Transcript of MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 2/13/25

My daughter, Ellie, had this ankle pain. We went to see VHI Orthopedics. They actually picked up on her fatigue issues. So they brought in a rheumatologist, and just a few small tests, they realized that Ellie was celiac. So what was brilliant was that VHI had a pediatric dietitian ready to help manage her diet. Really felt seamless. Vhi, because your health means everything. We've got a lot to discuss, Midas Mighty. Let's just get right into it. Donald Trump keeps giving these disastrous oval office press conferences where he is upending American foreign policy, crashing our economy locally. In the long run, we're already seeing inflation starting to surge. Let's just take a look at everything he's saying. Let's break it all down. Donald Trump has asked about rising prices, the recent inflation numbers, not good. Here's what Donald Trump says.

Let's play it. Mr. President, because of these tariffs, who do you think voters should hold responsible?

I think what's going to go up is jobs are going to go up, and prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down. I think the farmers are going to be helped by this very much.

Prices will go up short term, but then they also will go down and farmers will be helped by this. If you know anything about Trump this recent history of tariffs, the farmers got absolutely screwed. There had to be subsidies paid to the farmers because it led to foreign countries not buying America. It's exactly what we're going to see again. We're already seeing farmers being screwed, not just in the form of Donald Trump's tariffs and the harm that that's causing, but by Donald Trump's destruction of government entities that help support farmers who voted for Donald Trump. I guess the leopards are eating their faces or they're laughing around and finding out right now. Here, Donald Trump talks about prices going up. It just may be a short term disturbance is what they say. Play this clip.

They'll do it without tariffs, and therefore, prices won't go up. There could be some short term disturbance, but long term It's going to make our country a fortune. Americans should prepare for some short term paying- You said that. I didn't say that.

We'll let you get the prices go up.

Let's see what happens. Nobody really knows what is going to happen.

Now, this is at the same time EMAGA Republicans, released their budget resolution. They are going to add $4. 5 trillion in new deficits for Tax Writing, Ways and Means Committee, $4 trillion debt limit hike. In addition, $880 billion in deficit reduction as it relates to energy and commerce. That means Medicaid cuts, $330 billion in deficit reduction for Education Committee. That means education cuts, $230 billion in deficit reduction for the Agriculture Committee. That means nutrition cuts, and then about a $4. 5 to $5 trillion T, trillion dollar tax cut for the billionaires. So just so you know, their priorities: cutting Medicaid by billions, cutting education by billions, cutting agriculture by billions. But, Donald, I thought you said you were helping the farmers and giving the billionaires $4. 5 trillion in tax cuts. Let's go back to more of the Oval Office developments. You had Donald Trump with the leader of India, Modi, in the oval office. Donald Trump has asked a question whether he thinks that USAID was interfering in the 2020 US election and the 2024 India election, or the 2024 election, generally. Play this clip.

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Present. May I? Yeah. President Trump, first of all, congratulations for the fantastic 24 days of your presidency. Historic and unprecedented decisions that you made, transformational reforms. I'm particularly impressed by the exposé on USAID. I would like you to share with us if you think USAID had a role in election interference in the US in in 2020 and Indian elections in 2024.

It could have had a role. There were a lot of bad things that happened in 2020. I think bad things happened in 2024, but it was too big to rig, We won by a tremendous margin. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions of votes. It was too big to rig. But yeah, I think they probably tried. We're looking to go to a system now much different, where one day voting, voter ID, and we have to do that. And paper ballots. We want paper ballots. When they do that, we're going to clean it up very, very well.

I want to call in my brother Brett right now. Jordie couldn't be on it today. Jordy's on daddy duty. You got me and Brett today. But Brett, I think that shows, number one, you had the reporter manipulate him with flattery. And Then number two posed just a ridiculously absurd question. You could have basically said, Do you think that USAID was responsible? She could have said anything at that point. She could have said, Do you think USAID was responsible for COVID? Do you think USAID was responsible for the first. Donald Trump was like, Yeah, I think so. I definitely think it has a role. It's so reckless, so dangerous. It makes McCarthyism look like a little aunt, the way Watergate doesn't even look like a thing compared to the massive criminality we're seeing every day.

It's so true, Ben. It's such a good point. Great to be here with you. Great to be here with everybody. Sorry, Jordi, that you couldn't make it to this one. We miss you. But yeah, I think it's stunning how quickly the United States has basically fallen from a democracy hanging on by a thread to basically flipping into an all-out oligarchy overnight. We are seeing the results of that with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who throughout these past few days has honestly appeared to be acting more as the President of the United States than Donald Trump. Very odd visuals, very odd dynamics of power at play, but we'll get to more of that in this episode. But you see this weaponization of disinformation. We've never seen anything like this. Truthfully, one of the things that frightens me is that I don't think the public in the United States or overseas are necessarily equipped to handle this level of lying, this level of gaslighting, this amount of disinformation that is being flooded every single day. You have to remember, most of these lies originate where? From Elon Musk or from Elon Musk's platform, ex-formally Twitter. That's where the disinformation starts and spreads.

That's where they take snippets of information without context, try to make organizations, actual hardworking civil servants look as bad as possible They gather their algorithms to push everybody to content that smears these people, and then they use these lies in order to attack them, try to prosecute them, and to continue to just beat them down as we see here with Donald Trump, apparently accusing USAID of rigging elections and all this other stuff. You have a sizable amount of the population now that is believing this crap. It's one of the biggest dangers of our time that I don't think gets nearly enough attention. It's that we have this propaganda machine that is so outpowering what the corporate media is saying is so outpowering any of the information people get. And there are a lot of people that are walking around right now thinking of these crazy things that we think are insane, what Donald Trump is saying, taking them at face value, taking them as truth. There are a lot of people who maybe aren't as tuned into politics who don't believe that people would just lie to them in this way. They would just tell these big lies every single day where they're There has got to be a kernel of truth to this, right?

There's got to be a little truth. No, there's no truth to this. We are now living in a propaganda regime that looks no different than North Korea, that looks no different than Russia, that looks no different than the Nazi propaganda of the past. That's why this independent community needs to remain vigilant at all times. We need to be calling this out every single day, because if we don't, what we've learned in the past is a vacuum forms, and that's a vacuum for more disinformation to flood zone.

Even weirder and more of a pariah state than North Korea in many ways. North Korea condemned Donald Trump for talking about wanting to acquire, take over, occupy Gaza When you have Kim Jong Un making statements that resemble a more moderating voice than the President of the United States, you know there are major, major issues there. I'll show you this as well, though. Let's talk about Elon Musk for a second in the oval office. Elon Musk wears his little child like a prop on his head. It reminds me of, I forget that meme.

What is going on with that? And by the way, the child's mother. And honestly, it's one of the reasons why I don't like showing these clips, because it's unfair to the child, quite frankly. And I've seen the child's mother speak out, and she's very upset. I think it's Grimes speaking out and saying that she's horrified that her son is being paraded around in the oval office and through all these things. What's your take on? Do you think he's literally using this child as a shield during these various meetings and everything that he's doing?

Well, I saw Elon Musk's dad being interviewed for one of these podcasts, and they asked Elon Musk's dad, Do you think that your son is a good father? And Elon Musk's dad said, Absolutely not. He's a horrible father. Elon Musk's dad said, Elon Musk's first kid died under the care of a nanny, is what the father said. He goes, and all the other kids don't want to be around him at all. So he's got this kid who he wears literally as part of his costume to prop up and prop around. You saw that moment where the kid was even like, seemed like he was trash talking Donald Trump and whether he was saying, Shut your effing mouth or shush your mouth or something like that. It looked like he was saying things to Donald. I think it was Lawrence O'Donnell who said it was one of the most powerless images of the presidency he ever saw with Elon Musk dressed up just like in everyday attire, though, but with that black pea coat that looked like North Vader as his five-year-old son is taunting Donald Trump in Trump's looking away as the kid's making all of these statements.

It sounded like he was like, You're not the President. He was yelling at him like the kid is. It's pretty wild.

But let me show you this from the oval office where Elon Musk is asked by a reporter. You talked about, for example, giving condoms to Hamas because that was one of the ones that were repeated all the time. All of the senators and Congress members, MAGA Republicans, that is, they were out there saying, Look what we uncovered. Then they took it a step further and they were like, Oh, Hamas would use the condoms to make condom bombs. That's what was going on there. Look what we uncovered. Totally false. By the way, you can go through all of these, but at some point, you have to essentially everything they're saying is a lie because otherwise, you end up chasing these things like whack a mole and go, That's not true, that's not true, that's not true, that's not true. They're doing that while distracting you from the fact that inflation is once again surging, that egg prices are at record highs, that gas prices are up, that your groceries are up, that there's not peace in Ukraine in 24 hours, that housing is less affordable, that the business community feels that there's utter chaos right now as Donald Trump wakes up one day, I'm tariffing you, I'm not tariffing you.

I'm tariffing this, I'm tariffing this country. Let me just show you this clip, though, of Elon Musk being asked about the lies that he was saying. Elon Musk's response is, I'm going to be wrong a lot. I'm going to say things that aren't true. But whatever. Here, play the clip. You said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms were sent to Gaza. But after fact check this, But it's apparently Gaza in Mozambique, and the program was to protect them against HIV. Can you correct this statement? It wasn't sent to Hamas, actually. It was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms were sent there. How can we make I know that all the statements that you said were correct so we can't trust what you say? Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. Nobody's going to buy a thousand. We will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million with the condoms to anywhere, frankly. I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about.

You notice the pivot right away, again, and the gaslighting, which is- He follows up a lie with another lie as well.

He doubles down on the lie while saying, We'll admit when we're wrong. That's one of the most difficult things. That's why they hide behind this a fake, Oh, look, we're being honest. We're being transparent. If I mess up, I'll gladly say I was wrong. But he's never apologized for that lie. He moves right on to the next lie, and then he goes right on his social media platform and he spits out 50 other lies that I guess he could be asked about three days later and make the same comment, and then this whole cycle repeats. So they're disingenuous people. And that's why it's incumbent upon all the media out there and people not to take them at their word ever, because their word doesn't mean anything. Their word means zero So he says, Oh, yeah, I'm never going to bat a thousand. The whole concept of what you're doing is, quite frankly, to spread this information, to create these false pretenses, to gut these agencies, to fire people. And they're important things, ultimately. We're already learning about people who have died overseas because hospitals have shut down because of their federal funding freezing cuts. We're finding out about all these ramifications throughout the government.

We're finding out that the National weather service may go under because of Donald Trump's cuts.

We may not have a weather service. It's like people know that, like no weather. We won't be able to get weather anymore.

Yeah, and I'm sure that'll be great for the farmers as well to not be able to have a public weather service to alert them of issues and stuff. Just all of this is going to have such massive effects because he is making these cuts and doing these purges, A, obviously, without any regard to the rule of law or anything like that, but also with just complete disregard to the effects they're going to have on actual people's lives and on the country. We're going to be feeling the rippling effects of this, I think, for decades and decades and decades to come.

Yeah, you mentioned, for example, the weather service because that's handled by the National Oceanic and Atmispheric Administration, the NOAA, which is one of the things that Elon Musk and Donald Trump also gutded and attacked. But NOAA also does things like if you're by the Great Lakes, they tell you if the conditions are safe for you to go out in the water, or are you going to potentially drown? Is it safe to be out there? These are government workers who work very hard every day at thankless jobs that just quietly in the background are saving people's lives and making our lives all better. These are the people who are being attacked every day by the Trump authoritarian regime and their state-run regime media with Fox and with X and all of these other platforms. Now, let's pull up those budget numbers because the bait and switch here is that what Republicans want to do is give people like Elon Musk and billionaires a 4. 5 billion dollar tax cut. They want to run out. This isn't about fiscal responsibility. This isn't saving money. It's just making sure that the billionaires and the richest of the billionaires don't have to pay taxes.

So what they're doing is they're saying, look, we saved you $8 million here. We saved you $30 million here. We saved you $9 million here, which is like 0. 0001 %. Even if you took the entire USAID and gutded it, I think it would be less than one % of everything. If you gutted the whole thing, if you said we're just shutting it down, I think it would be less than 1%. So while that's happening, they're saying 4. 5 trillion that basically goes to the deck of millionaires, the billionaires, and the deck of billionaires. So they're hoping to fake people out. And it's, by and large, with a large part of our population, it's working while they're picking your pockets, basically. And then they go, oh, but guess what? Gulf of Mexico is now Gulf of America. America, yeah. While all of this is going on, they're also attacking our allies, and they are weakening NATO, they're weakening weakening the G7, they're weakening all of our alliances, and Donald Trump is propping up Putin. With some of the things that Trump's doing, the damage has been done. Economically, right now, Canada's boycott the United States of America.

That data is not going to show up overnight, but in a few months, we're going to see when our tourism industry in the United States is crashing, it'll start to show up. The economic slightly lags. The fact that we already got in a short period of time, inflation surging, which, by the way, Trump is trying to blame on former President Biden, that's why it was a little unexpected for economists because they thought we'd pick this up more along the lines of April and May. The fact that it's already starting in January, February, they're like, Whoa, that's sooner than expected. It wasn't sooner than we expected. I expect Donald Trump to cause a recession or a depression pretty soon based on what he's done. Just look at what he he is actually doing. I mean, these reckless tariffs are going to cause complete havoc.

By the way, Ben, if Donald Trump came out and he said, because if he was an honest broker of things and he said, Listen, inflation has been a sticky issue. We're going to work on it. It may take months, make tag here. But he didn't say that. He explicitly said a billion times during the campaign and in writing on a social media, On day one, they will come crashing down. On day one, the prices are going to go so quickly down. It's going to make your head spin. He made comments like this all the time. And now he's telling people that they need pain. And in that first clip, he was like, Wait, I didn't say pain. You said pain. I didn't say people were going to experience pain. No, you literally, explicitly, like a week ago, said that people were going to have to experience pain. Before the election, Elon Musk, a couple of days before, he said that it was your... While you were lying about it to people, Elon Musk admitted that people were going to have to feel pain under your agenda. So you have the pain agenda. You have the screw Americans agenda.

That is it. And the whole idea here to give four and a half trillions dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while you're taking away their Medicaid, while you're stripping away their Social Security, while you're gutting the VA and humanitarian aid, it's beyond what any villain could even come up with at anything. It's beyond villain.

What Trump and horrific human beings realize, and oftentimes they are authoritarian leaders, is that you can compound the lie with other lies, and people who get duped by the lies just keep getting duped by the lie and lie and lie until they're either just dead or broke. Part of the Ponzi scheme is that you bring the person along on the journey until you basically have taken everything. Then by the time they realize that they're either too weak or they're dead to stand up to you. I want everybody to realize that that's what he's doing. I don't want you to think that this is all doom and gloom, though, because in this episode, we're going to talk talk about how people are fighting back. We're going to talk about the resistance growing. We're going to talk about the protests that corporate media refuses to cover and how I think we're going to see more people take to the streets, peacefully protest in the coming days, weeks, and months. We're talking about the international resistance. By the way, we're talking about federal judges, both Democrats, Republican appointed judges, even Trump appointed judges, who have been almost consistently and universally ruling against Donald Trump and his administration administration's unlawful conduct.

And earlier today, we learned about even someone by the name of Daniel Sasson, who was the acting United States attorney in the Southern district of New York, a MAGA light, a MAGA-esque lawyer, someone who took the oath to work in the Trump administration. So someone who MAGA thought was going to be loyal to them, she was running the SDNY, Donald Trump through Emile Bove, the acting Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice ordered Danielle Sasson to dismiss the case against Mayor Eric Adams. And she goes, No, I would be violating my oath as a lawyer if you forced me to do that. In her letter, she goes, I attended a meeting on January 31st, 2025, with Mr. Bovay, Adams Counsel. And by the way, Adams Council is Elon Musk's lawyer. I want you to know that connection as well. Adams and Elon Musk share the same lawyer. That's not a coincidence. And members of my office, Adams attorneys repeatedly urge what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bovay admonished a member of my team who took notes during the meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion.

In other words, the DOJ is destroying evidence of a crime whereby Eric Adams is essentially saying, If you dismiss the case against me, I'm going to help Donald Trump's priorities. Let's do a quid pro quo deal. Even if I committed crimes, let's do a bargain. Let's make a deal. By the way, what did we learn that also happened in New York immediately after that quid pro quo deal. Donald Trump used the federal government to literally steal money that was allocated for FEMA or by FEMA for shelters in New York to help vulnerable people. $80 million was literally stolen from a bank account in New York by the federal. They just took it. They took the money like literal theft is what was going on, or at least that's what was alleged by the New York Comptroller as well as Governor Hochul. But the Trump lawyer resigned, and then the Trump DOJ tried to give it to central DOJ to dismiss the case against Eric Adams. People in the public integrity section at the DOJ resigned. Mind. Now one of the things we're seeing is, is there going to be this mass exodus of DOJ employees basically gutting the entire Department of Justice?

Look, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, she's out there making a fool of herself. She gave some press conference yesterday talking about how she was pressing charges against the governor of New York and the attorney general, LaTisha James. People are like, Are you charging them criminally? Then it was like a civil lawsuit based on a law on books in 2019 that was basically uphelded over and over again against the handling of migrants. And so it was just a civil action that was filed, not a criminal case. Anyway, Brett, I want you to talk about that all, Brett. We got to take our first break of the show. We've got a lot going on. I want to hear your thoughts on that. We'll talk about Donald Trump capitulating to Vladimir Putin. What a mess this Pete Hegsiff, foxhost turned defense secretary is. But when you lack experience and integrity, what else would As you expect? We'll talk about the international resistance as well. I want to remind everybody to hit subscribe here. We're doing it what, Brett? Next week, we're doing our Patreon chat?

A week from today. It's going to be a week from today. It's going to be next Thursday when we're live right now. So next Thursday on Patreon, patreon. Com/mitistouch. Meet me, Ben and Jordi. There, sign up for one of the paid tiers. You get to meet us. Looking forward to that very much. Also, everybody, you're making the Mitistouch podcast, the top podcast on the news charts, on the Apple charts. So let's keep us up there. So please, I'm asking you right now, if you haven't done it yet, go to Apple podcast app, go to the Spotify app, add the Mitistouch podcast. And if you have an extra... By the way, it's free. If you have an extra second, too, give us a five-star reviews. Send us some nice words. We'd appreciate that as well.

We'll take our first quick break. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back. Welcome back. That's where Jordi normally comes in and goes. Everybody, we've got the link to the discount codes in the description below. Make sure you check it out. We really appreciate our ProDemocracy Sponsors. We have zero outside investors on the Midas Touch Network, and so we've been able to build this network based on the support of those pro-democracy sponsors. Thanks to everyone at Patreon. Com/midastouch. And while you're at it, check out Midas mitisplus. Com, where we've been hosting a show called Mitis Meetups every Thursday, and we've got a lot of great content at the midasplus. Com. That's our sub stack, by the way.

All right, let's get into the- Baring the lead. Today, we spoke to former US congresswoman Adam Kinzinger had a great conversation about many of the issues that we're speaking to right now about basically Donald Trump's complete destruction of the global world order. Adam Kinzinger, a true patriot, a true fighter. It was great to speak to him, and you We'd watch our entire conversation that we had recorded live with Adam Kinzinger at mitisplus. Com. It's free to check it out. Just go to mitisplus. Com and check it out. And Ben, speaking of Donald Trump blowing up the entire global order, the entire world order, what is the latest?

Let's talk about Donald Trump in the oval office attacking Canada. Again, we've been used to this now. It's why Canada is boycotting here. Play this clip.

We're in for more than Europe. I mean, think of it, or NATO. I mean, let's call it NATO because Canada is in. By the way, Canada is just about the lowest payer also. They shouldn't be. They are just about the lowest payer in NATO, in addition to everything else. Canada has really been taken advantage of. If they had to pay just something modestly fair, they wouldn't be able to succeed as a country. That's why I feel they have to become a state. Yes, Ben.

Here what he said at the end, that's why I feel they have to be a state. Let me be very clear. Canada has a very proud history as well of defending democracy and standing up to fascism and fighting in war to preserve democracy and freedom. Just the belittling and degrading treatment of Canada every day from Donald Trump just goes to what a psychopathic dick demented freaking idiot. There's really no words to describe how contemplable Donald Trump is. While Donald Trump was doing that, attacking our allies, or I suppose former allies now because Trump has alienated them all. Pete Hegsith was in Germany. There was the Munich conference that was taking place, and you had Hegsith saying that as a... This is what he was saying. He goes, as a start, as a precondition of the negotiation Russia, he goes, We have to recognize that Ukraine should not get its pre-2014 borders back, and it should not become a member of NATO. We must start with that premise. That would literally be the way Russia how you start the negotiation, not how you start the negotiation, because you've now literally given Russia everything that they had asked for.

Let's play the clip. We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.

The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.

Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. Then Donald Trump speaks in the oval office about the phone call that he had with Vladimir Putin before ever even speaking to Zelenskyy, where Donald Trump reiterated those points. We're learning more about that phone call, which I'll go over in just a little bit. But here's Trump blaming Ukraine for Russia's unlawful invasion. Here, play this clip.

Probably good today. They're a little bit softer, perhaps, but I thought his comments from yesterday. I thought his comments They were pretty accurate. I don't see any way that a country in Russia's position could allow them, just in their position, could allow them to join NATO. I don't see that happening. And long before President Putin, Russia was very strong on the fact that I believe that's the reason the war started, because Biden went out and said that they could join NATO, and he shouldn't have said that. As soon as he said that, I said, You know what? You're going to have a war now. And I was right about that. This is a war that would have never happened if I were President. You don't think it's President Biden's fault, not President's fault?

I think Biden is incompetent.

I think when he said that they could join NATO, I thought that was a very stupid thing to say.

Well, and then here's Donald Trump while saying that Ukraine shouldn't join NATO. Donald Trump says Russia should join the G7 and make it the G8, and that Russia should be welcomed back into the G7 as the G8. Here, play this clip.

High-level people from Russia, from Ukraine, and from the United States.

Do you want to have Russia back to the G7, sir?

I'd love to have them back. I think it was a mistake to throw them out. Look, it's not a question of liking Russia or not liking Russia. It was the G8. I said, What are you doing? Because all you talk about is Russia, and they should be sitting at the table. I think Putin would love to be back. Obama and a couple of other people made a mistake, and they got Russia out. It's very possible that if that was the G8, you You would have had the problem with Ukraine. If I was President, you definitely wouldn't have had the problem with Ukraine. Russia would have never attacked Ukraine. But you ask a very good question, the G8. It used to be the G8, and then these people threw them out. I was arguing with Trudeau and with numerous of the people. Actually, Prime Minister Abbey, a great man.

Notice he goes in tax, a tax Prime Minister Trudeau again while saying all these things about Putin that are favorable. One of the things that we're learning as well is that according to many Kremlin insiders who are now just laughing at this whole thing, we've been covering a lot of this. I want to give a hat tip to Julie Delia Davis. She does a great job covering Russian media and what the Russian oligarchs are saying. Lapping Kremlin insiders say, Trump has given Putin the green light to expand the war, and what this article says is that basically the thing holding Putin back was the belief that if he expanded the war and used more weapons on Ukraine, the US would continue to fund Ukraine and would continue to build the coalition that would then attack Russia, but that Russia has basically been given a green light, if they want to, to just wipe it. It talks about how that's sent European leaders into a complete panic. Although I think the part of me, though, Brett, that is just wondering here is that this was obvious that this was going to be the outcome. If you knew and followed Trump's relationship with Russia and everything.

It shouldn't all of a sudden come as like, a, whoa, he's doing that? He wanted to do it the first time. He was held back, and now there's no one to hold him back. And Trump's weak, but Putin's going to go and do the things that I think he's going to do.

Yeah. And watching this press conference, the one on Ukraine and Russia that Trump held yesterday, I couldn't help but be reminded of Donald Trump in Helsinki saying that he trusted Vladimir Putin more than he trusted our own intelligence agencies. Just like back then, this is very much a history repeats itself moment, although this is possibly even worse. Donald Trump, quite literally, everything he said, whether it was that Russia should join the G7 or the lies about how the invasion, which he blames on Ukraine, began. That was all quite literally, word for word, Kremlin propaganda. 100% of it was straight from the mouth of Vladimir Putin. So much so that in her confirmation hearing, and I'm sure everybody knows by now that Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed as DNI, as the Director of National Intelligence, she was asked to disavow those very same statements and was basically forced to during those hearings that Donald Trump then repeated verbatim from the oval office. It's just such an absolute disgrace and such an abdication of our duty as the United States of America and retreating from all the promises that we have made to our allies. Why should anybody ever trust the United States of America's word?

If there was one thing in the that you could trust, it was that the United States would stand by its word, that we would uphold our values. If we told you that we would offer you protection, if you did X, Y, and Z, that we would be there to do that. Now we're in a space, though, where I was looking through all the comments from the Ukrainian yesterday, my heart was breaking as they were speaking about the cowardness of Donald Trump, speaking about the betrayal of the United States of America for their country. Remember, they had to, back in the day, meet a But I dig a list of preconditions for the United States to offer this support to NATO. That was basically disarming themselves and all these other things, only to get thrown under the bus by the United States. It's the ultimate betrayal, and I feel their pain, and it really breaks my heart to see those comments and to see that we have this guy right now who, instead of being allied with the free world, has turned the free world against the United States. Now the United States is in some weird alliance block with, I don't know, with Putin and who else?

I don't even know. Hungary. Who else? All the dictator.

Benjamin Netanyahu, maybe Putin. I don't know about I mean, does he like Xi Jinping? There's really no rhyme or reason to it. I guess there is whatever Putin wants is the rhyme or reason. But other than that, it's Donald Trump's psychotic madness mind of literally dismantling industry. I mean, this man hates America. We got to call it out. This man hates America. This is the betrale of all of these MAGA Republicans. The Republicans in the Senate, the Republicans in the House of Representatives who always were like, We need to be tough on Russia, and we need to protect Taiwan, and we need to support NATO. I mean, these people are just the ultimate traitorous human beings who I hope when we all get through this together, history will scorn them and their families will be humiliated to even be affiliated with these spineless pieces of crap who masquerade as being leaders in a political party. I mean, I would love to see their faces spread out in history, but books literally under the word traitor for what they've done to our country. Then they still go around and gaslight us like this is some normal things that are happening.

Oh, actually, I think that this... No, it's going to happen as we know it's going to. By the way, where is Keith Kellogg, the special envoy to Ukraine. He was a former Lieutenant General. He was the person tasked with the negotiation. Go back to my videos from two months ago. What did I say? I said, This guy is the first person they're going to isolate and they're going to kick this guy out. Why? Because the things he said actually were traditional US policy vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia. He was toeing the line, knowing which administration he was working for as the special envoy, but he was, by and large, standing up to Russia. I was like, That's an interesting guy. No way is this guy going to make it. Sure enough, in Trump's statement where he capitulated, he mentions literally 80 names in the statement of all the people who are going to be dealing with the negotiation. Not one of them was Keith Kellogg, literally the person who was the special envoy. I'm just waiting for the news to drop that Kellogg has resigned or he's officially out. But I think by all accounts, he's really isolated.

Just think about it, too. You bring Tulsi Gabbard in as the Director of National Intelligence, what that basically means is that America has no national intelligence anymore. There are no foreign government intelligence agencies that will share information with the United States, period, because they know it's a direct route to Vladimir Putin. We've now cut off all of our intelligence. Trump has tried to do buyouts of all CIA members, the FBI and the counter Terrorism Division. Trump's attacked all the FBI agencies, gutted all of our government agencies. While they're supposed to be an injunction stopping Trump's freeze on the government entities and agencies, we're learning from all of these entities that they're not getting the funding programs, whether it's Head Start or whatever, they're not getting the funding that they need. You had Governor Shapiro, for example, of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He had to file a lawsuit because the federal resources sources were not making their way to Pennsylvania despite the fact that there's an injunction saying that the money needs to go to the places, that it can't just stop. You have people having to file a lawsuit. The question is, because this is where we're headed, what happens when the federal judges, the Trump judges, too, the judge, what happens when their orders get defined?

One of the judges, by the way, who they attack more than almost any judge, but they'll never list the name on Fox and Maga. They'll act like, Oh, it was so absurd that the judge allowed the websites to be put back on. What websites? Hhs, FDA, NIH, literally websites that people rely on to get services that save their life. The judge ordered that because money has been appropriated for the purpose and the agency has to behave like an agency, Elon Musk can't just take down web pages. That's the judge that they attack relentlessly. But notice, they never really mention his name. Why? Because it's Judge Carl Nichols, the judge who Donald Trump appointed. The other judge who they attack a lot is this Judge, John Bates. And they go, This judge needs to be fired. Judicial dictatorship. Judge Bates, George W. Bush appointee, the Washington State Judge who ruled against Trump's birthright citizenship ban or tried to overturn the Constitution, a Reagan appointee. Judge Lambert who said, No, Donald Trump, you can't take transgender women in prisons who have female genitals and move them into the male cells and take off their clothes and force them to shower with the men.

That was a Reagan appointee, Judge Lambert. You can go around the country, almost equal amount of Republican judges as Democrat judges who are issuing these injunctions against Donald Trump. When we get back, I want to talk about the resistance, judiciary, internal resistance, People take you to the streets, federal judges resistance. We'll talk about all of that and more. I want to remind everybody, next Thursday is when we have our Patreon meeting. We don't have outside investors. So one of the best ways you can help, Patreon. Com/mitustouch. Join me, Brett and Jordi, on our Patreon Zoom meeting. We're so looking forward to meeting you then. And then also you could check us out at mitusplus. Com as well. M-e-i-d-a-s-p-l-u-s. That's our sub stack. We've got a lot of cool features there as well. Subscribe to this audio podcast. Subscribe on YouTube right now, and we'll be right back after our last quick break of the show.

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How dumb do those people look right now? Imagine putting all your chips in the Trump basket thinking you could cozy up to him and that it would end well for you. But as the saying goes, everything Trump touches dies. You have all those Conservatives in Canada right now with egg on their face, and they are rushing, most of them at least rushing, to get away from the Trump stench and to try to join with Trudeau and others in order to unite because they realize, oh, crap, now we look weak. We look weak because we want to give our sovereignty to Donald Trump. We're going to sell out our country to Donald Trump, I guess, other than what, Daniel Smith in Alberta. Everybody else has basically gotten on board with this. It's just such a betrayal, honestly, by those people to Canada to do that. I truly wonder. I wonder if there's been, I'm sure there have been polls. If that vote was held today, would Trudeau remain as Prime Minister? I bet he would.

It's interesting. I've seen a lot of polls showing the liberal party may be able to end up prevailing after the next Snap elections and be able to form a government which nobody thought possible before. Also, our Alberta fans want me to be very clear that it's Alberta, not Alberta, you American. Prime Minister Justin.

We do our best. We got America, we got the United States, and we got our New York accent, and we got whatever broadly shifted from us living in California. We got a whole mishmash stuff. Bear with us.

Prime Minister Trudeau saying, not a snowball's chance in hell will Canada become a 51st state. Let's play it. I've said unequivocally from the beginning, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that Canada will ever be the 51st state. He is again talking about Donald Trump's threats of annexation and conquest to conquer Canada. Play this one.

You previously said that it's a real thing that Trump wants to annex Canada. How serious or urgent would you classify that threat?

Let's be very clear. Conversations around a 54th state are a nonstarter. It's never going to happen. But we have to take seriously what the President is saying and fold that into our thinking as we continue to stand up for Canada. Among the many reasons why Donald Trump is just a very stupid individual is he views that as weakness. Let's be clear, our Canadian fans and friends and almost become like family at this point, say, Look, we're very nice in Canada, but once you push us a certain level, we're going over the boards. Don't mistake our kindness for our inability to punch you in the face when we want to. If you look at the history of Canada fighting in wars, when Canada fights, Canada wins. As I've always said, American foreign policy used to be rooted in this concept of walking soft or speaking soft and carrying a big stick, not walking like a maniac, but ultimately being weak at the end. It's been an inversion of what this American policy should be. So Trump looks at these bloviating, strong men, these Kim Jong Un and the guy, Victor Orbans and Javier Mallet and people like that who were loud and obnoxious, whose by the way, are suffering.

Trump views that as strength when in reality, strength is being deliberative, reflective, and when you need to punch somebody in the face, you freaking knock them out. That's what Trump never really understood or he did understand, but he's an idiot and he prefers. He's in the image of everything America wasn't. Again, shame on spineless Republicans and shame on everybody who's enabled this. Let's go to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who I'm not a big fan of, but he said something witty here every now and then. Here, let's play this clip if we got him, Brett. I actually happened to be giving a speech in Florida the other day, and I looked at the beach at Mar-a-Lago, and I thought this was a fantastic place if you wanted to resettle millions of people from the Middle East. It's absolutely beautiful. Lots of space here. But it's not going to happen because somebody else owns it. And Gaza is in law, owned and occupied by people who have a right to be there. That is not going to happen. But it's destabilizing to suggest it when you've got, for example, King Abdullah You've got the Egyptians and your threatening aid.

Whether or not this is just open thought, let's have a wonderful thought about what might happen. It's destabilizing. Well, but what Hamas did, frankly, was destabilizing destabilizing. So the Egyptian President, Al-Sisi, says he's not going to go to Washington, DC, and sit with Donald Trump the way King Abdullah of Jordan did, where Donald Trump talked about conquering Gaza and occupying it. And King Abdullah had to sit there and just be like, Oh, we will have chats further. You could see King Abdullah, literally grimacing as Donald Trump was saying these things that Abdullah knows back in the Middle East, that could cause a coup in that, a violent coup. Abdullah's life could be jeopardized by him, even entertaining some of these ideas. Let's take a look at Emmanuel Macron the President of France, what he had to say. Let's play it.

Today, humanitarian situation.

We have the ceasefire, we have to preserve it, we have to restore humanitarian operations, and we have to save maximum number of people. But now the right answer is not a real estate operation. This is a political operation. Just because this is not a free land, this is a place where 2 million people live and want to live. Just because international rights and a lot of treaties and agreements were negotiated, and even the US did recognize this rights.

You cannot say to 2 million people, Okay, now, guess what?

You will move. The whole story of humanity is made of tiny part of places where even less than 2 million people were ready to go till the end because they wanted just to stay. So I think we have to stick to our principles. Sometimes in this world, you have the feeling to be so old-fashioned when you speak about principles. Yeah. Just so I want to be clear, what the international resistance is looking like, what's forming with America being this isolated pariah country, like a North Korea. But even North Korea has some allies, at least in its region, like North Korea is least allied with Russia, China to some extent. Like Donald Trump attacks Mexico and Canada. And really, they're just in a holding pattern as they're trying to figure out which alliances they're going to form with America now being this pariah state. You have that going on. You have the federal judiciary, and then you have what's growing is despite corporate media trying to, again, as we're experiencing this, lie to us and gaslight us and pretend that things are just fine and normal and this is just crazy. Politics is crazy. No, no, no.

This is a coup. This is authoritarianism. It's here. It's not, will it be here? People are being pushed to a point where I think, especially as the weather starts getting a little better, you'll start also seeing as naturally happens in movements like this. I think you're going to start to see the scale and scope of protests get larger, especially as a lot of the things that we're seeing, the impact isn't going to be felt the day after or even a week after. But when you start adding up the economic data and you start seeing inflation go up, up, up, up, up in the wrong way, Trump will always make the wrong decisions in response to those things and make the things worse. You're going to see all this showing up, the Canadian boycott, the tariffs, the instability. You're going to see that. Yeah, the stock market's up. The level of instability in the market right now, it's like the Wild Wild West of just up days, down days up. I think I saw the small business index has never been more volatile in the history of it than it is right now. You know what?

It's like every day Trump wakes up and talks about tariffing this, tariffing that, tariffing this, tariffing that. What he said a deadline for Hamas, that if Hamas doesn't return all of the hostages He's going to unleash hell on Saturday, which, by the way, is a holy day for the Jews in Israel as well. But that's the day Trump picked because he goes, Why else? I'll just make it on a Saturday. But you've already just said no matter what, you're going to ethnically cleanse Palestine, and you're going to force the people out, and you're not going to let them ever return and go back. You've made a ceasefire less stable. You've placed the hostages lives at risk. You You've disincentivized the counterparty to the negotiation of cooperating because even once they cooperate, you say you're going to do the same thing you're going to do if they don't cooperate. That's the status of where we're at there, Brett.

Yeah, no, it's chaos every day. People are going to get screwed as the world unites against us. But I think one of the interesting things is to see this, if you want to use the word resistance, resistance forming that's not just in Europe, but also amongst governors in the United States. We are seeing prosecutors. We are seeing various legal groups throughout the United States. I feel like a lot of the countering of Donald Trump's autocratic movements are going to have to be in the courts. They're going to have to be these judges, whether they are Trump appointed, Bush appointed, Reagan appointed, Biden appointed, Obama appointed. I don't care who appointed you. Those are the people in the safest positions. It's going to be up to them to uphold our laws. That's why Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to destroy the judiciary. That's why they're making these threats. That's why they're saying that they want to impeach these justices. They want a world where they could just operate and do what they want without any repercussions. They are systematically destroying the United States, the very fabric of our government. I want to remind everybody, too, It's a lot easier to destroy than it is to build.

It's easy to tear things down. It's a lot harder to build them back up. And so at the end of the day, if we're able to get out from under this, and I think we will be able to, it's going to be very hard to repair the damage, and it's going to be a very lengthy process. But for now, we need to stem the bleeding. We need to work with all those out there, our true allies, to push back and whether those allies are here in the United States, in the court, whether there are people in our Congress, whether they are international leaders or our friends internationally, we need to all unite as a pro-democracy movement to fight back against what we are seeing here. And it's great seeing those instances of people fighting back. And there are some Dems now also stepping up, doing some good things. I think Chris Murphy has been a very effective voice. I think Dan Goldman has been very effective. I think Jasmine Crockett has been great. I think there are a lot of folks out there right now who are pushing back. Let's continue to put those people on the front lines of this movement and have them unleash everything that they could possibly unleash right now to protect us.

Because people are afraid, rightfully so. This is a totally illegal encroachment on all of our personal rights. The party that likes to dub itself the Party of Small Government is now leading the charge of the biggest government imaginable, the biggest big government takeover of our systems imaginable, destroying our checks and our balances in the process. And We need to fight back and we need to make it clear.

Yeah, I saw even to your point, Brett, during the confirmation hearing of Linda McMahon, the WWE co founder, along with her husband, she and he are both under. There were some investigations regarding sexual harassment cover-ups there as well. Her role, as Donald Trump said, as the Secretary of Education, is to destroy the Department of Education. Literally, Trump said, the goal is to destroy it. But one of the things she said in her confirmation hearing on Thursday which deserves to get more attention is that she would like to see the government examine the different clubs that are at schools. If there are schools that have Vietnamese clubs or African-American clubs or Asian clubs or clubs that are built around helping minorities or marginalized groups, just through the process that that would subject the school to losing their federal funding. She said she'd like to investigate, use the government investigate what it is that those clubs are doing, to which Senator Chris Murphy says, I find that astonishing that that's how you want to use the government to see what the African-American Club is doing or what's being taught in African-American studies. So I just wanted to bring that up as well.

I want to say this, too. We're going to be by your side every step of the way. As I've said before, until they rip this microphone from my hand, we will never obey, we will never kiss the ring. I want to be very clear about that. And we will be fighting by your side, especially as the protests start to pick up, especially as the international resistance starts to pick up. As corporate media fails us more and more, we will be here each and every day providing a robust coverage of the news to you and making sure you have all of the facts. We're not scared here at the Midas Touch Network. We understand what our obligations are to this country and to the world in this moment right now, and we are going to meet this moment with you each and every single day. I want to thank you all so much for watching this episode A reminder, next Thursday, we will be hosting our live, Patreon. Com/mightastouch, our live Zoom meeting. It's an exclusive Zoom meeting for our patrons. It's a fun way we try to get to meet you, get to see your face, and also when you become a member of Patreon, when you become a patron, it helps grow our independent platform.

Remember to check out midasplus. Com as well, meidasplus. Com. Don't forget to check out our ProDemocracy sponsors, all of those great discounts that Jordie negotiates with them. And we use all of those sponsors, and Jordie spends a long time with those sponsors vetting them. The discount codes are in the description below. Make sure you subscribe not just on YouTube, but also to our audio. So audio listeners be on YouTube, YouTube listeners subscribe to our audio. Keep us at the top of all of the charts. And remember to keep checking in throughout the day on the Midas Touch YouTube channel as we have new videos every 90 minutes or sometimes even every hour, giving you updates that we think you need to hear. Thank you all so much. Have a wonderful day. And as Jordie would say, shout out to the Midas Mighty.

The Midas Mighty, standing strong. Against the fascists, we sing our song.

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