Transcript of MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 9/1/26 New

We've got a lot to cover on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. More US military strikes against Iran. This time, the US hitting purported rocket launchers on Larak Island in Iran. Iran responded by striking US military bases in Jordan, in the United Arab Emirates, and in Qatar, apparently striking and damaging targets in those military bases, which the Trump regime denies. We'll cover the latest developments there. More US attacks against Canada in the form of a catastrophic trade war launched by Donald Trump against a country that had always been our greatest ally here in the United States. Weak, pathetic individuals in the Trump regime attacking Canada and saying Canada treats us more unfairly than any country in the world. We saw whiny, whiny Trump regime officials this weekend and throughout the day. The US continues to attack basically the rest of the world other than Putin and Xi and Kim Jong-un, who Donald Trump continues to lick their boots while they mock Donald Trump at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kyrgyzstan. And then in a week or so, there will be another meeting in New Delhi, India, as part of the BRICS meeting. Donald Trump weakening our alliances while other alliances forming and strengthening abroad.

Then you had Donald Trump's announcement of that dirty, fraudulent, fake Venezuela deal. And I say dirty for a lot of reasons as well. The actual deal itself, one of these phony, corrupt Trump-purported deals, although we haven't actually seen it in writing, surprise, surprise, but also the Venezuelan oil, the kind of tarry, sour, viscous, dense oil is not something that can easily be refined anytime soon. So when Donald Trump says we're gonna use this to fill up these strategic petroleum reserves— False. That oil can't even be used in the salt caverns in the United States strategic petroleum reserves in Texas and Louisiana. It just doesn't work here. And so we will expose that. Because I think we need to pay a lot of attention that that's just another market manipulation scheme. You had the MAGA Republican Congress returning for, what, 5 hours today? And then they're like, yeah, could we leave? And so MAGA Mike Johnson's like, yeah, we're going to just probably just recess again and just go home. We don't want to actually do any work here. So we'll cover that. But I'll tell you what, when you saw some of these MAGA Republican fascist clowns today on the various networks and trying to defend what Donald Trump's been doing to destroy our country.

They looked— I don't know if you caught this— visibly shaken. We'll cover that. I mean, it just looked almost like a parody, like an SNL skit. It was so freaking embarrassing what they were doing. On a serious note, though, you have the Supreme Court showing you once again how supremely corrupt and illegitimate they are with these right-wing fascists that dominate the Supreme Court. They basically said Donald Trump's Golden Ballroom, probably not legal. But there's just no standing for anybody to block it. So the historic preservation group that filed the lawsuit, we just don't think that they have standing. Most likely what Trump is doing, very illegal, but, you know, wrong plaintiff. Well, who would be the right plaintiff? The Supreme Court. Maybe the fact that our Constitution requires that the president take care that laws be faithfully executed. So under your paradigm, there's literally nobody in the world that could ever block a rogue president who you give absolute immunity to because no one will have standing other than the executive branch, which is not using the good faith to take care that our laws are faithfully executed. We'll talk about that. And then there's other things.

I mean, the Defense Department continues to unravel. We learned that they have a network of MAGA influencers who are all over X who are actually feds. They're actually the deep state, right? Isn't it just so fascinating that the people who warned about the Epstein cabal, right, they were the Epstein cabal. The people who warned about the deep state and the feds are actually the deep state feds. Hmm, I wonder how they did that. And so there's this network of special government employees who just spew the Defense Department propaganda and they pretend that they're like these big influencers. They have big accounts, and they're actually getting paid by the taxpayers, and they work for the Defense Department, and they don't disclose it. We'll talk about that. And then there was a massive leak, the Secretary of Defense Order Book, the SDOB, a highly classified document that actually showed that all other than the CENTCOM Brad Cooper guy, who's an absolute clown— this guy has like just destroyed his credibility. I mean, the way CENTCOM's behaving. But all of our other top generals and admirals All gave a non-concurrence regarding the Defense Department's war plans generally, meaning that they don't support the current strategy or future strategy.

All of them have a non-concurrence. And while maybe non-concurrences here or there have occurred, when they all say we don't concur with your war plan, that's a big, big deal. We'll talk about that and more. Brett and Jordy, how are you doing? Great to see you.

Great to see you too, Ben. Great to see you, Jordy. Great to see you, Midas Mighty. Wow, that reporting about the Pentagon paying these MAGA influencers was such a snap into focus moment for me because it's something that we've speculated on for a long time. We knew there was something behind this. I, I always assumed it was more of like a dark money operation, you know, kind of hiding payments and, and things like that. And by the way, I'm still sure that a lot of that is still going on as well. But the fact that they're literally bringing these people into the federal government, hiring people who have followings on X in order to spread government propaganda while they act like they are the people against the establishment and against the man when they are quite literally feds, not much could be more on brand for the Trump regime. And this is the people who called, remember, the people who they were like January 6th, it was all feds who did it, right? These are the people who were the QAnon people who would say that, uh, they were going to, uh, uh, blow the lid off this entire sex trafficking ring.

They ended up being the ones who ended up defending the Epstein files and, and, and fighting hard in order to protect Donald Trump and get Donald Trump elected. So I think I'm seeing a little bit of a theme here develop. I'm excited to get into all of it. We've got a lot of news today. Jordy, what's the latest on your end?

Brothers, I am so excited to get into today's show. Uh, personal note, Benji, and I'll toss it to you. Uh, the answer is no. Uh, baby is arrived just yet. And I'm actually under strict orders where I can't say— I might even get a text during the show that it might have. Some people in my universe are saying that I'm jinxing it by saying it and actually delaying it further by hinting that it could happen. So it's definitely not going to happen during the recording of this show. So I just want to say that. Benji, pumped to get into today's show. I mean, what a laundry list that you rattled off there to begin with. Where are we starting off today, big bro?

We'll take you to Tel Aviv where one of Donald Trump's chief propagandists now, one of his newer chief propagandists who's been reporting from Tel Aviv for quite some time, not sure why he needs to actually be there, but his name is Trey Yingst over at state regime media Fox. This morning, Donald Trump told Mr. Yingst that the US is going to start ramping up some attacks on Iran. We're going to start it back up again, he said. And that was after The US struck rocket launchers apparently in Larak Island in Iran last night. Iran responded by striking US air bases in the region. In Jordan, there was 2 bases there. One that we know has been hit over and over again, Mufawwak al-Salti Air Base over there in Jordan. Another, the Hussein Air Base over there in Jordan. Al Udeid over in Qatar, an air base in the UAE. Of course, all these countries said we intercepted everything, but the The heat images that come from some of these surveillance footage and companies and some of the satellite footage actually show that there were indeed lots of successful strikes from Iran. In addition, it seems that there were dozens and dozens, perhaps even 100 of those PAC-3 interceptors that were used, $4 million each.

So you could do the math of how much money was spent by the Trump regime further depleting our interceptor stockpile in the past 24 hours. But Donald Trump rushes, calls up state regime media, and here's what Trey Yingst has to say. Play this clip. Yeah, Lawrence, good morning. I just spoke with President Trump, who told Fox News the United States will respond to the Iranian attack on US forces overnight in Jordan. The president said, we're going to hit them hard. There will be a response. It's not Groundhog's Day, although it feels like it for for sure. That's actually new footage. But you could probably say, didn't he just say that like 4 weeks ago and 6 weeks ago? And yeah, that's what's going on. So then after calling Trey Inks, Donald Trump and other Trump officials then reach out to Barak Ravid. These are the 2 top propagandists who spread this news usually at the same time. So you've got Trey Inks, state regime media fox out of Tel Aviv, and then you have Barak Ravid also reporting from Israel as well. He's with Axios. He's one of Donald Trump's chief kind of stenographers as well.

And this is what Ravid posted. Trump has been considering a CENTCOM plan for waging limited strikes in the Strait of Hormuz to prevent Iran from reconstituting its radar and missile capabilities to attack ships, according to 3 U.S. officials. It's always that according to 3 U.S. officials. I wonder who the 3 real officials are.

It's always 3 same U.S. officials.

It's always the same people. It's probably Trump, Kushner, and Whitkopf or some variation of that as well.

Yeah, it's like source search. telling me that the most good-looking brothers on the planet are Ben, Brett, and Jordy.

According to high-level sources, 3 high-level sources that might as touch—

So this is how Barack Ravid says it was told to him, though. One U.S. official said the idea behind the plan is to reduce the risk of Iranian attacks on oil tankers, U.S. Navy ships, and Air Force aircraft to Mow the lawn, as this person put it. First off, mow the lawn is a genocidal term. It's a war criminal term. I just want you to think about what that means. Mow the lawn literally means just demolish areas. Mow the lawn. It's also an idiotic term in addition to being genocidal, because perhaps not the Mar-a-Lago lawn or other lawns that Donald Trump doesn't upkeep, but Kind of like the reflecting pool. If you paint it blue, the algae always comes back. The thing about mowing the lawn every 2 weeks, you got to do it again. Okay. So even saying that that's what you're going to do, probably something that you may want to reflect on. It's an admission of a— we're going to mow the lawn. The lawn grows back. You mow the lawn. And what they're talking about, though, also is war crimes and genocide is what they're actually saying. So then Donald Trump holds an Oval Office presser and Donald Trump says that he's going to smack them.

Smack them.

Iran.

I'm gonna smack him, he says. And look, this guy, you have to understand, he's a predator, right? If you think about Venezuela, when we'll talk about in a bit how it's a fraudulent fake deal, but what's it actually about? It's about dominance. It's about submission. It's about humiliation rituals. That's what it's really about. Fundamentally, the deal's total bullshit. It's made up, but it's about humiliating yourself to Donald Trump. He's a predator. What is his intention with Canada at 51st State? It is predatorial. It is about submission. It is about dominance. And the fact that you have northern border country that's happy and diverse and has healthcare— Trump sees that, and the sickos around him, and they're predators. That gets them angry. They hate that. That's why they say Canada is the worst country to them, because they see happiness, and these predators hate this happiness. And their mindset is always, if we just hit them harder, if we just make them suffer even more, then they will stop saying no and they'll finally say yes, because They're predators, the Trump regime. They're criminals and they're predators. And you have to view everything through that perspective.

So here he is saying he's going to smack them. He's going to smack them hard. Here, play this clip. Air Force is gone. Their surveillance equipment is almost entirely gone. That doesn't mean we won't smack them. We'll see what happens.

But We have the Strait of Hormuz in extremely good shape.

You know, we're taking over. Many, many ships got through last night, as you know. But then what's actually happening? Let's be clear. Okay, we obviously, you know, I don't— do I need to fact-check that? I just will for the sake of diligence. We don't control the Strait of Hormuz. Another supertanker was hit, uh, by a mine last night. There have been multiple tankers hit in the past few days by Iran. The actual amount of oil coming out according to tank trackers. It's probably closer to 4 million barrels a day. Before the war, we were talking about 20 million barrels a day. I don't want to act like nothing's coming out, but we're talking about fractions of what was coming out before. And obviously, if you look at these strategic petroleum reserves and these salt caverns that we have here, where the strategic petroleum reserves are kept. They're like these— there are these salt caverns that are used with this mixture of crude that's been developing with water, and then you kind of extract it. And I go into detail in a lot of videos. I won't bore you with all those details now, but there's a reason why those petroleum reserves here in the United States are going lower and lower.

Okay. If you look at what's happening in one of the main hubs where lots of the pipelines connect here in the United States, in Cushing, Oklahoma, you're also seeing all of the evidence that the supply of oil has been depleted. And also, you can obviously evaluate the gas prices, supply and demand. If there was this huge amount of supply, as the Trump regime claims, then what we could expect is the prices of oil, the gas you use, and the diesel to start going down. But they keep on going up because the supply shock is real. And when we talk about in the next segment, the whole Venezuela fraudulent deal, it's to have Donald Trump say this is going to be used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserves when people who understand the most basic aspects of oil know that that tarry oil doesn't go in the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. It's like the most basic thing. It's basically Trump saying inject yourself with bleach and you'll get rid of COVID It's like a variation of, of that. But what Trump has been doing is posting deranged AI videos striking Karg Island, which hasn't been hit via AI videos.

Karg Island being blown to smithereens. DJT. And it's this AI video of war crimes being committed, mowing the lawn, if you will, to use their genocidal war criminal term in Karg Island.

So I—

Trump needs his data centers. He's got a— he's got a crank out the AI slop. He's not winning the war in real life, so he needs to win the war in the fictional world of AI. It's a really pathetic strategy. And part of it, I wonder if he's trying to kind of pull one over his own supporters who maybe don't know the difference between real life and AI. Like, he posted that, he didn't say this is AI. He didn't, you know, there was no disclaimer on it. And if you're scrolling past and you're, I, you know, I assume if you're an older person who's not used to seeing AI videos every day, And why would you think what the President of the United States, someone who you trust— and this guy, I don't know why you trust the guy who lies to you about everything, but this is the person you decided to put your trust into. Once again, don't understand how that works. And he's posting videos like this during an actual war. I think he almost wants his people to believe it. Like, oh, look, see, he is actually doing damage. Look, he did strike Karg Island when he obviously didn't.

This didn't happen. It's just an AI video. Just so much AI slop coming from him every single day. And And it's just become a bizarre kind of aspect of the kind of proliferation of AI and his insistence on doubling down on just unfettered data centers in your backyard everywhere. Like, the way this is being used for warfare and the way this is being used for messaging, and in particular kind of messaging for an authoritarian regime, the way all the White House accounts are using it, it's all just a very disturbing kind of development. And use case of it to me.

Absolutely. And look, I'll even go a step further, Brett, you know, posting this to confuse his followers whether or not this happened. I'm like convinced, and this is my own personal belief here, that Donald Trump thinks this hat— like, I don't think he realizes it's AI. I think when he gets a lot of this stuff, the AI slop from his people, it's to appease him, right? Maybe he's getting antsy about how are we doing in the war, how are we doing? And so they send him these like videos to just kind of like, you know, make him like calm down or whatnot. I'm not convinced. He has not shown me any of the mental fitness for me to be like, okay, he's posting this to, you know, put one over on his followers too. I think he thinks it's real.

I, I—

that, that's, that's where I'm planting my flag here.

Okay, by the way, it's— look, the theory is not outrageous. I mean, he's the same person claiming that our strategic petroleum reserves are about to be filled up with tarry Venezuelan oil and that that's going to save the day when it's absolutely absolutely the— what's not going to happen. And then, I mean, if you go deeper into what went down in that Venezuela thing, no private companies really came into this investment group. So the Trump regime created through the Pentagon a Trump oil company basically to do business with a very corrupt person in Venezuela who comes from— they call him like a bully chico these rich young Chavistas who are very much aligned with Hugo Chavez. His name is Bentancourt, aligned with Hugo Chavez and the regime in Venezuela right now, where the US is basically pretending through its own state-owned oil company that I guess we're creating that Congress didn't approve, which is patently unlawful. But perhaps our United States Supreme Court's going to say, but no one has standing to sue to block it. You can't Who's going to be able to sue? I mean, we'll talk about the standing issue, but that may be an issue where the Supreme Court goes, but there's no standing, nobody can stop it.

And it's like, okay, well, it's clearly patently unlawful and against everything about our separation of powers. You're not— Supreme Court putting anything.

He's also the same guy who was convinced that Kilmaro Abrego-Garcia actually had MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles when it was literally put there by his government and not even AI, by like probably MS Paint or something. Just literally writing the letters on the knuckles. And he kept— remember when he held it at, uh, who's the, the ABC reporter who's no longer there, and was like yelling at him? Like, that was, that was bonkers.

And then an Iranian general, Mohammadreza Noqdi, today said this. He goes, so we expected victory because we were certain and confident in God's promise and his support that Iran would ultimately prevail, uh, but we didn't expect victory to come this easily. He's mocking us. I mean, they're just saying we didn't really expect it to become like this easy. He gave another quote during this interview, which was actually an example that I gave, which is, you know, you could have some of the best players on your team, like if this is a World Cup team, but ultimately, like, if your captain is giving you like incorrect instructions or telling you to play a different game, like You can have the best team, but you're going to lose. Like, you can still put out— and they're like, look, the US clearly has a bigger military. They're far more powerful and strong, but they don't know what the hell they're doing. Then we have a strategy, and that's why we've been able to, you know, take the strategic initiative, whether it's controlling the Strait of Hormuz or developing a level of strategic deterrence as the US depletes its missiles and its interceptors and we run out of weapons.

So J.D. Vance was asked about it on his way to Michigan, where he just gave one of the weirdest speeches ever today. But Vance was asked, so on Iran, Donald Trump tweeted this AI slop. Like, what's your view about Donald Trump tweeting fake war videos of Kharg Island being blown up that didn't happen? Like, you're, you're cool with that, J.D.? Here, play this clip.

On Iran, the president tweeted some AI-generated videos of bombing of Kharg Island.

Was that meant to be a warning, or what was the messaging there? Why did the president tweet that? Well, you know, like the president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit. He would be the first to say he doesn't make announcements about military actions on social media, but I think that he's sending a message to the Iranians. Look, we know that they continue to shoot at commercial shipping. We continue to have a lot of tools at our disposal to prevent them from doing so. Or at least cut down on them from doing so. And that's what the president is saying is, look, you guys are shooting at commercial shipping. You guys are behaving like a terrorist country.

You've got to stop or there are going to be some consequences.

Oh, that's what he was doing with the AI slop video of cargo.

I like the interpretation.

By the way, he does announce military action on his social media account all the time. He goes, at my direction, like all the time, all the bombings. He does this all the time.

JD's excuse was Oh, Trump, that rascal. I mean, that's, that's what that just summed up. It is unbelievable that we have a commander in chief right now who is so clearly cognitively addled like Donald Trump is that we can't even really come to a strong conclusion whether or not he knows what he's posted is AI and mean it. Like, that's the scary landscape there. And then you have JD trying to run cover for him and he goes, rascal, you know, he wouldn't, you know, you know how Trump is. Trump being Trump.

But that's to me why the Natalie Harp story is such an important story, you know, beyond the kind of palace intrigue kind of, you know, is it an affair? Does she do his diapers? You know, you see all the, all the various things.

Yeah.

But the fact that this unelected individual is controlling what goes on the most powerful person in the world's social media account that could move markets, uh, that could lead to insider trading, uh, that could could start wars, that could announce wars, that could cause, you know, a whole number of issues. This person has so much power over Donald Trump, and she's just putting these things in front of him, whether it's, you know, this AI video or, you know, a tweet of him on Mount Rushmore or whatever stupid thing it is, and then they're posting it out. And so this person, this unelected individual, actually has an outsized amount of power in this country. And I think it's important the same way that we're now just kind of finding out the very tip of the iceberg about who the Trump regime is paying as these MAGA influencers that you see on Twitter and other social media. I think it's important that we have a greater understanding of what is this person putting out? What are the approval protocols? Well, how is this entire thing working? Because contrary to what J.D. Vance is saying, Trump does announce a lot of stuff from his social media accounts.

And he has made that a means of communication with world leaders, threatening Iran with total obliteration. And so when those are the kinds of messages we're seeing, I think it's actually extremely important we know, you know, who's, who's behind them.

Of course. But 2 points. One, obviously, the buck stops at the top. I mean, Donald Trump surrounds himself with these people. He's unfit. Yes, Jordy, he is cognitively and physically addled and deteriorating rapidly each and every day. But look, this guy's been a loser his whole life. He's been a bankrupt businessman. encryptor. He's never been a builder. If you just go through his life, he's scared, he's weak, he's pathetic. He hides, he runs. He never had the fitness to be in positions of leadership. He's always been a fraud and a phony. And these qualities are now pronounced even more, and they're really destroying this country. They have destroyed, uh, this country. But this guy's always been a loser, and it's now at geopolitical level where, you know, he's, he's a weapon of mass distraction, but a weapon of mass destruction also against the United States. I mean, the damage he's causing is irreparable. And frankly, it's just embarrassing. Like, I don't know how any self-respecting American, any person who wants to call themselves patriotic or who loves this country can look at this and on matters of war and peace, see someone in the Oval Office behave like such an utter buffoon, like, like such an utter clown, you know, really sick stuff.

All right. Let's take a break right now. We come back, we've got a lot more to discuss. A reminder, our book's called WTF America. It comes out October 20th, but preorder it right now. The preorder momentum is great, but we got to keep up that preorder. If you intend to buy it in October anyway and you're able to buy it now, it really helps if you buy it now versus waiting until October. So just wanted to highlight that. All right. Let's take a quick break.

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Yeah, so I woke up, Donald Trump ranting and raving like a lunatic. He posted this about Iran. Iran first. He says Iran is officially a failed nation.

It is dead.

Interesting, because the Iranian president, Puzharsky, is currently in Kyrgyzstan, which Trump probably doesn't even know where that is on a map. But he's been meeting with everybody from, uh, Xi to Putin to Modi. You know, he's like, you know, like Iran is getting a hero's welcome at this Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, and they're going to have a prominent role also during BRICS meetings that are going to be taking place.

I'm not being facetious, but Ben, objectively, I do not understand what Donald Trump's strategy right now in this war is other than tweeting that Iran has lost the war or posting AI slop of himself bombing Iran. Like, I don't even get the strategy at this point. It's just— he just wants to pretend. Like, it's just so pathetic.

It is a market manipulation play. What you have to recognize is he doesn't care about national interest, right? He doesn't understand it. That's why he can't fathom why sovereign nations will stand up to him, right? He can't fathom why Canada's not submitting. It's sovereign, it's proud, it's independent. Prime Minister Carney's not working for Prime Minister Carney. He's working as a public servant for Canada pursuing national interests over there. You know, similarly, you know, when it comes to a country like Iran, they have their own national interests. If you attack and go after them, they're not going to be like, oh, that actually makes us want to now work with you. It's like it makes any ability of ever wanting to do with you or deal with you not going to happen. And Trump is not trying to make America great again. you have to recognize that everything the guy says is always the opposite, right? I've rebuilt the military. What does that mean? He destroyed the military. Make America Great Again is make America as weak as can be. His interests are purely himself. So he's just trying to find the arbitrage, the deltas between the dips that he creates in the markets and when it goes back up with his other market manipulations so he can grab for himself.

So, Brett, 2 points.

Jordy, you're right. The guy's cognitively deteriorating. Both can be true at the same time, right? So there is that aspect of it. But Brett, to answer your question, it isn't about the United States because this— everything that he's doing couldn't be more damaging, right, for the United States. But it's not— it's not supposed to be, you know, you know, in our interest. It's whatever he's doing to steal from us, to take from us, to pillage the United States. That's what this is all about. So then he goes on to say Iran is a failed nation. It's dead. It isn't. They have no military. He goes on and says that. Then he goes and says the only thing they have is fake news from USA, a willingness to kill their protesters. Now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity and a good line of bullshit. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump. A good line of bullshit. I mean, what are you even talking about? But then this exaggerated death count number. First, they said it was 30,000 in the protests in January when Donald Trump says, we're going to help you, we're going to send our troops to save you.

And then Trump didn't do anything when there were these protests. And by the way, what Iran had said is that these protests were actually done by the United States and Netanyahu. And there were a lot of people who were like, come on, that's getting into conspiratorial territory. Don't go there. You know, and then the Trump regime put out the number, and they said 30,000 people got killed. And that was a number that was kind of accepted. Okay, there's 30,000. You know, that's what everybody was saying. There's 30,000 people that the Iran regime killed. 30,000. And then Donald Trump said it was 42,000. Then he said it was 50,000. Then he says it's 100,000. And then you have to go and ask yourself these very serious questions. You know, no doubt there were protests. We saw the protests. We're aware. And they appeared to be protests leaning towards democracy. It's also— I've spoken with people who are professors in Iran. You've seen my interviews. There's no doubt that there had been a movement in Iran towards younger leadership, a more openness to the West, to the United States before Trump and Netanyahu launched their second invasion in late February.

So there's no doubt there was a sentiment The Ayatollah Khomeini, who the Trump regime killed along with his daughter, his granddaughter, his son-in-law, his whole family while they were eating dinner at their house on the first night of the war. And then the Trump regime proceeded to engage in war crimes and slaughter little girls in Manab and little girls playing volleyball. That's kind of the MO of Donald Trump, little girls killing, killing little girls and the cover-up. as it relates to the Epstein files. What's the cover-up about? The cover-up involves what Epstein was doing with little girls. I mean, that's part of that. So is it shocking that when you say, oh, that's what you're covering up and this is who you're going after over there? But in any event, you make up a number, 100,000. It's like, oh, got it. This is— you're a liar. And then it calls into question the whole thing. It called, right? And it's like, actually, yeah.

How am I supposed to believe any of the numbers if you're just making up the numbers? And unfortunately, I guess you You've got to look through independent sources. And when you look at independent sources, and it's not that it's a competition, and of course I'm not defending this in any way, but the numbers are far lower than anything Donald Trump has ever said. They're far lower than what Trump said months ago, and they're far lower than this 100,000 number. So then you realize, okay, so this guy is shoveling propaganda down our throats as well while he accuses the other side of spreading fake news and bullshit. And he's doing so in order to accept the fact that we're in this prolonged war where American are dying, where we're bombing innocent people, and all the other disasters that are happening right now. And I think it's just really, really foul. Not to mention that I think it's a betrayal to those people, uh, to the protesters, that Donald Trump, uh, you know, has completely abandoned them after, uh, telling them to take to the streets and everything that they did. And we'll get into this when we speak about, uh, you know, Venezuela.

But you see, that's the theme of Donald Trump. The theme of Donald Trump is use these innocent people, uh, who may be fighting for their freedom or for their country Use their stories and use that narrative in order to justify US intervention, in order to justify Donald Trump coming in there and bombing a country, killing innocents. And then what happens? Does Donald Trump end up helping those people? No. Donald Trump then tries to take as much as he can for himself. And that's what we're seeing in Iran. That's what we're seeing in Venezuela. That's why Donald Trump is comfortable with the Maduro regime remaining in power in Venezuela. That's why Donald Trump is seemingly okay with the Iranian regime remaining in power so long as they basically relinquish control to him and try to cut deals with him. Remember a few months ago, Donald Trump was like, oh yeah, we're doing a JV, we're going to do a joint venture, me and the Ayatollah, we're going to work something out together, we're going to have a business together. That's all he cares about. It's not about these other people, it's about himself, it's about enriching himself, it's about lining his own pockets, it's about enriching his family.

That's what it's That's what it is now. That's what it's always been.

And there it is right there, Brett. Exactly. Once you start to view things through the lens of why Donald Trump— this isn't going to help America, obviously, right? Donald Trump is doing things to help him, the top 0.00% that hang out with him at Mar-a-Lago and his children or his adult children, I should say. And that, that, that's how he leads. How can this, in my best interest, benefit me, Donald Trump? That's what he's thinking. You know, I want to take a quick step back looking at this political landscape at large, right? So you have Donald Trump just lying, throwing random numbers out there, right? Hyperinflating things, making things very confusing where, you know, you look, you're like, well, he said 100,000, so the truth has to be somewhere, you know, in the middle, right? So it's got to be a lot like— like he wouldn't lie about 100,000. That's an egregious number. Well, he is. He's lying. Then you have Fox News who carries his water also and starts to report on their end. Then you have other Murdoch properties like the New York Post who do stuff over there. Then you have Barack Raveed be his stenographer.

And then you have literal feds on Twitter who are tweeting and amplifying Donald Trump's messaging as if they're, I don't know, independent journalists or independent voices who are literal feds, again, carrying the water for Donald Trump. I can understand why people are so damn confused and so vulnerable and susceptible to the misinformation and the propaganda at a certain point. point, people have to take their own damn accountability though and look into things just a little bit further. But like, for example, in the case of literal feds operating on— like, that's, that's evil, man. And not disclosed. Like, all of this stuff right now.

And again, why is Twitter the preferred platform? Because Elon Musk bought it and he's able to control the algorithms. He's able to boost people. I've been around people, friends, family members, um, and you could do this test for yourself if you'd like. I don't recommend it, but you could do this test to show that I'm telling the truth here. If you make a Twitter account and like don't use it but keep your notifications on, you know what notifications they send you? They send you the notifications of the, of the feds. They send you the notifications of these MAGA influencers as if they are legitimate breaking news because they see, oh, this is an apolitical person. This is somebody who, you know, maybe they're looking at reality TV stuff, maybe they're talking about music, maybe they're not talking about anything at all. They're just lurking, or they just have the app. And they are beaming these messages at them so that when they read the headlines, they see the headlines that are now ironically, we're finding out, are crafted by the Trump regime, not independent news or influencers or anybody. And they're being beamed into people's phones.

It's just really effed up.

I want you to think about this, though, to the number 100,000 as it keeps creeping up. What is that number right around? around the amount of people who were killed in Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza, right? Where that's actually a real number, right? And so when you have the real number, right, which may be even more than that, but when you have the real number, and then you have this other 100,000 number, which they're saying, well, Donald Trump, there's 100,000 here. When numbers don't mean things in in war and peace, in major issues regarding the economy, right? Um, what happens? Everybody is lost. And that is the vacuum that the strongman wants to fill. You're just making up numbers about 100,000 people who were killed. And when there actually is 100,000 people who are slaughtered as part of a systematic genocide taking place, it's like, that didn't No, that's not, that's not the right number. And then you find out it is the right number. Well, we knew it's the right number, but then it's like, nah, nah, it's just a number. It's just a number. And when Trump announces the Venezuela situation, it's not even, it's not even a real deal.

For me to see a deal, I need to read it. I need to see it on paper. I need to know what the players, I need to know the terms. Then there's a deal. Whatever this fake fraud framework is, what do they do right away? Boom. Shock and awe you with big numbers. 65 million barrels of provable potential reserves. Provable potential reserves right there. Red flag. Okay, what does that really mean? Provable— can you extract it? Can you refine it? What, what does that look like? Then you learn the history and you go, got it, it's tarry, it's bad. Donald Trump once said that it's really bad oil that nobody can actually do anything about. It's why nobody— he once made that comment, um, when he was saying that they're narco-traffickers and they're a terrible country. And now he's like, today it's great. This is the best oil. You know what you can do with it? You can make asphalt with it. You can, you could replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserves with it.

No, you can't.

No, you can't. He's like, 65 billion barrels, $100 billion in investments. He said in Venezuela, they said it will bring $220 billion of economic recovery to Venezuela. Okay, let me ask everybody this. What the hell has happened since the Trump regime has taken over Venezuela? Where has the money gone to already? It's gone to a Qatari bank account with no oversight. No one knows what, what's actually going— is that Donald Trump's bank account in Qatar right now? That's where $8 billion has gone in terms of the actual production of oil. oil since the Trump regime has taken over Venezuela, it's either at the same or it's less than it was the previous year. Okay. So there's not some massive oil gushing kind of taking place right now. And as you look deeper, what you find out, and I'll just address the Venezuela situation right here, is that this tarry, dense— it's called sour because of its sulfur level. It's interesting if you go back and look at the in the 1800s of oil. People would taste it and the sulfur content would tell you, is it sour or is it sweet? But this very high sour, dense, tarry stuff, it's almost unusable.

Okay.

And it certainly, certainly can't go into our strategic petroleum reserves, which are in salt caverns, which mix this kind of water with more of the light sour, to kind of medium sweet kind of oil that, that's brought in to replenish it. And so this stuff doesn't go there. Now, you can build potential refineries that deal with this issue, or you can deal with technology that could make it capable of going into this, the salt caverns, or to be refined for other uses. But that would cost billions and billions and billions of dollars. And it's violative of the US Constitution.

Okay.

And when there's a new administration, this is not going to be a deal that people are going to abide by. Corporations know that right now, that once Trump's— this deal's done. And then on the Venezuela side, it's against their constitution. You can't give access to a foreign country with this level of degree of control. So it's against their constitution. Also, what does this do for all of the people who pretended that there was going to be democratic elections, which we knew is not going to be the case? If there ever was an election and the opposition party takes over, this entire arrangement will be voided right away. So all this deal does, if you're Delcy, is it entrenches your power, because if you lose power— and this incentivizes Trump to keep her power— the deal would— the fake deal would obviously go away too because it's unworkable. It should also be noted that Venezuela owed billions of dollars to China and Russia when they went in there and tried to have somewhat heavy-handed arrangements with Venezuela. That did not work out because of some of the issues with the oil. And so they are fine to now deal with their spheres of influence.

Why haven't you heard a peep from China China or Russia about this? Because don't you think that the unwritten rule or the unwritten deal or, you know, or the framework in Trump's mind is China, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, United States, Venezuela? And Russia and China know that this is tarry oil that they can't even utilize anyway. So they're like, take it. I mean, that's what you want to do. And it undermines undermines US legitimacy and it strengthens their claims on Taiwan and on Ukraine. Because if it is now the world is— the jungle law prevails, then the United States can't step up with moral authority or moral clarity. And then you just take a quick look at like who we're even doing this purported deal with. And is this guy Benta Court part of the Bully Chicos, these people who got really rich under Hugo Chavez. He did this electricity deal is how he first kind of got rich. And what if you know some of the basic stuff about the electrical grid in Venezuela? It didn't work. They're rolling blackouts while this guy got rich and he was under investigation in Europe and elsewhere. And this is the kind of guy that Donald Trump wants to, you know, that is, he's doing business with.

So the Pentagon is entering into a The Pentagon is forming a Trump oil company to do a deal with this BentaCorp guy, you know, who's this shady, you know, not good guy in general. And they're going to extract hypothetical oil that, you know, is not the kind that can be refined. And what is Trump saying? This will replenish the strategic reserves. Gas prices are going to go down. Absolutely freaking not.

Even—

I'll leave you with this on this point without totally geeking you out further on oil and gas discussions. Even if everything Donald Trump said was true, and we had 65 barrels, and it was light sour, you know, kind of like the Middle East stuff, and it was stuff that we all could, you know, it could be utilized easier, it would take 5 to 10 years before we were able to really even utilize that. Even if it was true, And it's not true. So this is never going to happen. It's all bogus. It's all a fugazi. And it's about dominance. It's about market manipulation. It is about raw power. And it's about Trump and people like Bentancourt enriching themselves at the expense of Venezuela, at the expense of the US, at the expense of a more stable world order. All right. Let's take our last quick break of the show.

Right. While we're on this, let me say, Let me say— I want to say 2 things about it before we lose the plot here. One, I worry about something like this creating such instability in a country like Venezuela because I think nothing creates more instability, anger at leaders, and overall chaos and potential civil war than kind of a humiliation like this, basically saying that, no, you're not even like a sovereign state essentially, but you are a vessel. a vassal of the United States in our pocket. The fact that you have a leader in Delcy Rodriguez who is going along with all this, I kind of view there being— I kind of have a feeling that when these people who— you may have seen images of them dancing in the streets when Delcy took over. I don't think they're dancing anymore and I think they're going to be furious about all of this. Also, I think Donald Trump is setting himself up for just another failure and another thing for people to point back to as we head into the midterms by saying in his post and saying how quickly now gas prices are going to shoot down, oil prices are going to shoot down.

We've literally only seen them go up even since Donald Trump made this announcement. If anybody viewed that with any legitimacy, you would have seen a sharp decrease in the oil prices right away. And this is going to just be another thing that people campaigning for the midterms are going to be able to hang over Donald Trump's head. And it's another kind of, you know, phony promise, another lie heading into the midterms. Let's—

by the way, this is why when that thing was announced, right away we pounced on it. I mean, we did the story right away, dissected it, and I wanted to create a permission structure for other people to rapidly respond and say, you know what, we don't just regurgitate and we're not stenographers. When there's a deal like that, call it out. So within what, 30 minutes of the deal, we were out. Now we're seeing people who are far more knowledgeable than oil than me, and I study them. I want to know what they're saying. That's how I give you the analysis. But, um, I think it's been actually, to the extent there is a refreshing aspect, that right away this— normally you would just have the lies spread, and there was boom, like a barrage of truth calling this out right away for what it is. And it was a powerful tsunami of information also that was out there. All right, last break of the show. Make sure you, um, subscribe. Um, big subscriber boost recently on this channel. Um, and also get your copy of WTF America, pre-order it right now. Um, you can click the QR code, we'll put a link in the description below.

It's the book I wrote with my brothers.

Pre-order it. I got it. You can't click the QR code. It's— that's confusing. That's a confusing instruction. You could scan the QR QR code. It's even easier than clicking it, but don't tell people to click because we're gonna have people clicking. They're gonna be like, why doesn't it scan the QR code?

We'll take our last quick break of the show. Scan it.

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Let's talk about the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. Earlier today, before we went live, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation to the White House following months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Reuters reports, citing a source familiar with the matter. It's probably Driscoll who's the source familiar with the matter. He's been leaking, or people around him have been leaking, that he was going to leave sometime in the next few months. I just think the last straw was when, uh, it was exposed that Hegseth was running this influencer scheme where you had all these big Twitter right-wing influencer accounts were actually feds They were actually the deep state and they were on the payroll of the United States government at the Defense Department. So while Hegseth purged out all of the kind of top reporters from being near him in the Pentagon, and he declared the press room and the area surrounding him a perpetual SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility, to try to block reporters from being near him. And then he brought in those propagandists. They went a step further. Not only did they bring in right-wing propagandists to replace the actually really good defense reporters who have been doing a great job, even though they've been pushed out of the Pentagon separately, you had all of these MAGA influencers who were actually feds undercover, basically pretending to be influencers and writing stories like this From cynical Publius.

Publius, the war on Pete Hegseth. Hegseth is facing a calculated smear campaign because he threatens the entrenched establishment reshaping America's military into something weaker and more political. Fed, Fed, deep state. These people work— this guy works for the— he's a, he's a government employee. He's a special government employee. People like Kurt Schlichter, Rob Mannis, this, the Data Republican account.

We talked—

By the way, let me say, Ben, and these are a lot of the people who go after us online all the time.

All the time.

All the time. Like, these are the people who will quote tweet us, who will try to like slip into our DMs to try to quote unquote fact check us, to try to slam us, to try to whatever. And finding out that these people who are actually Trump regime cronies, Trump feds here who are attacking the Midas Touch Network, it really just really Just once again, it's a moment of clarity. And I'm telling you, and I am speculating here, however, I feel pretty sure, in my opinion, that this is just the tip of the iceberg here, and that the more you start peeling the layers of this thing, the more you're going to find that virtually all these people, virtually everybody pushing this stuff every single day, every single minute of every single day, are paid by, I either the government or paid by dark money forces. More is going to come out, just, just you wait.

I want everybody at the macro level though to understand what Musk did, right? His acquisition of Twitter was funded a lot with foreign money and foreign debt. He's able to take it over. It's losing money. It seems like it is failing. On the other hand, he's got SpaceX Right, which is getting a lot of money. He spends all of this money on the election, like the most ever, to help Trump get elected. There are all of these government contracts that work their way to SpaceX. Then Musk does this IPO where he basically merges— and I believe this was going to be the plan all along— SpaceX with X, right? And why, why Twitter rename X? Well, he had SpaceX. Think about what the plan was. And so he had SpaceX and X, he merges them together into one entity, and then they change the rules for NASDAQ so that immediately it gets put into the NASDAQ 100 so that mutual funds and ETFs are required to purchase it based on its pumped-up valuation on day one. So whether you like it or not, your fund may have had to purchase it to keep it elevated.

It then pays off all of the people who funded the acquisition in the first place when it took over Twitter, and then it's being used with a rigged algorithm to pump up all of these accounts to spread this disinformation. Folks, it's at a very sophisticated level. I don't want to I don't want us to lose track of that diagram, though, that I just built out, because on the day-to-day level, you have these people who are feds, right, who are pretending, though, that they are these influencers. Their accounts are getting supercharged. They're pushing out all this stuff that's going super mega viral about all these things. And these people are working for the regime. That's how it's being done. And so it was interesting because earlier in the day— and I give a hat tip to the Washington Post here because the defense reporters, that is, their editorial board, not great right now under Jeff Bezos, let's be very clear.

That's the guy's name, Dan, Dan Lamothe, I think. But there was, there was a bunch, you know, that whole, that whole team is—

that whole team, the editorial stuff is great. So they broke a story in in the morning about this highly classified report that Hegseth, you know, and all defense secretaries put out, the Secretary of Defense Orders Book, and how in it all of the top admirals and generals had a unified not concur, do not concur with the war plans currently and future in this catastrophic and unlawful war. Some people have said, well, do not concur has happened before. Yes, on minor things, you know, I don't think we've ever seen a unified do not concur on the actual war.

Okay.

Like Persian Gulf War or Operation Desert Storm. Do not concur. That's not what happens. It may be do not concur. Should we do this weapon over this weapon or not? The overall war strategy. So obviously do not concur. It's not like— and not unified in that way. So they reported on that. Then all of these MAGA influencers swarmed And then the Washington Post dropped their story and said, ah, you're all feds, and they were all caught. It was actually kind of a brilliant chess play, and they waited and then they dropped it. Turns out the Washington Post had gone out for comment though earlier in the week to these people, so it wasn't just like they dropped it because the attack so happened. But once that attack happened, I just think the Washington Post people—

By the way, Yeah. And look, by the way, can I just say this too? It's shocking but not shocking, right? Like, we've seen the Trump regime do this throughout the entire administration so far in the second Trump term here. Right. What was one of the first things they did? They brought in those right-wing grifters to the White House, gave them all the white binders with the Epstein files. Oh, look at us. We got the— well, that didn't work. That didn't work.

No.

Egg on all of those people's faces. Faces, what utter buffoons that White Binder crew ultimately is. We already knew they were, but oh my goodness, looking at it through it now too, like you absolute shill. And then the press briefings, right? What do they do? They get real media out of the press room. And what do they do? They bring in all these right-wing propaganda mouthpieces to there to get more favorable questions, to get more favorable, I don't know, whatever, out into the ecosystem. And I guess take some of the pressure off of having to answer real questions. And so it doesn't surprise me that there are feds on Twitter working with Donald Trump and the regime. I want to get on a mountain, on a roof, and just scream it so everyone could just understand, like, this is crazy, but it's actually happening. And it's all the other stuff is happening right in front of your face. And it wasn't until this report came out that everyone now gets to see it and read about it and fully understand the depths that it goes. And Brett, to your point, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

tip of the iceberg.

All of these people are astroturfed. I am telling you, it's all astroturfed. It's all BS. And I, I know there are some people with very close connections to Trump world, people who have worked in the White House, people who have worked in Trump kind of campaign space, who have these kind of dark money firms, and they act as intermediaries. And what happens is somebody wants to get a message out. Remember, people were caught doing this also. Remember those influencers, those other influencers were caught being paid, like, by a Russian company, uh, the Tim Pools and them in the world. They, they claim that they, you know, didn't know that's where the money was coming from, but they were getting an exorbitant amount of money, uh, literally from Russia, uh, to push certain messages. Benny Johnson was one of them. There was like a handful of them. Um, well, there's another operation that's going where there are these firms run by Trump World people, and they take big money from people who want to get a message across. And the message could be to influence Uh, a politician into voting a certain way. It could be to influence other officials in the White House.

It could be to spread propaganda online just for the masses. They get a lot of money. They pay this intermediary to post about this topic in a specific way. That influencer does it. They promise them X amount of impressions or whatever, and that kind of repeats and repeats and repeats. And you've also seen, you know, some of these figures online line, uh, because people have exposed them in this way, is where people, uh, reach out kind of pretending to be some of these special interest groups to the MAGA influencers and ask them, you know, how much is it if you want to— if I— if I— how much does a retweet go for these days? You know, how much to post about my whatever? And they will do these undisclosed posts. You know, they're— they'll post about things, not say it, and they'll say, you know, some people might charge $500 for a retweet or $5,000 for retreat or whatever it is. But this is a whole financial operation that's happening right now in MAGA world. And it's just coming at you in all these different ways, whether directly from the government, whether from dark— whether it's from dark money organizations, whether it's from foreign money like Russia, or just people, you know, doing this as their own kind of little side business or main business, if you look at how many— how much these people tweet on a daily basis.

Yeah.

But it's, it's, it's, it's something. And it's something really, like, I, I think this is actually a super important issue that if Democrats were to take control of the House, uh, in the fall, I think they need to subpoena all these people, quite frankly. I think we need investigations. I think we need to kind of blow up this entire operation and see who's really pulling the strings here, see what's really going on. But I think all these influencers need to be subpoenaed, brought into Congress, questioned about all these arrangements.

Dan Driscoll, interesting guy. veteran, he was friends with J.D. Vance and Usha from Yale, private equity guy, lived out in California, spoke out at first against Zelensky. And then when he got this position as Army Secretary, he became very impressed with the Ukrainian military and the drones and the anti-drone technology. So he went from being a critic of Zelensky to actually saying that the US needed to innovate the way they've innovated in Ukraine. And he was working very closely then with people like Randy George, the former Army Chief of Staff, uh, General Donahue, um, and, and others who were spearheading these types of modernization, uh, uh, things. And then Randy George was was pushed out. Beloved Randy George and his wife Patty were like the most beloved people in our military. 4-star general, like literally like the, the best, the best of the best our military had to offer. He was pushed out and basically fired by Hegseth. We learned one of the reasons for that is he wanted to keep the investigation ongoing into the Apache helicopters that flew by Kid Brock's home. And also Randy George was objecting to the fact that Hegseth was refusing to promote Black people and women to 1-star generals and then allow them to rise through the ranks based on merit simply because they were Black and women.

That's who Hegseth was targeting, and Randy George wasn't cool with that, and Driscoll wasn't cool with that. And so ultimately, Hegseth Hegseth wanted Driscoll gone and saw Driscoll as a rival. And ultimately, Hegseth won that battle and pushed out all of these top generals. You know, we only have at this point less than half of the 4-star generals that we've had right now. We had the best team. We had the all-star team of generals and military leaders, and the top people were pushed out. out in their place are Hegseth sycophants.

Um, I'm not—

not to say there are still some good admirals and generals out there. I don't want to— there's none. Um, but you know, you have some shady people like this Laverne guy who was working with Hegseth to fire Randy George because of the Kid Rock situation. And what's one of the first things that Laverne is pushing? Basically the equivalent of Japanese Bushido, which was one of the among many critiques of the actual fighting of Japanese, of the Japanese during World War II. It was so rooted in the samurai spirit and Bushido and the code and the warrior ethos versus modernizing. Lots of people said they lost an edge to some of the Western military that had focused on technology. And so what's fascinating is to see history repeat itself in the form of this imperialistic Trump regime who are like, we need to restore the warrior ethos in the United States, the World War II warrior ethos. And it's like, okay, I mean, we get that, but like, stop saying the word lethality over and over again and recognize that war has fundamentally changed. We are in a situation of drones, anti-drones, unmanned submersibles, robotics, and this is the future.

And there needs to be, you know, And investments on that versus Trump-class battleships, nuclear battleships, and things that are, are where hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted that could be going to things like healthcare, could be going to things like making things more affordable and programs that help people. But they're going to these horrible catastrophic wars and weapons systems that aren't relevant to today. And we're just flushing taxpayer money down the toilet as the debt increases to over $40 trillion. All of Bessent's market manipulation schemes have failed. You know, he failed to bail out the Japanese yen. His bond buyback scheme is a complete failure. He's been a— you know, lots of these people, most of these people around Trump have the loser MAGA arc, and they've all found each other because they're losers. When they went out on their own. Besant is one of these people who was a loser. He had, uh, like 90% redemptions or so from one of his funds. He had a $5 billion fund, very unsuccessful. He worked decently when he was with smart people who oversaw him, but when he was on his own, he flailed that he was a loser.

And you can see why— he's got loser qualities. And I'll just give you an example of Besant from today. Um, so Besant is at the G20 Finance Summit meeting. It's the G20 meeting but of the finance ministers and the Treasury Secretary. He's banned the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Wall Street Journal from being at a lot of the meetings. He was asked a question about Canada, and I want to show you how he answered this question about Canada. I could show you so many other Bessin clips, and they're all equally bad, but I'll just show you this one because I think it highlights What just an arrogant loser he is. Here, play this clip.

What was the setup for this one?

Oh, just while we do it, Brett, you can keep on talking, but I'll find it in a moment. It was the one on— it was Bessant on Canada. I'll go and find it though and give you the better setup. The question was— anyway, you go talk, Brett. I'll go and find it. I don't have it in front of me, but it was the one on Canada.

Yeah, I mean, but what you're seeing is over and over again, you're seeing people like Bessent and Trump trying to gain control over a situation that they don't have any control of. And the problem is they're just not being honest with the American people and they think that they could continue to trick the markets. The thing is there's really only so much that you could trick— only so much time that you could trick the markets for until things really start to unravel. And that's why we're seeing all of this volatility in the regular markets. despite the fact that they are at highs. But the oil markets are something to watch. The bond yields are something that you really have to watch. This is something that is a huge problem. And I think as you see people continuing to now deal with the affordability crisis and they're trying to figure out what am I going to pay for a mortgage rate? What am I going to pay when I take out a loan? What am I going to do when I go to a grocery store. Those problems continue to get worse and worse and worse for regular people.

But it seems like despite all of that, that you have Donald Trump and Scott Bessant and all of them still trying to pretend that everything's great, that the war is going great, that the economy is going great. And the problem is people just know that that's not true. And the more they lie about it, what worries me is that it's kind of building up almost like a pressure valve, right? Just building up lot of pressure in these pipes. And the pipes, yes, they keep expanding with it, but eventually what's going to happen? The thing's going to pop. The thing's going to implode.

It's going to explode.

Markets are wondering where Canada is, if that helps you all. Jordy, answer.

I was going to say, and those pipes are going to explode, Brad, and not with oil. And I just want to emphasize kind of what you're saying there too, is they can only run this scheme so many times. Trump and Bessin and the entire Trump regime here trying to run this Groundhog Day play on the economy, on the stock market, until, you know, sooner or later things are going to get really bad. And you know who's going to be left holding the bag? The American people. That's who's going to be left holding the bag. Sorry, what'd you say, Brett?

Here's the clip.

Market's wondering if we're now in a tit-for-tat trade war with Canada. Well, I don't think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who's 13 times larger than you are. They say they're doing okay.

What else are they going to say?

Look, I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match. I mean, we're not at war with Canada. How are we going to be at war with Canada? What are they going to take their 2 submarines from the Edmonton Mall and stick them on us? Okay. I just want you to see how— what a loser quality that is, right? You wonder how these people are such losers and you see that behavior right there. there. It's rude, it's abrasive, it's disrespectful, it's filled with lies. And by the way, Canada has seen increased employment. Canada has actually seen GDP growth. Canada has a leader in Prime Minister Carney, unlike Bessant, who has been a very successful central banker who's done major moves during very difficult circumstances. And Carney's a very accomplished person outside of being the Prime Minister. The guy ran Bank of Canada and Bank of England during 2 separate crises and got them out of it. And Bessant only found his way into crises. And just in general too, even if what I just told you wasn't the case, you know, you underestimate people and entities at your own peril.

It's this level of just unmitigated arrogance and what you saw right there which is setting— it's not like a political thing that I'm even saying. It's just, it's right out of like Aesop's Fables, right? It's like right out of, again, Oedipus, you know, Homer's Odyssey, like to, to see the Shakespearean, if you will, right? And you see the— it's such a parody of the human defect that's so obvious in him and Trump and all of these people. It almost feels So poetically tragic, and it would have this parody quality and almost this surreal, you know, aspect if the people weren't suffering. The pain that American people are feeling now is so damn real because you have these malignant, narcissistic, stupid humans who have hijacked the United States of America, dividing with these culture wars, and they're trying it again. I mean, I'll show you right here, like, what are they talking about at these rallies today in Michigan? Just so you can see it for yourself. I mean, you've got people like Mike Rogers out there saying, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get the trans flags out. That's what we're gonna do. We're coming from the— we're gonna get the trans flags out here.

Play this clip. So when you all help me get to the United States Senate, I'm gonna make sure that we bring costs down. We're going to pass the SAVE Act. We're going to get trans flags out of our classrooms and American flags back in. American flags are in classrooms. What are you talking about? Get the trans flags out. You see what they're doing and you had the opportunity to lower costs. You are the ones who raised the cost. Or what about, what about what's Lisa McClain saying? MAGA Republican congresswoman from Michigan. Michigan's particularly hit hard by Trump. Trump's dangerous trade war, an idiotic trade war against Canada. Checking in on the Republican midterm messaging right here.

Let's play. The Democrats who are running for, for Congress are flat-out communists.

And now contrast that to New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani. What was he doing today? Fixing broken swing sets and saying, here's our crew to do repairs for parks to make people's lives better. In New York. This is what he's focused on, and this is their big enemy right now in the MAGA bubble. This guy is who they want you to be scared of. Here, play this clip.

New York, are you tired of waiting for your neighborhood park to get fixed? How long does this typically take? To do one board would probably take an hour. Meet the Renew Crew, a squad of painters, plumbers, electricians, and pros who will bring fast fixes to wherever they're needed most. If it's faded, broken, cracked, or even just Missing.

The Renew crew has it covered. I'll leave you all with that.

Oh, the Parks and Rec music. I love it.

I'll, I'll leave everybody with that right there. Thanks everybody for watching. We appreciate— pre-order WTF America now. It's out October 20th, but if you can order it now, it goes a long way. Um, the pre-orders are so important, they say, and if they say it, I say it, and then they say it's very important. Um, we appreciate you. Let's keep on building. Let's keep growing this together. We're thinking about you always. Jordy, take it away.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty!

The Midas Mighty standing strong against the fascists. We sing our song.

We will get it right when Hey, before you go, our book WTF America is available for preorder now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To preorder, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this. Let's do this.