Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 8/12/2025

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Why did Trump hold a press conference to announce a military take over of DC while a federal trial started about a military take over of Cali? Why did a federal judge just use a federal order to effectively tell Trump—release the damn files!? What do new independent financial numbers tell us about the failing Trump economy, and who is this MAGA economist that he hired to “cook” the job reports books? Popok tackles it all, on The Intersection podcast. Support Our Sponsors: Soul: Go to https://GetSoul.com and use code LEGALAF to get 30% OFF your order! Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Check out The Popok Firm at: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN?sub_confirmation=1 Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Follow Legal AF on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/legalafmtn.bsky.social Follow Michael Popok on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspopok.bsky.social Subscribe to the Legal AF by MeidasTouch podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You're at the intersection with Michael Popak here on the Midas Touch Network, and do I have a lineup for you of things you need to know at the intersection of law and politics inside and outside the courtroom. Let me just give you the rundown, the lineup for today, the Posse Comitatist Act, Donald Trump's phony press conference in order to step on the news story about Epstein scandal and the cover-up related to it. And the start of a three-day trial against the Trump administration, the first of its kind in San Francisco in front of Judge Breyer. Then we've got developments

in the Epstein case, because it's important to the victims. It's important that we understand it's sometimes it's the crime and the cover-up. And we've got a federal judge and New York, Judge Engelmeyer, who sets the record straight in support of the victims to remind people that Maxwell, Galane Maxwell, is not a saint. She's a convicted sinner and other things in his 38-page decision. Then we've got to turn to Trumponomics and the economy. Every day, first video on Legal A.F. YouTube channel that I also curate starts with a Trumponomics analysis. And here we've got the phony pick by Donald Trump to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

He's trying to create new numbers, manufacture numbers, cook the books, and he's hired a chief chef and Dr. E.J. Antony. Who's that guy? You're going to know by the time the intersection is over. In addition, we've got new numbers coming out of the Congressional Budget Office. We can't rely on anything coming out of the executive branch. We have to get our economic data from independent sources, you know, visitors and tourism bureaus from manufacturing societies and industry sector societies and agencies and companies that generate their own statistics that we can rely on because we can't rely on Donald Trump. And now we've got the Congressional Budget Office with their new data where they

took the budget bill, the bill that Donald Trump passed, and had it run through a waterfall to determine who's hurt and who's helped, who's made poorer, who's made richer. And I don't think you're going to be shocked by the results, but we need to talk about it now. In addition, we've got new data showing that the economy is in free falls. No other way to put it. And we don't have the full tariff impact yet baked. it's important to pin Trumponomics on Donald Trump and on MAGA that support him and enable him.

And we're going to do that together. I'll also touch on what's going on in Ukraine and why the strategy of Donald Trump is doomed for failure and all the rest here on the intersection. Welcome. They finally, the brothers were like Popok wants his own show and we're going to give it to him. And you have supported me.

It's been heartwarming. It warms. What's the phrase my late mother used to use? It warms the cockles of my heart to see two, three, four, 500,000 people every week here on this brand new podcast. You want to help support it. It's easy. Hit the free subscribe button on Midas, do the same thing on legal AF. But this podcast itself, it lives on an audio platform over on Apple, over on Spotify. And download it, listen to it, set your reminders, follow it, leave five-star reviews and comments. It's important. It helps the bellows that kind of take the little embers here and make it into a roaring fire of resistance here on the intersection. Let's get to it with the Posse Comitatis Act after our reconstruction period, the Civil War, in order to resolve an issue regarding presidential candidates

like Rutherford B. Hayes, there was a deal that was struck to ensure the Confederacy that if they came back to the Union, they wouldn't have to worry about federal union troops in their states trying to enforce domestic law enforcement policy. They didn't want Lincoln's troops, so to speak, in their states, they just come back to the union. So the Possecomitatis Act was passed. We got a current version of it. It started in 1787 or 1878.

I'll get the number right. I'm on a little bit of cough syrup here, folks. I'm sorry about that. And it says that a no one, including the commander-in-chief, can use the armed forces, the weight of the power, the awesome power of the U.S. military on domestic soil for domestic law enforcement purposes. The difference between that and commandeering the National Guard like they did in California is that there, if the president can't hold the line and can't execute faithfully laws with regular forces, they can use the National Guard of a state. the whole argument in California. But you can't violate the Posse Comitatis Act and turn a Marine into a cop

carrying the weaponry, the awesome weaponry of the U.S. military. So Judge Breyer, Charles Breyer, not to be confused with his brother, who's a retired Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer, he issued a ruling a couple of months ago

against Trump and for the state of California, ruling that Donald Trump violated the statute that allowed, under limited circumstances, a president to commandeer a state's national guard for his purposes, finding that the judge found that none of the conditions were present. This wasn't a rebellion, that he had no problems executing the laws with his regular forces. He didn't even try and other things.

He also found that Donald Trump violated not only the Constitution, but the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that the power that's not reserved for the federal government is given to the states. On the issue of whether the Trump administration also violated the Posse Comitatis Act, Judge Breyer said, not today. I need more evidence.

I need more time. Let's set a trial for August. And then the Trump administration appealed his ruling about the National Guard commandeering, and went up to a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, and they blocked Judge Breyer only on those issues. But the Posse Comitatis Act issue still around. Hence the trial that started, Yesterday. Day two was today. First day of the trial was about putting on California's case.

Now, I just had the California Attorney General Rob Banta. You're going to see his interview tomorrow on Legal AF address and brief our audience about the case. He's one of 23 Democratic Attorneys General and they're out, tip of the spear defending democracy with the superpowers that the Supreme Court gave the state attorney generals, attorneys general. In the nationwide injunction case where they said, well, we don't like in the birthright citizenship case, the Supreme Court said, we're not ready to rule on birthright citizenship, but we don't want federal district court trial level judges having this type of injunction power, nationwide injunction power. That's for us, except if states are involved. Well, there you go.

You're just superpowered and turbocharged state attorneys general to bring these cases, and that's what they've done about birthright citizenship, about funding, about women's rights, about immigration rights, and Rob Bonta and his team fighting against the Trump administration's attempt to take over the state of California. Now, to step on the story about the trial in the first day of the trial, and I'll tell you the report about that in a second. We just had the second day of trial today. What did Donald Trump do? To divert attention from the trial? Political timing. Everything about Donald Trump is about political timing, stepping on the news story, grabbing the headlines, grabbing the news cycle. Something goes wrong in the world of Epstein.

start an investigation about Obama, Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, about Senator Adam Schiff, divert attention, distract everyone, take advantage and exploit mainstream media's short attention span and deficit disorder. And they're ADDism. We don't have ADDism when it comes to the media here on legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network. We have fighter pilot vision. 270 degrees. We keep our hands on the control for you.

And we follow stories and the continuity of stories. And we explain them. I think that's why we're all here together at the intersection. And so when I see the news conference two days ago about the takeover of D.C. because Donald Trump's pet named Big Balls, a 19-year-old who's rummaging around your Social Security information and mine, too, under the guise of Doge, when he gets, I don't know, carjacked or beat up by a bunch of 15-year-olds,

oh, then we have to bring the full way to the federal government down on the District of Columbia. It's already a federal district. He's allowed to do certain things that he's not allowed to do in other places. I know a lot of people are like, New York's next. It's not next. D.C. is unique. It is a federal district, and it is ultimately controlled many aspects of it by the White House. Now, there's home rule. There's a mayor. There's a council. There's its own court system. Yes, that's true.

But really, in any moment, any president can take over the police department for usually a limited period of time. Otherwise, you violate a little bit of the home rule. So you can do that there because that's a statute. And that's how the district was created. And the rights given. into the district in 1973, which can't do that in the state of New York. They're not going to take over the police department as bad as the mayoral issues are in New York City right now. Donald Trump's not going to appoint himself acting mayor or send in one of his other Fox and friends to do it.

But that was just to distract attention to allow Donald Trump to stand up and say, I'm a tough guy at home. I'm for law and order and crushing dissent. And I'm for, I'm a peacemaker abroad. Although I defy you to show me the peace that he's made abroad, whether it's in the Middle East, whether it's in Armenia, whether it's in India, in Pakistan, or whether it's in Russia and Ukraine, where the victim is being left out of the negotiations. And the person responsible for making Zelensky feel better is J.D. Vance, who excoriated and clipped the balls publicly of Zelensky in a White House meeting several months ago and wagging his finger and you should show respect. This is the guy through diplomacy that's going to get Zelensky to be

okay with not being in the room to bargain with Putin. But I digress. So you've got a press conference where Donald Trump wants to distract your attention, but not ours and not this audience's attention about what's happening about his three-day trial, which he hates in San Francisco. Day one of the trial, very well for California. Great testimony from a major general, a lieutenant colonel, whatever it was. So he's testifying about how his loyalty was challenged by the Trump administration. He'd been in the, General Grant had been in the Army for 33 years. And yet he was sidelined to allow Donald Trump's troops to come into MacArthur Park

and scare the crap out of Los Angelinos. And so the evidence that was being put on today because Judge Breyer, knowing that there was a Zoom of 1,000 people and an audience waiting with bated breath for this historic trial, he kind of said what this case was about. He kind of did the opening statement of self, and then he turned it over to witness presentation. And so all the witnesses gave great testimony for California

showing that the armed services, the armed forces of the Trump administration were involved, with arresting people in the streets on domestic soil, which is a violation of the Posse Comitatis Act. Day two, which was today, was the response by the Trump administration, mainly a legal argument.

They put on a couple of witnesses. And then there's gonna be more legal argument tomorrow. We're following this all very closely on legal AF because, one, we need to follow it. Secondly, Adam Klassfeld, who runs All Rise News, you know, he's sort of the legal journalist, legal journalist. We've relied on reporting by Adam Classfeld from inside of courtrooms for years. He's now doing almost daily video reporting only on legal AF. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube

channel, and catch Adam Classvel. We just put up today, this afternoon, a new video in which Adam, having sat through hours of cover-to-coaster, coast-to-gavel testimony in trial work today in the posse comitatis case because he watched the zoom he couldn't get in the courtroom but he watched the zoom gave some amazing inside the courtroom observations and so you can watch that over there on legal a f so that's where we're at what do i think's going to happen and we'll talk about it maybe next week on the intersection next tuesday is that the briar is going to rule against the trump administration he's going to find violations the possecombatatus act what the interesting note what california is looking for is an injuncle

to stop future use of military on domestic soil, at least in California, to set that precedent. And in order to get an injunction, generally, you have to show that the harm that you're alleged happened to you is going to happen likely in the future. So you know what happened? The press conference today about the takeover of D.C. and the use of troops to make arrests. There's 23 arrests they just announced were made by law enforcement. I don't know, some combination of the FBI and the military. That's all Possecombatatus Act violations, at least the military part.

They pointed to that in the courtroom in real time. That press conference uses evidence of the ongoing future injunction matters that need, future conduct that needs to be enjoined through the injunction. Again, Donald Trump fabricating and creating new evidence in a case in real time as we move forward. I'm not sure that's exactly what he had up his sleeve. But that's what he ended up doing. Let me touch on, let me transition now, now that I think the audience has a good briefing on the Possecomitatis Act and attorney generals like Rob Banta, again, a guest of legal AFF.

You'll see him up there tomorrow on an interview. We also have a development in the Epstein case, got a few developments. Last Wednesday, the day after my intersection when I was traveling in Chicago, hanging out with the Texas Democrats, I'm kidding, but I was in Chicago at the same time. the multiple there's been multiple attempts by the by the trump administration almost at the Epstein administration it might as well be the Epstein administration have been going on to cover up the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein we can only guess why because they went through I don't know 300 gigabytes of information to tractor trailer trucks worth and they concluded that

Donald Trump's name was all over the Epstein files I mean how do you go from February in which the Trump administration said no rock this is what cash Patel said no stone will be left unturned every document will be provided there'll be no cover up it's exactly what we've been watching since february cover up rocks not overturned uh and no transparency and so we go from there then wednesday this past wednesday CNN gets word that there's going to be a big a big marshmallow roast over at J.D. Vance's house. And everybody's going to be there. Everybody in the Trump administration is going to be there.

Department of Justice, the FBI, Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff, probably Stephen Miller. They're all going to meet, talk about J.D. Vance, trying to be a problem solver. And what's the problem they're solving for? The Epstein cover-up. And according to Insider who leaked, this was all about how do we fix the communications

around the Epstein files? Right. The problem is the communications. This is a failure to communicate problem. Is that what this is? We've got a failure to communicate? Yeah, that's not the problem. Yeah, the problem with the Lincoln assassination was not the news reporting around it.

The problem was a president just had his head blown off in Washington, right? That was the problem. Same thing here. The problem is not how we communicate and mislead the American people. So that meeting gets moved to Washington, D.C., to the White House. probably because it's easier for people to come in and out without there being a reporter outside clocking off who's coming in and out, right?

And Trump can pop his head in, Stephen Miller can pop his head in, I'm sure, and they can sneak a whole bunch of people in for this meeting. Meeting happens. The day of the meeting, last Wednesday, a reporter, I give her a lot of credit, Trepid reporter, asked a question, of Trump, the day of the meeting, meetings that night,

with the van standing next to him. Mr. President, is there going to be a meeting tonight in J.D. Vance's house about Epstein and other things? Oh, I don't know. You'll have to ask him. I don't know. J.D.? That's a lie. That's false. That's fake news. Was it? It happened. We got a leak about how it went down. They're talking about Todd Blanche, about the second command of the Department of Justice, about how he's going to leak or have a press conference, about some but not all of the Galane Maxwell recordings, about her nine-hour interview with Donald, with the with Todd Blanche. Is he going to go on Joe Rogan? I'm not making this up. Is he going to do a press conference? Is he going to do a slideshow?

PowerPoint, what is he going to do? And then as a cover story, they fired a couple of FBI agents to act like they're rooting out corruption of the FBI. Yeah. And then J.D. Vance goes on Maria Bartarobo, chief propagandists for the Trump administration these days. And he actually says a few days later, he confirms the meeting. He just said was fake, didn't happen. He then tells her, yeah, oh, yeah, there was a meeting. It just wasn't at the time and place that CNN had reported.

That was the problem with the reporting, the time and place? Okay, go on. We didn't talk about Epstein. That's bullshit. And we're going to call bullshit because there's a leak. This is one of the leakiest administrations around. And we know they talked about Epstein. And then came J.D. Vance going on Sunday news shows, trying to tamp down.

and take the oxygen out of the room and the air out of the ball about the Epstein crisis, which has put the Trump administration into a credibility tailspin. And he makes it worse because he starts to point the finger with his talking points to Biden. Biden had the files too. Why didn't he release him? Why did he, why do we have to release him? Well, first of all, if Biden or anybody's administration thought that the Epstein files were interesting about Donald Trump, they would have released them, trust me.

But at that moment, I don't think they were looking at the Epstein files. Were they covering up for other powerful Democrats? I don't know. I don't want a powerful cover up. I don't want a Democrat cover up of powerful people. Anybody that's in there that sexually abused girls and women, justice is coming. I don't care if it's Democrat, Republican, libertarian, communist, socialist, Marxist, independent. I don't care.

Nobody cares on the Democratic side. I mean, the people care who committed the crimes potentially, but we don't care. So all that did when JD Vance went on Barteromo was to have left, right, and center all attack J.D. Vance and say, right, release the damn files, which takes us to Judge Paul Engelmeyer, who effectively said in 38 pages of a new federal order that he just issued, released the damn files. But he did more. He's one of three judges who had a motion to unseal grand jury transcripts about Maxwell and Epstein filed by the Trump administration, which is part of the charade to try to redefine what are the Epstein files. Or as I saw a banner over the Los Angeles Freeway last week, release the files, not the pedophiles. Don't let Galane Maxwell out.

That's not what we want. We want the files released in their entire. And we know what they are because Pam Bondi described them at one point in her career. So the three motions get filed. The redefinition process starts to try to rehabilitate Donald Trump. They want to rehabilitate by saying, well, it's the grand jury. I'm in favor of the grand jury transcripts being released. And every judge that's looked at it, Judge Rosenberg in West Palm Beach, Judge Engelmeier,

and another judge in New York said, first of all, we can't release the files because you haven't given us proper cause under the federal criminal rules of procedure to violate the rule of secrecy around grand jury files. But I will tell, this is what Judge Engelmeyer did, I will tell you there's nothing in there, that they were one-day grand juries that had a total between two grand juries of two witnesses who testified in summary fashion with no victims testifying and no evidence presented other than the sexual crimes alleged against Maxwell and Epstein.

There's more in the public domain, Judge Engelmeyer said, than existed in the grand jury transcripts. So he structured his order in three ways. First part. First part. He wanted to remind everyone and set the record straight that Galane Maxwell was convicted by evidence in front of a jury of five separate counts of child sex trafficking. including being involved with the sexual abuse conduct because she's not a saint as the rehabilitation campaign being led by Donald Trump's people's making her out to be. She's a convicted sinner. So that was for the victims,

of which Judge Engelmeyer noted there's over a thousand of them. Because we've forgotten, and Trump certainly wants us to forget, the victims at all this, and they cannot be. And they can't be sidelined in this process. That was Section 1. section two of the order was a telling the world and certainly the Trump administration and anybody that's listening to set the record straight that federal judges are not sitting on the Epstein files the Trump administration is sitting on the Epstein files everything the mother load he called it the mine load of documents about Epstein reside and are deposited with the Trump administration and that he cites to all of the press releases and statements. made by Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and letters between the Department of Justice, the FBI, identifying the size of the mother load, what's in the mother load, and how it's been reviewed.

Because he wants the world to know as a federal judge, don't let Donald Trump blame federal judges for not releasing files that we don't have. He has them. Look to him. He needs to provide these. They're in his power and control. So that was the second section. and it was very effective.

Third section of this order was announcing that he's not going to release the files, that he's looked at them in camera meeting in secrecy. There's nothing there. Nothing there. It's not already in the public domain. He even said at one point that your grounds for this is that the public demands the release of the grand jury, that it's of great public importance. That's what Pam Bondi wrote in your filings, which is completely at odds.

with what Trump says out loud politically to cover his ass, which is, this is boring. Why are we talking about child sex trafficking? He doesn't say that last part. This is boring details. There's nothing to see here. Can we talk about my tariffs? You're not American if you're a reporter and asking me about the child sex trafficking ring that I'm covering up. And yet she files with the court and says, we are entitled under Rule 6E of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to pierce the veil of secrecy around grand jury materials.

pardon me, it's tough doing Pam Bondi's voice. Because it's of great public importance. The judge says it's not a great public importance because you are sitting on the mother load and you won't release them. And that's not grounds for me to release them. And just to be clear, there's nothing in them. The end, release the damn files.

I mean, that's my artist rendering. Signed Paul Engelmeyer, United States District Court Judge. So that's where we are with the Epstein in a week in advancing the ball here. And the victims are demanding justice again and that the rehabilitation case against Galane Maxwell stop. She's already been rewarded

with two out of the three things she wanted. Immunity, not having to testify, three, not having to testify before Congress at any moment in time. And she got to go to a camp, a luxury, effectively a luxury prison camp in Texas. That's enough. That's enough. And in the name of the victims, that's enough. To have her transferred, was a poke in the eye to all of the victims that could only be perpetrated by a misogynist in chief, by a judge, sex abuser in chief who occupies the Oval Office.

So I'm going to, when I come back from a short break, we're going to talk about the economy, Trumponomics, and the rest so that you have what you need around your kitchen table, around your social media to set the record straight. I just said recently, I watched Mark Maron, great comedian, but really a social commentator, political commentator in his new show. He said, it's not, we're not watching with the Trump administration speaking truth to power. We're watching power to truth. Donald Trump is trying to use his power to crush truth.

We see it with the Smithsonian. museum and eight different museums being, being terrorized by the Trump administration just today in ordering them to rewrite history, literally, to remove Donald Trump from an insurrection, sorry, from an impeachment exhibit at the Smithsonian, to remove any references to what, slavery at the African American Experience Museum? But this is what a dictator wants to do. He has the power to control, right? The history is written by the winner, and that's what we're watching Donald Trump do.

But we can't let him do it. We can't let him use power to bend the truth. We've got to continue to speak truth to each other, and that's what we do every week here on the intersection. Number of ways to support us. Comments flying away here. I love those. This podcast is also audio. Pick us up on Spotify and Apple.

and leave a five-star review and notes. Tell your friends about us. We could use more audio downloads, more video downloads on YouTube, so we can end up in the top rankings of the YouTube podcast. That's important as well. Follow me and all of our other contributors on LegalAF, the YouTube channel, LegalAFMTN,

and free subscribe there. Ten new videos every day at the intersection of law of politics. And we've got a substack, LegalAF substack, where we post all of these, filings and orders, just like the one I just talked about, right there for you to read as well. So you can get the truth yourself. So we also have sponsors. So now a word from our pro-democracy sponsor. Are you sick of drinking your calories of waking up hungover? Having some drinks can be fun, but I'm glad I found an alternative that lets me feel great in the moment and the next morning.

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three-piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's try miracle.com slash legal a.f to treat yourself. Thank you, Miracle Made, for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to the intersection and thank you for our sponsors. One more sponsor of the the intersection is the Popok firm, as many of you know, I formed a firm really based on the demands and the requests of our audience. And so we're helping legal A-Fers and the mightest mighty and those that support the intersection in all of their legal matters related to catastrophic injury. It's where I can do the most good with my team of plaintiff's lawyers around the country. So if you've been injured in a catastrophic accident or somebody in your

family or loved one has. We're talking car accident, truck accident, ride share, Uber lift accident, some sort of medical malpractice injury and other things. We do other things as well, but we're really focused on that type. I've got an airplane crash, God forbid. We're representing people in some recent airplane crashes. Then call the Popak firm and we'll have somebody talk to you about evaluating your case. And if we end up taking the case, there's no. No charge, you won't be paid until we are. In other words, we're a contingency fee case. So contact us at 1877 Popak AF.

Or you can go to the website, read all about the firm and me and the rest at thepopokfirm.com. All right, let's get back to Trumponomics. I've been doing one video, the first video every day on LegalAF, about Trumponomics. And I think it's been a success because people are so interested to hear about how the policies that Donald Trump BS is about and defrauds the American people about how they actually impact your everyday life. And we've got some new developments here that I want to tie together in one economic evaluation, data all against the Trump administration. First of all, we now have the final numbers for inflation and they're terrible. And they're all under Donald Trump's watch.

He can't blame anybody else or as his Commerce Secretary recently said, this is now the Trump economy. He owns it. I agree. inflation. I thought the reason most people voted for Donald Trump because they thought the prices were going in the wrong direction. Well, they're going in the wrong direction even more. The core inflation, which covers food and transportation, things that you need to live, that's up 3.1% year over year. So as I've said, if you went to the supermarket, you had a basket of things. Last year, identical basket of things you need to live for you and your family, your loved ones and seniors in your life, you're 3.1% short now with the exact same money in your wallet. That's it. And the Federal Reserve, which is our central banker about monetary policy, the reason they have in lowered rates is their target inflation rate is 2%. By the time the tariffs come in, it'll be close to 4%. And that's not a good thing. And that is a reflection where Donald Trump is collecting lots of money to try to plug a hole in the amount of money he's not collecting on the Internal Revenue Service side because of the cut in taxes.

He'll never be able to plug this hole with the amount of tariffs that he's collecting. He keeps bragging. $26 billion came in. $58 billion came in. First of all, less and less is going to come in on tariff payments because countries are going to adjust, turn away from the United States like Canada is, and turn towards. Europe and other places, and they're going to start using modified behavior to avoid the tariffs. So Donald Trump's theory is, see, we sold this many goods last year, times my tariff rate will be this much dollars.

No, because you'll have less goods come in because people will work to avoid your tariff. Tariff avoidance policies are kicking in already. So that's the first problem. So prices up. Now, Donald Trump a few days ago, made a big. big show. I did a couple of videos about this on bringing in some Heritage Foundation Economist. Hold that thought because he just named the Heritage Foundation economist to a major position. But it's a different one. The guy was wandering around. He had a visit with Donald Trump.

Came with a couple of homemade charts based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You know the one where he just fired the commissioner? Based on their data, he had two charts. One showed that under the Bureau of Labor Statistics that he used it to make a point that the Biden administration didn't do well in the last economy and should have been it should have been reported more based on Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, which is a tough place to be when you're Donald Trump because he says all the numbers from the BLS are rigged, which was the reason he fired the commissioner. So it's hard to say, hey, I like the numbers when they're over here. and they show Biden had a terrible economy,

but I don't like them over here. So Donald Trump fell in love with another chart. And that chart, this guy made up using, wait for it, Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, to show that the average American household got an extra $1,800 because since Trump's been in office, and I said at the time, that's a lie, that it may be even on average,

but that means somebody's getting a million dollars and lots of people are getting zero. And it may average out to $1,800 or $2,000. And now it's out because you can't rely on any economic data coming out of the Trump administration, controlled by the Trump administration, because they've either defunded it out of existence, fired all the experts and the statisticians because they've been cooking the book since day one. They announced it. The Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik said the February of the beginning of the term,

We're going to get rid of the statistics. We're going to change how gross domestic product is measured. We're going to come up with new numbers. We're cooking the books. They told us this on the way in. So they had to get rid of the people that weren't willing to cook the books, like the economist commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So we can't rely anymore on their numbers.

We have to look to the Congressional Budget Office. We have to look to outside data points, produced by the industry, tourism boards, supply chain organizations, manufacturing organizations, labor unions, industry-specific organizations create their own data, which they get from their members. That's what we're going to have to rely on. And Donald Trump can't cook all those books because he's not in control of it. So we're starting to get data from these other sources.

So one is the Congressional Budget Office. They said, and their direction was, take Donald Trump's new budget that was just approved and run it through and show how it impacts Americans. And here's what they came up with today. The average Americans not getting $1,800 in their pocketbook. The average American runs this way in this C, Congressional Budget Office report.

One, the bottom 10% of America, the poorest 10%, are now, wait for it, $1,200 poorer because they just lost benefits that are part of their life package, like Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food stamps, SNAP benefits. To duck those, you, the poorer, the poor, are now $1,200 poor. top 10% the richest got richer and not by a little by a lot according to the CBO they got richer by $13,600 a household what do you need to know about how Trumponomics works that's not already proven by that CBO report if you're poor especially if you're poor middle class to poor and I'm not here to to undermine the poor or the middle class or those that don't have enough money that have to work three jobs. I have family members that fall into that category. I had grandparents, great-grandparents who first came to this country that fell into that

category. Dignity in work, I believe it. But if you voted for Donald Trump, that was against your interests. Because it's the red states that are getting nailed with the cut in federal funding. And it's the blue states where a lot of wealthy people live that aren't. And the Republican Country Club Republicans that live in wealthier states, they're not the ones that are getting screwed. It's the MAGA base that's getting screwed. Wake up. When are the scales going to drop from your eyes? I know there's a few that watch our shows here on the Midas Touch Network, like the intersection, and I'm appealing to them. Back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We've got a new development. Dr. E.J. Antony has been nominated to be your new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Who's that guy?

Well, from what I can tell, he owns a lot of three-piece suits with ties that are out of style and fashion. He wears a lot of three-piece suits. I think it's because he looks like he's about 22. He has allegedly a doctorate in economics from some Illinois University. I apologize in advance. I never heard of.

He runs some sort of Texas economic group, and he's maga, maga, magots of the core. And he's been critiquing the Bureau of Labor Statistics except when he's not critiquing it. I caught clips and I've done videos about it on LegalAF YouTube in which Dr. Antony actually using the Bureau of Labor Statistics data that he's now crapping all over said, see, Biden didn't do well using the same data that we're now for Trump saying was rigged, right? And that's the problem. What you want in a Bureau of Labor Statistics, which used to be the gold standard, the job. Rob's report used to be the gold standard used around the world.

What you want to lead that office, everybody agrees, except for Trump and those around him, is a nonpartisan, nonpartisan person who could be relied upon. It's not going to be the water carrier for the president. We just got the opposite. Bannon said it first, we need a right-wing maga person running our numbers. Correct. So they reached out to E.J. and Tony, self-proclaimed. expert on labor economics. Here's the problem. He's not a statistician. He doesn't understand how the Bureau of Labor Statistics works. And let me just explain as everybody gets it. The Bureau of Labor

Statistics, like any statistical modeling entity, has to balance between immediacy and accuracy, immediacy and accuracy. So on the immediacy side, the economy and the stakeholders of the economy need data. That's reasonably accurate. Now, they understand. when the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues a jobs report, that it's subject to change. Because first of all, the inputs for the job report come from states and other municipalities and governmental entities, and it's voluntary.

They don't have to fill out their reports. And since COVID, only like 43% fill out the reports, maybe because they don't have the funds to fund the statistics and give the raw data. That's Trump's fault. So you have that. So they have to run it through a model they have to do statistical modeling with limits,

and then they get more data and more data. They do a look back, and they revise up, down, or the same. Sometimes Donald Trump in the first term was the beneficiary of that. Sometimes he wasn't. The biggest revision that was ever done was actually not for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It was done for a prior president back in the 1990s. It was almost a one million job revision. It's so hard it is to get this.

But it's not rigged. And the economy and the stakeholders of the economy on Wall Street, financial services, and our global training partners, understand that those numbers can go up and down, that they're tentative. So the fact that Donald Trump lost 280,000 jobs that he never really had based on a modeling, it happens. Shit happens. Get over it. Instead of firing the numbers, so to speak, why don't you work on the failed economic policy that generated the numbers? Maybe that should say to you, crap, I didn't make 300,000 jobs. in May and June. I only made 38,000. Maybe I should make some adjustments to my policy. That's what a rational person running our economy would do. But we don't have a rational person running our economy. Mark Maren called it best when I watched this stand-up. He said we have a

clown king running our economy. And now the clown king is getting in business with the Chinese in violation of our national and undermining our national security. Yes, I know it's at the end of the intersection, but you heard me right. The clown king is violating and undermining our national security because Navidia, one of three chip manufacturers in America, came and cut a deal with Donald Trump. Let us get out from under export controls to our enemy, China. Technology that goes to the Chinese military to allow it to upgrade itself, to allow it to modernize itself. I know people are like, well, they got chips, too. Somebody wrote me that. Oh, you're showing your American bias,

Popok. They have chips. Yeah, they don't have our chips. They don't have our AI chips. They don't have Navidia's Blackwell chips, which are the industry leaders. They don't have AMD's chips. Now, these chip manufacturers very interesting. Donald Trump's always

like, I'm bringing chip manufacturing back to the United States. No, that was Joe Biden. In fact, Navidia and to a certain extent Intel are what they call fabless, not fabulous, fabless, meaning they don't manufacture, they don't fabricate. You know, they fab other places. Taiwan, primarily, South Korea.

That's where the actual chips are made. So Donald Trump's not bringing jobs back in chip manufacturing because the jobs aren't even here. And he's cutting deals with the video. Now he's going to let them sell to the Chinese and let them modernize their army in return for a 15% tribute payment to the U.S. government.

Are you effing out of your mind? I mean, I know the NFL's allowing smelling salts again. Donald Trump needs to take a whiff of a smelling salt. You don't sell our high-tech AI and other chips effectively to the Chinese military. That's why we have export controls that are supposed to be controlled by the Congress Department. That's why we got rid of TikTok

under the Biden administration with Congress in bipartisan fashion because it's a weapon of the Chinese government and military. My friends out there that are leaders on TikTok, God love you, more power to you. But that's what it is. Donald Trump just cut a deal to let Navidia for effectively $3 billion payment, sell hundreds of billions of dollars to chips,

and flood the market in China. There goes our national security. That was the reason for the export control. That was the reason to ban TikTok, to protect our national security. Because the people around Donald Trump are not national security experts. Who Marco Rubio, little Marco, down in Florida?

I know Marco Rubio. He was a partner in one of my law firms. Never met the guy. Although I'm pretty sure he picked up a paycheck. Yeah. That Marco? Because he's the Secretary of State, but he's not really the Secretary of State.

We know that's Steve Whitkoff. Who else? Howard Lutnik, Commerce Secretary. He ran a family office. Had no national security concerns. about any of his products because his products were brokering and broking and commissions and volume and turnover and velocity of trades. What's that to do with national security?

So Donald Trump doesn't have anybody around him that will say to him, speaking truth to power, no, don't sell the chips. The extra dollars to the American public to try to plug the hole you've made from your tax cuts isn't worth it. It's not the first time Donald Trump's gotten into bed with one of our allies or enemies. We own as an American people, effectively, a controlling interest in U.S. steel

because Donald Trump sold it to the Japanese. U.S. steel is not owned by U.S. steel or American interest. It's owned by Japanese interest. Donald Trump says, yeah, but I've got a cover story for that. We own a golden share. We got the golden share. We allow, yeah, you're now in business with Japan against actual American steel companies.

Well, I got 15% from our chip manufacturers. A, that's not going to help bring jobs back because it's made in Taiwan, effectively. Secondly, you just sold out our national security for effectively $3 billion. I thought it would be worth more, honestly. Rest in peace, national security. It's now dead under Donald Trump. So domestic security, undermined, foreign security undermined, national security undermined. And we're only seven, eight months into this administration.

What can you do about it? Let's leave on a hopeful note. Not the grim reaper. What do you do about it? Well, many of the things that we talk about would not be happening if we had Democrats running Congress, running the House, because they would be checks and balance. There would be investigations. there would be impeachment proceedings over most of what Donald Trump is doing. That's what you have to focus on.

That's why we talk about congressional maps. That's why we talk about the census. That's why we talk about voter voting rights being taken away and why it's important to fight that fight now and voter registration now. And we do it together, right? Because we're joined at the hip. We vibrated the same frequency here on the minus touch network and on legal AF. And together, together, I assure you, we will overcome the Trump administration.

May take one step at a time, but we see the runway, and we're going to do it together. I'm glad you're here on the intersection every Tuesday nights, join me here on YouTube, on audio podcast platforms, on LegalAF YouTube channel, on LegalAF, the podcast, which I do on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. about law and politics. I have a co-anchor, Karen Freeman Igniflo, on Wednesdays. Sometimes we have a guest host. Or Saturdays with Ben My Salas. Until my next, the intersection, this is Michael Popak, and I am reporting. I'm Michael Popak, and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touch's LegalAF and the LegalAF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer. Now, building a what we started together on LegalAF, I've launched a new law. firm, the Popok firm, dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal

representation. At the Popak firm, we are focused on obtaining justice for those who have been injured or damaged by a life-altering event, by securing the highest dollar recoveries. I've been tirelessly fighting for justice for the last 35 years, so my own law firm organically building on my legal AF work just feels right. And I've handpicked the team of top-tier trial fighters and settlement experts throughout all 50 states known as Big Auto Injury Attorneys who have the know-how to beat heartless insurance companies, corporations, government entities, and their attorneys. Big Auto's attorneys working with my firm are rock stars in their respective states and collectively responsible for billions of dollars in recoveries. So if you were a loved one, but on the wrong side of a

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