Transcript of MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 5/12/26 New

We have a lot to discuss on today's Midas Touch podcast. We'll give you the latest update on Donald Trump's phony ceasefire. Iran responded to Donald Trump's demand that Iran surrender. Trump ignored Iran's 10-point framework once again. Iran responded, agree to our 10-point framework. Then Donald Trump said, Iran's response is totally unacceptable. Thank you for your attention to this matter. And then today at a press conference that involved a crisis over male sperm count. This press conference was super creepy with RFK Jr. and female politicians. Donald Trump said it was a genius move to have Iran close the Strait of Hormuz. Why didn't Obama and Biden think about it? Because now it's made America greater, because now everyone needs American oil. So this was the plan the whole time. Give Iran control over the Strait of Hormuz. Also at the press conference, Donald Trump was sleeping when he wasn't talking. He was sleeping. And then the White House put out a statement after the Midas Touch Network said, yeah, he's sleeping. And they go, he's blinking. Stop being— spreading fake news. He's blinking. He's not sleeping. We'll cover that. Also, everything Donald Trump does, he makes just incredibly weird.

I mean, the Indiana college football team was at the White House today. Donald Trump didn't even know the name of the coach of the team. And then Trump started talking about the ballroom and how handsome some of the men were and how the fact that they're good looking makes Trump not like them because he doesn't like good looking. It just made the whole thing so damn weird. Just can we get through one thing where you don't behave like an actual lunatic? You know, and with all the drama, chaos, devastation taking place in the United States, it was good to see the people of Hungary rejoice as it was finally the swearing in and inauguration of Peter Magyar. And after making it official that Viktor Orbán, one of Trump's friends and fellow authoritarians, was finally kind of expelled and pushed out, just to see the sheer joy of people in Hungary in front of the Parliament building in Budapest gave, I don't know about you, it gave me hope. And I'm like, all right, a few years, that's gonna be us in a few, Hopefully sooner, but there is a future without authoritarians and we will too get through this.

Also, you know, we've been hearing about Golden Ballroom this and Triumphal Arch that. Now one of Donald Trump's big grifts and oddities is the reflecting pool, right? At the end of last week, he drove his motorcade through a reflecting pool that already suffers from cracks caused by the fact that DC is a swamp. And so Donald Trump's solution to all of this is to paint the reflecting pool, which already has algae and cracking issues and leak issues. Donald Trump's plan is drive the motorcade over it. And then he called in his pool guy. I'm not making that— Trump called in his pool guy, gave his pool guy a no-bid contract where there's like a $4 to $5 million profit margin apparently in this no-bid contract for Trump's own pool guy to paint it bright blue. To paint a reflecting pool bright blue and turn it into a pool. And this is what he's been talking about, as it seems that the war in Iran is very close to having open hostilities begin again as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. And as people in the United States are suffering right now and gas prices continue to go up, the people can't afford rent, people can't afford mortgages.

The consumer sentiment numbers, the worst in the history of the University of Michigan consumer sentiment. Survey. It, it was more than— it was worse than last month's, which was the prior worst in history, because that's how the American people are feeling now. We should also talk about Ukrainian President Zelensky, who at this point is calling Donald Trump out and actually showing what a strong leader looks like, because Trump claimed that he was able to do a 24-hour ceasefire where Trump called Zelensky on behalf of Putin and begged Zelensky not to attack the Russian parade on May 9th, which they call the Victory Day Parade in Russia. And Zelensky is like, okay, I'll agree to do it, but we got to do a prisoner swap. 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers get returned, we'll release 1,000 Russian soldiers. And then Zelensky agreed to do a ceasefire just for Red Square. Zelensky did it. And then Putin didn't release the Ukrainian prisoners. And so Zelensky didn't release the Russian prisoners. And then Zelensky is like, hey, Donald, you claim this was your ceasefire and Russia's not living up to it. We didn't attack Red Square. But isn't it just fascinating that Donald Trump said that he was going to end the war in 24 hours, and he can't even do a ceasefire of a small area for 24 hours?

Not within the first 24 hours. I mean, just think about that. We'll talk about this and more on the Midas Touch podcast. I'm Ben Myselis. Let's bring in Brett and Jordy. A lot to discuss, brothers. Brett, it's good to see you right there. Jordy, it's good to see you. Jordy, how are you doing? Jordy?

I'm doing well. Be fooled. Brett is— he's not frozen, Ben. I think that's your concern is Brett's frozen. No, he's actually just blinking with—

sorry, I was blinking. I was blinking.

I'm sorry. I genuinely thought you froze and we were gonna have to restart this all over again. And had a little panic.

No, I was, I was, I was blinking. You know, health experts recommend you get 7 to 9 hours of blinking every single day. I didn't get a good sleep. I mean, I didn't get a good blink last night. So I figured I had to get my blink on during this episode, you know.

No, it was really, really good.

How scared are you, Ben?

Ben was pretty scared. But hey, Ben and I could have done the show. We've done it before, just Ben and I without you, B. So don't—

I don't cue Ben into my bits.

For the audio listeners, my eyes were closed when we—

Can I just say this too? I'm really excited to get into tonight's show. I think we have, as Ben was saying at the upfront here, a lot to get into, a lot of interesting footage to show our live audience and for our audio listeners to really dig in and listen to. But as it relates specifically to the reflecting pool, and I know we'll get into this deeper, Trump has like a history of paying his pool people to do some obscure tasks, whether it's this reflecting pool, painting it blue, or wasn't there something going down in Mar-a-Lago with a pool person and trying to hide some documents?

Didn't that pool leak and destroy some of the classified documents or services? Yeah, something happened back there.

This kind of aligns really well with a lot of Trumpisms that we've seen over the course of the years. But neither here nor there.

He sure likes to decorate.

He loves to decorate.

Brett, anything to you before we kick it to Ben to get started?

Just, I mean, just look at how hideous this looks. I mean, come on, folks. Like, this is the, the blue paint on the bottom of the reflecting pool. And Trump posts these AI images, this AI slop on his social media platform of what it's going to look like. But he literally, he just tells the AI to like make the water blue. And then he says, this was Hussein Obama's pool. This is my pool. And like the AI doesn't even get the Lincoln Memorial pointed in the right direction. Like it's literally flipped. It's facing the wrong direction. It's facing backwards. We're living through like the dumbest dumbest times imaginable with, like, the dumbest, most dangerous idiot in charge. I'll have plenty to say throughout the episode, but we'll turn it over to Ben.

Ben, well, here's the thing. There was a lawsuit that was filed against Trump destroying the old reflecting pool and now painting it blue. It was one of these National Historic Preservation groups who also say, you know, the fact that the reflecting pool was a dark color and had a dark base, that's the point of a reflecting pool. I mean, it's a solemn tribute. It's a reflection. And quite literally is supposed to reflect the monuments also, and you reflect on it. It's not supposed to be a swimming pool. It's not supposed to be bright. And then also the issue with the reflecting pool that goes back to the time it was built is DC is a swamp. It gets very, very hot there. And so when you have intense—

I remember like a political candidate who had a whole slogan around DC being a swamp.

I just, I can't put my finger on it, but I feel like that was not in any way connected to the actual, like, atmosphere around DC and, like, the environment of DC actually being a swamp, though.

I think it was both. I mean, I think, I think the swamp and the swamp, it was a, there's a play on words, but yeah, I, I, I'm not giving them that much credit.

You're not convinced?

Not—

it was— I'll give him at least that.

Yeah, it's not really, not really a close call. The, the point that I want to make is that the issue that lots of presidents had to deal with— they didn't make the reflecting pool their top priority, but with National Park Services, etc., was it had algae buildup and it would have these cracks which would cause millions of gallons of water to leak. And that wasn't that environmentally friendly of a thing to have all this water leaking out and all of this algae in the area. And so Trump's solution which isn't a solution, but Trump's plan to fix it is let's drain it, then let's paint it blue. And then so for a short period of time, it's going to look bright blue. And then over time, though, what's going to happen? If you just looked at basic science, if you just understood what the problem is, it's not that it needed a $13 million paint job, okay? It needed real systemic change. But his solution is just paint over it. It's a symbolism here that we'll talk about in the episode as well, which is why I'm bringing it up at the front, not because I want to talk about the reflecting pool, but his solution is not actually coming up with a fix.

It's painted blue. But what's the science? If you paint it blue, well, it's going to attract more of the heat, which is going to lead to more cracks. It's going to cause more algae formation. If it's bright blue, you're going to eventually see all of the algae. It's going to ruin everything. The $13 million. Yeah, it's not going to look like what it looks like in the AI photos. And anyone who has a basic understanding of pool maintenance and science will tell you this is going to be very destructive and exacerbate the problem. Also, when you drive a motorcade over it for a publicity stunt in something that already suffers from cracks on its own based on nature causing the cracks with the heat. You driving over it with 20 vehicles, it's going to cause even more problems. Okay. And I think that's a great way to start, because if you think about it, this is Donald Trump's approach to everything, right? You give it a name. You call the catastrophic war in Iran with Trump and Netanyahu Epic Fury. And when that doesn't work, you come up with a new name, Project Freedom. And when that doesn't work, you come up with the new name.

What's Lindsey Graham calling it? Project Freedom Plus. Dude, Project Freedom lasted less than 24 hours where you're like, we're going to bring in our naval destroyers and we're going to bring these ships out the Strait of Hormuz. And Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and others like, okay, well, then we're not going to give you our air bases. And then Trump's like, all right, well, I'm not going to do that. Project Freedom victory. Epic Fury victory. We've now moved on. We've moved on to what? We may bring back Project Freedom. You bring it back and never— why are we even talking about this thing like it even existed? Like it was something that he did for like 24 hours. Everything with this guy is the announcement. The gold card, the gold card. We're going to bring in $5 trillion with the gold card.

Okay.

There's another lawsuit about the gold card. And we know from Howard Lutnick's testimony how many gold cards were sold to date. One. Hmm. But didn't you say there were 50,000 eligible people who were interested and it was going to bring in $5 trillion? Is that going to happen? No. And what happens in the lawsuit? Trump's DOJ admits, as it relates to the gold card, that it actually does not expedite anybody's visa process quicker than existing processes that exist. And the DOJ had to admit it because if it was some super special expediting process, guess what you would need? I don't know, a little something called a law. So you have Donald Trump saying, I brought in $18 to $21 trillion. Well, you didn't do that. You have Donald Trump saying, that I'm going to bring in $5 trillion with this. And it just turns out that everything is like, you know, we're just going to paint a little bit and then we're going to pretend everything is great, right? We're going to build 3 casinos right next to each other in Atlantic City. We'll paint it all gold and we'll give it all of these, you know, lavish names.

And then at the end of the day, it's like, so are you going to run the business? No, we're not going to run the business. Bankrupt, bankrupt, bankrupt. And that's what we're seeing over and over again. And so What is Donald Trump, you know, doing or not doing as it relates to the Strait of Hormuz? He's like frozen there. He thinks he's going to social media post and do some branding that's going to get him out of this, you know. Okay.

Project Freedom. Project Freedom Plus.

Epic Fury's over. All right. All right, guys, I'm going to unleash hell if you don't do this in 24 hours. I'm going to unleash this. I'm going to— and Iran's like, you realize that you're just a ranting, raving lunatic, like We're not the Republican Party. We're Iran. Like, we know that every time you've set these deadlines, you don't follow through. You then change the deadlines over and over again. I mean, what— April 8th, 2026, Donald Trump posted, the United States will work closely with Iran, which we have determined has gone through what will be very productive regime change. There will be no enrichment of uranium. And the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried nuclear dust. It is now and has been under very exacting satellite surveillance, Space Force. Nothing has been touched from the date of attack. We are and will be talking tariff and sanctions relief with Iran. Many of the 15 points already have been agreed to. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Remember, in early to mid-March, we were telling you what was really happening. Remember, at the Midas Touch Network, we said, look, Iran has a 10-point framework.

They've been very clear what their non-negotiables and red lines are. Iran views that they've won this war because all of the Trump regime's objectives have not been met. Regime change, removing the nuclear material, removing Iranians proxies, you know, installing a Trump puppet. None of it was achieved. And so Iran's like, why would we agree to things that you weren't able to achieve during the war? And when Donald Trump would threaten, I'm going to go and blow up all of your bridges and annihilate you and blow you out to the Stone Age and bomb me to the Stone Age and blow you up to the sun, all these things. He doesn't do it. And then he extends the deadline. And, you know, this weekend we just saw another example of that. End of last week, Trump goes, oh, they're really serious this time. They're going to give me a— they're really interested in my latest proposal. All Trump's proposal was is the same things that were rejected before. And by the way, Trump agreed not to make this proposal again when he previously agreed to Iran's 10-point framework. So it was not a shock. That Iran responded and said no.

And Iran's response was basically showing the 10-point framework. They, you know, they said— and they're trying to spell it out easy for Donald. They're like, okay, we're not going to talk about the nuclear material now. Okay, let's just agree at a very basic level to some basic points. Okay. We will agree that the Strait of Hormuz, you know, can go— can be opened through an Iranian-controlled route. But you got to remove sanctions. You've got to recognize our control over these Strait of Hormuz. You got to be willing to pay reparations. Why don't we start there, Donald? Let's keep it basic. And then Donald Trump's like, I don't like that plan. I don't like the plan. You know, I'm really angry at that. Okay, well, what are you going to do about it? You're either going to have to escalate this war and drag America back into open hostilities, which would cause a global depression. That's your— where you're out of munitions, even though you claim that's not true. We know Trump's out of munitions and the United States is out of munitions. Or you have to make concessions with Iran. I don't know what this other plan is where you post social media posts, but it's like you want to paint it blue and think it's all going to go away.

That's the best example. So Donald Trump is asked at this press conference today about, you know, the Strait of Hormuz. What's the status? And Trump says, actually, if you come to think about it, losing the Strait of Hormuz to Iran is, quote, genius. Because countries are buying all of their oil from Texas now. So it's all amazing. This is great, everybody. This was the goal from the outset. He literally says that here. Play this clip.

What's happening is when this first— when people heard about losing Hormuz, they said, oh, this is— it's genius. They're finding other locations. And some of those people I spoke to, companies and countries. Some of those people are going to continue to go to Texas. They like it better. They said it's an extra 45 minutes. They like it better. And it's sort of amazing. You know, it found its way. So a lot of people thought oil would go to $250, $300. It's not. I mean, today it's at less than $100. Think of that. Now, when this ends, you're going to see a drop like a rock.

How long are you going to suspend that tax for?

Uh, till it's appropriate. Yeah.

The other thing that he said there, there's so much wrong with what he said. Um, but when he goes, they like Texas better, it's like, it's like 45 minutes. It was like the difference between like a McDonald's and a burger. It's 45 minutes away. It's just a little bit longer, but it's a, it's a little bit better. How is that? How could the President of the United States even say such a thing, right? I mean, It shows zero understanding of the way international oil markets work. Now you're framing losing the Strait of Hormuz as a victory. And then, you know, Trump's sick defense, but yeah, that's what we wanted the whole time. The win was none of the things that we said. Give Iran the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, Obama was so weak to think that Obama stopped Iran from developing nuclear weapons and Iran didn't control the Strait of Hormuz. What are you doing, Obama? And then Donald Trump calls the proposal from Iran over here. And Iran's proposal is we control the Strait of Hormuz. There's no regime change, remove the sanctions against us, ceasefire in Lebanon as well. And Trump said this is unacceptable.

And Trump says, I have a plan though. My plan is so genius. We've already won with my plan. Here's what Trump says. Let's play the clip of Trump saying calls for the proposal from Iran unacceptable and says a lot of people say, well, does he have a plan? Yeah, of course I do. Narrator: He has no plan.

Let me look for this one.

All right. Take a look at that. But Bret and Jordy, I'll let you respond to all that.

As Brett looks for that clip, I just wanted to say this just to start. First off, Ben, you are so right. Like the reflecting pool is the perfect microcosm of Trump's entire presidency, his entire existence. It's short-term thinking, short-term perceived glitz and glam. You think the Ponzi scheme, stock market, think Trump media, think Liberation Day, think Operation Epic Fury. Go on and on, right? Like this huge splash moment to make all the MAGAs go, ooh, nah. But there's no substance behind these moves and there's legitimately no thinking behind these moves, like long-term thinking. And worst of all, all of the moves are in the sole purpose of serving one person and making one person look good. At least that's the attempt with these things. Donald Trump, without any care for the repercussions or the actual tangible impacts of these moves for the American people at large. People are feeling it. I mean, like literally every day. Just one example is the gas prices right now. I mean, they are simply outrageous. I don't know how Americans are doing it. It is crazy. And then not to get into more, you know, even more serious topics like our dead soldiers, 13 dead American soldiers off of this war of choice by Donald Trump.

It is ridiculous. Donald Trump, in my opinion, is the single most anti-American president we have ever had in this country. Every move, every single one is in the interest of him and him alone. And how could they— how could this make me, Donald Trump, look good instead of trying to find the interest of the American people and making long-term impacts for the American citizens at large? There is none of that thinking that ever goes into any of this from Donald Trump.

Well, it's also like, you know, there's no consistency in anything Trump does. So like, And Trump always tries to say, oh, I'm always under budget, I'm always ahead of schedule and under budget. And like with the Reflecting Pool, it's already— the price has already jumped up 88%, uh, to $13.1 million. And it has that 20% profit margin that Ben was talking about, uh, to a contractor Trump handpicked, um, with a no-bid contract. And this is the same guy who's going after like Jerome Powell saying that he went over budget, uh, with the Federal Reserve Building. And meanwhile, you remember he's also talking about the ballroom, which he said is going to cost zero dollars to taxpayers. Now they're demanding $1 billion from taxpayers. There's just no consistency with anything he does. It's all one fraud layered on top of another fraud layered on top of another fraud. And he uses any of those other inconsistencies to attack his own political enemies and try to threaten them. I got the clip that Ben was calling for before. Let me play it right now.

Can you tell us anything about that proposal and what, if any, well, it was just made to break the scale.

It was just unacceptable. You know, a lot of people said, well, does he have a plan? Yeah, of course I do. I have the best plan ever. Iran has been defeated militarily, totally. They have a little left. They probably built up during this period of time. We'll knock that out in about a day. But I have a plan. You know, it is a very simple plan. I don't know why you don't say it like it is. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

That's not a plan.

Okay.

That's not a plan. You don't have a plan. There is no plan. There hasn't been a plan.

And he could just keep lying his way through it.

But the fact is, I think Trump thought that this was going to be a Venezuela-type situation where he could go in, leave quickly, claim victory. But he's now stuck in a war. And you can't just— it takes two to tango in these wars, right? If one party wants to keep fighting, they could keep fighting. And if that party, in this case Iran, views that they have won the war, and by any of those metrics that Ben listed, they have won the war, then they are the ones who get to dictate the terms here. And so Donald Trump needs to come to the table, and now Trump needs to make some concessions. And he needs to land on a deal which is going to now be worse for the United States, worse for the way— worse than the way things were then prior to this war, because Trump is going to have to give stuff up. And you see Iran already making these, you know, red lines around their control over the Strait of Hormuz and getting the United States out of the region. Uh, you're seeing regional partners of the United States who have, uh, even throughout this process supported the United States, like Saudi Arabia, They, I think at this point, are kind of viewing the United States as more dangerous to their own existential survival than Iran at this point because of what Trump is doing, because of the way that Trump made them a target by having Iran turn their missiles on them after Trump attacked them, with Trump not responding to those attacks at all.

So right now, the region is incredibly volatile. You see saber rattling now on both sides. You see M.B. Golubov, the a parliament speaker hinting that Iran is awaiting the United States' next military action and they are ready and they will strike back. This could get very ugly very quickly. I honestly don't think that Trump even wants to get into any more battle. I, I, if not, if for anything else, just because he's like bored of it. I think he gets bored of things and he wants to move on. He wants to go to the next thing. It's like, you know, the Fort Knox thing, right? He was looking for gold at Fort Knox and then a reporter asked him about the gold at Fort Knox over the weekend and he was like, what are you talking about? Gold Fort Knox. I never said that.

I said that.

Hmm, that's weird. He says things and then he moves on to the next thing. And when it's lying about, I'm going to find the stolen gold at Fort Knox, it's a different— it's a bit different of a lie than lying yourself into a war where now you have an entire country trying to take you down, trying to get you out of it. And you cannot just bail. You cannot just say, I'm going home. You know, I, you know, I think back to Ben, when we used to play video games as a kid, when you would lose the game, right, you would shut off the game. You know, theoretically, right, you'd shut off the game, you'd run upstairs before I could actually declare victory. That would be the way that you would do it. Okay. Okay. You're going to— you're going to deny this live on camera.

Okay, Ben, I see it.

Unfortunately for Donald Trump, he cannot just shut off the game and run away. There are actual repercussions for that other than me crying because I didn't get my win registered against to, you know.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure—

not that I'm still thinking about it. All these—

wait, wait, Jordy, hold on.

I'm pretty sure it was actually Brett, for the viewers and listeners, that would shut off the games on Ben and I after we—

yeah, absolutely not.

And not only that, I mean, if anything would happen when Jordy and I would win, we would play We Are the Champions and Brett would cry.

Yes.

And then in the future he would— I cried a lot.

Listen, it's not that I'm still thinking about this 30 years later, but, uh, I just thought it was important.

By the way, the, the, the, the, the song from Queen, the We Are the Champ. That was such a staple of our childhood. Anytime one of us won any of the games, the We Are the Champions song would come on almost immediately. And then one or both other brothers would be crying because that song was playing.

Yeah, but really, here's the key of playing We Are the Champions, right? You have to win the game.

Yes.

And Donald Trump wants to sing We Are the Champions, but he lost. And Iran knows he lost and everybody knows he lost. So there ain't going to be any Queen song playing for Donald Trump right now. He's got to play like I'm a Loser Baby or something, right?

Actually have Let me phrase it. You actually have to win. You have to win if you want to sleep with the knock hockey puck, which was also a thing that we did. We'd have the knock hockey tournaments and the winner would get to sleep with the puck. But really quick, I'm going to bring this back. Brett, exactly. Donald Trump right now, what he's doing with Iran is he's treating it like it's some sort of business deal, right? Like, like he's in an episode of The Apprentice and he's trying to negotiate, like trying to do this hardball sort of negotiation. That's not where we are, right? Like American troops' lives are on the line. There are real economic impacts the longer this continues to go on. Like I said, people are already feeling it like 10 times over at the pump right now. It's absolutely outrageous and ridiculous. And Donald Trump is out here thinking that he could, you know, just get Daddy's lawyers and use Daddy's money to intimidate a contractor into just submitting. But in this analogy here, we're dealing with war. We're dealing with a country here that is angry that the United States has also bombed the little girl's school.

During all of this. So it is so like beneath the presidency here for Donald Trump to just kind of behave in a manner where he thinks like people will just get bored, right? Oh, people are going to get bored that our troops are dying in this war. People are going to get bored by paying tooth and nail at the pump. People are going to get bored about this stuff. No, there are real life implications. The longer this goes on, this is not an episode of The Apprentice. And it's absolutely ridiculous that he treats this like it is.

You know, you see the power of media manipulation in this, though, because when all of corporate news and state regime media throws its weight behind Donald Trump's imaginary negotiations with nobody when it comes to matters of war and peace and creates the sense that maybe there's progress, maybe there's hope right around the corner. Think about when that gets unleashed on Donald Trump's political enemies and the political enemies of the oligarchs. And when they want to basically use the same tactics to go after California Governor Gavin Newsom and say, look, it's the smelt fish. That's why there are all of these fires. He was protecting smelt and he didn't turn on the faucet. And you use the same media manipulation, you know, tactics because that's what Trump is used to doing. He's trying to now win a war with American propaganda media, trying to control a narrative and just spread lies and disorient what's actually happening on the ground. And Iran has studied this. It's not a coincidence that Iran's doing the Lego videos or the troll accounts. You know, they're not just doing it to be funny or to troll Donald Trump. They recognize the— and they've studied the kind of psychological tactics in order to kind of neutralize and push back against Donald Trump's right-wing media manipulation.

You know, that exists. And you see the power of this thing. Where, you know, he'll call up this reporter or that reporter, you know, and they will move markets. They will create this phony narrative of, okay, Iran's moving close. And actually a source tells us this about the ayatollah. And now a source tells us that like none of it is actually, you know, ending up to be true. And then Iran gets out its messages where it's like this was Iran's reaction to Donald Trump saying that he was upset at how Iran responded to Donald Trump's demands than Iran's surrender. This is what Iran told their state media. We just saw the reaction of the so-called president of the United States to Iran's response. It doesn't matter at all. No one in Iran drafts plans to please Trump. The negotiation team should only draft plans for the rights of the Iranian nation, and if Trump is not satisfied with it, that is naturally better. Trump generally does not like reality. That is why he keeps on losing to Iran. We'll pause there. We'll take our first quick break of the show. When we come back, I want to talk to you about Hegseth now threatening Senator Mark Kelly yet again for pointing out that the United States is significantly depleted in terms of our munitions, the Patriot system, the THAAD system, other interceptor systems and, and missile capabilities I want to talk more about the Trump regime's, you know, trying to do Putin's bidding when it comes to Zelensky.

I want to talk about what's going on in Hungary. I want to talk more about this bizarre press conference that went on today. A lot of other topics we'll cover here on this episode. Let's take our first quick break of the show. A reminder, subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel and subscribe to the Midas Touch on audio wherever you get your audio podcasts. Guests. Search Midas Touch and subscribe on audio and leave a 5-star review there. Right, let's take our first quick break of the show. We'll be right back.

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Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Quince and Miracle Maid folks have like specifically been sponsors of this channel for a very long time and of this podcast. So please definitely show them some love if you're in the markets for those products. Real quick, Ben, I am realizing knock hockey was actually super regional. I remember when I went to Ohio and when I was at Ohio State, the Ohio State University for school, and I tried to tell like my roommates and my friends that I made over there about knock hockey and how we used to play that as a kid in the winter got to sleep with the puck in their room and it was like a big thing. They're like, yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about.

I've never—

hockey.

Yeah, I need to see it. I need to see people in the comments. Let us know in the comments if you, if you play knock hockey. Knock hockey was the best. Yeah.

Sleeping with the puck, though, is not regional. That was a weird brother thing that we would—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We made that up.

So let me just, let me just clarify for the audience and we'll get back to the topic. In order to rub it in the brother's face who won, the puck would be the trophy. And so to sleep with the puck would be the ultimate way to rub it into the brother's face. That you were such a champion that you would sleep with the puck. All right, that's a good transition. Brett's like, let's get on with the show. Donald Trump was falling asleep in the Oval Office press conference today, and we've seen this time and time again with Donald Trump. I mean, he likes to brag about how he never sleeps, and I've never heard of an administration— although I call this a regime— but I've never heard of past administrations brag that, you know, this person never goes to sleep. I was never a fan And there were always people like that in like college and law school. I never sleep. I'm like, that's not a brag. You're human. Like, humans should get sleep. Like, that's not a good thing that you're not sleeping. And in fact, you should look into that because I want people who are well-rested, who sleep during the hours.

Doesn't mean you need the hours you're supposed to sleep. It doesn't mean that you should be, you know, sleeping excessively or if you sleep little, I'm not going to like look down upon it. Like getting sleep is part of being a healthy person. But Trump, I never sleep. And then like you always hear people from the regime, it's so incredible, he never sleeps. Yes, he does. He sleeps in front of us during the press conference. He falls asleep. And it's not like he closes his eyes for 3 seconds. There are minutes where the guy's eyes are closed and he's full-fledged sleeping. I mean, you can show it right here for our audio listeners. We're showing video of him, you know, listening to other people talking, and then he falls asleep. He closes his eyes and then just starts sleeping. And then he'll like get startled and he'll wake up. This goes on for a long time. I mean, I cut it after 15 seconds because you get the point. I'm not going to show you Trump sleep for 2 minutes straight, but he sleeps. And by the way, it's okay. You know, clearly you're very tired.

We all saw you sleeping. You did it. But what does the White House say? Rapid Response. The Rapid Response account goes and makes a post He was blinking, you absolute moron. So responding to someone posting a Reuters photo and a Reuters video of him sleeping, he's sleeping, and the White House calls the person posting it a moron.

The funny thing is, so this is someone who works with Reuters who posted the image here, and they didn't even mention that Trump was sleeping in the caption at all. Is just a photo of Trump. And it says, US President Donald Trump attends a maternal health event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., United States, May 11th, 2026. Reuters, Evelyn Hochstein. That's all they wrote.

They tell on themselves. They tell on themselves.

And here's the thing. They called it maternal health. And then Donald Trump spent most of it ranting and raving about the war and how he's brilliant to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. But it the focus actually wasn't on the maternal aspect of it. It was focused on men's sperm. And they kept on talking about how do we help men's sperm and that it's because liberals that the sperm is not as strong. And, you know, and you have these female politicians behind him, you know, who are like these Republican female politicians. And, you know, when it like, it looks right out of the hand The Handmaid's Tale. And they're like laughing at this as like creepy RFK Jr. who sleeps with raccoon penises, like he cuts off raccoon penises and sleeps with it. And, you know, someone who— what, he kept a diary of all the people who he cheated on his wife for before, before his wife allegedly died by suicide. And then Epstein wrote about that in his emails and wrote oopsie about that, or words to— or words to that effect. You know, I mean, you have RFK Jr., you know, who's engaged in some of the most, you know, just vile and disgusting acts.

Uh, you know, he's out there, you know, you know, talking about sperm, and it's a sperm— it's a sperm press conference here. Just play this clip of what RFK Jr. was saying.

The fertility crisis for women began in 2007, for men in 1970. Men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today. This is an existential crisis. For our country. We had a, uh, a series of presidents that were trying to discourage childbirth and motherhood in this country. We now have a president that is trying to encourage it, and I want to thank you again for your leadership.

The hell was that? I mean, what the hell were we watching there? And we— I won't do the voice, but we had—

do it.

We had—

no, no, we had prior— I'm not going to do the voice. We had prior administration. We had prior administrations. It was their fault for not encouraging motherhood. I mean, what, what the heck are they talking about?

And you're so right though, the faces too. Sorry to interrupt, the faces of the people watching RFK deliver this, whatever you want to call that, is dystopian. It's, it's so freaky.

He was measuring the sperm count in teenage boys. I, I mean, I, I, it's not, not a test I remember taking, but RFK seems to know a lot, a lot about about it.

And again, what was this talk supposed to be about?

It was about maternal health. Uh, but you know, here's—

and they also, like, to step back from that, maternal health gets right into sex and, and boys' sperm. I mean, just think where they brought it right away though. Like, there's a lot of things you could talk about with maternal health, infant mortality rates, the care that women get at hospitals, disparate treatment for women of color, disparate treatment of lower-income women in the care that they get, the issue of, you know, pregnancies that aren't discussed with complications. I mean, there's so many things that you could actually be discussing, and they talk about teenage boys. I mean, it's like, it's, you know, it's sperm, it's meds.

They talk about everything but the problem. Like, Dr. Oz, during the same press conference, whatever what the hell you want to call whatever that was. Dr. Oz made a comment. He said 1 in 3 Americans are— and this is, this is an exact quote— 1 in 3 Americans are underbabied. Underbabied, huh? He said that means either you have no children or have less children than you would normally want to have. We have a crisis that is causing our fertility rate to drop, but they try to diagnose, you know, this supposed issue, right? Why aren't people having kids? Which is a very, you know, it's sort of a valid question to ask, you know, in my opinion. But putting aside all the very creepy things that they are saying around this and treating women like they are out of The Handmaid's Tale and talking about teenage boys' sperm and all the weird things that they're talking about, but the thing that they want to avoid speaking about is the reason why people aren't having as many kids these days as they were in the past. And it's to me, a simple reason, and it's probably the reason for most of the problems in our society right now.

And that's that income inequality is so vast and that most people in this country do not have the means to support children. I mean, you used to be able to, on a single income, support a family, send a kid through college. You could have a guaranteed pension. You could be assured that your child would live a better life than you in an ideal world. Now we are experiencing the opposite. We are experiencing people who are unable to afford kids. They could barely afford their own housing. They could barely afford their own food. And now we're expecting them to go out there and have a whole bunch of kids. I mean, you have to address the root cause of the issue. And to me, the root cause of the issue is obvious. It's income inequality. It's the fact that people don't have money and the people in power are too afraid to admit it because they are the ones extracting that wealth from the people and causing those problems. Problems. And now we're seeing this effect ripple through the entire economy. We're seeing some of these CEOs of these various companies speak out, and they're starting to say, like McDonald's CEO, like, 'Oh no, we're starting to see slowdowns at McDonald's that are very similar to the slowdowns that we were seeing, uh, before the, uh, financial— the last financial crisis and the housing crisis in 2009.' We're seeing CEOs like the Costco CEO— and Costco does actually a lot of really good things for their workers, I will say— but we're seeing the Costco CEO say, 'We're looking at inventories.

We're seeing people have moved on from purchasing chicken to now purchasing more canned tuna. And that also was a recession indicator, um, from previous recessions. And when you really parse all of it, what you realize is you have all these billionaires in this society who have extracted all of this wealth, and they're happy to see themselves get richer and richer and richer as the stock market goes up, as they make all this money on everything they're doing. And then ultimately, somewhere down the line, you got to pay the price because these people didn't become billionaires by selling to nobody. You know, for Jeff Bezos to have money, people need to buy products on Amazon, right? For the CEO of whatever company, people— there need to be people to buy their products. When you all of a sudden have a society that can't afford to buy anything, uh, that's a major, major, major issue. And I think that's why we're kind of in this bubble right now that's essentially propped up by like 7 tech or AI companies and it's just like a house of cards that's waiting to topple.

Yeah. Look, you want to know why people aren't having kids? It's because this country didn't live up to its end of the bargain for a couple generations here. Right. I'm not going to go deep down this, but there is essentially sort of like an unreaden, an unwritten handshake agreement between, call it upper, you know, sort of millennials, Gen X with this country that said, hey, if we follow these subset of rules that this country has laid out before us, we go to school, we work work hard, we get a job, we do all of these things, then we will be able to live as good of lives, if not better lives, than our parents before us as they raised us. And as that sort of generation continued to get older, the wealth disparity in this country and the wealth inequality in this country grew larger and larger. And so all of a sudden you have a lot of millennials and Gen X and older generations too, but I'm specifically focusing on these— this group right here. Looking around and said, "Hey, we lived up to our bargain. I went to college. I spent a lot of money.

I'm in debt, but I was told that after I got out of college and I get the job, then I could pay off the debt and maybe go on 1 or 2 nice vacations a year and take this money and put my kids through college, buy a house, do all of these things that, again, I think we were all assuming if we followed these rules that we would sort of get to do." But the reality is that that's just not where we are.

Are.

That's not the buying power that the money has right now. That's not the types of jobs that are actually paying its citizens. And then you see these AI companies out there, you know, just taking more and more jobs from folks. And, you know, it's getting scary as far as, okay, now that we have kids, what's this going to be in another 25, 30? How much more is this wealth disparity and, and this wealth inequality going to continue to grow?

Look, consumer sentiment is the worst it's ever been since the University of Michigan survey survey has been out in the first place. And so the University of Michigan survey has been, you know, around for about 60 years measuring consumer sentiment. The worst reading was last month or 2 months ago, and then that was surpassed by the month after that as well. And so it's been the, you know, the worst.

Why?

Because to your point, Jordy and Brett, the American people are suffering, frankly, worse than they suffered in the Great Recession or, you know, other financial crises. It used to be during financial crises, it was kind of a shared crisis, right? And because the income disparity was still big but not so vast that Americans shared the pain. And now all of that pain is what trickles down. And the wealth remains at the top. And that kind of props up the GDP. So you don't have consecutive quarters of GDP that are negative, which would be the technical definition of a recession. So while the technical definition of a recession isn't met, most Americans feel that they're experiencing a depression because in their own personal life, they're experiencing foreclosures, They're not able to pay their credit card bills. They don't have healthcare. They can't afford healthcare. They can't afford gas. They can't afford basic things. But what Trump said during this weird maternal health press conference is he says, you know, young people today, they feel like billionaires. I used to say millionaires, but now you say billionaires. And he says that young people feel like billionaires today because a billionaire the billionaires, the Dell family, agreed to help the government put some money into Trump baby bank accounts or whatever, so that, so that that money can then be invested in the market to then go back to the oligarchs.

And that's how they say, you know, now Americans feel like billionaires, the young people feel rich. There's no young people who feel like billionaires or millionaires even. And but this is what they do. They hold out this illusion that, you know, that, that don't worry, you'll— you're like one of us. You're part of the billionaire club because we threw $1,000 in your account that you invest in the stock market, which props up our stock price, basically, which benefits the billionaires. Here, play this clip.

And that's another one that's gone through the Trump accounts where young kids, they turn 18 or 20 or 21, and they, they feel like, they feel like a billionaire. Used to say a millionaire. Now you say a billionaire. But they certainly feel rich as opposed to having absolutely nothing. It's so popular.

Right. And then Trump in this weird presser says that he was the hunted and now he's hunting. Now he's the hunter. Let me replay this clip.

You know, I was hunted. I was the hunter. Now the, you know, I was I was the hunted then, and I had to devote a lot of time to that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been too effective. Yeah, if I was out of office, I wouldn't have been. So we— I was hunted by some very bad people. Now I'm the hunter. It's much better when you're the hunter. But these are bad people.

And again, for those watching on video, you could rewind that a little bit and watch the faces of the women behind him. It's really deeply problematic that they're normalizing this behavior and they smile. I mean, what are— Whether you're a mother, a father, a business leader, whoever, anyone, if somebody behaved like that in front of you, it's not funny. It's not a laughing matter. It's not anything like they're smiling. Like, dude, he's, he's saying the dumbest, most dangerous stuff. Like, you know, someone in the room needs to be like, no, no, stop it. What are you saying? What are you talking about, you lunatic? You freaking psychotic maniac. You animal. What are you talking about? You sicko. You vile piece of trash. But what is that? What are we talking about? And then what he turns to. So after you have RFK talking about sperm and men's sperm and teenagers and sex and all of the weird, creepy stuff, you know, after you have Donald Trump saying that he's the hunter, he then tells the women who are there and others, don't speak too long. I'm waiting for generals. Generals. Don't speak too long, okay?

I'm speaking to generals about Iran. That's how they pronounce it, Iran. Here, play this clip.

And Dr. Alex Adams, and you'll speak not too long because I am being waited on by a large group of generals. And that's also important, you know, having to do it. Having to do with the absolutely lovely country of Iran. That's the way they pronounce it.

I mean, Brett, he just looks— he looks extra sleepy too, as, as he's talking about all of this. Like, it's, it's just so pathetic and disgraceful. Yeah, I commented on Threads and Blue Sky about this earlier. Just like, just the way Donald Trump behaves, just the way he, you know, puts forth this— like, that's the president of the United States right there. He's literally falling asleep at the table, and we have corporate media out there that just glazes the guy and pretends he's some, like, hard worker. Like, it really— it just blows my mind. Like, I just want to, like, shake somebody, be like, hey, can we just—

can we—

can we figure this out?

Like, that's the guy—

that's the guy in charge? Him?

I, I thought Beto was playing a prank on me because, like, oh, I want to wish every—

all the mothers— I'll tell you what I was just doing. I want to wish all the mothers a happy Mother's Day out there as well. And so UPS was supposed to bring the Mother's Day present on Friday, and then they gave me the wrong hour, so I missed it on Friday. Then they were coming again on Saturday, and I, I brought my wife and he made it to the beach. So I missed— so this would have been my third strike, and I, and I put a big note outside. I'm like, I'm here, please don't go. Third time they would have returned the Mother's Day gift, and I was already a day late. See, that would have been a disaster.

It's already a disaster enough that you missed Mother's Day.

Well, they— I, I— twice they, they gave me fake times, and so that's what that was. Anyway, let's take our last— wait, I have a Mother's Day.

I just Sign for it. I'll tell when we come back from break. Why don't we go to our last quick break and we'll come back right after this. Okay.

We'll take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, we got the Mother's Day present.

It's all good.

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Last quick break of the show. We'll be right back.

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I gotta say, Jordy, also nice, nice MTN hat you got. Yeah, and they're in your—

fort.mightystitch.com.

fort.mightystitch.com, go get your shirt.

So real quick, quick Mother's Day story. Again, shout out to all the mothers out there. Y'all are literally the backbone of this entire movement, of this entire country. So thank you guys so much from the bottom of our hearts. We love you guys. I sent mom flowers for Mother's Day, but they came Wednesday. They didn't come on Mother's Day. I definitely, like 1,000%, sent, checked, Mother's Day, like on Sunday, and usually like, hey, these will have to be delivered Saturday because of the week. And so I said, okay, agreed to all of that. All of a sudden I get a text from Mom on Wednesday like, hey, thanks so much for the flowers. I'm like, what? Where did the flowers come today? Worst of all, I'm a big like emotive, like emoji guy. Like I like to do like the slash and the 3 icon to do a heart. Like that's like big for my texting. And when I did this, I guess there was no special characters sort of allowed. So it just said, I love you so much, Mom. Thank you for everything. 'Love Jordan,' and I did the slash, you know, heart thing.

But they didn't do the slash, so it just said '3.' So it said, 'Love you so much, Jordan 3.' And it was a very—

I got—

let me, let me just say this, Jordan. Yeah, I don't think it's an issue if the gift comes early. I think, I think gift, gift arriving early, no problem whatsoever. I mean, the thing you don't want is to, you know, miss the delivery of the gift or miss the window, and then the gift comes like, I don't know, like the Monday after Mother's Day, like that would be bad, you know, like if that happened, I'd be like, Jordy, you're in big trouble. But coming Wednesday, I was overprepared. Yeah, but like, you know, can you imagine though if it came on Friday?

I wouldn't want to be the guy.

I was a day late. But look, UPS gave me— they gave me an incorrect window on Friday, an incorrect window on Saturday. And so today was my final day. I was 3 strikes away. Away, and then they return it back to the sender. So I heard that, I heard him, I rushed, I ran, I had to do it. And, uh, there you have it.

Let's get a high moment on the podcast.

Let's get, let's get, let's get back to the episode, which is, you know, so, so also, I mean, we, we lose sight of this sometimes, you know, and we don't hear it at the Midas Touch Network. And sometimes people like, well, why do you do stories about what Donald Trump is posting? Because I never want to normalize it ever. Because if any other president President or any other leader in American history posted these things, it would be automatically disqualifying. And we shouldn't have a standard that applies to Donald Trump. I mean, we should not be okay that there's a literal lunatic in the Oval Office. We should not be okay that there's a felon in the Oval Office, that there is an actual sexual predator who's been found civilly liable for sexual assault in the office. We shouldn't normalize that ever. And so So I'm going to say it every damn day and I'm going to call it out. So when we're in the middle of a war that we're not winning and he posts AI images that say, bye-bye drones, and it's a photo of an American destroyer shooting laser beams at Iranian drones, even though the Trump regime has claimed that Iran has no more navy since weeks ago, but apparently no more air force since weeks ago.

Bye-bye drones. You know, to which Iran responds, POTUS needs better AI image generators for depicting his dreams. And honestly, it's just sad and pathetic that you have the United States that's just being ridiculed and mocked by Iran, and that you have Iran after wanting to meet with the United States for decades and to try to get sanctions removed and to try to, you know, do any— like other countries would would do anything to have a meeting with the president of the United States.

Right.

Last week, President Lula of Brazil didn't want to be on video with Donald Trump, didn't want to be in the Oval Office because he knows that it's a circus and he does not want to be involved in some circus. That's not how he wants to conduct himself. You know, you have a—

Ron Moore at this point has become like Donald Trump, threatening them, you better agree to my proposal. Or I will post some banger AI memes and just wait till that meme drops on my Truth Social account. You're not even going to know what hits you, man.

The meme is the new all caps post.

Yeah, it's pathetic.

And here's the— and here's the thing, though. No, think about the way corporate news dissected every little thing that Biden did here, everything. Everything, or Obama from the tan suit to the this and that and everything. Oh my gosh, every time Kim Jong-un tested cruise missiles, it was like, how could Obama let that happen? Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un didn't have nuclear weapons. Iran didn't control the Strait of Hormuz. It's like a whole different set of rules with corporate news applies to Donald Trump. Why? Because they're an arm of the oligarchy. You know, when people talk about the K-shaped economy, which is a euphemism for the fact that everybody in America is getting screwed except the, the 1% that's above the— it's not even a K, it's like a little teeny tiny, you know, thing that control above the horizontal line in the K that, that, you know, represents where all the wealth actually is. Well, population-wise, everybody in America is mostly suffering, which is why you see those consumer sentiment numbers members. And the corporate media is a tool of the corporate oligarchy. And that's what's going on. And that's why they like, they normalize this stuff.

And then you'll have, you know, a Democrat take office and it's like, oh my gosh. I mean, just even think when former President Biden was in office, just even think about how the oil markets responded to Biden being in office versus now the entire Strait of Hormuz. Is closed, essentially, right? Zero ships or one ship, I think, you know, was allowed to leave with Iran. And then all of a sudden, you know, corporate, you know, America, they figure out a way to basically keep this Ponzi going. And you know what they're gonna do, whether the Democrats take control of the House in the midterms or when a Democratic president takes control, that's when, you know, after taking all of this wealth health. That's when they all sell, they hoard, and then they go, oh, look, look, you screwed it all up. Look, everybody, look who did it. Look who caused it. And then they wait until that there's another, you know, administration that removes all of the regulations and, and lets them run free and engage in all of their corruption. Then they prop it back up. That's what's actually happening, uh, before our eyes.

I mean, just look at Donald Trump's own business. I mean, I know I talked about this end of last week. I'll just mention it passing here because it's related to what I'm saying. Trump's own business, Trump Media, lost $406 million in the first quarter of 2026 and made $871,000. Sales of $871,000, losses of $405.9 million. That's their net loss. If Trump can't run Trump Media, How is he supposed to be running the country? And this is how he's run his casinos and Trump Steak and Trump Water and Trump Airplanes and Trump University and all these things that have gone out of business and/or have gone bankrupt. And so now what's Trump Media doing? What's their next play? They're merging with a fusion company with a type of energy that hasn't even been proven to have commercial use or use in any way. Yet that has contracts with the Department of Energy, right? They're merging with a fusion company, and that's gonna be the next gambit. And I'm sure the stock price will go up with the fusion when the fusion merger is approved. And then, you know, and then they'll just keep manipulating the market over and over and over again.

I want to talk about one other thing. I want to talk about this, this press, just to show you that everything this guy does is weird. Like, everything is strange. So he has the Indiana football team, college football team. They won the national championship. And Trump made this press conference into like the weirdest thing ever, whether you're a sports fan or not a sports fan. Just— I want you to watch just what he did. So first off, he tells the Indiana team, a little bit like your team, our country was laughed at a year and a half ago. He goes, "Jordy, you may know college football more than me. Indiana started getting good like 2 seasons ago." So it's not even like— I think if you went back 2 or 3 seasons, Indiana, you know, got the new coach. But he goes, "A little bit like your team, our country was laughed at." Like, why? Why even make this? Like, just be normal. Just say, "Congratulations. You know, your team represents the heart and spirit of America. It's always great to see, you know, champions here." and great to have you here. You know, what a great story to see the Indiana program rise, and congratulations.

Like, that's all you have to do, right? That's, that's what this is about. You shake their hands, you smile, you throw a football maybe. This couldn't be a bigger layup for the president. And here's what he turns it into. Let's play the first clip.

Things that are happening, things are happening right now. Our country, you know, a little bit like your team, our country a year and a half ago was We were mocked, and now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. There's nobody close. We're the greatest military in the world. We're unparalleled, and we're doing a job. We've made America great again, and this team has got a tremendous future. Don't lose the coach, she said. We can't lose the coach. It's a piece of work, right? We're not going to lose him.

Who's the coach, Donald? Who's the coach? You know who the coach is? Did you maybe want to just do, I don't know, 10 seconds of research before the team showed up? I'll give you a hint. His name rhymes with Bert. Could be Kurt. And he's standing right next to you on the stage. And lots of people know him because if you just knew of anything about Indiana, you know. But even if you didn't know anything about Indiana's story, Maybe you just look— maybe you just spend, I don't know, just 10 seconds of research because probably the coach is going to be standing by. Maybe you would want to know that. I don't know. Maybe I would want to be just slightly prepared. Watch as Donald Trump goes, Kurt, who, who, who? Kurt? Who's Kurt?

Here, play this clip.

Think of this. The press conference in 2023, shortly after joining Indiana. Kurt, who's Kurt? Kurt Signetti. Where is Kurt Signetti? Huh? Oh, come here. Come here. Kurt Signetti has turned out to be, I believe, I think he's the coach of the last decade.

Okay. And then Donald Trump turns around to one of the male football players behind him and says how handsome he is. I don't like good-looking men at all. Let's play this clip.

I said, how good is he, coach? He said he can play.

Let me see.

He's a good-looking guy. I don't like good-looking people. I don't like good-looking men at all, believe me.

And then regarding Indiana's former star quarterback, who was the top pick in the NFL draft, the Heisman Trophy winner as well, Fernando Mendoza, who was not there.

Was—

he said he wasn't going to be showing up. And whether that's because he's in training camp or whatever, he says he wasn't going to be there. Probably would have been easy to get there, but Trump makes it into this whole weird, you know, MAGA thing. And he's a Trumper. We all know Mendoza is a Trump. He likes Trump. We know that his family is a big Trumper. Here, play this clip.

Well, skill— they're skilled people. This season was also historic because starting quarterback Fernando Mendoza. Now, the reason he's not here— he was so nice, he called because he has actually— JD is a big fan of ours. You wouldn't believe it because he didn't show up. I'm not happy, but that's okay. The reason he didn't, because he's at spring training, right? Correct. And I actually said, you really let him— he's got to win. And I think he's going to win pretty early, Coach, right? I think pretty good. Time will tell. He's going to be a good one. A lot of people said they're going to win, but I think he will. No, he's been great. And he said spring training like his first day or something. I said, you better go there. But he became Indiana's first. Otherwise, if I didn't do that, I believe me, I wouldn't have even talked about him. I would have not if he was not here for other reasons.

Like, Trump is just such a fraud, too. Like, it's so obvious for many reasons, but like, it's not called spring training. Training in the NFL. Like, if you even know sports, like, just a little bit of the NFL, it's OTAs. Like, I know that's like really technical here, but it just goes to show you like his absolute brain rot. And then with Kurt Zanetti right next to him, like, he wasn't like joking. For our audio listeners, like, who's Kurt? Where's Kurt? Kurt was literally standing 4 inches from him on his left-hand side, and he has no idea where the guy is. Trump has no idea where he is when he's giving these speeches. I mean, again, it just blows my mind that so many people are just okay with whatever the heck that was.

You know, it's all part of the circus too, right? Because I think there's a lot of tie-ins in this episode, starting with painting the reflection pool blue and how that's how Donald Trump approaches everything. Just the announcement, you paint it blue, ignore the actual problem while the problem gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and things that can be solved, or at least that should be addressed, end up becoming catastrophes. That's part of his entire life. Another theme, I think, throughout this episode, though, are, you know, people around him who normalize that behavior. I mean, Signetti, you know, Jordy, and for people who know him, you know, is like this, you know, is like this badass coach. I mean, that's how he portrays himself. You know, there are some people who like his kind of arrogance and cockiness. There are some people who that, you know, rubs them the wrong way, how he behaves. But he's— he behaves right, you know. Jordy and Midas might even know the guy. Like, he's like a no— he's like a no-nonsense disciplinarian coach. Here's how we turn around the program, right? But then you see a guy like that being insulted by Don, like, not even knowing who he is, number one, you know.

And then Trump saying all of these things that are incorrect and inaccurate about football, and then going in and talking about the war. And then here, here's, here's the ballroom, right? Just play ballroom one quickly.

You're amazing. You've made the fans really proud and inspired millions. All of you, the coach and the players, and reminded everyone that with determination and lots of hard work, anything's possible. And I said to the coach, you know, we have a very special area. Well, that's very special. We're building a beautiful ballroom. You can see it's not too small, Coach. We need it. For 150 years, they've wanted a ballroom. We're going to give them the greatest ballroom anywhere the country. I'm very good at ballrooms. I'm very good at building things.

But, you know, and then the coach, for those on audio, is nodding his head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing he's saying is making sense. He's a demented individual. Like, I, I, we need people with moral clarity, you know, to, to stop, you know, enabling that, you know. And one of the things, you know, at least like when Mamdani goes into the Oval Office, Mamdani tells Donald Trump to his face face. Yeah, I disagree with you. You know, your policies are horrible. I think he's the worst. Yeah, I think he's authoritarian. I told him, I said, I think you're a fascist. I mean, Madani says it to the guy's face. And by the way, that's what— if you're going to go and do that, stop. You should do that. Because to me, all of Signetti's, you know, his whole persona, to me, when you do that, it shatters it, in my view. You know, and I understand, you know, the counterargument is, well, Well, it's the White House. It's not political. We're just showing up. It's an honor to be invited. No, no, no. Trump made it political. Okay. He made you a political prop and a political pawn in genocide, in fascism, in economic suffering that American people are feeling, in war crimes.

You're a prop. That's part of what you've been used for. And you stood there and you nodded your head and you could have done what Mendoza just blame it on, as Jordy says, spring training. But you're there. You're a prop. You're an enabler right now of fascism. That's how I feel about it.

You have to know it's part of Trump's strategy, too. I think it's all intentional. I mean, think about any time he has anybody around him, anybody kind of behind him, whether it's a sports team or children or whoever, he— women, whoever it is, he always starts asking them inappropriate questions or he'll say things because your silence behind him or you're even just kind of nodding behind him registers on television as some sort of tacit approval, whether you mean it or not. And I'm not even saying that any of these people necessarily even mean it when they're just kind of nodding behind them like, oh yeah, this crazy— you know, this crazy guy is rambling again about ballrooms or whatever. But that's why, you know, when he has the kids behind him, when he has the, the women's team behind him, and he goes, no men in women's sports, huh?

No men. And you don't want that?

You don't want— he wants get his deranged, his deranged point of view about everything, his just constant gaslighting and lies. He wants to get that out. But rather than himself just saying it, he wants the tacit approval of these people who people in other aspects of society respect in some way that is beyond politics. So he is using you to launder his political statements, his oftentimes very offensive rhetoric. He's laundering that through you by your reaction in the White House. And I think that's something that's worth— it's just worth knowing if you're going to show up at one of these things, why he is having you there and what his plan is when you actually do arrive.

Exactly. And look, I just want to say this. He's obviously a very incredibly selfish person, right? And every step of the way, he wants to make these moments about him while using y'all as props. That's what— that's what he does. He's using you guys as props and as you sort of nod and you think you're being polite, it looks like you're co-signing the behavior. That's just what it is. Just let me ask you something, right? Where are the Iran pilots? Where are the pilots, the American pilots that we rescued from Iran?

Where are they?

Right.

Because Donald Trump, every step of the turn, likes to use, you know, folks as props. He likes to use the Indiana team as props to talk about the ballroom. He likes to do— we've seen this countless times. So I just— I have to ask the question, where's the update on those pilots? And why did everyone specifically corporate media, stop caring about that.

It is a great point. And, you know, we're in this, you know, bizarre world where Trump, you know, is used to just bringing people out and using them as props and showing off these kind of trophies and making big stories out of it. For that, though, he's been oddly silent. But he got his headline already. And bringing it back to the beginning of the episode, you know, in some respects, he's just happy that he got the headline. He's happy that he got all these publications to be speaking about this daring rescue. Not question if there was anything deeper happening during when all of this was going on. If we're actually getting the true story, I'm not saying we are or we are not. I'm just saying we're no longer— people are no longer digging for that information because they feel like they already got it. And, you know, I think Ben's concept that the painting of the floor blue at the reflecting pool is a metaphor for everything that Donald Trump does is an apt one because Donald Trump is constantly metaphorically painting the floor blue despite the fact that he is making everything uglier and worse off for people.

I mean, if we're even just looking at this the way that Trump— their new thing over the past 24 hours that they want to get rid of the gas tax. You guys see this? We're going to get rid of the federal gas tax. The gas tax has stayed the same now for many, many years. It's like $0.18 on, on— it's like $0.18. And so it, uh, taking away the gas tax would add between $2 to $2.5 billion to the national debt, uh, per month. And gas has, of course, as anybody who's been to a gas station knows, gas has already went up far more than 18 cents. So 18 cents is not even a dent in the amount that gas has gone up already. I think gas has gone up with like $1.50 or so since the war began. It's an average of around $4.60, $4.65. It's expected to hit $5 at some point down the road. And so that $0.18 is, again, that's painting the bottom of the pool blue. It's not doing anything to make it better. But you know what it's going to do further down the line? That is going to screw over our country because that is the money that's used to improve our federal highways.

That is the money that's used to improve our federal roads. And so all of a sudden, we're not going to have any revenue from that. And this isn't due to some sort of force majeure situation where we have to do this because there's been this external crisis that now we have to take these extreme measures. Donald Trump is the cause of this with his war, and I could be more sympathetic to suspending a gas tax in my personal view if there was some existential thing happening, some external factors happening overseas that we cannot control. The fact that Donald Trump himself is the one responsible for driving up these gas prices, and now he wants the American American people to thank him because he's considering taking 18 cents off your, your gas bill is absolutely outrageous to me. And you just see this pattern of conning people over and over. I'll just show this chart I saw Sarah Ison post earlier today on, on, uh, she's a CNBC— Jordy, your show, I think she does Squawk Box— and so sorry, but you know, Sarah Ison said ahead of Presidents Trump and Xi meeting week. Important to note that fentanyl deaths in America have come down recently.

And she shows this chart and the chart shows Trump 1, Biden and Trump 2. And what Sarah Izen— she is somebody who I think it's fair to say has been very sympathetic to Donald Trump on the air. And so I think she's posting this chart and I saw a lot of Trump people reposting this chart, trying to credit Donald Trump with fentanyl overdose deaths coming down. But if you actually look at the chart, it shows fentanyl spiking under Donald Trump's first term, then Biden having to deal with the crisis. Biden is actually the one who reversed the trend, and now Trump is riding that trend out. And I think this is just the perfect representation of everything that Donald Trump has done. Frankly, this isn't even unique to Trump. I think Democratic presidents are used to this trend constantly of being left with a disastrous economy, a country that's been completely decimated from the inside out, Then the Democratic president comes in. They have to play adult. They have to pick up the pieces. They have to reverse the trends set by those Republican presidents who screwed everything up. And then eventually, you know, 3, 4 years down, it doesn't even take that long.

But the Republicans start complaining that everything's bad and people say it's not getting fixed quick enough. Then they put these Republicans back in charge who mess everything up again. And then the process just keeps repeating and repeating and repeating. So I think, you know, we need to identify these trends. We need to work to break these cycles and we need to call out the con because the con is an obvious one. It's just a matter of kind of surfacing this data and making sure that people understand the strategy that's happening behind the scenes.

Look, think about the surgeon who identifies a very serious illness that requires surgery, right? The surgeon can tell the patient, you're fine, you look great, everything is amazing, while the patient gets sicker and sicker and sicker. Sicker, or the surgeon can intervene and perform a surgery to try to help remove whatever the ailment is. That procedure is often going to be risky, it's going to be bloody, it's going to be complicated, it's going to take work, and it may temporarily make things worse before it gets better. But once the medicine kicks in, things can get better. It would be much easier for the surgeon to say, things are fine, like a miracle, it's all going to go away. If you take that example, and you can bring it to the reflecting pool as well. Someone looking at the reflecting pool can say, aha, we've got a major problem. It's algae and it's cracks. And it's not going to be easy to fix this. But here's how we actually fix it. You're going to have to put a lot of money, it's going to be shut down, it may look dirtier before it gets better, but you basically can fix the problem.

Or you can say, actually, we're just gonna paint it blue and it'll look good for a little bit, but you're not addressing kind of the main problems. Eventually, if you just ignore it and say it's all going to go away, someone down the line is going to have to deal with it. And what Republicans do is when the surgeon is now performing the surgery, when the fire department is stopping what the arsonist did, when, you know, the person is fixing the thing. When you see, if you looked at that chart of fentanyl decreasing, it went up a little bit before it all of a sudden started sharply going down under Biden. But all Republicans would do the whole time is blame the person who's in the middle of the The fire department in the middle of putting out the fire that was created and then trying to blame the person fixing it for the problems. And then when they get into power, just claim it doesn't really exist or it's all fine. And, you know, and just continue to make the problem worse and worse and worse until adult— an adult comes in the room or the surgeon comes in the room or the fire department or an actual builder who tries to fix fix it, then it's easy to attack the person who's actually rolling up their sleeves and trying to get the work done because you can publicly see a person grappling with problems.

It's easy. Anybody can basically see Dr. Fauci. It's easy to blame someone who's trying, who's grappling with the science, who's trying to figure it out, who's using, you know, the scientific methods of trying to identify these things. And then just— and it's easier to say, you know who caused it? You know what it is? The China virus. Hahaha. You know, they did it. Like a miracle, it's going to inject yourself with bleach. Oh, it's their fault. It's this person's fault. You know, and then, you know, you have someone like a Mark Kelly. I don't think I need to show the clip. You know, he'll point out things. We are running low on munitions. Red flag. Big problem. And what does the Trump regime say? Well, Pete Hegseth goes, Captain Mark Kelly strikes again. Now he's blabbing on TV falsely and dumbly. This is how the truth is, how the Trump regime talks about everything. I mean, their, their language is such— this such the behavior of just scumbags. I don't know how else to— now he's blabbing on TV falsely and dumbly about a classified Pentagon briefing after he received it. Did he violate his oath again?

Department of War legal counsel, or have you— no, you idiot. You were— he was cross-examining you at the hearing. You had this conversation in a public hearing with you. Why is everything, oh, we're going to prosecute him? There's a real issue. We're running low on munitions right now, and we— the world knows it. Stop trying to cover up. Just to show everyone, Brett, just play the clip of what went down at this hearing where he was cross-examined. They had this conversation in a public hearing. Let's play it. How many years to replenish? That's the question. I think that's exactly the right question too, Senator, because because the time frame we were existing under was unacceptable. Okay, what's happening?

Budget does—

I mean, months and years, fast years. I mean, we're building new plants in real time, so just to replace what we have expended— I said months and then you said years. Both. It depends on the weapon system, but 2 to 3, 4x of what we have today. So yes, we're dealing with the reality under the previous administration of what they sent to Ukraine and what they allocated elsewhere. I got it. So we required years' worth of munitions. And it is clear that these are being expended to try to achieve some objectives. That was the plan. But, Mr. Secretary, this war is stuck. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Iranian regime is in place. The nuclear material still in their hands. Americans are being crushed by higher costs, and it's not clear to them at all what the goal of this war is. And you also saw Hagseth say, you know, and it was rightly pointed out by Senator Kelly, it'll take months and years. Okay. And then he goes, okay, so it'll take years as well? I said months. You said months and years. I mean, everything that they do is like a scam in a lie.

Lie.

And everything is a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up. It is all painting the reflecting pool blue. That's what it is. It's painting it blue like a miracle. It's all gonna go away. Secret solutions. I mean, you know, easy fixes. Doge will solve it. Gold cards will solve it. $18 to $21 trillion that isn't coming in, that's going to— that's going to fix at all. I mean, that's what's going on. And now you have Donald Trump taking a trip to China to meet with Xi Jinping. You have the entire American oligarchy apparently showing up with him, like every CEO of big companies are taking this trip to China. America's never been in a weaker position, and it's obvious to anybody following it, you know, China's going in with a plan. They want Taiwan. Donald Trump wants China to say that there's going to be a fake deal and a trillion dollars is going to be invested into United States. And so, you know, that's, that's, that's what Trump wants out of it. Xi Jinping knows, look, Donald Trump just wants a press release. I'm gonna get something tangible. China still controls the rare earths.

All of those munitions that need to be replaced require rare earths from China, right? We already know that China outmaneuvered the Trump regime when Trump tried to tariff China 135%. China cut off the rare earths. And Trump and Hegseth folded immediately, just like they folded in Iran. They went from, we're going to decouple with China, China, China, and we're going to go after them, to Donald Trump, oh, Xi Jinping is my king. He is the king right now. Oh, he's so strong. You know, you know, we get along so well. All Xi Jinping said, all right, we're cutting you off from rare earths. And the Trump regime folded like that. American power used to mean something. Walking soft, carrying a big stick, or talking soft, carrying a big stick. Our words mattered. Our conduct was deliberate and intentional. And now it's arbitrary, capricious, and Donald Trump fraud. Painting the reflecting pool blue, painting a picture that doesn't exist, passing it off to the next guy or gal in the Oval Office, and then blaming them when they have to perform the surgery to fix it. There you have it, everybody. Make sure you hit subscribe.

Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Also subscribe to the Midas Touch on audio. If you like some of that Midas Touch gear you saw Jordy wearing during the commercial break, store.midastouch.com. Thank you everybody for watching. We appreciate you. One more time, store.midastouch.com. Subscribe to the Midas Touch on audio. Subscribe to our YouTube. We'll see you next time, everybody, on the Midas Touch podcast. Jordy, take it away.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty!

The Midas Mighty standing strong against the fascists. We sing our song, we will get it right.

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