Tuesday Afternoon Breaking News Updates with Ben - 5/5/26

26:19Ben Meiselas:And all the markets would be up significantly right now, even though that's not a metric of the success of people. I also think if Trump did nothing, we would see a lot more manufacturing jobs created, a lot more people doing better outside. Both the market that really isn't accessible to a lot of people, though some people's 401ks are in there, and the market that people feel would both be doing better if Trump just stayed out, just went golfing and did nothing. But in Trump's mind, markets aren't like tanking and that's how he sees everything. So I'll just keep the blockade and I won't have to make a decision as a leader.

26:56Ben Meiselas:I won't get Netanyahu angry at me or UAE angry at me or Saudi angry at me. And then something catastrophic will happen eventually, right? It's bound to. It's bound to because you can't, this is unsustainable, unsustainable. So then when it's catastrophic, I'll just pull a Trump. I'll blame you and you and you. I'll blame this one, that one, and that one. And I'll blame the Democrats. Look, they control the house. They control it. That's what this is about. And if he didn't have these entanglements, that wouldn't be the case. All right. We're going to take our first quick break of the show. Reminder, hit subscribe.

27:31Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Subscribe to the Midas Touch podcast on audio as well. become a member, get access to those emojis. Let's take our first quick break. We only have one quick break. So quick break of the show. We'll be right back. Ever wake up sweaty, freezing, or just uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That's why I switched to Miracle Made Sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver infused temperature regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. Here's the thing. Thanks to their antibacterial silver technology, Miracle Made Sheets stay cleaner and fresher up to three times longer than regular sheets.

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30:28Your body does so much for you. Let's do something for it. That's D-O-S-E-D-A-I-L-Y.co slash Midas, M-E-I-D-A-S for 35 % off your first month subscription. Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Micellis, and this is your Breaking News.

30:51Ben Meiselas:Let's get into some additional details. I referenced this before as well. A lot of this catastrophic in a lawful war is distraction, distraction from the grift, distraction from all of the, my opinion, theft of the American taxpayer and the American people that Trump and his regime are engaging. I did a report on this earlier this morning, but while while everybody's distracted by this, that, and the other, you have Palm Beach changing the name of its airport to the Trump Palm Beach International Airport, but it wasn't sufficient for Donald Trump to plaster his name, which never happens for a living person who's currently president to put their name on an airport while they're alive.

31:46Ben Meiselas:That's an unheard of thing, but it's not just enough for him to have the airport named after him. He then has to create a holdco that holds this new IP called the Donald Trump International Airport. And then the airport in perpetuity has to buy all of its merch and has to enter into a licensing deal with the Trump organization to pay the Trump organization to use the Trump name, image, and likeness. So it's a constant stream of money in the future. And ultimately, where do public airports get a lot of its money from taxpayers? And so in my view, it's an honorific that's usually in most circumstances given to people who are dead because living presidents don't plaster their names on things.

32:39Ben Meiselas:They should be focused on affordability, helping people who are alive right now. But then he does this hold co-structure. So you've got that. You've got him lying to the American people and saying not a single taxpayer dollar is going to go to the ballroom. Well, East Wing modernization and the latest appropriations reconciliation bill that just came out has$1 billion. $1 billion for East Wing modernization. What the hell is going on there? then you have his now infatuation on the golf course, right? It's the reflecting pool and the triumphal arches and the golden ballrooms. And now back in December, he sees the public golf courses.

33:23Ben Meiselas:There's lots of public land. There's running trails and baseball fields and all these things in this area also. And if you've ever been to DC, are these golf courses like the most beautiful, and I'm not really a golfer. So take what I say with a grain of salt. I don't think I've golfed for like a very long time. I go to the driving range occasionally. I could be a dangerous driver from time to time, but I don't know where I would even have time to go golfing, as you know. But any event, when I was in DC and I went to GW undergrad in Georgetown, I played in those courses. They weren't like the greatest courses, but I would go with my friends and it's fine.

34:00Ben Meiselas:It was nice. It was open to the public. It's a public thing. No one ever said, man, you know what I I hate about DC. Damn, those public golf courses. And so they're seizing those courses. They've also used the courses to move, it's all kind of related, to move some of the material from the East Wing, some of this asbestos, in my opinion, it was when all of this asbestos was used in a lot of construction when the East Wing was originally built. You have all of this like, you know, carcinogenic metal. They buried it by these golf courses. And so the White House East Wing debris dumped at nearby golf courses has these toxic metals in it.

34:44Like you can literally see these big mounds that has these, you know, that has these, you know, in my view, like real serious carcinogens, you know. But Trump's broader plan now is to turn these like golf courses into, you know, into Trump golf courses. And nobody wants any of this stuff. Really, people just want to have health care. People just want to be able to afford housing and to have jobs that pay themselves with, you know, where they could be paid with dignity. And they don't have to, if they're working 40 hours a week, you know, or even less, they shouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck.

35:24It's a lot of time to be working out in a job, you know, and people do that and they can't afford a house. That's crazy. And he's out there talking about this golden ballroom, that thing, the other thing, putting his face on the dollar. bill, a hundred dollar bill and this, that, and the other. I think people are livid and they are

35:48Ben Meiselas:absolutely losing it. Now, what else is going on? What else are the major distractions right now? I mean, the Epstein files, right? The Epstein files. And right now, Trump, Comer, Maga Mike, Bondi, DOJ, Blanche, they're not going to allow Bondi to have her deposition taken. On May 29th, it's just going to be a transcribed interview, not under oath. They don't even want to allow it to be videotaped. And Democrats are like, come on, you have to have it videotaped. But Democrats, because they don't control the oversight committee, they can't choose, they can't even force it right now that there be an actual under oath deposition.

36:38Ben Meiselas:The Democrats don't have the subpoena power. So what Comer said is, well, we'll accommodate Bondi first with a transcribed interview. No one wants a transcribed interview of Bondi where she can lie. We want her under oath. Frankly, we want a hearing. But isn't it notable that Jack Smith wanted a public hearing and the MAGA Republicans like, no, no, no, no, no, no public hearing for you. Hunter Biden wanted a public hearing. Let's do it in public. No, no, no, no, no, no, no public hearing. No public hearing for you. Okay. Bondi, who does all the state regime media appearances, right? Kristi Noem, who would do all the state regime media appearances.

37:24Notice they never want to sit

37:27Ben Meiselas:for a hearing. They never want to go under oath. They never want to actually have to answer in formats that make them accountable. Think about Trump when he files lawsuits. He never wants to sit for a deposition. He never wants to do discovery. He just wants the headline. His same view about war. He wants the headline, quick, easy, get the headline, look, blockade, epic fury. But then you got to do the thing. Leadership is not just making an announcement. it's doing the damn thing and then concluding the damn thing and then holding yourself accountable for the journey from beginning middle and end for trump it's beginning beginning beginning beginning and then the middle and the end are the failures but then it's lots of beginnings of in my opinion fraudulent stuff and then the endings are all you know when when things hit the fan he then blames people for all of these things.

38:29I just think it's on a bipartisan basis, an outrage. Bondi's not sitting for a deposition. So anybody who goes, oh, well, May 29th, do you remember when Democrats said, we are going to file a contempt motion against Bondi? And then Comer was like, oh, more of Garcia being dramatic, more of Garcia being dramatic. That's Comer's line about Garcia. He's a drama queen.

38:58Ben Meiselas:He's a drama queen. And that's kind of his dog whistle because Garcia is gay. That's why Comer's being drama. Way too much drama over here. He's not being dramatic. There's a cover-up of a child sex trafficking ring taking place right now. That's what's happening. And Bondi's at the center of it. And you said the Democrats are being drama queens are being dramatic because they want Bondi under oath. And you said, we're going to make her available for a deposition. It's May 29th. And now you've said, nope, it's actually not a depo. It's a transcribed interview. Oh, and by the way, one of the top DOJ officials, Armie Dillon, who is the number two or three at the DOJ, who may become the next attorney general, by the way, she's going to be representing Bondi, not as a top DOJ official, but in her personal capacity as a private lawyer.

39:53Well, wait a minute. DOJ lawyers aren't allowed to do that. Their loyalty has to be to the DOJ. You can't represent people in proceedings. That would be if it was a proceeding. This is an informal transcribed interview, not a proceeding. Gotcha. Go back to how I started this episode. Operation Epic Fury isn't going on. There's no operation. This is Project Freedom, where we have to open up the straight up removes. That's the objective. Epic Fury, well done. We're not doing anything with Epic Fury. What are you talking about? What does that even mean? And that's everything that the Trump regime does about everything.

40:34Well, there's an appointment clause. So you need to appoint United States attorneys, the top federal prosecutors. We don't need to do that. We'll just make the first assistant deputy, we'll give them the same responsibilities as the United States Attorney. So we'll have an acting United States Attorney, their term will expire. And rather than actually go through the appointments clause, we'll then make them the first assistant deputy, and they'll serve in that capacity, but basically do the job as the acting United States Attorney, even though the statute requires that we have a confirmation and it goes through the appointments.

41:15It's like, well, you violated the appointment. We didn't violate the appointment clause. Just look, they're not the United States attorney on an acting. They're the first assistant deputy. Everything they do is that. The problem, when I teach constitutional law at law school, one of the things that I think we marvel at with our constitution is not long. When I teach about collective bargaining agreements and labor law, collective bargaining agreements are really long documents.

41:44Ben Meiselas:They could be like 1 ,000-plus pages. They're really, really, really long documents that detail everything. If you look at an NFL CBA or an NBA CBA, every possible thing that can happen is, or in general, usually contracted for in a CBA, this massive document. The Constitution, I'll go try to do a word count of it, but look at the First Amendment. It's like a sentence or two, right? You look at the Second Amendment. It's like a sentence. It's a little bit of a run-on sentence, but it's a sentence. I mean, you look at all these amendments. You look at the Constitution. You know, they're kind of these broad pronouncements that rely upon a contract principle called good faith and fair dealing.

42:30It requires good faith, norms, principles, good faith that you can have this grand contract, the United States Constitution, with these broad pronouncements and they're followed and complied with. And, you know, that's why our constitution for a long period of time was kind of viewed by other countries as saying, well, how does it even work? You don't even lay out all of these issues, yet you can have disagreements and you generally follow this document.

43:02Ben Meiselas:And, you know, and you and the president doesn't often, you know, there'll be times where the president oversteps, but like, you know, and generally they respect their lane and there's an article one lane and an article three lane. Then when a court makes a decision, you respect the decision and they're not whining and, you know, you don't have a look, Donald Trump didn't invent the election is rigged. That's, you know, that's authoritarian baby behavior since the beginning of mankind or person kind. Well, you know, I should have won. Me, me, me. Look at me, look at me. That's not new behavior.

43:36What was novel about the United States, and not to say the US was the only one who did this.

43:40Ben Meiselas:I mean, you know, the enlightened philosophies of the 18th century, early 18th century extending on was adopted in lots of constitutions that we saw across Europe and elsewhere. And it became a model and a template for the rest of the world. But people looked, you know, American law professors would take trips abroad, delegations to teach. How do you guys do this? How do you do it? And so now to see this perverted Orban Putin style, you know, piece of shit here, you know, excuse my language, but it just makes me livid. It makes me angry. You know, to see that behavior here, I don't view it as a Democrat or Republican or independent thing.

44:20Ben Meiselas:I just view it as a rule of law, as a law and order thing right now. And Trump in the past never was like a negotiator. He was always someone who used negotiations to sucker punch. He lures you in under the pretext of good faith negotiations and punches you in the back of the face. By the way, it's what he did to Iran twice. Back last June, this past February, we're in negotiations. I kind of, you know, bring you in, bring you in. Boom. That's when you get hit, when your back his turn when you don't expect it. Sucker puncher. He's a sucker puncher. That's what he is. That's what he is. And he tries to get you when you try to appease him or when you think you're in some sort of good faith negotiation.

45:06So he's someone his whole life who ripped apart contracts. And that's what he's doing with the Constitution. It's really not all that complicated. And so all of these things, they think they're smarter than anybody. Oh, here's the workaround. Here's the workaround. Here's the workaround. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we're not going to follow this. We'll just basically say, ah, you know, it's not Apparition Epic Fury, so we don't need war powers. It's Project Freedom, defensive, humanitarian. Okay, but what's the long-term impact of all of this? And here's the important point that I want us all to remember, though.

45:38The moment the Democrats take power, all of the crap that Donald Trump has, you know, left the United States with and the world with, they're going to be like, oh, his plan was perfect. It was going to plan. But then the Democrats took over and now we see the surging inflation and now we see the this and now we see this. That wasn't happening here. I mean, the guy's manipulating the markets every day. He's artificially suppressing what really should be happening to our economy right now.

46:09Ben Meiselas:He's broken the bonds of American alliances. He's destroyed America's in the world. And that's not going to be repaired after he leaves. And so his sycophants will say, but look, he had this plan. He had this vision. No, what he's putting the country in the direction right now is something so deeply dangerous. And I just think we have to get in front of it and call it out. And who's ever the president in the future, you can't, to me, the big problem with Biden was not his ideas. I think it was, you know, his age made him a less effective communicator in a 2021, in a post-Trump world. The level of communication when right-wing floods the zone with crap, you have to flood it back with truth and you have to do it right away.

47:06Ben Meiselas:and you have to really flood the zone and you kind of have to be everywhere all at once. And you have to have, you know, separate social media accounts that do the mockery. You have to have your official accounts that do your kind of official speeches. You have to go out there and you have to give the speeches every day. You have to be with the people all of the time. You have to do all of that, you know, right now. And, you know, I think as you looked at the last year or so of the Biden administration, when inflation was heading down to 2%, when you looked at the job creation record, which set records, I mean, there were quite literally the most jobs created under Biden than anybody, you know, out there.

47:50Ben Meiselas:when you looked at his reduction of insulin and as he brought the semiconductor industry back to the United States, as you had a manufacturing boom, don't take my word for it. I mean, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, others said America's economy by the end of the Biden administration was the Goldilocks economy, that it was the envy of the world at the end, not to say at the beginning. I mean, inflation was very high. Gas prices were very high. You know, and a lot of the shock took place in a post-COVID world where all of a sudden in this right-wing flood-the-zone culture that's taking place, you know, people were like moved on very quickly to the idea that Donald Trump told you nine months before he was out of office like a miracle COVID was going to go away.

48:37It was never going to hit our shores and everybody was going to be fine and things were going to be perfect. And just inject yourself with bleach in two weeks. He's going to have a health care plan and this is going to happen then. And this is going to happen. I mean, Trump lost jobs. And then it's like, well, if COVID didn't happen, we would have been fine. COVID happened. What do you mean if it didn't happen? You get a mulligan. You pretend that I never even like what stand you get graded on. You get graded on like a baby curve. No, you were in office. What are we talking about? you know, what are we saying?

49:09Ben Meiselas:You know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, whether it's, you know, look, George W. Bush, it would have been a great presidency if it wasn't for Afghanistan and Iraq and the financial crisis and subprime mortgages. You're going to blame him for Lehman Brothers and subprime mortgage? What did he do? What are you talking about? It would have been great. If you just judge him by his second year response when it was just going after the Taliban and his approval ratings were like, what was Bush's approval ratings? Right after 9-11, like 80 % or something. It was like one time it was super high and then it flopped to record lows.

49:53Ben Meiselas:Just judge. Why do we judge this guy by some bizarre curve where, or this entire MAGA movement, going back to where I started this episode, where Rubio speaks in a sentence that's coherent. And I have people like, I'd feel good if, you know, all things considered, you know, Rubio is someone intelligent guy. What are we talking? Rubio was the guy a few years back who worked on a bipartisan basis to say the president couldn't pull out of NATO without two-thirds of the Senate. And now Rubio is the guy that says, basically, America needs to get out of NATO. So I'm not going to give Rubio applause because as a Secretary of State, he speaks in sentences.

50:43Folks, Secretary of State, it's an august position. They should be the brightest of the bright, smart, sharp, encyclopedic. They should know who all the world leaders are, the capital of every country, the unique dynamics. If there are different ethnic groups in each country at a very macro and micro and sub micro level, you should know all of that as secretaries. That shouldn't be like, whoa, the guy did a decent press conference. Wow. Wow, what are we doing? The Overton window has shifted to such a degree where this is something that we see in authoritarian countries where people just accept breadcrumbs and they say, thank you, thank you, thank you.

51:32We cannot be in that mindset where you just accept that government

51:37Ben Meiselas:is a utter failure and that leadership doesn't exist and that this is just a battle of bombastic personalities puffing and creating drama in a election that's driven by reality show theatrics. That's not what the system is. We should be asking, what are these candidates going to deliver for us? What are they doing? How is my life impacted by this? Forget your team, Democrat, Republican, Independent. You should be team yourself, your family, your community, your state or nation, your world. You should be on team. Are lives getting better? And are these people making my lives better? And where they are and that aligns with you, then support them.

52:33Ben Meiselas:And if it doesn't, I don't care what political party they are, but stop everybody falling for these con artists and these people who it's me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, who just constantly lie over and over again, you know, and they do it in different ways. I mean, you saw, you know, I showed you some of those clips of Rubio at the outset and Rubio in his own way, you know, you know, he has his own shtick, but that's not presidential. That's not presidential. Dude was up there lying and saying Operation Epic Fury is done. And now we're in Operation Project Freedom and it's a separate operation.

53:08And the goal is to open up the strait and then everything's going to be great. And the ceasefires, that ceasefire is this thing. We're in a humanitarian mission now. Come on. Come on.

53:18Ben Meiselas:Meanwhile, we saw what happened over the past 24 to 48 hours. Port of Fujaira and UAE was hit. A South Korean ship was hit. A UAE ship was hit. Currently right now there's UAE air defenses being activated. As Donald Trump threatens Iran, Iran is responding, believing that Trump's escalatory ambiguity is unacceptable. And Trump and everybody's out there pumping up this market, manipulating this market that most Americans don't feel. And they do it. It's the same shtick. They got like Barack Ravid. The guy's got a Trump bobble. Did you see this? This Axios guy. I saw somebody post. He's got a Trump bobblehead behind him, this guy.

54:05And then you see at night, in the morning, right before the markets close, right before the markets open, Axios, Barack Ravid, he's got a new scoop. Several sources are telling him that Pakistan feels very, very, very confident that this time negotiations are super serial and everyone's going to do great. That's what Pakistan is saying. American officials say that the latest Iranian proposal is actually making significant progress and Iran is willing to make some concessions that they weren't before. And the prospect of a deal seems to be, I mean, it's the same crap.

54:43Ben Meiselas:And I see the oil futures fall, then I see the market rise, and then the information sits in, and then it goes down and up and down. It's the same pattern, okay? And corporate news is like, corporate news than just buys it hook, line, and sinker. It's wild, wild concept. Anyway, that's why we have the Midas Dutch Network. That's why we get out this information. That's why we say it's not normal when Donald Trump brags about cognitive exams or when Donald Trump held a press conference with kids this morning and started talking about Hussein Obama and told a little girl that she's not going to be a volleyball player or he started doing his weird dance in front of them.

55:26And I point out, look, this regime's covering up, in my opinion, a child sex trafficking in the Epstein files. There shouldn't be children anywhere near these people. Donald Trump was found civilly liable for sexual assault. There shouldn't be children near this guy. Why doesn't anybody... I appreciate other people, independent media colleagues say it. Why is anyone saying that? Dude, this is a guy found civilly liable for sexual assault who's on audio saying he grabs women by their genitals because when you're rich, you get away with them. Then he told high school students at a young Republican club that he calls a locker room talking that makes him courageous.

55:58Like no one wants to, and now you're putting this guy with little children? How's going on here? I don't, and I, by the way, I don't think I'm being courageous for even saying these things. I just think I'm saying the thing.

56:09Ben Meiselas:That's like reality. Anyway, that's all I got for you today. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Keep checking back the Midas Touch YouTube channel. We have updates throughout the day. We're grateful for you as always. Tell other people about this channel. Subscribe on audio. We'll see you next time on Ben on Breaking News. Appreciate you all. Make sure you hit subscribe. Shout out Midas Mighty. We're grateful for you. Have a good one, everybody. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.

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