Transcript of Tuesday Afternoon Breaking News Updates with Ben — 2/17/26

Welcome to on Breaking News. I'm Ben Meisellis, and this is your Breaking News. Shout out to all of our friends in Düsseldorff, Germany, where they're having their annual carnival parade featuring images of Donald Trump assaulting the Statute of Liberty and trying to stick his tongue down statue of Lady Liberty's throat, the carnival float of Donald Trump punching Jesus in the face. Jesus is wearing a Love and Humanity shirt and giving Jesus a black eye. More floats of Donald Trump and Putin together. Also featured alongside floats of the Ayatollah and the Taliban. That is the distinction for the United States right now. You have the images as well of Trump and Putin trying to eat up Europe. That's about sums up Donald Trump and his fascist regime and how the world feels about us. Well, we clearly saw how the world felt about us at the Munich Security Conference. When Marco Rubio gives his speech and says, The world order is now over. It was something that we never really have felt that there could be a world where people lived in peace and that there could be multilateralism and free trade We were hopelessly optimistic, and we should have taken into account the 5,000 years of human history before World War II and recognized that at its base, people go to war with each other, and it's the rules of the strong.

That was basically Rubio's speech right there. What I like to see, people like the former leader of Estonia who's now the foreign policy chief at the European Union, Kaya Callas, and you had Frederick Mertz of Germany, and others from the European Union and elsewhere at this Munich security conference, just standing up to Donald Trump forcefully against the Trump regime and all of their despicable behavior. We saw President Zelenskyy giving a speech, strongly asserting Ukrainian sovereignty and basically saying, Stop trying to force us into concessions without security guarantees. We already agreed to lots of concessions. We've already agreed to so much. What else do you want us to agree to? You want us just to give away all of Eastern Ukraine to Vladimir Putin without any security guarantees, without ceasefire, without putting it to a referendum of our people? And so it's not really being reported that many places, but there are going on right now, supposedly, trilateral meetings in Geneva following the Munich Security Conference, trilateral discussions between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. But let's face it, Russia has never agreed at any point in time to a single concession of anything, not even a short ceasefire from I remember a few weeks back when Donald Trump said, Putin agreed temporarily to not attack Ukraine for a few days because how cold it is in Ukraine.

Putin gave me his word, Donald Trump said. And what happened as soon as Donald Trump said that? Putin launched one of his biggest ballistic missile, Shahid drone, attacks on Ukraine since the war began. There's never even been a scintilla of compromise by Russia, and there has been massive compromise by Ukraine. Ukraine has said, Okay, you want us to hold the presidential election, even though there's a war where ballistic missiles and Shahid drones are running on? Fine. We'll do an election. You want us to do a referendum to the people of Ukraine about giving up most of Eastern Ukraine, Donbas, Donetsk, other era? Okay, we'll do it. How about then just a 30 to 45 day ceasefire so we can create the circumstances to allow a vote to take place. Russia, what say you? No, we're not going to do that ever. Instead, Putin goes to Donald Trump and talks about $12 trillion economic deals when Russia's entire GDP is $2 trillion annually. But that's the language of these con artists. That's the language of the Epstein class. That's the language of these fraudsters, just lies while people suffer. And that's why Starting where we did at this episode of what's going on in Düsseldorff, seeing those floats at the carnival there is frankly a perfect symbolism of what's taking place in the world right now.

And it is horrifying as an American to see this. It's horrifying for anybody to see this. And of course, it's horrifying to learn that the depths of depravity in the Epstein files, frankly, has no bottom. The depths Continue. From what we've seen and what we've observed. Oh, my gosh, when you look at those documents and records, 38,000 references to Donald Trump in over 5,000 documents, more references to Donald Trump in the Epstein files that have been released than Harry and Harry Potter, than God or Jesus in the freaking Bible, folks. So yeah, that float of Donald Trump punching Jesus in the face and giving him a black eye, that's pretty accurate stuff right there. And then we learn and hat tip to news four in the UK for a report. But you know on the Midas Touch Network, I've been telling you this as a former litigator where the document production number of terabytes just didn't add up to me. It makes no sense that this is all the documents. I'm like, there's clearly more. There seems to be, based on the latest reporting from news four and others, us. There could be as much as 50 terabytes of documents still missing, and that what has been produced constitutes only 2%.

So the 3 million redacted files that have been produced, unlawfully redacted, constitutes, it seems, only 2% of the files, and that there are 50 terabytes, 98% has not been turned over. It's not simply another 3 million that Todd Blanch talked about that he was not turning because the Trump regime is making frivolous privilege claims. That's the tip of the iceberg. There's likely as many as 50 terabytes of files that have not been produced. I think those are some of the most devastating and damaging documents that have not been produced. Where are all the financials and the bank records? There was a money laundering scheme adjacent to the child sex trafficking ring totaling $1. 2 billion or so. So where are all of those records? Where are the daily, monthly, weekly, annual financials? We should be seeing all the transactions. Which bank accounts were sending money to which people. That exists somewhere. Let us see those records. Where are the FBI investigative reports? Where are the witness statements that we know don't exist? Where are those? They're called the 302s. Where are those? Where are all the internal emails and internal memos and investigative steps? Where are all of those?

Where are the CIA records and the national security records? When you report on the Epstein files, you have a duty to the public not to veer into areas of conspiracy and areas of hypotheticals. But what's in the files, when you just look at the documents, sometimes you listen to yourself speaking and you say, Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist? And then you go, No, I'm just reading the documents. And that's part of what the Trump regime wanted to do by spreading all the QAnon lies and spreading all of this stuff for so long by projecting what they were doing onto others. They wanted you to question the very existence of reality itself while the Epstein class feasted on all of us, while the Epstein predator class international in scope, prey on little girls and prayed on the world. When you look at the Epstein files and you Epstein knowing about the annexation of Crimea days before it was going to take place, knowing about Brexit before it was going to take place, meeting or talking about meetings with Serge Lavrov before Trump met with Putin during the first administration. Talking about hoisting up people like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil with Steve Banon.

Talking about toppling Pope Francis. You have messages here from the CIA. This is what I mean. I'm like, Man, you're talking about the CIA and Jeffrey Epstein? I mean, look, this is a real document. Efta 01089. 9, 5, 6, 5, dated July 29, 2011, from the CIA to Epstein's lawyer, Martin G. Weinberg. Epstein's lawyer makes a public records request for all communications and references and messages regarding Epstein's involvement in the CIA. Epstein has his lawyer, Foya, the CIA, so that he can have leverage on the government as part of a black campaign. The CIA says, With respect to responsive records that would reveal a classified connection to the CIA in accordance with Section 3. 6a of executive order, 13. 526, as amended, the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request. Take a look at the National Security Agency letter. This is after Epstein's lawyers appealed over and over again to get the records that they claimed show that Epstein was a CIA or NESA asset for the United States. July 30th, 2014, this replies to your letter. This is from the National Security Agency to Epstein's representative, replies to your letter dated March fifth, 2014.

This your client has requested from the National Security Agency Regency, Records, documents, communications, memorandum, orders, agreements, and/or instructions relating to or referring to Mr. Epstein that were created from January 1, 2000 to January 2, 2014, and were prepared, received, transmitted, collected, and/or maintained by the National Security Agency. It says, I've concluded that the appropriate response is to continue to neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any intelligence material on the subject of your client's request pertaining to any NSA, CSS, intelligence programs or activities, including programs authorized under Section 215 of the US Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as amendment. The existence or nonexistence of any intelligence information you requested remains exempt from disclosure pursuant to 5USC, Section 552 sub B sub 1, which protects properly classified information. In terms of Donald Trump's references in Epstein files. I just had this debate with somebody in the media. We were talking about a little of his connection was not great. And so hard to hear what we were saying when we were trying to have a substantive debate on this issue. But he used the line that I've heard before, there's nothing in the files that shows that Donald Trump engaged in any any criminal conduct or any crimes.

We don't see that in the file. There's nothing incriminating in the files. And I said, well, to be charged with a crime, someone has to be charged. So a actual crime and a charge requires a prosecutor to investigate and file criminal charges. I said, one of the issues that we've seen in the Epstein files is that there was clearly lots of allegations that were made, very serious allegations that were made, and a failure to investigate, to which the person said, Well, I don't buy it because why wouldn't Biden's DOJ investigate these issues if there were these crimes? My point is, first off, Merrick Garland didn't investigate a lot of things that I think that Merrick Garland and Biden's DOJ should have done. I think that Biden's DOJ said, Oh, they were weapons weaponized against Donald Trump. I think that they were fearful, frankly, of having the perception of being weaponized, that they were still labeled as being weaponized and didn't do the things that they should have done because they viewed it, I think, wrongfully as they would get political backlash, but they ended up getting the political backlash and not doing the investigation. I don't think that that is exculpatory to Donald Trump, what Biden's DOJ did or didn't do.

I think that This is the whole point of the Epstein files discussion by putting it through a political prism. I could care less if it was a Trump DOJ, a Biden DOJ, a Trump I DOJ, an Obama DOJ, or a George W Bush DOJ. Looking at this through a politics as usual lens misses the point. What we do know is from reviewing the files is that there was and is a powerful class, an Epstein class. And in my personal opinion, Trump is at the heart of what I consider to be this Epstein class that cover-ups for each other. That's why my my opinion, I use that terminology. It's this cover-up racket. And why is he covering it up? In my opinion, it's based on all of the conduct that we've seen him and the DOJ engage in. And I have a First Amendment right to express my opinion here freely. I think the First Amendment still exists, so I will declare that opinion. But to me, this Epstein class is not domestic in scale, and it's not necessarily one political party in scale. To me, it's clear that Trump's a main character in this thing because of the sheer volume of his references and the volume of those references before he even got into politics.

But it's international in scope and powerful people, royalty, kings and queens and princesses and princes and national security advisors and ambassadors and leaders and sultans. Epstein was in the middle of all of this, and he happened to also be a great friend of Donald Trump, and Trump said he's a great guy who likes women on the younger side. That's what Trump said about him at the height of Epstein sex trafficking. I also said to the individual who I was having this discussion or debate with. I just said it's undisputed that Mar-a-Lago was one of the sites of the child sex trafficking. Mar-a-lago was used for that, at least by Epstein. Virginia Jufrey was a child who was sex trafficked, who worked at Mar-a-Lago. From all of the reporting out there, the Mar-a-Lago spa was brought to Epstein's place down the block. Over and over and over and again. There's apparently a redacted document that shouldn't be redacted, that based on what lawmakers are saying, seems to come from Trump's lawyer to Epstein's lawyer, showing that Epstein was actually never banned from Mar-a-Lago, and that he was never even a member of Mar-a-Lago, so thus could not be banned from Mar-a-Lago, that he was a guest in Trump's friend, and that's how he arrived.

But we see all the back channel communications taking place. And I always say this. I go, Isn't it an undisputed fact, number one, that Donald Trump was found civilly liable for sexual assault? Civily liable by a federal jury? Isn't that an undisputed fact? Undisputed fact. Undisputed fact number two, wasn't Mar-a-Lago used as a situs of the sex trafficking? In the law, we would say these are summary judgment undisputed facts. Three, isn't Donald Trump on tape saying that he sexually assaults women and he's rich and he gets away with it. Says he grabs women by their vaginas and use the different word for it. And he says, When you're rich, you get away with it. And then when he was asked about it at a deposition, he said, Fortunately or unfortunately, that's just true of men for thousands of years, is what he said. Isn't it true that when Donald Trump ran beauty pageants, he said that he inspected the girls naked without their consent? He would look at them naked. When you're in charge of beauty pageants, you get to inspect them is what he says. Isn't it true that Donald Trump said that Virginia Jew fray was stolen from him by Epstein?

He used the term stolen. You add up these these undisputed facts. I mean, Donald Trump's the guy who's claiming that the birthday letter that he sent wasn't the birthday letter and that there was secret time travelers that went back in time. It's utterly absurd. It's utterly ridiculous. So I give you just those undisputed facts plus the allegations. To me, it's obvious. So when Donald Trump is out there, I mean, you saw the allegations. We've read those allegations that are in there. And it's not a defense to me. You go, oh, Biden's DOJ didn't investigate. Merrick Garland should have done a lot more things early on that he should have. Let's not hoist that up as the golden standard of prosecutorial, whatever. No, screw that. I think a lot of Americans, I think most Americans are not viewing this through political lenses. Finally, that's an important breakthrough. Because very frequently on the Midas Touch Network, it would be a very big understatement to say I'm critical of Donald Trump in this regime. But because I am, people are like, oh, well, that makes you this and this and that. And then I go, I'm just trying to use the lawyer lens that I once used when I was a litigator to assess the facts and the issues.

And sure, does Does that mean that when I assess my values and my empathy and where I believe the truth more closely resides and how I want people to be protected and how I don't want this Epstein class to be ripping away people's health care and taking away people's ability to afford homes, that I don't want private equity gobbling up the home market and screwing people over in I go, Yeah, look, if you wanted to put a label on me, that makes me progressive. That's fine. But what we're talking about here is just the reality and the truth and the facts. When Donald Trump's on Air Force One and he's like, I'm fully vindicated. These files fully vindicate me. Quite the content. They fully vindicate you. Just put aside everything I even said about all the things we know about Donald Trump. If you just assessed his behavior from the past five days with regard to these files, you are running a company. I'll do a law school hypothetical exam. You're running Company X. You learn that your employee who previously assured you about hiring him never had any further interactions with Epstein because he was so disgusted other than one interaction in 2005.

You now find out that your employee brought employees' children and the children of friends to Epstein's Island where child sex trafficking was taking place. You learn those facts. Do you praise your employee? Do you fire your employee? Do you ignore it and pretend it's normal? Okay, The answer is to fire your employee, regardless of what company you're from. That's called ratification at that point. You're now ratifying that behavior, not to mention what nick went into business with him. You see Pam Bondi refusing to even look at, yet alone, meet the survivors who were there. You heard Goldman's questioning, and what Goldman said, all of the survivors would still have met with the DOJ. And your head of the DOJ is saying, The Dow, the Dow is 50,000. The Dow is 50,000. And you're okay with that? Even if we knew nothing about your behavior before, you are ratifying this conduct right here. That's what's going on. That's what sickens me. That's what sickens the American people. New Mexico, we learned, launching an investigation, their legislature, into the Zoro Ranch. By the way, it's like who owns the Zoro Ranch right now? It's a group called San Rafael, LL L-L-C.

It's a family called the Huffines, the Huffines, Don Huffines, his son, Russell Huffines. Don Huffines describes himself as a mager Republican dozier. He's running for Texas Comtroller. The Huffines family made their money when their great grandfather in the 1920s launched a car dealership during the beginning days of car dealerships. So this family has had generational money. They don't explain why they bought the Zoro Ranch in 2023. They negotiated a discount at auction from 27 million to 12. 7 million or something like that because of the history involved. So they somewhat knew the history based on negotiating it down that amount of money. The son, Russell, works for the White House right now. Are all of these people connected? And now they said, Oh, well, now that the state legislature has voted to investigate, and they're doing a truth committee into what went down at Zora Ranch. The Huffines said, okay, we're willing to be cooperative now. But it's also notable in this photo that I'm showing, where was Don Huffines in 2018. In 2018, in August, he was in Moscow meeting with Russian lawmakers to try to bridge US relations with Russia. He's one of those.

He's one of those. I always say, and I think it's important that we talk about it, too, when we talk about what's happening to make sure we understand the international dimensions of it. This is international in scope. If you're just viewing this through a myopic domestic politics lens, it's like you're bringing a butter knife to a fight against an F-35. Because the scale and scope of authoritarian creep is international and it's generational. What I mean by that is for so long, I'll show you a clip of Marco Rubio's speech in a little bit. Most of history was defined by strong men and the law of the strong prevailed over liberal democracy. And then in the 1700s, although you start to see some of this thinking develop in the late 1600s, you start to have enlightened thinking, and you have philosophers in France and elsewhere writing about freedom and liberty. But that was not the human experience. The human experience was medieval times and dark ages, and and authoritarians conquering each other in conquest. You start having enlightened thinking. That gets embodied in a Declaration of Independence in the United States. You see also French Revolution, and we start to see this enlightened thinking struggling with the forces of authoritarianism and this struggle still going back and forth between people like Napoleon and seizing power, and then you back and forth there.

But the US starts to show in a flawed way, not trying to act like this was some perfect system, this rooting of democracy, our Constitution, taking these enlightened ideas and showing that a Constitution, this is crazy thinking, that a Constitution that is rooted in these principles, can exist on good faith and that the Constitution is not that long, but yet the arc move towards a more perfect union and bettering our democracy, and spreading democracy across the world took root. And that became a powerful force internationally as well. And the spread of democracy, then the fight of democracy versus communism. We see as embodied in Russia, but which to me is more of a proxy for communism being the language of how these authoritarians could seize power and fight back against democracy. But ultimately, I think that the forces of democracy prevailed. But these authoritarians, these people in the Epstein class, in my opinion, is how I refer to them as, they've been trying to figure out how do you take down these systems of democracy. They use the same playbook, and they've created, they've sculpted the playbook, the anti Anti-woke, two genders, anti-immigrant, accusing the other side of being pedos.

What's the worst thing you can be? Say pedo. You accuse the other side of being pedos, and then someone has to say, I'm not that. I'm not that. A person struggles to be like, I'm not that. I'm not that. If you're being accused by the people who are doing it, so This is all part of the same playbook. Orban uses this playbook. Putin uses this playbook. The leader of Belarus uses this playbook. Javier Mallet uses this. They use the same playbook. That's why Marco Rubio is in Hungary with Orban right now, because this is part of the group. When you saw what Steve Banon and when you saw what Epstein were doing in trying to prop up this right wing playbook in other countries, trying to prop up the right wing groups in La Penne in France and Nigel Farage's reform party in the UK and Pierre Polyev in Canada, all this stuff is connected. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Bukele in El Salvador. All of the stuff was being connected to each other. It was create destruction and chaos. The oligarchs then feast on the panic, on the ensuing panic. They start propping up things like cryptocurrencies where people flee to try to find stable coins in unstable times.

The rich get richer, they seize people's assets, and their currency in these files, when you looked at it and what they were talking about or as Epstein was using, it was everybody was blackmailing everybody. That's what was going down in these files as you really go back and understand it. Then so when you see Epstein referenced in the these CIA messages and in these NSA messages, you start to make these connections about what's really going down here. And so when Donald Trump goes and makes the comment that he has no involvement at all and that he's vindicated. It's like, what the hell are you talking about, you crazy human? The hell are you talking about? Here, play this clip of Trump on Air Force One saying he's vindicated. Let's play. Hillary Clinton said in an interview today that she and her husband are getting pulled into the Epstein matter to divert attention from you and that your administration has something to hide. What's her response to that? I have nothing to hide. I've been exonerated. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. They went in hoping that they'd find it and found just the opposite.

I've been totally exonerated. In fact, Jeffrey Epstein was fighting that I don't get elected with some author, a sleezbag, by the way. I've been totally No, they're getting pulled in, and that's their problem. I don't know. They got to see what happens. But I watched her in Munich, and she seriously has Trump derangements in her. Do you think that she should publicly testify? I've been totally exonerated on Epstein. It's really interesting because they've been pulled in. Think of it. They've been pulled in. Clinton and many other Democrats have been pulled in. Now, I want to show you in Munich, though. First, I want to show you Hillary Clinton, calling out this right-wing troll. But then I want to show you what this right-wing troll, Czech Deputy Prime Minister, Peter Machinka, had to say. Why don't I first show you what this right-wing troll said? I want to show the clip of Clinton clashing with the Deputy PM, Peter Machinka, after he defended Trump as responding to policies that went too far. Let's watch this guy. Let's play this clip. We We saw the cancel culture. We saw the woke revolution. I don't agree with the gender revolution, the climate alarmism.

Which gender? Women having their rights? No, let Peter go on. I think there are two genders, but some of us think that there is more than one or more than two, sorry, more than two gender. I think there is male and female, and the rest probably is a social construct. Correct. So this is something that went too far.

But does that justify selling out the people of Ukraine who are on the front lines dying to save their freedom and their two genders?

If that's what you're worried about? Can I please finish my point? I'm sorry. It makes you nervous. I'm really sorry for that. It makes me nervous.

It makes me very.

No, but seriously. That right there, just so you can see it, is the playbook. Because what I'll show you when we get back is, Hillary Clinton is saying, democracy, values, empathy, support Ukraine. Here's what we need to do. Here's what America should stand for. Here's what the world needs to do. Here's how we correct these things. Then they come back with... It's international. The things that... What the right wing authoritarians analyzed at a psychological level is how to brainwash humanity. These concepts trigger in people's reptilian brains things that are deeply rooted and deep-seated. It galvanizes people to not address the logical arguments that are before you. Then you layer on top of that what's happening with AI and counterintuitively counterintuitively, you have this situation where with more knowledge out there, you actually have less knowledge out there, and you create a Lord surf dynamic that existed in futalism. And this is what I I want to let you know this is what they're thinking about. This is how they're doing it. You know the playbook right now. Let's take our first and only quick break of the show. We'll be right back, but we've got a lot to discuss on this episode.

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Welcome back. Great ad reads Jordy. Isn't Jordy just the best? Even when he's not hosting with me, I think that his ad Do the trick, are sufficient. If you hear my dog is in the background, I think they agree as well. I showed you what that check deputy spewing right wing points are, but I could show you that those are Orban's points. Those are Bukele's points. Those are Javier Mallet's points. Those are the successors to Le Pen's party's points. Nigel Farage says those things. That's what the AFD is saying in Germany. That is why it is the US foreign policy to disrupt the European Union. That's America's stated 2026 foreign policy paper is to try to destroy the European Union and prop up right wing authoritarians, lend support to the AFD. And by the way, who's in Hungary right now? Well, last week, Putin went first with his representatives. Now you You had Rubio there with Orban. You had the AFD leader show up as well. They stick together. When I said, If you don't recognize that that's going on, you are in a fight against an F-35 with a butter knife. That's what's going on.

And no one talks about this stuff. No one talks about this stuff, really, unless you're reading WONKI, Foreign Affairs papers. But that's That's why we want to make this information and knowledge accessible to you. By the way, we're so close to 6 million subscribers. I just realized that. Can you help us hit 6 million subscribers? That would be fantastic. So if you can, just double check that you're subscribed and recommend the Midas Touch podcast and the show to others. Also, you can go to store. Midas touch. Com and get the Midas gear. Anyway, let me show you what Hillary Clinton was saying, because this, to me, frames internationally what's going on. You saw the MAGA, right wing extremist argument. Here's the argument of multilateralism, pro-European Union, free trade, cooperation, democracy. Let's play. He has betrayed the West. He's betrayed human values. He's betrayed the NATO Charter, the Atlantic Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A lot of what has been done before to try to make sense of how difficult it is to restrain people who want unaccountable power. None of us in this room, including all of us on this panel, would choose to live under a regime that was so unaccountable that it could act with impunity the way that Putin does, except that's who Trump is modeling himself.

Well, first, I think you really don't like him. That is absolutely true. But I really, not Why do I not like him?

I don't like him because of what he's doing to the United States and the world.

I think you should take a hard look at it if you think that there is something good that will come out of it. What I think, and again, that's one of their tricks on the right wing. Oh, it just seems that you don't like him. It's like, you're the anti-Trump podcast. You're anti-Trump. You hate Trump. I don't hate the guy because he's Trump. There are a lot billionaires out there who do bad things. There are a few who do good things, but there are mostly a lot of them who... I don't devote my energy going there because they're not necessarily, in an individual level, disrupting the global world order, the way that Donald Trump and his regime are. The reason I'm anti-Trump is not because I don't like him. Of course, I don't like him, but I don't like him for very specific reasons. And those reasons I lay out, because to me, I don't like somebody if they're taking away your health care. I don't like someone when they're depriving you of the ability for you to afford a home or to afford rent and then lies to you and claims they've made it so much better.

I don't like somebody who betrays our allies and lends a hand and affirmatively supports our enemies. I don't like somebody who's been found civilly liable for sexual assault and who was close friends with Jeffrey Epstein and said Epstein was a great guy who likes women on the younger side. It's a direct quote. I don't like people who host beauty pageants and say they use it to see girls naked and that when you host the pageants, you're an inspector. I don't like people like that who give away our classified information to the United Arab Emirates, the Qataris, and the Saudis in exchange for personal business deals that enrich themselves. I don't like people who engage in behavior that attacks our educational institutions. I don't like people who put mass agents, border patrol and ICE Gestapo on the street to terrorize, torture and kill people in this country. I don't like people who significantly harm immigrant populations, put people into concentration camps. We have a two month old being sent to an emergency room because there were no doctors at a concentration camp called the Dilly Detention Center in Texas, where there was no doctors on site from this private prison camp that's making money off the taxpayers.

They are getting enriched as two months old and little children are getting rounded up and put in these freaking warehouses, and the little baby almost died spending their life in a concentration camp. I don't like the conduct of a regime that after terrorizing, torturing, kidnapping children and their parents and families and throwing them in these camps, are now currently, as I'm recording this, rounding up the children, stealing the letters and artwork that the children are creating because ProPublica did a story the letters coming out from the children who are telling the stories about being tortured by this regime. That's why I don't like the person who goes and says that Canada is the 51st state that says we need to take over Greenland. I don't like the person who puts a photo of himself with Vladimir Putin in the oval office above his grandkids. I don't like that person. I don't like that person for those reasons and many, many more reasons that I could an entire episode delineating. It's not, You don't like him. What does that even mean? I'm not in third grade. I'm not in second. It's not a matter of, Oh, will you be my Valentine?

I like you. I don't like you. It's a matter of humanity. And these are the conversations that we get to discuss here on this show, because it's just me and I get to speak to you about... But these are the things that weigh heavily on my mind beyond doing an episode, and here's what Trump did at the press conference, and here's what he did. The connective tissue is this, is this discussion about the broader geopolitical ramifications and the broader ramifications on our basic humanity and our decency. I don't like somebody who makes a post today when you have someone like Reverend Jesse Jackson who died at the age of 84. Donald Trump's post is, Reverend Jesse Jackson is dead at 84. Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a racist by the scoundrels and lunatics on the radical left, Democrats all, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse. He had much to do with the election without acknowledgement or credit of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand. I don't like that's what you say when somebody dies. You have to make it about yourself and attack former President Obama after posting photos of former President Obama and Michelle Obama on the bodies of apes.

Then when you're asked if you would apologize for putting the photos of the first Black President and first Black first lady and having their photos go on apes in a photo, and you don't apologize, and you say that the photo and the video that had their faces on apes was strongly about voter fraud. I mean, you're just a terrible human being. Then you layer on top of that all the Epstein stuff. It's like, who the hell is? Who are these freaking people? You wonder how we got here. Actually, the Epstein files, to me, is like the decoder. It's like the way you decoded the Rosetta Stone. That's the word I was looking for, of the hieroglyphics. The hieroglyphics in this zeitgeist is, how the hell did we get her? How did this happen? Why is that happening? Why is this happening? How did this relate to this? To me, the Epstein files are viewed on multiple levels. One level is, of course, the horrific and atrocious sex trafficking that's taking place of thousands of girls who are victims. That is in there. There's another layer that is taking place, though, within these files that, to me, is further the Rosetta Stone of what's happening in the world because you know how Forrest Gump in the movie is in the center of all of these zeitgeist defining events in American history as it goes through everything?

To me, Epstein is like Petto Trump. I mean, it's not Petto Trump, it's like Petto Gump. That was a Petto Trump. Petto Gump. It's like Petto Gump. I see why I said that. But that's what it is. If you were to do Epstein's movie, you have Forrest Gump and you've got Petto Gump. He's like the central in all of these things. You're like, Oh, you were there when that happened. You were there when that happened. You were there when that happened. I wasn't crazy to think this was happened. I wasn't crazy to think that all of these things are actually inextricably intertwined with other. Then we have state regime media here now in the United States. As I'm describing it this way for you, how do you think Jesse Waters and state regime media is talking about it? Here's what Jesse Waters had to say, Let's play this clip of Jesse Waters talking about the Epstein files. Let's play. It looks like he's mostly just a fixer, a guy who advises. He helps people with their problems. Sometimes those problems are, You need a girl. Or some penicillin. If you need it, he's got it.

He's a sex rabbi. He should perform at the halftime show next week. Now, we could pass that off as just, It's a ridiculous show. That's brainwashing right there. They are conditioning. They know what they're doing. They have embedded themselves in the living room of Americans, and they are now conditioning that all of these things that you've seen, it's funny and it's a joke, and that there's no difference between the halftime show of Bad Bunny and what you see in the files. He's a sex rabbi, and he's like a fixer, and we've heard all these terms. What's penicillin? I mean, making a joke about treatment for sexually transmitted diseases in connection with sex trafficking. I want you to know that it is not random what you see. It is part of an affirmative brainwashing campaign that is taking place. Whether it's done, I'm not suggesting that they're necessarily sitting in a room, how do we brainwash people today? Perhaps I'm not suggesting it's necessarily that explicit. But the role of how you defend the indefensible and prop up these types of people has a historical playbook that spans 5,000 years. It was fascinating to me when I heard Marco Rubio speaking at the Munich conference, and he spoke about this history of 5,000 years and how it was foolish that we would all believe that we could be different than we were in the past.

Now, Jeremy, I don't want to play the one with Rubio to Victor Orban. People get it. He's there. Actually, you know what? Fine. Just play the clip with Rubio to Victor Orban, and then I'm going to play the one at Munich. Just Rubio to Victor Orban first. Let's play. If we got the- But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion. That we had entered, quote, the end of history, that every nation would now be a liberal democracy, that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood, that the rules-based global order, an overused term, would now replace the national interest, and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world. This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history. Yeah, so that was not the Orban clip, but that was the one I wanted to play anyway, so it's fine that we played that one. But I want you... Again, that's the type of clip that we can just push aside and say, Well, so what?

What are you trying to get out of that? This is the view. The view is Is that what came before, this is the Trump view, but this is the Epstein class view, and we see it in the files. They hate liberal democracies. They hate those institutions that Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, a former secretary, was talking about there. They hate that, and they've tried to find ways to poke holes in it and destroy it. Why? Because authoritarians existed for 5,000 years before the American experiment and before the spread of liberal democracies. So the authoritarians in the arc of history want to go back to the time of what existed, frankly, before. And what he's saying is that really what's happened after World War II Which, by the way, has had America as the so-called leader of the free world, and America leading these international institutions and the United Nations. For all of its flaws, we can debate it, but we've avoided at least a... We We haven't avoided wars, let's be clear, but we've avoided a world war since World War II and have constrained it with certain institutions. What Rubio is saying there is we should return to what humanity was like before then.

The experience of what humanity was before is the real experience, not moving the arc of history forward, but actually moving the arc of history backwards. He's saying it out loud. The playbook is there in front of our eyes, and I don't think we can look at the Epstein files divorced from that because as I mentioned, what they talked about over and over again is precisely disruption, chaos, anarchy. Then they feast on people's panic. People move towards cryptocurrencies and other assets. They're already there. They're the ultimate insider traders because they are They're the ones not just moving the markets, they're destroying the world, and they're a few steps ahead of it. That's why I'm like, if we're just focusing on domestic politics, we're missing the real picture right here. Now, so what is Trump doing as he's confronted now with the fact that he's been figured out? Americans say, Okay, well, his polling is like atrocious. It's like the worst ever right now. It's the negative 30, 40. I mean, the guy is polling at 36%, 37%, and there seems to be no floor. It just goes lower and lower. Rig the midterms. Who do you go after?

Who does the Epstein class go after? Women and children. We're seeing in the detention centers, children in concentration camps, children under attack. But when they talk about the Save Act, they're talking about, in many ways, disenfranchizing women. And so the plan, as you know, for the midterms when they want to push this Save Act through. Fortunately, the filibuster in the Senate is actually blocking the Senate from passing the SAVE Act, although Trump and MAGA wants to try to destroy the filibuster to push forward the SAVE Act. But one of their main goals is to disenfranchize women. Again, this isn't conspiratorial. Under the Save Act, when a woman shows up to vote, she would have to bring her birth certificate, her license, and a signed declaration stating that she would be the same. She's the same person on the license as the birth certificate, and any name change is reflected because of marriage. You have to do an affidavit or a passport. You'd have to do all of those things. The idea is to discourage women to vote. You have to find your... Hopefully, what they want to hope is that don't know about this. They forget their birth certificates.

They don't bring it. They don't carry their birth certificates on them. They don't carry a passport. Obviously, this would disincentivize people who may not have a passport the people who are citizens but don't have a passport from voting. The way they try to frame this, and I'll just show you the two examples before we go, is that you are being offensive to women by saying women are unable to figure out how to find their birth certificate and their passport and do a declaration. Their gaslighting is that you are sexist to suggest that women should not be able to find all of these documents. For you to argue that women shouldn't be uniquely put through these hurdles, you are saying that you hate women is basically their argument that they're making. I'll show you how they make the argument. Here's Tom Emmer on the Save America Act. Let's not treat women like this. Women are brilliant. Women can figure this out. You're saying they don't know how to bring their birth certificate and their passport and do a declaration? Watch what he says here, play this clip. Let's not treat women. You worked with a lot of these women in Congress.

They are brilliant. They're smart. Why do you suggest that they know how to prove their citizenship by bringing a passport or a birth certificate or a marriage certificate and or the new Social Security card that gets issued right after they get married? This is all nonsense. This is something that's common sense, almost Almost all Americans agree with it. It's time has come. You must prove that you're a citizen when you register to vote. Makes sense. You got plenty of time to get that done, and you got to show up with a photo ID to prove that you are the person that is indeed the citizen entitled to It's an easy thing. It should be done tomorrow. Now, I don't just want to show you. I want to show you the tactic of the manipulation, how they are framing it. And then they use their state regime media to push this point, and they're like, oh, they hope their viewers go, wait a minute. So am I discriminating against women by saying women aren't smart enough to to do this? They're gaslighters. I mean, these are the height of sociopaths, right? I mean, they're pretending they care about women at the same time they're covering up the Epstein files, too.

Seriously? Here is what Chip Roy said. You'll just see it's the same message here. Play this clip. A lot of people are asking questions. They're saying, Well, that's going to prevent women who've got complications with name changes. Hold on. We actually allow a fail safe that you go and you can sign an affidavit that says, This is my driver's license. My name is Sarah Jones on my driver's license. Here's my birth certificate, Sarah Smith. I certify under penalty of perjury that I'm the same person. We allow that, and we allow states to make other mechanisms under their laws to make sure that they match it. We're just requiring a process. A process targeting women to sign affidavits in order to vote? What? I want you to hear their words. And what their plans are. I'll leave you with this, right? Think about the issues that you're going through right now and that Americans are going through right now, right? Struggling to pay rent, can't buy a home, your kids are living with you because they can't even come close to afford anywhere. There's no hope for them. And you see the hopeless look and the dread on their faces.

You have to make decisions. Can I or health care? Do I hope that I just don't get sick this year? Do I not show up at a doctor because Trump and Mag has just ripped away my health care and now they claim they made prescription drug prices cheaper? When we know that's not true, they keep saying, Most favored nations when everything's more expensive, can't go out and afford things, I can't get a good education. My kids don't have anywhere near the future that I have. Heck, my future right now, I'm not sure how I'm going to get by. I feel psychologically tortured, living paycheck to paycheck. What do I do? All I see is the United States provoking more wars across the country. I see endless suffering taking place throughout the world. I hear Donald Trump declaring peace in the Middle East and that everybody's happy in Gaza, yet I know that more people keep on getting killed, women and children, in Palestine every single day, and they keep pretending there's a ceasefire there. He's exhorting Zelenskyy and trying to, yet again, threaten total capitulation there. He keeps claiming that there are all these wars being solved, but there just seems to be more wars and more treasury coming out from America every single day.

You see all of the posts that this guy is making as his family continues to grift and grift and grift. A jobs recession The environment is toxic. They cancel the endangered finding that greenhouse gasses are health issues. They're out there right now while there's mast agents going on the street torturing people, covering up the Epstein files. While all of this is taking place, they're out there talking about making women sign affidavits to vote. This is what's on their mind. Then the media presents this as Just another side of the discussion. If I go on one of these shows, I have to debate these people and discuss with them all these crazy things that they want to talk about, about why women need to sign affidavits, and I need to prove why women don't need to sign affidavits. I need to prove why to sign affidavits and why that's a ridiculous thing, and we can't talk about the real issues facing the American people. As Senator Bernie Sanders always says to me, The most important issues are those being least discussed, and I would go, I think because Epstein class doesn't want us to discuss those issues.

They want to silence these issues. They want to cover up these issues. They don't want us talking about these issues. And I think it's incumbent upon us to talk about those issues and to bring them to light and to contextualize it. And I know sometimes a lot of you feel, why do you show these Fox videos? I hate it when you do the Fox videos, Ben, because if I wanted to watch Fox, I would turn it on. I'm not showing it to you to show you Fox clips I'm showing it to you to contextualize the brainwashing that's taking place. If you have people in your family who are brainwashed by this stuff, you know how to speak to them. That's why I show that. It's the same reason why I show Trump clips. I don't like showing Trump clips. I don't like listening to his voice. But I also know that part of the way we fight it is we can't let those words become the truth when they're lies, and we need to look it, confront it, fact check it, show you the receipts. That's why I go play this clip, play this clip.

We put it all together. So anyway, I hope you like this new format here. It's called Ben on Breaking News. Talk about breaking news, and then I wander off into professorial philosophies, but I think are really important for us to speak about and chat. Oh, I have some good news. I'm going to be doing a show with Katie Fange at this time slot as well. And so you all love Katie Fang on Thursday. I think we're going to try to launch me and Katie Fang on Thursday. I look forward to Katie Fang being on this time slot as well, which will be Great. That's all I got for you. Help us get to 6 million subscribers. If you're in here right now, got 10,000 people watching. Here's a way you can help. Send a text message to 10 people you know right now and just say, Hey, I just watched this guy, Ben. It's called Ben on Breaking News on the Midas Touch podcast. They are 40,000 subscribers away from 6 million. Give them a shot. Subscribe. Do that to 10 people right now. That's the best way you can help me because I'm sure you're all subscribed already.

If you were like, How can we help, Ben? How can we help? Do that. That'll be a huge help. All right. Thanks, everybody. More videos I'm going to make right now. Hang out with my little girl. I think pop up is going to be in town soon also. See pop up on Thursday or Friday. That'll be cool. Thanks, everybody. Shout out, Midas Mighty. The Midas.

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