Transcript of Thursday Afternoon Breaking News Updates with Ben - 4/30/2026 New

Welcome to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Myselis and this is breaking news. Let's get into it, folks. Donald Trump right now experiencing an unprecedented death spiral when it comes to American politics. At least you wouldn't know that if you turned on corporate news. They still want to talk about how heroic Donald Trump was regarding the alleged White House Correspondents' Dinner incident, which has so many red flags it's not even visible which flag from the next. It's just one gigantic kind of red screen at, uh, this point. We learned that the alleged suspect's lawyer was saying that the lawyer wasn't even able to meet with the suspect, uh, in a private and confidential place. Um, we're going to keep you updated there, but there's not really a clear explanation about whether the alleged suspect was actually the person who shot one of the Secret Service agents or whether it was friendly fire. They're saying that the alleged suspect had a shotgun, and it seems that it would be pretty easy to run a quick ballistic to determine if it was a shotgun residue or shotgun spray versus a handgun. But we'll set that aside because I I think you all have the same red flags and questions that we do.

But the reality is, is that Donald Trump is historically unpopular, right? The latest AP-NORC poll has Trump's approval at 33% nationwide amongst all respondents. The latest Reuters poll has Trump's approval at 34%. In terms of standard of living, 8% approval amongst independents, 8%. Amongst independents. That's a very low number, uh, right there. When it comes to Trump's approval on the economy in the AP-NORC poll, it's at like 30%. Overwhelmingly, Americans don't support this catastrophic and unlawful war in Iran. New polling data as well over here that we're posting from Washington Post, ABC, Ipsos, showing that Americans despise that Donald Trump's priorities right now are golden ballrooms and 250-foot arches and putting his face and signature on currency. Overwhelmingly, the support for these things is anywhere, uh, top support for the ballroom is 28%. The ballroom is the most popular amongst this cohort, 28% approval. And all the other stuff that Trump wants to do, it's like 12% approval. He just thinks people are stupid. Like, nobody wants UFC fights at the White House. Nobody wants him to keep posting about reflecting pools or golden ballrooms or arches or putting his face on passports. No one wants any of this stuff.

People are struggling here in this country. Uh, for most Americans, this economy is in a Great Recession. And you may be saying, but no one's reporting it's a Great Recession. I, I understand that the GDP, you know, the technical definition of a recession is having successive quarters of declining GDP and declining growth. The issue though is, is that with the spread of wealth being so disparate at this point and rich people being so rich and the rest of the kind of 98% of the country struggling and the rich hoarding all of this money, that props up the GDP. So in theory, the GDP is like, ah, you know, it's 2%, still slow and sluggish. The estimates were that the GDP was supposed to be about 2.3%. But the same way the economy is not the GDP, the economy is not the stock market, the economy is— are people getting jobs, right? The economy is— can most people afford things? And overwhelmingly there, the answer is no. I think when we looked at past recessions and Great Recessions, because the wealth gap was less wide and less severe, collectively the country experienced the pain and suffering a little bit more as a collective enterprise, if you will.

Um, whereas now you have the super rich and rich doing very well. They call this K, a K-shaped economy. Um, but in terms of that K-shape, it's a very small amount of people who hoard most of the wealth. And most Americans are experiencing Great Recession or depressionary, uh, environments right now. I mean, this is the reality. People can't afford their mortgage or their rent. Lucky if they can have a mortgage, meaning they have a home to begin with that they technically may own. but people can't afford rent. They can't afford groceries. Gas is at all-time highs. I think the average nationwide now is somewhere close to $4.50. If you're in California, that's above $5. Other states, $4.99, $5 on average. But nationwide, we're looking at, you know, I think it was $4.23, then $4.29. The futures, when you talk about Brent and WTI crude, that's where you're looking at like $120 per barrel. But the spot price, meaning what it's actually being sold at right now, not in the future, not a futures market which is manipulated, uh, by the kind of jawboning techniques of Trump and, uh, leaking information to sycophantic stenographers who call themselves reporters.

But the spot prices, you know, meaning if you— what does it actually cost right now to buy a barrel of oil? Like, you know, it's like $250 a barrel of oil right now. And that's translating into higher prices for you, and it's only going to get higher and higher. And all of this— I guess Donald Trump's plan is indefinite naval blockade, just keep this going on forever. On the one hand, he doesn't want to escalate with a ground invasion. On the other hand, he doesn't want to negotiate with Iran, which would require actually making concessions and recognizing that Iran won the war, if indeed The objectives of the war were regime change and obliterating ballistic missile and drone capabilities, and Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. So I, I understand that it is a fact that the U.S. and Israel dropped a bunch of bombs on Iran, including bombs that killed a lot of innocent Iranians, including little schoolgirls who attended the Manab Elementary School. Um, and yes, we also struck, uh, the Navy and conventional military equipment of Iran, but Iran in this so-called ceasefire period, trust me, they've been able to very quickly ramp up production and replace the drones and replace the ballistic missiles and replace, you know, all of their, you know, most of their arsenal.

It's cheaper for them to make it. Um, But in terms of, you know, who controls the Strait of Hormuz, right? It's Iran. Today's Persian Gulf Day in Iran, where they celebrate forcing out European colonizing forces in the 17th century. As their parliament leader, Mbigal Abaf, writes, in the year 1622 AD, after 115 years of occupation, we expelled the European colonizers from the Persian Gulf, and we celebrate Persian Gulf Day in honor of this victory. Today as well, Iran, by exercising control over the Strait of Hormuz will ensure that it and its neighbors enjoy the precious blessings of a future free from the presence and interference of America. So clearly, uh, M.B. Ghalibaf is not showing any signs of surrendering. Iran's not showing signs of surrendering to Donald Trump, uh, and his regime. We heard from, uh, the new Ayatollah, Monjaba, who posted on social media today after not really speaking out for a number of days. And in addition to talking about Persian Gulf Day, he also had a lot of strong words about, you know, if the US continues its blockade, it's only going to find itself at the bottom of the sea, and that Iran is never going to surrender.

And, you know, Donald Trump thinks that this naval blockade is this cure-all, is this panacea that it's going to solve everything. But I think Donald Trump, like he's lived his entire life, he wants somebody to try to bail him out. He thinks if he just waits it out as things get more precarious and more catastrophic— this is how he's lived his life, uh, whether it was with the casinos, whether it was with failing companies, whatever it's been, either his daddy has bailed him out or you know, he's had someone else bail him out, or he blames people for it. And I think that's what, sadly, you know, he's trying to— he's trying to do here. And I guess he just thinks he's gonna post on social media like a maniac over and over and over again. And that's the plan: keep a naval blockade and then post like a maniac on social media. You have MB Golabaf, also Iran's parliament leader. He posted a map of the United States, and he said, if you build two walls, one from New York City to the West Coast and another from LA to the East Coast, the total length will be 7,755 kilometers, which is still about 1,000 kilometers short of Iran's total borders.

Good luck blockading a country with those borders. P.S. for Pete Hegseth, 1 kilometer equals 0.62 miles. And we've been hearing how there have been a number of tankers that have been able to get through the US blockade. But, you know, in addition to those tankers, it does seem that, uh, Iran working actually with Pakistan, uh, has been able to come up with a number of land routes in order to, uh, take some of its, uh, oil and some of its supplies to break the block— to break the blockade by working with Pakistan in order to move a lot of supplies on land. And, um, you know, we've been seeing a lot of maps a lot of overhead visuals that suggest that that's going on right now as well. Remember on Sunday, Donald Trump was on state regime media, which calls itself Fox, and he said, look, Iran's got 3 days left, which would be Wednesday based on when he said it on Sunday. He goes, they got 3 days left, the oil is filling up in the pipes. This is how Donald Trump understands in his words, mechanical engineering. The oil fills up in the pipes, and because of the blockade, there's really no ships that can come and take the oil from the pipes, put it on the ships, and then take it out.

So the pipes fill up, fill up, fill up, fill up, and then they reach this, uh, overpressurization point. This is Donald Trump's explanation. And then, uh, because there are no, uh, valves that deal with overpressurization, as Donald Trump puts it, everything blows up and then you win the war. And so Trump said that was going to happen by Wednesday. And so, you know, that didn't happen, of course, and we know that's not going to happen.

But, you know, Trump never gets called out for any of these things.

It just is, ah, you know, that's Donald being Donald. He makes up these things and he just lies about it. But, but the reality is, is that the American people are suffering throughout all of this. Like It's not when will the consequences hit. The consequences are hitting now, and they've hit before this catastrophic and unlawful war. Americans don't feel that we're in a golden age or a period of great prosperity. People do see rich people getting much richer and their net worths increasing to the point where we may have a trillionaire soon, and everybody sees these billionaires are getting more billions and more billions and more billions. And meanwhile, just regular folks aren't able to afford anything at all. And Trump's saying that this is the golden age. Republicans are saying this is the golden age and, and things are amazing. Like, they can't even acknowledge the reality that people are struggling. One of the things that we've been able to do as the Midas Touch Network expands is, as I'm sure you all know, we have a Washington, D.C. bureau And, uh, it's led by Scott McFarland, right? Veteran reporter, formerly with CBS. He leads our DC bureau.

We've also got Pablo Monríquez, uh, Pablo, also veteran reporter on the Hill, um, who's just incredible. And he asks, uh, the questions that regular folk, regular people want to have answered. What a novel concept to ask politicians the questions that you want answered. That's what what we're doing on Capitol Hill every single day. And so when we all huddled up this morning in our company meeting, we're like, well, what should we ask people? And we said, you know, look, let's not be— let's not even approach this in an accusatory way with Republicans. And don't, you know, we don't need to be yelling or aggressive or say, obviously your constituents are suffering. We just said, what if we went up to a bunch of Republicans and just ask them a very basic question, which is, what would you grade Donald Trump if you had to give him a grade? An A, B, C, D, and E, and F. What would you grade him in terms of his handling of the economy? And just, do you think he's kept his promise of bringing prices down? Like, do you think, right? We all agree Donald Trump promised on day one he was going to bring prices down.

That was one of his promises, right? And so I think it's fair, regardless of what political party you're with, whether you're Democrat, Republican, independent, whether you don't like politics, you don't identify with anything, whatever, right? I think it's a fair question for us to ask, is just to say, did he, you know, are our prices down? And I think that even if we didn't, let's just say we all I think we all in this chat, uh, think that Donald Trump is a, is a terrible, vile creature. I mean, I think we all feel that way, that he's a horrible human being, that he's a war criminal. But just put that aside for a moment. I think we still, even if all of that, you know, I think we all feel that undisputed, but if prices were actually lower, I think that we would— we should say, you know what, there are all of these things, but, but prices are lower. And then we should probably still say, you know, all that other stuff, you know, ICE and war crimes doesn't justify bringing prices lower. But I still think we would have to live in reality and say prices are lower if that's what happened.

When I have debates with MAGA people They often say, even if Donald Trump cured cancer, you would not say that he cured cancer. You would find some way to criticize it.

Have you seen the debates that I've had sometimes where they've used that rhetorical thing on me? And, ah, you would— if he, if he cured cancer, you wouldn't, uh, say he did a good thing.

That's how much you hate him.

I said, no, that's not true at all. If he cured cancer, I would say, oh my gosh, great work. He He cured cancer. That's a, that's a big deal. Except Donald Trump has defunded cancer treatments and cancer research. He's actually created a situation and he's defunded experimental treatments and he's destroyed people's health care. So when I get that question, I'm often like, but that's actually— if you want to use that example, he's—

his actions have actually led to it being more difficult to treat cancer. But if he helped it out, we would all say it. And look, when it comes to prices, Objectively, everything is more expensive.

It's objectively—

things are worse. That's just the way it is if we're, if we're living in reality.

Now, if you're a MAGA person, you may say, look, what if you said, hey, prices are up and he did not keep his promises and things are bad, but you try to make the case, I guess, that you think it's worth it.

But don't tell me that the prices are down.

Or things are better, or things are much better.

Um, that's, that's not a normal—

I think this is why people are so disenchanted with politics generally, because it's like we're just sick and tired of freaking liars who lie about everything. It's like, no, no, people are struggling. You have to, you have to recognize what people are actually going through right now out there, especially if you're a politician and you're representing constituents If all you're gonna do is be someone who blames others, you— Republicans are in charge, right? They control the House, they control the Senate, they control the executive branch, they control SCOTUS, they control— they control everything. So we're in April, or almost in May 2026, right? So you can't keep on saying Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden And then also lie about, about Biden. Under Biden, inflation was going down and was less than what it is now.

That's just an objective fact. You may not like Biden. You get, well, early on in Biden's term, inflation was high.

I understand that. I would counter with the fact that when you rip a— when you actually have to address systemic problems that Trump caused during his first term, when Trump added, uh, 30% of our national debt with that PPP program he ran, which basically funneled money to rich people and didn't actually help lots of regular-day Americans. And lots— that— want to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse? The PPP program, like, literally lost, like, what, hundreds and billions of dollars, maybe trillions of dollars, were just flat-out lost. What do you think when you print all that money and basically lose it? Where do you think inflation is going to— like, where do you think it's going to be coming from? It's the way Trump mishandled or didn't handle at all COVID, and a responsible grown-up administration has to deal with it.

But I couldn't be like, actually, inflation was low under Biden. No, it was high, and then it was low at the end, and it was going to head to 2%.

And if Donald Trump just did nothing and allowed things to go on overdrive and literally did nothing, the stock market—

I know he loves it— would be like crazy booming right now.

The Dow would probably be at 70,000 right now if Trump literally just did nothing. One of the things that I noted when you look at last year and you say, well, America's market was up whatever percentage it was, 12, 15%, whatever it was, not an insignificant amount, but compared to the rest of the world, actually America's market was far lower than most other countries. We weren't first, we were actually towards the bottom in, in market growth. But I know Trump loves the stock market.

If he did nothing, the markets would just be ripping every day and probably be in the 70s, maybe even 80s, and he could have taken credit for all of the stuff that Biden did. And he, he, he could have had that.

But setting aside that, Biden was creating manufacturing jobs, Biden was creating all different types of jobs. You know, Donald Trump likes to disparage a lot of the infrastructure investment that Biden was making, especially in lots of areas of clean energy. One of the major growth areas that has led to China's economic boom is that they've actually focused a lot on clean energy— solar, wind—

and dominating in that area.

And that creates jobs. You know, I know that Donald Trump wants to disparage climate change and pretend it's not real and say, I like when there's more beachfront property or whatever the stupid stuff that he says. But from a pure economic standpoint, that's more jobs to be created. So Trump's a job killer.

We're in a job recession.

Um, the markets are not where they should be anyway, and his tariffs against the world have also been inflationary, and they've also created great animosity between, um, between us and our allies. All, all of, all of that is objectively, you know, bad things. And I just don't know how we could ignore the very reality of these things. And we could have grown-up conversations. I mean, that's the thing, like, we can just— we can disagree about policies and how we get here and how we get there, and should interest rates be cut or should they not be cut, but we have to agree to basic truth and basic objective data and basic facts. Tariffs are inflationary. Tariffs aren't taxes on other countries, they're taxes on imports that get passed on to consumers. That's, that's Once we acknowledge that, we can then say, well, how much of a tax is it going to be? Well, if you look at inflation regarding produce and groceries, it's up about 10%. Certain types of produce is up like 90%. I know you feel it when you go to the gro—

whoa, is that double? Is that, is that, is that double what I spent?

We, we, we can have, I think, adult conversations about the best way to reduce the price of healthcare. Right. I believe in single payer. I believe in universal healthcare. I believe the government, as is a basic human right, it should be provided by the government. That's what I'm— that's my view. I think everybody should have healthcare. It should be free. The way I think we're able to pay for it is we reduce military expenditures by 50 to 60%, maybe even more, right? They're doing a $1.5 trillion budget. My military budget, if you elected me president, which I'm never going to run for, so don't— I don't want to run for anything, um, is, yeah, $400 billion will still lead the world. That's a lot of money for the military, you know. And now I've saved us $600 billion over there. I tax the rich about 1%, 1.5% more, maybe, maybe even 2%. Add that to the federal tax, I probably just brought us another, you know, I don't know, close to another half— another half a trillion dollars, maybe more. By the way, I think it should be more than that, but I'm just going to give us a conservative plan right now, right?

I mean, I found a trillion and a half dollars right there, maybe more. I put that to healthcare and people, you know, people have healthcare. If you think that, that there's a market force or technology or other things that can do a better job than universal healthcare, it hasn't been created yet. So I'm happy to have that discussion, but don't tell me that right now healthcare costs are lower, right? That's what the Trump regime does and the Republicans do. They act like, ah, healthcare is cheap right now, we did it, we did the most favored nations clause. What do you mean you did the most favored nations? Right now in America, right, this is what the Trump and the GOP will say to you. Right now in America, if you buy a drug, it is the same price as the lowest price for that same drug in any other— in any country in the world. So if the lowest price for drug A is being sold for a dollar in Canada, in America you can buy that same drug for a dollar. If drug B, the lowest price all across the world, let's say, is $2 in Sweden, in America the drug manufacturers have to match Sweden and sell it to Americans for $2.

Trump and the Republicans claim that that's what exists now.

That doesn't exist.

That's not a real thing. We don't have most favored nations. And your Trump Rx thing isn't that. It's, it's literally restating, repackaging the same types of direct-to-consumer discounts that pharmaceutical companies are already offering on their websites. It's, it's, it is, it's stop with the gimmick, stop with the trick, stop with the 2 weeks, stop with the, oh, we've done it, we brought in $21 trillion and $28 trillion, you know. If you look at the first quarter GDP numbers and you say, okay, the estimate was 2.3%, GDP growth came in at 2%, which even though that was below the estimate, 2% was not a terrible number. Um, it's not a great number, but not a, not a terrible— not objectively, it's not a terrible number. It should be much higher if Trump didn't stall out our economy. But if you told me that there was $21 to $28 trillion of outside investment into the United States, and let's just say you then brought that, uh, $21 to $28 trillion, and let's just say you divided that into different quarters, right? So that each quarter you're going to add another $7 trillion of CapEx into the United States, right?

Our GDP would be like 8% or 10% or 12%. That's not what the results are. So just stop, right? Stop lying. Stop saying you've turned over all the Epstein files when you didn't and you're covering it up. You know, stop saying, oh, the Clintons, the Clinton— I don't want to hear about the Clintons. I want to hear about Pam Bondi, because Pam Bondi's the former Attorney General and she's the one who's at the center of the cover-up. Not the Clintons. Stop talking about the Clintons and Hunter Biden and— stop it. You know, it's really a time where we need grown-ups. And I think when you look at the data, Americans are, are expressing the sentiment which— there is this anger, there is this resentment, there is this furiousness that exists. But it's, it's like, we need grown-ups, we need smart people. We don't want drama. You know, I don't want the government treading on me and you every damn day. Remember those signs with the snake, "Don't tread on me"? Every day they're treading, whether it's physical tread of ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo killing folks off the street, detaining people, throwing people into concentration camps, you know.

But it's also just the government's intervention and Trump trying to throw himself into your life like a freaking stalker every damn day, you know. Uh, just get out.

Like, just stay away from us. I don't want to hear you. I don't want you to be around in general from a president of the United States. I want someone who behaves normal. I don't want someone who at 12:30 AM is posting QAnon memes.

Like, and I bring it up because I know it gets no attention, like, on corporate. I know no one will talk about it if I don't talk about it. And I know we have a bigger audience than corporate news.

And so when Donald Trump at 12:30 AM makes a post like this, the storm is coming, nothing can stop what is coming, if you're— everybody's watching that. Look at this photo. You see on the left that there's a queue Do you see that? This is a QAnon meme right here, you know, and you're posting QAnon memes at 12:30 AM. Then you're posting no more Mr. Nice Guy with the AR-15 style rifle in your hand, and you're saying Iran can't get their act together. They don't know how to sign a non-nuclear deal. They better get smart soon, DJT. And it's like a weird AI photo of himself holding an AR-15 style rifle. Why are you doing this? Why? This isn't funny, dude. This is, this is war and peace.

This is life or death.

There are American people struggling right now. Most American people are struggling.

What is that crap?

And of course the Iranians are mocking it, but it just makes you look, you know, deeply unserious. And one of the interesting things too, you know, as I've been studying international affairs and just seeing what's going on across the country You know what, one of the interesting things is that, you know, even these kind of right-wing MAGA parties in other countries are coming out against Donald Trump right now. Um, you have the, uh, the French Le Pen party with that guy, uh, Bardella from the, uh, what's that party called, the National Unity Party, or, um, Jordan Bardella, which is Le Pen's party basically, and he's, and he's their leader.

I mean, you got— I mean, this is the—

this was like the MAGA-aligned party France and dudes like Donald Trump's policy is now completely erratic. No one is able to predict what he wants. By definition, when you change your position very regularly, when you're not consistent, you no longer provide certainty, especially as the leader of an allied country. And obviously the situation harms the reliability and credibility of the United States on the international stage. So what, like the far right-wing French party that's like their MAGA party is out there. I said I don't need to promote the guy anymore. But you know, you, you've got— and, and the reality is, is that there is no reliability or credibility.

We all grew up, and I hope you thought like, you all, you have to be a person of your word, right?

And trust is everything. And you know, Donald Trump's whole life he's been a con artist and a scammer. Like, that's his whole thing. Like, the whole Trump thing is being a scammer. I saw You know, with this, uh, visit by King Charles recently, um, some articles from the 1990s surfaced of Donald Trump would make up all of these lies about the royal family buying apartments at Trump Towers and the royal family begging for memberships at Mar-a-Lago and all of these things. He would say, he would say really weird and creepy things about Diana and like going on a date with Princess Di, you know, you know, and, and, you know, and also he made some very crude remarks about her as well. Um, and then the royal family back then would like have to like deny it and, and say, no, he's lying, he's lying. This guy's been a— you gotta understand, like, the guy's been a liar and a con man his entire life, objectively.

And, and my big problem with it all is that we need facts.

We need the truth. And going back to what I was saying too about the economy in our Washington, D.C. bureau before I took this circuitous path, which is our Washington, D.C. bureau people were asking these politicians questions about the economy. And so I'll show you, for example, when, uh, our D.C. team spoke with MAGA Republican Congress member Babin. He gives Donald Trump an A or a B on the economy. I mean, what do you mean you're giving him an A or a B on the economy? That's stupid.

Come on.

First he walks past our camera and like dodges it, and then he's like, all right, who you with? Who you with? Watch this MAGA Republican congress member here. Play this clip.

Congressman, real quick, has Donald Trump kept his promise to lower prices? No, I know, I know. Congressman, has Donald Trump kept his promise? Who are you with? Midas Touch. Who are you with? Midas Touch.

Okay.

Just has Donald Trump kept his promise to lower prices? I'm asking all your Republican colleagues.

Yeah, we saw the prices come down dramatically, but we're involved in a conflict with the worst regime, terrorist exportation regime, probably in the last 100 years. And this is going to be over soon. And we'll get these prices down. I live in— my district is in the epicenter of energy in Southeast Texas, the greater Houston region. You're going to see prices come down as soon as we get through with this.

If it was a report card—

the president keeps his promises.

If it was a report card, what grade would you give him on the economy?

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear.

If it was like a report card, say, what grade would you give Trump on the economy then?

On the economy?

Yeah.

I think he's got to be— He's got a B average right now, but he had an A. It went to a B and it's going to go back to an A.

Thank you, Congressman.

So I'll show you Byron Donalds, MAGA Republican Congress member from Florida who's running for governor there. Let's play this clip.

Congressman, do you think Donald Trump has delivered on his promise to lower prices?

Yeah, he actually has. I know gas prices are a little bit higher because of what's happening in Iran, but Across the country, a lot of prices actually have stabilized. I think, you know, inflation is hard, but I remember where we were with the Biden administration. You know, airline tickets jumped 50%. It was insane. So, you know, he's doing a great job. We need, you know, the other side of the aisle to come and help us just do common sense business. But the president is doing great.

If it were a report card, what grade would you give him on the economy?

Oh, he gets an A.

An A?

Yeah. Got it.

Thank you very much.

What about Senator Tim Scott when he did an appearance earlier today? What about Senator Scott? Let's play it.

That's great news, by the way. The fact of the matter is that all of the cylinders are kicking. It is good news. You can even feel in our environment how good things are getting. Gas prices continue to come down, which means that your groceries will come down a little bit as well. We've got a lot of good signs in the economy. We just need to continue to execute and have confidence in the choices the American people have made by making President Trump their president and keeping majorities, Republican majorities, in both the House and the Senate.

I mean, come on, doesn't it just like— it's such a transparent con and scam and like a little bit impressive, like If, if, if, if, if I don't even— I just genuinely don't know how you lie like that with such a straight face and go, yeah, of course things are amazing, things are great, things are great.

But like, they must think—

again, they think we're stupid.

They think that they can say that.

I'm like, oh, I guess, uh, you said it's amazing and an A, so maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe all of the things that I'm feeling are, are incorrect right now. And, uh, in fact Uh, things are— they are saying things are great.

They're not. Enough of this crap. And this is why people hate politics. And this is why I think, regardless of political party or anything, what we need to be focused on, all of us here, just objective facts, okay? And we need to make sure that we center everything in the people. And yes, we're a network, a news network, so we talk, right? News networks, we talk, but we need to listen. And I think the most important thing that we can be doing right now is just listening to what people are actually experiencing and, and talking about, uh, those things. Not this kind of constant gaslighting that you hear over and over again. All right, I want to also talk about the Pete Hegseth, uh, cross-examination, the hearing that took place before the House and the Senate. How atrocious was Hegseth? I want to talk about the Supreme Court ruling, the Voting Rights Act ruling, what that really means. I want to, I want to break it down for you in a way that you understand, um, because I want to explain why it's such a horrific ruling. Um, but what can be done about it also?

And, uh, a few more things. Let's just take a quick break. We'll be right back. Just make sure you hit subscribe. You may think you're subscribed, but you may not be. Just double-check that you're subscribed. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Myselis and this is breaking news. Great ad reads right there by, uh, Brett, my brothers. Uh, the discount code are in the description below. Uh, Jordy works really hard on, uh, negotiating good discount codes and thinks these are products that you would like. And the sponsors help support the network, so support the sponsors if you like it. And again, discount codes in the description below. By now you probably Heard about this Supreme Court ruling which strikes down essentially Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act passed in the mid-1960s, one of the crown jewels of the civil rights movement. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the various, uh, minority groups. And, uh, it was specifically enacted because, uh, the history of racism in states. And what states would do is they would work, and as we see now, they would not say, hey, we're racist states, everybody look at us, we're the racist state of this, but they would implement, uh, voting maps and strategies that would significantly dilute the vote of— very frequently it was of Black majority congressional districts.

So in a specific state where, say, there's 35% of the population is Black, a, uh, state that may have a 65% white population would say, okay, rather than ensuring that the Black community had congressional representation, We will draw maps that basically dilute the Black population's voting power by carving up the 35% into various districts and moving those into majority white districts so that there would be no majority Black districts in a state, or maybe one where the representation, if it was fair and say it was 65-35 or 60-40, You know, if there were 10 seats, you would expect there to be, you know, at least 4 seats that would be reflective of the Black population in the state or closely reflective of it so that there could be the right representation for the community. So the way the Voting Rights Act dealt with this is they had different procedures to ensure that states would not impose racist maps. And part of the Voting Rights Act required something called preclearance. So when a state would do a gerrymander— we all know about gerrymandering— when, so when a legislature would want to change their maps, the preclearance meant that a state had to submit it to the DOJ and then frequently to a 3-judge federal court panel, and it had to be approved and analyzed before it could become an effective map.

It wasn't presumed to be the right map.

It had to go through a DOJ review and then a 3-judge panel review that was called preclearance. Well, there was a case in 2013 as a concerted movement was taking place by the Federalist Society and other right-wing forces. They put before a right-wing Supreme Court that had a slimmer right-wing majority in 2013, a case called Shelby County versus Holder. And there the Supreme Court struck down the formula for coming up with a preclearance determination. And by striking down the formula, it basically struck down the very nature of a preclearance requirement in the first place.

So what that meant is when the new census would take place in 2020, And then thereafter, when a legislature would create new congressional maps based on the new census, that map would automatically be deemed to be a valid map because you didn't have to preclear it.

So you can challenge that map by a lawsuit, but the initial presumption is that a state map was valid, and then the lawsuits would have to come.

And, you know, lawsuits take a lot of time.

And then if you were preserving the status quo, you could be preserving the racist map.

So then what states realized is, look, we're not going to say we're diluting Black votes.

We're just going to say this is a political gerrymander because there is no law against political gerrymandering.

Democrats have tried in the past to put forward federal legislation that bans all gerrymandering, political gerrymandering, and all forms of gerrymandering. The Democrat position is no gerrymandering at all. Let's just come up with a system where it's fair across the country, okay?

And that districts don't look like salamanders or whatever look like all over the place.

Republicans fought against that and blocked that piece of legislation from becoming law. So now we have this, uh, this system. So now if a state says, haha, We're doing a racist map. It would then be struck down under Section 2. But the state said, we're not going to say that because then we'd run afoul of Section 2. Even if we put forward the invalid map, it would be challenged. We'll lose if we say it's a racist map. So they just say it's a political map. We're just—

we're bringing in political interests. So the way, you know, the Texas map We weren't carving it out to put this population or do it based on race.

We're just doing it based on political considerations because we're trying to get more Republicans in districts, not less Black people, more Republicans, which, as you know, often equates, though, to pretextually isolating certain, uh, certain racial groups. So what Section 2 was still interpreted to basically mean is, okay, we can look beyond a state saying that they're not— or the legislature saying they're not racist, and we can look at its impact and see, okay, is the impact of what they did clearly racist or have a racist effect or effect in the end of the day? And then we can determine when you were saying it was political, it's really pretextual. We know the reason you were doing this. You wanted to dilute the Black vote. It's obvious. 'Look what you did and how you specifically targeted Black voters,' right? And so we can still look at the implications even if your express words were that you were not doing a racist map. And so what this Supreme Court case was basically saying is that you challenging the racist map, you saying that we should have majority Black congressional districts, that you even saying that that should exist is a racist thing.

You being an anti-racist to challenge what you believe is a racist map when the legislature says it's political. In essence, what the Supreme Court saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're being the racist for saying you want a majority Black congressional district. We've moved beyond racism in this country. That's literally what Justice Alito essentially writes in his opinion, that we should overturn our prior Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act precedent because we've moved beyond racism at this point. So there should be nothing that allows people to even ask for a majority Black congressional district because that in and of itself is factoring in race. And actually, the Voting Rights Act says we shouldn't be factoring in race. So aren't you violating— you see how warped this is— Section 2 by promoting anti-racism, by even focusing on racism at all? And the non-racist are the racist because they're just being political and you're making accusations against them. and we shouldn't pry into anything other than what they say their map is. So what this ruling basically enables a state to say is, look, just say that it is a political gerrymander and you're good. We're not even gonna look beyond that.

So any state, feel free to dilute congressional Black majorities. Just don't say you're doing it for that purpose, and we're not gonna look into its impact or its consequence or anything like that. We're just going to look into what the legislative pronouncement is. I'm oversimplifying it slightly, but not by that much. So as a result of this, the question is, is how big of a shift can we have? To the extent there's good news, it's that this decision has been made late in the process, and it's going to be hard for a lot of states to these Republican state legislatures to all of a sudden change their maps when there's lots of primaries coming up. And so, uh, and, and this— Florida was going to do its gerrymander anyway, and the Florida gerrymander that DeSantis is working with Trump on may be a dummy-mander as well because it's based on Latino voting behavior, and the Latino voting population has moved away from Trump. And so if they're going to now create +8 to +10 Trump districts. We're seeing in Florida and elsewhere +12 to +20 Democrat overperformances in special elections. But the Florida thing was coming regardless.

But in 2028, we're now going to see all of these Republican states, or these state legislatures, they're no longer going to feel constrained by Section 2, and they're going to do racist maps. And so, and they're just going to say, uh, it was political gerrymandering. So then the Democrats are going to have to respond where the Democrats can't unilaterally disarm. And in states that have constitutional amendments that prohibit political gerrymandering, that's going to have to be amended. There's going to have to be referendums put on. And then those other states are going to have to now change their dynamic. And so now we're going to have an entire country that's going to be completely gerrymandered and it's going to be one-off. Republicans are going to do this and Democrats are going to do this. and then it's just going to be a gerrymander fight. It's going to, I think, create a country that's far more divided potentially. But I don't know about you, but I think that people are absolutely sick of this. And this is what the Supreme Court— this is the result, a more divided country, a more racist country, a more, um, you know, why would we want any of these things?

Uh, you know, what we should do is have none of this gerrymandering, right?

We should have— I mean, just think about all of the ways these right-wing Supreme Court have butchered our Constitution, butchered the Constitution, right? I mean, whether it's the Citizens United decision, which allows these unlimited corporate expenditures with super PACs and all of that, you know, to flood the zone with money where Elon Musk and other people are trying to buy elections, where Miriam Adelson is saying, I'll give you $150 million I'll give you a half a billion dollars, but you have to promise to do this and that for Israel and my agendas here. Or, or Elon Musk saying, I'm going to do this and that, but you have to do this for Tesla and this for X and this for my companies. Or, you know, whoever the companies are, right? You know, citizen— we had McCain-Feingold. That's bipartisan. McCain, Republican. Feingold, Democrat. McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. Democrats, Republicans came together. The legislature's— I would think about this for a second.

Pull back.

This is what I teach my law students and undergrads. And maybe I won't get into the Hegseth stuff because I'll just focus on the type of lectures that sometimes I give. And this isn't political. It's actually apolitical what I'm saying right now. Just think about it. Campaign finance reform. Democrat and Republican come together. McCain and Feingold. They passed this incredible piece. Of legislation that would reduce corporate influence on our campaign, you know, which we know is so horrible today. They saw the problem because it was building and building and building, and they created something to stop the problem. They diagnosed it, they created— and they created the medicine. And on a bipartisan basis, we worked together and we created a great piece of legislation. And then the Supreme Court goes, eh, that violates the Constitution.

Why?

Why does it violate the Constitution? Explain that to me. Why does it violate the— Corporations are people. What? They're people. They have a First Amendment right. What are you saying? Corporations should do whatever they want because they're a human being. A corporation's a human being? Yes.

That's my Supreme Court voice. I'm not sure why, but yes.

Really?

Yes.

Okay, I'm not really sure. Show me where in the Constitution it says a corporation is a freaking human being. So you're going to overturn what Article 1 did and, and was signed into law by Article 2? You right-wing Supreme Court, just— you're gonna say that the Constitution says something that the Constitution doesn't? Yes, we're gonna say that clearly corporations are human. Uh, I don't, I don't, I don't know. But think about all of these laws you know, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, right? The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed on a bipartisan basis. You had Democrats, you had Republicans, you had during that era Lyndon B. Johnson pushing through a lot of this legislation as well, based on his background as a lawmaker, as an unexpected person to be a champion of a lot of this.

Civil rights legislation.

I mean, heck, the environment— the EPA was created basically under Nixon and expanded, you know, and expanded under some other Republican administrations. I mean, just think about it. And Maine— some big environmental protections in California were done under Reagan. In California, Nixon signed the EPA. These weren't actually— these weren't controversial things. They've been made this way, but that's not actually the way it has been. And, you know, I often ask my students and I ask you, I'll ask you in the chat, like, how many of— how many people believe that the Civil Rights Act of 19— or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act, Title IX, all of this civil rights legislation, right? Do you think Do you think that in 2026 the Voting Rights Act could be passed in 2026 with our Congress? Of course, the answer is no. Right. Do you think that McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform could be passed in 2026? Of course it couldn't be. Do you think Title IX, which, you know, respects men-female equality in sports, you know, or in other educational institutions in general, and also prohibits like sexual harassment and discrimination at a federal level in education institutions that take federal money.

Do you think that could be passed? Of course it couldn't be passed. None of it could be. I mean, look, and a major part of it is Trump, is what Trump and Trumpism and MAGA, what this cancer has done to our body politic. And it's, oh, you don't like Trump, you don't like Trump. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. On a bipartisan basis, Biden worked with Lankford, a really right-wing Republican Senator Lankford.

Right.

And Biden worked on a bipartisan piece of legislation for immigration reform. And it would have had strong— this is what Biden was trying to do during his term. It would have strong borders, pouring millions of dollars at that point. It was to ICE and Border Patrol for the borders, not to invade the places and go after Americans and people who were hardworking people to stay at the border. A lot of Border Patrol border, not go and invade Minnesota or California, this place, and throw gas in people's faces and torture them and terrorize them. For the freaking border. It would have invested hundreds of millions in immigration law judges. It would have expedited asylum proceedings to ensure that only meritorious asylum claims could get through the system quickly. It created a pathway to citizenship that was compassionate, recognized that your country got to have borders. But at the same time, we should come up with a pathway for citizenship, people who have been living in the shadows so they can pay taxes and continue to contribute. They raise families so they're not scared. It would have actually addressed a lot of these issues. But what did Donald Trump say?

Trump said it out loud. He said, immigration is a winning issue for me. I get to win by creating chaos. And I want there to be problems because I can use the issue to divide. Now, that is a tactic that actually is not unique to America. We see that with Putin in Russia, Orbán in Hungary, going back to, you know, in France, that national so-called National Unity Party. We see it in the tactics that are used by Nigel Farage. We saw that in the Reform, so-called Reform Party in the UK. They all have names.

Things like that, by the way.

We saw Maple MAGA, right, with Pierre Poilievre, who was before Trump and before Prime Minister Carney ascendancy. You know, Poilievre probably would have been the Prime Minister of Canada, and he was dragging Canada into a big Maple MAGA Daniel Smith kind of direction over there, which would have been disastrous and catastrophic. Catastrophic for the country, but using the same divisive tactics and masks and no masks. It's about finding issues that divide. You know, and this is what the Russians were great at. Their, you know, their intelligence services and others are able to kind of find the cultural division points that naturally exist and then just push right on those things as ways to divide us. And that's kind of the very right reason for existence of MAGA, of what it's all about. Find ways to divide, you know, bathrooms, male, female sports, bully transgender, eating cats and dogs, you know, blame the immigrants. Let's talk about Somalians. Let's do this, that, you know, it's, it's always creating a crisis, finding division points accentuating divisions, pushing hard, and preventing actual results from happening.

Right.

We could have had bipartisan immigration reform and that would have been great. I mean, you know, there was lots of legislation coming out of the Biden administration that Trump is undoing right now, you know, which invested in clean energy and all these things. That's jobs. Clean energy equals jobs regardless of what you view about climate change. In my view, you should believe it's a real damn thing. Of course it is. But it's also economically, it's creating jobs. Like, I don't like windmills. I don't like solar. What do you mean you don't like those? You don't like creating jobs? What are we talking about here?

What are we doing here?

So I know I veered off a little bit and talked about some of these topics instead of showing you the Hexit clip and this and that and the other. But I think it's important to reflect on that there was a time when we were able to talk about these issues and we were able to bring people together and have bipartisan legislation. And then ultimately, whether it was the Supreme Court or Trump or whatever would cause divisions in bipartisanship. I still believe that there's about, uh, most issues are actually 70-30 or 80-20 issues on some of the biggest issues that Americans mostly agree on things. I think we all agree on common sense gun control and gun reform. I think we all view common sense climate legislation. I think generally people overwhelmingly believe, as I do, of course, in women's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. I think we all believe in equality. I think we all believe, um, that America is a country of immigrants and that we should have— yes, there should be strong borders, but there should be a compassionate policy, uh, regarding immigration. I think we all agree that there should be a more fair tax code that addresses the fact that billionaires and deca-millionaires are not paying their fair share and have all of these loopholes.

I think we all agree that some of the critical issues impacting people are issues like people needing to be paid wages with dignity and that the corporate CEOs should not be paid, you know, 1,000x of what the worker is. Are making. People should be able to— I think we all agree generally that people should have healthcare and it should be free, or at the very least very affordable. And I believe for you, I think we all believe that health is a human right. I think we all agree that, you know, these data centers and unrestrained AI poses very serious risks and that we could recognize the importance of technological innovation, but that there needs to be a balancing of interests to make sure that the significant, uh, the significant, um, natural and job-related consequences are not, uh, catastrophic. I think, uh, you know, I, I, I think that there are very basic things that we agree on, and I think that it's the plan of MAGA and the right-wing Supreme Court often to find ways to break that. And in breaking that, hoist up a strongman proxy for the right-wing oligarchs à la Putin, à la what Orbán was doing in Hungary.

And if you've all been following Hungary, right, you all know that those oligarchs in Hungary, they've been fleeing. They've been trying to push their money into the United States and hide their money here and there and elsewhere. And Peter Magyar their new prime minister keeps on aggressively calling out what's happening there. But, you know, that's, that's, to me, it's just fascinating when you hear, you know, all these right-wing people talk about capitalism and this and that and, and rail against socialism. I mean, right now there's socialism for the billionaires. That's what exists. There's socialism for the billionaires, and they're getting all the benefits. I mean, I mean, you know, I'll give you an, I'll give you an example.

Example right here, because something that I teach them as, as my semester wraps up, it's, it's, it's something that I teach as well.

So if you're a billionaire and you buy a sports team, your purchase price of the sports team is 100% deductible over the course of like a 10-year— I forget if it's a 10 or 12-year period under the tax So if you're a billionaire and let's say you buy the Carolina Panthers, and I think this is a real example, for $2.6 billion over the next 10 to 12 years, you can deduct that purchase price to reduce your tax basis generally by the purchase price. So while the asset appreciates and you're not being taxed on the appreciation of the asset of your sports team, right? Go— what's the Carolina Panthers valued at right now? $5 to $6 billion, $7 billion, right? Until there's a sale, and then there's schemes to not actually pay the tax on that. But you're not being taxed on the increase in the valuation of your team. And in fact, your purchase price is then deductible. So if you're making— like, a wealthy person like that say they're making a billion dollars a year and you purchase the team for $2.6 billion. Do the math. Do you divide 2.6 into 12 separate parts?

Whatever that number is, you get like a $200 million deduction or one whatever it is, uh, every year for— because you bought the sports team, so your tax basis is already decreasing, and you apply that over the next 12 years while your asset is appreciating. And then you have the municipalities buy the, uh, the stadiums for you. And, and so it's a way to shield your money ultimately from the taxes. And then ultimately when you make a sale, you have it at a lower tax bracket based on the capital gains or however, you know, they've structured it. And so, you you just think about all of these things and it's so detached from the everyday experience of what Americans are experiencing, what Americans are experiencing, uh, you know. And, and I just think it's, it's, it's so to benefit all of these right-wing oligarchs while people on a day-to-day basis are just getting screwed. I think people get it. I think people see it. I think people are sick and tired of the lingo and the desire— you're a socialist, ah, you're a lefty, then you're like, people, let's just be normal. Let's be fair.

I don't think anybody's saying, you know, we want to, you know, not have people who reach levels of success make money. I just think we're saying make the system— keep the system fair. Don't rig the system. Keep it fair so people— and if we keep a fair system, then everybody benefits. We all live in a better place with better services. Because everything's better. Anyway, that's my, that's my spiel. That's my spiel for you before I go. Watch the Brother Show tonight.

I didn't even show you any of the clips. I just ranted. I hope you're okay.

I didn't even do the show I was supposed to do.

I just went off on that tangent. What can you, what can you do?

Next time, watch the Brother Show. I'll go over the stuff that I was supposed to cover. I'll save it, save it for the Brother Show.

Exactly.

You're gonna get a very different Brother show than this show.

This is the show where I just start talking about something that end up, uh, that end up talking about this.

All right, there, there you go. That's Ben on breaking news and me ranting about whatever I just ranted about. Hopefully you liked it. Hit subscribe. Thanks for watching. Help us get 7 million subscribers.

We appreciate you. I'll see you on the Brother show tonight, 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific. Shout out Midas Mighty.

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