🚨Trump Loses It and Attacks Meidas over War Coverage

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2:23Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump is attacking the Midas Touch Network over our coverage of his disastrous war in Iran. He's also attacking the Midas Touch Network, then 24 hours of the Midas Touch Network winning podcast of the year for the news category in the iHeart Awards that just took place. And shout out to iHeart. We're grateful for that award. But Donald Trump and his regime kept on referring to us as dumbasses yesterday on social media. Not every day where you're called a dumbass by the White House, something I will tell my daughter when she's older. The White House called me a dumbass because I called out their unlawful war that has destroyed the United States of America.

3:15Ben Meiselas:Let me show you what went down. So we were exposing the hypocrisy of the White House. What else is new? They lie about everything where they were trying to say, of course, Iran poses a threat to the United States, an imminent threat. That's why we had to invade. So then we just showed a post of Caroline Levitt, Donald Trump's chief propagandist, when she previously wrote, to be clear, no such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did, to which we were called a dumbass by the official White House rapid response account. No such threat to our homeland of Iran launching a drone offensive on our West Coast dumbasses.

4:05Ben Meiselas:So let's just rewind and let me show you what happened and what we then said to the White House and Trump in response that has since gone mega viral. But first, this ultra-MAGA right-wing extremist by the name of Joe Kent, who has been serving as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He resigned from his position, objecting to Donald Trump's unlawful war in Iran. He said that this war is a war of choice, that Iran did not pose any imminent threat to the United States. essentially that it is a betrayal to the MAGA movement. And while this guy Joe Kent is certainly a right-wing extremist who has said and done some of the most heinous things that we've called out, he did previously serve in 11 combat tours.

5:03Ben Meiselas:He is a husband of his wife died in Syria in 2019, a gold star husband. And amongst the kind of far right MAGA's, they like this guy, even though we call him out. So him saying that Donald Trump betrayed the MAGA movement and him resigning his position. And he did it in a very kind of dramatic fashion. He's Tulsi Gabbard's number two. He told Tulsi he was going to resign. And Tulsi's like, wait, wait, wait, just speak to J.D. Vance. You got to go to the White House. So he went to the White House. He told J.D. Vance that he was going to resign, handed the resignation letter. Now he's, I think, going to be going on Tucker Carlson.

5:45Ben Meiselas:And so he posted his resignation, that it's a betrayal of MAGA. That post went mega viral, like over 75 million views on X, formerly Twitter, in a period of 24 hours. So in response, Caroline Levitt got all nervous. And so she responded to Joseph Kent saying that Iran did not pose an imminent threat, that we were dragged into this war by Netanyahu and Israel, and that this will be a catastrophe for the United States of America. So Caroline Levitt says in response to Joseph Kent, she goes, there are many false claims in this letter, but let me address one specifically, that Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.

6:28Ben Meiselas:This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over. As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first. The evidence was compiled from many sources and many factors. We're not going to tell you, but many sources and many factors. So we just responded to Caroline Leavitt with her own post. So, Caroline Leavitt, a week or so ago, posted the following with respect to a story by ABC that Iran was potentially going to attack the United States and potentially looking to attack the West Coast, California and LA, by the way, where I live.

7:13Ben Meiselas:Caroline Levitt previously wrote, this post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people. They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single unverified tip. The email even states the tip was based on unverified intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story. Why? To be clear, no such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did. So we just posted Caroline's message. So then Trump's rapid response White House team refer to us as dumbasses, and they go, no such threat to our homeland of Iran launching a drone offensive on our West Coast, dumbasses.

8:04Ben Meiselas:The nuclear threat of the psychotic, murderous Iranian regime is very real, however. Thank God we finally have a president who's doing something about it. So then we responded to Trump in his White House by saying, what nuclear threat? Dumbasses. And all we simply did with a mic drop moment was we posted a press release from the White House dated June 25th, 2025, where the White House posted, Iran's nuclear facilities have been obliterated and suggestions otherwise are fake news. So if you completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program on June 25th, 2025, you are now claiming the nuclear threat of the psychotic murderous Iranian regime is very real.

8:59Ben Meiselas:How could it be very real if you obliterated it back in June? This is the problem, Trump regime, when you literally lie about every single thing. Also, it should be noted that the Trump regime then went on to attack Joe Kent throughout the entire day. And they said that, oh, Joe Kent is a leaker and he's disloyal and he's a bad guy and he's someone, he's the, he's now a liberal. What are you talking about? But it just goes to show Joe Kent, this is what happened when you call out the cult. And if you're MAGA, that means you have to cover up child sex trafficking rings now. MAGA equals you're the Epstein class, right?

9:45Ben Meiselas:Trump says you're not MAGA if you, you could do all the things that Marjorie Taylor Greene did, but you're not MAGA if you say stop the child sex trafficking cover up. if you're totally MAGA with all of their crazy extremist delusional and deranged things, but you go, yeah, but doing this war in Iran, where now the Strait of Hormuz is blocked and America's economy is cratering and we've lost the lives of 13 service members and Donald Trump is out there like campaigning off of it, 200 seriously injured. There's this never ending war. Oh, you call that out. You're not MAGA, you're exiled. And that's what Joe Kent is seeing.

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11:43Ben Meiselas:For a limited time, Home Chef is offering my listeners 50 % off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life. Go to homechef.com slash Midas. That's homechef.com slash Midas for 50 % off your first box and free dessert for life. Homechef.com slash Midas must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. There's been time over time this Trump regime has been attacking the Midas Touch Network. As you know, state regime media, which calls itself Fox, frequently attacking the Midas Touch Network. One of our hosts, Aaron Parnas, very early on in the Trump regime was threatened with arrest by the Trump regime because he was reporting on where ICE raids were taking place, like not this past February, the February of 2025, when the ICE surge just started to begin.

12:37Ben Meiselas:Again, we've had hosts like Katie Fang get attacked and the Midas Touch Network has been attacked. Remember when the Midas Touch Network broke the story about how the military was going to be doing those tests on or around last October, where they were going to be shooting live ammunition over the highway? Remember Midas Touch Network broke that story. Then we broke the story. First, we said we believe that with these live munitions that they're firing over the highways, that it could result in some of the shrapnel falling into the highway. Then we reported when the shrapnel was in the highway.

13:16Ben Meiselas:Then everybody was like, oh, that's such irresponsible reporting. You don't know what you're talking about. And even like corporate news was attacking us, right? No, we had all the facts right. We told you all when the live munitions test was going to be taking place. They used these M795 high explosive rounds that were detonated. And now the Defense Department issued a report. Military report is saying that it is a one in a million live fire malfunction that rained shrapnel on the California highway. So we went from being completely attacked, whatever that was, last October or before then, on this to you got it right.

14:01Ben Meiselas:And now it's a 666-page report, odd number, by the way, saying this was a one-in-a-million situation when we were calling it out from the outset. But we were calling out what was going to happen in this trade-in for moves. We were calling out what's going to happen when you tariff against the world. Why? Because when you follow, it's not because we're prescient and we predict the future. We're just listening to what the experts are saying, what the scientists are saying, what the facts are saying right in front of us. And look, folks, I'm just going to say this. This Trump regime has all of MAGA livid right now about this unlawful war, about the coverup of the Epstein files.

14:42Ben Meiselas:Trump's popularity, which was already at historic lows, continues to plummet. Did you see this, right here. Pennsylvania voters who voted three times for Trump. Here's what they had to say. Play this clip. If you could say something to President Trump, he was going to hear you right now. What would it be? You are a worthless pile of. And you voted for him. How many times? Three times. That was my bad. Apparently, I'm an idiot. What about these right wing conservative influencers who are like, I've been loyal to Trump for so long. Not anymore. here. Play this clip. I've been a loyal supporter of the president for almost 20 years.

15:19This goes back to when I was 21 years old and I was Miss California at the Miss USA pageant. And I've known him. I consider him a dear friend. And I will tell you right now, I do not recognize our president. And MAGA, let me tell you right now, MAGA is dead. It is deader than dead. And Americans are furious. We do not recognize President Donald J. Trump anymore.

15:42Ben Meiselas:People just livid about uh the rising gas prices listen to what this trucker had to say play this clip at least once every day if i'm on e it's about 207 every day right now uh yeah it's pretty crazy i went from 140 a day to 207 a day or the rise in grocery prices here at play this clip we bought stuff for a stew and some snacks and a plant 150 it keeps going up and up and up um people on on lower end pay, they're hurting. This is the new normal. I think everything is more expensive now, and it sucks. I don't really know what else there is. I think one thing I want to share with you as well, though, is that Donald Trump, I just want to show you the sentiment out there.

16:28And it's very difficult for me to,

16:33Ben Meiselas:people who vote for Trump three times, for me to fully understand how you could do that when there's so many glaring warning signs. But I do recognize that it is important that, you know, you provide at least some off ramp, I guess, for people who, whatever. But what we're going to do here at the Midas Touch Network is not chase those people at all. We're just going to report on the facts each and every day. And if the Trump regime wants to threaten, harass us, call us dumbasses or whatever, so be it, okay? we're going to report the facts and we're going to report on them relentlessly and fearlessly.

17:14Ben Meiselas:By the way, that's what the speech was that we gave when we won the iHeart Award for the best news podcast of the year. And I don't think it's coincidental that after winning that award, the Trump regime has been attacking us. Here was the speech that we gave when we won iHeart podcast, news podcast of the year. And I want to give a shout out to all the Midas Mighty for supporting us. And just take a watch of this here. Play this clip right here. Wow, this is crazy. We are so humbled to win. But most importantly, we are grateful that we beat Megyn Kelly. I think that was a... If I went home, if we went home to our wives and said we lost to Megyn Kelly, that door would be...

18:01Ben Meiselas:And I want to thank our wives as well because we quit our real jobs to become podcasters. And it was hard to believe in that dream right away when we had two people listening to us or three people listening to us. And those were our three wives at the time and perhaps our parents, but I can't confirm whether or not the parents were actually listening. But we grew this news network now, what's the latest? Nine billion views in the past two years on YouTube. And I think the reason that this is connecting is because we're not both sidesing the issues. When we see injustice, we're calling it out with moral clarity.

18:43Ben Meiselas:We're not afraid to call out fascism when we see it. When we see ICE and Border Patrol on our streets killing our people, we call it out. When we see injustices happening internationally, we call it out. we're not afraid we approach this with a fearlessness and we are inspired by all of you by this community and right now more than ever we need courage we need to stick together we need to fight for democracy and we all need to lean on each other during these times democracy will prevail the truth will prevail and if three brothers from long island can be standing on the stage beating Megyn Kelly.

19:35Ben Meiselas:And everybody should pick up a microphone and do the same. So you have that versus like, what was Donald Trump talking about in the past 24 hours? He keeps referring to his war in Iran as a little excursion. He goes, I was like to Susie Wiles, my chief of staff, things are going so good in this country. Can we take an excursion right now? Let's do an Iran excursion. And Susie Wiles, my chief of staff, is like, do it, do it. Go do a war. Let's play this clip. Doing better. We had to do a little excursion, if you don't mind. A little excursion to take care of nuclear weaponry in the hands of maniacs.

20:08But other than that, in a couple of weeks, and won't be much longer, it's moving along fast. We're way ahead of schedule. Did you know that, Mr. Speaker?

20:16Ben Meiselas:Or Donald Trump was like speaking yesterday. He was with the Taoiseach, was like the prime minister of ireland and donald trump kept on saying like how handsome men were in the audience like you're really handsome you're a fine physical specimen it's really weird your play this clip name for the irish american warrior who president grant called the finest specimen of physical manhood i've ever looked upon we didn't know that about president grant i think we just learned something but i could say that about your sons okay kelly i could say that about your sons One's a boxing champion. They're like champions.

20:54Who would think from this one? It's got to be from that.

21:00Well, I didn't know about your Italian roots either. I thought he was a super wasp, you know, to me.

21:07Ben Meiselas:Then you have Kevin Hassett, Donald Trump's national economic advisor, who is out there saying, look, if this war continues to be extended, it's not really going to impact the American economy. It's just going to hurt consumers. and who really gives a crap about consumers? Nobody cares about consumers right now. Here, play this clip. But the fact is that the US economy is fundamentally sound and that if it were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the US economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers. And we'd have to think about, if that continued, what we would have to do about that.

21:42But that's like really the last of our concerns right now, because we're very confident

21:45Ben Meiselas:that this thing is going ahead of schedule. Nobody cares about consumers. What in the world are you talking about? And finally, I just want to share this with you as well, because I think one of the things that are being missed when we talk about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well, is that it's not just the oil, it's not just the crude that's stuck, right? And it's not just creating this oil shock. These ships carry things like helium, aluminum food, fertilizer, and that supply chain just destroyed right now. Destroyed right now. Watch as they describe what's going down on CNN. Let's play.

22:25Ben Meiselas:I mean, the Strait of Hormuz, as we've been talking about, is locked down. About 20 % of the world's oil comes through there, but that's not the only thing. Other ships that don't carry oil but carry other products are also stuck in the Persian Gulf, and they carry things like helium, aluminum. They carry food. They carry fertilizer, which is a key ingredient for food. Food prices could start to surge as well. And one of the other things is natural gas. And remember, our electricity runs on natural gas. One of the big power sucks is AI right now, and natural gas powers that. So all of that could compound and make prices a lot more expensive.

23:09Ben Meiselas:All right, Trump regime, you want to attack us, attack us. We'll just pop, pop, pop. Fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. Just hit you with the facts every day. That's what we're going to do here. Really an honor to win that iHeart Award. I guess really an honor for Donald Trump to call us dumbasses. Another day. Keep reporting. Keep fighting back for democracy. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million. Thanks for watching, y 'all.

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