Transcript of Afternoon Breaking Updates with Ben: Trump Trapped In His Own Crisis  — 9/3/26 New

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Welcome to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Meiselas. This is your breaking news overnight. Iran struck hard in Kuwait. This follows Iran striking hard at US military bases, not just in Kuwait, but also in Jordan, also in Iraq, also in the UAE, also in Bahrain, also in all of the surrounding areas.

The Strait of Hormuz continues to be under attack by Iran, which controls it to the extent the US is trying to take out tankers, those VLCCs, and other ships through the southern Oman route. Iran is not playing around. Donald Trump is. Playing around. Donald Trump just continues to fabricate and claim, uh, we have so much oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, you're not even going to know what to do with it.

We've got 18 million barrels coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump is posting memes, everybody, so you know it must be really true if Donald Trump is posting some sort of C-Spot Run second grade memes. No offense to C-Spot Run, no offense to second grade. This is how Donald Trump thinks. American people think.

This is how stupid he thinks he is. Here, put that graph up one more time there, Jeremy. Donald Trump posts a weird photo of the Strait of Hormuz. Okay. Then an AI image of a barrel of oil.

Then it says before 20 million barrels a day. Then he posts another graph that says 18 million barrels a day. And that's it. And then, okay, got it. I guess if that thing is saying that, I guess it's true.

We know this to be false. We know this is inaccurate. One of the easiest ways to know it's inaccurate is what are you paying right now for your gas? Okay, like there's a supply shock. Okay, we know the drawdowns of our strategic petroleum reserves, those salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana.

It's becoming a major, major issue there. The price of gas right now is what? It's going to be $5 a gallon soon. It's creeping up there. The price of diesel, what, gonna go up to $6 a gallon soon?

You want to talk about the paper price of crude? What are we talking about, $96, $97 a barrel? It's gonna hit $100 a barrel in the next few days. Bessent promised that it was gonna have a 3 or even a 2 in front of it after Labor Day. Of course, the Trump regime lies about everything.

The spot price of diesel right now, you know what it is? It's about $100. About $255 a barrel for the spot price of diesel. So you've got $255 spot price diesel, you've got about $100 a barrel, the price of crude. We're talking about both Brent and WTI as well approaching that mark.

So your crack spread, your delta between the price of crude and your diesel, often called the 3-2-1 crack spread, the amount of diesel and gas that can be extracted and jet fuel and other types of fuel that can be extracted from that crude, That number is reaching record highs. And basically what that means for you, without getting hyper-technical and geeking out on oil prices, is your prices are far more expensive. You understand what I mean when I talk about these salt caverns? I just want to make sure we're on the same page. In Texas and Louisiana, but particularly Texas, there's literal caverns.

There are salt caverns, like geological salt cavern formations. Which over time people realized this could be a good way to store excess oil, strategic petroleum reserves. So it was basically used in, you know, in a way that mixes water with the right type of oil, light sour, mid-sweet, but light sour that mixes with the water. And they call it sour and sweet because people used to actually taste the oil. Like during like the, the big oil baron days, people would taste the oil.

Oh, it's sweet, it's sour. Its sulfur content is, is what it's rooted in. By the way, that's why Venezuela's oil sat very sour, very viscous, very dense type of stuff, very tarry. Doesn't go into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. That's why Trump's trying to defraud us all and say, ah, that goes in the petroleum reserve, that'll fill it up.

Total lie. Bullshit liar. Lies about everything. They lie about everything, literally. But we now have so much drawdowns in our salt caverns right now.

If you think about it, like, the, the— there has to be a threshold level, um, in order to literally keep the geological formation and the foundation secure. So one of the issues we could be dealing with— it's why I've been geeking out about the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, the salt caverns, and all of these things It could collapse. It literally won't hold up. Like, at some point it could literally collapse and, and like implode. Okay.

And that's one of the things that people are looking at and going, this is getting very, very dangerous, not just because we're running out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but the whole thing could collapse, which could cause a major catastrophic shock. Um, something that no one is prepared for, but we should be absolutely prepared for. One of the biggest tells also, Remember back in April what Trump and Bessant were telling you and telling everybody? They said in 3 days Iran's going to blow up. I mean, stupid.

These people are like the dumbest people, right? Inject yourself with bleach. They said 3 days Iran had left because the pipes would get so congested. I don't even understand the science. It's made up stuff.

The blockade would cause the pipes to get— you remember this? Get congested and all of Iran would explode late April, and then everyone would be wiped out in Iran. And this was coming Iran's way. Remember, Trump said this and Bessin said this and JD Vance said this. They were pushing this.

No, no, no. What actually could happen soon in the United States— and again, I think my predictions have been fairly scarily accurate in what's happening right now. If you go back 6 months ago, what we were saying is going to happen is happening. The salt cavern could collapse. And if it collapses, then even the remaining Strategic Petroleum Reserve amounts, which are at tank bottom, become inaccessible.

And then we lose the concept of a Strategic Petroleum reserve in the United States, in Texas. That could be a big, big deal. I separately talk about things that go on in Cushing, Oklahoma. That's another kind of main hub. And one of the things you can see in Cushing is the— I'm oversimplifying it here, but the productivity that's taking place, the high level within which the crude is being transported.

Demonstrates that the supply shock is incredibly severe. And you look at what's happening in Cushing, and then you look at the salt caverns. It tells us they're separate concepts, but they tell a story of a supply shock like we've never seen anywhere in history. And it's because— and it's caused by Donald Trump's incompetence, folks. Iran knows this.

Iran realizes this, okay? And they know that What they got to do to establish deterrence is every time Trump strikes, they got to strike hard at the military bases in the region. They need to take out tankers each day or as many tankers as they can. And that keeps the overall world economy in a state of paralysis. And Donald Trump's lies make things worse at this point.

Donald Trump gets more deranged. What did Donald Trump threaten 2 days ago when he struck Iran? He said, Iran, if you respond, we're going to hit you so hard. We're going to blow up your whole civilization, so do not respond. What does Iran do?

Boom, responds right away. Also, we've talked about this, and this gets like no attention on corporate news. I mean, like, or like a blip. The Trump regime struck a wedding in Sirik, and they killed 5 people, including a 4-year-old who was attending this wedding. About 74 people were seriously injured at a wedding in Sirik.

And you may go, did they— it was a slammer missile. We know it was a U.S. missile. It was geolocated by both the New York Times and the BBC. They did a good job covering this with their verify teams that confirmed that the footage coming out of Iran is indeed accurate. The hospital footage is accurate.

The area that was hit It was indeed hit by the US SLAM-ER missiles. So there's a telecommunications tower nearby in Sirik. And so the Trump regime, though, in going for the telecommunications tower, didn't just hit the telecommunications tower, it hit the private residential area nearby. And this is why you probably want to have a robust infrastructure to avoid civilian targeting that Hegseth and Donald Trump gutted. When you talk about Manab, the elementary school where the Trump regime slaughtered 168 little girls, or you talk about Lemaire, where the Trump regime slaughtered 17 little children at a sports hall, one of the commonalities is that they're somewhat near facilities, telecommunications towers, and other things.

But the Trump regime just would go in there and they'd blow up everything nearby. By the way, a tactic we see Netanyahu use in Gaza with the genocide there, in Lebanon and elsewhere, Okay, you see, whether or not we feel these telecommunications towers are military targets or not, I don't think the telecommunications tower is even a valid military target, if I'm being totally honest. But you would say, okay, there is something that we view as being used by the IRGC, or Netanyahu would say, that's something I believe Hamas is using. Just blow up everything around it. Okay, and then you just slaughter little girls and innocent people and all of these people.

And you murder every— you murder everybody. You know, I mean, I'm just trying to think of a corollary in my life. I used to live in downtown Los Angeles, right? You live in downtown Los Angeles, and, um, I lived in a, a tall building, lots of apartments, uh, in the apartment that I used to live in, you know, 10 years ago. And I remember there was once a drug dealer in the building.

Um, I remember there was a whole story about a drug dealer in the building on one of the floors and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. And I— and the drug dealer had fentanyl, and it was a whole bad— it was, it was a scary story that someone in the building was doing that. But under the kind of Netanyahu, Hegseth, Trump approach, got it. There's someone right there, narcotrafficker, blow up the whole building, murder everybody in it, slaughter everybody in it, and then say, oh, we were going after Hamas. We were going after this person or that person.

So we just murder everybody. But then I think it gets one step worse because then they just view everybody as a narcotrafficker or everybody they just label as Hamas or everybody who doesn't agree with their fascism all of a sudden gets the label. And in fact, the narcotraffickers are the ones getting pardoned by the Trump regime, right? The Orlando Hernandezes and the, uh, Juan Orlando Hernandez, the, the worst of the worst, those people get protected by Donald Trump. I mean, once upon a time, Delcy Rodriguez of Venezuela was viewed as a bounty, you know, on, on, on her arrest.

I mean, she was viewed as you know, in the Maduro regime. And all of the individuals that were there were viewed as these people were working for doing the narcotrafficking, just like Orlando Hernandez. Also, a lot of the people Trump is installing in these South American countries have lots of red flag links to a lot of bad activity. But this is who Trump's actually promoting because he— his view is you basically create the issue, you create the problem, and under the pretext of the chaos that you cause the people and that you inflict, then you assert your fascism. You come along and say, I alone can fix it.

I'm the one who can save the day. I'm the one who's the savior. I mean, we're going to show you in a little bit J.D. Vance's disastrous press conference in the Oval Office when he was playing the role of Caroline Levitt. And J.D.

Vance is like, it's only because of us that there is not a massive energy crisis in the world right now. I mean, what What in the hell kind of predator-ass thing is that for you to— like, you're saying, like, you're a bunch of predators, you're crazy people, you created the issue, and now you're like, and we're the only ones who can save it. I mean, they are the arsonists who then say, but we're the firefighters. It's really shameful stuff. And the rest of the world sees it.

The rest of the world sees how weak and pathetic the United States is. And just look overnight, Iran attacked last night Al-Jabbar Air Base in Kuwait and the Al-Manad Air Base in the UAE with missiles and drones. That follows All the other strikes I was talking about. There was no comment from military officials or Trump yet. CENTCOM hasn't responded to Iran's retaliatory operations from the previous day.

And if CENTCOM doesn't conduct strikes, it will further highlight how the US military is unwilling and unable to even engage in another tit-for-tat round. The US is out of weapons. I don't know how many times we can say this. I know Donald Trump wants to post it's treasonous or traitorous to say that we're out of weapons. We're out of weapons.

We're out of weapons. We're out of weapons. We're out of weapons. We're out of weapons because Trump and Hegseth are idiots and they shouldn't have been involved in this catastrophic war. But then they depleted all of our freaking weapons, our munitions, our THAADs, our Patriots, our Tomahawks.

It's probably good not to have Tomahawks in the hands of these freaking sickos, but they depleted them. We're out. We're at a very limited level right now, I should say. That makes it impossible if there is— and there is— conflagration wars throughout the world. There's a There is a war going on in the entire world right now.

Can we all agree? Can we so stipulate that that's actually what's taking place? The US is unable to project strength like it did before throughout the world. It's done. The Asian security umbrella, done.

European security umbrella, done. Of course, the Middle East security umbrella, done. Donald Trump just wants to install his little dictators in South America, Central America, focus on exploiting the people there. That's his game plan. That's what he cares about.

Meanwhile, Russia prepares for its winter offensive against Ukraine. Trump taps Zelensky along, says, I'm going to give you Patriot interceptors or interceptor licenses. Donald Trump doesn't do that, lies to Zelensky, makes Zelensky incredibly vulnerable for a Russian winter offensive. Russia, meanwhile, testing the resolve of NATO, seeing NATO has no resolve at all. A drone incident that took place in Germany.

Russia struck a ship in the coast of Romania. Russia has been, you know, hitting certain types of targets. I mean, there was areas of Poland which were subject to a Russian missile strike in the area that at least went into NATO territory. And with all of these incidents, of course, none of these countries are invoking Article 4 of NATO because it don't exist anymore, folks. Hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Trump's destroyed NATO. Trump's destroyed Article 4, Article 5. It doesn't exist. I mean, we can pretend it does, but there's a reason why these countries that have been subject in NATO to attacks by Russia— I mean, there was an attack in Poland recently where a Russian-backed arsonist blew up a facility linked to Ukraine. I mean, we're seeing this happen.

There are incidents almost every day happening where Russia is sending people across Europe in various locations, uh, where NATO is based and where there's, uh, American military plants. I mean, a Coca-Cola factory was smashed today in Ukraine by, uh, Putin. You won't hear a single peep from Donald Trump or, uh, Treasury Secretary Bessent or anybody in this regime. But Article 4, Article 5 is effectively dead. Instead, Donald Trump wants to spend his time attacking Canada.

Canada this, Canada that. We hate Canada. We hate Canada. Or go, we're going to teach Canada a lesson. They're going to know.

They're going to pay Prime Minister Carney. We're going to make you suffer. I mean, what are you doing, you freaking sicko? What the hell are you even talking about? It's the most ridiculous thing.

I want to give a hat tip, though. Did you all see this moment? I covered it earlier today. Make sure you check all the morning videos that we did here at The Midas Touch. I try to curate everything for you that is kind of not being covered in other places.

After all, Senator Bernie Sanders told me the most important issues, Ben, are the issues that the media is not discussing. Disgusting. Disgusting. I couldn't agree more with Senator Bernie Sanders there. But I believe the guy's name is Admiral Paparo.

I think that's his name. Um, and he is the top admiral, top commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Fleet. Did you see this? He was at an Indo-Pacific conference in British Columbia yesterday in Canada, and he was with his counterpart, uh, the leader of Canada's military. And a member of the press, a member of the press asked this admiral, this very decorated admiral, if Donald Trump gives you the order to invade Canada or to strike Canada, are you going to follow through with it?

And the admiral, the U.S. admiral, very dismissive over it. I think that's a ridiculous question. I think it's a very emotional question. And I really don't want to even uh, give it the attention that— and the reporter pressed. The reporter said, well, Admiral Paparo, I think you're being very disrespectful to the people of Canada by dismissing us that way when you have your commander, your commander, Commander Paparo, your command— we hate that he's the commander-in-chief, but he is.

He talks about annexation every day. He says, I'm going to make Canada the 51st state. He uses the language of Hitler vis-à-vis Canada every day. He uses that type of Denazification language is the language that Trump uses. He uses the language.

He uses the language of someone who would be invading another country. So the fact that you go, oh, he's not going to do it, I think we all know. You know, I think here's the— here's what we know. If he could do it, he would do it. Do we all agree with that?

If he could do it, he would do it. He's— he shouldn't do it. I mean, I could go on and on, but He, he lost the war to Iran big time. Not even close. Iran wiped the floor with that orange blob.

Was it— was not even— and they're mocking the shit out of him. Iran's doing minesweeper memes against him right now, just mocking the hell out of Donald Trump. You've got, you've got Iran's parliament leader, MB Ghalibaf, doing, uh, memes of Wile E. Coyotes. That was a Wile E. Coyote being chased by the Road Runner, you know, remember? And, uh, you've got— he's like, sorry cutie, you're not gonna get either.

They're calling Besant cutie. They're calling this— they're mocking him so much. They're saying, sorry sweetie, sorry cutie, you struggling? Struggling much? Yeah, Wile E. Coyote.

Wile E. Coyote. I watched that growing up. The editors are producing Wile E. Coyote. Yeah, I mean, but it is actually, you know, I used that analogy or metaphor, whatever you want to call it, before that, you know, Trump, it does seem like it is like Wile E. Coyote out there. Like, you know, it's a predator.

It's predatorial, whether it's Canada, whether it's Iran, whether it's— it's predatorial. And that image of Wile E. Coyote doing that is an apt example. So You know, Trump's making all of these threats, so it's a fair question to ask Commander, uh, Admiral Samuel Paparo, uh, who leads the U.S. Indo-Pacific Fleet. What, what, what would you do? And stop being so emotional with that question.

How about you tell the freaking traitorous, treasonous commander-in-chief, stop threatening Canada? Why don't you actually listen to what Canadians feel? Because Canadians don't just feel it's a trade war that was launched against them. Against them. Canada feels like it's an actual war.

It's a hybrid war that was launched against them by Donald Trump because it is. It is. That's not being emotional. Really, all these people who are being emotional, stop with the hyperbolics. Stop with— what world are you living in right now?

I live in a world where ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo are killing people in this country, where the Trump regime is posting torture videos of Haitians who used to work and live in the United States productively shackled being sent to their deaths back in Haiti. That's the world. I mean, that's the world that I'm living in right now where the Trump regime slaughters children and people attending a wedding in Sirik. They bombed that. What was their escalation before that?

Was a home in Keshem. And by the way, these sick fucks, you know what they do? Excuse my language. You know what they do? They test The new weapons on the little girls.

They test the new weapons. They tested on the volleyball hall in Lemaire this new pellet weapon, the first time it was really used, that spread these little pellets, 1,000 or 5,000 pellets, on the little girls playing volleyball. And then they do the same story. Oh no, it was Iran who killed their own people. It was Iran who killed their own people.

No, it wasn't. It was you. That was your new weapon. This is your slammer weapon. That was your new pellet weapon that just explodes these little pellets everywhere and killed the little girls.

You dropped a $5,000— it wasn't a mother of all bombs, but it was basically like a MOAB. You dropped one of your biggest bombs on just a home in Keshem and you killed a family. Uh, you know, and, and then you did it. Of course you slaughtered the little girls in Manab. And then, and then they go so freaking cavalierly, the J.D.

Vances and all of these freaking war criminals. It's Iran that would target their own people. We, we don't do it. No, you do. You do.

You do. You do. You do. You are war criminals. And J.D.

Vance and Donald Trump and Hegseth, you definitely deserve to be tried in The Hague. And frankly, I don't give a shit. I don't want— if a Democratic candidate doesn't say that they will ensure that they turn over these war criminals to The Hague, do not elect any of the Democratic candidates unless that's part of their position. For real. For real.

They need to say Hague. That's what it needs to be. Ruthless accountability, period, full stop. That's it. What are you going to do?

Hey, what are you going to do with the ballroom? Destroy it. What are you going to do with the money Trump made? Take it away. How are you going to take it away?

I'm going to go into his bank accounts and I'm going to fucking rip it away. If a Democratic candidate isn't saying that, then don't run. Don't run. We don't want you. Get the hell out of here.

Seriously, you're not doing deals with Donald Trump. I don't want— oh, we're going to do deals on affordability. You're not doing a deal with the guy. Okay. You're not going to do a deal with the guy.

The American people are psychologically tortured by this regime. What the hell are you going to do for the people right now? Seriously, how are you going to hold these war criminals accountable? It's Hague or don't run for office. It's destroy the Golden— what are you going to do with the Golden Ballroom?

I'm going to demolish it on day one. How are you going to demolish it? On live TV in front of everybody. I'm going to put a shit ton of dynamite and I'm just going to blow it up. Obviously, we're going to remove the people from it.

We're going to make a national spectacle of blowing up the Golden Ballroom. That's what voters want to see right now.

Period, full stop. Anywhere that Trump's name, we're going to rip it off. That's what I want to hear a Democratic candidate say. We're going to rip it off. We're going to broadcast it.

We're going to livestream it on the Midas Touch Network. They don't have to be the Midas Touch Network, but I'd love to livestream it here. That's what I want to hear a Democratic candidate say. If not, don't run. Don't run.

Because the American people have been so freaking traumatized right now by what this regime has done. And not just the American people, the Canadian people, and the whole damn world who just wanted to go on and live their lives with their family and just get on with it and try to make memories and enjoy their time here, our short time on Earth, without these freaking predator leeches out there just trying to destroy our happiness, our solitude, the little time we all have together on this beautiful planet. These predators want to pollute it. They want to put data centers everywhere. They want to make people miserable.

They want to spread diseases. They want to spread their diseases. It's sick. It's freaking sick. And so stop acting like this is normal.

I want to see ruthless account— that's what the— forget what I want to see. Who cares about me? The American people want to see ruthless accountability, period, full stop, end of story. Sorry I went on that rant. This is what that Admiral Paparo had to say.

Let's play it. So this is a question that is asked of all journalists. Under what circumstances Under those circumstances, would you obey an order to launch military action against Canada?

I'm— yeah, I find that scenario to be absolutely and utterly preposterous.

And so I follow the orders of the commander-in-chief, but that is a needlessly emotional question. I don't find— forgive my saying it too— is that Canada is a close ally.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be insulting. No, no, but you didn't answer the question. I'm sorry? You didn't answer the question. I said I follow the orders of the president, and I find it to be a— would you ask me please also what my attack plans are for the Martians?

You want to dismiss it, by all means. Yes, sir. I don't dismiss you, but I do dismiss the question. You belittle it. I'm sorry?

You belittle it, and I don't think that's the right approach at all. This is a serious question about a serious issue. We've had threats of annexation. I know it's not. I know it's a hypothetical, but nonetheless, if you've not thought about it, maybe you should.

Thank you, John. We'll go to Jody.

Yeah, horrible, horrible, horrible response. And you want to know why the people of Canada hate this regime right now? I mean, that dismissive answer right there, it's like the Martians. It's like, well, you, you realize in saying that too, then what you also are admitting is that Donald Trump's words don't matter at all, which we all know to be the case. But when Donald Trump uses the— I mean, the word annexation, you realize that that has a meaning.

If another— could you imagine if Obama said annexation of Canada? What would be the response? Why? Because we have some psychotic orange blob, does that change the equation? Because he was a failed, bankrupt reality scumbag, then now, oh, it's— he says it.

So it's still the commander-in-chief of the United States military, and that requires that we— well, I don't know, I don't understand what— when it was that we don't treat the commander-in-chief like they're— like their words have meaning or matter. I mean, and that's what Trump and corporate news and trillions of dollars in brainwashing, I think, has done. Where it's like, hey, just— which— there's just words. He just says annexation, 51st state. He just says words.

He just says he's gonna blow up the whole civilization to smithereens. He just posted AI memes of himself bombing Karg Island and engaging in genocide and mass slaughter. Yeah, just— it's just a— guys, it's just a meme of him and Netanyahu building a Trump Gaza hotel and dancing with bearded naked women in a— remember that one? It was like a bearded naked women. I'm not sure why the naked women have beards, but, you know, dancing with Netanyahu and Trump with naked bearded women in Gaza while they sip martinis together.

That's what— and Ronald Reagan did it, and George W. Bush did it, and George H.W. Bush, and Obama, and Clinton, and Carter, and Nixon, and Ford, and JFK and FDR and Truman and Eisenhower. We all remember that this was there. No, it's not, folks. Folks, this behavior is crazier than Kim Jong-un.

Actually, I don't like when people go, we're behaving like North Korea. Oh my gosh. No, no, no, no, no. North Korea seems like, compared to us right now, North Korea seems like a place of discipline. Uh, at the— despite all of the derangement, it at least appears they're working towards some sort of national interest.

I mean, Donald, I mean, truthfully, and I'm not saying this to even be facetious, right now, Trump regime, United States, Kim Jong-un, North Korea— what would I view as a— as having a crazier leader and a more unpredictable and deranged? Uh, United States by far. But not even— I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even put it close, to be honest with you. I mean, we got a guy who wakes up, starts posting the most deranged memes, makes threats, doesn't follow through with the threats, makes more threats, doesn't follow through, talks about how he thinks he's the greatest, starts putting his face on money every day and talks about golden ballrooms. And then, I mean, could you imagine what we would be saying about Kim Jong-un if he hid in a catering container?

Could you imagine what we— what the world— could you imagine what the world— what we would be saying if we found out, you know, that Xi Jinping hid in a catering container after leaving a NATO summit when he was on the most protected plane but decided to hide in a catering container? Or if Putin did that? Or if— I mean, if any leader did that at all, could you imagine Oh my God, this is stuff that's out of the worst types of parodies that wouldn't even be believable, and this is the United States. I don't know. I say this truly as someone who loves this country.

I still love the country. I say this believing that this is ultimately what patriotism should be about.

I mourn what's happening to our service members right now under this reckless Trump regime. As Hegseth says, well, we're going to deploy them to 2027, and Trump says, I don't think they've been out long enough. I mean, I literally, I literally shed a tear when I saw the USS Abraham Lincoln pulling into Thailand and seeing the condition of that ship. And then hearing about the experience of those incredible sailors and Marines who were tortured by the Trump regime— tortured, our service members.

I've heard— I hear from their families what they're going through. They don't even want to go to Thailand. They want to go home. They want to be with their families. They want to be with their kids.

They want to be— they don't want— they don't want to be in Thailand right now either. You know, but this is part of the Trump regime two-step to kind of COVID it up. Put him in Thailand, you know, who the hell even knows, you know, between Israeli intelligence there and Chinese intelligence and Russian intelligence and the hell's even happening.

JD Vance press conference, I want to talk a little bit about that when we come back from our First quick break. Have you ordered WTF America, the book I wrote with my brothers? It comes out October 20th. I hope you will purchase it. Uh, please preorder it right now.

Um, the preorders are really helpful. Um, so preorder it now. Um, comes out October. Put in the comments if you preordered it. We'll be back.

Let's take our first and only break of the show. Thanks.

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Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Myselis. This is your breaking news. Did you see this deranged press conference that J.D. Vance gave a little bit earlier today?

So with all of what I said in the first half of this show as background, with Iran striking back hard at U.S. military bases in the region, And then striking again yesterday in Kuwait in response to the US striking a wedding that was taking place in Sirak. You know, oil prices skyrocketing right now, Treasury yields skyrocketing right now. MB Ghalibaf, Iran's parliament leader, again mocking the Trump regime and the manipulation that Iran sees at a very Micro— I mean, Iran sees it at a very specific level, what's happening. They, they know very— their knowledge is fairly extensive about what's happening here and the U.S. munition situation. And Iran knows, just keep this going, you know, what's happening right now.

You know, think about it this way. The Trump regime likes to say we've been at war with Iran for 47 years. So it's a ridiculous statement, but that's what they, that's what they go with. This isn't a new war, this is just part of 47 years of war. Okay, sure, um, but let's accept that as true.

So Iran's been able to survive and build this massive, massive weapons cadre, these ballistic missiles, these drones, the Shaheds, all this stuff. Over the course of, you know, 50 years of the toughest sanctions. So you think that in the next 2 weeks they're gonna be like, ah, enough, enough, we're out, we surrender, please, we want to make a deal with you now, sir, tell us about your terms, make us submit? I mean, is that— in what delusional predatory world, do you think the response from Iran after 50 years is going to be, uncle, I give up, I give up? No, that's— of course they're not.

If anything, they see what we see, what people with the brain see, which is they've got the US Trapped. They got the U.S. stuck. You better believe that Russia knows that, that China knows that, that the other BRICS nations know that, that the nations at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization know that. Now they got to be careful because the U.S. architecture still is there. It's been pulled apart.

It's no longer, um, the security umbrella no longer holds. So it's dismantled. You can't just— if you rip it apart so quickly, the fear is that could cause even more global chaos. But if you Just like, uh, what's it like, a Jenga board? Or maybe it's not a good example, but you just keep on picking at it.

Take another one, you take another one. While Donald Trump's like, Canada, Greenland, Putin likes me, they just take a little bit more, take a little bit more. Surgical. Oh, oh, are we hot? Are we, are we so hot right now?

$9.2 trillion. Okay, do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that. They are so outmaneuvering us every damn day. It's why I cover the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meetings. That's why I cover the trip of Xi Jinping to Egypt right now, where he's meeting with El-Sisi, where there were military exercises in Egypt the other day.

Heck, Xi Jinping, when Trump visited Beijing, talked about the, the Thucydides trap. And when Xi visited Egypt, where they just did military exercises together the last few weeks, he talked about the new security architecture in the Middle East, which is also implicitly saying US out, China in. But China's pitch is not, we're going to do what the US did. China's pitch is create your own structures, Arab nations, and then lean on us to have your back, but you take control. What do you think the Mecca Pact is really about?

It's about the new security architecture with China leading the world. That's what the Mecca Pact is about. And Trump, like, I like the Mecca Pact. Good work, good work. Really?

I mean, I, I, I just— you don't realize what's actually happening here? I mean, it's not like Xi Jinping isn't saying it. He said there's a new security— he used the words new security architecture for the Middle East during his Cairo visit with el-Sisi. Shouldn't this be the main story, like, on, on the news, right? I mean, I mean, I guess that— I guess I am the news, so it is my main story.

It is our It's our collective main story. What happened at the G20 summit that took place in Asheville, North Carolina this past week? Well, in addition to the Trump regime inviting Russia, Russia's finance minister was there. China blocked the US resolution on these Strait of Hormuz. It would have been just a symbolic resolution anyway, but China blocked it.

What the US vision for the Strait of Hormuz. And Bessent's like, well, I think that China actually gets what we're doing. I think that they really understand and they are on our side. Okay, stupidest people ever. It's like the dumbest.

It's the dumbest. It's dumb and dumber and dumber, dumber and dumber, dumber, dumber, dumber, dumber and dumber, dumber, dumber, dumber, dumber, dumber, dumber. For real? I mean, what are you— what are you talking about? They're on your— they're on our side?

What world are— what world? They're pursuing a long-term plan that they just pressed fast forward on that has a geopolitical vision of a world order structured around China's hegemonic leadership, multipolar, with the U.S. being one of the weaker poles in China's ascendancy. And they're very closely allied with Russia and North Korea and Iran. And Iran got a hero's welcome at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Iran was treated like a hero.

When Iran goes— when Pashinyan, Iran's president, and Rouhani go to these world summits, they get standing ovations right now because the whole world sees that they beat the United States. Remember when Trump would be like, the whole world was laughing at us before me? No, no, no, they are now. They are now, that's, that's for sure. And you invited the Russian finance minister over at the same time that Russia met with Iran in Kyrgyzstan.

Putin met with Pozheshkin and said, we are economically supporting you. He literally said that. He goes, we are here to economically support Iran. And then Donald Trump will be like, well, I think that Putin and Russia love me, and they're— and, and they are helping me, and they are, they are great allies. But I'll tell you who's really bad: Canada, NATO.

I mean, you know, so what? So when our admiral's out there, Paparo, being like, that question's ridiculous— it may have been ridiculous 10 years ago if you were asked such a question when Obama was in office, or it may be a ridiculous question when Biden's in office, It ain't a ridiculous question, you know. And when you say that, Paparo, ask the Canadian people how they feel. Ask the people of Greenland how they feel. You, you may be living in your ivory tower, or you're living in your delusional world that's disconnected from what's happening on the ground, but the people in Canada, the people in the United States, the people across the world truly view Trump's statements as a threat, as a threat of war.

I think people recognize Trump's a loser and that he's lost to Iran. So if Trump even dared try to invade Canada, Trump would get his ass kicked 1,000 times worse than what Iran's doing. That's for sure. That's for sure. But I think people take the threats as threats.

Let's take a look at what J.D. Vance had to say. J.D. Vance, what's your advice to the Iranian people right now? This is what he said during his press conference.

He filled in for Caroline Levitt. Let's watch what he said. Let's play it. It started. So my advice to the Iranians is stop acting like crazy people and stop shooting at commercial shipping.

And in the meantime, we've got to do what we've got to do despite what a foreign country is going to do in the Strait of Hormuz. Stop acting like crazy people, Iran. That's my— you are acting like crazy people. You invaded their country. They didn't invade your country.

You invaded their country. What are you talking about? They're supposed to do nothing? They should do what Delcy Rodriguez did? They should do what Venezuela— and by the way, the people of Venezuela are pissed.

They just, just subject themselves to a humiliation ritual. And, and that isn't even a real deal, but it's just announced. Like, it's like literally the Venezuela deal is literally just Trump is such a predator, he wanted to announce submission of the other. He wanted to see them just behave so obsequious. He needed it because he was getting his ass kicked so badly in the rest of the world.

It ain't a real deal. I've gone over it a million times. It ain't gonna— it ain't gonna put oil in our strategic reserves. It's not the way oil works. It ain't gonna be refined anytime soon.

It's not the way oil works. Um, that's Trump for you. That's why he's bankrupted most of the things he's touched. A reporter goes and asks JD Vance on Iran, will the war be over by the midterms? Fair question.

Will the war be over by the midterms? Let's Let's, let's watch what JD has to say. Let's play it. With Iran, will this war be over by the time of the midterm elections? Well, Caitlin, again, I don't— I wouldn't call it a war right now.

There is no active shooting. I recognize there is— there have been places where this has flared up. Major combat operations, again, major combat operations lasted for about 6 weeks. And since then, we destroyed, of course, their nuclear facilities with Midnight Caitlin, I wouldn't call it a war. I would just call it a, uh, what are you talking about?

I mean, this is clowns. No offense to clowns. JD Vance on Iran: when will the Iranians stop shooting at ships? I don't know the answer to such a question. Usually things that happen in war skirmish.

Play this clip. But when you ask when will this end, you're asking me a question like When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships? I think the reality is I don't know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians. When will the Iranians shooting at ships stop having an effect on world energy markets?

And the answer is it has less effect day by day. So what we're going to do is not depend on the Iranians behaving responsibly or negotiating in good faith. What we're going to do is use the tools that we have at our disposal to ensure that the American people One, never have to deal with the threat of an Iranian nuclear program. And 2, that world energy markets are properly supplied. I'm going to go out on a limb here.

So forgive, forgive me going out on a limb here. Iran is going to stop blowing up ships in the Strait of Hormuz when— you ready for this, JD? Can you handle it, JD? When the U.S. leaves the Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

Wow. Oh my gosh. Perhaps when you invade somebody, they— and say we want regime change and kill their leaders and slaughter their children Maybe they respond and they get angry, and maybe they say, well, we don't want more of this. Maybe they say, we see what you did in Gaza and in southern Lebanon. We know what you're going to do here.

We don't want that here. We want our way of life, and that may be different than our way of life, JD. But believe it or not, there are other nations who have their own national interests and identity and religion and beliefs and history. And I know it's so crazy, it's so crazy, but why don't you just get out of the area? And then you can follow the MOU, which says that Iran and Oman control the Strait of Hormuz.

And why don't you maybe work out a small nominal fee to pay Iran? Because you started the war, you fix it. So just— it'll be far cheaper than what's happening right now by the magnitude of possibly trillions of dollars. So pay them the small fee of $10 billion or $12 billion. It's fine, you lost.

Pay them $12 billion. Maybe more. It's cheaper than what's happening. Get out. And guess what'll happen?

Prices will start going down again. We can fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's going to be the outcome anyway. It's gonna matter what— that's what's going to happen. So what are we doing?

Just stop wasting our time. And then JD Vance goes, but if you look at the Iranian ability to disrupt the lives of American people It's quite limited, he says. Very limited. Here, play this clip. You know, if you look at the Iranian ability to disrupt the normal lives of Americans, I think it's quite limited.

It's not zero, but it's quite limited. I'd be much more worried about cyberattacks from other actors. But again, we're doing everything that we can to stay ahead of this stuff.

No way. First off, they were able to successfully hack Minnesota, possibly Michigan's water systems. And in the UK. But Trump hates Minnesota, so he denies that they did it, even though we know that they did. But of course our lives are being impacted by this war.

It's being impacted because Trump and Netanyahu launched this never-ending war that nobody wanted, and they responded. But look at the price of oil today. Look at the price of diesel today. It's at record highs right now. What are you talking about?

Things are getting Things are getting worse. You know when they were doing better, JD? I know this is going to blow your mind. This is going to be a crazy concept. After the MOU was signed— and we can all read the words in the MOU, and yes, the MOU was a document of defeat that the United States signed.

You can't win it all. You lost. It's okay. You shouldn't have done it. You lost.

But paradoxically The US was actually getting rewarded for it in terms of lower prices for losing. And you're such— you're so bad that even though you were getting an undeserved W by losing— I mean, just think about the— like, think about privilege here. Seriously, think about privilege. Like, crazy privilege. The craziest.

It's like Game Genie privilege for those who played Nintendo growing up. You lose the war, you sign a surrender document in the MOU, and then you get rewarded with the markets going up and prices going down and it being viewed as the right decision. And the only people who were railing against the MOU were your usual neocon warmonger suspects, right? Your Mark Levin, your Netanyahu's, your Marco Rubio's, your Brian Kilmeade's on Fox. There was a, you know, group of people who always want these never-ending wars.

But even though we lost, they were getting rewarded. Like, it could have even going into the midterm— this is what a kind of crazy country we live in sometimes. Like, like that it actually could have stopped the bleeding for what these MAGA Republicans are going through in the midterms had they just gone through their loser document. It would have been viewed as a win. Crazy, right?

Even though it was clearly a loser doc because people didn't want to be there. So it was like, all right. And once again, Trump could have potentially have gotten credit for being the arsonist and then Pretending to be the firefighter and lighting a smaller fire. I mean, think about it. Obama did the deal.

JCPOA stopped Iran, also deterred North Korea. Let's not forget that JCPOA had a dual purpose of being used as a template for international coalition against North Korea. And when Trump ripped it apart, it sent a message to Kim Jong-un. It sent a message to other world leaders. Got it, we need nuclear weapons.

By the way, that's the message being sent now to every world leader. We need nuclear weapons or else. We need, we need nuclear weapons. So Trump couldn't even take the— he's such a loser that he couldn't even take the dub from being the loser. That's kind of crazy.

Like, like, he's so pathologically crazy that that's the case. And then J.D. Vance says But for the leadership of Trump, we would have had an energy crisis because the Iranians refused to stop acting like terrorists. Dude, you're the terrorist. You are the terrorists.

You are. It pains me to say this. You think I— you think I like being part of this regime of like, like being in this country where I'm led by a regime of terrorists? But that's just, that's just the reality. And, you know, again, I, I hear so many people talk about it this way, about, you know, okay, the political messaging, you know, what could they be messaging?

What do you mean messaging? What are you talking about? We're run by terrorists. We're run by people covering up a child sex trafficking ring right now, the Epstein Files, who are doubling down. Message that.

I don't— I don't message that. Don't message that. I really don't care. Um, but we all know that that's what's happening. Like, like, this is a crazy— this is crazy shit.

Listen to what JD Vance says over here. Let's play. Worldwide energy crisis. I can't repeat this enough, but for the leadership of President Trump and the hard work of our troops, we would have had an energy crisis because the Iranians refused to stop acting like terrorists in the Strait of Hormuz.

We have an energy crisis now, but for The actions of your regime. You caused the energy crisis. You caused it.

But for you, we would have been in one? No. Before the war, 20 million-plus barrels a day were getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. Before this, I didn't even know how to pronounce the Strait of Hormuz. I was calling it the Strait of Hormuz.

Because I never thought about it. Maybe that's because I'm ignorant. Maybe I should have thought about it more, because when I learned my history and I learned about what took place in the late '80s, I learned also that under the Reagan regime, under the Reagan administration, the U.S. shot a commercial plane filled with Iranian innocent people and then boasted about it and gave the commander an award when we put ships in there. Maybe I was, you know, we all can learn more. We all can learn more, is the truth.

But I was in my state of, you know what, I'm focused on this. This is my lane. Here's what I'm focused on. Like, I never focused that much on salt caverns, right? I wasn't Mr. Salt Cavern Guy or Cushing, Oklahoma Guy or light sweet versus very sweet crude guy or sulfur ratio guy of, of the crude.

You know, I, I didn't, I didn't do, I didn't do deep dives into Treasury yields and the 30, the 20, and the 10-year and the 2-year. That's not, you know, I was a litigator before all of this and did trials and deposit. I had to learn a lot of material quickly, and I would get thrown into depositions in different cases. And so I'd have to learn a lot of things, but It wasn't really a political thing. And then I think I took for granted a lot of these things, a lot of these geopolitical events in the world, like logistical hubs for our service members.

You know, I never specifically knew that we had the importance of the logistical hub in Bahrain and why not having logistical hubs in the area is a disaster for our troops and why having the only logistical hub in Diego Garcia is deeply problematic. I, I wasn't thinking, you know, I, I wasn't— I, I'm sure I knew a little bit about this stuff, but when the Trump regime— but, but, but there were experts, there were people, and it was, I think, a lot of the way I think I coped with or dealt with the ignorance is at least some general view that I could be an expert in this area, the law mostly, um, and an expert in adjacent areas, but that there would be experts in this area and that area and that area who I could trust to implement very basic and complex functions in governance and generally. But seeing the destruction of experts and seeing the destruction of facts and truth and all of these things, for me, knowledge isn't simply power. Knowledge is survival. And this YouTube channel and this network of knowledge and getting the knowledge out there, not in a gamified political way, but getting out the knowledge of how these things are connected, how these things are manipulated, how these things are executed.

Is truly critical and become matters of life or death. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. And so that's the moment that we're in right now, and that's what I think we're all duty-bound to be doing here. Anybody and everybody that's affiliated with the Midas Touch Network is, is that— that's our mission. That's our collective mission with you as well.

It's getting out good data, good information, truthful information, because these propaganda forces are deadly. And you got people like JD who go up there, psycho chameleon. He just— we said, whatever, there'd be an energy crisis if it wasn't for us. We saved you, we saved you, we're saving you. Truly crazy, crazy stuff.

So here we are, September 2026. We made it this far.

Seriously, we made it this far. They've thrown everything at you, literally everything.

This— remember when We would think about during the first Trump term. What if, what if that would have happened? Okay, we are at a point where all of those most dangerous and deranged things that would be floated in Trump 1 are thrown at us already, and we've had to fight it. We've had to maneuver. And there have been people who have stepped up— private life, public life, internationally.

There have been people who have folded. But here we are, and we look ahead to the midterms, to 2027, to 2028, and we think to ourselves, we gotta hold on. We gotta, we gotta lean on each other right now. Because we could get through this. I truly think we could get through this.

I think we will get through this. I'm confident we will. But I also know that it's going to be very, very difficult because these demonic forces— and I mean that, I, I, I'm not being hyperbolic— I believe demonic forces, the, the evil This evil that's on this earth. People like Trump and JD and Hegseth, they're not gonna give this up easily.

They have a design, they have a vision.

The way they view the Strait of Hormuz and Iran, the way they view Venezuela, they view Humans as things to be subjugated for their own domination and their own perverted gratification. They're sick.

They're sick.

It's, it's not about anything other than them.

And how sick they are and how they want to take and take.

And so they're gonna pull shit in the midterms, no doubt about it. They're gonna pull shit in 2028, no doubt about it. They are with the mail, the mail ballots.

We have made it this far. If you study authoritarianism, you know that almost all authoritarian regimes take over in the first 100 days and break the people's spirits. And Trump broke a lot of people in the first 100 days here. A lot of institutions fell.

But the people rebuilt, whether it's independent media, whether it's some of these incredible organizations that have brought these lawsuits, whether it's just the people who show up to No Kings, or the people who have spread the word of truth.

And that's the force that they didn't anticipate. But just as we see their fascism. They see the power of the people, so they're not done yet. They're going to keep on throwing wave and wave and wave of hate and venom our way. So we have to stand strong together, and we will, and we'll prevail.

And by the way, when we get through this all, It's gonna feel like we met the generational challenge, and it wasn't preordained that we would.

So thanks for watching. Please pre-order WTF America. It's the book I wrote with my brothers. Check it out now. I just did a video as well that just dropped on the YouTube channel.

Check out the video that just dropped.

After this ends, go check that and check out the video. I— check out the show I'm gonna do with my brothers later, please. Um, uh, 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific. But make sure you get your pre-order WTF America now. Thanks everybody, appreciate you.

We're grateful for you. We'll see you next time on Ben on Breaking News. Have a good one everybody. Pre-order it now and check out the video. Um, that we just dropped on the YouTube feed.

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