Tuesday Afternoon Breaking News Updates with Ben - 7/14/2026

25:16Ben Meiselas:And now, this was obviously inspired. This happened because of the memorandum of understanding. And now that the war has escalated, we're already back up to$80 a barrel right now of crude, which, by the way, is different than a refinery price, which is an important thing. But in terms of the price at the pump, we're dealing with$4 right now. So talk to us about the report. But to me, it just shows you, ah, finally, finally, could it be heading? No, it's not. And by the way, Warsh seemed to recognize that in his testimony as well today. Yeah. First of all, love the shout out from my brother, Scott.

25:54So I want to send one back to Scott. What a joy it is to be appearing next to Scott and to you, brother Ben. Appreciate you, mate. Look, big news day today. The inflation report just came out. This is particularly important right now because inflation is the absolutely dominant macroeconomic phenomenon for thinking about the future of monetary policy. And it was, as Ben described, very good news. Now, we need to be very careful and thoughtful how we talk about any economic number. So the numbers came in a little lower than we had anticipated, suggesting inflation is a little weaker than most people on Wall Street and throughout the economy had expected.

26:33So that's the very good news. I feel more optimistic about the future today than I did last night. But I also want to pan back. Headline inflation is still 3.5%. Even when you strip out energy, it's still 2.6%, well above the Fed's target. So this is a case where the number itself, the level, it's still pretty unhappy. It's still a problem. We're in an inflation moment right now, and there may be more inflation just to come. But it's less bad than we'd previously thought. That's the subtlety to bear in mind. And then, you know, looking, there are deep questions about what's going on. So first of all, we all know there's a lot going on in Iran.

27:13We know that that drives oil markets. We know that oil markets drive energy markets. And that's a big part of what happened today, which is energy prices are high, but they fell from being extremely high when we were at war. So this was basically the payoff to the ceasefire. The problem, of course, is that today the ceasefire is over, which suggests that this positive force is going to go away and we're going to see a return of higher energy prices, higher gas prices and probably higher headline inflation again over the next few weeks. But Ben, there's a ton to discuss here. Right. Right. You know, what's fascinating to me to try to understand is we don't just have escalation, all out, let's call it all out regional war in the Middle East, because we're seeing Iran respond by striking other Arab nations.

28:02You have Saudi Arabia striking the Houthis within Yemen. You have the Houthis striking back at Saudi Arabia. You have, again, the entire region, right? And then you look a little further on the map and you see escalation with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You see Ukraine developing these capabilities now with their long range FP1, FP2, FP5s, whether it's the Flamingos or the FP1 long range to hit those refineries deep, 3 ,000 kilometers deep or 2 ,500 kilometers. Although the flight of those drones has to sometimes travel 3 ,000 kilometers, also striking all of these Russian ships. And so when I pull back, what confuses and confounds me, and we could talk a little bit about the strategic reserves, is I remember under the Biden administration, the idea that the market viewed this uncertainty as one of the reasons why we were dealing with oil prices that were significantly higher than they are today.

29:14Ben Meiselas:And I'm talking maybe when Russia first invades Ukraine. I get it. But by 2023, the Strait of Hormuz is open. You've got all of that. Yet I'm looking at 2023 price of crude, and I'm seeing still 85, 86, 87, you know, when Biden was in office. And now, you know, I look at it and I go, how is it even? And you can say, well, Ben, the market has priced this, that, and the other, but is it because of the strategic reserves that we've tapped into and we now have to do what's going on there? Yeah, there's a lot going on here. So look, the first thing is just to recognise there was a lot of talk during the Biden and also the Obama era's Republicans talked a lot about uncertainty.

30:02This is more than uncertainty. This is geopolitical risk. So you named a lot of countries and a lot of strategic issues. It all just boils down to the way an economist would think about it is one thing, right? You're talking about different countries, different militaries and very important stories, but it basically comes down to geopolitical risk. If I were running a company right now, if it were a multinational, Would I be willing to make investments, say, in expanding my product lines because I want to go around the world? Would I be willing to invest in a factory which is dependent on oil, which in turn depends on what happens in the Middle East?

30:38So we're in a very, very interconnected world. Geopolitical risk is just one of those things we all want less of. To simplify things a touch too much, I don't know about you, I have a cat and I've seen what happens when my cat catches a mouse. My cat doesn't just go and eat the mouse and be done with it. That would be pretty easy and quick for markets to digest. My cat bats the mouse around a little bit and keeps playing with it. In fact, my cat can be a bit of a bastard. He keeps playing with the mouse and the mouse suffers and on and on the story goes. And what I worry about is in this story, Donald Trump is the cat and Iran or the Middle East or American interests over there are the mouse.

31:16And what we had was we began a war with no strategic objectives, no understanding of the Strait of Humor, was very poorly defined, a failure to bring the Allies along. We realised it was going nowhere, so we started a ceasefire. The ceasefire, we're now actually just going back to what we did before, which is re-entering an armed conflict with no strategic goals that are well articulated, no allies and no plan. It didn't work the first time and it didn't work the second time. When folks in financial markets are thinking, they're not just thinking about where are we today, we're thinking about the future.

31:54And so the problem is, is the cat going to keep playing with the mouse, batting it about, creating this geopolitical risk, which at one level is inflationary and also at another level is going to lead to less investment. You know, and what also concerns me is that Trump's response to all of this is gimmicks, or in my opinion, outright fraud. The gimmick, gas prices going up, I'm opening up Freedom Center gas stations with opaque ownership in Pennsylvania, and I'm going to declare$3.47 a gallon. And it's like, what is this? There's 150 ,000 gas stations across the country. You're pointing to 25, and that that's trying to extrapolate something when that's not an economically significant data point or basically pointing to a Walmart sale, right?

32:52As though it's like a Cyber Monday sale or whatever it is.

32:56Ben Meiselas:Like Walmart is doing a sale and the Trump regime points to that as, aha, look, we're talking 15%, 20 % off of beef. And they're trying to act like that's an economic policy. And to me, that's trying to throw people off, Justin, from the work that you and economists do because you're trying to give data sets and numbers and explain it in ways that may be slightly complicated and uncomfortable and all of these things. He's then throwing this thing and he's doing it deliberately. My view is to kind of undermine the work of it because you just throw out a lot of numbers and be like, what are we talking about?

33:37Ben Meiselas:And then more broadly, he then throws out something like 19.2 trillion, a number so unfathomably large that you just, you talk about the cat chasing the mouse. We're talking about right here, someone trying to follow a laser pen going all around. It's like, okay, I'm done. I'm just going to go and watch a Netflix movie, okay? And I don't know who's telling me whatever, but I don't know. And I think that's the reaction that they're going for. What do you make of it all? First of all, you took my analogy with the cat and you improved it with the laser pointer. They jump, they pounce, they're little bastards about it and they're having too much fun.

34:22And I think that is what's going on. Look, it's a funny way of saying this, but partly this is a challenge to your audience as well, which is what you just described is the foundation of why I started Platypus Economics and why you and I are working together. And we all have different theories about what bedevils the world right now. But one of my core beliefs is we'd all be a little better off if we all understood a little bit of economics. And part of that is a reaction to the current moment where truth has become optional. And so I want folks to understand what the truth is, to be able to think through it for themselves.

34:57That's exactly the energy. I don't have the charisma energy, mate. I've got big nerd energy. but that's the energy I want to bring to Midas, which is let's focus relentlessly on giving folks at home the tools to be able to see through the bullshit. Let's give a couple of examples here, right? You just said the president has been boasting about$19.2 trillion of investment in the United States. I just want to give people at home the weapons that they need to understand what's true and what's false. The US economy, the total amount of production in the US economy in a year is 30 trillion. If 19 trillion of it was investment, that means that there's only 11 trillion left for consumption.

35:34Consumption is you and I eating dinner. If you think that consumption has fallen to a third of the economy, it's impossible. It's crazy. We'd all notice and we'd all be a little bit hungry right now. And so you're absolutely right, Ben, to say that, you know, one way of saying it is the president is a truly brilliant television producer. And what he's done is he's created a narrative arc that I think people find genuinely compelling, they can't avert their eyes from it. But the narrative isn't true. And so what I'm going to keep doing relentlessly, and I love the fact that you're in this with me, brother, is bringing it back to understanding the very basic truths.

36:11One of the ways we establish credibility is by always telling the truth. Today was a really good day for the White House. If they could tell us the truth and say, hey, you know what? Inflation's higher than we want, but we got a little bit of good news today. I'm all in on that. And that's what happened. and that's the story that we had to tell. Right. Or extrapolate. Why was it a better report? Oh, wait, the memorandum of understanding allowed for there to be a temporary cessation of war. Maybe there's a reason why the American people don't want this war, you know, to continue to escalate. Maybe it's more than just a talking point and there's actually, you know, reality.

36:48Ben Meiselas:And the hard part is, is that, you know, you know, with Donald Trump's pathology, you know, with past this prelude. You know that this is going to happen. And so you still want to root for good news in the economy because I know bad news in the economy means real people are hurting. And I know that what he's inevitably going to do, since this is what he's done his whole life, his narrative arc, to use your term, often ends in bankruptcy with his past entities. and just when you kind of hope, okay, maybe there's been so much off, just let's just get Americans out of this. Let's get the world out of this.

37:34Ben Meiselas:Boom, right back into an escalatory trap, climbing the ladder. And then I'll just leave with this. And then I want to talk briefly just about your YouTube channel. I mean, you talk about geopolitical risk, like other than World War II. And again, this is where people, you know, I'm careful. I don't want people to go, man, you know, you're hyperbolic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, but I don't, as a student of history, I can't think of geopolitical risk being higher right now with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At the exact same time, you have a regional war. You have this lined up with regional powers in a massive global proxy war.

38:16Ben Meiselas:You have a main oil hub shut down. You've got Trump threatening Cuba. And so I don't know. I don't want my point of reference to seem there he goes again. But I just need to call out what I see. So before we go, though, I want to remind everybody to subscribe to Platypus Economics on YouTube. It's going to be great to have you on here to give your economic takes. And you and I will do some videos on topics. You'll do some videos, you know, on the YouTube channel here. Everybody subscribe to Justin's channel, Platypus Economics. Justin, anything you want to say before we go? Mate, I just think that we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that what's happening in Iran, it's a personal story.

38:59It's a moral story. It's an ethical story. It's a geopolitical story. You asked a question. You said, is it true that geopolitical risk is that high? You have a feeling that it is. It turns out the Fed actually has an indicator. It has an index that measures this, and it says that geopolitical risk right now is at a very, very high level. So beyond all of the other good reasons to be worried and concerned and right on top of this Iran issue, there's one more, which is that it does affect the pocketbook. It's going to be one of the dominant themes affecting the U.S. economy. And every time the president escalates, the clearest pattern is every time he escalates this war, American markets fall, American confidence falls.

39:41And there's a general sense that this is probably going to be a negative for the economy moving forward. Justin Wolfers, great to have you aboard. It was great to see you and Scott side by side. And thank you so much, Justin, everybody. We'll take our last quick break of the show. And just a reminder, everybody, too, did you see the video I did this morning where I showcased Allison Gill and Katie Fang and how the work that they've done in the Midas Touch Network to bring transparency to the Epstein Transparency Act, right?

40:15Ben Meiselas:Allison identifying a training video that showed how they identify Trump in the Epstein files. And then you have Katie Fang seeking an order to enforce a judge's prior order that the Trump regime needs to turn over Epstein files. So I want to highlight the great work of Allison and Katie Fang, and I showcased that this morning as well. So Midas is growing. Midas is having an impact. And we'll keep on just keep on chopping wood every day. When we come back, a lot to report U.S. airstrikes in Bandar Abbas, U.S. strikes in Keshem right now, airstrikes in Kabahar in Iran right now. massive strikes there.

41:09Iran is responding. I mean, this war is escalating quicker than ever right now.

41:17Ben Meiselas:And we'll talk more about that when we come back from this last break. Thanks, everybody. Last break of the show. We'll be right back.

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43:56welcome back to ben on breaking news at scott mcfarland we had justin wolfers this morning we did a video with katie fang and alice and gill really showcasing the full repertoire here at the midas touch network which i don't just believe is the future of news i believe it is the present of news and again remember to subscribe to scott mcfarland's youtube channel Justin Wolfer's YouTube channel, Katie Fang's YouTube channel, Alison Gill's YouTube channel, and her podcast, Daily Beans. Let's get into what else happened today. As I mentioned before the break, CENTCOM announced it was resuming strikes on Iran.

44:35Iran has responded, apparently striking a Kuwaiti Navy vessel. Also, Iran has been able to strike nearby Arab nations in Kuwait and Bahrain and United Arab Emirates and Qatar and a small area in Oman where the U.S. has some military facilities there. Jordan I've been able to hit. And these are strikes that are, these Iranian strikes are getting through. Iran clearly has less munitions than the United States, although the U.S. munitions are depleting the same way the U.S. strategic reserves are depleting. But Iran's launched its largest attack on Bahrain with over 30 missiles targeting U.S. assets there.

45:27There's been continuous and heavy explosions reported across Bahrain minutes ago. You also had Iran striking again, all these Arab nations nearby. Iran is, you know, I always want to think about everything in life that I do, whether it's Midas Touch Network, whether it's you name it, as what is the purpose of this all? Like, what is the goal? What is the objective of this? And, you know, I think it's important that you highlight Trump's deranged behavior with things as simple, which become as not simple as the reflecting pool or whatever, to extrapolate. These are people who don't strategize, who don't have plans, who don't think through things, and who are malicious.

46:18That's a very bad recipe. And so if you were to extrapolate lessons from the 40 days of the war, and we know there's really never been a ceasefire, but the 40 days of the initial fighting, then MOU, then right now back to war. And then if you observed the Ayatollah's funeral in both Iran and Iraq, how your conclusion is, well, if we just bomb the coast a little more, that's going to make Iran tap out. And they're

46:54Ben Meiselas:going to say, Donald, what can we do for you, Donald? Oh, you want to do a deal? Sure. What do you want to do? You want to control the strain of hormone? Oh, God, your bombing is, as this time, we are submitting. That's not going to happen, period. The idea that that was going to happen with the first set of strikes by the United States, which is what Netanyahu told Trump and what others told Trump and what Trump believed, that's been proven to be false. So, you know, there's either, you know, I've always said there's two things that need to happen. One or the other needs to happen. The one that I support is the memorandum of understanding.

47:38I think that obviously we should never have been involved in the catastrophic war in the first place.

47:44Ben Meiselas:But the Memorandum of Understanding gave at least a modicum of saving face. Any of the humiliation that the United States has been put through by losing the war, you know, can be addressed in the economy maybe gets better. You know, maybe inflation decreases. You focus on some other things. and, you know, yes, it'll definitely be a blemish beyond the blemish. I'm not trying to understate it, especially with the war crimes that are being committed. So forgive me. But you could, at least if you're the Trump regime, try to spin it and say, well, now we're focusing on the economy and look at this, you know, we got a good inflation readout.

48:27Ben Meiselas:We're going to be so focused on that right now. And that to me seems to be a logical course of action. Go all in on the MOU. And maybe there's some face-saving things you do also. Iran wants to control the Strait of Hormuz. They probably want to charge something like 1 % of the value of the vessels, not the 20 % that Trump said. They seem to be open to environmental fees or other ways to deal with it. So it's not a toll. You know, you figure it out with Oman and Iran, where maybe you come up with some payment structure and, you know, not ideal. But when you lose a war, which America lost the war, when you lose the war and when you break things, you got to fix it.

49:10Ben Meiselas:So, you know, I think there was a way to deal with it, you know. But remember, Donald Trump has all these personal entanglements and emolument violations for himself that he's also beholden to this person here and that person there and that person here, which to me also undermines American foreign policy, which is why we have an emolument clause. So to me, there's the path of one. Don't get into the war in the first place. But MOU, lean in, save face if you can, move out of the region, which the US, my opinion, shouldn't really be in there in the first place because it's only led to disastrous wars.

49:49Ben Meiselas:Focus on the economy from, should be for the next three years. And then make that your thing. That to me is a logical approach to this. Alternatively, you do a ground invasion. You go all in. You have to expect that you will probably lose 30 ,000 to 50 ,000 US troops per month, per month. That's similar to the amount of troops that Russia is losing in its invasion of Ukraine. And the Ukrainian soldiers are also at very high death toll right there. But if Trump is saying this is existential and that this nuclear bomb is going to destroy, which I don't agree with, let me be very clear. Okay. If you're going to do a ground invasion and you are focused on doing something different, because obviously the bombings don't work, that you can't just bomb and be like, they're obliterated.

50:45Ben Meiselas:They don't exist. They don't have a Navy anymore. This is amazing. saying that that's not a strategy. And you do a ground invasion, you commit it and expect that you're going to have 30, expect global economic catastrophe at a scale worse than the Great Depression and expect 30 ,000 to 50 ,000 troops dead. You'll have to do a draft, which we know Trump is a draft dodger, five times bone spurs. You'll have to do a draft and good luck seeing the American people's reaction to that. By reference, America only has like 50 ,000 troops in the region right now, which CENTCOM boasted about in a post-year.

51:26We have 50 ,000 troops. Okay. Russia's losing 50 ,000 troops essentially a month in the war on Ukraine, just by reference. And if you are saying that you want to try to change the dynamic, that's your only other option other than the MOU. What Trump is doing is, you know, this, you know, fraud, you know, it's war.

51:51Ben Meiselas:I mean, he's striking coastal cities hard. Iran then responds hard and tactically because Iran knows how to utilize its terrain to cause harm in the region, right? And so, you know, this then becomes this never-ending thing where CENTCOM announces attacks. Iran then responds and hits the neighbors. And inevitably, whether it's today or tomorrow or five days from now or seven days from now, as the strategic petroleum reserves, which were basically there, hits actual tank bottom, not just functional tank bottom. And then something happens and it's like, we're done, we're out. And then all of a sudden it's like, ah, panic, what happened?

52:34Ben Meiselas:Then you'll see the oil go from$80 a barrel to$120,$130 a barrel to$150 a barrel, you know, very, very quickly. And then we're scrambling to try to do some deal or something that now probably looks like a worse version of the MOU, which was a worse version of the JCPOA. Like that's obviously where this heads anyway, you know, and anyway, and it's clear where we're going with all of this. And, you know, That's where it's like, I just don't know. I don't know how, I know how this ends, but like to observe it in slow motion, to watch drunk history unfold before your eyes and say, this is what you're doing.

53:20This is the plan. This is like what we're, it is embarrassing.

53:25Ben Meiselas:And then you have the Iraqi prime minister, he showed up in the Oval Office And Trump just made it incredibly – just talk about injecting even more issues into the region. I mean this – one of the fears amongst the Shiite community as well is that this Iraqi PM, prime minister, who basically took the job away from al-Malaki, the other guy who was previously a prime minister of Iraq, and now bringing this guy. Is this guy going to be a puppet of Trump? And so we saw those massive crowds in Iraq for the Ayatollah's funeral and the processions there where you had Foreign Minister Aragji. And this guy, Iraq's prime minister, this guy was there with Aragji.

54:16And Aragji, one of the reasons in Iran, among the fact that there's a huge Shiite population in Iraq, they wanted to show this guy, look at all the millions of people in Iraq.

54:28Ben Meiselas:And so if you're going to go along and try to be a U.S. puppet, we've got the people on the side of Iran. That was one of the reasons, among others, but one of the main reasons why Iran decided we're going to do a procession in Iraq. And so Trump brings the guy in and starts talking about how handsome you are and beautiful looking you are, which gets really weird right away. Here, play this clip. And he's a young man. He's young and he's handsome, which I don't like. I'm not happy about it.

55:03Okay. And then I'll show you next what he says in this press conference. While he's talking to the Iraqi prime minister, Trump's like, and we're just going to take your oil.

55:19Ben Meiselas:We're going to take your oil. Here, let's play this clip. Look, Baghdad, I think, and I and this country, we're going to make some tremendous music together. We haven't been dealing very much over the last four or five years with the previous administration. Iraq has tremendous potential because of their oil and because of other things, but because of their oil. and we're going to be doing a lot of deals. We're going to create a lot of jobs for both countries and we're going to be taking out a lot of oil. A lot of oil is coming out and the American companies are doing it, mostly American companies now.

55:59They don't want to do business with others. They want to do business with America and that's good. And that's one of the reasons that I felt so strongly that this was going to be a great prime minister and I fought for that. I fought for that because I want to take their oil. We'll make great music together when I take his oil. And then Trump was asked a very basic question about Iran, and he was confused. And he starts talking about Iraq and how American oil companies are going to, again, take all of the oil out of Iraq.

56:34Ben Meiselas:That's what he's saying. I just want you to think about the Shiite population in Iraq that's very sympathetic to Iran. They're seeing these images right here. What do you think that they're thinking right now? That's why I say, well, what's the goal and objective? Was it the goal and objective to just make yourself seem tough? because you've now created even more instability in the region by not even understanding the dynamics at play here. Play this clip. Sir, is the military attack on Iran, is this a strategy to bring them back to the table, or is it to degrade them so the regime will eventually close?

57:24Well, we don't think we need the military there anymore. It's a very big operation. And what we do have is the oil companies are all going in now, and they're doing partnerships with Iraq, and they're getting along very well. The relationship is a whole big relationship where we don't need the military there. We're there to help them. We're there to protect them if need be. But we don't think that's going to be necessary. And their primary, I consider an opponent, they might have considered a friend, But I consider that an opponent was Iran was a big burden on Iraq because they were the bully of the Middle East, as you know.

58:05So that's what's going on in the White House. Let's talk about what's going on in America now, in places like Allentown, in places like Scranton. Over the next month, our friends over at Fight for Progress are spotlighting what's going down in Pennsylvania. Real people living with decisions coming out of Washington. And one name keeps on coming up, Rob Bresnahan, the MAGA Republican congressman out there. And so while the people of Northeast Pennsylvania, throughout Pennsylvania, and the entire country are focused on affordability, Donald Trump psychologically torturing them each and every day.

58:51You've got MAGA Republican Congress members like Bresnahan and others who are out there making life more difficult and harder and avoiding their constituents. And so I want everybody to go check out the Fight for Progress YouTube page. So when this is done as well, search Fight for Progress. And I want you to watch the full eight-minute video. They're highlighting the stories of people just like you who are out there, who are experiencing the pain, the psychological torture of the Trump regime, aided, abetted, enabled by MAGA Republican Congress members. So let me share with you this story right here.

59:36And you can watch the full version of that story at the Fight for Progress YouTube page. But this to me is, when I think about everything we're talking about on this episode, for me, who I'm fighting for is the people out there.

59:54Ben Meiselas:And this story probably feels, if you're in America, like your story. Let's play it. It is really hard to get by. Price of groceries, everything is skyrocketed, things because of the tariffs. During the periods of time, I didn't have SNAP. I straight up didn't eat anything on my days off because there's no room in the budget to go grocery shopping, especially with grocery prices being what they are. So the fridge is empty. This is what it looks like because my EBT money doesn't hit until tomorrow. This is how I live. If I don't have my EBT card, if I don't have food stamps, this is what my fridge looks like.

1:00:28I absolutely worry about losing the benefits because it's happened before. The president's tax bill could feature the largest Medicaid and snap cuts in history. Congressman Rob Bresnahan voted for President Trump's so-called one big beautiful bill. Trump and Bresnahan are doing, from my perspective, everything they can to bring the cost of living up. The tariffs, the taxes, the wars. I think if they had to survive one day in someone's shoes in my financial standing or someone else's financial standing, they wouldn't. They wouldn't be able to. Even more so if you took away the benefits. Go ahead and live my life now.

1:01:07Drop a blue heart if you're from Pennsylvania. Just curious to see how many people watching from Pennsylvania right now. Whether you're from Pennsylvania or not, this is a story that is what's going on in America right now. There was that shot there that really touched me when she opened up the fridge. And in the fridge, there were three things, maybe four things. and I think about whether it's MAGA Republicans like Bresnahan or any MAGA Republican Congress member as they're focused on reconciliation 3.0 as they're calling it it's trying to find ways to label patriotic Americans people like Anna right there and others frauds and saying that they're frauds.

1:02:03Ben Meiselas:So we need to take away their food stamps and we need to take away. Why? Where's it going to go? Bombing Iran with Netanyahu. Bomb them. You know, when Donald Trump does these interviews, which I saw yesterday, and you know, it'll be these like right wing MAGA neocon pundits. You're going to kill them? You're going to kill the fifth and the sixth tier of these leaders? You're going to kill them? Yeah, I'm going to kill them. I'm going to kill them. They have no Navy. They have no Navy. And it's like, I think about that video that I just showed you of the American experience of nothing in the fridge.

1:02:50Ben Meiselas:That's when I say people feel psychologically tortured. That's what I mean. because it is a form of psychological torture where you live in what's supposed to be the wealthiest country in the history of the world. But that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a teeny tiny right-wing oligarch group that parades and struts themselves in the Oval Office, conspiring with a psychotic madman who's out there bombing things and making things up about $19.1 trillion. Well, if you brought$19.1 trillion, then help the American people with that. Why are people suffering? Because you're not. Because they're not.

1:03:35Ben Meiselas:And this is real. These are real stories out there. These are real stories of real people out there. That's why everybody, if you can, subscribe to the YouTube channel Fight for Progress. Watch the full eight-minute video there as well. You could put in the comments, Ben says hello, so they can see that you're there in search Fight for Progress. All right. Thanks, everybody, for watching. I hope you were okay that I highlighted that. I just thought it was an important story to share. I'll, of course, continue the war coverage throughout the day. I'll, of course, give you the breaking news throughout the day, every 90 minutes, new videos, breaking news on the Midas Touch Network.

1:04:11Thanks for watching, everybody. We appreciate you. Hit subscribe. Go to the Fight for Progress YouTube. Say Ben sends you. Watch the full video. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one. 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.