Transcript of Afternoon Breaking Updates with Ben: Trump Convention Backfires — 9/10/26

Welcome to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Myselis. This is your breaking news. I've got an incredible sidekick here for today's Ben on Breaking News. It's Jessica Tarlov, everyone, helping me make sense of all of this madness. We've got Jessica Tarlov. Let's bring in Jessica. She's the author of the new book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. Comes out September 15th. Preorder it now, but make sure you get it on September 15th. I think a book that is more prescient than perhaps you were even able to predict, especially with everything that's going on before the midterms. And I want to ask you, Jessica, about how you apply a lot of the learning and the teachings from your book when you live in a world where you have the Trump regime not just having a debate about policy and sides, but just making up stuff. Everything is a lie. A barrage, a parade of lies were rolled out at this so-called Republican midterm convention. So, Jessica, I want to start there just by getting your overall reaction to everything we've seen up until this point at the Republican midterm convention.

I mean, well, first of all, thank you for having me. And, uh, I'm excited about the book and also for your audience to get the book. I feel like I've been in a parasocial relationship with a lot of these folks for a long time, and I really want it to be helpful for those of you out there that are trying to have some contentious conversations. And I know maybe you want to lose friends. That is totally fine. The book is for those that you would like to keep in your life, relationships that you might want to repair. Life is longer than Donald Trump. That's what I tell myself every night before I go to sleep. So the book, that's what it's all about. The midterm convention. So I had the lowest of expectations and it was even worse. Was that your feeling? We did a montage of various aspects, you know, like Tim Scott's speech, obviously a lot of Trump. I was sad they left Ken Paxton out because I think we all know why Ken Paxton doesn't do interviews, um, because he's so absolutely terrible. And then Hasan Piker's junk on the Jumbotron, like, what were they thinking, that people were going to be scared of him and think that he's a terrorist?

Like, what, what, what do you think went on in the programming room when they said, let's get that shot of Hasan?

Well, there was a Grindr outage that we are aware of in Dallas.

Always.

So yeah, it did seem that there was a lot on the mind of MAGA that was heading into Dallas. But, you know, I, I've seen some of these, uh, videos of the movie Idiocracy. And I wrote what I observed last night was way worse than Idiocracy. I'm not sure you can do Idiocracy or Veep or anything like this, except the tragic reality, Jessica, is that this stuff is hurting people. It is whether you are a Trump supporter, a not-Trump supporter, or whoever, you're paying record-high gas prices, diesel prices, We saw today the price of Brent over $107 a barrel, WTI over $101 a barrel, Treasury yields surging. This stuff is hurting people. This is not some, you know, just debate for the sake of a debate. This is real life. And when Trump says this was a golden age and that everything's amazing, it isn't. And so how do you think that plays, you know, when, when he's out there saying, this is it, this is the golden age, everybody, it's so great?

Well, I think the timing of the convention kicking off and then Tony Fabrizio releasing his poll of the Texas Senate race with James Talarico up 4, uh, indicates that things are not what Trump would tell you that they are. And I was thinking about, you know, the big takeaway— we're gonna have our fun with Tim Scott's performance and The, the Jumbotron piker situation. But obviously the promise, the bribe, the $5,000 if Republicans win was the big takeaway because Donald Trump didn't even really try to make a case to anybody. He started off the day with, after the election, the war is going to magically stop and gas will be under $2. So I think, okay, no one's taking that seriously because he's been saying stuff like that since, what, 48 hours into a war that is now 7, 8 months plus. Um, but then that we have moved just to straight, I'm gonna put cash in your hand, and people even being skeptical of that because that stuff used to work. This idea that you're getting a Doge dividend or a subsidy check, uh, after they got rid of the Obamacare subsidies, and there were stimulus checks, right, uh, in the first term.

And yes, Joe Biden should have put his signature on the checks that he gave out. But I feel like Americans, even some of the biggest Trump supporters, are just tuning the guy out. And we'll see what the ratings were. Obviously going up against the NFL was a misguided programming choice, but I do think we have hit a kind of new threshold for how seriously people are taking this guy, even if they like him.

Sad, because even though it's not a secret to my audience that I not just dislike him, I despise him, you still want America to be treated with respect, and you still want your captain, even if he's not the one you ever wanted, and frankly the captain of your nightmares, to still be someone who at least carries themselves with a scintilla of— I don't know, a modicum of existing in reality. It's just everything is a lie. It's just every, every word, sound, utterance, syllable is a lie. It's a weird lie. and it brings us down a path of losing, frankly, like this guy had done most of his life with the casinos and the— and you see why. And it's like, now I'm a non-consensual extra in this dystopian reality. I don't want to be a part. And I think so many people are saying that. Heck, Aaron Rodgers— Aaron Rodgers today put out a statement where he said, I, I don't know what the hell is going on here, you know, Kash Patel covering up the Epstein file. I mean, when you, when you lose Aaron Rodgers, Rodgers, you, you've, you've lost the MAGA plot, huh?

I, I actually hadn't even seen that. It brings me a little bit of a joy, uh, that it has broken through the ayahuasca or whatever is going on with Aaron Rodgers, uh, to penetrate that this guy isn't delivering. He made a lot of promises, and the, the difference between how he used to craft— and again, he didn't follow through on any of this, but he did have a platform, right, that people could sink their proverbial teeth into. And they could say, okay, yes, he's going to give us the Epstein files, which we knew he was never going to do. But prices will come down on day one. We're not going to be entangled in needless wars. What are we going to do? We're going to deport everybody. Mass deportations now. Which I mean, they I've been getting a lot of people out here, uh, most of them people who I, you know, you or I think that, uh, deserve to stay here. And there have been a lot of those self-deportations. But that's how he used to campaign, and now he just is like, I'll pay you to like me. Like, that has been the transformation.

And I don't know if that's a function of just how dire it's gotten Age, exhaustion, whatever. But the guy is just saying the quiet part out loud. I know I can't get you to like me for any other reasons, so I'm going to put cash in your hand, which he's not even going to be able to do. And then he leaves everybody else out there dangling, having to defend it, having to deal with the actual math, right? JD Vance is going to go do interviews after this, and of course he's going to get asked like, okay, well, how does that work? Right, $5,000 for every American. I mean, I'm sure that— I guess they'll say 200 million are illegals or something like that, and they don't, they don't deserve the money.

But— So in your book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, you talk about, all right, you're at the Thanksgiving table and here's what's going on. What do you do though in a situation like this? Look, somebody I definitely disagree with, it's not a surprise, is someone like a Laura Ingraham. But even she Today, she's releasing an interview she did with Trump. And she asked him, she goes, okay, if you have this $5,000 that you're promising and you believe the American people are suffering and need the $5,000, but you also say there's a golden age, why not just give the money now? If you have it, just do it. Just do it right now because people are hurting right now. And I want you to listen to what Trump's response was to Laura Ingraham, someone I disagree with a lot, but she at least asked a question that needed to be asked. Here, play this clip.

Why not just give the money now? If you have the money, why not give it now?

Because they can't. I'll tell you what, because the Democrats can't do it. Because with them, it's negative growth. With us, it's so positive. So we're taking in $21 trillion. Nobody, no country's ever taken in anywhere near that. It's 4 or 5 times higher than the next, all because of that beautiful word that you and I love more than most others, tariffs.

You know, it's like having a discussion with a Furby. Remember the Furbies when we grew up and they would have discussions with other Furbies? There are words, but they're not forming sentences. And what he said there is not a— we can talk about non sequiturs. He just said 5 different words and just placed some things in between it. What do you mean that the Democrats will stop it? You control all branches of government right now. What are you talking about? What does it even mean? So start with that piece of it, and then we can talk about this $21 trillion fake number that he made, which makes no sense if the debt is over $40 trillion and our deficit is expanding. So that makes no sense. And then he just says, you know, I love this word, tariffs. Okay, what does that have to do with anything? And it's been a disaster. So talk about it.

Um, yeah, all the same thoughts racing through my head. I mean, happy that he's going to be pushed about it. And I think he is going to end up probably wanting to talk less as a result, because this is one of the kind of gobsmacked ones. Right. He says a lot of things which you can kind of laugh at or giggle at and move on. But this one is sending shivers up the spine, certainly of all of the elected Republicans who are about to get asked about this from their constituents. and in the press, um, but really highlights the downfall of Trump swagger. Is that the right way to say it? You like, you know how people who liked him would always say, oh, but his zigging and his zagging, or you just don't understand. Now literally no one understands, right? You don't have to be a Trump whisperer for this one. Like, we were all on the same page now. where you're raising an eyebrow to, it's the Democrats' fault. And he used all the trigger words, Democrats, tariffs. If he had thrown in socialists or communists, I guess that would have been the full repertoire.

But he's not with us anymore. It feels like he's fully moved to some other planet, I guess, that he's having these conversations or thinking that the country is on this kind of glide path. And I tweeted this about his comments there that we all have accepted. And for those of us who probably pushed the idea that Joe Biden was up for a second term too long, and I take responsibility for that, though I certainly think that the policy outcomes would have been better. And I didn't think that the country was in danger as a result of having Joe Biden as president. But this is a level of incoherence that certainly wouldn't have been accepted from Biden. And this is how he's sounding now on a pretty regular basis. And I don't know what we do about that. I mean, you have an election and you all turn out to vote and it has to be too big to rig. I know that we've heard that they're not going to send ICE to polling stations. who knows what's going to go on between the USPS stuff, sending people out there, intimidation. Uh, it's like a 5-alarm fire for the next 7 weeks.

Um, but he's still gonna be in office for another 2 years after that. And I don't know, it just doesn't seem like he's operating on the same plane that you and I are.

Yeah, and the whole world sees it. Most Americans see it now. Yet he goes out there and every day he humiliates us more and more here and abroad. I mean, you know, you take a look at this trade war he started against Canada. Canada obviously standing up for its sovereignty, but even when they watch him with the memes and the threats and the this and the that, they're just like, bud, you're weird. You guys are like a weird loser country. Like, like, this is sad for— like, no one's even laughing. It's like, it's sad for us to see. I mean, you have these Iranian leaders, whether it's MB Ghalibaf, their parliament leader, or Rouhani, their foreign minister, who's out there mocking us and mocking us where I see what they're saying and I'm like, that is Trump's pattern. He does do that. I saw like MB Ghalibaf post, all right, here's what Trump's gonna do. He's gonna say we're about to do a deal and then he's gonna do this and he's gonna do that. And it's like—

And then the market will rally.

And the market will rally and then, and then we'll say this and then again, and, and it is just a humiliation ritual that the whole world looks at the United States this way. And so how do we grapple with that? I mean, it's truly uncharted territory in this country, and I don't think we can normalize this as just, yeah, you know, this is what the Republicans feel like and this is what the Democrats think, so let's do— how do you deal with that and say, I see you duking it out every day on The Five, you go, this isn't normal, guys. This isn't normal. How do you deal with it?

Well, part of it is definitely highlighting the reality of what's going on. And it's always, I think, useful to be using the language of Republicans themselves because people, if you're talking across partisan lines, you know, like helpful to say, don't take it from me, right? And then rattle off the lists of people. Who are concerned or skeptical. And the war in Iran is a perfect example because there has been so much criticism from people who are traditionally very much in lockstep with the president. But I do think, and I write about this in I Disagree, that there is a generosity and a humanity with which I think we need to be having these political conversations. when you do get out there and talk to people who feel differently about Donald Trump than you do. And rubbing it in people's faces and gloating, especially when that can be read as being anti-American to some extent, because if you say gas prices at record highs, that has real implications for people. That's not just some political football. That's literally your ability to get where you're going. With diesel at $6 or wherever it is, depending on your state, but up enormously, that's truckers not being able to do their jobs.

And so I think keeping that generosity and that humanity present in the way that you communicate is something that is and which I definitely try to do when I'm talking to my conservative co-hosts. I, I call it the soft start, where you find some way to create connective tissue, an olive branch, where we see things similarly, or that we all want the same things out of, out of a policy, out of a presidency, out of our leadership. And then you can more easily go into the information that runs counter to the way that they see the world. And a lot times, especially when it gets this dire, people are jonesing, right, to be able to have these conversations without having to recant their beliefs wholesale, right? To be able to say, oh, this thing, you know, I'm not that into this thing. And that's why I— and I talk about this a lot in the book, you know, I don't see my job or people in the space necessarily as trying to change minds, but to open them up to the possibility that there is an alternative point of view worth considering. And that's why I do so much research and so much preparation to be able to talk about these very difficult political issues.

Because I know how resistant we are naturally. And there's social science behind this. This is in the book too, about our threat reflexes going up when we hear information that runs counter to our beliefs. Even your pain reflex. Like, you know, that look sometimes when you're telling someone something that flies in the face of how they see the world or what they've been told, and they look like they're in pain, like, they actually are. And the same thing works in reverse too. It is very hard to break through with liberals, right? If you're saying, well, I don't know, like, look at this. I mean, this was the ongoing fight about immigration in the first 3 years of the Biden administration. So, you know, that generosity and that humanity, the soft start, creating the connective tissue, being super well prepared and being prepared not only to make your point, but that almost you could make the alternative point. And we could have hours of conversations about where our algorithms take us and all those deep, dark places. Makes for these conversations to be possible, and that maybe you can open someone's mind up to the idea that you're not batshit crazy.

Look, you film in New York, and so you think about it even like this way. There's, you know, the New York Mets and then the New York Yankees. How difficult would it be to make a Met fan into a Yankee fan? And that's baseball. That's baseball. So then when you put people into tribes of a political allegiance which has defined not just a team you root for but has defined what you perceive to be a value set, and then have somebody say, you know what, your team, you're just the evil and the worst people. You got to switch to my team. Oftentimes that process really speeds up 60 days before an election, and you're not going to be an authentic messenger to be able to persuade anybody if you waited 60 days to have, I think, this conversation.

Right.

You know what, you got to be on this team right now. People are like, wait a minute, I thought I was on this team. I think, and what you bring up in this book, is when you say, you know what, we're not even playing a game of baseball here, or politics is not this gamified thing. Step back for a moment. This is just about us all being on one team. This is us being about Americans, and this is about us trying to do something with our lives for the short period of time that we're all here together. And what do we care about? Don't we care about family and compassion and building things and leaving the world a better place? And we shouldn't be afraid to talk about that. And there's going to be a lot of loud voices. You know about that. There's going to be a lot of loud voices that are going to try to distract us from that. But one of the things we talk about here on this network all the time is just trying to say, you know what, let's We're going to talk about breaking news because that's what we have to do.

We're going to respond to here's what Trump did and here's what this person— because that's what we do. But we have to take a step back and say, why are we doing this? What is the point of all of this? And it's not to pay higher gas prices, live shitty lives and die, be angry at each other all the time and hate. It's to build connections and leave the world a better place. So before we go, That's what I got out of your book. And so if others want to get that out, you know, that, that's what I take from it. But, but before we go, talk to our audience, you know, you know, just about the book and anything else you want to tell them before we go.

Yeah. Well, I love that. That's what you took from the book. And I would just add to it that none of that or efforting towards that goal means that you need to be a Pollyanna or mushy about your politics. And this isn't license for electeds to not be cutthroat. And I have a podcast called Raging Moderates. Yes, we have the rage in there, but I've traditionally been towards the more, the center of the party, center-left for sure. Though us figuring out how this big tent works has, I think, pulled me a little bit to the left in, in more ways than I expected, or at least understanding it better, which has been a very healthy exercise for me. But I disagree, and it ends on a path forward for our politics, complete with a platform that I think we can run on and win on. There's nothing mamby-pamby about it. So yes, while we share these goals and this vision for what our time on earth is all about, which is, you know, so short in the grand scheme of things. It is also about maximizing good outcomes while we are here. And Democratic electeds, and there's a Democratic administration, we have better outcomes.

The economy performs better. We see this over and over again. And they try to tell us, no, trickle-down economics, this is the best, it's the best. And it's like, no, actually, you know when it was better because you all loved the Clinton years, and that was not trickle-down economics. So I just want to be clear, it's not like, uh, kiss your neighbor, we're all going to be best friends and, and think exactly the same thing. It is a roadmap for building bravery to be better in these conversations and to be able to maximize the potential to get something out of them, to represent yourself better, and to also understand the person on the other side better. We have a listening problem in this country. We have a big listening deficit. And we all want to be heard. And we all want to be taken seriously. And I believe that there is a way to communicate to one another that is just a lot higher quality than where we are now. And that you can make an impression on the person that you are talking to, the group you're talking to. If you're someone who goes on podcasts or goes on TV, there is ample opportunity to disseminate a better message to the people out there about your values, your morals, your politics, and the way you see the world that won't feel threatening, um, or that you're just constantly trying to undercut the other person.

Um, so that's what I Disagree is.

Everybody, make sure you preorder it right now. No matter what, make sure you go and get your copy of the book I Disagree when it comes out Tuesday, September 15th. My friend Jessica Tarlov, the book's called I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. We appreciate all the work you do, Jessica. And as you said, this was an interview long time in the making. Our audience always wanted to have you on. And, um, there's so many other questions that I could ask. Like, I want to ask you about the South Carolina race and that that's becoming very close.

Yeah.

And there are others, there are others. But why don't we save that for our next appearance, uh, when we have you back maybe next week or, or the week As I would love that. That would be fantastic. Jessica Tarlov, everybody. Make sure you get your copy. I Disagree. We'll put a link as well in the description below.

That's Jessica.

Amazing. Thank you. It was great to see you.

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Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. What a great interview with Jessica Tarlov. Excited to have her back on the Midas Touch Network and, uh, getting her perspective as someone who dukes it out every day when she's the lone liberal voice at that table, and she does such an amazing job. And, uh, I've always been in awe of her great work and just how she handles the debates and the discussions and represents these issues very, very well. You know, I've been spending a lot of time here on the Midas Touch Network, really since this Trump regime came back into power, on international developments. I mean, we started Midas Canada, gave the handoff to Charlie Angus to run with it. He's got full editorial control and handles the operations there. But we knew that we had to do outreach across the world because we saw that the forces of authoritarianism were international in scope, and we had to build a pro-democracy media network that was international in scope as well, forming and forging alliances all throughout the world. And, you know, we've been really in the weeds, which is where you need to be, in our coverage of the various Trump wars.

And there has been quite a lot of them that have taken place. Far from a peace president, far from someone who has not engaged in never-ending wars, he's been bringing the United States into all of these conflicts and making the world a far less safe and far less stable, uh, place, uh, spending a lot of his time attacking our allies, destroying NATO, uh, destroying America's soft and hard power, right? destroying things like USAID, soft power diplomacy, gutting the State Department. And then our hard power— we're out of weapons, we're out of munitions. The United States military has never been weaker. Our top generals and admirals have been purged. We have Hegseth, of all people, running the Defense Department, who spends more time mocking Canadian high school cadets and talking about, I don't know, injecting yourself with testosterone than being involved in the minutia of war strategy. And like, again, we should not be involved in these catastrophic wars, but also we need to reflect on if you're gonna do it, I mean, are you going to do any planning or, or no, you just want to talk about injecting yourself with testosterone? And we've been talking about how there's been a rapidly changing global world order, that the U.S. security umbrella in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe, and elsewhere has pretty much all been destroyed.

And fast forward, Donald Trump managed to achieve that. If you want to talk about achieving something, he's destroyed the US-created post-World War II architecture pretty damn quickly. In its place, we're seeing a multipolar world with China being the global hegemon right now, Putin feeling the ability to be more aggressive in his invasion of Ukraine and in some of the other more surreptitious operations that are taking place across the world. And the Trump regime is out there. Donald Trump wakes up and he posts a meme of Venezuela And that's his, you know, that's his plan. 65 billion barrels, he claims, go into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which we know is just completely false. This is what he does. I think he mocks in this relatively racist, xenophobic post his Saudi friends in OPEC. He mocks Canada over there. He claims that 65 billion barrels are going to find their way into our salt caverns, even though Venezuelan oil doesn't even mix into our salt caverns. And the reality here and abroad is Very bad. Very, very bad for the, for the United States. And I mean, even today, don't believe me? Listen to Hung Kao.

Hung Kao, the acting Secretary of Navy. What has he said? He said, yeah, he admitted in an interview this morning that was just released. Yes, indeed, Iran did blow up the US military base in Bahrain. Of course, we knew that because Bahrain is the main logistical center that feeds our aircraft carriers and our ships in the region. It's where the ships used to, uh, dock. It's where our ships would get their, uh, supplies from. And, uh, early on in the war, Bahrain was not protected the way it needed to be. Iran knew you strike Bahrain, you can cut off a main logistical supply route to the U.S. Navy. They did that, and it was covered up by the Trump regime. Throughout the war, Iran was able to successfully strike US military bases in the region, pretty much destroying all the US military bases, right? From Bahrain to Jordan to the UAE to Kuwait to Erbil, Iraq, to Al Udeid in Qatar. You know, these bases, multiple US bases, one by one Iran was picking off and they were destroying our aircraft. Our equipment, our helicopters were being destroyed. I mean, we're talking billions and billions and billions.

The true extent is still being covered up, just like the true extent of the casualty count is still being covered up. Stars and Stripes reporting this past week that 60 new casualties were added to the Pentagon public list. No statement from Hegseth or Trump, but 60 new additions to people who were injured in this catastrophic war. Although the Trump regime puts those 60 people on a different list, not the list of Epic Fury, because Trump says we won Epic Fury. This is miscellaneous conflict. And if you were injured and killed in miscellaneous conflict, you don't get benefits because Trump treats our veterans like absolute crap. He did say that they are suckers and losers. And so throughout the world, you have Donald Trump degrading US military capability. And when we zoom in to see what else is taking place with Iran's Axis of Resistance, we've been very much focused on the Houthi advances in Yemen. Now, just to give you— Positioning themselves all across— Not sure what that was, but just to give you a little zoom out on Yemen right there. You have the Houthis, which is part of the Axis of Resistance, Iran's Axis of Resistance— Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, some groups in Somalia, some groups, militia groups in Iraq that are actually part of the Iraqi military.

Yemen is controlled by kind of 2 main factions at this point. There is the kind of Iranian-backed Houthis, Sana'a is their capital, and they control much of western Yemen, although they did not control Al Mokka until today. And then you have the Saudi-backed government, which also gets some supplies from UAE in this kind of interesting coalition alliance that was existing in Yemen. They have their main base over in Aden. There was this, you know, Yemen was kind of divided into these 2 main areas, and the Houthis did not really get involved that much in the war that Netanyahu and Trump launched on Iran, like overtly, until really July. What happened in July, Saudi Arabia struck an airbase in Sana'a, it's the capital of The Houthis control area of Yemen. And then at that point, for the Houthis, they were like, all right, game on, we're in a full-fledged war now. Saudi Arabia did that because Iran was potentially giving supplies to the Houthis over there. Saudi Arabia thought that the US had its back, so it said, look, we're going to project our power and strength because we're allied with the US. Look, MBS gave Donald Trump and Jared Kushner all of this money.

They're going to have our back.

Right.

So the Saudi-backed group in Yemen gets all of their forces from Saudi Arabia. They struck this airport in Sana'a that really led to the acceleration of the Houthis basically doing a blockade in the Red Sea. In Western Yemen, you have the Red Sea. The Bab el-Mandab Strait is that area. Between looks like kind of Somalia over there and Yemen. And then you have the Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman area over there. And so the Houthis in Yemen said, we're not going to let Saudi tankers get out of the Red Sea. And we saw all of those strikes taking place. And then the Houthis started to go on the offense. And I think they realized, wait a minute, wait a minute, the once mighty U.S. military lost to Iran. And if the U.S. military is losing to Iran and Saudi Arabia is getting its weapons from the U.S. military, wait a minute, we can surely take on Saudi Arabia if the Saudi Arabian government is backing the government here in Yemen. So the Houthis felt emboldened by all of this. And not only that, but, you know, I know I'm getting in the weeds, but I think this is why you come to the Midas Touch Network for us getting in the weeds.

The Houthis, like Iran, Shiite, but there are a lot of tribes in Yemen that are Sunni. Obviously, we know the clashes that have taken place between the Shia and the Sunni, but one of the things that we've seen now, you know, whereas the Sunni tribes may look and have natural allegiance to more Sunni-run countries like Saudi Arabia, say, they're seeing weakness now and they're seeing, whoa, it looks like the Trump regime in the United States are losing to Iran. And so they're now saying this could be a way to remove Western powers from having control and dominance over Yemen or over other areas in the Middle East. That's increasingly becoming part of the calculus in the area. And so a lot of the different Yemeni tribes are actually now welcoming the Houthis also. And when we saw the Houthis offensive that they were launching in a very short period of time, I mean, we're talking in the past 24 hours, They were able to move from Al-Koka to Al-Moka, and now they're heading to Dubab. They're also able to take over the Hanish Islands, this 3 or 4 island group in the Red Sea as well.

And as they move closer to Dubab right there, that right now the Houthis are about 60 kilometers from the Bab el-Mandab Strait, and they are moving quick. They're doing military parades in the area. And they're being greeted and welcomed into Al Mokka by the local people there. And so far, despite all of the military supplies that have been given by the United States to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia to the Yemeni-backed government that Saudi Arabia is fighting against, the Houthis, that's been no match for what the Houthis have been able to accomplish. Now, CNN did a report before we went live, where US intelligence officials said that they believe there are hundreds of IRGC military officers currently in Yemen working with the Houthis who have been helping them with this offensive. Also, there appears to be more than 100 US military advisers on the ground in Saudi Arabia providing Saudi Arabia with intel and targeting support for the Saudi Arabian backed proxy group there. And what we see happening right now in Yemen is the Iranian-aligned Houthis are winning and they're winning big. What we also saw in the past 24 hours is the Saudi-backed group claiming that it was having these major victories, saying it was going to take Sana'a, which is the Houthis' capital.

And it was all bullshit. It was all lies. And they were saying that to try to project strength. And the Houthis called their bluff, maneuvered the troops in a way that was able to basically flank the Saudi-backed group, who then retreated. And they're in full retreat right now. And so what this could mean is with the Houthis now potentially fully controlling all of western Yemen, That gives them even more control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea. And this places Saudi Arabia, the monarchy, in grave danger as well, exposing their weakness, that their ability to subsist is dependent on the United States. That's— and if you think about the dynamic here, what Iran has always said is that we don't want to exist where we would have to be dependent on the United States or on Western powers. We have to build our own access. That's one of the main things, not just in the Trump regime, but just going back decades and decades and decades, was clashing with US foreign policy, which was controlling the region. That was always a major issue. But now what you're seeing actually be exposed is with the United States military so utterly degraded, It's like the dominoes are falling all throughout the Middle East.

And so, yes, the big story today, the Houthis controlling much of western Yemen, controlling Mokka, now on the march to Dubab, taking over the Hanish Islands, taking over all of these areas nearby. 1,500 kilometers controlled in the past 12 hours of additional territory. The main question is, do they now march on Aden? Do they even need to march on Aden? Is that even a strategic imperative to now move east towards Aden when they control the areas that are in demand anyway? So that's, I think, a question that will be answered shortly as well, which is the Saudi-backed government's kind of main area. But also, I think we're seeing a weakened Saudi monarchy. We're seeing a weakened Jordanian monarchy. One of the things that I note, and I showed this video, were the Jordanian people who were on the rooftops having dinner and they were celebrating at the Iranian strikes on US military bases in the region. They were partying and celebrating and cheering on the Iranians destroying US military bases. And then what does Donald Trump say?

Ah.

That never happened. None of our military bases were actually injured. None of it's all a lie. What did the Jordanian government say? Iran only shot 18 ballistics and we intercepted all of them. And then there were 2 that we didn't intercept, but they landed outside of the military bases. No issues. And then what do we learn about even CBS, which is its own form of regime media? What does CBS report? It was 8 F-15s. Were damaged. They said lightly damaged. How could you lightly damage an F-15? Okay, I think that someone clearly leaked this to CBS in order to put out some damage assessment so that there's some credible explanation, but they wanted to understate it. We've seen these videos of damaged Blackhawks leaving the region, and I've been showing, you know, today in my various videos more satellite image showing Muwafiq al-Salti Basin, Jordan, King the Faisal base that were very significantly injured. And then we get the new casualty report of 60 more casualties that are added to the public database since August 31st. I mean, this Trump regime keeps covering stuff up there. Remember Donald Trump's civil trial before this regime took power?

Remember what the issue was? He lies about everything. He lies about numbers. He makes up numbers. Tragically, that's what our CENTCOM has become. And all of these lies, as I've said before, like with the reflecting pool, you know, you can paint it blue and you can blame this person or that person, but the algae always comes back. With the reflecting pool, it's just algae. And it's, you know, devastatingly, the Trump regime went after people like David Hearn and others and tried to, like, prosecute people. And they're still trying to prosecute people. Right. But we're talking about a reflecting pool. You do those lies in geopolitical affairs. And you weaken irreparably the United States. You put our service members' lives at risk with these heinous lies that leads to our troops not being able to eat. It leads to the conditions we saw aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. It leads to logistics being broken down like we saw after Bahrain was destroyed. Okay. The algae always comes back. And when it comes with the United States military, that's deadly and that causes irreparable harm. And all of this One, we want to make sure our service members are protected.

So that's important in and of itself. But then also, we want to make sure we always know that this is connected to the horrific economy here at home. Why do you think it is that the price of oil is going up the way it is to $107 a barrel, $110 a barrel, exactly where we predicted that the salt cavern is in danger of imploding?

Right.

Remember when the Trump regime said that the Iranian oil infrastructure back in April was about to just explode and be destroyed and it was all a lie? Our salt caverns are actually close because they're actually caves and we don't have the right amount anymore of petroleum and water mixture in there. It could actually collapse and destroy forever our petroleum reserves. That's the situation there. It wouldn't shock me If that actually happens. And the inflation report, PPI inflation, what was it, 5.4% today? It came in hotter than expected. Tomorrow's CPI will certainly come in hotter than expected. Not hotter than— not hotter than we expected. We all know what we're paying right now. And all Donald Trump's going to do is lie and say, I'll give you $5,000, I'll give you $500. It's all utter lies. So Thank you for allowing me to give that detailed overview of what's going on right now in Yemen with the Houthis, with the Saudi-backed government, Al Mokka, the, the islands that are nearby. I know that's a lot to take in, but I want to give you a full picture of what's happening right there. Let's take our last quick break of the show.

We come back, we've got a lot more to discuss. Let's take our last break of the show.

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Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Myselis. This is your breaking news. One more thanks to Jessica Tarlov for joining us here. Make sure you all get a copy of her new book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. I'd love to have Jessica back on the show next week. I like having a sidekick, Ben, on breaking news, and I think Jessica is, uh, really one of the, uh, the, the best out there, and it's such an honor to have her on the show. All right, let's talk about just the constant barrage of lies that Trump keeps on spewing. So yesterday, as he was heading to Texas for that, uh, you know, Republican midterm convention, it was— it looked right out of Idiocracy. Donald Trump said oil prices are going to come down, but let me tell you when— right after the election. That's when I promise you this time. I know I promised you that they were going to come down in March and then April and then May and then June, then July, then August. But after the election, that's when he promises. Here, play this clip.

But right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward.

Tumbling downward. How convenient. What about the war?

The war.

Remember the war that you claim we won in March? When is that going to come to an end? When are you going to— when will the war be over, Donald? Because you've been saying that there's been deal, deal, deal, deal, deal. We've done a deal over here. So is the war going to be over soon? He goes, I think the war will end immediately after the election.

Got it.

After the election. Ah, God. It's not even a good fraud. You're not even a good— it's just, it just, it's just dumb. It's just really dumb at this point, at all points. But here, play this clip.

Oh, I think the war is going to end immediately after the election. I think the war will end immediately after the election because, because they can't hold out any longer. They're desperate to try and affect the election.

Not only are they not desperate, They have improved the quality of their ballistics. They have also improved the quantity. They sufficiently, unlike the United States under the Trump regime, stored enough ballistics to last a very long time. And they're using these new Qasem ballistic missiles and these new Khaibar shaken, um, castle breakers that change direction in the air. Um, they continue to strike tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Everything that Trump's saying is, is a lie. We all know it. And he looks like a crazy person, man. But when we all watch him there, right, even the press is like, because why? Why, why is it going to be over, Donald? Because, because it will. Because They're running out of time.

That's why.

Because— because what do you mean? This— you told us in April they were going to surrender, in May they were going to— they're not going to surrender. They feel, and they would be right, stronger than they were before this Trump and Netanyahu invasion took place. That's the reality. Look at what's happening in Yemen. It's why I spent all that time talking about Yemen. They are part of Iran's alliance. Look at what's happening there. Look at what's happening in the region. It ain't the US winning, that's for sure. But it's going to happen after the election, folks, after the election. Okay, then we heard from MAGA Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. By the way, have you been following that other Senate race in South Carolina between Darlene Graham and, uh, Or Annie Andrews, the Democratic candidate right there. Yeah, Dr. Annie Andrews. This is a neck-and-neck race. And folks, based on Democratic overperformance, I would not be shocked if in these midterms you see a seat like South Carolina go Democrat. I would not be shocked because we've been seeing stuff like that happen in special elections all of the time. And I just think Americans by and large, look at somebody like a Tim Scott or that Trump speech and they just go, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't do it.

Remember the example I gave with Jessica when I said, you know, look, just think about it. If you were a Met fan your whole life and then the Mets started saying horrible things about you, would you become a Yankee fan right away? Right. It would be a little bit difficult to even do that, even if the Mets were saying, we hate you, we hate you, we hate you, we hate you. But eventually it may break and you may go, God, I guess, I guess I get the point. Now imagine political allegiance and political ideology that in theory becomes every part of your fiber and being. And now you're trying to get out of that. It's not easy. It's why when people look at American politics, like, how is this even possible? Because America has been divided for so many decades. That people are entrenched and politics have been, have been gamified. And you see all of the money that's poured into our politics to manipulate and distort before elections. That's why, that's why you get these outcomes. But I just think that we're in a new era right now where people are like, enough, enough.

I mean, look, they see Tim Scott. What the hell was this? MAGA Republican Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina. Listen to what he had to say.

Play this clip.

Standing with our President Donald J. Trump. Stand for the President Donald J. Trump. This is a battle for the heart of our nation. I said the heart of our nation. By the way, as I was recording, another vessel was struck in the Strait of Hormuz, uh, moments ago. We're sure I'll do a report on that later. Another tanker struck in the Strait of Hormuz. And, you know, this is the— this is what happens when you have like a loser in office. This isn't a political thing, you know. He just— he's been a lifelong loser. He's been a lifelong liar. And we're seeing what that looks like when you have a loser and a liar as the commander-in-chief. It's why before the 2024 election, I was speaking so much about moral character and backgrounds of these people. I'm like, look, this guy's a sexual predator. I'm not saying that to like debate you. It's like undisputed. Like, he's been found civilly liable for sexual assault. That's undisputed fact. He was found liable for fraud separately in a criminal case. He's a convicted felon. He's a bad guy. He's the bad person. And he loses. And now we all have to be losers because of this loser.

And I think Americans are like, no, what are we doing here? And I don't see how it gets better anytime soon. You know, back in 2020, Biden won the election and Biden had to do difficult things to turn the ship around. And Biden got blamed for all of the stuff that Trump was— that Trump screwed up. And the whole media machine, the whole MAGA media, they all went right after Biden. And Biden was all about bringing people together. Kumbaya, let's get beyond this. And that just crushed him. But he had to clean the mess and it took him 4 years. 3.5%, really, to clean it up. And then everything started trending in the right direction because he made the right moves. He listened to experts. Not on everything. Let's be clear, not on everything. There were some major foreign policy problems. It's putting an understatement. But on the economy, inflation was heading to 2%. Manufacturing jobs were increasing. We addressed the issue of semiconductor supply chains. The CHIPS Act. You had a lot of major legislation and he would have gotten comprehensive immigration reform passed, except Trump killed it. When Trump wasn't in office, he had all the MAGA Republicans block comprehensive immigration reform, which would have dealt with strong borders, which I do think most Americans want strong borders, me included.

But we also want to have asylum seekers be treated with dignity. We want people who have been here for a long time and paying taxes and who have families and who contribute. We want them to be treated with dignity and to have a pathway to citizenship. There's a way that businesses can benefit. People can be— human beings can be treated with dignity, and we can enhance border control in the right way. And it's done in a way with dignity. Biden had a deal, but Trump destroyed the deal because that's what Trump does this whole time. He's a deal breaker. He's a deal destroyer. That would have actually been good. Any time we try to solve problems, either Trump destroys it or his right-wing Supreme Court destroys it. Although for the very first time, the Supreme Court made a decent ruling, a good ruling today, upholding the right-wing Missouri Supreme Court's unanimous decision that the pre-gerrymandered maps before the MAGA Republican AG and MAGA Republican Secretary of State screwed with the Missouri maps and made it a 7-to-1 when it was previously a 6-Republican, 2-Democratic, uh, seat, uh, congressional seat state. Um, and what the Missouri Supreme Court said is you can change the maps, but you got to do a referendum.

And we'll do a referendum in November. And if the voters want a new map, let them vote on it the way they voted on it in California, then do a new map. That's what the Missouri Supreme Court said. And the MAGA-controlled Missouri legislature and AG and Secretary of State said, nope, we're going to just push forward HB 1, our own piece of legislation. We're going to push forward our own legislation and just do it. And then we're going to say, now you can't rule against us because we've already gone through a primary. Nothing you can do now. And the Missouri Supreme Court— and not only that, Right-wing Supreme Court, 5 right-wing justices. They said nope, and we're going to hold the secretary of state in contempt. And so they held the secretary of state in contempt today until the secretary of state finally said and backed down and said, okay, we're going to put in the original maps that were supposed to be used for this election. But that was after the Supreme Court said that the Missouri State Supreme Court did the right thing in a 7 to 0 decision. But you had a Trump-appointed district court judge and the 8th Circuit before this went up to the Supreme Court.

The district court judge tried to overrule the Missouri State Supreme Court and based it on some bizarre interpretation of the Constitution, which says that elections are a time, place, and manner is a states' rights issue. But this Trump-appointed judge is like, well, because the primaries already took place, then we're just going to say the Constitution says you got to go forward with it just because, because primaries are important. I'm like, well, what do you base— you're just making up fake law. They were. The Trump-appointed judge made up a fake law. The 8th Circuit claimed we don't have jurisdiction. And actually, the United States Supreme Court made the right call. And overruled the Trump-appointed judge, overruled the 8th Circuit Court of Appeal, and agreed with the state, the state Supreme Court, and said it's the old map. Do your referendum. That's it. So actually a good development. And then let me just leave everybody with this as well. Donald Trump, during his speech yesterday, he says that this has been the most successful 2 years economically in the history of the United States. this, one of his closing messages from last night, that this has been the most successful 2 years we've ever experienced.

Listen to what he has to say. Let's play.

You, 4 years of disaster, bedlam, and death under Sleepy Joe Biden. And I'm asking you to let us finish the job we began with the greatest 2 years in the history of the presidency. This has been the most Successful 2 years financially and every other way in the history of the presidency.

I mean, it's—

couldn't be more false, and we all know it's more false. And here's the thing, when you looked at the crowd there, there were a lot of empty seats. The way they set up the stage, it really only utilized half of the stadium where the Dallas Mavericks play. So maybe there was 75 500 people, 7,000 people, you know, who were there. Which, you know, people who are able to attract 7,000 people, you know, I, I, it's, it's, it is what it is. But I'll say this, I mean, the fact that there's still a group of people— I was watching the people behind him, I was watching, it was mostly ladies behind him, and I think they set it up that way on purpose as well, especially as Trump is having more and more difficult issues with women voters, which he always had before, but He's having issues with all voters. But as I watch that and I, I'm thinking to myself, I just— I know what the world is thinking about us, but how shameful for our country that this literal psycho— like, you can't get much worse than this objectively.

Not—

not— and I'm not saying this because I don't like the guy, which I don't. I'm not saying this because, you know, I think MAGA is a dangerous movement, which I do think, of course, it's a dangerous movement. I'm just saying objectively, as I'm recording this, September 10th. We're in a disaster. Objectively, we're in a disaster. There's no other way around it. It's not a talking point. It's not political messaging that I'm doing. It's just the reality. We're in a disaster. Gas prices, diesel prices, the price of crude, WTI and Brent, losing this catastrophic war with seemingly no way out. More tankers being hit in the Strait of Hormuz every damn day. The Houthis now controlling mostly All of Yemen. China asserting itself more than ever before. The war rages on with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The strikes are only escalating there. It's going to be a very, very deadly autumn and winter there, that's for sure. You look around the world, there's chaos everywhere. The world is literally at war. Whether future historians will call this moment World War III, I leave that to them. But objectively, The world is in a war. Every country is somehow involved in some war right now, right across the entire world, which is exactly what Trump and MAGA were trying to warn about with Biden, which never actually happened.

And healthcare has been ripped away from American people. More people's Medicaid will be lost after the midterms because the trigger for a lot of the Medicaid cuts happens after November, and the Republicans set it up that way so they could try to claim, oh, well, it wasn't all that bad. No, it was that bad, and it's only going to get worse there. People can't pay their rent. We're in a dire— I mean, objectively, we're in a dire situation, and he's out there saying it's amazing. And you still have people behind him like, like they're watching Shamu catch a sardine in his mouth. And it's a very bizarre thing. It's a very bizarre thing to observe and a very strange phenomenon to observe that people can be treated like absolute horseshit and then smear it on their face and then cheer for— and then cheer for the infected horse. It's a very strange thing to observe. But the rest of the world, they don't see this. You know, it was Governor Newsom who once said Donald Trump is weakness masquerading as strength. To me, it's weakness masquerading as weirdness and weakness, and the world sees it and they're like, got it, they don't know what they're doing anymore.

They got rid of their top people. They're losers. They're a loser country. That's how the world sees us now, as a loser country, because all we do is lose. And all Trump does is post weird memes and make threats, and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna go after you, Canada. I'm gonna go after you, UK. Falkland Island War. You know, it's just an— it's a nightmare. It is. And look, I think as we approach the midterms, I think more and more Americans see it for what it is. I think, um, I think Republicans are going to have a rude awakening in the midterms. I think it's going to be way more of a wipeout than anybody expects, just judging by these special elections. And if you look at the trajectory of where things are going, it's just It's just going to get worse, sadly, for this country, right, from here until then. And what the plan is, we're going to give you $5,000 and it's going to lie about giving you money. And more bribes, more lying about bribing the American people. Sick, sick stuff. We'll keep on reporting it every day.

We'll keep, uh, delivering this breaking news. Keep checking back on our YouTube channel every 90 minutes. for more breaking news. We appreciate you. We're grateful for you. Make sure you watch the Brother Show. Check out Jessica Tarlov's new book. We love Jessica. We're so grateful for her to join me on the show. And, uh, get our book too. You could get both books while you're doing books. WTF America is our book, and, uh, Jessica's book is over there. Thanks everybody. Appreciate you. Shout out Midas Mighty. I'll see you on the Brother Show tonight. Thanks.

Thanks, everybody.

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