Transcript of MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 4/3/26

Bei Amazon werden jetzt mehr als 50% der Bestellungen mit weniger Verpackung geliefert, zum Beispiel in Papiertüten oder auch ganz ohne zusätzliche Verpackung. Wenn dein Nachbar also Gitarre spielt, liefern wir dir deinen neuen Kopfhörer mit Geräuschunterdrückung in der Verpackung des Herstellers, basierend auf Amazon-Verpackungsdaten aus dem Jahr 2025 in Großbritannien und der EU. A lot to discuss on this episode of the Midas Touch Podcast. We'll talk about Donald Trump's disastrous address to the nation on his catastrophic war in Iran that only continues. To escalate. I believe it was the worst presidential address in American history. Today, Donald Trump started blowing up bridges in Iran and bragging about it, bragging about war crimes, to which Iran responded right away. The fact that you're blowing up our bridges just reeks of desperation. In addition to blowing up bridges, Donald Trump and his regime continued to say, we're going to be bringing Iran back to the Stone Ages, or we'll blow them up to oblivion, or blow them up the Stone Ages, to which Iran responded with a map of the Iranian Empire during the Stone Ages. As you sure you want us to go back to the Stone Ages, uh, right there.

And so you have this kind of constant, uh, trolling operation that's taking place by Iran. Donald Trump also spent the day, uh, saying that he thinks that Bruce Springsteen, uh, concerts suck and that Davy Crockett is a high IQ Something about Jasmine Crockett. I really can't even follow what he's talking about, but just some weird posts by Donald Trump. Pam Bondi, Attorney General, was fired today. Lots of people believe Kash Patel is next. Also, the Army Chief of Staff was fired today or forced out into retirement. The price of oil, both Brent and WTI crude, surging. The national average over $4.08 a gallon right now. Donald Trump and his regime have also been targeting anyone who's potentially involved in future negotiations regarding peace talks in Iran. So Donald Trump has been soliciting Pakistan, please help Pakistan get Iran involved. So Pakistan reached out to a former foreign minister who's viewed as kind of a more moderate person, if you will, within the Islamic Republic. And then the Trump regime killed that former foreign minister's wife and caused severe injuries to that former foreign minister who the Trump regime asked to try to get involved. Uh, and so we'll talk about that.

His name is Kamal Karazi, and he gave an interview with CNN actually back in mid to early March, um, where, you know, he was talking about exact— he's kind of predicting exactly what was going to, uh, happen You also have Donald Trump attending a Supreme Court oral argument where Trump's tried to basically overturn the 14th Amendment birthright citizenship. After the Supreme Court justices who Donald Trump appointed started asking questions to the Solicitor General, basically the main attorney who does the oral arguments for the Justice Department, Donald Trump got angry and then stormed out of the courtroom. Very odd our odd and petulant behavior. And then he started talking about, these judges are stupid. These are all the right-wing judges are stupid. They don't do, they don't do what I want. And if I was a king also, why are other judges, by the way, Republican judge in Washington, D.C., Judge Leon, blocking my ballroom? By the way, that's probably what's making Donald Trump most upset right now is that his ballroom has been permanently blocked pending congressional authorization, which I don't think Congress is going to authorize right now. So we got all of that and much more to talk about.

You know, it's a normal episode of the Midas Touch podcast. In other words, you know, there you have it, Brett and Jordy.

Yeah, well, isn't every day a normal day? I mean, every day it just gets crazier and crazier. But I would say in particular over these past few days and these past few weeks, it feels like the wheels are falling off the Trump train even more than they were in the past. Like, he's just— let's face it, he's totally lost control of this thing. He entered this war. Who knows why. It still doesn't make any sense. I think he thought he was like being macho and he'd help Israel and he'd be able to be Mr. Tough Guy and, you know, Mr. America blowing up things, you know, and now he's just stuck in this quagmire that he can't get out of. And so he's trying to look for any possible win that he can. But what I don't think he necessarily realizes, or maybe he just doesn't care, is that all the actions that Trump is taking right now are getting us more entrenched in this war and they're making Iran more defiant and more resilient throughout the process. And he's also really been very off-putting to all the Iranians who are sympathetic to us going in there and trying to overthrow this regime.

I mean, the things that Donald Trump is posting and saying, as Ben said earlier, are just straight-up war crimes. And he's not making that distinction between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime. And those threats are just propaganda gold for the Iranian regime. And that's why you see the Iranian regime using Donald Trump's statements, his videos, all of these things. It's the best thing possible that they could ever ask for to have Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth saying the things that they are saying right now. We got a lot to discuss. I'm going to pass it over to Jordy first. Jordy, what's the latest on your end?

What's up, brothers? Midas Mighty. How's it going?

It's—

look, a lot to get into tonight. When I was watching that just disaster address to the nation that Trump gave last night, I wrote down a couple of words, brothers. Midas Mighty. Just a couple, like one, one word here and there. Low energy came to mind. Incoherent, bizarre, pathetic, and just plain weird. I don't know what the hell that was that we watched earlier this week when he addressed the nation, but he is just so absolutely embarrassing to this country every time he takes this, every time he takes the mic, every time he addresses us publicly. A lot to get into tonight. Benji, where are we starting off?

Yeah, take a look at Donald Trump's post where he says the biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down. 'Never to be used again. Much more to follow. It is time for Iran to make a deal before it is too late and there is nothing left of what still could become a great country.' He puts that in caps. 'President Donald J. Trump.' And he shows a video of the United States blowing up the B-1 bridge on the Khoraj Northern Bypass in western Tehran. I don't think the bridge was fully operational yet, but it was just about to be. It was. One of their, if not their biggest bridge. It was a source of national pride. It was for civilian use, and that was attacked. And Donald Trump said that he was attacking it because it was the biggest bridge, to which Iran's foreign minister, Araghchi, responded by saying, striking civilian structures, including unfinished bridges, will not compel Iranians to surrender. It only conveys defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray. 'Every bridge and building will be built back stronger. What will never recover? Damage to America's standing.' Other Iranian social media accounts reposted Donald Trump's post, and they wrote, for example, 'Trump directly admits to targeting civilian positions, international organizations, governments.

Hasn't the time come to act against this brutality?' Now, The Trump regime has used this guy, Barak Ravid, who is a reporter at Axios to spread a lot of the kind of Trump propaganda. He basically writes whatever a Trump official tells him. And I think the Trump regime has found it more useful now to manipulate markets and try to get information out by filtering it through something like Axios versus Donald Trump's social media posts, which nobody takes seriously at all. So I think people are wising up though now to like this Ravid guy just writes whatever Trump or a Trump official tells him. The guy's always been wrong about everything, but he writes, a US official tells me— that's how he always starts— or 3 US officials tell me, it's probably the same people over and over again. But a US official tells me the bridge was attacked because it was used by the Iranian armed forces to try and secretly move missiles and missile parts from Tehran to launch sites in western Iran, and for giving logistical support for Iranian military in Tehran. To which this Murtaza Hussain account goes, okay, this is obviously a lie since it was not even operational yet.

The US president also said he bombed it because it was the biggest bridge in the country. And Trump was saying earlier this week, we're going to bomb your biggest bridges because they're your biggest bridges. And Donald Trump posted about it on social media. He also posted a photo of Davy Crockett randomly and said Davy Crockett, obviously a distant relative of Jasmine Crockett and a very high-Q Frontiersmen would be proud of the legacy that he began long ago, especially Jasmine's great success as a politician for the great state of Texas. And then Donald Trump went on to say that Bruce Springsteen sucks. MAGA should boycott him. His concerts suck. They are overpriced. Save your hard-earned money. America is back! Exclamation point. Again, very weird behavior. And one of the things that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have been repeating over and over again is we're going to 'Iron into the Stone Age,' to which Iranian social media has responded by saying, 'Well, this map shows Iran in the Stone Age. Do you insist on reviving it?' And for those listening on audio, the Iranian Empire being very vast and basically stretching throughout the entire Middle East and in other areas as well, reaching into Africa.

Donald Trump said, 'Why isn't Iran—' this is what he told Time Magazine, Why isn't Iran calling? Why won't they call? We just blew up 3 bridges last night. And then he goes, they say Trump is not negotiating with Iran. I mean, it's sort of an easy negotiation, isn't it? Meanwhile, Iran says that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed long term for both the US and Israel and their allies. Iran and Oman have been working together to create a toll system where they are charging $2 million or around that amount for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. There is no sign that the Strait of Hormuz will ever be what it was prior to the war. But Donald Trump and the regime continues to brag that, uh, Iran has been completely decimated, that they don't have any weapons. What are they going to hit us with, BB guns? They don't have leadership anymore. Meanwhile, Iran clearly has its ballistic missile, Shahed drone, and FPV drone arsenal, which is only being reinforced by Russia, which is providing providing it with more Shaheds and other military equipment, also intelligence to strike American military bases. America has evacuated 13 military bases where those American soldiers are now in hotels in the Middle East, which are now targets of Iran.

Iran continues to shoot its ballistic missiles, Shaheds, and FPV drones into these surrounding areas. For example, Bahrain's Amazon Cloud facility was targeted. Recently, Qatar's infrastructure was hit again. Kuwaiti-flagged ships were attacked and hit off the coast of Dubai. Dubai, UAE continues to get hit as well. Tel Aviv keeps on having daily barrages of ballistic missiles hit it, and the Iranian weapons seem to only be getting more advanced and harder to strike down. You have French President Emmanuel Macron saying, we must be serious, and when we are serious, we do not say the opposite of what we said the day before. Referring to Donald Trump. Perhaps we should not speak every day. We should simply calm things down and build lasting peace. Macron also says, 6 months ago we were told everything had been destroyed and settled. Clearly that was not the case. Without international inspectors verifying materials, research, and hidden sites, it's simply not serious. He also says regarding the Strait of Hormuz, opening it by force is not the option we have chosen. We consider it unrealistic. A military operation to reopen it would take an infinite amount of time and expose forces to immense coastal and ballistic risks.

From the beginning, we have said it must be reopened, but only in coordination with Iran. The world cannot live with a strait that can be opened or closed overnight. Clearly, France moving towards bilateral negotiations and discussions with Iran. We're seeing France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria closing its airspace as it had before, but making it very clear their airspace and any military bases are shut down to the United States. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, and Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK, gave speeches calling out Donald Trump and what he has caused and that they're not going to get involved in this unlawful and catastrophic war. And again, it only seems that this quagmire that Donald Trump has put the United States in is— it's not going anywhere. It's not ending soon. This will continue to drag on and on and on. So to me, that gives you a comprehensive update. And I'll just add that the Army chief of staff was also fired today, that someone who was deemed very well respected was, you know, fired by Hegseth and basically forced into early retirement. Chief of Staff of the Army Randy George is stepping down.

That always shows a great deal of kind of confidence during a war where you get rid of kind of the key official from the United States Army. And, you know, I think people like the Army Chief of Staff and others are raising these concerns to Hegseth and Trump. And, you know, Hegseth's a lifelong loser. The guy couldn't run nonprofits for military veterans, and his personal behavior was disqualifying. Trump's a loser who's bankrupted thing after thing after thing, and they're, they're repeating that now, sadly, with our country.

Yeah, and Trump's issues with his businesses, I feel like, were always that rule of holes that Ben talks about a lot, which is when you're in a hole, what do you not want to do? You don't want to keep digging. But that's all Donald Trump knows how to do, and that's what we see him doing with this war. When I see Donald Trump get out there and deliver all of this messaging like in that speech last night. I'm always left wondering, like, who is this for? Is my main question that I ask, because yesterday as we were watching them, Trump's speech offered zero clarity on anything. There was no new information to the point where I was wondering if, like, they had another plan or another speech planned before they went live and then they decided to change it up last minute because it just— it's just a bizarre thing to ask for that time. And oftentimes You know, the media, the main broadcast channels will grant a president that time because it is such an extraordinary request. By the way, they had denied Biden that time in the past, a lot of these networks, but they all aired Trump live.

But when that happens, you expect that there's going to be some big announcement, some new piece of information. But what I was looking at, in my opinion, was that Donald Trump right now, I think he's starting to lose trust in all the people around him. I think that's why we're starting to see him shed staff. That's why we're starting to see him yell at people more, target people more in his inner circle. That's why we keep hearing all these other rumors that other people may be soon on the outs in the administration. And I think that Trump feels that he is always his best advocate. And all of the issues that are out there are actually because other people aren't doing their jobs well enough and they're not communicating his brilliance enough. He's a genius. He's the best. And if they just said it correctly to the public, if everybody knew what a smart guy that Donald Trump is, then they would be all for it. You saw a hint of this the other day when Donald Trump was speaking. He took a shot at Caroline Levitt. If you remember, it was very quick. But Trump said something like, you know, I think he was asked about his horrific poll numbers, which are just getting lower and lower and lower.

I think I saw one poll in the 20s the other day, but he was asked about that. He was speaking about it and he said, maybe my messaging isn't getting out. I guess Caroline just probably isn't doing— she's— she must not be doing a good job. It must be Caroline's fault. And it's like, no, dude, that's not the issue here. The issue is that people actually do see what you're doing and they hate it. And you pitched your own base and you pitched all these people on this concept of America First, which sort of sounds good to a lot of people if that's actually your plan if you don't see through the BS. But now everybody's seeing through the BS because you're getting out there and you're saying things like, actually, you know, it's not the government's job to take care of Americans here at home. We need to be spending as much money as we can on war and military and overseas rather than doing stuff here. It's like a shot in the heart to all this America First nonsense that he had pushed in the past. But he thinks he's his best own advocate.

He thinks if he could only communicate this stuff to the public, everybody would suddenly realize that he's this brilliant guy. The fact is, it's the opposite. Obviously, people saw Donald Trump. I think they saw his weakness. I think they saw how, like Jordy said, how low energy he looked, how kind of sickly he looked, how he kept fumbling over his words, how he seemed to just continue to cede things to the Iranians and kind of give up and surrender throughout. You know, we may not even need the strait opened. We could pass that off, you know, to other countries to handle. It's their problem. We don't need gas. We have lots of gas. We don't need to go into this war. We actually won already. But actually, we probably need to send more troops over there. So like, what is it? And I think that's why we saw while Donald Trump was speaking in real time, we saw the stock market futures start to go down. We saw oil spike because people were like, oh, this guy's an idiot. He has no idea what the hell he is doing. I wish these people would watch Midas Touch and watch Ben's coverage on the war as we went, because they wouldn't be that big of a surprise when they see Donald Trump in this primetime setting and go, oh my God, this guy is deteriorating.

He has no clue what is going on. But that's to me, that's the function that this served by the broadcast networks airing this. And that's why I'm actually happy that they did air this live, because while the Midas Touch audience here and so many people who are online, everything, who are seeing these clips of Trump, they know how bad Donald Trump looks and sounds right now. They know how how crazy he is. They know the crazy posts that he's made, all that stuff. There's a lot of people in the country who aren't— bless them, I'm jealous of them, to be honest— who don't see this stuff every single day. And instead, they are getting a sanitized, sane-washed version from the corporate media where they may kind of summarize what he said with a positive spin or play one line from him. Or, you know, it's a much different perspective when you're seeing him unfiltered, looking delusional, crazy, all the above. And that is what the American people saw last night. And frankly, when you put the messaging of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth— and we've talked about this, but I think it's important to continue to track just the huge disparity in the messaging right now between what's coming from the United States government and what's coming from the Iranian regime— you see that Iran is being far more sophisticated than the United States when it comes to messaging.

When you have Trump and Pete Hegseth saying things like, we are going to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, I'm sure there's some good people there, but we're going to bomb all that land back to the Stone Age. You're not exactly endearing yourself to the Iranian people when you say that. And one of the interesting things that happened yesterday was that the Iranian president did a rebuttal of Trump's speech. And I wonder if this changed any of the contents of Trump's speech before he actually went live. But the Iranian president went out there, he released this statement, and all their messaging has been directed at the American people and issues the American people actually care about, like why are you fighting these overseas wars and not focused on America first? The United States is fighting Israel's wars. Trump decided to bomb us in the middle of negotiations when we were reaching a deal on negotiations. Like they went all in on all of these things, which are, which are for the most part, everything they said is kind of undeniably true. They talked about Donald Trump bombing these civilian centers, bombing the schools. And the opposite end of that is Donald Trump feeding right into that messaging that Iran wants to tell its people, where, where all the Iranian regime has to do is show Donald Trump's words.

Show his statements, and they were able to present this image of this just barbaric, bloodthirsty maniac who just wants to kill everybody. That's what I just don't understand. I don't know. I mean, I was going to say, I don't know where this is coming from. It's coming from Trump, but it's like it's the worst possible strategy that you could possibly have if you wanted to win the war, win over the people, achieve any objectives. And by the way, if you noticed, every time Marco Rubio posts the objectives on his page, They change and they get less and less and less. They become, you know, weaker and weaker. You called it out last episode, B. I did. And it's continued on, right? If you notice, they constantly are shifting it. And they always frame it as like, as we've been clear from the beginning. And then it's like a new list of objectives anytime, every time. Like Trump is just being mismatched here. And anybody who thinks otherwise just honestly isn't getting the accurate information, you know, right now, and it's led to just an incredibly dangerous situation. Obviously, there's economic upheaval, and all you have to do is look to countries that have actual leaders in place, whether you love them or, or don't like them, but just normal people in, you know, in charge.

If you look at the UK, if you look at South Korea, if you look at Australia, all of these world leaders right now are warning about what's going on and what's to come, and they're telling their people, like, We may run out of gas soon, so you better start conserving on gas. We may run out of oil, like the prices are about to skyrocket. So we need to start taking measures to mitigate that and to make sure that we are prepared as a country. While Donald Trump's strategy is the COVID strategy of like a miracle, it's all going to go away. The Hormuz Strait is going to open by itself. You'll see, it will open by Easter. Everything's great. Everything's amazing. The United States the best country in the world. We've heard that before from him. It's like a broken record. We're hearing it again. Don't fall for the BS.

Trump is being totally outmatched, Brett. That's perfectly said. I don't know what his strategy is. I don't think he has a clear strategy. I don't think the American people know. Here's the thing. When I gave those one-liners earlier about, you know, Trump's address— low energy, weird, incoherent— I'm not saying that like to be funny. Or like to get clips. He, he's embarrassing our entire country. He's a stain on this country. And it just blows my mind that anybody could look at what we all witnessed with our own eyes last night and say, like, that's a totally normal guy up there doing totally normal things. That's the leader that we need. That's it. That's our guy. And quite frankly, people aren't like— I can't imagine that that speech played well with the apolitical folks out there being interrupted, just trying to watch their shows. Right. There's probably a huge portion of the country that didn't even to realize Trump was going to address the nation last night. And all of a sudden, that's what they get hit with. That's what they get forced upon them. Donald Trump, just like at like his like, which is the strangest behavior.

And he is spiraling. I mean, that, that, that is my biggest takeaway from last night. He is completely spiraling because he's gotten us into a mess right now that just simply won't go away. Right. This is COVID 2.0. He is spiraling and his mishandling of this entire war in Iran is deadly costly. Like, literally troops are dying. Oil prices are skyrocketing. It's hitting people here at home in ways that Trump probably didn't even realize were possible. And so for me, it just comes down to we need real leadership in these times. And what Donald Trump is now showing the country at large is that he's not just ill-equipped to handle this. He's not equipped at all. He is not the guy to handle the situation that he's gotten us into. He lit the fire. Now he's trying to put the fire out and get pats on the back. This fire is not going out. This fire is only going to keep getting bigger and bigger, and it's not just going to go away like a miracle. It's just not going to go away because that's not how these situations resolve themselves. You need competency, you need leadership, you need real things to get this stuff across the finish line.

And Donald Trump just isn't the person to do that. So now he's looking around at his cabinet because it can never be his fault. And so he's trying to find people to just take blame for anything, anything that could possibly look— make Donald Trump look like he's the bad guy in the situation or any situations and just try and get the heat off himself by putting his other cabinet members in the news. It's pathetic and it's a dangerous game to play because again, American troops are going to continue to die until we figure out what the hell is going on in Iran.

Look, Iran's foreign minister, Araghchi, is right when he says blowing up the bridges shows desperation and weakness. I mean, can you think about that plan behind the scenes? All right, so none of our allies are going to be helping us in the Strait of Hormuz. They're not really our allies anymore. They're not letting us on their bases because they know it's an unlawful war. Um, what are we going to do here? Let's blow up the bridges. That'll get them to surrender if we just start blowing up civilian infrastructure. That'll do it. And it's like it's going to do the exact opposite of like, who the hell is in this room? Who's out there saying this? And what you learn is it's Donald. He's the guy in the room. No matter what experts you have, what people he surrounds, it's ultimately Donald, the wannabe king, who's making these calls. And they are in the image of all of his loser behavior. His entire life. He's ill-equipped to handle issues of any level of complexity, yet alone a war involving multi-layers of world powers. Trump doesn't know how to use hard, soft, and medium power of the United States to achieve objectives.

And, and it's just loser behavior after loser behavior. We got this guy, uh, Saeed Jalil, who was a former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, you know, a former top military advisor rather in Iran. Here's what he posts, kind of mocking Donald Trump in the United States. He goes, the Strait of Hormuz must be opened. We will escort the ships. NATO should help open the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz will be open within 48 hours. I am extending the deadline by another 5 days. Why isn't NATO helping to open the Strait of Hormuz? The countries that want oil should go and open the Strait of Hormuz themselves. They should cherish it. That's what he said in the speech. They should cherish the Strait of Hormuz. We're out. And Saeed Jalili writes, this is the account of the United States' gradual retreat and the collapse of its president's illusions. Those are all direct quotes from what Donald Trump is saying. And, you know, I saw Dana Perino, one of these Fox propagandists, and she used to be press secretary for George W. Bush before Donald Trump gave the speech. She was like, you know, the big problem is because Iran is so involved in their censoring of the media that the people of Iran aren't going to get to see Donald Trump's speech.

They're not going to get to see it. Dana, you're very wrong, okay? Iran is happy to show them that speech and the clips of the speech where Donald Trump says, we're going to blow you into the Stone Age and we're going to do this to you and that to you. We're going to blow up your electrical grid. And that's exactly what Iran wants the people to see. And that's what they show the people. They're using Donald Trump's own videos and own quotes to show the people and rally the people of Iran. We have a lot to talk about when we come back. We should also talk about Donald Trump's attack on NATO. Donald Trump's lifting the sanctions against Russia, Russian vessels, lifting sanctions against Iran. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about how Donald Trump is so giddy about a meeting with Xi Jinping that's been moved to May while China's foreign ministry is out there mocking Donald Trump and calling Trump out for his unlawful war. We'll talk about that. And of course, we'll talk about Pat Bondi, talk about Kash Patel. We'll talk about others. A quick reminder, Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Help us get to 7 million subscribers here. Subscribe to Scott McFarland's YouTube channel, Katie Fang's YouTube channel, Legal AF YouTube channel, Aaron Parnas' legal channel. Scott McFarland's YouTube channel is on its way to 200,000 subscribers now. Really quick, make sure you subscribe. Really quick.

Scott, we got to get an updated screenshot of that one, Brett. Yeah, I do.

I know I got to get an updated screenshot. I can't use the same ones. I want to also say like a really cool announcement as well right now, which is that Midas Touch Podcast, again, number 1 in the podcast charts, which is super cool. I just want to show you because this is the competition that we're going against when we're getting our messages out into the world. And this is why I think this stat is so important. You see the Midas Touch Podcast. The second show there is this Diary of a CEO, which I'm sure a lot of people have seen clips of. But let me show you the next few. Okay. Candace, Candace Owens' show is number 3 on these charts. Joe Rogan is number 4. Then there's New York Times, The Daily, NPR News Now, I've Had It Podcast. Love them. And then Tucker Carlson at number 10. But it shows you like right now you have Midas Touch Podcast and I've Had It Podcast as like the only ones in this mix, you know, aside from the corporate shows, all these kind of right-wing shows, which I think is— it shows the power of you spreading this content out there.

And then the other thing I want to point out is not only that, but the Midas Touch The network as a whole went up to number 2 on the top publishers of all publishers. So the entire network, so all of our shows. And so now the only organization that we are behind is Spotify, and we're ahead of NPR in views and downloads. We're ahead of iHeartMedia, we're ahead of Acast, we're ahead of all these massive, massive, massive conglomerates. And that is thanks to the power of of you. So thank you. Keep spreading the show. Make sure to go to Apple Podcasts, add the show, leave a 5-star review. Check out all of our channels. If you go onto our YouTube channel and at the very bottom it says More from Midas Touch, you'll see all of the kind of Midas Touch affiliated channels right there. You could just go through and go click, click, click, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, and subscribe to all of them. It's free, takes 2 seconds. All right, a lot to discuss, a lot more to go over with you. Don't go anywhere, we'll be right back after this super quick break.

See you soon.

My cat hears the news with me every morning, and honestly, she handles it way better than I do, probably because she starts her day with Smalls. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. Is the news making you want to cuddle up with your cat? Smalls fresh cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free, 100% human-grade ingredients you'd find in your fridge, and it's delivered right to your door. That's why Cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. For a limited time, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to Smalls.com/Midas. Starting with Smalls is easy. Just share info about your cat's diet, health, and food preferences. Then Smalls puts together a personalized meal plan for your cat. No more picking between random brands at the store. Smalls has the right food to satisfy any cat's cravings. Last time I fed my cat Smalls, she loved it. Legitimately, we did a taste test, put two food bowls side by side, and she immediately went to Smalls. My cat actually follows me around every morning until I give her Smalls. Still not a believer in Smalls? Forbes ranked Smalls the best overall cat food, while BuzzFeed said my cats went completely ballistic for this stuff.

Smalls is possibly my favorite sponsor ever because my cat's breath is so much better and her fur is so much softer ever since I switched to Smalls. Smalls. This year's winter coat has been so soft and healthy. After switching to Smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. That's a big deal. And the team at Smalls is so confident that your cat will love their product that you can try it risk-free. That means they will refund you if your cat won't eat their food. So stop guessing which meals will upset their stomach. For a limited time, because you are a Midas Touch podcast listener, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com/midas. One last time, that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com/midas. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last. That's where Quince shines. Premium fabrics, considered design, and everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable even as the seasons change. Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that lasts. Lightweight cashmere sweaters, short-sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos, linen bottoms and shorts, tees in 100% pima cotton, and European jersey linen.

These are the versatile pieces that make a wardrobe actually work season to season. Quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen. You're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores, just quality clothing. The cashmere is 100% Mongolian, the same stuff luxury brands use. The pima cotton is long staple, which means it stays soft and doesn't pill. The European jersey linen is breathable and lightweight. Everything is built to hold up to regular wear and still look good. Their clothing is rated between 4.5 and 5 stars by thousands of people wearing it every day, and they only partner with factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. Those linen shorts have become my go-to. They don't wrinkle like cheap linen does, and they work with everything. Didn't cost a fortune either. Stop overcomplicating your wardrobe. You don't need a closet full of options. You need a few pieces that actually work. Right now, go to quince.com/mytis for free shipping and 365-day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it, and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com/mytis for free shipping and 365-day returns.

quince.com/mytis. Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors, links in description of the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Quick tangent here, Ben. I hate April Fool's Day. I hate April Fool's Day. It's the dumbest quote unquote holiday that exists. I had a brand reach out to me that they were hamster laxatives. And I'm like, I didn't know people had that many hamsters. I know hamsters need laxatives. And they're like, can you vet your audience and you vet your shows to see if anyone one, you know, would read for hamster lax. I'm like, are they a good product? I'm like doing all of this research online. 20 minutes later, they're like, April Fools, Jordy. And I just, I, I blocked their email.

So honestly, April Fools needs to be, uh, temporarily suspended till we could figure out what the hell is going on.

Okay, it's a true, that's a true story. I, I spent way too much of my day on April Fool's Day researching about hamster laxatives and if, if a lot of people have hamsters that need these.

It Well, the world is a joke right now, a dangerous one.

Also, part of the issue is I really take people seriously. Like, when they tell me— like, I just, I just assume you're telling me the truth. Like, I don't assume you're lying to me or like playing a joke on me. Like, when I— we're not like— we're not close like that. Oh, weird. It was a weird one. Weird one.

Benji, thank you for the hamster laxative story. I guess we'll do another hamster laxative story. What's going on in the White House is a hamster laxative story ready to explode. I don't know where I'm going with this. Donald Trump gave what I think is the worst presidential address in United States history. Whether he was or was not on hamster laxatives, he certainly was slurring his words, very low energy, but saying things like, "In Iran," We have all the cards. All the cards are mine. We have all— you don't have the Strait of Hormuz, so thus you don't have the cards. You don't have all the ballistic missiles, Shahed drones, and FPV drones, thus you don't have the cards. The cards you did have— sanctions against Russian oil and against Russian vessels— well, you gave up those cards and you unsanctioned the Russian oil and the Russian vessels. While you were at it, you claimed you were doing, quote, jiu-jitsu on the Iranians by removing sanctions against their oil, handing them $14 billion to help build more weapons with the Russians and get some of the Russian satellite footage in order to target American military bases and other American interests in the region.

So, no, I'm not sure. I'm not sure which cards you— you blew up a bridge. You blew up lots of bridges, civilian infrastructure. Yes. You've blown up an elementary school and you killed 165 little girls. And then earlier in the war, you blew up a gym and killed dozens of children as well. And thousands of civilians have been killed. By the way, even in the bridge incident, there was like 10 people who died. I should mention that as well, because, you know, there are real casualties that are taking place from what this Trump regime is doing with their war crimes. You did also blow up Iranian military facilities, you know, and I think military targets are, I suppose, targets that are the valid targets, although you don't understand the way the Iranian Revolutionary Guard actually functions. It's Shiite proxies across the region. The fact that your destruction of their conventional navy and other of their, like, kind of older and outdated weapons. That's not what they're using now. I mean, they're using the ballistic missiles, the Shahed drones, the FPV drones. You didn't destroy all of that, maybe at most one-third. So what are these cards you're referring to, Donald?

But according to Donald, we have all of them. We have, we have all the cards, he says. Here, play this clip. We have all the cards, they have none.

It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective.

Look, I I think I gave the right perspective. Now, you could not like what I just said, but the perspective that I'm giving is the actual objective reality on the ground. Then Donald Trump says, if there is no deal, then we're going to hit all of their electric generating plants very hard. This is a war crime, just like blowing up their bridges. You could play this clip.

Yet if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.

We have not hit their oil very hard and simultaneously. I'm not sure why it would have to be done. It all happens at the same time. But weren't you posting on social media to manipulate the markets that they offered a ceasefire? Didn't you say that they want— that they were the ones begging you for a deal? So you can't make a deal with someone begging you for a deal? Well, you've been begging them. The objective facts is this: that Whitkopf and Kushner and JD Vance have been begging Iran to make a deal and to leave the Strait of Hormuz, and in return they said the Islamic Republic can stay in power. And that, um, you know, that would basically be the— it would basically be the deal. The U.S. has tried to work with Pakistan, uh, because Donald Trump betrayed India for Pakistan because Pakistan invested in Trump's crypto World Liberty financial stuff, um, by the way, the same way a lot of Middle East countries did, believing they were going to get security protection from Donald Trump. Pakistan was working with the old foreign minister of Iran who was viewed as one of the only people who maybe could try to, you know, maybe reach out to the current foreign minister, Araghchi.

And then Trump and Netanyahu killed, uh, the foreign minister's wife and severely injured that foreign minister who they were having, uh, conversations, uh, conversations with.

Um, this plays into exactly the kind of image that the Iranian regime is telling their people about the United States. I'd like to say that it's a caricature. I'd like to say that it's insane that you would possibly portray the United States in this way, but the fact is it's true. And Donald Trump continues to affirm that image of the United States. You know, I think there's, there's an information war that occurs during all of these wars that has been heightened now with social media and social media tactics. And I, I think like, you know, Trump has been trying to kind of portray Iran as like this, you know, almost like everybody's there like living in caves and they're like not civilized and they're like savages and they don't know, you know, what's going on in the world and they, you know, hate us and hate everybody. Like, he's trying to put this image out there, but all the things that the Iranian people keep saying and the Iranian regime keeps saying is like, actually The Iranian people are some of the most educated people. Uh, we're responsible for some of the biggest innovations. Um, we are trying to make a deal, and they're saying, look at these bloodthirsty maniacs in the United States who just want to kill and commit war crimes.

And all they have to do to show evidence of that, of the barbarism of what's happening in the United States, is showing clips of our leaders, is showing what Donald Trump is saying, and showing what Pete Hegseth is saying. And so I, you know, I said this, I feel like a few weeks ago, even before the Iran war broke out, as we were seeing Trump, you know, do all these attacks on Venezuela and threaten Greenland and everything else that he's been doing. And what I said is, I think Trump's kind of vision, his actual kind of doctrine that exists, is he thinks the United States is so strong and so powerful that the United States could use brute force to push its way onto anybody in any country and make them submit to our will. So we're just going to use our force in Greenland. If you don't like it, too bad, we're going to take you over Venezuela. If you don't like it, too bad, we're going to invade and take you over Canada. If you don't like it, we're going to take you over and make you the 51st state. And so I think he went into this war with that mindset as well.

But he's dealing with a country right now who that has the opposite effect on. As Donald Trump tries to force his will on the Iranian people and on the Iranian regime, they're going, we don't want that. That's weird. That's creepy. That's dangerous. That's psychotic. And so you're getting even people who, as I said, were sympathetic to the idea of the United States coming in, bringing regime change, bringing democracy to Iran. Even many of those people now are looking out their windows. They're seeing their neighborhoods being decimated. Their neighborhoods being bombed by the United States. And it's not exactly a way that they're going to say, oh, these people are here to protect me. And you can't look at any statement Donald Trump has made or any action that Donald Trump has taken and come to the conclusion that this is somebody who actually wants to see democracy in Iran or wants to see the people of Iran free and wants to see all of that, because just every single piece of evidence speaks to the contrary.

Here's the thing. He doesn't know how to negotiate, right? He got into business— like, let's start back here. He got into business school because his daddy got him in. He doesn't know how to negotiate because his negotiating tactic used to be, I have more money and more lawyers than you, so do what I say. That's why he is notoriously known for screwing the contractors that work for him, because he pretends like he's some great businessman. Meanwhile, he's just leveraging his, his quote unquote, power that was given to him. Like, he thinks it's his birthright to just act like this and behave like this. But he's also so demented that he actually now has told himself that he is this great man, that he's—

let me make this comparison. And sorry to interrupt you, but you just sparked a thought in my head. The same way that Donald Trump inherited his wealth from his daddy and then used that wealth to bully people, to get his way, to steamroll his way through business and screw over contractors, not pay anybody, and built his business empire off that the same way that Donald Trump inherited that. He inherited the power of the United States that was built up over hundreds of years of people building the system that we have today, building the military that we have today, the alliances that we have today. And just like he squandered his wealth, his daddy's wealth during his business career, he's now doing the same thing with the power he inherited through that fact history of the United States. Just like he took his father's wealth and claimed it as he's a self-made man, that he's a self-made person, that he's this brilliant genius. He takes credit for the United States' success. If you know, he says this repeatedly, right? As we come up to the birthday of the US, the 250, he says, oh, and it's all because of me that we're reaching 250.

It's all because of me that I rebuilt the military. I did X, Y, legacy. It ain't because of you. You know what is because of you? The fact that, I don't know, a quarter of the nation's debt, maybe more at this point, is because of you. That's, that's because of you. The reason we're spending now like trillions of dollars on the military, the reason why the global economy is shut down. Yeah, that's your legacy. Your legacy is more of, you know, a, a Herbert Hoover than somebody who's actually done anything to actually build this country up. Exactly right.

So when he's trying to negotiate with Iran now and he's claiming to have all of the cards, he's basically saying, I'm America and you bow down to me because of how awesome I am. I mean, that, that's what he's trying to leverage here. The problem is he's losing. And now his losses, unlike when he was a businessman bankrupting casinos, bankrupting steak businesses, bankrupting every business he's been a part of, they aren't his own personal monetary losses. No. Now his losses are he's getting American troops killed getting killed. He's crippling the economy here. He's spiking oil prices and he's getting American troops killed. So, like, lose me on this. Can I say one of the cards?

I just want to say one of the things that really sickens me the most, and this is a— this Trump did not invent this. You know, this was done by George W. Bush. This was done by a whole lot of people who brought us into wars. And it disgusts me every single time I see it. But it was something that Trump said last night during his speech where what they do is they use the deaths of American soldiers in order to further propagandize the war and say that that's a reason why we can't leave. That's a reason why we need to stay in this war as long as it takes. You saw Trump said something, you know, about the American soldiers who have died in the Iran War. And he made some sort of comment that was like, you know, we can't let those deaths be in vain. We have to stay there. We have to finish the job. And that's a propaganda tactic that I have heard my entire life as we've been in all of these various wars across the Middle East. And it has always just led more of our troops to slaughter.

And I just—

I hate it. And it's precisely— and I'll toss it to you in a second. You've been very patient. And it's precisely why he also leaked the photos when the troops came home, when the troops who were killed came home. It's why— it's why when the families asked him not to published photos of that, of that coming home, that he released it to further propagandize their deaths. It's disgusting.

But Trump takes it to the next level. He wears a MAGA hat and sells the hat, right? And uses— I mean, Brett, like, he takes the George W. Bush disgusting thing and then, like, just brings it to a level that's, like, even beyond, you know, the most horrific content.

I mean, you're wearing this. Please, sir, please, sir, we need more killing. Get the get the—

well, that's what he says. He goes, the family said to me, sir, you need to continue to— not even just saying for those families we have to do it. He does the lie and says every single family went up to me and said, sir, we need this job to be finished.

And then the families come out and they release statements to the press saying, I never said that.

Then he attacked the families. And then, you know, I mean, it's a cycle that happens over and over. We've seen that happen before when he, you know, attacks Gold Star families. Israelis. And, you know, that's a pattern that he has over and over again. Let's just show the clip quickly of Donald Trump saying, I'm going to— we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. I mean, just think about it. This is a war of Donald Trump and Netanyahu's choosing, an unlawful war. And now Trump's giving an address for the first time weeks into this thing and saying— over a month into this thing and saying, we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. I mean, you know, when I watch this, I think about, you know, all of these these, you know, horrific, you know, dictators in history. And I'm like, I'm like, this guy's just a fucking scumbag. It's like, guys, a piece of trash. Here, play this clip.

We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next 2 to 3 weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.

That's like a script. Someone wrote that also. I mean, he probably was part of it, but like, that was a script. We're gonna bring them back to the Stone Ages also. To which I immediately said last night, Iran's going to use that. They're using it. And that only makes us less safe. That makes American interests in the region less safe, and it makes us look weak.

That's how weak people— it's not how strong people talk.

That's how very weak people talk, you know. And as noted, the Amazon facility in Bahrain was targeted, and, uh, the kind of cloud computing technology was hit. It was struck, taken down. I know the Oracle being targeted there after Donald Trump was like bragging, Oracle in Saudi Arabia, they're doing a plant in Saudi Arabia. That was targeted as well. You know, and Iran has its arsenal and it keeps on attacking in response and in retaliation to what Donald Trump's doing. I want to take our last quick break of the show. When we come back, I want to talk about a few things. Donald Trump saying that the budget for the military, $1.5 trillion, while we can't fund Medicaid, Medicare, and other social programs is what he literally said. That we'll talk about Pam Bondi being fired. What's next there? We'll talk about some other stuff as well. Let's take our last quick break of the show. Reminder, subscribe to the Midas Touch podcast on audio as well. If you just get this on video, help us out by subscribing on audio. Even if you don't plan on listening in audio, you may actually do it once you're down because you'll be in a car, you'll be somewhere, put on Midas Touch.

Touch. So all the video watchers, go download and subscribe to Midas Touch on audio. That helps us a ton. All right, let's take our last quick break.

The older I get, the more I find myself wanting to be more intentional about the way I live, eat, and take care of my body. Mosh, which you may have heard about on Shark Tank or Oprah's Favorite Things, was founded by Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger with a mission to spark a conversation about brain health through food, education, and research. After Maria's father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, they set out to create something bigger than just a protein bar. Mosh protein bars are made with ingredients that support your brain and body, like ashwagandha, lion's mane, and omega-3s. Plus, Mosh is the first and only food brand boosted with Cognizin, a premium form of citrulline that helps support focus, memory, and mental clarity. And they taste amazing, with 9 delicious flavors, including plant-based options in chocolate chip cookie, hazelnut chocolate chip, and peanut chocolate And now you can save on MASH while making your wellness routine effortless. Get 25% off plus free shipping on your first 15-count variety pack, and then 20% off for life on your monthly subscription. You can swap flavors anytime based on what you like best. Keep your go-tos on repeat or try something new.

Your favorite functional fuel is delivered directly to your door so you never run out, and supporting your brain health becomes a simple habit you can feel good about. Out. Why? Because Mosh donates a portion of the proceeds from every order to the Women's Alzheimer's Movement, because two-thirds of Alzheimer's patients are women, and Mosh is working to close that gap. It's more than just a protein bar, it's brain fuel with a purpose. I love Mosh, and I know you will too. Find your favorites, build your boxes, or keep things fresh with a variety pack. Mosh bars are the best way to customize your health while giving back. Head to moshlife.com/mightiestouch and subscribe today to get 25% off your first variety pack and 20% off your monthly subscription with code MIDAS Touch. That's 25% off your first pack and 20% off your subscription of brain-boosting bars delivered straight to your door. Start building brain health into your everyday with Mosh Bars. Thanks to Mosh for sponsoring this episode. All right, let me ask you something.

How boring is your debit card right now? Be honest. Like, if you could redesign What are you putting on there? I'm talking full personality. And also, if Cash App could hook you up with discounts anywhere, where are you picking? Coffee, food, late-night impulse buys? Don't lie. I've been using Cash App for a while, and one thing I love is how it actually feels built around how we really spend money, not how banks think we should. Cash App just released a new status program for the way people actually spend called Cash App Green. Green. It unlocks new ways for you to pay, get rewarded, and easily grow or manage your money on your terms. Now, when you spend at least $500 a month with the Cash App Card or Cash App Pay, you earn Green status, which unlocks benefits like up to $200 of free overdraft coverage, higher borrow limits, and customized personalized cashback offers every Friday at places you love to shop. Turn everyday spending into status with Cash App Green. Download Cash App today or visit cash.app/new to learn more about this and other great features launching now. And look, if you're already spending money every month, you might as well get something back for it, right?

For a limited time, new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code CashApp10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services a platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Cash App Green overdraft coverage, borrow, cashback offers, and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.

Shout out to our sponsors. Links in description of both YouTube and the audio. Use the link Use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Benji, real quick. The thing that really upset me about the whole laxatives prank with the hamster laxatives is I texted one of our hosts that they had a hamster because I'm pretty sure that their kid does actually have one. I like to take people at their word, Ben, like people who aren't proven liars like Donald Trump. I like to take them at their word at first that it's a sincere conversation I'm having. Shame on me. Shame on me.

You got to have your April Fool's guard up. Next April Fool's, I'll remind you the day before. If anybody talks to you about mosquito laxatives or whatever, you know, you should definitely be suspicious about it. Speaking of, though, the feeling that millions of mosquitoes were attacking me all last night, all at once, I think that's the reaction a lot of Americans got while watching Donald Trump's disastrous Oval Office speech. You see that transition from hamster laxative to mosquitoes into the Oval Office. Here we go. As Hegseth would say, full throttle, full throttle ahead. This is the stupidest people in the world. These people in the White House are the worst. Donald Trump spent a lot of the day yesterday and the day before. Like he has forever, attacking NATO, calling NATO a paper tiger, saying that he and Vladimir Putin said together, they were talking about him and Putin had a conversation about what a paper tiger NATO is. I mean, just think about it. Donald Trump taking away the oil sanctions and shipping sanctions on Russia. We know that because it happened publicly. Trump saying that he was on the phone with Putin, they were talking about why the US needs to withdraw from NATO.

And why it's a paper tiger. I mean, just think about like, you know, FDR or Truman or whoever, you know, on the phone telling the people, you know, look, I was on the phone with Hitler and we were talking about withdrawing from the current alliance. And we're actually thinking about how can we help Nazi Germany and Mussolini What can we do to help you during this war? I mean, like Donald Trump's out there saying, you know, oh, and by the way, the main kind of Reich leaders, they're going to be in Congress. They're going to be getting a tour of the Capitol building. Right. I mean, like, literally, the Russian Duma members got a tour of the Capitol building. I mean, all of that was happening publicly. And then what if FDR or Truman or whoever just started attacking the allies over and over and over? Over again. You know, Churchill, you're horrible. And you know, you're horrible, you're a terrible person, you're awful. I mean, you know, throughout the day Donald Trump was attacking NATO, and then in his speech he was attacking NATO. I'll show you one portion of the speech right here where Donald Trump talks about how the countries of the world that do receive their oil through Hormuz, you'll take care of it yourself, it's for you to deal with now.

Let's play this clip. The countries of world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on. We'll break it.

You fix it. See you later. Jordy, to your point, that's been his philosophy his entire life. I'm going to break it. You cherish it. You deal with it. You've, you've got it. And, you know, in response, a lot of these countries are basically like, okay, well, you don't use our air bases, you don't use our airspace, you know, we wish you the best, we're not doing anything. Remember, Donald Trump and Netanyahu did this unlawful war of choice on their own. They didn't consult anybody, not the Arab nation allies with Trump, the ones who did all the quid pro quo pay-for-plays with the Trump buildings and buying him the jets You know, Donald Trump didn't consult them. Donald Trump didn't consult NATO. He didn't consult anybody. It was him and Netanyahu. They did it, and this was the result. It's an absolute disaster. Remember, we've— so many things happen as well. Remember, like a day in, Trump and Netanyahu started like broadcasting themselves on Iranian TV, like, because one of the things they told us is that the Iranian people were going to take to the streets like they did back in January when Donald Trump betrayed them and said, go out, I got your back.

And then didn't get their back because they're like, why would we do it again? You screwed us over last time. We're not going to do it again. And they— and like Trump and Netanyahu were like, did TV shows themselves, like the people of Iran. It is me, Donald Trump, and it is me, Netanyahu. Go out, go out in the street. We will be your heroes. And people are like, what the heck? What? What? Yeah, no, no, no, no, thank you. We've seen what you've done in Gaza. We've seen what you've done in Lebanon. We know what you're going to— we're not going to do that. No, by the way, one of the things that the Iranians keep on posting over and over again are photos of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together on the Iranian missiles. They have Donald Trump and Epstein photos, or Trump, Netanyahu, Epstein photos. But like, the Iranian regime posts over and over again, they're like, who would you trust, this guy or this guy? And they'll like show the Ayatollah praying, and they show Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. And, you know, that seems to be more effective propaganda than Donald Trump saying, I'm going to blow you into the Stone Age.

Or, you know, when Donald Trump blows up after covering up child sex trafficking involving little girls in the Epstein files, Donald Trump and his regime with Netanyahu blow up an elementary school filled with little girls in Iran, you know, which is a war crime and it's a travesty and it's horrific. And they're still covering it up today. Right. Trump and the regime still cover it up. The military's fessed up to it, but Trump and the regime, you know, uh, you know, are still covering it up, uh, still covering it up today. I'll show you also, this is Marco Rubio attacking NATO. I think we've got video footage of Rubio attacking NATO. Let's play it.

When we need them to allow us to use their military bases, their answer is no. Then, then why are we in NATO? You have to ask that question. Why do we have billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars over the years, trillions of dollars, and all these American forces stationed in the region. If we can only use— we can— in our time of need, we're not going to be allowed to use those bases. So I think there's no doubt, unfortunately, after this conflict is concluded, we are going to have to reexamine that relationship. We're going to have to reexamine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country. Ultimately, that's a decision for the president to make.

One of the things we're seeing now United Airlines hiking their checked bag fee by $10 as fuel prices continue to climb. Amazon's imposing a 3.5% fuel surcharge for many of their online merchants. And just like COVID, you know, it'll start to hit over here, you know, and we already know what the gas price is, but it'll start to hit over here. That's for sure.

I just wanna remind too, just how, And just to remind everybody how spineless Marco Rubio is, obviously you've seen his complete transformation from when he was running against Trump to now, where he's just given up every little speck of, I don't know, morality that he may have had or values that he had. But Marco Rubio literally is the individual who sponsored the bill that was in 2024 that passed that said that a president cannot unilaterally pull the United States out of NATO with congressional approval. That was Marco Rubio's bill that passed, and now he is parroting Donald Trump's talking points, saying that the United States needs to start rethinking its relationship with NATO. NATO has nothing to do with this. NATO has nothing to do with helping aggressors in a war. NATO is about— if one, it's a defensive alliance, that's the most important thing about it, and And they keep talking about Article 5. Why aren't they reacting? Article 5, Article 5, Article 5 is if they're attacked. If a NATO nation is attacked, other nations can invoke— they can invoke Article 5 and have other nations come to help them out. The only time in history that Article 5 has been invoked was after the September 11th attacks on the United States, when our allies came to our side and helped us in Afghanistan.

So if you want to talk about who's helping who and who's pulling their weight, I think you need a bit of historical context.

Rubio is such an embarrassment. Ben, I'll toss to you in one sec. But that's why I think as we go forward here and, you know, try and take back this like pro-democracy essence that this country like we really need here to like celebrate and champion, that we can never forget or lose sight of the Marco Rubios, of the folks who have totally and utterly debased themselves in order to appease Donald Trump, folks that have almost said like, I'm the centrist Republican and I want to work across the aisle and do the— and then how they just put on that red MAGA hat and totally fell in line to appease Donald Trump and not to help the American people. We can never forget who those people are.

Donald Trump rolling out a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027 today, and he was teasing it yesterday before he gave that horrific national address. Where all of the remaining money, which is not all that much, that could have otherwise gone to Medicaid, Medicare, daycare, social programs, will now all go into the military. Donald Trump says that the, the big message going into the midterms is, as Bloomberg writes it, Trump will frame the Republican Party's midterm message around a massive massive military defense buildup paid for by cuts to domestic agencies and what they call healthcare entitlements. This one account goes, they've done it. Donald Trump has invented unpopularism. You know, it's a funny way, by the way, Donald Trump, while we were recording this, continues to post photos of the Golden Ballroom that's now been permanently blocked by a federal judge, a Republican federal judge, Judge Leon, George W. Bush appointee from 2002 found that the construction was ultra vires. It's a Latin term just meaning outside the scope of presidential authority. You need congressional authorization if you're going to rip down the White House and build a golden ballroom. So there is a permanent injunction blocking the golden ballroom, although Donald Trump saying the ballroom is needed for national security because it gives me anti-drone protection and it will save me from ballistic missiles.

So I need the drone because The real purpose of the drone is the bunker underneath, as well as the ballroom will serve as anti-drone protection, and that that's really what this is all about. I mean, again, I know, right? Totally and utterly deranged. But here was Donald Trump yesterday saying that we don't need childcare, we can't take care of it, we're too big, we're going to be involved in so many wars. No childcare, no Medicaid, no Medicare. We can't do it. We can't do it. That's not what the federal government does. Listen to what he says. Let's play this clip.

Because the United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up for— but we— it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.

We have one thing that we do here: military wars. I mean, like, this is truly a deranged maniac. And I wanted to make sure I played that clip because in a lot of the chaos and the Trump distraction machine. That right there needs to be looped over and over again. Because he's saying it, we're going to be in endless wars. And we're the federal government's never going to actually do things that a government's actually supposed to do. You know, Barack Obama ran on Yes, We Can. Donald Trump's like, no, we can't. I will steal from view. Unpopularism. I think that's the right way to talk about it.

It is a— how these online propagandists push Donald Trump on the American people. Because remember, you got Elon Musk buying Twitter, controlling the algorithms, pumping these people who just spread disinformation all day to the forefront. I mean, I know people in my family who are completely apolitical, never even use Twitter, but have it on their phone, which is an account that maybe occasionally they'll scroll, but not really. and they will get notifications from individuals who are just Trump propagandists. They all like tweet the same things at the same times, and they all push this messaging. And so I was just looking through some of these folks' accounts the other day, and I found this one from this dude named Eric Daughtry, who's one of the, you know, biggest defenders of all of this. And this was his tweet from June 19th, 2025. And this is what he wrote. This was their big pitch why you should vote for Trump. We would be at war with Iran directly if Kamala Harris won in November. This rather, you know, after, but this is the messaging they were pushing leading up to the election. We'd be at war with Iran directly if Kamala Harris won in November.

Just think about what we avoided. She would have already signed off on several strikes and probably would have sent troops. It would have been a nightmare. And if you think that this individual, now you go to their account, it's like Wow, I can't believe Trump did this. WTF, he lied to me. No, they just move on to the next propaganda. Trump's so strong. Look at what he's doing. This is amazing. America. Yeah. America first means bombing Iran. America first means going into other countries. They just switch. They just— they're just propagandists. And I think it's important that people see the messaging and like the machine that's working behind this to kind of just propagandize people and brainwash people into thinking that someone like Donald Trump is anti-war, thinking like someone like Donald Trump is is pro-health, for your health, as he like does everything to destroy health. Everything that they ran on that Donald Trump said he would do— affordability, all of this crap— it's the opposite of what he wants to do. The fact that this guy who is enriching himself to the tune of billions and his family to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, releasing these fraudsters, giving them settlements to J6ers and all of this crap, The fact that they propagandized the American people to believe that this person was somebody who supported the working class, was going to bring prices down, was going to put America first.

It's just Looney Tunes to me.

One of the biggest reckonings that this country is going to have to come to, I believe, in our lifetimes, brothers, is like we have to be able to actually champion truth again and celebrate truth. Because when you see all those putzes online spreading like this misinformation and they're just totally you know, just, just astroturfed movement, whatever the fuck they're doing, they're really breaking through because of the people who control the platforms and push them to the top of the algorithms. So when you're constantly like filling the information hole with lies and just BS and propaganda, like inevitably that's going to break through to apolitical people who just are like trying to see what's the drama on Summer House this week. And when all this stuff starts to hit you in waves where you can't even hide from it, I could see how penetrating that is. I would just say we as a collective society, like the larger we, just need to get to a point where we all want to champion the truth, where we all want to celebrate the truth and actually deal in facts and data and honesty and integrity. In my mind, there's nothing cooler than that.

And that might sound geeky or whatever, but it's just, it's just how I earnestly feel. Having a young son, having another kid on the way, trying to figure out trying to figure out how we continue. What was that?

Was that public knowledge? No, it was just—

it just came out. I'm out. Let's just keep going on from there.

But genuinely, as I'm trying to grow my family, you know, the chat's lighting up right now. I just let that slip and not expect they're going to miss it.

I just want to be able to live in a society here where we could truly champion the truth and honesty and integrity and stop dealing with this propaganda stuff in the waves and droves that we currently they are. And yes, I'm having another kid.

Let's go! Let's talk about it. It's, it's, it's— I, I would say it's a good segue to birthright citizenship.

I don't know, but I was looking for the transition.

I was looking, always looking for a good transition. Uh, Donald Trump did that executive order a while back saying birthright citizenship is hereby illegal via my executive order. Obviously, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution clearly says birthright citizenship is legal. There have been cases on it. There have been statutes codifying it. It's in the Constitution. It shouldn't be a very difficult situation to rule that Donald Trump's executive order was unlawful. Court after court, federal courts, circuit courts, all ruled that Donald Trump calling birthright citizenship unlawful, that Trump violated the law. They blocked Trump's executive order. Order. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday. Donald Trump attended the oral arguments himself, and he sat there for a short period of time. And then once the judges or justices started asking questions to his lawyer and Donald Trump didn't like where the questions were going, before the lawyer for the ACLU was able to present the arguments, Donald Trump stormed out like a little baby storms out of a Supreme Court. It's not all that long. Like the entire oral arguments, what, like 90 minutes max? You decided to show up and you show up just for a little bit, then walk out of the Supreme Court.

I mean, again, just, just things like that are just, you know, you wear a hat to the dignified transfer, you walk out like just a bad human, like in every aspect, like just a piece of trash in every, in every, in every interaction, micro interaction at a microscopic level. Everything is just— he's just trash. Every cell, every fiber, everything is just like the worst human being imaginable. I'll just share with you what Donald Trump heard before he jetted out. John Sauer, this guy is Donald Trump's lawyer. Basically, he's the Solicitor General, but the DOJ has been turned into Donald Trump's law firm. So here this guy is arguing why birthright citizenship should be unlawful. Even though it's in the Constitution. And then Chief Justice Roberts is like, yeah, but the Constitution is the Constitution. Like, it says it in the Constitution. Watch this. Let's play it.

That's their interpretation. It's made a mess of the provision.

Well, it certainly wasn't a problem in the 19th century.

No, but of course we're in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out to you, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a U.S. citizen.

Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution.

It is. And as Justice Scalia said, I think in the case that, uh, Justice Alito was referring to, uh, you've got a constitutional provision that addresses certain evils and it should be extended to reasonably comparable evils. He said that about statutory interpretation. I think the same principle applies here. And I think we quote that.

Yeah, I mean, that's him. Just leave it at that. Um, just leave it at that. Uh, I'm, I'm not, I'm not going there. I'm not going to talk about Christine Ohm's husband being involved in bimbification. But, you know, I think I handled the Christine Ohm situation. I mean, my view about Christine Ohm's husband being involved in a bimbification community, which is, you know, he would cross-dress wearing triple E or— I wasn't aware of this community— triple E, triple F breasts. And he loved to cross-dress with these, you know, gigantic breasts. And he liked being humiliated by other people who fit the bimbofication, and he would love the humiliation rituals. And he was into that. And what I've made very clear in my coverage is I'm not going to kink shame or mock what people do privately as long as it's safe, as long as it's consensual. You know, people have private lives and the government should not tread on that. Remember, don't tread on me. And so that's not what I judge. What I do judge It's people like Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi and others who intrude on people's private lives and who wreck people's private lives and mock people and use the government to harass and judge this group and that group.

And then behind the scenes, they are involved in private conduct that they did, that they have, that they want secrecy and they want, you know, don't involve me in that. You know, I'm not getting into that. I'm not going to talk about Lindsey Graham going around Disney World with his bubble wand, you know, and I'm not going to, you know, you know, don't talk about that. Yeah. When it was like with Lindsey Graham, whatever kind of the private situation is, whatever it is, don't then take out on us, though, you know, what you're— what's going on with you privately, you know, by being a warmonger and this or that, you know, obviously, you know, J.D. Vance, high school gay. You know, he was saying that he was a gay man. He went to, you know, he said he was converted and that he's no longer gay anymore. And, you know, and he wrote a book, he wrote in his book, you know, that he said that I was not— I thought I was gay, I'm not really gay. And then he becomes anti-gay, you know, and then like goes after the gay communities and LGBTQ communities.

So it's like, oh, you know, just be happy, just be happy with who you are. But you are. And what do you say? What people— I said, just let me say this.

But what people do in their personal lives is what they do in their personal lives. Exactly. What these individuals, though, are doing to the American people and their sort of, I don't know, the self-flagellation of what they do for Donald Trump and the way that they humiliate themselves for Donald Trump, that is what is just disgusting to me. And And they're never— it's never good enough. You know, as we saw with Pam Bondi, Pam Bondi fired today, tossed aside. I think she maybe was officially fired yesterday. It was announced today. She was told yesterday. And she wasn't fired because she covered up the Epstein files. She wasn't fired because she weaponized the Justice Department. She wasn't fired because of her horrific performance talking about the Dow being at 50,000. She wasn't fired for being bad at her job and being an evil human being doing Donald Trump's bidding. She was fired because she did not debase herself enough, apparently. She was fired because she didn't weaponize the Department of Justice enough. She was fired because while she tried to do everything that she possibly could to go after people like James Comey and Letitia James and Don Lemon, it wasn't enough.

For Donald Trump. That's why she was fired. And that's the end result of all of these people who tie themselves to Donald Trump. They humiliate themselves. They debase themselves. But it's always a one-way street every single time. And those are the people who should be walking around in shame every single day. I agree with you there, Brett.

I mean, do we have the clip, though, of Donald Trump saying Bondi is great? I look forward to her. 3 more years. I think she's amazing and things are going— I mean, he said this in the past 3 weeks, didn't he? You know, I mean, this is a recent clip, uh, we're gonna show. Let's see if we have that clip. Let's, let's play it.

I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to this country. Also with us are Attorney General Pam Bondi, who's a terrific person and fan, and she's proving how tough she is And I think the next 3 years she's going to really prove it, right? Huh? Like these people.

Just also the way he talks to her, like the way he even did that, you know, obviously he lied, but like, she's the Attorney General of the United States. Like, imagine, like, your boss. By the way, he shouldn't even be the boss at that point. This is— there's supposed to be independence, right? You're the AG. It's the top law enforcement officer in the nation. She's going to do a good job. You're going to be a good girl, aren't you going to be a good one?

You're going to be a good one, aren't you?

I mean, just the behavior, the misogyny. I'm like, it's absolutely, you know, it's absolutely, you know, it was absolutely disgusting. But, you know, it's what Pam Bondi knew she signed up for. It's what she did. In addition to what you said, Brett, obviously she was covering up up a child sex trafficking ring. Millions of documents still have not been produced. She didn't cover up the Epstein files good enough. What's— but the Democrats in the House Oversight Committee have made very clear, she ain't getting out of her deposition just because she's gone and she got fired. She's still sitting for her April 14th deposition. Let me read for you what the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia, Congressmember Garcia, that, uh, posted. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been leading a White House cover-up of the Epstein file. She has weaponized the Department of Justice to protect Donald Trump and put survivors in harm's way by exposing their identity. She will not escape accountability and remains legally obligated to appear before our committee under oath. She must answer for her mishandling of the Epstein files and the special treatment she has given Ghislaine Maxwell. Oversight Democrats have been leading serious investigations into Bondi and Secretary Kristi Noem, if they think we are moving on because they were fired, they are gravely mistaken.

And I just wonder too, now that she's no longer an active member of the Justice Department, will there be states that start criminal investigations into her? Because while she doesn't have immunity like Donald Trump does, while she's actively leading the Justice Department, states would stay away from that. State bar associations would stay away from it. So I'm just curious if you'll start to see state bar investigations, state bar complaints being filed against her, state criminal investigations into her, uh, conduct. And we'll keep our eyes open and we'll keep on reporting for you every step of the way. But today was one of those days where there was a lot of news coming from every direction. Um, we continue at the Midas Touch Network to build our team and to keep on growing to make sure from every angle we are covering this. Shout out Scott McFarland, uh, and the great work that he's done in building his platform. Shout out Katie Fang, shout out Popock and Legal AF, and shout out Aaron Parnas and Tennessee Brando and Adam Mockler. Frankly, everybody who's involved in the Midas Touch Network, shout out all of you for all the support, the courage that you show each and every day.

We're grateful, we're thankful for you. And, uh, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, help us get 7 million subscribers. Subscribe to our audio, If you just watch on YouTube, subscribe to the audio podcast. It really helps us a lot. It'll take you about 30 seconds or less to subscribe. Just search Midas Touch Podcast, whatever audio podcast app you use, and click subscribe. That helps us a ton. Leave a 5-star review on those apps. It helps us again a lot, a lot, a lot. Even if you don't plan on watching, it helps a lot. If you don't plan on listening, of course you're going to watch on our YouTube channel. Thanks everybody so much. We're grateful for you. We'll see you next time on the Midas Touch Podcast. Keep checking back on the YouTube channel every 90 minutes or so for updated news. We'll see you next time on the Midas Touch Podcast. Jordy, take it away.

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