Trump has Catastrophic Sunday as World Cancels Deals!!!

0:00Brett Meiselas:When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton. For this day. Class. This class again? Don't sit in courses you've already taken. University of Phoenix accepts eligible transfer credits and has a scholarship for transfer students. Finish your degree faster. LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

0:54Brett Meiselas:We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at linkedin.com slash small business. I'm R.J. Decker, a private investigator uncovering the sunshine state's darkest secrets. Tonight, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. R.J. freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mass. Trying to get someone back to prison today?

1:35Brett Meiselas:You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. R.J. Decker, series premiere. Tonight on ABC and stream on Hulu. Tax Act is here anytime you want to easily file your taxes. Tax Act is here for the early birds who like to knock them out as soon as the season opens. And for the procrastinators who like to wait until the very last minute. Tax Act is also here for the middlers who file right in the middle of tax season. No one ever talks about the middlers, but Tax Act sees you and Tax Act respects you. Tax Act, let's get them over with.

2:15Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump is having a catastrophic Sunday after he announced that he's now imposing 15 % tariffs against the world, unlawfully invoking Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act after having his other tariffs against the world struck down by the United Supreme Court. Here are the announcements coming in this morning on Sunday. European Parliament is announcing that tomorrow on Monday, they will be proposing a freeze to the ratification of the European Union trade agreement with the United States in response to Donald Trump's new chaotic 15 % tariffs against the world. India is delaying its Washington trade visit this week based on Donald Trump imposing these new 15 % tariffs against the world and the chaos being imposed here.

3:03Ben Meiselas:In France, they summoned Charles Kushner, who's the ambassador to France. He's also Jared Kushner's father. He was also a convicted felon who Donald Trump pardoned back in 2020. And he's being summoned because he and the State Department are interfering with domestic affairs in France. and they are trying to say, oh, France better focus on its left-wing extremism. And France is like, let us deal with our internal issues and please be quiet. So Kushner has been summoned. Also, the people in Greenland are furious yet again at the Trump regime because they should be. Donald Trump continues to attack the sovereignty of Greenland like the despicable predator that he is Donald Trump's been posting these bizarre messages about sending hospital ships and hospital boats to save the people of Greenland.

4:01Ben Meiselas:And people are like, what are you talking about? We have universal health care in Greenland. We don't need your boats in any event. The boats that Donald Trump claims he's sending, the mercy and the comfort are currently undergoing long-term maintenance in Alabama. It should be noted the people in Greenland are also terrified because one of the things that they think this could be used as is a Trojan horse for an invasion of Greenland. And one of the reasons they think this is well, in addition to Donald Trump threatening to invade Greenland, is that a nuclear submarine just surfaced off the coast of Greenland because someone on the ship was dying and needed medical help.

4:41Ben Meiselas:And the people in Greenland saved this American who was on this submarine. But then it turned out that this submarine, a nuclear submarine, was on the coast of Greenland in the first place, which was not known to the Greenlandic people. And that nuclear submarine was there the same time the king of Denmark, Frederick X, was visiting Greenland. So Greenland saved a submariner who was off the coast of Greenland. And then Trump said, we're going to be sending our ships to save the people of Greenland who are dying in Greenland. People are like, what the hell are you even talking about? And then the Greenland people learned that the submarines were off the coast of their ship.

5:26Ben Meiselas:So what's Donald Trump doing in response to all of this? Well, he sent Jameson Greer, his trade representative, to make the rounds on various cable news networks and TV shows this weekend to do the Sunday shows. And here's what Jameson Greer said when he was confronted on ABCs this week with the fact that these tariffs are not popular. The American people hate it. And so your plan after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs against the world are now to impose new tariffs against the world by now invoking another law. I mean, previously you invoked IEPA, which you didn't have the right to by claiming that there is an emergency to regulate import and exports.

6:08Ben Meiselas:The Supreme Court said no way. Now, under this Trade Act of 1974, which really deals with currency manipulation, and it does not deal with anything that's relating to any conduct that's out there right now. I mean, it's nothing to do with trade deficits at all. It has to deal with payments. And when there's big kind of payment incongruity and catch catastrophes in payment systems going around the world is when you can invoke this thing. Anyway, here's what Jameson Greer has to say. Play this clip.

6:40Brett Meiselas:The 15 % tariffs, of course, will expire at the end of July. That's about three months before the midterms. So what does President Trump do at the end of that period with midterms looming that have to be on his mind? He comes out and extends it. He comes out and announces more. This is not popular with the American people. In our latest poll, two-thirds of Americans are not happy with the tariffs. Well, the president's been campaigning on tariffs and protecting American industry for many years. And he does what he says. He delivers on his promises. And so the policy hasn't changed. The legal tool to implement it, that might change, but the policy hasn't changed.

7:22Brett Meiselas:And so we're aiming for continuity. There's a 15 % tariff now. It's roughly equivalent to the types of tariffs that we had in place under IEPA. As this tool expires, I'm going to be conducting Section 301 investigations. the Commerce Department has existing tariffs under Section 232. A lot of tariffs are still in place. The reality is we want to maintain the policy we have, have as much continuity as possible, make sure that business understands this is the direction we've been going. We're going to

7:50Ben Meiselas:continue going. So then on CNN, you have Dana Bash asking the Commerce Secretary Besant, I'm sorry, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, a pretty good normal question. So the big question that American corporations and the American people want to know, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is will we be getting refunds? Will we be getting tariff refunds now? Because obviously that you stole our money. You taxed American companies, which were then passed on to the consumers. So we should be getting refunds, right? Here's what he says. Play this clip.

8:27Jordan Meiselas:Question. Will you refund the roughly$134 billion in revenue taken by these emergency tariffs?

8:36Brett Meiselas:Well, Dana, that's not the big question. Let's just level set here. What the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president's authority under the IEPA tariffs. We have other tariff authorities which have been functioning, Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs. And, Dana, when you say it's a big question, that's bad framing because the Supreme Court didn't even address that. The Supreme Court remanded it down to a lower court. And, you know, we will follow what they say, but that could be weeks or months when we hear them. So the Supreme Court did not address refunds.

9:14Jordan Meiselas:Sure. They didn't address refunds. That is clearly going to be up to you, which is why it is.

9:19Brett Meiselas:No, no, no, Dana, it is not up to me. Not you. Not you. It is not up to the administration. it is up to the lower court. Let's just be clear on that.

9:27Jordan Meiselas:Okay. Well, the Justice Department told a federal appeals court in this very case last year, if tariffs imposed on plaintiffs during these appeals are ultimately held unlawful, then the government will issue refunds to plaintiffs.

9:43Brett Meiselas:Again, I'm not going to get out ahead of the court. We will follow the court's direction. But as I said, that could be weeks or months away. That decision was not rendered on Friday.

9:52Ben Meiselas:And then this video has surfaced as well right here. So a guy who claimed to be named John Barron, Rupert posted this clip and sounded a lot like Donald Trump called into C-SPAN on Friday. Now, this clip surfacing now right after the Supreme Court ruling to complain. Now, we know that in the past, Donald Trump has used the name John Barron to pretend to be his own public relations person or his own spokesperson. And he gives statements saying that he's John Barron, Donald Trump's PR person. The undisputed fact is that Donald Trump, for a lot of his adult life, pretended to have a spokesperson named John Barron who would interact with the press.

10:37Ben Meiselas:That's a true story. So someone named John Barron, though, called in. I'll just play to C-SPAN to complain about the Supreme Court rule. I'll just play the clip for you here so you can hear it for yourself. Let's play this clip.

10:50Jordan Meiselas:John in Virginia, Republican. Let's hear from you.

10:54Brett Meiselas:well this is john baron and you have look you have this is the worst decision you ever have in your life practically jack and jack's going to agree with me right but this is a terrible decision and you have hakeem jeffries who he's a dope and you have chuck schumer who can't cook a cheeseburger of course these people are happy of course these people are happy but true americans will not be happy and you have the woman earlier i assume she's a woman she's a democrat but she said she's disgraced. She's devastated.

11:26Jordan Meiselas:All right, John, we'll go to Chester, who's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Democratic caller.

11:32Ben Meiselas:Oh, and by the way, if you want to know some additional information about Charles Kushner and who Charles Kushner is, well, he was convicted of multiple felonies and he was pardoned by Donald Trump as well. And one of the things that he did when his brother-in-law was testifying against him was Charles Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, his wife's brother, in order to set up the brother and blackmail him to not cooperate with the feds against Charles Kushner for tax evasion. And so Charles Kushner was eventually pled guilty to tax evasion and witness tampering. and the witness tampering involved his hiring a prostitute for his brother and not telling his brother to seduce his brother than to blackmail his brother.

12:22Ben Meiselas:And then Donald Trump pardoned Kushner in 2020. And then Kushner became the ambassador to France. That's called protecting the Epstein class right there, in my opinion. But by the way, one of the things that Jameson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, is saying, he says, no countries have said they will withdraw from tariff deals. Okay, well, we know that's like, that's just blatantly false. We know that the European Union is freezing the ratification of the deal. By the way, the deal hadn't even been ratified yet. Fake deal. And also, so maybe what you're saying, maybe what Jameson Greer means when he says no countries have said they will withdraw from the tariff deals is that there are actually no ratified deals that have actually been made.

13:07Ben Meiselas:It's just Donald Trump making social media posts, increasing or decreasing the tariff percentage, and then eventually the people who collect the levies are told what the numbers are, and businesses are left in this kind of chaotic state. But I also showed you that India is not coming to meet with the United States. So there's already ramifications from not just the Supreme Court ruling. I think that foreign countries like the certainty coming from that ruling that Trump's tariffs against the world are unlawful. But it's that Donald Trump invoked a new unlawful scheme, section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, in order to impose these tariffs against the world.

13:48Ben Meiselas:Take a look at this story right here. U.S. Trade Trade says no countries have said they will withdraw from tariff deals. Notice that no one on the left is covering this. There's a little bit of coverage from the center, but this is mostly being covered from the right because this is a lie, because this is blatant propaganda coming from Jameson Greer. We all know that other countries don't even have trade deals with the United States. They're just a tariff number. Anyway, I have to stay up to date on the news all the time, as you know, in order to do this podcast. And my biggest go-to news source is something called Ground News.

14:26Ben Meiselas:You know that, right? I love Ground News. It's a subscriber-funded app and news site, and every day they pull in thousands of articles from around the world and organize them by story and then show you what the right is reporting, what the center is reporting, what the left's reporting. It's a game changer because as active, responsible citizens, we must get our news from reliable sources in Trump's America. Being informed about the facts and media and media bias is the most important thing that you can do. But that's why I love ground news. For every article, they also tell you, did a media conglomerate put this news out or was it independent media?

14:59Ben Meiselas:And they also list the degree of factuality, which is interesting as there are a lot of news sources from media conglomerates that have mixed or low factuality. Independent media seems to have a higher factuality, but you get all of that with your ground news vantage subscription. I especially like their blind spot feed, which highlights stories that are disproportionately covered by one side of the political spectrum. Like the story I just shared with you about how a U.S. trade chief, Jamison Greer, says no countries have said they will withdraw from tariff deals, which is being covered almost all from right wing media.

15:32Ben Meiselas:when we know it's also all they like because that's the propaganda they feed to their audience. So join us now by going to ground.news.com to get 40 % off the Ground News Vantage plan that I use every morning. They are subscriber funded. By subscribing, you're not only getting a tool we all need today, you're also supporting our work here on the Midas Touch YouTube channel. So go to G-R-O-U-N-D dot news slash MTN and we pin the link to purchase your subscription below. Thanks, Ground News. Moving on to Steve Witkoff's comments about Iran. He made his rounds. I went on state regime media and Witkoff said, one of the things that we don't understand about Iran is with all of the ships that we have.

16:20Ben Meiselas:The fact that America now has 40 to 50 percent of the deployable U.S. air power in the world, basically off the coast of Iran right now. Why isn't Iran capitulating? This is what Whitcoff says. Why? Just capitulate to us. Don't you see all of the ships around? Why aren't you capitulating? This is Whitcoff's message. Here play this clip.

16:44Jordan Meiselas:I know that we have red lines here from the U.S. How about over with Iran?

16:48Brett Meiselas:The president asked me that this morning, and he's, I don't want to use the word frustrated. It's almost because he understands he's got plenty of alternatives. But it's curious. He's curious as to why they haven't, I don't want to use the word capitulated, but why they haven't capitulated. Why under this sort of pressure with the amount of sea power, naval power that we have over there, why they haven't come to us and said, we profess that we don't want a weapon. So here's what we're prepared to do. And yet it's hard to to sort of get them to that place.

17:23Ben Meiselas:Well, there's that. But I guess where I'm confused and maybe you're confused as well. Didn't Donald Trump say last June that he obliterated all of Iran's nuclear facilities, that it was totally and utterly obliterated and they were done? Isn't that what we were sold? Isn't that what we were told? Oh, are we lied to them the same way this regime lies to us about every damn thing? I think we were lied to. I think we were lied to. Or why didn't you go in if you said you were going to go into Iran, Donald? You told the protesters in Iran, get out there. We've got your back. And if Iran shoots at the protesters, we will make sure that we go in and save the protesters.

18:05Ben Meiselas:Well, Donald Trump's been using numbers. If you take Trump's numbers, Trump has said that about 30 ,000 Iranian protesters were massacred. We knew it was in the thousands, but the number I've heard Trump and officials use within the regime is could be as many as 30 ,000 protesters who were massacred by the Ayatollah. But Trump, you told them go out and protest. You said go and do it. You got their back. You got them massacred. And then you are now bragging that you saved 800 Iranians from being hung by the Ayatollah. And by the way, those people were probably hung. We haven't heard a lot of data, but I bet you if I had to guess, the people that Donald Trump said he saved from being hung 30 days ago got hung.

18:51Ben Meiselas:That's my guess, knowing the way he lies about everything. But it's hard to know for sure, given the media blackout that takes place in Iran and given that Donald Trump lies about everything. And then finally, you have J.D. Vance making his rounds. And J.D. Vance says that, you know, the thing about the left is that all we want to do with ICE is get the sex offenders. That's what we're trying to do. The reason why you've seen ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo doing all those things is because we're trying to stop sex offenders. That's what we care about in this Trump regime. OK, that's you think we're that stupid.

19:29Ben Meiselas:But this is what J.D. Vance says. Play this clip. It's really not that hard.

19:33Brett Meiselas:And it's a huge indictment of Jacob Fry and frankly, the entire far left that they made that their cause of the day, letting violent sex offenders stay on the streets of America. The president's just not going to go for that.

19:46Jordan Meiselas:Well, the irony doesn't end there, unfortunately, for the Democrats. They've now thrust us.

19:50Ben Meiselas:And as Aaron Reikland Melnick explains, sex offenders account for a grand total of 1.4 % of people arrested by ICE in the last year. And by the way, Obama and Biden and other administrations arrested far more sex offenders using ICE and Border Patrol, I guess as it was initially intended, or actually having deportations against the bad people than what ICE and Border Patrol is being used as now as a terroristic force. And let me be very clear, ICE and Border Patrol need to be abolished. Okay, I don't want to say, there's no reforming these entities. They are broken. They are terroristic. They are SS.