Transcript of MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 4/7/26 New

Donald Trump's unlawful and catastrophic war in Iran continues to escalate. Over the weekend, Donald Trump posted an expletive-laced social media post where he says, open the effing strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. And then Donald Trump said that he was involved in negotiations with Iran and he thought a deal was going to happen. And yet again, he leaked this fake information. This fraudulent information to manipulate the markets to Barak Ravid over at Axios, who then published it. Then we woke up this morning to find out, surprise, surprise, yet again, there's no negotiations taking place. In fact, Iran sent back its framework if the United States even wants to be involved in negotiations, which include all the non-negotiables that they've been saying for weeks, which is what we've been talking about here on the Midas Touch network, that they keep their ballistic missiles and Shahed drones, that they get full reparations, no ceasefire. They want full-time security guarantees forever for themselves, for Hezbollah, for the Houthis, and for Shiite militia groups in Iraq. And they said they basically want the US off of military bases in the region, and they want full control of the Strait of Hormuz to set up their toll system, which they are doing right now.

Donald Trump then said, actually, I'm just going to blow up all of Iran now, all of it. I'm going to destroy the entire country. He called Iran in general like a bunch of animals. He gave one of the most deranged, if not the most deranged press conference I'd ever seen today, where he said that he was the one who killed Osama bin Laden. He said he wants to run and become the president of Venezuela. He went on to, you know, provide likely classified information about the number of special forces in this purported operation near the Isfahan nuclear facility involving the F-15E pilots, which I did a video about, which let me be very clear, it's great news that that F-15E pilot and both of 'em were crew members were found and safe and secure. Although there's a lot of questions about this operation involving hundreds of special forces right by the Isfahan facility. When also the CIA leaked that it was involved in a deception campaign in the area. And then we saw what, multiple C-130s, multiple helicopters, multiple Reaper drones were destroyed by Iran in connection with this, about half a billion dollars of military equipment destroyed.

And we'll talk about that. And now Donald Trump has basically set another deadline And his other deadline is that by 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, if Iran doesn't make a deal with him or doesn't negotiate with him, he goes, we're going to blow up all of their bridges, every one of them, every one of their power plants, every one of them, all of their civilian infrastructure. And already today, things have escalated a lot. I mean, US and Israel hit the petrochemical plants in Iran. Those kind of that southern Pars facility right by the Qatari northern oil field. You had the, you know, the LNG facilities, had petrochemical facilities that you had universities, the Sharif University, the MIT essentially of Iran was destroyed by US and Israeli strikes. And throughout all of this, Iran's out there on their various social media accounts and they're saying, you know, basically bring it on, we're ready to fight. They're out there mocking Donald Trump for negotiating with himself. They're out there calling out Donald Trump's behavior. They're out there saying the 25th Amendment needs to be invoked. There's this post right here for audio listeners where they go, where Donald Trump goes, Tuesday, 8:00 PM Eastern time.

And the Iranian social media accounts respond by saying, 8:00 PM, not that good. Could you change it to between 1:00 and 2:00 PM, or if possible, 1:00 and 2:00 AM? Thank you for your attention to this important matter. I mean, they're mocking him. They're mocking him. Never before has the United States looked so weak and pathetic on the world stage. It is, it is a humiliation ritual that the entire country is being put through. And then Donald Trump continues to attack NATO. NATO probably just exists in name only at this point, because Trump says that he and Putin talk all about how NATO is a paper tiger. And that NATO's not a real powerful group anymore. So you've got Trump doing that real pathetic stuff. We'll cover it all. We'll break it all down here on the Midas Touch Network. And Brett and Jordy and Midas Mighty, we're used to Donald Trump on Easter Sunday and other holidays posting deranged stuff. But with the United States in this unlawful war that Donald Trump has brought us in, I mean, this was something that, you know, when I read even in the morning You know, I'm like, is this real?

And I had to look at it again and again. I'm like, this is just a whole new level of weak and pathetic.

Threatening to destroy entire countries on Easter Sunday. How pious of Donald Trump. It's good to be here, brothers. Good to be here, Ben. Good to be here, Jordy. Good to be here, Midas Mighty. Everybody out there listening on the audio podcast or watching us live on YouTube, always great to be here with you to break down the news. I will say before we get into everything that I have figured out a new way to know what day it is without checking the calendar because even yesterday I kind of forgot it was a Sunday, to be honest. I was like, I kind of thought it was a Saturday. And then I was so disappointed because I saw the tweet from Barak Ravid of Axios that said a deal is imminent. There's a ceasefire, a 45-day ceasefire imminent, and the talks are real and it's coming, folks. It's about to be here. And I said, oh, it's Market Manipulation Sunday. The futures markets are about to open. I see now. I was like, shit, I thought it was Saturday.

I thought another day.

Of this weekend. But no, Barack Ravid posted his market manipulation story, and now I know it's Sunday. I jest, but that's like the way this thing is going right now. It's a predictable pattern of every single week, this firehose of BS coming from the Trump administration, coming from reporters who just act as stenographers for the Trump administration, pushing false information out there to try, in my opinion, to pump the markets before they open on Monday morning. The whole thing is just grotesque. We'll get into all of it. You know, first, I I got to check in with Jordy. Jordy, what's the latest?

What's up, brothers? What's up, Midas Mighty? Ben, going to just piggyback on what you were talking about earlier. Donald Trump, he sounds like a comic book villain at this point. Like, he sounds like the Joker. If you don't agree by 8:00 PM ET on Tuesday night, I'm going to blow up your bridges. And then Tuesday inevitably comes. Well, nothing happens, right? Not that I'm rooting for him to blow up these bridges and stuff, but it's just like he is cartoonishly evil and just so stupid. And to your point, exactly, Ben, this is a humiliation ritual. He's putting our entire country— every citizen in this country is being put through this humiliation ritual because Donald Trump doesn't know how to actually negotiate. He's treating this entire war with Iran like it's some episode of The Apprentice. Right. And they know that he's doing that. And so He's just— he's singularly the most ill-equipped person to be handling this matter right now. And he's just so unserious. But the things he says, like, they have consequences worldwide. Benji, excited again tonight's show, brothers. Midas Mighty, where are we starting off?

Yeah, obviously the market manipulation Sunday night. It's a weekly ritual. This is so reminiscent and the timeframe is so reminiscent of COVID in 2020, right? Remember Donald Trump said COVID was gonna go away by Easter, the curve would be bent. He goes, it's gonna align so perfectly, and he'd invoke God, and that it's godly and miracles, and it's gonna go away because of Easter. And then it didn't, and then it got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Here we are after Easter, all of Donald Trump's lies, caught up with him. It's just at this point nobody believes a word of what he's saying. Nobody should have believed a word of what he's saying. But, you know, it still seems that he and a crew of his right-wing oligarch buds do the Ponzi scheme thing where they still try to really trade on the information as soon as— and it's shorter bursts at this point— but as soon as Barak Ravid from Axios publishes the story, they come up with new creative framings I think this time it was like, you know, there were like multiple countries involved in this and there's a slim chance, but people still hold hope.

And, you know, they like add new details that are just completely— US officials are telling me this, that, you know, and the other. I mean, in a last-ditch push, a 45-day ceasefire in a very specific amount of days, right? Iran's never agreeing to a ceasefire, nor is Iran ever going to speak with Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkopf. The last times they spoke with Kushner and Whitkopf, they were invaded right after there was believed to be a deal in principle based on what the independent neutral mediators said. And they believe— this is why we study what they're saying, what they're reporting. They believe, one, anything that Whitkopf and Kushner says, they're not even going to believe, and they're never going to talk to them at all. And then they also believe that any type of ceasefire just provides the U.S. and Israel time to build up their munitions. Iran, despite the Trump regime and Netanyahu, like, portraying them as like cavemen who scream like "Allahu Akbar" and aren't like sophisticated actors and they don't know what they're doing and they're savages and animals. Right. That's the language that comes out from the Trump regime. You know, Iran has a framework of negotiation that they've always said, if you don't agree with our framework, we're not negotiating with you in the first place.

Iran has a clear plan here where they've utilized this war to gain more power each and every day, fully controlling the Strait of Hormuz, having countries bilaterally negotiate it with it. Countries that do want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz that are not allied with the US and Israel. Have to utilize yuan, Chinese currency, in order to devalue the dollar. They're very much aware of the missile stockpiles and the amount of munitions the United States and Israel have. They're very much aware that the penetration rate of the Iranian ballistics and Shaheds is up significantly since the beginning of the war. Iran shoots less missiles with more precision right now. And I think the last analysis that was actually done by JP Morgan, I think, says that Iran now has like a a 27% success rate of utilizing its weapons to hit targets, whereas at the beginning of the war it was 3%. And so this idea by the Trump regime portraying Iran as like a barbaric group of savage animals— that's basically the language word for word that Donald Trump uses— belies the on-the-ground reality that it's filled with very smart engineers that know what they're doing, that have built these drones, these Shaheds and FPVs.

They are utilizing systems to shoot down American planes, American helicopters. In this one mission alone, if you believe the official narrative, the US on its own had to destroy two C-130s, two helicopters, MQ-9 Reaper drones. The US destroyed it all. Whether you believe the US narrative that they destroyed that they destroyed the 8 aircraft or the Iranians that they shot it down. We know the F-15E and the A-10 were shot down over— were shot down by Iran. But all these— it's undisputed fact that all of this aircraft was shot down. We see Iran shooting the Babco facility in Bahrain and the Kuwaiti facilities. We learned right before we went live that there was a recent strike on Kuwait. Where multiple American soldiers were injured that, you know, that CENTCOM and nobody's talking about. An Iranian drone strike at the Ali al-Salam Air Base in Kuwait overnight injured 15 Americans. This is what officials are telling CBS. They got to leak it because the Trump regime is not putting forward any accurate data. We truly have no count, no accurate count right now. What's the real casualty rate? Everything the Trump regime is telling us is a lie.

You have to ask, like, You know, on the big aircraft carrier when the U.S. claimed, oh, there was a fire that was started in the laundry room. Like, you know, is that really what happened? You know, when they say, oh, we brought in hundreds of special forces right off of the Isfahan nuclear facility to save this F-15E fighter pilot. You have to question, are you giving us— like, normally we would be like, okay, that's accurate information. And I don't want to veer into the land of conspiracy or people go, but Ben, clearly this, that, and the other. I simply have to now say that most of the info we're getting out of the Trump regime, if not all of it, is a complete and utter lie. And that is, and that is deeply problematic. But Iran is increasing its capabilities, not decreasing its capabilities. And now we're at a point where Donald Trump is saying again, by 8:00 PM Eastern time, and I'll show you what he said on this press conference in a little bit, by 8:00 PM Eastern time Tuesday, We are going to basically destroy the entire country. We're going to bomb it back to the Stone Age.

We're going to— we're going to crush it. We're going to destroy these savages. And he says these things which are war crimes. Let's not mince words what he's saying— war crimes. And then the Iranian regime has used this to boost morale amongst its people. They use it to motivate their people. And if anything, you know, Iran now feels that this is a war of civilizations. It's a clash of civilizations because Trump has framed it not as the United States going after the Islamic Republic and this ayatollah regime. Donald Trump has framed it as an extension essentially of the Crusades, that this is the West or America, the American empire I, Donald Trump, am going to obliterate and send you to the Stone Age and destroy these savage animals. That framing of things, that discussion from the perspective of these are war crimes. If you're not humiliated by that as an American, again, I don't care what political party you're from. If you're okay with this, you got to look in the mirror because this is some weak and pathetic stuff. Wasn't it last week where Donald Trump gave an address to the nation and said, we don't need the Strait of Hormuz at all.

Why would we need it? We have all of the oil. So we're going to just leave it to the Europeans and France and the UK and Arab nations. You all figure it out. We're leaving in 2 days because we don't need the Strait of Hormuz. You've got this. He gave a national address. Think about past presidents giving national addresses and the impact and import that that has. He gives that national address And then within a few days later, on Easter Sunday, he says, praise be Allah, you know, praise be to Allah, open the effing strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. I'll throw it over to Brett and Jordy. I mean, again, we, you know, you have Dr. Gupta here who basically says, you know, there are major red flags in Donald Trump's health. We've been talking about the 25th Amendment repeatedly here. I just don't— I just, at a basic level, I don't even know how you look at that and go, okay, I look beyond that. That is just— that is some of the most disgusting and vile stuff.

It also shows like he's kind of the world's worst poker player, right? Like, it's so obvious that he's bluffing when he's like, oh, we don't need anyone else's help. You know, we don't even need the straight of 4 moves. It's all good. It'll open itself 'Everybody just don't even worry about it. Like a miracle, it's going to go away,' you know? And then like 2 days later to say, 'Open the fucking straight.' Like, like it just shows you where you are. It shows that this guy's back is against the wall. And the thing that I've really just been afraid about is when his back is against the wall, that's when he's most erratic and most dangerous, as cornered rats often are. That's why I am worried about him doing some sort of major strikes or something, you know, outrageous at this moment, because he's running out of options, quite frankly. Frankly, like, Donald Trump is not winning this war right now. He's putting our troops at risk. They keep making things up, like, you know, that we have total air superiority and they're unable to get us. Next thing we know, they're shooting down our planes, they're shooting down our helicopters.

And the fact that we even had to do that rescue mission to begin with shows the precarious situation that we are in. And meanwhile, yes, that was a heroic rescue that we witnessed. And I got to say, the United States military, the best military there is, our troops are incredibly impressive at doing operational duties. However, our leadership is absolutely awful right now because our leadership is Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, just utter buffoons who are sending these troops into really dangerous situations and unnecessary situations. And with their rhetoric, the rhetoric of Hegseth and the rhetoric of Donald Trump, they are invoking all of that religious imagery that, that Ben was saying. It was the Donald Trump that Ben was saying before. I know, right? Invoking all that religious imagery and that rhetoric that Ben was speaking about before and everything that they're doing right now. It's almost as if their messaging is designed to turn everybody in that region against the United States and turn all the Iranian people against the United States. And frankly, I'm like sickened to see my tax dollars right now be spent on this stuff, be spent on Donald Trump right now.

To be threatening war crimes, committing war crimes in the Middle East, saying, I'm going to blow up this power plant and I'm going to blow up this bridge and we're blowing up this university and blowing up a girls' school. This is all really twisted, demented stuff that we are watching right now that is way beyond the pale. But these people in our government right now are just letting Donald Trump do it. And it is absolutely sickening. And now we have all of these people these sympathetic Iranians to the United States cause, people who would have welcomed us actually early on if Donald Trump actually did something when he told them to protest en masse and get out into the streets. But now these people view it as existential, like Ben was saying, right? This has been an existential battle right now. And I brought this up a few episodes ago— it's a war of choice from the United States. This is an existential war for Iran. They are quite literally fighting for their existence. And now it's not just the Islamic Republic fighting for existence, but it's the people in Iran fighting for their existence, the everyday people there.

And when you hear Donald Trump talk today, quite frankly, he could have went out, you know, gone out during this press conference and he could have said— he could have— he could have talked about the heroism of our troops and talked about the rescue mission and spoke about the pilots and spoke about what they were going through. Instead, he went out there and said, yes, the Iranian people, they actually love when we bomb them. And we're going to bomb them even harder. And they celebrate when we bomb them, and they actually get upset when they stop hearing the bombs dropping on their schools and their universities. They get sad. They say, please, sir, more bombs, more bombs. This is the behavior of a sick, delusional madman. And every piece of intelligence that has come out throughout the last few weeks has completely contradicted everything that he has said in public. So right now, it's really tough to honestly even infer what we— well, you have to infer what's going on because it's actually kind of impossible to understand the facts, what actually happened during that rescue mission. What's actually— how many troops are actually injured?

How many casualties do we actually have? How much military equipment is actually damaged? We simply don't know a lot of this information, and we have to get it from secondhand sources because the United States government right now cannot be trusted to tell the truth at all.

Exactly. You cannot take— you can't take the Trump regime word for anything. Our leadership, our quote-unquote leadership in this country, is absolutely failing our citizens and our soldiers, and especially our soldiers. Like, I just want to continue to emphasize that. Like, remember when Hegseth said during the presser not too long ago— I have the quote right here, I'm just going to read it— we will keep pressing, we will keep pushing, keep advancing, uh, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies. When you say stuff like that, right? Like when you want to use these like really tough guy phrases to make yourself look, I don't know, look like a man, Hegseth, saying we're going to show our enemies no quarters. Inevitably, when missions go wrong in wars, because it's just— it's a thing that sadly happens. Now you're putting our troops at so much more of a higher risk here to trying to get them home safe. Because you're telling— what you're telling everyone is like, we're not going to abide by those types of rules. No, no, we see we're out for blood and for blood only. And so what Donald Trump and the Trump regime continue to do every single day here is one, make us look wholly incompetent.

Like truly just there was no plan for the war to begin with. Because remember, now the plan and how we win the war is to open the strait. Well, the strait was open before we got there, so why are we even there anymore? And then if we damaged all of their equipment and all of their plants and things like that, if we totally obliterated them in the first strikes, well then why are we still there? Why, why, why does Trump need so much more money, endless amounts of money to fund this illegal war in the first place? It is mind-boggling to me that mainstream and legacy media let him skate by. Donald Trump and the Trump regime let him skate by on all of these things. I'm so grateful for this community to always call that stuff out. But the constant moving of the goalposts for the sake of market manipulation, I mean, that to me is like so evil. Like at its core, it is so evil in its essence. And people just need to like stand up and call it out for what it is. It's criminal, Ben.

Yeah. Well, a few things that we've been reporting on that I don't think you've seen many other places. We shared with you the protests over the weekend in Baghdad. Where there was about a million members of the Shiite community there with some of the influential Shiite clerics. They were all protesting the U.S. invasion of Iran, and they were calling for Iraq to officially join the side of Iran against the United States. I mean, there were people as far as the eye could see. We've been seeing huge crowds in Iran, and we've been sharing that with you just to see the ability to mass mobilize. Then you can say, well, all of those people are out there. That's part of a coordinated propaganda campaign. You can make that argument, but there's a lot of damn people who are out there. Then, you know, we shared with you the protests that are taking place in Yemen, hundreds of thousands of people at those protests. In Syria, hundreds of thousands of people in those protests. We also shared with you in Tel Aviv, in Israel, where there's a lot of anti-war protests taking place now. I think we'd like to see that bigger, but there's a lot of people out there.

And what Donald Trump's been able to do is rally a lot of people against him in ways that heretofore would likely not have happened with every one of Donald Trump's, not just mistakes, but his cultural maliciousness and this barbarism that is not being exhibited by the other side in their negotiations, at least publicly. but is being exhibited by Donald Trump and Hegseth, who keep on saying, glory to God, God's telling us to kill you. God wants us to blow you all up to the Stone Age. God is telling me to do this. I mean, that's the messaging coming from Donald Trump and his regime. And I've been studying, and I have before, Iranian culture, the foundation of the Islamic Republic, their prior involvement in The only two times they've ever made a deal, the Islamic Republic, was to end the Iran-Iraq War, where they learned a lot from that and they were willing to commit lots of lives in that fight that lasted years and years and years. And the Obama deal were the only two times they really did a negotiation and made a deal. When you study their negotiating tactics or the kind of cultural aspects of, of how they perceive their role in the world.

They view it through what's called a principalist framework, and that ultimately they're not transactional. It's one of the things that are frustrating Donald, because he's used to, you know, MBS of Saudi Arabia or the UAE or Qatar being transactional. You know, you'd scratch my back, I scratch your back. You know, you get— although pay for play, although Donald Trump doesn't ultimately play after the pay. But at least Trump saw in them transactional people. And he doesn't understand why the Islamic Republic is not accepting, you know, the threats, the inducements of money. Why? Why wouldn't you want to just do what Delcy Rodriguez did in Venezuela and join me? And we could be— we could lead a cartel together. We could be shoulder to shoulder and we'll both make money on the Strait of Hormuz. But that's just not how Iranians negotiate. And they've always put forward the same 10-point framework. And I know it's being reported today by the New York Times and elsewhere as this maximalist approach. They call it maximalist, where Iran submits 10-point proposal via Pakistan to end the war, including to end all attacks, full sanctions relief, halt to Israeli strikes, reconstruction support, and guarantees against future attacks.

No ceasefire because they want full guarantees and they want to keep their weapons. I didn't need this report. They've been very clear and very consistent about this framework. And every time Trump has escalated, they've returned in kind and escalated. You strike their petrochemical facility, they strike a petrochemical facility. They hit Haifa, they hit Qatar, they hit Bahrain. You hit their area, they hit your area. That's what they said they're going to do. They've, they've done that. And so, you know, there was a brief window this weekend where you had the foreign minister of Iran, Araghchi, seem to extend an olive branch, which was not understood by the Trump regime, where he was like, we never said that we don't want any communications with Pakistan. We just don't want it enforced on us or imposed upon us. And the response to that was Trump's, you know, effing straight, you effing bastards. Bomb you to the Stone Age. And all that does is have the opposite impact, has the opposite effect. And so the way with COVID Trump's like, like a miracle, it's all going to go away. No, it's not real.

It's not a real thing.

That doesn't work. Right. The strategy over here with Iran is never going to work. And the only way to deal with it is either to demonstrate a respect culturally for Iran, you know, which is You may or may not want to do that. You pull out and you recognize the defeat and you give up the Strait of Hormuz and allow Iran— allow Iran to do that, you know, or you escalate and you cause mass catastrophic events in the Middle East. But you're huffing and you're throughout the world, but you're huffing and you're puffing and I'll blow your house up. That doesn't work. That's not going to work. It never will work in Iran. They're not afraid of that.

They're mocking you.

You for doing that. So you have to at least start with a cultural understanding of who is the other, who's the counterparty. And that's one of the things we try to deliver to you here. You may not like it. You may go, why are you giving their perspective? I just want everybody to see the dynamics that are at play so we truly understand what's happening, not just the frantic headlines. We'll leave there for now. We've got a lot.

I'll just say, let me just say this quickly, like Iran has Russia has been hitting back at the US quite frequently now because they're saying, how are we supposed to trust that they're even serious about diplomacy? And I think you could see why they would come to that conclusion when you see Donald Trump saying, open the effing strait, you crazy bastards. F you, F you. We're going to blow it up. We're going to blow up your power plants. It's not exactly an opening to discussions here. And let's remember, the people who are the people in the room right now, so to speak, the metaphorical room, because there aren't actually any sort of direct negotiations underway at all. Hell. But we got Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner right now have the fate of this whole thing in their hands. And you could argue very strongly, I would say, that they're the reason we're in this war to begin with. Uh, and, and by the way, there was a deal, right? We spoke about this. There was a deal. There was a mediator from Oman who was picked by the United States in the room that said the Iranians were willing to give up a whole lot of stuff, more than even during the Iranian nuclear deal that Trump tore up, which led to this You could draw a direct line from that moment to this moment.

But they apparently did not understand what was going on, or they relayed bad information to Donald Trump, or Trump didn't understand them, or Trump didn't care. I don't know what it is. But now we are relying on Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump right now to try to negotiate something. The whole thing is just unserious, but it is incredibly dangerous.

America killed Ali Larijani, who was one of the people that was negotiating a a few weeks back. Remember, we killed that. The United States killed him. Then there was another former foreign minister of Iran who, as soon as he was asked by Pakistan to get involved, his home was bombed by the United States and Israel. His wife was killed and he was severely injured. And so every time also Donald Trump says, hey, you know, let's negotiate, there's always an escalation as well. In the war, which seems to demonstrate, at least to Iran, that you just use negotiations as a pretext for escalation and not de-escalation. And so I gave you the framework. One of these things either have to happen. Either you're going to escalate and cause a catastrophic event for the world of proportions we haven't, you know, ever, you know, aren't even able to fathom. You just totally withdraw and you concede just an absolute, an absolute shoot, you know, defeat, um, you know, or you, you know, you try to make some deal where Iran is able to keep certain things. You negotiate within their framework, um, and you try to maybe get in a point here or there, but you negotiate within a mutual framework, not your— one of those three things happens, or there's— or nothing happens.

And Trump's like, no, I'm just gonna threaten you. And it's, it's an— as you look at Trump Trump, it's not a superpower, but there is a— and I don't mean this in a positive way— there's a relentlessness. The way he still talks about the 2020 elections and spread lies about it, right? When he gets fixated on a thing, whatever it is, it's the fountain hose of lies is so incredibly overwhelming, nonstop, that for a lot of people it exhausts them. Them, then it breaks them. And the moment you break and you live within his framework of his alternative reality, right, like a Rubio or any of these types of people, you've now debased yourself where you can't really get out of it because you've now accepted this alternative reality. And to get out means complete and utter humiliation for you. And while you're still facing humiliation rituals being in this alternative reality, your only hope becomes the zombification of others, bringing them into your alternate reality and trying to shape other people and force them into your thinking. Because if you admit you're wrong, it's a total humiliation ritual. That's the kind of psychological brainwashing jiu-jitsu that's taking place.

And he's trying to do that with Iran. I mean, just think of it.

It's nonstop, nonstop.

And they just mock it and brush it off. Pathetic.

Okay.

8:00 PM. How about 6:00 PM? We actually were better at 1:00 PM or 2:00 PM, or you want to do it at 3:00 AM. That's, you know, that's ultimately what someone like a Governor Newsom, what clicks and he realizes, you know, or people who oppose Trump, what you realize is you have to mock it and ignore it and then just treat it like crazy. And not, not normalize it. And so there's that adaptive learning taking place. And so anyway, I don't think you've heard this level of analysis anywhere else. It's been a long— this is a long segment. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back. I'm going to show you some of the clips of what went down. I don't think I need to show you all of them because you've seen the deranged stuff that he said. And then let's talk about other developments. Howard Lutnick is going to be meeting with the House Oversight Oversight Committee apparently voluntarily regarding their Epstein investigation. Let's not forget about that. We got a lot more to discuss. Let's take our quick break. A reminder, hit subscribe, help us get to 7 million subscribers right now.

And also, if you can, subscribe on audio as well and leave a 5-star review on the Midas Touch audio podcast. All right, we'll be right back.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress affects far more than our bank accounts. It can take a serious toll on mental health and relationships, with 88% of Americans feeling some form of financial stress at the start of 2026. Money worries often bring anxiety, sleep disruption, and even depression, and are one of the leading sources of conflict for couples. This month, we want to normalize the emotional weight of financial stress and remind people that struggling with money doesn't mean they failed. Sometimes it's just about accessing the right kind of support. Therapy isn't about financial advice, It's about managing the stress, shame, or anxiety that can come with it. Therapy can help people unpack their relationship with money, build healthier coping strategies, and feel less alone in the process. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, and their 12+ years of experience and industry-leading match fulfillment rate means that they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations.

With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally, and it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. When life feels overwhelming therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/mitus. That's betterhelp.com/mitus.

All right, we all love our pets. I want to tell you something real quick about my dog because I think a lot of you are probably dealing with the same thing. Mine started slowing down a bit, a little less energy, and I just figured, hey, that's just the part of getting older, right? But I figured, let me mix things up just a little bit. Then after a few weeks on Rough Greens, I started to see a real difference. This stuff is amazing. Now my dog is a Ruff Greens dog for life. Here's the thing. Most dog food is basically dead food. It's processed, shelf-stable for years, and stripped of the nutrients your dog actually needs. Ruff Greens brings that nutrition back. It's packed with live bioavailable nutrients, essential vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and omega oils that support long-term health. It helps improve nutrient absorption, supports joint and muscle health, and boosts overall vitality. Plus, it promotes longevity by addressing the nutritional gaps in typical dog food with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds that help keep your dog active, mobile, and alert as they age. And the best part? You don't have to change your dog's food at all.

Rough Greens isn't dog food, it's a supplement. Just add a scoop to whatever you're already feeding your dog. I've seen the difference myself. More energy, better mood, just a healthier, happier dog overall. I don't just recommend Ruff Greens, I depend on it to keep my dog happy and healthy. Don't change your dog's food, just add Ruff Greens. Ruff Greens is offering a free jumpstart trial bag. You just cover shipping. Use discount code MIDAS to claim your free jumpstart trial bag at ruffgreens.com. That's ruffgreens.com, promo code MIDAS, M-E-I-D-A-S. So don't change your dog's food, just add Ruff Greens and watch the health benefits come alive.

Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors. Links in the description of both YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. I really love that Rough Greens especially. Definitely, definitely check that out. Use the code Midas. Benji, before I toss it back over to you, I just wanted to say this, and I know I said this on the podcast before, but I just think it's worth repeating, is that Donald Trump is not a great businessman. Right. I just think it needs to be said plainly, just like that, because there are far too many people, especially in the right wing and corporate media ecosystem, that truly believe he is. He's the world's worst negotiator. Let me say it like that again. He is the world's worst negotiator and is singularly the worst person to be in charge of this moment right now. He has no reason to why we actually got put into this war that he got us into, and he has no plan for us to exit other than seemingly it seems like killing a whole lot of people and having our troops get killed too in the likes of it.

Donald Trump is the world's worst businessman. He was put into business by his father. He was bankrolled by his father, daddy's money, and he failed at every single business he had. It's amazing to me that there are so many people in the right-wing ecosystem and just in the ecosystems in general that like to say, you know what, that Donald Trump, I don't like, like how he goes crazy and like says the weird stuff, but he's a good businessman. No, he is not. He bankrupted casinos. Do you know how bad you have to be have to be at business to bankrupt a casino.

It is—

it makes me want to rip out my hair sometimes when I hear that from people. Benji, what do you think about that? Where to next?

You know, I teach negotiations at a law school. I am a professor, and one of the topics that we spend a lot of weeks on in my class is negotiation. And Donald Trump violates every rule of good faith negotiation. He sets fake deadlines. Oftentimes in negotiations, each side leaves a little bit on the table, right? When you're trying to negotiate with the counterparty, it's not a war usually. You know, if you go to war, you go to war, or you litigate, right? You fight in the court, or you fight whatever. And the negotiation part is trying to figure out solutions where both sides leave, leave a little bit kind of left. Donald Trump views negotiations as the act of war itself, when a negotiation often involves a level of de-escalation. So he sets arbitrary and fake deadlines. He is not a trustworthy conveyor of information, which is an understatement, right? He provides contradictory data. Within moments of each other. So you on the other side don't even know what to trust or what to not trust. He undermines other people on his team who you think you're negotiating with, and then he'll throw them under the bus.

Or so you don't have a point of contact for the negotiation itself. As noted, you know, he views it as an effort to crush the other side. When he misses a deadline, He then just switches it and then acts like he doesn't make good often on the threat from the arbitrary deadline. And oftentimes a good negotiator, like all the stuff I teach in my class, you are not just like throwing out numbers to try to meet in the middle. A lot of negotiation is a data gathering exercise where you, the best negotiators are very detailed-oriented people who are extracting oftentimes what's referred to as the unknown unknowns by asking questions to try to determine how do you have the best data set in order to find solutions. And oftentimes that involves a real curiosity. So what often I tell students in my negotiation classes is not to, you know, just go out and throw out numbers. Numbers and say, oh, this is the number, or even if your client wants X dollars or X whatever, that's not the best negotiating strategy. The best is to reach out to the other side or a mediator, ask a lot of questions, be very curious, keep asking questions, listen.

Being a good listener is the best type of negotiator. And then once you have as much data as you can, then you try to reach common sense solutions that bring people together. So he's the opposite of all— like, literally the worst of the worst forms of negotiation.

And then, and then to your point exactly there, this, this negotiation to escalate, like, as Trump is doing that, isn't that just such typical, like, rich kid, bad at business, daddy's money type of, like, businessman mentality? Because Donald Trump is used to doing that. He's used to using his negotiation tactics along with escalation because he's always had something in his back pocket.

Right.

Just think, you know, in the context of litigation, right? Imagine you're at a mediation to try to resolve the case. Plaintiff is there. Defendant is there. Let's say both sides are suing each other. There's a mediator trying to bring the parties together. And then one side learns while you're in this mediation process, that the other side just took some action that was, you know, you know, that tried to humiliate you or make you look stupid, or that really escalated the case. That will always result in the party leaving the mediation and saying, why would I deal with you? We were here to try to come up with a solution. Extrapolated writ large is kind of what you're seeing here. And Iran's like, why would I negotiate with one of these I don't want to speak with Whitkopf and Kushner. Two, you're killing our negotiators once they actually get involved. And we need to at least establish a negotiating framework. And we don't like being threatened every single time. That's not a way to get us to the negotiating— it's not a way to get us to the negotiating table. So what Trump has done, though, in his view of negotiations generally, and this is what I said before.

It is a relentless attack on the other.

Relentless.

Bring the family in, attack this person, give them nicknames, mock them, flood the zone, get others to start, you know, ganging up with you to pick on the person, really attack the weak side over and over and over again and try to pound them down and exhaust them and tire them out with just a relentlessness that most human beings don't want to deal with this crap, right? Most human beings want to go and spend Easter Sunday with their family, right? Or they want to go, you know, to, you know, to do something with their children or grandkids or go out with a significant other or friend or have a dinner or have a meal or take a walk or do these things, right? But this kind of MAGA crew, this Trump group, they just live in a stew in this kind of of, you know, in this world, you think about the kind of cartoonish bad guys or, you know, the, you know, Lord of the Rings bad guys, right? And they live in like this area with the volcanoes and it's dark and it's, you know, evil. And it's like, honestly, those characters, which seems so cartoonishly silly, right, is kind of the world where it's just relentless.

And so the only way to fight back is relentlessness to fight back with. It. And you really can't negotiate with it because it's all done in bad faith. Anyway, I know I took us on a journey there, but I wanted to give you my insight into the way I teach negotiation, you know, in, in a law class for law students and undergrads to, you know, and you know, you could say, well, this is different.

This is war.

This is that the same principles to me kind of generally apply right here. But let's just take a look at what went down. I want to show you this just disastrous press conference. Conference and some of the lowlights of it very quickly. So here's where Donald Trump says that he wants to be the president of Venezuela. And again, he keeps on mentioning Venezuela and I have such high popularity. And he's not like joking. He genuinely wants to be the president of Venezuela. Here's what he says.

Let's play this clip.

And we just— so you understand, the people of Venezuela, they say if I ran for president of Venezuela, I'm polling high. Higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela. So after I'm finished with this, I can go to Venezuela. I will quickly learn Spanish. It won't take too long. I'm good at language. And I will go to Venezuela. I'm going to run for president. But we're very happy with the president-elect.

So to me, he's not joking there. Like, that's not him. He's not being funny. He genuinely wants to be the president of Venezuela.

The fact that he keeps comparing it to Venezuela too has to just be like— to me, that's a disturbing sign for all the Iranian people, uh, because, you know, I, I get if there's one comparison that he— it seems from all like the kind of leaks and stuff that we've heard is that Trump really believed that this Iran mission might be like Venezuela in terms of the speed, that he'd be able to get in and get out and everything would just be done, boom, out, done, good. That's clearly not the case. The Iranian regime views this as existential. The Iranian people view this as existential, and they're going to fight this out till the end, you know, so it seems. But the thing that concerns me is you have to listen to Trump's rhetoric, and we're obviously about to play some more clips, but, uh, Trump keeps saying we've already had regime change. He's now said it like every single day. We've already had regime change in Iran. And he oscillates back and forth between yesterday saying these are some— y'all are crazy bastards, he said— and then saying the people in this new regime are actually far more easy to deal deal with.

They're actually way easier and way chiller to deal with. These people are reasonable. You can't have both. Just like in Venezuela, what did he do? He left the Maduro regime in charge with Maduro's second in command now leading the country with the same restrictions on freedoms that those people had beforehand. Now, he's claiming victory in terms of regime change in Iran when all he did was elevate the younger guy, the younger son of the Ayatollah to be Ayatollah, and he is a more hardline guy. With every individual that they kill in this regime, whether it be the military commanders or the political leaders, the more hardline people come in and then they come in with a vengeance because their, their sister is killed, their, you know, their dad is killed, their mom is killed, their kids are killed. And so the situation is just getting worse and worse and worse for the Iranian people themselves.

You know, I had a debate with a former top FBI negotiator who wrote a book called How to Split the Difference, and his name is Chris Voss. And Chris Voss seemed to say that Donald Trump's transactional negotiations in Venezuela, he seemed to be supportive of it. And I said to him, I said, well, you were an FBI hostage negotiator, so you were negotiating with hostage takers, with kidnappers, right? I said, well, if you were the FBI, wouldn't it be an easy outcome if you and the hostage taker and the kidnapper came together and said, you know how we can make a lot of money? I got all this power. The FBI? What if the FBI became the kidnappers? We'll help you do the kidnapping and we'll both make a lot of money, but you got to give us a lot of money and then we'll give you a percentage. Kidnapper, would you like that? And then the US became the kidnapper. That's what I said to Chris Voss. I said, what kind of outcome is that? You want to free the hostages, not join the hostage taker. And what Trump wants to do is go around the world.

World and join the hostage takers. He wants to join the authoritarians and be the repressive regime because he sees himself, in my opinion, as a Putin, as a Kim Jong-un, frankly, as a Maduro. The ultimate irony to me on the Maduro thing is Trump just didn't like Maduro dancing. Trump was kind of like jealous of it. Trump was like, I'm the guy who dances. You don't want to dance. And based on his views of women, I think that he viewed that he controls Delcy in his own mind. We don't know what's even going on behind the scenes because you don't think Delcy is still talking to China and has channels behind the scenes with Putin. That's a naive thought to believe that that isn't what's happening. But then Donald Trump wants someone in the Maduro regime who he feels he can control, right? He views Delcy as his Pam Bondi or his Christine Ohm, someone who's dispensable when he needs them to be dispensable. Who will just do what he does. And that's his kind of worldview that shapes all of these things. So from the very outset, when Donald Trump started talking— this was, what, 3 weeks ago at this point, 4 weeks ago— when Trump was saying that he and the ayatollah were going to work together and control the Strait of Hormuz together, the moment he signaled that about 3 weeks ago or 4 weeks ago or so, that signaled the ultimate weakness.

And Iran's like, okay, we got him. There was other signs, too. To do. But that's what you're looking for, to be shoulder to shoulder with the ayatollah to control the Strait of Hormuz. So what message does that also send to people in Iran who may otherwise be sympathetic to you to stand up to the regime if they know the best case scenario is Donald Trump and the ayatollah forming a joint venture LLC together and going into business together? I mean, that very framing of things is destructive and already undermines any ability to lift up popular support to the extent it existed and certainly doesn't exist right now, you know, anymore. The idea that beaming Trump and Netanyahu's image and name, image, and likeness into the homes of people in Iran would be a net plus and that that's the way to go about it. I mean, they did things like that. I mean, they're regardless of all the intelligence the United States has and the military and the sophistication and all the weapons in the world in the hands of someone who is weak, who is insecure, who's a malignant narcissist, who thinks they know everything when they know nothing, who tries to cast the other side in terms that are just completely inaccurate.

Someone who's out there saying, oh, what are they going to shoot us with, their BB guns?

What do they got, BB guns?

No, they have Shahed drones. By the thousands. They have ballistic missiles, probably still by the thousands. They have FPV drones that they've now given to other countries, to their militia groups in other countries, along with sophisticated ways to evade the drone jammers. So that's what we've got going on there. And then he gives this deranged press conference where he's like, I killed Soleimani. And if I didn't kill him, things would be much worse today. And you know who else I killed? Bin Laden. I'm the reason that bin Laden got killed.

What are you—

what are you talking—

you're the reason that bin Laden got killed? Again, this is demented stuff here.

Play this clip.

It was so easy. I terminated that, and then the B-2 bombers. And I did one other thing. I had killed Qasem Soleimani, who was an evil genius. And the reason I did it, I heard he was going to knock out 5 of our military bases. And had he lived, I believe we would be fighting perhaps a different Iran right now because, because he's never, he's never been replaced, you know. And I also, I did one other, but this one was not picked up. Osama bin Laden. If you read my book, I said you got to take them out one year before the World Trade Center came down. So I wish you'd read the book.

I'll pass it to you, Jordy. But basically, 3 times the amount of military bases that he just referenced have already been destroyed in the war. 13 American military bases right now in the region have been fully evacuated and have been pounded and pummeled by Iran right now. And so again, there's those realities of what's happened on the ground. And Jordy, he's saying that he's the reason.

I just say before Jordy goes, I feel like that's like saying, you know, after PlayStation 1 came out, I was like, they got to make a PlayStation 2. They should have taken my advice. And then they took my advice. So I am the creator of the PlayStation 2.

Isn't that like the same?

It's like the same logic. Like, okay, dude.

That is quite the comparison, B. But I I think you're on to something there. Look, I'm not saying this for clicks. I'm not saying this for clout or whatever. And I'm certainly not saying this to get Donald Trump out of any future potential prosecution that we all would like to see around here. But this is not a stable man. This is not a quote unquote stable genius. This person is really not in their right mind when they're— when he's up there speaking the way he is. It is so deeply embarrassing to me as an American that I have to say That's my president, right? That's not the position of how it was taught to me growing up, of how someone behaves themselves and acts. It really hurts me to a level that I can't even truly define when I see him up there. And quite frankly, I think all Americans, I think everyone that's watching that, they feel a certain shame to them that we have to say that's our president. That's the person who's supposed to get us out of this situation. He said we won and no, now we're going to bomb them and now we need more money to bomb them and we've actually destroyed all their facilities and, and we've already— we've done all these great things.

This guy's a maniac, right? This, this guy is truly out of his damn mind. There is nobody steering this ship and he's surrounded himself by a bunch of yes-men, by a bunch of people that just want to talk about him and how great he is. It is quite literally the most dangerous position that we could be in as a country, that this person like has the nuclear codes. And I'm not ruling it out that he wouldn't use those. Like, I'm not going to dive into conspiracies or whatever, but we're charting into some really uncharted waters.

Right.

This is some really scary stuff that we're witnessing play out because, again, he's got no one next to him that's going to check him. That's going to be like, hey, maybe if we did it this way or this way. No. And this guy is so far gone mentally, in my opinion, that he will do whatever just to leave his mark on this country and on the world. And it terrifies me. It genuinely terrifies me, Brett.

You know, one data point I want to bring up as well. This is, you know, we've been seeing this trend happen, but the United Kingdom will refuse to allow the United States to use its air bases, particularly the Royal Air Force Base Fairford and Diego Garcia, which long-range strategic bombers with the US Air Force had previously utilized on a case-by-case basis to carry out strikes in Iran for missions that target Iranian bridges, power plants, and other civilian infrastructure, citing concerns that such strikes could harm civilians and constitute war crimes, civilian senior officials are telling ePaper. So we already know, you know, Spain and France Italy and Austria and Switzerland. And now we're seeing the people were saying, all right, UK, he keeps on attacking you. When are you going to step up? And the UK saying right now, whatever your mission is here, we will be held responsible for war. Keir Starmer and all the UK, they will sit in war tribunals. In the future. That's where this is heading, in my opinion. This is heading to war tribunals in the future. These are war, undisputed war crimes that he's leaving a trail of publicly, you know, and it is.

And other countries are now like, we do it, we're not doing this. And that's a big development, by the way, that the UK is out. We'll be right back after our last quick break of the show. A reminder, hit subscribe, help us get to 7 million subscribers. Subscribe to The Midas Touch on audio, help our audio podcast grow, and leave a 5-star review on audio. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Ever wake up sweaty, freezing, or just uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That's why I switched to Miracle-Made Sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver-infused temperature-regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. Miracle-Made sheets feel just as good, if not better, than sheets you'd find at a 5-star hotel, but without the steep price tag. Smooth, breathable, and ridiculously comfortable. Thanks to their antibacterial silver technology, Miracle-Made sheets stay cleaner and fresher up to 3 times longer than regular sheets. That means fewer odors, fewer wash cycles, and way less laundry. All that hidden bacteria in regular sheets, it can clog your pores and cause breakouts. Miracle-Made's antibacterial design helps you sleep cleaner and clearer night after night. Miracle-Made sheets are crafted with NASA-inspired silver-infused fabric that helps regulate your body temperature. Hot sleeper, cold sleeper, it doesn't matter. These sheets help keep you in the comfort zone all night long. Upgrade your sleep or give the gift of better rest. Go to trymiracle.com/midas to try Miracle-Made sheets today. You'll save over 40%, and when you use the promo code MIDAS, you'll get an extra 20% off plus plus a free 3-piece towel set.

They make for an amazing gift, and with a 30-day money-back guarantee, there's no risk. That's trymiracle.com/mitus, code MITUS at checkout. Thanks to Miracle-Made for sponsoring this episode.

I want to talk about something right now that is super important, and that's privacy. DeleteMe makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. Your address, your phone number, even your family members' names can be just sitting out there, and that could have real-world consequences. We're also seeing more and more bad actors digging up that information and using it to target people, whether it's political figures, journalists, or just everyday folks speaking their minds online. As someone with an active online presence, privacy is really important to me. I've seen how quickly things could escalate when your personal info is out there. Even if it has not happened to you, you probably know someone who's dealt dealt with harassment or worse. Taking steps to remove that data just makes sense. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindelete.me.com/midas and use promo code Midas at checkout.

The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me.com/midas and enter code Midas at checkout. That's joindelete.me.com/midas. Code MIDAS, M-E-I-D-A-S.

Shout out to our sponsors. Links in description of both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benjamin, where would you like to go next?

I want to give a hat tip to our editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski, who puts together the incredible newsletters on the Midas Touch Substack every day. And the level of detail that Ron utilizes and his— such a student of meticulous— all the nuances are in this. Whenever I read it, I'm like, I'm like, damn, you're good, Ron. And so Ron compiled the following: Trump's quotes since the war began. Brett and Jordy, shall I share it? March 3rd, we won the war. March 7th, we defeated Iran. March 9th, we must attack Iraq. March 9th, the war is ending almost completely and very beautifully. March 11th, you never like to say too early you won, but we won in the first hour. It was over. March 12th, we did win, but we haven't won completely yet. March 13th, we won the war. March 14th, please help us. March 15th, if you don't help us, I will certainly remember it. March 16th, actually, we don't need any help at all. March 16th, I was just testing to see who's listening to me. Also March 16th, If NATO doesn't help, they will suffer something very bad. March 17th: We neither need nor want NATO's help.

March 17th: I don't need congressional approval to withdraw from NATO. March 18th: Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz. March 19th: US allies need to get a grip, step up, and help open the Strait of Hormuz. March 20th: NATO are cowards. March 21st: The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don't use it. We don't need to open it. March 22nd: This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait. March 22nd: Iran is dead. March 23rd: We had a very good and productive talk with Iran. March 24th: We're making progress. March 25th: They gave us a present, and the present arrived today, and it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I'm not going to tell you what the present is, but it was a very significant prize. Also March 26th, make a deal or we'll just keep blowing them away. March 27th, we don't have to be there for NATO. March 28th, nothing really major, he said on that day. March 29th, claimed talks were progressing. March 30th, open the Strait of Hormuz immediately or face devastating consequences.

March 31st, claimed a deal was very close and then Iran would do the right thing. April 1st, we'll see what happens very soon. April 2nd, a deal was very likely. But we'll continue strikes if not. April 3rd, something big is going to happen. April 4th, Iran must comply immediately or face further consequences. April 5th, open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah.

Are you getting COVID PTSD with that list right there?

I mean, you're so right. You are so right. It's the correlation between how he's handling this and COVID. I mean, he said a date.

When you see that list and it's read the way I just presented it and drafted the way that Ron drafted it, you don't think in Iran they're reviewing it that way? Like, you know, I know Donald Trump doesn't think they have intelligence services and they're all running around with BB guns in caves. That's not what's happening. What do you think the French intelligence service, the UK intelligence services, Australia, Canada, European Union more broadly, Germany, Japan, South Korea, South America, Central America, Africa, Mexico, you know, other Asian countries. How do you think they're reviewing it at the highest level? Like, they're all probably saying that Donald Trump is a— is just a demented human being who's basically, like, possessed. And there's no reliability there. You know, their strategy seems to be kind of manage it, you know, you know, manage it like a patient in a hospice, like manage it. Yes, Donald. Okay. You want to send Mark Rudd over, the secretary general? Mark Rudd will show up. Who else do you want to send over? You know, send over this person, you know, and they kind of embarrass themselves. But like, like, you know, it's like they're showing up at the— you know, I'm not trying to be rude here, you know, but it's like they're showing up at the facility and they're saying, okay, Donald, yeah, we hear you, we hear you.

Because I think their plan, if they think they can do it, but I think it's naive, is to run out the clock, keep NATO functioning at some level that at least doesn't just totally destroy the existence of the organization. Hope that the individuals, the generals who work in NATO, can kind of keep it going as much as possible. By the way, while Donald Trump fires them— I mean, let's not forget that Donald Trump fired the Army Chief of Staff at the end of last week. That's the top position in the Army. A 4-star general got fired in the middle of a war who had massive amounts of experience in drone warfare. The guy's name is Randy George, like one of the most beloved people in the United States Army, right, was fired by Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump at the end of last week. And he joins 22 or so top admirals, generals, military leaders over the past 12 to 14 months. And a number of them have been fired in the past few weeks. By the way, Iran posted an image, we did regime change, and it shows all of the admirals and generals and military officials who the Trump regime has fired.

But with those people comes huge amounts of experience. So this idea that you can try to hope that the Randy Georges of the world and the C.Q. Brown, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that they can exist in this— the moment they exercise competence, Hexit gets rid of you right away. Like, you get fired. So to me, the only thing Donald Trump responds to is forced to force. So the only way you can deal with it is not to appease it. Like, it's sad to say, but if you're NATO, you have to call his bluff and you got to be like, all right, it's done. Why would we want to be a part of an organization where you keep lifting the sanctions against Russia and helping Russia attack your own troops, where you're going out of your way to help Russia and praise China and say you're more focused on your meeting with Xi Jinping coming up and, you know, you think they're your friends, we— I think you just have to say, fine, we don't want you. And then that's the only way you can teach him or deal with him is just to say no.

And then he'll do his temper tantrum. But that's why, to your point, Jordy, he's a bad businessperson who's bankrupted so many things. Eventually, after dragging things on, turning a bad decision into a worse, a worse into a catastrophe, a catastrophe into a bankruptcy. And having some layers of accountability may have been able to fix some of the problems, the malicious problems he may have created in these organizations. Eventually someone has said no, and then it blows it up when the bluff gets called. And so there's really no other way to treat it because appeasing it— remember what I said earlier in this episode? The moment you exist within his framework, you're now residing in an area that's already made you compromised, right? That's why Iran, at a sophisticated level of negotiation, says, we're not even negotiating within your framework. You could come into our framework or there's no negotiation that exists at all, period. Now, we saw what happened right when Greenland stood up to Donald Trump. And by the way, that was one of the things that Donald Trump said at the press conference today. You know, I was done with NATO the moment— we don't have to play the clip, but I'm done with NATO the moment Greenland— the moment they wouldn't give me Greenland, I was done with NATO.

That was so frickin— it's so telling also, right, that because they wouldn't— they wouldn't give him Greenland, they wouldn't appease him on that. They wouldn't let him take over a sovereign nation. I mean, that's a real— that's really like an effed up thing to say.

I'm like, what are we even talking about at a certain point, right? It's like in no other facet of our lives would anyone accept accept this mentally unhinged individual running whatever, you name it, running their company, being the principal of a school, being the owner or GM of a sports team.

Right.

So why does corporate media hold his hand, the president of the United States' hand, as he further goes down this just insane devolvement of a brain? It's crazy to me.

The fact that NATO should allow one of its members to conquer a country is just like I mean, the delusions are just wild. Like, this is somebody who, like, frankly needs to be institutionalized. This is like absolute insanity.

Yeah. Let me show you a few things that he said, though, because I think even though I'm saying he said those things, I think it's an— I think it's important to bring the receipt, though, and, you know, and share with you. So here a reporter says, so you said Iranians would be mad if you stopped these attacks?

Attacks.

But why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure, to cut off their power? Like, you're saying they want you to blow them up?

Here, play this clip.

Success of this operation. Yes, please.

Thank you, Mr. President. You've said Iranians would be mad if you stopped these attacks, but why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure, to cut off their power? Wouldn't that be punishing Iranians for the actions of the regime?

They would be willing to— they would be— and it's suffering. They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom. The Iranians have— and we've had numerous intercepts. Please keep bombing. Bombs that are dropping near their homes. Please keep bombing. Do it. And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding. And when we leave and we're not hitting those areas, they're saying, please come back, come back, come back. People, I don't know what they do. All I can tell you is they want freedom.

They want freedom. Please, please, please bomb us. And then he— this is the longer clip right here that I'll show where he goes, we have a plan to basically blow up all of Iran. We're going to blow up this facility and that. Here he goes and talks about the war crimes he wants to commit.

Let's play.

We have a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12:00 tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition by 12:00. And it'll happen over a period of 4 hours if we wanted to. We don't want that to happen. We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation. And you know what? If that's the case, the last thing we want to do is start with power plants, which are among the most expensive things, and bridges. You saw the bridge, the bridge one. We were very close to a deal. And then I got a call from Mr. Whitkopf, Mr. Kushner, and JD saying, I think they're breaking the deal. I said, tell them that's Okay, don't worry about it, but tell them to look out their window and watch. And within 45 minutes, I gave the order to knock out the biggest bridge. I gave the order, knock out the biggest bridge in, I believe, the Middle East, but the biggest bridge in Iran. And within 10 minutes after I gave that order, that bridge was over.

So do I want to do that?

No.

I want to destroy their infrastructure? No, it will take them 100 years to rebuild. Right now, if we left today, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country, and it would never be as good as it was. And the only way they're going to be able to rebuild their country is to utilize the genius of the United States of America.

Sick language right there. And then here's what he says about NATO being a paper tiger, and I have to show you him saying the Greenland thing, just so there's no dispute that I'm being hyperbolic or making it up or exaggerating. Like, it's so damaging and deranged that you have to hear him say it. Let's play it.

No, NATO is a paper tiger. Now, he's coming to see me on Wednesday, as you know. He's a wonderful guy. Secretary General is great. And Mark Rutte, he's a great person, but he's got— and you know, it all It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don't want to give it to us. And I said, bye-bye. Okay, thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

Absolutely, absolutely deranged.

Brett and Jordy, real quick, Brett, before you go. So I was watching CNBC's coverage of this. I don't know why that's where I decided to watch this one. And after that comment, that's your rage bait. That's my rage bait.

It keeps me fired up.

CNBC, man, I hate watch that program. And so, you know, after that, when he's like, all right, everyone, see you later, after all of the crazy shit he just said. And by the way, slightly before that moment, and I'm going to say a bad word here because he said it and it's going to be jarring because it's fucked up, is that he said that he had a conversation with Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Un called Joe Biden mentally retarded. And he said it twice and he kept saying it and he said it loud. And it caught my attention because I was half watching this and I was like, holy shit.

It.

Did he really just say that? Not one reporter blinked. No one, you know, was like caught off guard by it. That's just what's come. That's what we've come to expect from Donald Trump. It is absolutely disgusting, his behavior on a day-in and day-out basis. We're not going to play that clip here. But when CNBC got the coverage back after all of that went down, you know, you know what their response was to all of that? They go, So that was Donald Trump addressing the media today about the war in Iran. And they just like business as usual, man, business as usual. And it just made me think to myself, it's like when, you know, the people out there, not anyone watching here, of course, but when the people out there get upset with like Midas titling for videos like Donald Trump loses it. What do you want me to say when he is up there saying shit like that? He's like, in no way, shape, or form is any of this normal. And I'm not going to gaslight our audience. Audience into thinking any of this is normal. And we're not going to do that here as a network.

This is unprecedented shit. This stuff is bonker land and you can't treat it like CNBC treated it when they got the coverage back when they go, so that was Donald Trump addressing the media today about the war in Iran. I'm like, what are you talking about? I hate watching that program, Brett.

I feel like, have you heard about like people going to rage rooms? Have you ever heard of rage rooms?

Yeah, I've heard. I've heard of these things.

I've had friends go to rage rooms.

They like love it.

It's like, for those who don't know, like rage rooms are places you could go to, like you pay money to do this and to get your anger out. You go to this like room where you're like protected and you're wearing proper equipment and stuff, and you break shit and you destroy stuff and you throw TVs on the ground and you smash things. I've never done it. I've actually had friends who have done this. Um, if you've done it, you can let us know, uh, in the comments. I feel like It's like you watching CNBC is your rage room. You go in there, you get out all your aggression on the TV. Thankfully, the TV, I think, is still standing. And, you know, it just, it just allows you to, you know, spikes my cortisol levels, breaks your cortisol levels to dangerous levels.

Brett, I'll toss it to you, but I think this was a good comprehensive update of everything that's going on. Stay tuned to our reporting throughout the day. About every 90 minutes, we do new breaking updates on everything that's going on, whether it's in the war or throughout the country. Uh, the only one, you know, piece of news I don't want to forget about is the Epstein investigation. And there's a lot of news, you know, we're going to see the impact on our economy that this is all having. But I also want to, you know, remember that we should not forget about how this all started, which was a Trump regime cover-up cover-up of the Epstein files. Um, and now with Pam Bondi gone, Todd Blanch, the new acting attorney general, says we should never even talk about Epstein anymore. And so I'm glad to hear the Democrats in the House Oversight Committee making sure Howard Lutnick shows up and that the investigation regarding this cover-up doesn't end. And I know that's talked about a lot less. That's why I'm going to make sure everybody knows we're very focused on covering it here on the Midas Touch Network.

So thanks everybody for watching. I want to remind everybody to hit subscribe here, help us get to 7 million subscribers. Subscribe to the Midas Touch on audio podcast as well, help us grow on audio. Leave a 5-star review on audio. We're grateful for all of you. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Let's just keep growing this. 8 weeks in a row, Midas Touch number 1 on YouTube, beating the Joe Rogans and the Candace Owens and all those people, and that's thanks to you. So So let's, let's keep it up. We're so grateful for you, Brett. Anything you want to say before we go?

I've got nothing to add. Jordy, take us out.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our Substack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.

Stelle für junge Kicker. Ich fass' nicht! 10.000 Elektrofahrzeuge und es werden immer mehr. Basierend auf geplanten Fahrzeugen unserer Lieferpartner in der EU und Großbritannien bis Ende 2026.