The MeidasTouch Podcast - Governor Hochul Discusses Fighting Back Against Trump

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on karma finally striking Trump as all his plans are being exposed as utter failures and people are calling him out for lying about the economy and Meiselas interviews New York Governor Kathy Hochul about how she is standing up to Donald Trump and how it’s making him scared. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! 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 Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan 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 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. That right there is the face of a beaten and defeated man. Just look at Maga Mike Johnson being hit with the ultimate karma he deserves heading into the midterms. Or take a look at Donald Trump in fear, in panic, as his regime is in collapse. And we have different cabinet members and top officials pointing fingers at each other, Christy Gnome blaming Stephen Miller, blaming Christy Gnome.

They're all leaking to corporate news and regime media. They're blaming the border patrol. It is utter chaos. And when Donald Trump's been giving speeches over the past 24 to 48 hours, he's really being hit by that instant karma as he's getting kind of fact check to his face. He had that disastrous appearance in Iowa

where there was someone there at this like diner where he was trying to stage this. affordability event. And as Daniel Dale says, in an unusual moment, Trump was fact-checked by a woman in the crowd at his Iowa speech yesterday who was on scene. Donald Trump said, I've lowered gas to $1.95 or $1.85 in $1.85 in Iowa. The woman shouted, no, you didn't. Gas is $2.63? Stop lying. It was $2.69 at the station right outside the venue and the state averages $2.57. Gas buddy found just four stations

out of 2036 in the state. We're actually selling for under $2. He's just out there making things up, folks. And one of the things to mention as well as that, so he did the speech in Iowa earlier in the week. Then he did the speech where he did like a speech with Nikki Minaj, the rapper, and then he handed her a gold card

where she now gets, to be like a citizen. She was undocumented, but then she professed her love to Donald Trump and MAGA, and she was given a gold card, and the whole thing was really weird, and Donald Trump was like, Nikki Minaj has these great long nails,

and look at her, I want nails like that. But one of the things I want to focus on right now is that as the American people are struggling, as the American people are suffering, psychologically tortured living paycheck to paycheck, if they're lucky enough to even have a paycheck right now, they can't afford homes,

can't afford groceries, but inflation's rising. It's not dropping. Let's be very clear about that. And then Donald Trump's attacking the idea of low-income housing as though low-income housing is some sort of disease or plague. And Donald Trump, in the speech, he was attacking Governor Gavin Newsom of California and saying, and he was lying about like what Newsom's plans are. And Donald Trump's like, you can't ever put low-income housing in rich, wealthy areas that were burned. down by the fires. You can't do that. And then Trump signed like a made up executive order saying that the federal government is now taking over disaster relief in Los Angeles based on the fires from last January. And it's like, just give the disaster relief money. Basically the $40 billion that's needed to rebuild these communities that the Trump regime is withholding. But instead of actually giving the money, Donald Trump is bashing the idea of low income housing in general. like low-income housing some horrible thing,

even though that's not even what the plan is in Los Angeles and doing fake executive orders saying that he's going to be taking over Los Angeles and just give them money. Here's what Donald Trump said, though, where he said low-income housing. This is like a horrible thing. Here, play this clip. And I don't want a big section of the area built into low-income housing. They want to put low-income housing right smack in the middle of it.

And that's not the American dream. You know, you didn't do that. And low-income housing is great. I built a lot of low-income housing, but you don't put it there. This is one of the richest neighborhoods in the world. Now, Donald Trump was also fact-checked by the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. And Jerome Powell made it clear that job gains have remained low,

non-farm payrolls declined. This is not good stuff. The economic data is horrible. Play this clip. The unemployment rate was 4.4% in December and has changed little in recent months. Job gains have remained low. Total non-farm payrolls declined at an average pace of 22,000 per month over the last three months, excluding government employment. And as the economic data is horrible as people's pocketbooks are being hit hard, as 96% of the

tariffs were passed through to the consumers who had to eat it, the consumers. It is a tax on the consumer on Americans. The corporation in America pays the tariff and it's passed on. But setting that aside, federal spending is through the roof. I know that is. I guess it's only when Democratic presidents exist where people start talking about, oh, the deficit is up and all of the debt. I mean, the way Trump is running up this deficit in the MAGA Republicans, it is awful. A new CBO analysis reveals that the Trump regime spent about $496 million last year to deploy the National Guard to six cities. It's about $100 million a month is what the,

that's our taxpayer dollars going to torture people using Trump's military forces when he tries to use the National Guard. Take a look right here, though. This was when Donald Trump was at that diner that I mentioned earlier. It's in Iowa. And Donald Trump's like mocking the people there

and mocking the Americans, bragging about making your life save. into a yo-yo? Trump's like, I can make the economy do a yo-yo if I want it. I'll make it do a yo-yo. Here, play this clip. Would you like to see the dollar's value to find more? Would that be- No, no, I'd want it to be just seek its own level, which is the fair thing to do. You could have it, I could have it go up or go down like a yo-yo. I'll give you an example, unemployment. I could create the greatest unemployment numbers or employment numbers ever.

All I have to do is hire three million people and put them into the federal government. And you have 10 people, you know, for one job, right? That's right. Going back to Maga Mike Johnson, Maga Mike Johnson has not condemned the attack on Elon Omar by that deranged, demented individual who sprayed things on her with a syringe. No statements about Maga Mike on that. No statements about the murder by the Trump Gestapo of Alex Pretti.

Maga Mike didn't do that. But Maga Mike did have time to hug Nikki Minaj and talk about her coat. her nails. This is what it means to be a Mago Republican today, just being completely and utterly demented. Play this clip. And then also the utter corruption, the right wing oligarchy on full display as Melania for reasons that are unclear other than the right wing oligarchy giving us all the middle finger. She was, she went to the New York Stock Exchange. to promote her movie, Melania, that was funded by $70 million, maybe even more from Bezos, gave her $40 million for a licensing deal for the film, another $30 million for marketing.

Nobody wants to see this. The film's like banned, by the way, in South Africa. And so while Amazon's cutting 16,000 jobs, and we've seen job cuts announced this week in other major companies as well, Amazon cutting 16,000, but 70 million to Melania. That makes sense. That's what the people want to hear right now. Pinterest laying off 15% of its workforce. City group laying off tons of employees.

ASML plans to cut 1700 employees. Cuts, cuts, cuts. Melania, though, is right there. Ring it in the bell. Here, play this clip. Oh, and this is what's going on at Mar-a-Lago. It's not even let them eat cake. It is, let's do more eyes-wide-shut-style parties non-stop at Mar-a-Lago.

as the country is reeling right now from the murder of Alex Preti, from the ICE Gestapo raids that continue. At Mar-a-Lago, guests were greeted by showgirls in outfits, shipping champagne by the pool with their legs spread at Mar-a-Lago. That's what was going on there, in bubble balls with their leg-spread, show-girls at Mar-a-Lago. The Family Values Party, everybody. The Family Values Party.

And meanwhile, Donald Trump is whining. that his golden ballroom is not being built. A federal judge appointed by George W. Bush, Judge Leon, is presiding over a lawsuit by the Washington, D.C. National Historic Preservation Society to block the construction of the ballroom. And they're doing a pretty good job in front of this federal judge Leon, who's very skeptical about Trump's ability to tear down the East Wing and build a ballroom. I think Trump may be permanently enjoined or blocked from building this thing.

Federal Judge Leon said the following, where do you see the authority for the president to tear down the East Wing and build something in its place? And when the Trump regime lawyers tried to compare it to Gerald Ford using private donations for a swimming pool, Judge Leon said, you compare ripping down the East Wing and building a new East Wing to a swimming pool.

Are you absolutely out of your mind? Speaking about out of your mind, you've got Melania on state regime media saying that Brett Ratner, Brett disgraced individual Brett Ratner, is very talented at the box office as she continues to promote her film. Play this clip right here. The director, was that, that's Brett Ratner. Right now. How did that go?

He hasn't been involved in movies in a couple of years. How did that, how was that relationship? Very good. He was very talented. I know that. and box offices could tell you, right? That he was very talented. And we had other suggestions and looking into it. And he was the one that he, I said, you know,

the most important is that he puts out my idea, what I have and cinematic film that I want to achieve. So he was the best one. And he was great to work with. Let's bring in New York Governor Kathy Hochel, Governor, Governor Hokel. great to see you. You've repeatedly called for the end of Donald Trump and his regime's occupation of Minnesota and cities and towns across this country. And you use that term that this is an occupation, that essentially it's an invasion of our cities and towns. Get out now and just shuffling the deck and removing Bovino as bad as he is and bringing in Tom Holman. That's not what the people want, right? I mean, they just want. get ICE and Border Patrol back to what, you know, get him out of there.

Talk to us about that. Yeah, put ice where it was January 19th, 2025. Can we go in a way back machine to prior to Donald Trump's militarization of this force that's supposed to protect our borders from transnational criminals and terrorists and, you know, work with the Border Patrol to keep our streets safe? They have no, they've totally lost their way. They've lost the original mission, which is to protect our communities.

And their definition of criminals is someone who left their home country under dire circumstances, like my own grandparents did. They left great poverty. They were told they had to leave because they would starve. They came here, became migrant farm workers and worked at factories. But that's, so people who just come here in search of that life, they're treating as if they're criminals. And that's just wrong. And what is happening in my friend Tim Walls' estate and in this

cities is abhorrent on every level. It is un-American. And as I'm continuing to watch again, Ken Burns' American Revolution. And I think about those reg-tag groups of individuals who banded together as patriots and stood up to this abuse of power and put us on a track to have a democracy that is held strong for 250 years and is becoming unraveled before our eyes. So we must be the ones who stand up to this and call it out and use all the powers that I'm our lever to fight back. You know, and now you have people in the administration pointing fingers at each other. You have Christy Noem saying the reason why I used the term domestic terrorists was because

Stephen Miller wrote it. And then Stephen Miller said, the Border Patrol was telling me that it's their fault. And so they're all pointing fingers and no one's taking accountability. And now you have the Department of Homeland Security saying, well, the reason we came out and said that Alex Prattie was a domestic terrorist was it was a. chaotic situation. So we just thought that's what we had to say. And I mean, everybody knows that's just not how leadership is conducted. You don't just go out and start defaming people, but that seems to be their instinct with everything is just, they don't think about things.

And it's just immediately attack defame, rip apart. You know, it's, it's, we see this over and over again, not just here, but everything they do. The whole crew has to go then, right? If they don't know how to run agencies that have been run, you know, for decades before the NICE was based, established in its current form after 9-11, yes, to protect us from terrorists. And they just don't know what they're doing. And so we can't have this level of incompetence and an agency that's so important to our society

if they did it right. The way it's done now is just, it's a joke. So they should clean house, kick their asses out of town, and say, we're starting over. And stop militarizing our streets with people who have, you know, literally days or weeks of training compared to the police officers that I go to their graduations, I support our police here in the state of New York,

and they have six months of, you know, in-person training. They leave their families, and they're trained in conflict de-escalation and all the other strategies you want someone to have before you give them a gun. And I'm sick and tired of masked people roving our streets, terrorizing kids, taking kids using them as bait. And I'm New York's first mom governor, and you start messing with kids. I'm going to be pissed off more than anybody. And so that's my state of mind right now.

There's an anger, but is also leading to policies and changes here in New York, as we all try to figure out at the state level how we can protect the integrity of our states and our morals and our values that have gotten us through all these decades. And now they're under attack and we have to stand up. I think that's an important point. And it gets lost in sometimes how corporate news covers politics. as, you know, gamification, who's ahead, who's up? What, what this person? Is this person really good?

Versus, can we just take a step back here and say, like, what are we doing? This is good versus evil in many cases. This is just about basic morality and decency. I mean, having masked individuals walk through the street and terrorize people is bad. I mean, when Donald Trump and his regime take away people's health care and don't extend affordable care access subsidies, like, that's bad. is hurting people when RFK is out there changing the vaccine recommendations and we're seeing measles surge and other diseases that have been prevented before on the rights.

Like that's just, these are just bad things that government should not be inflicting pain upon us at like just a basic level. And I don't know what their political calculation is, but you basically antagonized everybody in the country, right? You know, the Hispanics who thought they were promising just to get rid of the baddest of the bad, right? The criminals, the terrorists, the human traffickers, the drug dealers. Many of them supported the president, not all certainly, but many did because they bought into his message of affordability. A lot of people bought into the message of affordability.

Prices are going to come down day one. Remember that one? My God, the cost of ground beef and all the things that you need to buy for your families are just. going off the charts. And I'm trying here in New York to make it more affordable. And it's a challenge because I've got tariffs driving up costs for my farmers. And so therefore, their products must be more expensive.

And the cost of everything is going up for my small businesses. And for God's sakes, we're at war with Canada. You know, I have a 432-mile border with Canada. They're our friends. They come and spend money in our hotels and our little bed and breakfast in our tourism areas and stimulate our economy.

our economy and buy our products, our largest trading partner. We're at war with Canada. So it is, we need a project 2029 to know when we have a Democratic president, which we must have, how to put it all back. We have put the genie back in the bottle and regain some sense of normalcy. So generations from now and they say, what did you do when your democracy is being shredded by people in search of unfettered power in Washington and surrounding them, with a bunch of cronies who have no spine?

Where were you? Did you stand up and try to save our country? And the answer better be yes. And it's going to be yes for those who look at what New York did because we have no choice. So what is being... I just feel like we're under attack. The farmers are under attack.

The migrant communities and immigrant communities are under attack. Struggling parents are under attack. I don't know who doesn't feel other than people are making a ton of money on Wall Street right now. Okay. That's why our economy is. looks good, but it's really not. And we have layoffs. People are now starting to lose their jobs.

Donald Trump pulled the plug on the largest public sector infrastructure project in America today to rebuild a tunnel between York and New Jersey for trains that was damaged during Hurricane Sandy decade ago. We're ready to do this. We've been working on it. 10,000 jobs. And all of a sudden, he says, no, you guys aren't very nice to me. And he pulled the plug.

But seriously, these people may have voted for you. These union guys might have voted for you, Mr. Trump, and now you're going to be laying them all off because the money's running out in a matter of two days. So these are the kind of fights that we have to take on. In addition to, I have hospitals that are teetering on the edge because they lost the money they needed from Medicaid. So states like New York that strongly are proud of our heritage

as being a progressive state where we led the women's rights movement and the LGBTQ plus movement and the environmental movement and early in the fights and civil rights, we're proud of that heritage, but this is the equivalent of that combined because this is an attack on everyone, not just one group or another, this is an attack on everyone.

And the consequences are so severe. So I can rant all day, Ben, because you can tell this has hit a nerve as a leader of a state that I cherish and I want to continue to be that guiding light for others and say we do it differently in New York, but we certainly have a fight on our hands. Here's what he said about you yesterday on the Sid Rosenberg show.

He said, Governor Hockel, she calls me, hi, president, hi, hi, how you doing? Could not be nicer. She wants to build windmills all over the place. She cannot be nicer. And then I'll see her the following day on television knocking the hell out of me. I mean, setting aside that these seem. to be the musings of a second grader because the fact that you say hi that's nice to me when i read things like this like what are you talking about you have a job to do as the governor of new york to

defend and protect your state especially when he's invading it saying hi to somebody you know he views wow so nice it's just a very strange framing of i don't know it just doesn't even seem the way adults communicate i get i can get into him saying these things about you like this isn't the way grownups talk to each. It's very strange. You know, Ben, bullies hate being stood up to, right? They don't like it. And I grew up in Buffalo, you know, families, a lot of brothers,

big Catholic family, a big family packed in a tiny house. We didn't have much when we started out. My parents used to live in a trailer park, and I know how to fight back. I've been trained to fight back my whole life. So what I said to the president when he first got elected, I called and congratulate him, Mr. President, There are areas we can work on together. Let's redo Penn Station.

It looks like a hellhole. Everybody hates going. Let's redo that. Let's work on building infrastructure. Let's do big projects. But if you come after New York State, our people, our values, our beliefs, you're gonna have to have a fight with me

because that's who I am. So we can be nice and work together. I had to call him because he literally shut off offshore wind, which is scheduled next year to bring clean, renewable power to half a million homes in Brooklyn. Just turn it off because I don't I don't like wind. You just threw a whole lot of people out of work too, Mr. President.

And they voted for you. I know they did because they're from Long Island. So these are the kind of conversation. Yeah, I'll open up and say hi. I'll call up and say hi. Yeah, hi. That's the first thing you say in a normal conversation, right? Hi, how you doing?

Then I go off on telling my Venezuela and all sorts of tangent. That's fine. I mean, I want to keep the dialogue open. It's important. But don't think that's going to censor me the next day when I'm going to ask about what I think about what's going on, because I'm going to speak out. I'm from Long Island and so I think we're changing.

I hope, I don't know what happened to us there. I know. I grew up in NASA County. I went back and I said, but I think things are actually changing now in Long Island as I think they're seeing, you know, some of the issue. I think that, you know, an area like Long Island, I'm running, you know, my challenger is the county executive of Nassau County in the November election who has, you know, who Donald Trump said is 100 percent.

That's all I need to put on the ads. 100% mega and that should serve us well. He is out there defending ICE, by the way. He is defending ICE. He started his own militia. He actually has 10 of his county paid for police officers deployed with ICE directly. So he's, I love Nassau County,

but the leadership is really challenged and compromised right now, and we'll put an end to that next November. So that being said, I do think a nerve has been touched has been touched in this country. There's been an awakening, which I think you add up all these individual fights that are now finally culminating in the death of two individuals, two 37-year-olds, who are doing nothing other than just exercising their rights of free speech and the right to protest. Those have been with us since the very beginning, the founding of our nation,

and we're not going to surrender those. And so I think finally this is a change. This is a see change in people's attitudes. And I'm sorry it took their deaths, but also it is now time for us to say, enough is enough. Chrissy Nome needs to be held responsible. They're right now thwarting investigations because they're lying about them. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted any longer.

They must be called to resign, fired, or impeached. Get out of town and stop doing the damage and try to rebuild the trust that we work so hard with local law enforcement to have with the community. That is broken because people don't know who they're dealing with. You have a mask on. I don't know who you are. Now, I was in an interesting encounter with an ICE officer when I was trying to free an elected official

from ICE custody a few months ago. They literally took our city controller at the time and arrested him. And I marched up there and stood outside the door and said, I'm not leaving until you free this individual. He was simply trying to help people being escorted to court. And they alleged that he had to be. assaulted somebody, which is a flat out lie. Any surprise there? No. So I stood there for an hour

in the hallway talking to ICE agents. And I said, why do you have to wear the masks? Like, what's the mask all about? They said they're worried about being doxed and harassed by people. I said, but FBI agents don't do that and my police don't do that. Our sheriffs don't do that. And they're exposed. They're on the front lines of people every day. Like, why do you need to do this? And they really didn't have an answer. It's part of the intimidation tactics to have us be submissive, you know, to have the population terrified that this person could do something, so I must surrender my rights. And we're not doing that. This is the nerve that I said has been touched. You cannot do that in this country, and we have to stand up and say no more.

Finally, you had a big announcement beginning of this year. You and Mayor Mamdani announced expanding child care as part of a broader vision of expanding child care of, you know, eventually to everybody, but to everybody two years old in New York City, it just shows government working and actually doing things for the people and not against the people. And I know that affordability is a big priority of yours. And throughout this year, you, Mayor Mamdani,

and other state and local officials who are actually working to help people are gonna be announcing things throughout this year as well. I know that's a big priority of yours. No, I'm looking forward to continue to partner with the mayor. We have a very strong relationship. My job is as governor. I also represent 8.5 million New York City residents.

So I've got to focus on their challenges as well. So I'll work with the mayor. I've been talking about childcare for a very long time. As a young mother, working as an attorney for Senator Moynihan long time ago, had to leave my job because I couldn't find childcare for my babies. And so this is personal to me as something I feel bad.

It's like one generation later, they still have not figured out when those babies are not having their own kids, my grandkids, and they can't find affordable childcare either in their struggling. So I could not wait to dive into this issue with the mayor. We're putting a lot of state dollars behind it, but the only reason people need child care is to go to their jobs. So I'm encouraging the business community to support this whole effort as well because it's in their interest to have less turnover and be able to attract more moms to be able to come to work and young dads who want to be able to see the, you know, see

the children during the daytime if they do an on-site facility. So this is something that we're going to keep leaning into and not look back from. So stay tuned. Governor Kathy Hokel, thanks for joining us as always. We appreciate you. All right. Thanks, Ben. Appreciate you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to six million subscribers. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our substack at Midasplus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, add free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available. at Midasplus.com.