Tuesday Afternoon Breaking News Updates with Ben - 6/16/2026

23:49Ben Meiselas:I mean, just I think we, the people can understand like we're not stupid. We're not stupid. it. I mean, maybe some people are, not us. I mean, the people who were clapping when the UFC fighter said Michelle Obama's a man, I don't know how to ever get in touch with those. I'm not fully sure how to ever interact with those people validly. And I'm not trying to be like a party pooper, right? I'm not trying to be like, let's not have fun or UFC sucks. No, I mean, personally, I don't like UFC. I like football or in the United States, we call it soccer. I'm a big Nick fan. I like boxing. I like running.

24:33Ben Meiselas:I played sports in high school. And I don't think personally, like broing out to me ever meant like attacking marginalized groups and like mocking and being racist and mocking transgender people or marginalized communities that to me, to me, you could like, like if, if we want to be like dudes and bro out and do that, like we, we, I'm not, I'm not trying to like, like act like you, you know, you shouldn't do that or whatever. Just, just don't bully marginalized communities. Don't be racist assholes. Don't that's, that's not a, that's not funny when you see stuff like that, call it out. I don't know the way I was raised, you know, the bully wasn't the, you know, it's the bully wasn't the cool person, you know, you, you, you, you needed to, when I was president of my high school, you know, I would stand up for people in my school.

25:29Ben Meiselas:I wouldn't be, I wouldn't want to use my position even when I was student government president of high school to like denigrate and bully people. That wasn't what leadership was. And it was very basic to me in high school. And so I think one of the consequences of this Trump and this kind of weird MAGA movement is that, but one of the projects that I've dedicated my life to, among others, is to try to push back on that. Sorry that I digress right there. But I want us to be able to handle the facts. To me, Prime Minister Carney has been dealt a very difficult hand in Canada. He has to deal with with American war against Canada.

26:15Ben Meiselas:And Canada for decades built a dependence on the United States. It wasn't Carney's fault, but it was a view that the United States and Canada were inseparable, you know, and were close. And Trump changed that equation. Canada had a dependency on the US. That dynamic changed. Carney has to change it up. But Carney tells the people what the dynamics are. He sets a vision. He explains the problems. And he says, you know, we could always be at the, we could always have our sovereignty attacked by the United States and we could always be dependent in a bad way, or we can try to take control of our destiny and help unite the mid powers, Canada, European Union, others, and form a stronger alliance and stand up and be a major power.

27:13Ben Meiselas:And he levels with the people. He talks to the people that way. And Trump just lies. And as we'll talk about in the second half of the show, Trump's approach is just paint it blue. Just dress it up. Just say$30 trillion was brought in when we didn't bring in$30 trillion, dollars, right? Just say like a miracle, it's all going to go away. Just say regime change. Just say when that's not actually what's happening. Then Trump also claims that Qatar and Iran share a land border and that you can walk from one to the other. Here's what he says. Let's play it. Any money in Iran. Working with Qatar and the people of Qatar was really a pleasure.

27:56They were tough they were strong you know they are the closest to iran physically so with other countries i noticed i had to travel about 45 minutes to get there with you you could walk right across the border so you were in a more dangerous position yeah you can just so everybody can see let's look at a map let's look at a map look where iran is look where qatar is look where the strait of Hormuzes, you see that if you wanted to walk from Iran to Qatar, you'd have to go through Iraq, Saudi Arabia, maybe Kuwait, maybe Bahrain, but you'd have to at least cross two or three borders to get there.

28:43Or you can cross the Persian Gulf. But we need a president who understands basic geography, right? Like, I don't think that's asking too much.

28:54Ben Meiselas:I mean, if you accept a 747 jet from a country, from the person who's sitting right there, at the very least, you can know maybe where the country is located on a map. And, you know, call me old fashioned, but I remember the days where if you spelled potato wrong, right, Dan Quayle, that was the end of your political career. How do you not know how to spell? And, you know, maybe it's a tricky spelling. You know, Maybe there are a lot of Americans who don't know where Qatar is on a map. I don't begrudge you. I don't begrudge you. But I do want the president of the United States, who's entering into memorandums of understanding, to understand at the most basic level where the countries are located.

29:42Ben Meiselas:Remember that. Remember where in debates, those were major issues also and major points of discussion. But here he is after saying that attacking Obama. Here he is saying Obama sold out Israel. Obama sold out Israel. Here, let's play this clip. Barack Hussein Obama sold out Israel for Iran. He went to Iran. He sold them out. how anybody can vote for this guy or the party, the Democrats, I call them, because they're dumb. They're dumb people. There's no internal consistency here as well, because let me see if we have, let me see if I have this clip right here. I'll show you after the break. But, you know, So you have Donald Trump, currently his approval in Israel went from plus 24 to net negative 24, basically overnight.

30:44And Donald Trump wouldn't show Israel the memorandum of understanding.

30:51Ben Meiselas:And Donald Trump in this press conference calls out Israel for their bombings in Beirut. which by the way, when Trump is saying those things, I agree with. I don't agree with all the other stuff he's saying, but when he was saying that Israel bombing, let me be very clear. Trump aided and abetted this in the first place. And I think when you listen to Trump's words, he then kind of says, and they weren't able to finish the job quickly. So to me, what Trump seemed more concerned about were the optics versus the genocide and that he would have been OK if Israel took care of it quickly, meaning done the genocide quicker as they have in Gaza, in Lebanon.

31:51But I do, you know, when Trump's out there not showing the MOU to Israel, I am like, good, why would you show them?

31:58Ben Meiselas:Why would you go into this catastrophic war with them, you know, in the first place? And when he at least called out Beirut, I said, you should have been saying that a very long time ago. I guess why I'm sharing this is that the coverage is complex because then Trump will do that. And then he seems over there. And this is where he's so discombobulated. And by the way, that was a term that Trump used when posting these weird AI images, discombobulated, because I think his head is discombobulated. It's just an interesting word to say. But then he attacked Obama for standing up to Israel, or at least that was the criticism was that Obama sold Israel out.

32:48And then Trump seems to, though, be doing an Obama template, but attacking. So none of what he's saying kind of makes any sense at all. And going back to where we started with this episode, at a very bare minimum, we need someone in the leadership position who could kind of comprehend what's happening, can kind of comprehend what's happening here. And Trump can't.

33:19Ben Meiselas:He's really deeply, deeply out of it. And so when we come back, I want to talk more about that. I want to share with you the memorandum of understanding that leaked where there is indeed$300 billion to Iran, all sanctions removed from Iran, from everybody, all removed from Iran. I want to talk about the reflecting pool. Jeremy, can we just show what it looks like? Do we have a photo of this reflecting pool? This is what it looks like now. So go back to the last one, and then we'll show you this one. This is foam floating on the surface because Trump workers dumped bottles of hydrogen peroxide in the Lincoln Memorial.

34:03Ben Meiselas:That's what they were doing. They were dumping bottles of hydrogen peroxide. And again, when you don't understand basic science, this is what you, as Dr. Michael O 'Brien says, y 'all, not to be like a huge nerd about the reflective of it all, but you'll need a minimum about 8 ,000 liters of 12 % hydrogen peroxide to reach the 50 parts per million concentration to kill algae. Is this what happens when you have zero scientists in your administration? They bring it like the pool guy. They're bringing like the pool guys in and the algae is just going to come back. The algae is just going to come back.

34:42Ben Meiselas:Even if you do the hydrogen, you're just going to, the reflecting pool is now going to be a hydrogen peroxide pool. I mean, it's the stupidest. It's the stupidest. I can't even, I can't even fathom what's happening to this country right now. We'll take our first quick break of the show. Can y 'all do me a favor? Can you subscribe to the Midas Touch on Audio? Wherever you get your audio podcasts, it really helps us when you subscribe on audio. Subscribe now. We'll be right back after our first quick break of the show. Thanks. Time for some talk. Life insurance talk that is. You probably have it, but do you know how much you're paying for it?

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40:21Ben Meiselas:You want to invade? Let's do it. Could we get the same deal also? That's kind of what Donald Trump looks like to the entire world right now. Let's talk more about what went down at this press conference or this conference with the emir of Qatar, as well as with the Amir of Abu Dhabi and the president of the UAE. Donald Trump was asked about, let's see this one. Donald Trump says that his relationship with Iran was fully normalized. We now have a fully normalized relationship. Let's play it. Get it done. Iran wants to get it done. They have to get back to business. and the relationship is now normalized.

41:11So I think it's going to go pretty quickly. Could go faster. He's also saying that right there with MBZ, leader of the United Arab Emirates, who in Trump's first term got to sign on to the Abraham Accords and the UAE was all in with Trump on trying to destroy Iran, do regime change in Iran, and believe that the U.S. was going to do that. And now, MBZ, who's looking at Trump right there, behind the scenes, was it last week? And this is where some of the writing was on the wall that there was going to be a deal with Iran. MBZ spoke directly with Foreign Minister Aragji of Iran And there was lots of reporting that the UAE was giving Iran billions of dollars.

42:06Now, the UAE denies that for what it's worth, but you can form opinions yourself if the UAE has released billions and billions of dollars. Also reports that Qatar did as well. And I think that MBZ, who you saw there, as well as the emir of Qatar, Al Thani, they both just said, you know what? We just can't rely on the United States in this region. I mean, obviously, the U.S. is still going to be a major power in the world just based on population and GDP and the markets and the post-World War II legacy. But I don't think that going forward, you're going to see any kind of similar view of these Middle East countries' perspectives on the United States.

42:55Ben Meiselas:And by the way, at the end of the day, that may be a good thing, right? I mean, should we have air bases in all of these countries and in their territory? It may actually be a good thing. Why do we need to be spending billions and trillions of dollars on a military industrial complex while American people are suffering? and you know now should we have gotten into an unlawful and catastrophic war in the first place to reach that conclusion you know do do i have confidence that the structure and framework of this deal is going to be durable i don't because it's not even a deal it's a memorandum of understanding and it's all over the place and and trump doesn't even know where he is he doesn't understand the complexities of, I truly doubt, and I talked about this on the podcast that I was doing with my brothers last night when we were live.

43:54I really don't think that Donald Trump's even read the agreement that he signed. I genuinely don't think that he's read the terms. Someone may have given him a summary of it, but I don't think he sat there with the terms and actually read it, thought about it, and truly knows what's in the deal. I think that's deeply, deeply problematic. And I hope though, and this is where I want to root for America,

44:24Ben Meiselas:that we can stop these never-ending wars. But with Trump, where's his mind going to go next? Invade Cuba, right? That's the next one, I'm sure. And we've already been talking about Cuba invasion, but I'm sure soon he'll be doing the Cuba invasion talk again and ramping up there. And he'll do more blowing up of boats off the coast of Venezuela and in the Pacific also, and engaged in more war crimes there. He can't help himself. And when you spend$1.5 trillion on a military budget, it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you're going to be engaged in wars because you're going to spend the trillions that, and when you create, when you go from the Department of the Defense to the Department of War, or the DOD to the Department of War, you're saying that you're a warmonger, right?

45:18Going back to Trump with MBZ, you know, Donald Trump just says how rich he is. You're so rich. When you're rich, you get to talk a lot. That's what he says. Let's play it.

45:41I don't even know what's funny about that. Like, I don't want, who's laughing at these things? When you're that rich, you get to talk that long and then people laugh.

45:49Ben Meiselas:Who are the people laughing? What's funny about that? I just, I genuinely don't even get, it's like they, it's like they're speaking an entirely different, I don't want to say language. It's like it's this oligarch Furby speak. You know, they're rich, you get to talk a lot. What is funny about any of this? We're dealing with issues of war and peace. We're dealing with issues of life and death. We're dealing with war crimes and genocide. We're dealing with the American people suffering here. What's the funny? And again, I believe I have a sense of humor. I find things funny outside of, you know, when there's a place for humor and funny TV shows or movies or comedy series.

46:43Ben Meiselas:But I also don't find it funny when comedians punch down. I don't find it funny when you mock marginalized communities. It's not funny. That's just bullying. That's not humor. To me, humor is punching up and mocking power structures. To me, that's humor. You want to be witty and controversial? You make fun of people in power. but making fun of people who are bullied and who suffer already? Why is that funny? J.D. Vance was on state regime media. J.D. Vance has basically been the guy put out there to try to sell this deal to the American people. We know behind the scenes that J.D. Vance was the person pushing for the deal.

47:36And you had Rubio and Hegseth and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe,

47:41Ben Meiselas:all against it. And J.D. Vance is out there, but J.D. Vance is also lying about the deal. J.D. Vance is saying, oh, no, that's not in the terms. That's not there. Just a bunch of propaganda. That's not, okay, well then release the terms. Just let us see what's in it then. We won't have to speculate. But J.D. Vance is lying about what's in there because we know what's in there now. And I also though, and this is where I hold the complex thoughts, I'm also glad that in the regime, in the Trump regime, that J.D. Vance was the person who fought to get a deal. It doesn't mean I like J.D. Vance. Let me be very clear.

48:21Ben Meiselas:I think J.D. Vance is complicit in war crimes, in other crimes. I mean, I think he's a horrible person. I think he's changed personalities multiple times. I think that he's a fascist. I think he's a horrible person. But also, if he was helpful in getting this deal done, I'm glad that there was someone saying, we need to get the hell out. So I share that with you. Maybe you don't want to hear me say that. I don't like J.D. May. He's a liar. And again, this memorandum of understanding doesn't really create certainty, doesn't do anything. I think it's going to fall apart. I hope it doesn't though.

48:59Ben Meiselas:And so I'm glad that there's someone who was like, let's get out of there. But now J.D. Vance has become under attack by Hegsa and Ratcliffe and Rubio and Netanyahu and everybody like that. So here's what J.D. Vance says. We don't commit to doing anything as part of the deal. We win either way. Okay. Here, play what he But here's the option for Iran. If you learn the right lessons from this, and if you change the way that you react and respond to the United States, option one is we're going to change the way that we respond to you. We're going to have a better relationship. But if they choose option two, which is we're going to continue to try to pursue a nuclear weapon, then nothing that we we don't commit to doing anything as part of this deal.

49:47So the United States wins either way. What the president is trying to do is actually extend the hand of peace and say, if the Iranian people want greater prosperity, then their leadership has to step up and change their behavior. If they do great, if they don't, the United States has already gotten a lot from what we need. OK, first off, his eyeliner just looks absolutely crazy. I mean, the eyeliner just is like it's like next level. The guy is just wearing a massive amount of eyeliner. I mean, I'm not judging just wearing a huge amount of eyeliner I mean, it looks like I don't know

50:28Ben Meiselas:anyway, it looks like he wears a lot of eyeliner and what does that even mean? We win either way I don't know, what are you even talking about? We win either way We win? We win We didn't win, we lost the war We lost the war We should never have been in the war and we lost That's what happened. Tariffs are attacks on the American consumer. It's causing inflation. Let's just understand fundamental truths. Because again, if you try to break it down for me, and I think this is how the American people feel on a lot of issues, I think America understands we lost this war. Not everybody, but we did, obviously, when they said, here's what's going to happen and those things didn't happen.

51:15Ben Meiselas:But you have to understand, I don't immediately rush and go the$300 billion is pathetic and it's a sellout and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I actually want there to be peace in the Middle East. That's the hard part about Sometimes, you know, if you talk to me like an intelligent person and you explain to me and showed me with charts and graphs and data that$300 billion isn't an arbitrary number and that there are lots of businesses who actually think this is a good idea and that somehow this will flow to the benefit of the United States and result in cheaper gas prices. and will make things better and can maybe lead to diplomatic breakthroughs in other areas, like Russia's invasion of Ukraine since Iran provides Shahid drones to Russia?

52:15Ben Meiselas:And could there be a more comprehensive approach? And is investing$300 billion of private capital, does that have a net positive effect? I don't know because you're not talking to me like a grown up or like a human. You're just, I win, you win. And it's not 300 billion. It's not 300 billion. All right. Then it's clear to me that whatever you're doing is shady and is a lie and is bad. Because if it was good, stand on business. If you did this deal, if your name, Donald J. Trump is signed to this thing and your name, J.D. Vance is signed to this thing, then just did, we're going to read it eventually.

53:01Eventually, to use the expression that I've been saying, eventually the algae surfaces, right? You can paint it blue for a little bit, but eventually the algae surfaces. And then if you want to try to pour, you know, hydrogen peroxide or whatever on it, that's not going to solve the problem. It's not going to solve the problem if that's what you're going to do, right? It's a perfect metaphor for what's happening here. You know, if you want to deal with the reflecting pool and you can explain to us the issue,

53:33Ben Meiselas:ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about the real issue here. Former President Obama in 2012 made a decision, which I believe is the right decision, to say, you know what, we shouldn't be using the same water supply for drinking water, which is a scarce supply for the reflecting pool to fill that massive pool. It's a waste of water where there are water shortages. It could seriously impact people living in DC and other places that get their source of water. So Obama made the decision, and I think a smart one, that we're going to bring in the water from the Potomac Basin that has algae in it. And so that became the water source.

54:17Ben Meiselas:It was a darker paint on the bottom. It was, there was an algae issue that costed tens of millions of dollars to try to deal with. And Obama then struggled with the algae. I mean, it wasn't, let me be very clear. This was not one of the top 50 ,000 issues that Obama was focused on. And I quite literally mean that. When I say he struggled with it, it wasn't like he was posting about the reflecting pool or giving speeches about the reflecting pool or even talking about the reflecting pool. Okay. He had an interior secretary who handled certain things, and there were certain people who focused on D.C.

54:54Ben Meiselas:issues, but they tried to deal with it science-based, responsibly, figure out a solution. There was never really a good solution. Why? Just basic science. Reflecting pool, shallow water, humid, D.C.'s a swamp. right idea when the reflecting pool was built, reflecting on Washington and Lincoln right there. I get it. History, Martin Luther King's speech, civil rights movement, a lot there. But given the way DC is, the weather and such, maybe this was not the right move originally. That's a tough thing to say, but maybe we need to not do a reflecting pool. But we should maybe bring it to the American people.

55:43What do you think about this? Let's talk about that. That's a democracy, right?

55:48Ben Meiselas:What should we do with this? It's going to cost us potentially a billion dollars over the next 20 years to deal with the algae situation. Or we can close the reflecting pool, maybe make it like reflecting marble, and maybe we deal with it. Or we spend it. What do we want, right? Let me bring it to the chat. Let's do a democracy here, right? What would you do? If I told you the truth about the reflecting pool and explained to you the origins, first off, wouldn't you appreciate that I was just being honest with you about what the issue was? And we could vote and make a decision what's best. That's messy.

56:29Ben Meiselas:Some of you may be upset with the decisions that we make, but let's make the decision. What Trump did was paint it blue and say it was going to be great. And everybody was saying, but you're not dealing with the filtration. You're not dealing with the water source. The nanobubblers are not going to work the way you think it's going to work in order to get rid of the algae. Algae is microscopic. It's reproduction asexually, sexually. The way algae spreads, just microscopic algae, it will always come back. So in painting it blue, if anything, may make the situation worse. You may be creating a worse situation.

57:07go over to the Iran deal. The algae comes back. Donald Trump can say in 2018,

57:14Ben Meiselas:I'm going to get out of this Obama deal and I'm going to do a deal so much better. Or he can say, I'm going to pull out of the Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act and I'm going to do a better deal. And that sounds nice. The Affordable Care Act is messy. Premiums are still expensive. right? You have to rely on subsidies. It still is unpredictable sometimes. Sometimes you think, wow, I'm still not getting the best care. But we have to remember where were we before Obamacare when 25, 30 million Americans were uninsured and insurance companies could discriminate on the basis of preexisting conditions.

57:56Ben Meiselas:So the Affordable Care Act was messy. I believe we should have had universal healthcare. I want there to be universal healthcare. Right now I do. I want the government to pay for it. I want it to be free. I think healthcare is a human right. Obama, I think, wanted that. But in that time period, the best he could get was the Affordable Care Act. The best Obama could do was the JCPOA, which was still a strong template. And Donald Trump has run on painting it blue. I'll fix it. I'll do a better healthcare plan. And to Americans, that sounds great. Okay, what do you mean? Let's do it. Let's get a better healthcare plan.

58:35I'll do a better JCPOA. Okay, that's great. Let's do a better deal. Trump, I will expose the predator cabal in the Epstein files. I'll release it. The American people, that's great. Let's release it. Let's expose the cabal. Let's do it. I can fix all of these. Great, fix it, fix it. But then you got to do it. And doing it doesn't mean Obama's deal, Biden, auto pan up. No, you're the leader now. All right. Before we know it, we're going to be in 2027. Okay. We're going to be halfway through this God forsaken term. And you did this deal. You signed it. If you didn't want to do it or memorandum understand, then don't do it.

59:24but you signed a document. Your name is on the thing. So go and talk to us like grownups about it. And if you didn't like it, then don't do it, but stop with the nonsense and the baby behavior. No offense to babies. I'm telling you, you could convince me that$300 billion may make sense. I don't know. I'm not fully an expert. I don't know$150 billion,$500 billion.

59:49Ben Meiselas:I certainly don't want taxpayer dollars from the American people that should be going to our healthcare to fund this. I absolutely don't want that. But explain it to me. Can this be helpful in stopping the genocide in Palestine? Can this be helpful in rebuilding a Lebanon? Can this be helpful in doing a two-state solution? Could this be helpful in bringing stability to the region? I don't believe it's going to be because look how shady they are about it. And look how Trump lies about everything. But my whole point, though, is stand on business. Stand on it and talk to us and explain it. And I'm not saying this in like a sexist way or whatever.

1:00:37But like for Trump, because, you know, he pretends to be a man. Man up or person up or woman up or whatever, whatever the expression is, you know. But just let's go. Be a grown up. Be an adult. You know, when the court tells you you've got to take your name down from the Kennedy Center that you put up and vandalized, don't hide it behind drapes or by tarp. Come on. It's like a loser thing, man. Just take it down. Now everybody looks at this thing like, who the hell is this loser? Just take it down and grow up and let's just be adults. You know, as I say, you know, lots of people are like, oh, you know, you're anti-Trump.

1:01:17You're anti-Trump. You're anti-Trump. I'm anti this thing that's in the Oval Office that is so negatively impacting the American people. I am anti that. You know, he wasn't obligated. He wasn't forced, as so many people aren't, most people, to become a public servant, to serve the public, a servant, a public servant. But when you've used the position of public servant to cover up pedophile rings, to engage in catastrophic wars, to rip away people's health care, to send ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo, to round people up, torture people and kill them, to be an instrument and an aider and a better of genocide.

1:02:07When you do all of these things, you've stepped into the arena to do those things. And I'm anti the pain that's being inflicted on the American people that finds its main source in this guy, in this person who occupies, sadly, the Oval Office right now. And as I've said before, we have to have to get out of these cycles where when the next person takes over, that we're so tribal that all of a sudden you have this tsunami of MAGA and right wing talking points to blame all of the shit that Donald Trump has handed over onto the next person. We have to be constructive, honestly, as Americans, not as political tribal animals, like as Americans, as human beings, because this system is not a sustainable system right now.

1:03:12It is not. And we should look at models that are working. And we don't have to embrace all aspects of it, but we should look at what Mamdani is doing in Manhattan right now. We should look at it. It doesn't mean we have to take every aspect of it, but we should look at what he's doing there and seeing what's working. We should look at models and we should have, once again, laboratories of democracy versus laboratories of autocracy. And too frequently, that's what we're seeing states have become, laboratories of autocracy, where the most vile and villainous ideas, what get adopted is what gets adopted in D.C.

1:04:02to then inflict nationwide, and that found its home in Project 2025. So I'll leave you with this. Former Vice President Kamala Harris giving a speech today in Vienna.

1:04:13Ben Meiselas:And here's what she had to say on Iran. Let's watch former Vice President Kamala Harris. Let's play. Let's be clear about this. Thank you, Tim. Let's be clear about this. Whatever is being negotiated, this president is going to declare victory and will end up where we were after the JCPOA and call that a victory. the JCPOA that he withdrew from. The Obama nuclear agreement. One more clip of former Vice President Kamala Harris. Let's play it. But to be clear, if you were president, you never start this war. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

1:04:51I'll leave you with that. Everybody hit subscribe. Help us get to 7 million subscribers. We're grateful for you. We appreciate you so much. Tell everyone you know about the Midas Touch Network. about this show. This has been Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Mycelis. This is Breaking News. And subscribe to the Midas Touch on audio. We're making a big audio push right now. So just double check that you're subscribed. Even if you think I don't listen to it on audio, just subscribe on audio. It helps us out a ton. Thanks for watching. Shout out Midas and Mighty. We appreciate you.

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