Trump Goes Quiet as Economic and Foreign Policy Pressures Mount

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2:28Ben Meiselas:Like the coward that he is, Donald Trump shut the White House down to all press yesterday. He refused to be seen in public. This says mortgage rates hit 7.17 % for a 30-year fixed mortgage. This says diesel and gas prices surge to record highs, and they're only going to get higher. This, as the catastrophic war in Iran continues to get even worse, you take a look at Donald Trump's schedule, nothing, nothing, nothing close to the press. You take a look at his schedule for today, close to the press, close to the press, close to the press. Apparently, he's going to be going to North Carolina in the evening to lie to the people there.

3:13Ben Meiselas:I think Donald Trump's approval in North Carolina is worse than net negative 20 at this point. So I'm sure he'll go in front of a little tiny crowd and he'll act like it's a big stadium, so utterly pathetic. And he's posting things like this throughout the night as he closed off the White House to the press. What the disloyal leaks about Iran prove about Trump. I don't know that you're a lunatic, that you're a bankrupting psycho. What do they prove, Donald? I mean, while you rant and rave like a lunatic that the Kennedy Center needs to have your name engraved on it or else you're shutting it down forever.

3:53Ben Meiselas:And you'll see if the Supreme Court allows you to engrave your name on it, then maybe you'll open it back up. Otherwise, you're going to deprive Washington, D.C. of this cultural landmark because you are an absolute piece of trash. This is the article that he posts. This guy, Mark Thieson, some deranged propagandist. Have ever seen this guy on Fox before on regime media? He's such a weirdo. He goes, what the disloyal leaks about Iran prove about Trump. Trump did what past leaders should have, take an enemy at its word. Well said there, Mark Thiessen, talking about. By the way, this article is from August 27th, 2026.

4:35Ben Meiselas:It's September 16th. Why are you posting that? And then Donald Trump posts this weird book from Charles Payne, a Fox business host. They said business, so it must be serious. No, this is the book, Undeniable Windfalls, How One Stock Can Change Your Life. Just if you get the miracle stock, everybody, you can be rich. No, the American people are suffering, man. You've screwed people over so badly. People can't afford anything right now. They can't afford gas. They can't afford diesel. They can't afford groceries. They're suffering. You ripped away people's health care. You took away services to help kids eat lunch because you said they were involved in waste, fraud, and abuse.

5:17Ben Meiselas:And then you bragged that you solved poverty by ripping away food from the mouths of children. You deprived people of the services that USAID provided, which may have resulted in the deaths of millions of people across the world. Then your catastrophic war in Iran, your aiding and embedding of Netanyahu's genocide has led to the slaughter of children and women and mass. It is sickening. It is absolutely sickening. And people are suffering here. They're suffering abroad. Norfolk Southern CFO calls the fuel price issue that we're seeing right now and the shortage of oil and LNG and all of these supplies, something out of a science fiction as it warns huge cost headwinds from diesel.

6:06Ben Meiselas:Right now, as we see the national average of gas approaching$5, as diesel approaching$7 a gallon, depending on where you live, it's probably higher than that. That's just the national average. We're going to look back at this and say, we wish for that. And I think we deserve far less. I don't mean that we actually want that. I just mean we have passed the point of no return. It's possible our salt caverns for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve implodes. Y 'all see what's happening across the world right now? Houthis control the Bab el-Mandab Strait and thus the Red Sea. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and thus the Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, all of the inflows and outflows.

6:54Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump can claim, we're bringing in 10 million, 20 million barrels a day. You aren't. You're bringing in maybe a few million barrels a day, like 20 % or less than what was taking place before the catastrophic war started. And then we know the East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia has been severely damaged. The Houthis likely struck it. Saudi Arabia wants to blame Iraqi resistance, also allied with Iran, But they're like, we wish we did it, but it's the Houthis. The Houthis are like, it's us. But MBS doesn't want to admit that it's them because that would make him look weak. And his whole thing is projecting strength.

7:30Ben Meiselas:You know, MBS is like Don Jr., right? He basically did a coup though of the royal family that was there several, several years ago. And right now, MBS just is dependent on this Trump-Netanyahu alliance. And I find it notable that after Netanyahu and CENCOM met with MBS, his strategy over the past 24 hours, in addition to indiscriminately bombing areas of Yemen controlled by Ansaral, the Houthis, is he's now making up. The Houthis are striking Mecca. They're striking Mecca. They're going after the Saudi Arabian religion. They're doing that playbook right now. They're going after our religion. The Houthis are a tech.

8:13They're doing

8:13Ben Meiselas:that shtick. And that's just the psyops after. It's like dumb psyops. We know what's going on. I mean, it's like, look what Donald Trump posted. This was from the White House. Household income rose to$87 ,460 under Trump in 2025, the highest figure in almost 60 years. Under Biden, the White House writes, American families were squeezed by surging inflation, falling real incomes, and wage growth being suppressed by illegal immigrants. The illegal immigrants' faults. We're going to do that playbook again. Under Trump, incomes are up. Poverty is falling. American workers are getting ahead again. And we're just getting started.

8:58Ben Meiselas:Real income, highest in history. U.S. poverty rate, lowest in history. you. Child poverty rate, historic lows. No one's buying. You're lying. You're lying. We all live in this country. Stop with the stupid lies. Meanwhile, the chief oil analyst for Gulf Oil says the next 24 hours, we'll see staggering increases at the pump for both gasoline and diesel. Fuel margins have yet to catch up with the previous wholesale hikes. Watch for huge increases in Great Lakes and Rocky Mountain areas, huge increases we're going to see. And so that's why I've been spending so much time going over the oil markets with you, explaining to you the price of crude, the price of diesel, the crack spreads, the delta between your price of diesel and crude, which are at record highs.

9:53Ben Meiselas:And they've just kept on going up, up, up, up, up. Inflation is surging. Americans are struggling. These stats are bullshit. Excuse my language. There's nothing you can do to try to convince us that this is a golden era or a golden age. It isn't. It's really bad. And it's dire. We are in dire economic conditions right now. Here in the world is because of Donald Trump's behavior. So Donald Trump trots out J.D. Vance, like a weird dude, objectively a weird human. He wears all of the makeup and the eyeliner and pretends he doesn't and judges people who does. Like, dude, you're wearing like a ton.

10:32Ben Meiselas:You have so much makeup on your face. It's distracting, frankly. It's distracting. I mean, I don't care if you do or you don't. It's just he mocks people that does. And meanwhile, while dude slops eyeliner on like he's like the cat woman. It's like crazy amount of it. Purr, purr, JD, purr. Sorry. He then goes, even if you don't agree with us on every issue, give us another chance. We're not crazy. The Democrats are crazy. Give us one more chance. Please give us one more chance. I'm JD. Purr. Here, play this clip. Do, don't give power to the people who cause the problems that we're fixing. Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.

11:24And the second argument I'd make is even if you don't agree with us on every issue, the other party.

11:30Ben Meiselas:Pathetic, man. This guy's pathetic. These are just, I hope you've come to realize that none of this is political in my view. These are just losers. These are loser human beings who had somehow managed to take over our systems and just force it into loser-ville. The rest of the world views us as losers. It sucks. It's just true. More from J.D. Vance over here. You know, I give Donald Trump so much credit for what he's done over the last 18 months. He's a risk taker. This is being posted on the official White House account. Let's play it. Willing to take risks. Obviously, he gets criticized for it from time to time, but I'd much rather have a president who's willing to take those risks, who's willing to take on the big projects.

12:18It's the only way I think you're going to reverse America's long-term decline is to be willing to take those risks. Thank God for the past 18 months, We've had a president willing to do just that.

12:28Ben Meiselas:And then you bring on more Trump sycophants and they're like, inflation is coming down. No matter what criteria you look at, it's coming down, down, down. Thus, we should not be raising the interest rate today. Inflation is going down. I don't know what world are you living in. It's going up. It's going up. Stop it. Stop the, you know what? Stop treating us like we're dumb. Yeah, we're not. But inflation's not going down. Inflation is going up. We all know it. We all experience it. Maybe in Club Mar-a-Lago or Golden Ballroom world or whatever your crypto meme coin pump and dumpy or whatever world, maybe things are great for them.

13:12Ben Meiselas:It's not for most Americans. Listen to what this idiot has to say. Play this clip. The inflation data has actually been in the right direction. No matter how you measure inflation. CPI, core CPI, PCE, core PCE. If you look over the last three months on average, inflation is lower over those last three months than the three months before, no matter how you measure it. Inflation is coming down. They didn't choose to raise rates three months ago when inflation was higher. It doesn't make sense to raise rates now, in my view. I want to share with you what Kerry Kennedy had to say about the Kennedy Center.

13:54Ben Meiselas:I thought this was profound. Let me play this clip for you. Out front now, Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and RFK Jr.'s sister. So Kerry, can we just start with the Kennedy Center here? What's your reaction to the board voting to shut down the Kennedy Center altogether? Well, this is a tragedy. You know, the American people love the Kennedy Center. They love the arts. They understand what's going on. They see the corruption of this. There's not a financial issue here. President Trump has said they have$250 million ready to hand over tomorrow. He's just withholding it because he wants his name on the building.

14:38So this is like so many other things that Trump has touched. It's a bankruptcy because he adds his name to it.

14:48Ben Meiselas:Yeah, sorry, I digress, but I wanted to show you Peter Navarro, one of Donald Trump's top economic advisors. This was March 12, 2026. Iran war will lower energy prices is what he predicted. The risk of regime violence has long been baked into the global price of oil and gas and everything else. People are fed up. People are fed up. Did you see this latest polling right here. The generic ballot right now of Hispanics, Democrats up 68%, Republicans 25%. As Ahmed Baba says, it turns out racially profiling, systematically separating families, brutalizing, and in some cases killing members of Latino community isn't all that popular in the Latino community.

15:36Ben Meiselas:Who'd have thunk that one? And remember when Trump would be like, I'm going after the bad hombres, man, that's who are focused on. No, you went after workers. You went after people paying taxes. You went after people who were here for a very long time, who started families. You ripped families apart. You deported people to random countries. You deported people to random countries in Africa. The only people you welcomed into the United States were white South Africans and claim there's a genocide in South Africa against white people, which isn't true, while you deny the genocide in Gaza. But that's who you brought in white.

16:16Ben Meiselas:I mean, it's like objectively the most racist policy in the world. He's like, because he's a racist scumbags. That's just who they are. That's who they've been their whole life, in my opinion. Anyway, here's Harry Enten's report on the massive shift with non-college Latinos from 2024 to what we're seeing right now. Watch for yourself. Here, play this clip. Oh, my goodness gracious. Oy, oy, oy. No bueno if you're the president of the United States, because just take a look here. Working class Latinos, he had a massive breakthrough in 2024. He won working class Latinos. He won non-college Latino voters by a point over Kamala Harris.

16:58That's a major breakthrough for a Republican president or Republican running for president. But that win that he had, adios amigos, goodbye, see you later. Look at his net approval rating now. And an average of polls, CNN, SSRS polls across 2026, he's 42 points underwater. That is a switcheroo, Kate Baldwin, of what? 43 points shifting away from the president of the United States. His support rapidly declining, plummeting among working class Latinos, a group that helped get him elected back in 20 -

17:28Ben Meiselas:Now, we have a lot of other reports coming this morning. I did an interview with Colin Kaepernick, who was my client. And I think you'll like the interview. So check back soon. I did this long interview with Kaepernick. And if you know my background with Kaepernick, I really think you're going to, I think it's going to be a profoundly important interview. So I hope you'll watch that today. Any event, thanks for watching. Appreciate you. We're in this together. Okay.

18:01Ben Meiselas:podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for new updates every single day.