting everything, because he can't make the right decisions. He's physically incapable of making the right decisions. And what he does when he's in a bind is he just does this doom spiral. And when you doom spiral, you end up doomed. And that's what's happening right now. Thankfully, there are still a few things blocking him from completely throwing everything in this country into the trash. But we are hanging by a thread here.

41:54Brett Meiselas:Can I go tinfoil hat, Jordy, just for a quick second here? Something to me is just I'm holding reservations here. Something's not passing the sniff test for me right away. And part of it actually came in Navarro's response on Bannon over there, where he said something along the lines of, you know, maybe Washington needs more training. It's such a weird way for him to phrase that more training. And there's like, what do you need to sit him in front of the TV and have him watch more Trump rallies for three hours and then send him back out there? There's there's an overarching relationship here that I just I don't feel comfortable about.

42:29Brett Meiselas:But we'll kind of see where things continue to, you know, head out there. Ben, what do you think? You think do you think everything is simpatic over here? or do you think there's a little bit more that we have to kind of wait and see approach?

42:41Ben Meiselas:I don't think that it's simpatico. I think you always have to wait and see. There's always scheming with the Trump regime. I mean, Kevin Warsh sold himself as somebody who would be the opposite of what he was his entire career. If you go back and you say, well, why did Trump pick this guy? It makes no sense, Ben. Didn't Trump know the guy was a Fed hawk? Well, didn't he know that JD Vance was out there saying that I'm a never Trump guy and that he's like Hitler. And that's what JD Vance said, right? But JD Vance ended up doing the shtick of MAGA this, MAGA that. I never said I was gay in high school when I said this with my grandma.

43:20Ben Meiselas:I never said that I was Appalachia guy, this, that, and the other. This ultra MAGA extremist, that's who I really am. Look, this eyeliner is not eyeliner. It's toughness. Look at me. I'm strong. JD Vance did that shtick. And that worked on Trump. And, you know, Warsh did, you know, I think Trump thinks that Warsh is an attractive man. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I think that Warsh, it's a crazy analysis and you'll be like, Ben, what are you talking about? But this is how Trump, no, it's a Hegseth.

43:48Brett Meiselas:It's a Hegseth.

43:49Ben Meiselas:Warsh is central casting. He's a handsome guy. He looks the part. He knows how to play into Donald Trump's thing. He said he would be doing the cuts. I think if he's able to, He'll try to do it. I think though his view of it is that it was so overwhelmingly baked in that this was going to happen that if it wasn't unanimous, anybody who broke would not have any credibility ever again. So I think his view of it is, is look, inflation, I can't not do the interest rate hikes right now. So we have to do it. We're going to have to do one more. The next one is going to be, I believe, unanimous as well.

44:29Ben Meiselas:And then I think what his hope is, is change, you know, and this is what I think they're messaging behind the scenes is you got to find a way out of this war. You got to find a solution. You got to figure this out, you know, and then we'll work for you. We'll try to get it down. But like we can't do it right now. no matter what you want us to do, it'll undermine you. So I think those are the conversations taking place. But I think Trump is attracted to him as a man. I do. I think that we've seen that before with Trump. And I think that plays into it. And the guy's central casting for what Trump perceives as that role.

45:02Ben Meiselas:And so there's a lot of factors that get into play. It's just so

45:05Jordy Meiselas:incredibly sick, though, that, you know, reflecting back on how you started this segment, that Donald Trump was willing to criminally prosecute and throw an individual in jail in Jerome Powell because he wouldn't do what he said, because he wouldn't break the independence of the Fed and lower rates artificially in order to soothe Donald Trump's ego and do what he wants. And now his own guy is in there and his own guy also not only kept rates steady like Powell did, but actually had to hike rates. And it just goes throughout this entire Trump regime. I mean, And that's really the makings of an authoritarian tin pot dictatorship.

45:41Jordy Meiselas:What do you see when you see a guy like Trump threatening people with prison time and not only threatening it and making a wacky truth social post and people saying, ah, but Donald, he just says things, you know, he doesn't actually do things. No, seeking the Department of Justice, the once trusted Department of Justice and career officials and his lackeys who he put in there and having them go after career individuals in the United States federal government and go after American citizens. In some cases, like American sporting heroes, like the Olympian who was near the reflecting pool who they tried to throw in jail, going after people like James Comey.

46:17Jordy Meiselas:It's really, really, really a bad situation when you have the president of the United States willing to use the power of the United States government to go after people for whatever petty grievance he has.

46:28Brett Meiselas:And it's obviously intentional. And we all know that too, is because he wants like Powell, for example, to quit, to put his head in the sand, to back away slowly, to just give up hope and just hope, okay, maybe if I just stop, maybe if I just go away, Trump will leave me alone. But to Powell's credit, I think he's hung in there. And it's been at least refreshing to see another, someone else kind of stand up to Trump. Like, hey, I'm not just going to completely go away and fade into the sunset here, Donnie. There's going to be some overarching oversight as we go forward here. And that to me, Brett, too, how strong he went after Powell versus now the reaction with Warsh when we've now seen the actual, the physical raise, there almost hasn't been any.

47:13Brett Meiselas:You know, like if Powell had done that -

47:14Jordy Meiselas:He blamed everyone else. He was like, oh, he's on a board with a bunch of wackos. And the thing that Donald Trump says - And the thing that Donald Trump says also is, once again, his psychological projection. He goes, all those other people were just put on the board for political reasons, doing the political biddings of their masters. Unlike my guy who should be doing what I tell him. It's like you realize you just contradicted yourself in one sentence.

47:37Ben Meiselas:Well, because he's, again, the projection there is also his boards, like the Kennedy Center Board, which are all of his handpicked puppets because he does that. He assumes that's how all boards operate, that they're all fake. Every board's a fake board because he runs fake boards. That's what he does. We'll talk about that when we come back. Also, So there's also, you know, you've got to remember how basic and kind of caveman and lunatic kind of Trump is, right? He also doesn't like the way that Powell looks. It's like a professor. He looks smart. Like Trump looked at the guy and just doesn't like the guy's existence.

48:10Ben Meiselas:And so part of it also for Donald Trump is like torturing the guy. And Trump feels differently also about his guy, you know, the guy who he thinks is good looking. It's a weird dynamic. And I almost sound like I'm crazy for saying that, but that's part of Trump's deranged and demented.

48:28Brett Meiselas:But I think you're completely right. And let me just interject one more time. I think it's something to do with the fact that he's an academic, right? This is the same reason why he went after Fauci. That truly intimidates Donald Trump because intellectually Donald Trump can't meet on that level. So what does he have to do? He's got to threaten. He's got a name call. He's got to do all the stuff that dumb jocks do that Donald Trump used to do in high school that he's gotten away with because of his daddy's lawyers and his monies and all of that all of his entire life. That's what we're seeing.

48:51Ben Meiselas:But here's, but let me even refine that though, Jordy. Trump wasn't, Trump also, Trump was not accepted in any of that in his life, right? The jocks didn't want to be with him. And so Trump thought like, like, just think about it. Trump believes that locker room talk is talking about grabbing women by their genitals and sexually assaulting them because you get away with it when you're rich. He's like, isn't that what we're talking about in the locker rooms? You know, I, I did an interview with Colin Kaepernick, you know, and you should go watch it. And you could ask what happens in locker rooms at high level sports.

49:23Ben Meiselas:And it's not that, okay? And it's serious business and it's behaving like leaders and running teams and organizing things. You should go and watch the interview I did with Colin Kaepernick. Trump wasn't accepted into that. That's locker room talk. It isn't. And then the academics and that, they rejected him. And so that's why he's like, my uncle, MIT. And so you have to think about he's been the outcast his whole life because he's a deranged lunatic. And he's seeking vengeance on everybody right now in ways that are kind of profoundly kind of crazy. And that's part of all of this. His whole life has been about revenge and they're unfair and I'm unfair and everything's unfair.

50:06Ben Meiselas:And this is this, that, and everything's treating me this way. And it's like, we'll talk about this in the next break too. We'll talk about the Kennedy Center. He just wants desperately to have his name with Kennedy, right? I need to engrave it. I need to be, he wants to be in that. He wants to be the Putin, she thinks he wants to be in that club and they don't want him in that club. The crazy thing is that the U S had the club that lots of people wanted to be. And we created the post-World War II architecture and Donald Trump never thought, I thought that first off, Trump thought that that was never something he could be a part of.

50:37Ben Meiselas:He was intimidated by that. He thought the other people would embrace him in his club. They don't want him in his club. And so it's just all of this rage all at once. And that's how the whole world, that's why it's like, oh, they're laughing at you. They're laughing at you. He's talking about himself, that everybody looked at him his whole life this way. So I think that's an important framework. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show. Check out the Colin Kaepernick interview, by the way. I think it's an hour-long, long form. I'm going to try to do more of those.

51:05Jordy Meiselas:On YouTube and on the Midas Touch podcast audio feed. So check out on the Midas Touch podcast audio feed too. And by the way, I'm going to, I'm going to give a call out right now. Make sure you add the Midas Touch audio podcast. If you haven't yet, Apple podcasts, Spotify, anywhere you find podcasts, add the show, listen to the latest episodes. We're dropping new episodes there every single day. All right. In the book, WTF America, get the book, pre-order the book, pre-order super important. We poured our heart and soul into this. Yes, there's an audio book. There's an ebook. There's a hardcover.

51:33Jordy Meiselas:You could get it all at the little QR code above me. if you're watching or in the description here, or just search WTF America Midas Touch. It's available at all the places where you'd expect. All right. Thank you so much. We got a lot more still to talk about, so don't go anywhere. We will be right back. Oh, the perfect gene. I've got to tell you about the perfect gene because these are legit some of the most comfortable jeans that I've ever worn. Because normally with jeans, there's always something. They're too tight in the thighs, the waistband digs in, or they look good, but you're counting the minutes until you can change it to sweatpants.

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54:01Brett Meiselas:Shout out to our sponsors, y 'all. Links in description of both YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's that exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benji, before I toss it back over to you, everyone here knows that I'm a big fan of giving folks their flowers while you can. And so, Ben, I did just, like, honestly, I do want to say, Ben's Colin Kaepernick interview, I know you're not supposed to, like, choose favorite interviews, especially as someone who like co-founded the network it is my favorite interview that we've ever done here on the network i've listened to it now three three and a half times it is so worth the listen if you haven't done it don't do it right now because you're watching us and listening to us so don't do it this sec when you're done with this give that give that interview a listen it's like an hour long it's truly just the the insight and just the conversation ben i i just found like so thoughtful and just really loved it big bro yeah you know um i've known colin now for

54:55Ben Meiselas:nine years eight eight years you know a really long period of time and you know some crazy we

55:01Jordy Meiselas:was really one of the fascinating things to me of the interview was how many people said i had no idea that you were his lawyer i had no idea what you did before midas or you were your friends with con i like that actually really fascinated me because we have a lot of listeners who go you know, back to the beginning and I've heard us tell, you know, these stories a lot. And we've got a lot of folks who are joining us every single day. And so I think it was cool also for folks to get reminded that you didn't kind of just materialize one day. Hey, I'm Ben on YouTube.

55:33Brett Meiselas:Also, inevitably, since I'm always in the chat, I always see someone say, are these guys brothers? Love that. Love because they're, I mean, welcome. Welcome. No shade. You and I are not twins. That's been, that's, that's come up quite a bit lately. So I just want to put that out there, but we're brothers.

55:49Ben Meiselas:You know, prime minister Carney was basically, basically the same role as Powell and Kevin Warsh in Canada, right? He was the chairman of their, basically their bank of Canada. He was one of their, basically the big central bankers, you know, over there. And then bank of England, he was like their big central banker over there. Canada during the Great Recession, in the UK during Brexit. And so this is someone who was tested during great times of crises. So he had a coalition build and those were times where the recessions could have turned into depressions and the Brexit break, which is still, I think, had very negative consequences, in my opinion, could have even been much worse.

56:38Ben Meiselas:But for him being brought in to fix things. And so Canada elected someone who is of incredible intellect, incredible empathy, and someone who's reflective with all these life experiences, a true builder, a coalition builder, and the US elected a bank ruptor, a deal breaker, and a predator. And so you have such a contrast. And, you know, thinking about chess moves, you know, to think about Canada fortifying itself and building this resilience by bringing in Carney and then Carney bringing resilience in a rapidly changing global order against the chaos unleashed by the U.S. in ripping apart its own architecture, right?

57:26Ben Meiselas:The U.S. created the post-World War II architecture where all of these countries were dependent on the U.S. and the U.S. made a lot of money, building that dependency, providing protection, and providing a framework for financial structures, security structures. And whether you like that structure or don't like that structure, I think undeniably that was the structure. And that structure in the rules-based order, the rules were created by the United States after World War II. And those rules frequently benefited the United States. And Trump viewed that as we're being taken advantage of when it's kind of the opposite, you know, was the case.

58:08Ben Meiselas:And now you see a rapidly changing order. And so you'll have the BRICS alliance being built up. We talked about the New Delhi BRICS summit, Iran playing a prominent role in that summit as well, you know, with Brazil and Russia and China and India and South Africa and all these other countries as well. Today in the United Nations Security Council, you had Russia and China block a US-led effort to impose international sanctions and sanctions monitoring on Iran. And so it was a big deal that you had, this existed before at the UN Security Council, and this was blocked by Russia and China earlier today.

58:53Ben Meiselas:You had Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, meeting with Foreign Minister Arangchi in Beijing before Xi Jinping was set to meet with Donald Trump next week to prepare and coordinate there. We've learned, I don't think we needed this report from CNN, but nonetheless, CNN reported on it. It gave some new data, gave some of the names of the satellites, but the Russian satellites were providing Iran the targeting of U.S. bases in the region. region i mean but like we all see that satellite footage it wasn't kind of rocket science and russia's pretty much outright saying yeah we're allied and china's pretty much outright saying yeah we're allied and iran saying we're allied and meanwhile you have treasury secretary besant like doing tip lines if you found anybody we're going to who may be helping iran please let us know and we will take action against them and as i said i think on the show i did earlier today it's like, we're going to punish you so much.

59:48Ben Meiselas:She, we're going to throw you a five course dinner. We're going to treat you with the most lavish state dinner, Donald Trump. That's how we're going to tell you that we're angry with you. It's like, okay, I mean, you know, you have Besson just looks like an utter fool. He couldn't even answer the basic questions of where some of the money was going from Venezuela, as I know earlier, which bank account. I mean, the guy looks like a total. But Ben, he is the house. I'm the house. I wrote it in the Financial Times, my op-ed announcing economic D-Day. Then I said, the Financial Times is a tool of China and it's far.

1:00:23Ben Meiselas:Okay. Well, you wrote it.

1:00:25Jordy Meiselas:I saw some of these like right-wing accounts online. They were like, oh, that line was so bad-ass. What a bad-ass mic drop best. I'm like, the guy's an idiot. The guy like, what are you doing? Haven't you learned the lesson of people who have too much hubris? Because I feel like we're all watching like some poetry right now play out before us.

1:00:45Ben Meiselas:Yeah, it's like Oedipus. It's freaking Homer. It's like Aesop's fable. It's Thucydides. Yeah, but they're having sex with the animals, apparently. It splits apparently under Kash Patel's view. Did you see that? I thought there was that chart, the spectrum of dogs. It was so good. Yeah, and it was like Kristi Noam zero, Kash Patel 10 of their view of dogs. But there's even videos today. I mean, like, you know, one of our researchers was able to identify at Trump's Virginia Golf Club. They had like all these kids that were in this swimming pool, shallow pool, kiddie pool area. And at Trump's swimming pool, they released like hundreds, maybe thousands of little goldfish.

1:01:32Ben Meiselas:And they put it in the pool in the chlorinated water. And then they had the little kids like it was running around, getting the fish, killing the fish. The whole scene looked like incredibly creepy. And it's like, are you aliens? Like you just love seeing animals and get tortured. Why are you putting the little fish in the chlorinated water? Why are you having the little kids try to hunt for the fish in the water? Why is like, why is that even a game? I don't know if you're going to have them search for things. Why don't you put marbles in the water or something? Or why don't you put, you know, I don't know, pennies in the water or something.

1:02:04Ben Meiselas:Why goldfish? Why does everything have to be a torture ritual? which adult that part of the Trump Epstein class like thought about this idea to begin with. I don't know. It's just, in my opinion, the whole thing is just absolutely deranged and crazy in any event. You have the U.S. chaos and disorder. Meanwhile, you have Prime Minister Carney. He's there speaking in the European Union Parliament after the State of the Union previously given. Yeah, that's it right there. I mean, what are they doing right there? The whole scene is gross. Take it off. I don't want to look at it anymore. It's disgusting.

1:02:34Ben Meiselas:It disgusts me, They grossed me out. What are they doing right there? The whole scene is grotesque. Prime Minister Carney, on the other hand, this is serious times, man. This is serious stuff happening in the world right now. And I've just over and over again, it's like we are not behaving as a serious nation. We're not even talking about the layers and levels of complexity and intrigue. We're not even behaving as a modicum as a serious nation. So at the floor, we should be a serious nation, and then we should go up from there in terms of levels to this, right? U.S. used to lead the global architecture.

1:03:17Ben Meiselas:Now we're not even meeting the bare minimum threshold of pass. We're below the floor. We're not serious. We're clownish. We're jokes, and we're worse than that. We're dangerous. That's what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. We're dangerous. We're not serious and we're a menace. We go around and we do menacing, dangerous things. By the way, like Donald Trump his whole life, remember the conversation of he wanted to be in this locker room. Get out. He wanted to be in that group. Get out. That's why he brags about his uncle being at MIT or that's why he needs to steal the valor of this group or that group.

1:03:55Ben Meiselas:He was the outcast. The irony is that you have Besson saying economic outcast with Iran. Iran's being embraced more than ever in this newly established global world order by a group of nations that Donald Trump wishes he was allied with. That's one of the crazy things about all of us. Anyway, I digress, I digress, I digress. Prime Minister Carney speaking at the European Union Parliament, talking about how we're not fair weather allies in Canada. Listen to what he had to say. Let's play it. We are not fair weather allies. We do not pursue zero-sum deals. Our commitment to the rule of law and our unyielding defense of human dignity, individual freedom, and democracy share the same deep roots, the same unwavering dedication.

1:04:47We hold common values for which we have always fought and in whose defense we must always remain vigilant. We believe that a strong economy is not an end in itself, but a means to a just society. We are committed.

1:05:18We are committed stewards of our natural heritage. We believe that our prosperity grows when it's shared. These values. This is a sharing of choice, not coincidence.

1:05:34Ben Meiselas:And he goes on and discusses more about sovereignty, about uniting, about all of these things. And so... Can I just tell the people of Canada?

1:05:43Jordy Meiselas:I'm very jealous of you guys. Very jealous. You guys made an incredibly good decision. And I wake up every morning and I see stuff like that. And I watch what we're dealing with here at home in the US. And it's just, I'm just, I'm happy for you guys, but obviously very sad for what's going on here. And, you know, Trump confirmed, remember Trump tried to deny the other day when he went out there, you know, when the trade deal, so to speak, fell apart with Canada, what did Canada say? They said that the United States of America was trying to remove our sovereignty. They were trying to say who we could trade with, who we can't trade with.

1:06:19Jordy Meiselas:They were trying to say what language we could speak, what language we can't speak. And this was kind of all confirmed when Donald Trump was speaking about this new relationship that's forming right now, or this strengthened relationship between Canada and the European Union. When what did Donald Trump do? He threatened both parties over this new agreement. He was asked about it yesterday while he was on the tarmac in North Carolina. and Donald Trump made some sort of comment like, well, you know, if they're doing this, you know, he made some comment like if they're doing this in bad faith or if they're doing this with bad intentions, then I might have to punish them with more tariffs.

1:06:54Jordy Meiselas:If they're doing this with good intentions, that's another story, but I might have to punish them for doing this. Once again, that's confirming exactly, and not that we needed confirmation that Canada was telling the truth in the situation and Donald Trump and all the crazy psychotic lunatics in the Trump regime were lying. But it's further confirmation that he's saying it out in the open. You don't have sovereignty. We don't want you to have sovereignty. You can't enter into trade agreements or have relationships of your own unless you have the explicit approval of me, Donald Trump. Yeah.

1:07:25Ben Meiselas:Show you Professor Sachs, renowned professor. Here's what he has to say. When I heard him say this, I was like, this sounds like a Ben rant right here. Listen Listen to what he has to say. Let's play it. I think we should understand we have a cabinet of 35 people. Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one. There's one bachelor's degree, one bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. no other training at all on technical issues and not one single research phd degree in the cabinet as opposed to china where it's half the cabinet basically is science and technology and research phds in other words were led by drifters and fools sorry, straight out.

1:08:27And they're incompetent and they're arrogant and they don't even know how to ask a question.

1:08:33Jordy Meiselas:He's got to be a Midas viewer. I've heard you make that exact rant before. I've been on that rant before. I mean, he's exactly right though.

1:08:39Brett Meiselas:Again, and it goes back to kind of, I guess, like the central theme of this episode and that's Donald Trump's like allergy to academics. Like he, he, Donald Trump would much rather put people around him. That would be yes, men and women, these stooges, these mega stooges that will go along with whatever he wants and also who trump just thinks like like fits the bill like yeah like i don't think though

1:08:59Ben Meiselas:it's an allergy i'll throw it back to you though but i don't think it's an allergy just to academics it's all these different groups of people who are trying to be thoughtful or teamwork or work together trump just views the whole world going back to what carney says as the zero-sum game where he wants to steal and take and destroy and he thinks that he's not in the club with all the secret people who are doing all the destroying. And he really wants to be the leader of that and be with that crew of people. And he keeps trying to find all these people and everybody's repulsed by him. And so he gets deeper and deeper into this.

1:09:37Ben Meiselas:And so this whole facade, this whole crazy thing has just become this kind of weapon of mass destruction. He is the WMD that now is here just taking his life vengeance out on everybody, his own supporters. I mean, the people who voted for him, I mean, he's screwing them more than just about anybody, but all Americans are being screwed right here. I mean, we all are experiencing the rising price of gas and diesel. I saw JP Morgan recently published our baseline analysis. We don't have a baseline anymore when it comes to oil. We assume that there were certain red lines that just Donald Trump wouldn't cross because it would cause economic catastrophe.

1:10:22Ben Meiselas:And he's crossed them. And so we don't really know what to say anymore. This goes to show you, remember, even though the arrogance of like Jamie Dimon, you know, well, I think I think it's like, OK, well, guess what? Guess where this has taken us right now? You know, we have to recognize we have a psycho, George. I mean, you know this. We have a psychotic lunatic in this guy's we can't. You show that NBC headline, you know, others want to talk about this podcast or that podcast. They don't have the stupidest debates. Most American people are like, yo, we are led by a literal psychotic human. Or who even knows if he's, the guy's a lunatic.

1:10:59Ben Meiselas:Like this is a real demented thing.

1:11:02Jordy Meiselas:CNN was focused on the important stuff today from what I heard when I got my notes from the team. I heard they were laser focused on Hassan Piker. Laser focused on Hassan Piker. I just want to make sure that they're focused on the important stuff. We have like today alone also like the thing is it's Trump has infected every aspect of government and government is of course supposed to work for you and it often doesn't. But it's often not like a purposefully destructive force that's working against the actual stated goals of the kind of entities that people are assigned to lead. When you have somebody running the Department of Education whose goal is to destroy education, when you have somebody running health whose goal is to destroy health and make you sicker, and every day we're getting new reports about food contamination and, oh, yes, everyone's getting diarrhea now because nothing's tested and measles is raging back and everyone has measles.

1:12:01Jordy Meiselas:And today, of course, talking about RFK Jr. and plenty of other folks in this administration, this regime, I should say. But even today, you know, RFK was out there. And one of the comments he made, he was like, the unvaccinated kids, you know, who died from measles. Sure, they get all the headlines. So that's what the media wants to focus on. But you know what they don't want to focus on? They never talk about the real problems. The vaccine injured. They should really focus on the vaccine injured, not those poor, unvaccinated kids who died. Why are they focusing all their attention on that? You know what I'm going to look into today also?

1:12:42Jordy Meiselas:You know what we need to focus our health infrastructure on? We need to look at chemtrails. I'm looking into chemtrails. I got to look into chemtrails. That is what I need to see. When I look in the sky, I see lines and I don't know what they are. People say they're coming from planes, but I think it's a secret government conspiracy from your own government. What are you talking about? There are real issues right now. There are children dying because they're unvaccinated. You are encouraging this bad behavior, and you are using your pedestal, your powerful role as the leader of the nation's health, and it pains me to say that, to spread disinformation that literally kills people.

1:13:21Jordy Meiselas:That is a shame. And the blood of every child who dies, who is unvaccinated, particularly when you are pushing all of this garbage, the blood is on the hands of RFK Jr. The blood is on the hands of Donald Trump and all of these enablers around him. Remember, none of this happens without enablers around him. When you see that picture on the plane yesterday or on Marine One yesterday of Donald Trump, and you saw through the window, and he's holding that big placard up that says Kennedy Center demolition or Kennedy Center demolished or whatever, he was handed that by somebody, somebody who had to mock it up, whether they used AI or whether they used Photoshop or whatever.

1:14:01Jordy Meiselas:They had to mock up this ridiculous graphic, print it out on a giant poster board because this is how they present things to him, hand it to Donald Trump to approve or reject from posting on his Truth Social account. Then a Natalie Harp or whomever posted on his Truth Social account. And this is how the government is operating right now. You saw the picture then after on Marine One of what's the Bill Pulte, the guy who Trump put in charge of housing and Freddie and Fannie, and he's walking out with this giant poster board that they just showed Trump about demolishing the Kennedy Center. And then that's the same guy who was pitching 50-year mortgages to Donald Trump as a means to try to make home ownership easier as interest rates are spiking and everybody is suffering and everything is getting more expensive.

1:14:48Jordy Meiselas:It's the problem when you infect every aspect of the government. It's not just the government that get sick. It's the people who get sick. And that's an issue. And unfortunately, we need to act right now. It's very important. We have midterms coming up. And it's important because we can't let this be terminal, right? We're sick. We're a sick country. We have to admit we're a deeply, deeply sick country right now with a whole lot of issues. But I don't think we've reached that terminal phase yet. And there are these small moments in history where people could rise up and people could push back and people could say, I'm done with this crap.

1:15:23Jordy Meiselas:I'm going to at least do as little, like the bare minimum of what I need to do right now to stop this sickness. And then hopefully, probably not right now, probably not a couple of years from now, probably not even a few years from that, we will work to get and bring back a healthier country that actually works for the people.

1:15:44Ben Meiselas:Covered a lot in this episode. We could keep on going, but I think right now we'll just say We're grateful for you. We feel more confident than ever heading into the midterms that the American people are starting to feel like, you know what, we can fight back. We're in this together. I think people are identifying the source of all of this. It's in the Oval Office.

1:16:07Jordy Meiselas:Let me give you a couple of data points too, as Ben's talking here. Ashley Hinson, Iowa, running for office. What was her big announcement yesterday, her big ad that she released? I'm willing to work across the aisle with Democrats to get things done. That's the kind of language you only hear from Democrats normally. And for a Republican to be putting that in an ad a few weeks before the midterms shows that they know which way the wind is blowing. What's the representative Maria Salazar in Florida, who we don't, I think Ben showed these clips before. We don't have to show them again. But, you know, right after the 2024 election, the day after she goes, Donald Trump, he's only going to go after the bad immigrants.

1:16:50Jordy Meiselas:She has like over 200 ,000, I think, undocumented immigrants in her district. And so this is a big issue that her constituents really care about. She gets a lot of pressure from because she lives around a lot of these folks. And she goes, well, I'm not worried about them when she was asked. She's only going to go after the bad ones, the criminals, the Trende Aragua, the this, the that. And flash forward to today, she releases an ad against Donald Trump, not against her midterm opponents, not against the Democrats. She releases her own ad against Donald Trump saying, Mr. Trump, you've gone too far with this immigration thing.

1:17:25Jordy Meiselas:This is not okay. This, listen, it's, in my opinion, all performative BS, right? But it shows you one thing. It shows you that even they know the tide is turning and all their internal data is telling them what's coming for them in just a few weeks from now. And I can't believe it really just kind of a few weeks away at this point, is going to be a disaster. And they are trying to stop what's kind of impending doom for them right now. So read the signs, keep looking for all these indicators, and never take any of that for granted in any way. You know, always make sure that you're doing your small part and are doing whatever you can to promote democracy and to try to stop this chaos.

1:18:05Ben Meiselas:Appreciate y 'all so much, Midas Mighty. We're grateful for you. We dedicate our book to you, by the way, that WTF America is dedicated to you. We harnessed and channeled our experiences here with you, a people-powered movement. By the way, go and watch and listen to my interview with Kaepernick. We learned from the people-powered movement that we saw then. We built this with you, and we're going to keep on building it. The book's called WTF America, The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. Check it out. Pre-order it now. We'll put a link in the description. make it easy we have a qr code you can scan as well we appreciate you we'll keep doing updated videos every 90 minutes or so here on the Midas Touch YouTube channel subscribe to Midas Touch on audio it really helps when you subscribe on audio not just the YouTube audio listeners subscribe to YouTube see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast Jordy take it away shout out to the Midas Mighty

1:19:10Jordy Meiselas:Against the fascists we sing our song We begin it right when ever

1:19:19Brett 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.

1:19:38Thank you.