Tuesday Afternoon Breaking Updates with Ben 8/18/26

29:32Ben Meiselas:And I won't bore you with the details. But if you remember at Camp David, and I'll show you a clip of Trump and Camp David in a moment, Besant wrote on a napkin, five to ten billion dollars for the yen. Now, that was then published by the press who were like, look, did he do this on purpose? Is he leaking information? And so people who were not in the know would have assumed that it was not going to be the euro, that it would be the dollar. and if you knew that it was going to be a sale of the euros to yen, which I would, you know, that has never really happened before that the US central bank, you know, or that the treasury department or whatever would be, would be doing, would be doing that.

30:22Ben Meiselas:You could have made a lot of money arbitraging that Delta during that trade. If you just saw what was on the napkin, you might have assumed, oh, got it. This is going to be a different type of bailout. In any event, it didn't work or it worked for, and this is kind of a lot of what Trump does, it works for a few days, right? You can paint it blue for a few days. But as we say in WTF America, the algae always comes back, right? The perfect metaphor for all of this, by the way, is the reflecting pool. You could paint it blue. You could pretend it's whatever. The algae will come back if you don't address the systemic issues.

31:07Ben Meiselas:The water source from the Potomac has algae in it. It is summer. It is a small, shallow body of water in this massive, a vast, huge body, but it's shallow. So of course the algae is going to come back if you don't address systemically what the issue is. And you could try to pretend that you're better than algae, but you're not. You're not. You're not better than the science just because you say it isn't going to happen. But then they'll blame and they'll blame and they'll blame. The algae always comes back, right? You could try to manipulate the price of the Japanese yen for a few days, a week, a month.

31:51Ben Meiselas:But guess what? The algae always comes back. And now we see the collapse of the yen again. So for about a three-week period, we propped up the yen, screwed over more relations with Europe. And now what's going to happen? The Japanese Central Bank will probably have to do what the US tried to avoid. They're the biggest bond holder of US Treasuries. So they're going to unload our bonds. And what's going to happen? The value of our bonds is going to decrease. The yields are going to increase. The Treasury Department's going to You have to pay more interest, in other words, because the paper is weaker.

32:44Ben Meiselas:So to incentivize infusions of money, you have to raise the yields. So the 30-year becomes 5.3%. The 10-year becomes 4.7%, okay? And that will go higher and higher and higher. And that has a massive detrimental impact on the functioning of our economy as we now have to service$1.3 trillion a year in debt from our taxpayer dollars, which increases the deficit and prevents us from, in theory, putting money in ways and make it work for ways that help the American people or forces us to borrow more and incur more debt and more debt. And when you lose the trust of like this Ponzi scheme debt, and Trump's responsible for 30 to 40 % of it, it works where the dollar is the reserve currency, where the United States is viewed as the undisputed economic hegemon in the world.

33:49Ben Meiselas:That's the Ponzi scheme keeps. Nobody questions it when you're the main economic hegemon, when nobody doubts it. When you've got the petrodollar, the dollar is the reserve currency. The U.S. markets are viewed as the safest place to put your money. The U.S. private equity is viewed as the safe. The U.S. real estate is viewed as the safest and most. When that breaks and that shatters, it also shatters the Ponzi scheme of the fact that it's just the Treasury printing out money. And it has a generational impact. And it's having an impact right now. It's having an impact right now. We're seeing the impact happen right now before our eyes.

34:35Ben Meiselas:It impacts things like the mortgage rates that you pay, right? It impacts these things that are happening right before our eyes. I mean, before our eyes as well. We're seeing diesel crack. And that doesn't mean like diesel crack, like crack, crack, but it's the diesel crack price, the spreads, if you will, the deltas between the costs of diesel and crude that's out there. What's going on in the refinery versus what's going on in the paper markets. the manipulated paper markets. Although as diesel crack hits a record$102 a barrel, the floor of the crack, if you will, which is the crude part. I mean, we're seeing crude prices now that paper crude is at like$91 a barrel.

35:28Ben Meiselas:And it's going to keep on going higher and higher and higher and higher. I would not be shocked if it hits$100 a barrel soon. Remember, folks, the algae always comes back. You can paint it blue. You can manipulate the market. Oh, we're doing a deal. We're so close to a deal. Iran's begging for a deal. They want a deal. Deal, deal, deal, deal, deal. You can keep on doing that, but eventually you run out. Eventually your words don't matter. and eventually people say, you know what? I actually trust what they're saying in Iran more than I trust what you're saying. And that pains me as an American to say, really, I'm getting my news from Tasneem?

36:11Ben Meiselas:I don't even know what Tasneem was a year ago. And I'm getting my news from there and I view it more reliably than what I'm being told on state regime media Fox. Now I know that's gonna be tinged with propaganda. Let's be very clear. or we're not naive to wartime propaganda. But I'm like, I don't know. What's happening in the Strait of Hormuz objectively from what I'm seeing on satellite footage and what I'm seeing in terms of our strategic petroleum reserves, what we're seeing in terms of tankers in and out, sadly, tragically, I say to an American, seems more consistent with what they're saying, freaking Tasneem or Fars, than what they're saying on state regime media, which calls itself Fox.

37:01Ben Meiselas:That's unfortunate. That's like, I don't want that. I don't want that to be, I don't want that to be the case. But that's, you know, the algae always comes back. And now we're seeing the things that you may have said, Ben, you were saying strategic petroleum reserves and you were warning about these things and it never happened. So are you just a doomsdayer YouTuber who just says all of these things and then they don't happen and that's how you get clicks? Is that what you're doing right here? No. Oh, the whole point of why we created this YouTube channel and this network is that there were an ecosystem of people who were masquerading as experts who didn't know shit.

37:48Ben Meiselas:They didn't know what they were talking about. They weren't experts. They weren't in the trenches. So the idea was, let's actually bring on the best experts and let's not waste our time with split screens of people yelling at each other. Oh, you never said this about Natalie. Oh, this about Natalie, Natalie, Natalie, Natalie. You know, reminds me of Billy Madison, like conditioner is better. Shampoo is better. Condition is like, I don't need to have a debate over what's better, shampoo or conditioner. Okay. Shampoo is better because you need shampoo before you get to the conditioner. So it's not even a debate, by the way, but setting that aside, we just want the data.

38:28Ben Meiselas:Show me the chart. Show me the graphs, analyze it in detail, leave me smarter than when I came here. And then if you want to give me your opinion, you give me a little opinion. I'm okay with that. We all are allowed to hold opinions. But guide me there by telling me the facts and showing me the science and showing me the footage and the photos and the videos and the clips. So Ben, when you say that Donald Trump is attacking the ICC for Benjamin Netanyahu, when you're saying that, that's a bold claim, Ben. you're going to go there, come loaded with some facts, come loaded with some evidence. So then I say, okay, well, here he was at Camp David saying it, as I would do when I was a litigator, when I did trials, and when I was a lawyer, I would say, all right, pull up exhibit A.

39:19Ben Meiselas:Let's play from your deposition or here, let's just play the clip. That's why I say, let's play the clip. That's from when I was a lawyer. Let's show the exhibit. All right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm showing you Exhibit A right now. Here was Donald Trump at Camp David. Here's what he said. Let's play that clip, Jeremy. Of Donald Trump at Camp David. ...leader and Paul into the hay. So we've begun, we tried to get them to reform and listen to us. They wouldn't do it. They're very arrogant. We've now begun an effort to really try to bring that court to heal. Oh, there's no information that they're after me.

39:52It could happen. Just so you know. He's not trying to defend me. He is trying to defend BB and various other people. But there are many people that shouldn't be looked at that way. But there is no indication that I'm one of them at this moment.

40:13Ben Meiselas:He said it. He said it. Those are his words, eh? All right. Let's take our last quick break of the show. When I come back, I want to talk about that Oval Office press conference that Donald Trump had yesterday. But I want to talk about it from an angle that to me, whether you're a Democrat, Republican or independent, we should all look at it. And it's one of the there's there's so many alarming qualities about this malignant narcissist. But there's something particularly, and I've talked about, I want to emphasize it again, because to me, it tells the whole story of the moral rot that exists, moral rot.

41:04Ben Meiselas:And that's, I try, not in a waggy finger way. We're all human. We all make mistakes. We all sin. We all hopefully can apologize and take accountability. And I don't mean sin in a religious sense. You know, we all make mistakes. We all err. That's what makes us human. But it's how we take accountability, how we respond, how we support each other, how we lift up people, not punch people down, how we try to improve and become better people, and how we carry ourselves for future generations. And when I'm watching in the Oval Office and I'm seeing Trump's behavior with a 16-year-old boy and a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old little girl, it was one of the most horrific things I watched.

42:02Ben Meiselas:Let's take our last quick break of the show.

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44:53Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Micellis. So this is our breaking news. As I noted before the break, I wanted to talk about that Oval Office presser that Donald Trump had yesterday. It's one of those things that sometimes will just be chalked up to, it's Donald being Donald. This is who he is. That's just him. And that's the biggest mistake in how we report on these things. Every media entity needs to not only call it out, but you need to also talk about some of the most basic things that are happening and in that not normalize this.

45:50Ben Meiselas:But the 16-year-old courageous lifeguard appears to be a white kid with blonde hair and Trump's setting up a dynamic. He's setting up a dynamic that's very intentionally scripted. There's a lot of people who do courageous things, and I don't take anything away from the courage of this 16-year-old. I saw the video. It was absolutely courageous. But the dynamic is a dynamic of a savior. And then there's an 8-year-old or 10-year-old kid, Nathaniel Ray. and this idea that the idea that this kid saved this kid and despite Donald Trump covering up child sex trafficking rings I just want you to understand the propaganda tactic he shields himself in the valor of a white knight savior story and positions himself as a lead character in a story of white kid, blonde hair, right out of a Saved by the Bell type of script, although Zach Morris, I think, was half Asian.

47:14Ben Meiselas:But with that dynamic and a young kid who, you know, appears to be from a minority group. And Trump casts himself as kind of the actual person who blesses that this was a active savior in the Oval Office, the site where they're actively covering up child sex trafficking rings. Okay. And he brings on the, has them dress up in their uniforms and he's signaling. These are signals. And if you criticize his behavior, he will turn it into victimhood, but he will use the 16-year-old and the eight-year-old and the scene as his shield, right? And so when a reporter asks him questions about, look, you just said you're supporting Kim Jong-un and that you don't want any testing in, or you don't want any testing, you don't want testing, but you don't want any military exercises taking place?

48:28Ben Meiselas:Well, his response when he's asked a question of like, we're giving up our alliance with South Korea, just like that, like via social media post, how dare you ask that question? Do you see I have these kids here with their families and you're asking me questions about what's happening in the world? Don't you see what I'm trying to do? Okay. No, I mean, American people, it's great. We all recognize the kid's heroic. Yes. It was a crazy situation. Yes. Great. Okay. You're the commander in chief, sadly, and we have a lot of catastrophes happening where nobody's coming to save tens of millions of Americans who have their healthcare ripped away, who can't pay their rent right now, who can't afford things.

49:23Ben Meiselas:And so we want to ask you what the F is going on. Okay. Oh, your fake news, your fake news, your fake news. So within this, he's cocooning. You get it? He's a weak, weak thing. And he creates this cocoon for himself to hide. Quite literally, the physical manifestation is the bunker that he's creating in the White House, his golden ballroom, which he says is a shield. While the US is not equipped to handle drones from foreign entities, he wants himself to be protected in a bunker. And he says, golden ballroom is my shield so I can hide. Weak, pathetic, cocooning. But he does this in so many other ways.

50:09Ben Meiselas:Yes, physical manifestation, him, Natalie Hart, catering container, cocooning, literally hiding. But he does that with these setups where he surrounds himself with sports teams or surrounds himself with this 16-year-old and this 10-year-old and the eight-year-old girl sister. So you ask him questions and he's like, ah, don't you see I have kids here? Don't you see Yeah. Okay. No. While you are doing this press conference, you are also saying we're no longer allied with South Korea and Kim Jong-un is your friend and is not engaged in hostile activity when he just launched a ballistic missile that nearly hit Japan, while he brags about his nuclear capabilities, while he's providing weapons to Russia and tens of thousands of soldiers.

51:02Ben Meiselas:So no, you're the president. We're going to ask you questions. OK, it's not all state regime media. So in this cocoon that he creates, he can't even behave normal. So one of the things he does is the 16 year old lifeguard. He basically says how good looking he is. And then he says his mom who's standing behind him. Trump basically tells the 16 year old without saying this specifically, like you got a hot mom is basically what Trump says. and it's a very creepy thing to watch that this is Donald Trump. Good genes. Your mom, I can tell you've got good genes together. And it's like, dude, what are you doing?

51:41Ben Meiselas:Why are you making this like a weird thing in the Oval Office? Here, let's watch this clip first. That's the mom. So you did a good job. It's good genetics. When you look at him, you can see really good. When you see you did really good by producing him, Like, how kind of creepy ass thing is that to say? Then the reporter asks him the question about Senator Ossoff's speech, where Ossoff said, you'd rather travel with your aide, Natalie, and build ballrooms than do your job. That's objectively true. It's why Donald Trump's approval is at historic lows. Let's play this clip. Mr. President, what did Donald Ossoff say?

52:24Would you rather travel with your aide, Natalie Hart, and build the ballroom than do your job as president? What is your response, John Ossoff? You mean Pee Wee Herman? Pee Wee Herman lookalike? No, I would much rather do other things. We're building a great facility here. We're fixing a White House that hasn't been taken care of. You can look at this. This room was a disgraceful situation. The Oval Office, and it was let go. The whole building, the White House, was let go.

52:54Ben Meiselas:It literally looks like he's swimming in piss in the Oval Office. That yellow around him literally looks like he's drowning in quicksand of golden piss around him. like like i mean just the deranged fact that this oval office looks the way it does i mean you know what was the uh what was the show i watched growing up scrooge mcduck ducktales you know the scene is i don't know if it's called scrooge mcduck but that's what i'm going to call him for purposes of this segment and he and you know the beginning song where it was like ducktales woohoo you would like swim in the gold and he'd have to put the gold all over him.

53:38At least that's how I remembered the opening.

53:41Ben Meiselas:Maybe I imagined that. But I'm looking there. I'm like, what are you doing? This looks so freaking weird. What the F is happening? You're calling the kid's mom hot. You're destroying our alliances and our service members are suffering. You're not feeding our troops the most basic. We've run out of weapons in the war, went through trillions of dollars of weapons, gone. Our service members don't have food to put in their stomachs. Pretty basic stuff. There's feces all over the floor. You hear about one of the ships that were accompanied, the USS George Washington in the Pacific before the USS George Washington had to abandon the Pacific.

54:26Ben Meiselas:They didn't have working toilets for nearly a week. So everybody had to go to bathrooms in buckets that filled up and the feces was everywhere on a smaller ship. Covered up until recently. Covered up until recently. And he wants to cocoon and hide and say, look, I got kids around. I got kids around. So let me show you the moment where Trump scolds the reporter and says, quiet, you're very disrespectful in front of this young man. Let's play this clip.

55:05Quiet, quiet, quiet. You're very disrespectful in front of this young man. Okay. Don't you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet. Who are you with? I'm with CNN. Fake news. You're fake news. You're loud. You're a loud, boisterous person. You're fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. You're a fake reporter and you report fake news. Go ahead.

55:33Ben Meiselas:At first, I didn't see the angle. And I thought he was talking to the 16-year-old, which still would have been bad, the 16-year-old boy. He was talking to the 8-year-old. and he was telling the eight-year-old, don't you think that female reporter is disrespectful? He wanted the cosign from an eight-year-old little boy or 10-year-old little boy. Let me clarify. 10-year-old little boy, his eight-year-old sister was sitting next to him. Nathaniel's 10, his sister eight was sitting right next to him. Then Trump told her and Nathaniel, I'll show you the Lincoln bedroom after this as well, which is especially given the fact that he is a sicko, is something that's also deeply concerning.

56:24But he needed the cosign of a 10-year-old

56:28Ben Meiselas:boy to attack the female reporter. And he didn't do it. That's genuinely him. I can't think of anything more disqualifying as it, well, I can think of a lot of things more disqualifying. It's up there of some of the most disqualifying things in terms of character. Just do you think any of you in the presence of a 10-year-old would use the 10-year-old to attack you. You agree. Like just even think about Thanksgiving or being at a restaurant or whatever. And you call upon as a grown ass man, we know that Donald Trump isn't a grown ass woman or person, whatever. You call upon the 10 year old. That's a bad person, right?

57:25Ben Meiselas:That's a bad person. And you, not hard to wonder how that loser, that's loser behavior, loses everything. It's loser behavior. Corrupt, yes. Criminal, yes. Deranged, yes. Behaves like an authoritarian, yes. But it's a loser. It's a loser. That's how losers behave. That's not how people who should be role models carry themselves. That's not how we expect the bare minimum modicum of adult grown-up behavior. And the idea that our country has, not all of it, but the institutions have bent to Trump's bent reality. and they've tried to force feed the rest of us like that's normal, right? Like a zombie movie where the zombies have all been bitten or they've all drinking the Kool-Aid, perhaps quite literally.

58:47Ben Meiselas:And then they want us to drink it. And all of us are like, no, what are you talking about? He's yelling at a 10-year-old, he's talking to a 10-year-old boy. He's yelling at the reporter. It looks like the Oval Office is a sea of piss. He's making up fake deals. He's like a crazy crazy human. I don't want to drink. I don't want to drink that crap. Yeah. But, but, but, uh, if you don't drink it, the communists are going to get you and the socialists are going to get you and they're going to take away your healthcare. You're already taking away our healthcare. He's already taking over the methods of production.

59:16Ben Meiselas:I don't, we don't want you, what are you talking about? The communists, the social, I don't even know. I don't even understand the conversation. I don't even understand the conversation that you're having, you know, and then you have people who try to like buy into that conversation who you, some people like we even like looked up to Like, what are you, you're believing this shit? What are you talking about? They're just saying this to scare us. They're being dumb. Healthcare is a basic right. Just shut up. Stop trying to scare us into communism and socialism and this dumb shit. Let's talk about what's happening.

59:44Ben Meiselas:Let's talk about his treatment of our service members. Let's talk about the fact that he's lost this catastrophic and unlawful war that we shouldn't be. And let's talk about the fact that Americans can't afford to live in the United States right now. that the cost of living is prohibitive. Let's talk about what actually is on the minds of the American people that because of the diesel crack spreads right now, because of the price of diesel, our farmers are suffering. That has a cascading impact for the rest of the economy as well, not just farmers, other people who rely on diesel for their businesses right now.

1:00:19Ben Meiselas:And it's not just them, it's all of us who can't afford the price of regular gas, not just diesel. Let's focus on what's actually happening right now. And I'm sick and tired, sick and fricking tired of people falling into the trap of trying to debate within the bent reality, within the warped dystopian nightmare of what Trump and state regime media and these people who have clear agendas to subjugate us all, to inflict harm and to steal and to create just this social welfare for the oligarchs, for the billionaires while they screw everybody over and try to divide us. It's so obvious. And we have to recognize the ecosystem, the information ecosystem that they created.

1:01:07Ben Meiselas:And it's not enough for us just to report on the news. It's not enough for us to just report, here's what happened, here's what happened. What is critical is the generational task that the Touch Network has embarked on with so many other independent journalists. And I hope we've demonstrated a leadership in this capacity, which is to create not just a news network, to create an ecosystem that controls the narrative with the truth. And so that they, everybody else has to have dialogue and discussion within reality, not bent, warped reality, within reality. And we can do that by promoting and encouraging other independent journalists.

1:01:58Ben Meiselas:When you see Katie Fang leading the way, subscribe to her podcast, by the way, you say, aha, that's what this is all about. When you see Alison Gill on the Midas Touch Network with her FOIA requests, with her sourcing and on her own network. That's the way when you see Scott McFarland, that's the way when you see the Midas team on Capitol Hill reframe, reshape the discussions of how we report on what's happening in the Capitol. That's the way when you see Aaron Parnas, when you see other Gen Z Midas touch network hosts, when you see others here, whether it's Jack or Adam or others leading. That's the way when you see on Legal AF, Michael Popak and Karen Friedman-Agnifolo, Dina Dahl.

1:02:48When you see Siri Crow, she does some incredible pieces

1:02:53Ben Meiselas:on topics that aren't being covered on a lot of political shows and that it's very important that we cover, and she does a great job covering it. I could keep going on and on and on. That's the way. Create an ecosystem of the truth and then build out other institutions that start to talk about things that get overlooked that shouldn't. Moral character, leadership, mentoring, empathy, democracy, being there for each other, standing firm when it comes to values and principles. That's the message. That's the message that I want to leave you with. It's the message I talk about in WTF America. That's the challenge.

1:03:45Ben Meiselas:It's not an election book. It is a how we get out of this hell book. And I gave you right there a little bit of the roadmap of how we do it. That's how we do it. So pre-order it right now. Keep watching the Midas Touch Network. Shout out to all the great reporters at the Midas Touch Network and all the other independent journalists out there who we help, we've encouraged in small ways and big ways to do this great work. We're all in this together. The rising tide lifts all ships. And when it comes to the truth, that's a tidal wave of truth that we need right now more than ever. All right. Keep watching the videos throughout the day.

1:04:29Ben Meiselas:That's all I got for you on Ben on Breaking News. Subscribe. Put in the comments if you have pre-ordered WTF America. And it looks also like Katie Fang is live right now. So when this ends, go check out Katie Fang's live as well. Thanks, everybody, for watching. This has been Ben on Breaking News. Shout out Midas Mighty. We got this. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, add free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com. Thank you.