The MeidasTouch Podcast - MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 8/25/26

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

The United States is now in a full-blown trade war with Canada after negotiations collapsed, as Canadian leaders across the political spectrum unite against Trump’s escalating threats. Ben, Brett and Jordy break down Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bizarre “Economic D-Day” against Iran and his stunning admission about the potential consequences for the global financial system. They also discuss Trump’s bizarre IndyCar spectacle in Washington, including an awkward scene involving Melania Trump and Natalie Harp. Ben breaks down the Supreme Court’s latest ruling allowing Trump’s controversial election executive order to remain in effect for now, including its potential impact on mail-in ballots and the Postal Service. And the brothers discuss another Houthi attack on a Saudi tanker in the Red Sea as the Trump regime faces growing questions over its claims about the Strait of Hormuz. Deals from our sponsors!  Quince: Go to https://quince.com/meidas for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. Willie’s Remedy: Order now at https://drinkwillies.com and use code MEIDAS for 20% off your first order plus free shipping on orders over $95. IQ Bar: Text TRUTH to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply. DeleteMe: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://www.joindeleteme.com/MEIDAS and use promo code MEIDAS at checkout. Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Get Meidas Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com 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 Sidebar with Katie Phang: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sidebar-with-katie-phang/id1886801652 The Parnas Perspective: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-parnas-perspective/id1869165949 The Intersection with Michael Popok: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-intersection-with-michael-popok/id1818863274 MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show 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 Five Minute News: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/five-minute-news/id1471715443 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF America, things keep getting more outrageous, egregious, and despicable here in the United States under the Trump regime and the entire world sees it. The entire world is standing up to this pathetic Trump regime right now. You have Donald Trump's trade war against Canada taking full effect as the Trump regime tried to alter the negotiation terms at the last minute when they were close to making a deal with Canada. Prime Minister Carney ordered his negotiators in Washington, D.C., return to Ottawa. We've learned how horrific the Trump bad faith tactics were. We'll talk about that, but we are seeing a united Canada, all of the premiers working together with Prime Minister Carney, regardless of political

parties, standing up to the despicable Trump regime. You've got a disastrous economic D-Day announcement by Treasury Secretary Bessent, as one reporter asked Besson today during a bizarre press conference. You know, usually on D days, you don't like announce we're doing a D day. You kind of just do it. So why are you announcing it? And Besson's like, well, if we do it, we'll blow up the entire world financial market. So we want to give countries the opportunity to maybe make a deal with us. That'll make them all want to isolate Iran with us.

China immediately responded through its foreign ministry spokesperson saying, basically, no, we are not supportive of this economic coercion. We do not support this tariff and sanction regime that the United States has engaged in throughout the world. And then you had Donald Trump saying, I can't wait for Xi Jinping to visit and see all the great work I've been doing on the ballroom when he visits in the next few weeks. I got a feeling that if the Trump regime is attacking China, that your friend Xi Jinping's not going to visit you, Donald, but we will talk about that. This weekend, you had Donald Trump showing what he cares about, which is himself. He threw himself and Natalie and the other Trump regime officials, a IndyCar race event and tried to say,

this is what the American people want. The American people do not want our taxpayer dollars or DC to be turned into an IndyCar race. No offense. IndyCar. It's a cool event in general. You know, and we like, you know, you could like UFC, you could like sporting events, but not to be used as propaganda tools with quid pro quo corporate interests, you know, that look like bribes to Donald Trump. And when the American people are like, you're ripping away our health care. You know, the gas prices and diesel prices are at record highs. People can't afford groceries. People can't afford homes.

They can pay their rent. You have bankruptcies up to like record highs, the lowest consumer confidence in history. And you're doing some weird IndyCar event. And by the way, Donald Trump just looked so addled. He looked so physically and cognitively out of it. People had to show him which side of the green flag to hold. He didn't even understand how to hold the flag. It was really just utterly humiliating to watch.

Then you had the whole Natalie Hart being there behind Melania. Melania looked like she was yelling at Trump and she walked out. And, you know, look, what people do in their private life, I'm not a judge. I'm not the morality police. But I am an American citizen who sees that Donald Trump is focused on Natalie and whatever this bizarre circuses and himself and enriching himself while the American people suffer. And that's why this matters. This is about priorities. It's about governance.

It's about public service. And it's also about national security. I mean, Natalie, Maloney, who are these people? What is going on? We'll talk about that. We'll talk about the Supreme Court ruling, which was just issued. regarding Trump's executive order on elections, I'll break it down in a way that you all will be able to understand how it impacts the Postal Service, how it impacts the threats of prosecutions,

of states, and what the Trump regime is planning to do and what the Supreme Court ultimately I'll break it down. I'll put on my law professor hat. I don't teach in the fall. I teach in the spring. So I'll bring you into my virtual lecture hall in this class. I'll break it down for you. And meanwhile, while all of this is going on, if you look in the Red Sea by the Bob El Mondeb Strait, actually about 600 miles away from kind of the area where the Houthis controlled, but still in the Red Sea, we saw another Saudi tanker that was hit by the Houthis, and the Houthis continued to exert their influence there.

If you look at the Strait of Hormuz, you got a few tankers getting out of the Strait of Hormuz, but the Trump regime lying and claiming that basically it's pre-war levels, and that's what they leaked to Barack Ravid this weekend. And Barack Ravid posted and then all the right-wing propaganda, state regime media, then cites, Barakraved, citing three U.S. officials to spread this propaganda that we're getting out more oil than ever, which is just utterly false. Look no further than the gas prices that you're paying or the diesel prices that you're paying. I think we're 41 days away from totally running out.

of our strategic petroleum reserves. And so if we were bringing all this oil out, if it was all out there, we would see it just like if you claim you brought in $19.1 trillion Donald, we would see the money. We wouldn't have the debt increasing past $40 trillion. We wouldn't have treasury yield crises.

We wouldn't have Bessent trying to manipulate the market with yen buyout schemes to prop it up and bond buyback schemes and tapping the general account of the treasury. If we had all of this money, wouldn't need that there, Donald. You are a loser. You are a liar. And world leaders are saying that as well. Brett and Jordy, great to see as always, WTF America. It's also the name of our book. Pre-order it now. W-TF, indeed. Good to see Ben. Good to see you, Jordy. Good to see you. Midas. Mighty. Always great to be here. Remember if you're watching us live on YouTube. Remember to go and add the Midas-Touch podcast anywhere you listen.

And if you're listening, remember to go and subscribe to us over on YouTube. You know, I think one of the most disturbing things that I thought, you know, the past weekend in a list of we never have a quiet weekend anymore but the way that fox was presenting the indy car race it felt very like north korea to me i don't know if you guys did you guys see like the uh tape piece that they ran the sports president yeah that's yeah that's what it said it said the sports president and it looked like the video could have been produced by the white house themselves and handed right off to fox and it literally looked like something you'd see right out of north korea and it was just so incredibly disturbing but we've been been speaking about this, right? We've been speaking about Donald Trump's distractions by doing

these big events, the kind of idea of bread and circuses. But as I said on the last episode, it seems to be forgetting the bread part because people are having trouble eating, but certainly plenty of circuses to distract. And then last week, I was speaking about this concept of Scott Bessent and Trump and this entire regime constantly trying to put band-aids on bullet wounds and how that doesn't work and actually leads to more problems. And I think we're seeing that quickly come to fruition now as Besant kind of starts to elaborate a little bit more on his so-called economic D-Day plan and his also plan to try to steady the bond markets, which also seems to be backfiring.

We're going to get into all of it. Also, Jordy right now is on Baby Watch. And when we say Jordy is on Baby Watch for Baby Number 2, it could happen during this episode. So you're not going to want to turn away because if that happens, I'm just going to say it. It's going to make for some good pod. Listen, listen, listen, brothers, might as mighty, it is great to be here. Brett is not being hyperbolic. Just a quick, quick aside here, Ben, before I toss it over to you.

So my wife is literally due any hour, any day. I could get the phone call right now. This is the only hour in the day, her and I are not together. Where I'm recording, I'm at my in-laws right now. I can't record with a toddler because that setup isn't made for that. So our other son, as much as we love him, he just doesn't fully understand the podcast. testing game, just it. So I have to go all the way to my in-laws to record right now. And I am just bracing. This is the one hour in the day that we have not been together,

that I'm going to get some call and just have to shoot down. Let me ask you this. This is your one hour away right now. You got any haircuts on the horizon, any other appointments? I have canceled all of my appointments. They have cleared out. You know, you know the second you step away. It's one. Exactly. Exactly. All right. With that, with that, Benji, let's get into it. All right. Yeah, WTF. I would actually say, Brett, you mentioned Kim Jong-un of North Korea, I would say that the United States is actually behaving far weirder than North Korea. You know, it at least seems that Kim Jong-un has plans about how he's going to do things that move in a direction, whether we think they're crazy or not crazy or whatever, but they at least

appear to be rooted in a plan and like, you know, a vision of where he wants to move the country. I mean, you've got Donald Trump, I mean, actually behaving worse and weirder and more of a lunatic than Kim Jong-un. It's a very strange thing to observe. It's very sad to observe this happen to our country. But it's the reality. And people who want to normalize this and act like these are, you know, normal political debates happening in the United States. I mean, you're missing the whole thing. Again, that's why we called it WTF, because this isn't normal.

This isn't like Democrat, Republican, independent. I mean, we have a truly deranged lunatic predator out there who every day does things to harm the United States of America. I mean, just think about it this way. I mean, you don't think that if North Korea was able to have full access to all of the markets and to have, you know, military bases everywhere and to have all of the advantages and to have Their currency be the currency that they'd be out there whining, that they're the ones being taken advantage of, and that they're the ones being bullied.

I mean, the United States created the post-World War II architecture, which benefited the United States, whether you like that architecture or not, it benefited the United States. It's why the U.S. was the richest country by GDP in the world. It's why the dollar was the world's reserve currency, the petro dollar, why the transactions in oil would happen in dollars, you know, why people look to the United States as a predictable thriving market. And Donald Trump has like literally done a wrecking ball to that. And if you think about it this way, Justin Wolfers, the chief economist of the Midas Touch

Network, I think he put it perfectly. He's like, all right. So our plan in order to destroy Iran is to economically isolate them and that'll destroy them. But then at the same time, Trump's plan to make America great is to economically isolate us from markets. So those are the two plans that he's doing. What he's actually done is he's allowed Iran to become a regional and global actor right now. the United States has become more and more isolated, and you just see a regime that's desperate and lashing out.

And when I watch Treasury Secretary Besson's press conference, when I even heard him say, the world's going to have to choose the United States or Iran. The fact that that's a choice, and Iran is in the same level as him saying, you have to make a choice. Who are you going to go with? The United States and Iran. You're going to go with the superpower. that has a $32 trillion a year GDP, that's supposed to have the biggest military in the world,

or are you going to go with a power that before Donald Trump's unlawful and catastrophic war was kind of an outcast for a very long time, not to say they didn't have alliances, but kind of an outcast. And the Trump regime called what they were doing, Operation Economic Outcast against Iran. And everything the Trump regime does, it's like textbook projection, right?

Operation Economic Outcast is what the Trump regime did to itself. And so you take a look at what's happened. Now, let me be very clear when I show you a Premier Doug Ford clip. He's a right-wing Ontario politician. And on most issues, I disagree with this guy. And most of our Canadian audience would disagree with this guy. not to say all the Canadian, but most of them would say, we don't like this guy's policies.

I mean, he's a right-wing conservative premier, who by the way, used to be during the first Trump administration, a maple MAGA guy. People would see the Ford kids in Canada wearing like MAGA hats. So I just want to, I want to frame it for you, so you understand that these were, that this was a Maple MAGA guy who Trump turned off. And in Canada now, you have perfect unity of all of the political parties.

Now, to be fair and to be very specific as we are in Alberta, they have Danielle Smith as their premier, and she's both sides in it, which is perhaps a little more progress than that she was full Maple Maga before, and she was full Mar-a-Lago club. And, you know, so that's who she is. But by and large, at the premier level, whether the NDP, Premier Manitoba, Wab Canoe, or British Columbia, David Eby, to the right-wing premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, to the prime minister of the Liberal Party, all sides of the political spectrum there, united. So here you have Doug Ford at a press conference earlier today saying,

look, I can go back and forth with Trump, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to take the bait. This guy is a loser. Here, play this clip. You know, I'm not going to, I'm just not going to take the bait. This guy's a loser. He's going to be a loser. And as simple as that, we're going to fight with everything we have. And, you know, something, I have more courage, more brains of my baby toe than he has in his whole body.

So there you go. Then Donald Trump posted a deranged rant on social media against Ford, actually before that press conference. And then Ford just said, look, I'm not going to take any advice off of a guy that's the king of bankruptcies. Let's play this clip. No, I don't respond to a dictator like president. Trump, a bully like President Trump, as I said before. He's the type of guy in school that would take your lunch money one day, take your toke off your head the next day, and then steal your running shoes.

But I'm not going to take any advice off a guy that's the king of bankruptcies. And he's actually terrifying his own people, taxing his own people. And I'm going to make sure I communicate through the U.S. media. I'm going to be reaching out to every single governor, every single senator, and every single congressperson. and when it comes to the midterms, I have a message to the Americans. Don't vote in a person that's going to kill your jobs. He ran on creating more jobs.

Last time I checked, jobs went down in the U.S., and Ontario created more jobs. He ran on reducing the cost of living. Last time I checked, foods are more expensive down there. Homes are more expensive, and the reason homes are more expensive because he has a tariff on our lumber, which 33% of all homes that are built in the U.S. use Canadian lumber. So I'm not going to take lessons off President Trump. He's the last guy that I would take any lessons off.

And it's about Team Canada. We'll see how this goes, but he wants to put pain on Canadians. We'll leverage every bit of pain we possibly can on America. And just to give you some of the bare facts here, Canada is by far America's biggest foreign source of crude oil. The U.S. imported about 3.9. million barrels of Canadian crude every day in 2025, accounting for roughly 60% of all U.S. crude oil imports, a huge portion of what U.S. refineries process is Canadian crude.

Virtually all U.S. pipeline natural gas imports come from Canada. Canada is America's number one foreign uranium source. Canada supplies electricity directly into the American grid in 2024. The US imported 27.2 million megawatt hours of electricity from Canada right there. Canada is also very important for American fertilizer. 90% of US net potash imports came from Canada. Canada is critical for aluminum, the leaning source associated with US aluminum imports. And so when we have an energy crisis right now caused by Donald Trump's unlawful and catastrophic

war, you're picking this fight with your closest ally. Yeah, you would think you would want friends and want to lean on your friends and need to lean on your friends at a time like this when you're isolating yourself from the rest of the world and when you're engaged in a physical war overseas in the Middle East. And the thing that I see when I see people like Doug Ford and Charlie Angus and all, you all people of different affiliations in Canada coming together for this, is you see what a country behaves like when a country is at war. That's because they are at war.

It's a trade war. And it is very much a war, though. And I think that hasn't really gotten through to a lot of folks that Canada right now is in a war posture. And I feel like they have been now for a while because they're dealing with a hostile power to the south in the United States. But now it's like the war is on. And if you remember, Doug Ford was the one who also released that ad with Ronald Reagan's quotes.

Remember, it was like a Ronald Reagan radio broadcast that he had broadcast, I think, during a sporting event, about, like, one ad. And it was Reagan speaking about the danger of tariffs. And then Trump freaked out. He stopped the trade talks. He threatened Canada. It was like a whole big thing. He said that Reagan actually loved tariffs and that the ad was AI and it was fake. he had one of his deranged meltdowns.

And this is the guy that they've been dealing with now for the last few years. And they know that he's unhinged. And they know also that the United States is suffering due to its actions overseas. And so you're going to see right now the U.S. become increasingly isolated. And to Ben's point, the name of the operation against Iran is really like the name of the operation against the United States because he's turning the U.S. into a pariah across the world. And the American people are already feeling it.

And they are going to continue to feel it. And you're also going to see people in a lot of these swing states, especially as the midterms approach, they're freaking out. When I say those people, I mean like the Republicans who might be in states like Michigan or states like Wisconsin or Susan Collins in Maine. Because all of this actually has a tremendous impact, an outsized impact, in those states for reasons that been discussed and also just for like the tourism reasons, right? You don't have people from Canada now coming to the United States.

you're having mass boycotts of American goods. This is really going to be incredibly detrimental to the U.S. economy, and it's united the same way that Trump united Iran against the U.S., the same way he's united, all these other countries with different maybe political beliefs or views on their government against the U.S. Trump has managed to unite all the different factions within Canada against the U.S. We're seeing a pattern in that regard. Absolutely.

Look, and it goes down to the same things that we've talked about previously here. the way Donald Trump expresses this America first notion, you know, his MAGA is America first, it just means America last. It just means America all alone. And all of a sudden, you're going to be looking around, you're going to be like, hey, I wish I had some friends. Well, the problem is when you're a jagoff to all of your allies, sooner or later, they're going to want to stop helping you. They're going to want to stop hanging out with you. I don't blame any of our former allies here or our allies as they look at us and they're like, what is wrong with you? Like, they just like want to shake America right now because it's like, wake up. And the fact that Trump,

and the Trump regime can't see the writing on the wall that, yes, Donald, America First, okay? I get that it's a nice, cutesy little slogan that you like to roll out. But now you've just left us all alone. Now we're on this island. Now, you know, we're the stinky kid in class, where the kid with whatever in his hair. No one wants to be around us, man. You've made us so unappealing. And what worries me deeply with, you know, we're talking about this, having a kid any moment, uh, going to want to be around us. waiting on that call, have a two-year-old here, we all have children here on the show. It's just like what this means for the country going forward.

Like, look, 2028 happens, say, just say, for the sake of a Democrat becomes president, okay? Just say, those relationships that Donald Trump has so irrepulately harmed here, like, that doesn't get fixed overnight. The reputation of America is damaged, like, very, very much so. And for me, I'm worried, like, how can we ever get back in the good graces of our allies here? And it's just frustrating to see it continue to play out. The answer, sadly, is we won't. The break is forever. That isn't to say that America won't have a place in the world in the future.

It'll just be a very different type of world in a post-Trump world where nobody's going to trust that any deal with the United States. United States is something that can be relied on. And so what you're seeing develop right now is whereas the U.S.-led international groups and the architecture and security umbrellas and things were U.S.-based, we are now seeing a move away from that in every which way. And so you'll see Canada move closer to China, right? You'll see China move closer to South Korea. You will see a kind of trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic unity brokered by Canada.

And you'll see the U.S. wanting to be involved in these things, and the U.S. just won't be a leader. And ultimately, when you think about this is a deeper concern, the $40 trillion of debt that the United States has and the kind of Ponzi scheme with which we've dealt with the debt, is made possible because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world and because the United States leads the overall post-World War II international architecture, even though the debt is crippling, the Ponzi scheme goes on, the confidence game goes on, as long as the confidence, as long as people have confidence in the U.S., the con can go on and on and on. But the issue is what happens when that breaks? What happens when the policies of Bessent, degrade, debase, break down the dollar?

And what happens when you have a BRICS alliance that looks more reliable than a NATO alliance? What happens then? And so that is, again, kind of deeply concerning. But I don't think we ever return ever to what the world looked like before Trump. I just don't. And I think that's going to be worse off for the United States. I do think it creates lots of opportunities for mid-powers and a massive opportunity for China, which accelerated the direction where it was heading anyway.

I just think that's where we're at. Let's take our first quick break of the show. When we come back, we've got a lot to discuss, including I'll break down that Supreme Court ruling in a way that everybody can understand what the executive order stated and what the Supreme Court ruled when it stayed lower court injunctions block. blocking the executive order. Let's take our first quick break of the show. A reminder, pre-order WTF America, the book I wrote with my brothers.

It's available for pre-order now. Yes, it comes out in October, but it is important to do the pre-orders. So if you are able, if you were going to buy it in October and you are able to buy it now, do the pre-order versus waiting until October. That's a big help. All right. Let's take our first quick break of the show. We'll be right back after this quick message.

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if there's an exit survey, that then though he sent you, I'm still here. No call just yet. Benji, where to your next, big bro? Well, if you think about the reason, though, why Canada at the instruction of Prime Minister Carney had their negotiators leave Washington, D.C., it reveals a lot about the Trump regime. One of the main things right now is that Canada's making these incredible trade deals all over the world and they're expanding their free trade relationships. You'll see Prime Minister Carney announced real deals when he attends the ASEAN conference. He'll see him make real deals in Europe.

Remember, Prime Minister Carney was the first non-European leader invited to a major European council meeting that actually took place in Armenia representing Canada there. And he had a very prominent role there. And he's been cutting very beneficial deals for Canada. also cut an EV deal with China, which is limited in scope, but has the ability to grow deeper as more trust is built there. But one of the things the Trump regime negotiated, you know, it was Jameson Greer, but I hear that Howard Lutnik got more involved in it. And we haven't heard much about Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary lately. He's kind of kept a lower profile over the past

months since his deposition in the House of Representatives. Actually, it was supposed to be a deposition, the non-under oath and non-video tape thing he did when he lied and claimed he wasn't on Epstein Island. And we didn't really hear much about Lutnik. But he came back in the picture here. You read between the lines. It seems like a lot of this was coming from, you know, Trump and Lutnik and that, you know, Jameson Greer is a bit of a dweeb and, you know, he's a bit of a pushover.

And he's a weird guy, Jameson Greer and a pretty weak and pathetic guy and the trade representative who talks a big game. but like he can be easily out maneuvered by like LeBlanc over in the main negotiator in Canada, who's been around, you know, high level deals for a long time. But it did seem that, you know, there was some progress being made. But then one of the things that the United States said at the last minute is Canada can't do trade deals with other countries without our approval. You need the United States approval. So obviously that infringed on Canadian sovereignty.

And then an issue that if you know Canadian policy, politics, you don't go there. And it just shows you how offensive and abrasive and how much the U.S. just wants to attack Canadian sovereignty is going into Quebec, where the language they speak is French. The Trump regime wanted serious limitations and to curtail the French language from labeling and other important things. And that's like a very important big deal to Canada as well, even within Canada itself, if you know, the dynamics there of Quebec relative, you know, to, you know, the broader Canadian

provincial situation. And so the U.S. went right there at the end. And then, and then Carney's like, we can't deal with these people. Like, like, let's get, like, let's just get out of here. And now you just have one after the other, all these Trump regime officials just whining. Canada's mean to us. Maybe if we're even more aggressive with Canada, that maybe they want to do a deal with us then and Donald Trump was posting, I may do 50% tariffs on the Canadian auto industry. And that'll take effect January 1 of 2027 unless you do a deal with me. And again, what you have to realize is Trump is a bad human being. You can't look at it.

He's just a bad, putrid, horrible piece of trash thing. That's just the reality of what he is. So as you heard Doug Fortes, we heard Wob Canoe. I mean, you can't get people on opposite aisles, then a NDP, kind of a far left or further left, although I don't love labels as you know like that. But that's how NDP would be viewed. And then a kind of more far right in Ford. And they both just say the same thing.

You can't do a deal with this guy. He's just going to come back and want more and more and more. And then he'll break his own deals like the Kuzma deal, Canadian, U.S., Mexico, Canada agreement, was the deal Trump did during his first term, which Trump threw apart and ripped apart. Like, that was Trump's deal. So if you can't, if you can't abide by your own Kuzma, as Canada says, then you get no boozema. You don't, we're not going to put your, why would we help you put your booze on our shelves? Like, why do we want to help you?

Okay, you want to do 50% tariffs against Canadian auto? Okay, great. Remember all those things I listed that Canada does to actually provide critical stuff to the United States, Canada can just shut that off. Canada can charge surcharges on electricity. They can do a lot of things to cause pain. And the only reason why it appears that Canada has a surplus is because the U.S. relies on cheap affordable energy from Canada. And that creates the surplus. Without that, U.S. has a surplus. And so this whole thing is just so utterly deranged, but it's being run by deranged people. And then you think about Treasury Secretary,

you know, Scott Bessent and what he's done over the weekend and what he did today in his press conference, you know, he goes to the Financial Times. By the way, it's an interesting place to put your op-ed in and declare like a major economic warfare against an adversary. You go to the Financial Times. Two days ago, the Financial Times had an article that talked about how Donald Trump's losing war in Iran is like Besson's losing war. war against the bond market as he tries, bond buybacks and all of these schemes. So the Financial Times op-ed editorial board like completely mocked Besson two days ago. And then two days later, Besson then puts his op-ed announcing the D-Day against Iran. And this is like one of the weirdest, most deranged things I've ever read.

So this is what he writes in his op-ed when he announces. The U.S. is going to go after Iran, and we're going to go after any country that does business with Iran. You will be a pariah. We will isolate. We will destroy you. And so you read this op-ed, and then a few paragraphs in, it's not all that long where he announces the economic D-Day policy. Pull that back up, Brett. He goes, in the 17th century, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, why? We're in 2026. What are you going to say? Are you going to bring up some economic policy from the 17th? How is that going to apply? But okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, even though I shouldn't. Let me read the next sentence. In the 17th century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal gave enduring expression to the dilemma beneath this temptation. He understood that uncertainty does not absolve men or nations of divine judgment. In fact, it demands a more exacting approach. of risk and imposes a higher price of error. Pascal's epitomous wager now applies to Iran's lifelines.

Nations that, in courting reprie from Tehran, continue to replenish the very regime from which they seek protection and now exceed the limits of America's tolerance. So I finished reading this and I'm like, oh, you dumbed them. You dumb, dumb. I'm like, well, let me look more into this guy, Bessent. And then I look at his background.

Dude couldn't run his own fund in the private sector. After having a lot of allies that supported him at first, he went through a $5 billion fund with so much redemptions that within about a year, it went down to like a $500 million fund. You know, dude was an utter failure. his MAGA arc was being a loser and being a contrarian who goes against what everybody says. And he's a loser. That's how we ended up finding Donald Trump.

And I'm reading that. And I'm like, what does Blaise Pascal and the Pascal wager have to do with this trick? What the hell are you freaking talking about? And I understand the Pascal's wager is like, we should, Pascal said it. This was posthumous that this writing came out and it's attributed to him. We should have an infinite belief in God because you get infinite rewards. What's the downside, basically? Do you want to have infinite belief and infinite rewards or not have infinite belief and then

not get the rewards? So we might as well just go and believe there's a God because if there isn't a God, then what's the downside to believing in one? And if there is one, you've just screwed yourself by not believing that. It's a basic summary of what the past happened. I was best it here's thing. I was thinking when I heard it. Is he comparing the United States to God here?

Is that the, it's that that seems to be the case. That would say then you must trust us no matter what, even if you don't believe you should because you will get infinite reward versus not trusting us no matter what. I assume, but like what a freaking weird thing? What are you even talking about? Pascal's Wager, dude, the freaking price of oil is $4.11 a gallon nationwide and probably more expensive where you, where you,

where you live, the highest in our nation's history. Diesel's up to 550. Dude, I went by the gas station here yesterday in LA. It was like 729. Yeah, that's what most places. The nationwide, I'm giving the nation-wide. People can't afford anything. Trump's talking about importing mystery frozen meat from countries that we don't know

to undercut our ranchers by 25%. Americans have their health care ripped away. And you're out there, oh, the Blase, Pascals, dilemma. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? You were an idiot. Like, you're an idiot, dude. Yeah, it'll be one thing. It's one thing if you're a contrarian, but like your record shows, like you zigged when they zagged and you were a success man. And that's why he got to where he is. But when you trace it, it's him losing money and losing more money and losing more money and failing upwards and ending up in the Trump regime and now doing the same thing with the United States

economy. And you know, I was thinking about this over the weekend as, like, as all this was going on. And one of the things that I'd said online was, if you notice, there's a pattern that has formed right now as you look across the board, right? If it's Donald Trump dealing with Canada, if it's Donald Trump dealing with NATO, if it's Donald Trump dealing with Iran, the EU, Greenland,

any of our allies, you know, the Democrats, the media, whoever it is, everyone who Donald Trump deals with, they are always the problem. It's never Donald Trump. It's always they're the issue. They're the ones they're taking advantage of me. They're taking advantage of America. They're acting in bad faith.

They're evil people. They're communist. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And it reminded me of an old saying that if you run into a jerk in the morning, there's a good chance that that person's a jerk. But if you're running into jerks all day long, you're the jerk. And I think we've established now beyond a reasonable doubt, who is the jerk in these scenarios?

Because if you're going to everybody and everyone's coming to the same conclusion and you're viewing everyone who you deal with as the bad guy, you may be the bad guy. There's another version of the phrases. If you're constantly walking around all day and you keep smelling poop, then check your own shoe because it's probably coming from you. We're in this case. You've never heard these phrases.

These are good phrases. I'm going to add these to my arsenal. You're just like chock full of like phrases. Also, can I just take the obvious? Can I say the obvious too? And look, I don't like coming after people's appearances for the same. I think it's immature. I think it's low.

But when I think it's like medically affecting their thinking, but a big, like I think, I think the Botox has gone to Besson's brain. Like I think he was once a figure that to your point, Brett, felt he was this contrarian where I could outsmart the room, even if that wasn't fully the kid. I think he is so far gone. I mean, the Botox is like really, like really out of control these days. And it's alarming, Ben.

That's, I know you're making it face of me. I'm just saying it's an alarm. No, no, no, look. we go to Brett for the phrases. Also, for the physical appearance. Can I get him just one more thing there? He also, he comes off as a guy that just loves sniffing his own parts.

You guys remember that South Park episode where they were like part in like the wine cups and they'd like sniff it and I could totally see Besson after and Pascal in the 17th century. Come on. Let me break it down for a second though, because you got to think. Okay, so Scott Besson, he wants to come after all of a Ron financial lifelines. Oh, who's it going to be? Is it going to be China? Because they're a pretty big financial lifeline. No, I don't think it's going to be China because Xi Jinping is coming

to the United States next month and Donald Trump is going to want to piss him off. Okay, well, that's a big one. Who isn't that? India? Is Donald Trump going to want to piss off Modi and India? I'm going to say probably not. Is Donald Trump going to want to escalate things even further with Russia? I'm going to guess probably not. It's like there aren't really many options out there of folks for them to even unleash this so-called economic deed day on. And if they did, if they were like, okay, we're going to now declare a trade war, you know, escalate things on China now and treat them the way we're treating Iran, then you have World War III. So they've almost boxed themselves into this scenario. That's a no-win scenario for them, which is also just like stupid

strategically. Look, you have the mediator who Donald Trump loves, who donate. made a lot of crypto money to World Liberty Financial. Pakistan, Field Marshal Munir, the leader of Pakistan was in Iran. I mean, they are brotherly nations with each other. Remember when Donald Trump praised Al-Zaidi, the prime minister of Iraq, about how good-looking he was and how attracted Donald Trump was?

You're very handsome man. You remember when Zayyde showed up? Well, you just had M.B. Ghalibah, Iran's parliament leader show up in Iraq, and Zayidi says, this is your country. Iraq and Iran are one of the same. We view us as indispensable and integral to each other. Yes, you have China.

What about the other mediator who the Trump regime threw under the bus, who did a deal stronger than the JCPOA? And then that night, Trump and Netanyahu invaded Iran. Oman, right? They're working out the deal right now over control over the Strait of Ramuz, which the deal, news flash, everybody. Oman and Iran finished their deal, okay? Iran just sees no benefit of announcing the deal.

because it's just going to be used by Trump to manipulate the market. So Iran's not going to, you know, do any type of formal deal with Oman yet until the United States complies with the terms of the memorandum of understanding, which the United States is never going to do. And you have, you know, the broader BRICS relationships, right, which is Brazil and Russia and India and China and South Africa. and then the other groups who have joined, where we saw in the past 60 days, Foreign Minister Araghi being greeted as a hero in the Brick's Summit where he addressed everybody as kind of like a conquering hero, you know, within Bricks.

And so, you know, you get Bessent, who's asked this question today about, you know, who you're going to go after, what are you going to do? Why are you saying economic D-Day and then announcing it, but you don't really take any steps today. And the reporter says you described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion. We didn't give Germany a timeline. Watch what Besson says, though.

Let's play this clip. This is an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion, and the U.S. didn't give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today? Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy, bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly

and that we are serious. Secondary sanctions are a very powerful tool. Okay, so you are admitting that what you're doing will blow up the global financial system. You're the Treasury Secretary. uses words so recklessly, so maliciously, so callously, we will blow up the world financial – by the way, do you know what the global financial economic structure is? It's you, you idiot. It's the U.S. architecture of it. Post-World War II, you freaking moron. But I will tell you who's been making a lot of money from a lot of this chaos and craziness over the past week. Intent. It was a group of people who Donald Trump said that he was also very attracted to who were in the Oval Office, the crypto bros, the Winklevoss bros and all of those people were there in the

White House. That crypto crew was there. And I just find it interesting. I find it intriguing that right when that day, what happened thereafter, we saw the price of Bitcoin go up, up, up, and not like a little bit, but like dramatically. when they all were in the same room together in front of us. You know, I don't know. Call me cynical.

But, you know, the guy who does 21,000 stock trades during his first year in office, who did 1,000 stock trades in June. And Brett, you did a great breakdown of all of Trump stock. Buying, buying Boeing, buying Amazon, selling Vanguard ETF. I mean, the guy's a rapacious, crazy trader Donald Trump. I just wonder over there, what could. What could be happening? And the example I give earlier when I talked about,

you know, Trump is like way crazier. And the way the US is behaving is way less predictable than even North Korea. It's like North Korea doesn't like overtly be like, you know what we're gonna destroy North Korea, yo? We're gonna destroy North Korea. It's like, okay, Besson, you're literally writing a suicide note. Why would we blow?

We want to give them warning before we blow up the world financial structure. Dude, we run the financial structure, you idiot. It's the U.S. Archive. You want us to blow our building down? You want us to do it? You want us to do you dare me? You double dare me.

I'm watching this. I'm like, this guy's a dummy. Iran's going to be like, okay, do it. Do it. Like, again, it's like we said last time, like all they have to do is sit back and like Donald Trump and his merry band of goons destroy everything. That's why they don't even have to take action. They don't have to do bombings.

They don't have to try to get Trump. They don't have to do anything except let Trump be Trump and let these idiots around him be idiotic. And it's working incredibly successfully. It doesn't it feel like every time they go out there too, whether it's Besson or Howard Lutnik or Trump or Hegsef, it's like they're trying to be like a movie villain. It's like they're trying to be Dr. Evil or something. But it just comes off like even lamer and weirder. It's like, why are you threatening to blow up the global economy? why you're sending mass death and destruction like all the things you're saying are freaking weird they

only play into uh what everybody else in the world is saying about us and you're just painting a picture because it's an accurate one of the united states as an incredibly unstable nation with unsurious leaders who are willing to damage itself for what i don't even know for what brett brett i'm doing my best best best in right now i'm giving everyone time to course correct before i launch to Epic Plan D-Day economically. I mean, they're all buffoons. They're also egomaniacs that always think they're the smartest people in the room at all times. They think they're outsmarting everybody.

But also, they're deep, deeply selfish people, all of them. You know, the issue with egomaniacs is often they attract other egomaniacs in their circles. And so this Trump regime is built solely upon egomaniacs with one goal in mind, and that is to benefit Donald Trump. Next goal, egomaniacs, how can we benefit me, myself and I? And what Besson's doing here trying to make himself like a de facto star or whatever, like, I'm going to, I'm going to scare it. It's so deeply pathetic and infuriating knowing like the real world implications as Bessent

cosplays Dr. Evil is going to have in our economy. I mean, did you all get very worried about Janet Yellen? Were you like, Janet Yellen? Did you even know Janet Yellen was a Treasury Secretary? I mean, did you know who our Treasury secretaries were under Biden? The reality is that it is an important position, but it is actually, Jordy, to your point, it should be a deeply selfless position, not selfish position.

You don't want to know all that much about the Treasury auctions. You don't want to know that much about the plumbing and the pipes and what happens there. You know it's very important. You want somebody who has profound macro economic prowess and knowledge. But you don't want to see the person that frequently because you know where you see the Treasury Secretary very frequently. They're not called the Treasury Secretary in a communist nation where they do central planning

and where there's intervention at every step to manipulate the markets and there aren't free markets. And that's what we have here. So again, the ultimate projection, the same. way they call it economic outcast. We're going after the communist. Y'all are the communists. I mean, you have these bond buyback schemes to manipulate the market. You're the worst communist. Because as I'm right when I talked about, you know, other communism, at least they're focused on their country. We're like communism to benefit other countries. Oh, you know what we're going to do

ranchers? You know how we're going to do this? We're going to bring it. We're going to do price controls, but not for you. Okay. We're going to screw you over. We're going to bring in frozen mystery beef from countries won't tell you who they are. We're going to bring it in. Are they going to get checked for, you know, I don't know, all of the various diseases and health issues that we're seeing now spread and spawn throughout the United States? I'm not going to tell you, but we're going to undercut our own farmers. Price control, 25% why by Fiat. Donald Trump says so, and we're going to undercut you our ranchers. And it's like, what, what are you going to do? You know, and then Besson, I may use one trillion dollars from the, this was the new one today, from the Treasury,

general fund in order to manipulate the long-term Treasury yields. All right. Well, there's $40 trillion in debt. There's $1 trillion in the Treasury General account, which is viewed as a liability on the Fed's balance sheet. So you're going to take the $1 trillion to try to do what, to service the $1.3 trillion in debt. Then what's going to happen with the general operating expense, you idiot? We're just going to deplete everything. Is that?

And by the way, Ben, by the way, Ben, to interrupt you for one second here, wasn't the last bomb buyback, whatever the hell he's doing, like $2 billion? So didn't he just jump from $2 billion to try to save this issue to $1 trillion? Yes and no. Yes. But he's not saying that the $1 trillion will be used for it. What he's saying is it could be used for it. And what he was saying with the $4 billion to the $2 billion is that we are likely to use $4 billion.

billion to go into the market at the next time, I think, which is in September, to then start buying back the long-term yields and then selling more short-term but buying the long-term maturity bonds. And so he's now trying to signal again to the market. We will do central planning in order to suppress the market forces, which some people say that's a form of communism and whatever. So that's what it is. It's signaling.

It's manipulation. It hasn't been done yet, but they're signaling that they're willing to do it. So the same way, Brett, they do all these leaks about the Strait of Hormuz and say, we've got these tankers coming out and we've got this amount of oil. And they're telling that to Barack Ravid. He's saying, I've got a trillion dollars. Here's what I'm going to do to try to manipulate the market. And the issue is when you keep on doing that, it's like ignoring the disease that someone has inside.

The disease is still there. You're just a fake doctor who's telling the patient that they're going to be fine. And it's just getting worse and worse and worse. That's what's actually happening right now. And now the American people are seeing it more and more and more. And the rest of the world, using my doctor examples, are not the fake doctor. They're real doctors. And they see what's happening.

And they're like, yeah, the patient is dying. And the American doctor is out there pretending that they're perfectly healthy and that they've never been better and never been stronger. And that's just not what's happening. All right, we'll take our last quick break of the show. When we come back, I will break down the Supreme Court order. So everybody understands what the order is. We'll do it in a diligent professorial way. I'll show one more clip that I got to show of Bessent.

Perhaps we'll talk a little bit about J.D. Vance's presser in Maine that Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, did not want to be a part of at all. Last break, quickly, reminder by WTF America. pre-order it right now. It's the book I wrote with my brothers. We've got to keep the momentum on those pre-order sales. So if you're going to buy it in October and you are able to buy it now, buy it now. It helps a lot. All right. Let's take our last quick break in the show. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. IQ bars are better for you, clean plant protein bars packed with fiber and brain boosting nutrients with zero added

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www.join delete me.com slash mitus and enter code Midas at checkout, M-E-I-D-A-S. That's www.joinedleetme.com slash mites, code mitus. Shout out to our sponsors, y'all. Links in the description of the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. Sorry, I was giggling, Brett.

You froze, but I wasn't sure if you froze. You're not frozen anymore. But it was like a really cheerful smile on your face as you were frozen. So no, I know you're faking it. I could tell when you're faking it. Benji, where to next, big bro? I just want to show this other clip to show you

what a fraudster Treasury Secretary Bessent is. So a reporter asks Besson. So you said that Donald Trump is calling world leaders with specific asks, regarding economic D-day, as you call it. So who is he calling? Who is he speaking to, right? The same way Trump was recently asked.

So you said you're bringing in this frozen mystery meat from foreign countries, and they've agreed to somehow work with our retailers to undercut our ranchers by 25%. Who? Who? Who? We'd like to know from maybe health breaches. reasons, transparency reason, I don't know. A little thing called laws.

We want to know what the hell is going into our food supply. Who? Oh, lots of people, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to speak about it. I can't tell you who it is. You can't tell us? That's now a classified material? Okay.

Okay. Now, Bessent. Talk to us. Tell us, which leaders has Donald Trump had high-level discussions with? Because the way the world was the way the world works, even when it comes to countries that we disagree with, they do readouts where they post so-and-so spoke with so-and-so, especially if it's with the President of the

United States. Now, they don't have to give meticulous notes of everything that went down on the call, but they will describe what the discussion was in broad strokes. So Bessent, who were these discussions with? Let's tell us because that's always been information, always Democratic administrations, Republican administrations. If the president of the United States speaks with another president, there's always been a readout so we have some understanding. We have the right to this knowledge, okay?

They work for us, we don't work for them. This isn't super crazy classified information. Who'd you speak to? Listen to what he said, let's play it. Thank you, sir. Thank you. You said the president is calling world leaders with specific asks and that there is a defined timeline.

Who is he calling and what are the asks? We're not going to name names. We've already seen some results and that I am confident. The president, as you all know, is quite persuasive. And we are following his calls up with calls from visits and calls from the State Department and from the U.S. Treasury, expecting them, or telling the leaders, the countries, and the entities,

exactly what we expect and the timelines. And I would expect that very quickly, if they do not respond, then you will see the ramifications of their actions. Can you say how far the timelines are? Again, I'm not going to set timelines, but we do not have infinite patients here. Hey, I mean, what a loser? What are you talking about? You're not going to tell us. We know that Donald Trump is persuasive. I'm not going to name names. He's not persuasive. He's a predator, a sexual predator. He's also a felon. He's a liar. He's a fraud. We're not going to give you timelines. But just trust me, it's happening and it's good. What the hell is that? Again, I don't care

if you're a Democrat or a Republican or an independent or you don't like politics. What we just saw there is offensive to people who should care about information and knowledge and the country and our standing in the world and our families and other people in the kind of, like, what truthfully, what the hell even was that? And by the way, he's the guy when he speaks, doesn't exactly instill confidence.

Like, you hear the guy speak, he's like, I don't know. You're like, I don't know that I could trust this guy or that he even feels confident in what. What he's saying. Just think about it, Brett, you know, like you go in an airplane. Yes, your pilot. You know, your pilot. Where are we going?

Not going to tell you. What do you mean you're not going to tell me? Yeah. Are you want to tell me anything? No. Just, you know, I'm a good pilot. I don't know. I don't actually know that you're a bad pilot.

Not we're not going to set any parameters for this flight. Just to you're not going to help any parameters. Yeah. He gives off. He gives off Elon when he speaks. I'll just leave it as that. He gives off Elon is. I'm surprised Trump likes him speaking on it.

You know, Trump's whole thing is like, you know, this guy is made for TV is, you know, he's Trump like likes the guy's hair. He thinks he's tall. I don't, you know, it's weird. He's got more, I don't like taking it here because I don't want to be immature, but he's got Mar-a-Gro face. Mar-a-O-Go-Face. Like he's like, that's the whole, that's the whole point 0.0.0%. Trump likes to be around people that make him feel better about himself.

So of course he likes this guy. This guy's a freak. All of these mega are. All of me. And, Jordy, did you see, I mean, so Hegeseth, right? We know that even a guy like Dan Driscoll who's allied with J.D. Vance, he's like a Yale friend of Vance. And like, Driscoll's not a good dude, but in the Trump regime, he's like one of the more normal people. He came in hating Ukraine.

But then he actually forged an interesting bond with Zelensky in the Ukrainian army and was like, whoa, I'm the secretary of the army. It looks like Ukraine knows what they're doing with, like, army stuff. They know how to do drones and interceptors and stuff that we probably need, and they want to give it to us. So Driscoll ended up liking Ukraine, which was like kind of an interesting story. So obviously, Driscoll had to be pushed out by Higgsith and had to be pushed out. And so he's leaked to the Wall Street Journal and others that he's out. But he was allied with Randy George and General George, Army Chief of Staff, General Donahue,

the last soldier in Afghanistan. These are beloved army figures who are out there modernizing our army to improve drone capabilities, anti-drone capabilities, the way modern warfare is fought, lots of learning from Ukraine. So the Trump regime purged those people and brought in somebody who Hegesith liked. Their words are back to the basics. We need the warrior ethos of World War II in 26, back to the basics. So they cut the cutting-edge drone program. And then you had Heg-Syth today talking about, you know, what does he say?

He says, no, he goes, no more. I don't even want to say the words. But you know the one I'm about to play, Brett. He says, no more trannies just trading. Here, play this quote. Every dollar squandered on redundancy or bureaucracy or waste. It's an insult to you, the taxpayer. And it's a theft from warfighters.

This is a new department with a new focus on our core mission, where we're restoring the warrior ethos, and that means a focus, an unrelenting, uncompromising focus on lethality. It means no more DEI. It means no more trannies, just training. It means colorblind, gender neutral, merit-based, back to basics across the board, no matter if you're carrying a rifle or you're working on the plant floor. Jordy, as you said, I mean, these guys are absolute sickos.

I mean, and he thought he was going to get, well, like a laugh line or an applause line on that. You know, he's, which is horrific. And he's somebody who has refused to promote black people, women, wouldn't allow anyone who's a black person or a woman to become a one star and to rise through the ranks. he pushed out C.Q. Brown Jr., the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, because he's black. And so the Trump regime has made it their mission to purge the top military ranks of black people and women who have achieved the highest level of military valor and accomplishments because Hegzith wanted to give a waiver to a guy named Raisin,

Dan Raisin-Kane. We like his nickname. Raised. Like his nickname? Who was a three-star, not to take away from a three-star. I mean, that's a pretty significant accomplishment to be a three-star general. But he wasn't qualified to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You want to talk about meritocracy and qualifications. The guys, I was going to say irony of the irony of everything that Hexeth and Trump say about things like this when they speak about merit and when they speak about DEI is that there, of course, it's projection. They're doing what they say that was happening beforehand because they also misrepresent what DEI even is and what it's all about. What it's about is actually finding the best people and not limiting yourself to one kind of caricature of a person or another, but to make sure that you're reaching out to all different groups so that you could find

the best talent, not so that you can meet specific quotas, but so you're making sure that you are finding the very best talent that is out there. We're seeing a reversal of that. We're actually seeing the opposite of the meritocracy with Trump, with Hegg Seth, where the kind of dumbest people are the ones who get elevated, or not necessarily even the dumbest, but the people who are just most loyal to Donald Trump and are going to carry out his orders. And the people who are actual experts in the fields, the people who are doing this out of love of country, the people who are doing this out of service to our country with their extensive backgrounds, they are the ones getting pushed out, most of the time for superficial reasons.

And the superficial reasons could be anything from the color of their skin to their gender identity, to their allegiance to Donald Trump, all this other crap. And that is actually what's making us not ready militarily. And we're seeing the lack of military readiness right now across the entire world under this regime as we move ships for out of Asia. because we're running low on help in the Middle East, then we need to get the ships there. We see it as we cancel these training exercises in South Korea, which we just canceled another one. And this one is different than the one

that Trump was speaking about the other day, this exercise. This military exercise, they ended, and explicitly the reasoning behind it is that the United States is, unfortunately, right now, a stretch-to-thin being in the Iran War, which is what I was kind of, surmising last week when I said, I think a lot of this, honestly, Donald Trump's bravado about we're not going to help South Korea, we're not going to do this. To me, it felt a little

bit like a cover for we don't have enough troops right now to even help us fight our wars here, so we actually have to pull people back because we're getting desperate. And it definitely feels like there's an element of that. And all of this makes us less safe. And it's such a slap in the face to all the people who have served us, right? To any black Americans who have served this country, to transgender Americans who have bravely served this country. to women who serve this country. It's absolutely atrocious. It's a slap in the face to all of our veterans

and all those still serving today. 0.2%. That's per the Pentagon and official data. 0.2% active trans-military personnel right now. Hegsef feels that he needs to go out of his way to attack people who are trying their damnedest to serve this country, to serve a country where their leaders,

their leaders, quote unquote leaders, the Heggsess, the Trump are constantly attacking them. Makes up 0.2% of our active military force. Hegset, just I'm going after. I'm going to make this the thing that's most important right now. Not this war of choice that Donald Trump has gotten us into, this endless war, this forever war that we will always be in because of this incompetent leadership. This is what, this is where they plant their flag in the ground. Go back to this warrior ethos. begin to describe how deeply upsetting it is to me just from like a human standpoint how

someone could just attack a community like this just at the highest levels of government look it would be awful if this was some bob on the street making these types of comments this pete heggseth is donald trump it's the entire trump regime it's all of maga it's absolutely filth and again all these folks want to do is protect this damn country a country that won't even love them back right now it is despicable to me man when we play that stuff and we see that stuff with heggseth it's so frustrating because again too at the root of it bread too he's playing a character he's cosplaying the same way trump does his cosplay thing like that's what heggseth is going we've talked about this he's like an 80s like movie what general right now up there like that's what

he's trying to be in a very bad guy in the karate kidojo well i'm just in a very serious time where troops are dying like american soldiers are dying actively in this war and you have hegseth out there just behaving like an absolute clown just embarrassing us left and right. No, he's the corny bad guy. I think of the karate kid, like the bad coach with the bad dojo. Do you remember, like with the corny dialogue? You know, and it's like this, to your point, Jordy, there's real world ramifications for this. And America's getting weaker and weaker and the damage is irreparable at this point. I'll give you another number, Jordy, 0%. That's the number of transgender WNBA players in the WN.

NBA. Yet if you watched Fox state regime media, you would think the biggest issue facing the country right now is transgender players in the WNBA because two deranged former NBA players who had really bad careers for, you know, personal issues or whatever was going on with them, but didn't end up making it. They were playing, you know, saying that they were saying that they were saying that they wanted to be in the WNBA. draft and so you've got to draft us you know now because you don't support women and then they one person showed up to like a game and then started like taunting the women athletes and then and then got thrown out and then so why would you do this to me and then fox then played the guy getting through it's like what do you where would what are we like by the way i can't stand this and i don't want to say these players names because they are just so clownish and i don't want to give them the limelight here because they are the danger to women's sports Like, I want to be very, like what that NBA platformer NBA player did, like that, that is making women's sports less safe.

That's not creating a safer environment. That's making everything less safe. You're bringing all this weird negative attention to a league that's just trying to exist. They're just trying to ball. They're just trying to play a ball. And you have this absolute buffoon out there trying to make it all about him. Again, it's deeply upsetting to me because on a human level, they're just attacking like our fellow human, like our fellow person. And I know that might sound sappy or whatever, but that's what's happening.

And it's just so gross. And then you know what MAGA does? They reward that behavior. They give that NBA player the limelight on Fox News to go and talk. Oh, well, I declare, I could, you know, I could do this. This is my right. Yeah, dude, it is. But at a certain point, you're just a douchebag.

You're just an a-ho, man. And that's it. You're not alpha. You're not, you're not, oh, bro, you fucking crush that, man. I love seeing you up. Oh, dude, you're going to wear the wig on. You're going to do the hit with the. wig. No, you're just a jagoff. Because here's the thing, whether it's the IndyCar race,

and I don't want to spend so much time talking about it, but the issue with the Natalie Hart, Malina, all that stuff, you know, in addition to national security issues, too, in my view of, like, who are these people? Like, what do we know about them? What don't we know about them? What's really happening here with someone like a Natalie Harp, you know? But the issue is also an issue of priorities. And you're doing that. Well, as I said, there are all these real catastrophic issues. And that's not hyperbolic, catastrophic issues facing the American people. And don't be like, oh, Ben, catastrophic. Yeah, consumer confidence is at a historic low in the history of the United States. So yes, I would call that catastrophic. And gas prices and diesel

prices are at the historic high, which is not good. So I would call that catastrophic. Okay. And so you have that going on. You have state regime media wanting to talk about those issues, you know, on TV versus talking about what the American people are going through to try to divide people and to try to separate people. You know, and then I want to end with this, though, because a Trump, we talk about this in WTF America, you know, Trump is a vessel. and our system, he's a vessel of fascism, and our very sick system allows that vessel to be the manifestation of authoritarianism here.

Because if we had a healthy system, you would purge it out. You would be able to resist it and fight it and not allow these losers to take control. And so when you look at the systems, and we devote a lot of the book to talk about this, You see a sick and broken judiciary system at the top with the United States Supreme Court. And this right-wing fascist Supreme Court, which was the project of a federalist society dating back many decades, has destroyed the rule of law on very basic issues, on an issue like the ballroom. It's illegal. It's unlawful. It's not a hard question. Okay. Congress needs to fund it. If Congress agrees to this crazy thing, then it happens that's the way our system works you can't just go and demolish the white house okay

and then not consult congress i don't need to go consult law books or the any americans should know you can't demolish the white house you can't go well Obama did Obama didn't demolish the white house shut the f up no president demolished the white house and if they made a material repair guess what they got congressional authorization via a law because that's the way our system works And that's the way our system's supposed to work on everything. And the president's supposed to take care of that the law is faithfully executed. So when you see the Supreme Court grant a stay that permits the golden ballroom to continue to be built, when the law is so obvious that it's unlawful, you just know viscerally that this Supreme Court's a piece of shit.

And you're like, what are you doing? Who are you? What is this fascist crap? The law is very clear, okay? You can't build golden ballrooms without Congress. It's called the legislative branch. And if Congress does it, I might not like it. And you might not like it. But that's the system. We could, in the midterms or in another election period, vote out these people in Congress and then get them to pass laws that we want.

That's our system. You don't like the system. Then do another system. That's our system right here. So there's that ruling by the Supreme Court. And then you had Donald Trump about five months ago with this election executive order that would tamper with the way states rights. Remember when the right wing would talk about state's rights, the way states rights deal with their own elections because elections are a function of state's rights.

Remember all the right wing where states rights, don't tread on me, don't tread on me. This executive order is the biggest tread on state's rights. So let me tell you what the Supreme Court did about two hours ago in staying or pausing district court and court of appeal orders that blocked Donald Trump's executive order. So by staying the district court and the circuit court block of Donald Trump's executive order, it allows Donald Trump's executive order to remain in place pending a final resolution. So it allows the executive order to stay in effect. And how the Supreme Court justified it is they said, well, the executive order just set out a

process by which certain things can happen, but the injury has not been inflicted on the states yet. So even though we know that the Trump regime intends to inflict the injury, right, imagine the example of someone says, I've got a gun, I'm going to shoot you in the face. And the states go, hey, Supreme Court, they got a gun and they said they're going to shoot me in the face. The Supreme Court's ruling basically boils down to you don't have standards. because you haven't been shot in the face yet, so you haven't been injured. And the states are like, yeah, but we're not going to wait until we're shot in the face. You can't shoot people in the face and they're threatening to shoot me in the face.

You're the Supreme Court. Tell them not to shoot me in the face because we know that the way this is lined up, that's the only outcome. And the Supreme Court cloaks their ruling in judicability and standing. They tried to act like technical procedural issues and says, well, until the injury happens, there's no relief that the Supreme Court can give you at this point. So you may be saying, well, what are the issues at play right now? Let me just go through the three things from Trump's executive order.

Number one, it directs the Postal Service to initiate a proposed rulemaking that includes several proposed provisions. One such provision is that outbound ballot envelopes must contain a unique barcode to facilitate tracking. The order does not demand that any proposed provision appear in the final rule, but does say that the federal government will outline how the states do their barcode if the mail, if the U.S. Postal Service will deliver their mail. Otherwise, the U.S. Postal Service won't return your mail, won't deliver your mail to the election facilities. That that's how the Trump regime will weaponize the postal service. Second, the executive order requires the

Attorney General to prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of state and local officials or any others who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters. And then it orders the Secretary of Homeland Security to take appropriate action to create and send state citizenship list to each state. These lists will catalog the residents of each state who are, United States citizens and who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming federal election. And then the Supreme Court says, but states are not required to use the list, and the secretary may compile and transmit them only to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law. And so the feds are saying, we have our list. We want you to use our list, not your state list.

And the state is saying, we don't want your federal list because you are Trump and you do fraud all of the time. And so then you have that next provision second, which says, we're going to prosecute you basically if we think that you're not complying. So do you see how those two things go together? If you're not using our lists, that may be grounds for the DOJ to prosecute state officials for using the real list. And remember, Donald Trump lies about the state election lists all of the time. And he's like there's all these illegals who vote, which we know it all. these illegal immigrants who vote. I hate that term, but that's how he says it, you know, which is not the

case. So what the Supreme Court said, all of those things haven't kicked in yet. They're just proposed rules. So once the Postal Service actually announces its rule, because right now it's initiating a proposed rulemaking that includes these provisions. Once the rule becomes official, and then they want to impose it on the states, then the state can file the law. and say states rights, it's illegal. The states argue that's going to cause chaos in our system. You want us to wait until we know the states are saying anything that's done in this arena is illegal because this is a state's rights issue.

So whatever rule it is, it will be illegal. So you want us to wait, get injured, then sue and then be confused over what the actual obligations are versus deal with it right now and say this is a state's rights issue. And so to be clear, this doesn't say the federal government wins. It says, we're in a, the Supreme Court saying, we at this point don't know what the federal government's going to do yet. And once they issue their final rule on the mail, then the states can sue. The state's concern is once the rule is implemented and then they sue, what are they supposed to do? The federal, the postal service is going to be told, here's our bar code.

here's how we're doing it. Don't take the state voting. Don't take the state ballots if they don't have the barcode. And then the states are saying, then we're going to fight. Then you're going to have the postal service, not take our ballots. That's going to create a massive amount of confusion. So that's where we are right now. And if you're saying, well, what's the outcome?

I mean, right now where the concern is is the level of confusion. because, as I note, what happens when we all know what the rule is going to be that the federal government implements, and then the states are going to sue, and then the states will probably win. But then is Trump going to say, well, now I can't deliver the mail because we're still litigating this issue, and we're litigating it, so we need to see what happens. But then I'll just read you this beginning, because this is how the right-wing Supreme Court frames the issue. The president recently issued an executive order regarding election integrity. Five months ago, Trump issued an executive order designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections.

That's how they start off this order. How do you even buy that premise? Trump is the arsonist who created the lack of public confidence in our system. He's the liar. He's the arsonist. the idiot, fascist, sexual predator, deviant, sicko, bankrupter that you all gave absolute immunity to, you psycho Supreme Court, pieces of crap. That's what the issue is here. You gave him absolute immunity. He eroded confidence in the public elections. And now he's trying to say, I'm going to restore it. No, he's not. He's going to create more chaos in it is the underlying issue.

And the American people see it. They see that this Supreme Court is a right-wing fascist. the Supreme Court enabling this type of behavior. And that's why people are absolutely livid at this entire system. And this system is what we talk about in WTF America as well, because you can't just go back to a pre-Trump status quo. You can't because what led to a Trump was the pre-Trump status quo. And that enabled, that empowered,

we have to be ensuring that we, that we focus on a people-powered, pro-democracy, listen to the people, deliver for the people, fight for the people, be uncompromising in fighting for the people approach here. And because you read an order like this and you're like, what the hell are they doing? What?

That's what our Supreme Court's doing. And you see it's sick, it's a diseased, sick Supreme Court that that's how they treat it. After everything we've been through, some sickos over there, And that's my professorial argument, Brett and Jory. Good, good professorial argument and good and good breakdown. And, you know, but I think aside from the confusion, it doesn't seem like this is some sort of seismic decision that's going to alter the election.

Would that be an accurate kind of thing to say at this moment in time? Not that it's a good thing, but. The order doesn't say, Trump, you're correct. You win the case. It's an issue about standing and judicability right now is how it's framed. So it doesn't have that like outcome dispositive. But if you're a state, you're saying to yourself, why would the Supreme Court inject this level of confusion?

You want us to wait now and then sue once we suffer the injury? We've suffered the injury. The threat I'm going to shoot you is the injury. That's a threat to us. That's enough. And the Supreme Court saying, nope, got to be shot in the face first. And it seems like they always find their legally reason and do whatever they plan on doing anyway.

That's, you know, nine times out of ten to benefit Donald Trump. Justice Jackson was very strong in her dissent saying, talking about Donald Trump's efforts to foment chaos ahead of the November elections and said that the decision was massed as a quibble over justiciability, which I thought was, you know, interesting. And this was a long partisan lines or along, ideological lines. You know, six-three decision. The people you think are that of that six are the six. The people you think are the three are the three. That's why elections are important. That's why

every election is important. That's why voting is important because the people at the top decide who are on those seats. And Donald Trump has had far too much power in that regard and in judicial seats across the country. But, you know, I think voters now heading into the midterms, they have a chance now to begin to change the tide. Like Ben said, it's very important, I think, that this country quickly changes its trajectory and not only reverts back to some sort of nostalgic time in the past, because, as Ben said, that's not going to be good for anybody, but actually develops a future that actually has institutions that work for the people and has a country that works for everybody and makes it so that these bad actors are held accountable

and that people could actually succeed in this country, not the people at the very top. And I think that's what we're fighting for. I know that's what you all are pushing for. It's a big thing we speak about in the book, WTF America, and thank you to everybody who has pre-ordered and continue to pre-order and who shares this stuff every single day. It's so important, you know, as a community that we stay together,

that we stay enthusiastic, that we don't let them beat us down, and that we keep fighting, we keep forging ahead. because frankly, that is the one way that we win, and we've seen it now in these special elections. We've seen the massive shift, by the way, have you guys seen in these school boards? You're seeing the kind of Moms for Liberty faction that had so entrenched themselves in Florida politics, losing their majorities on these school boards. Why? Because the people are showing up. Because for far too long, for decades and decades and decades, this predates Trump by a whole lot,

You had these right-wing billionaires and think tanks working and figuring out how can we dissect the American system of government from the inside. And they realize that a lot of this is local as well, not just at the top, not just at the Donald Trump's, but down to the people who are running for school boards and county commissioners and city council. And they invested a lot in that and getting people to run for those positions to push their beliefs from top to bottom and from bottom to top. And I think people are seeing what's happening. And I think people now are taking it upon themselves. They're standing up. They're saying, I don't want this crap anymore. I'm not going to live like this.

I'm not going to let these people do this to me. I'm going to take control of my own life. I'm going to take control of my country. And so thank you to everybody for watching and listening and for doing just that. Thanks, everybody. We appreciate you. Jordy, take it away. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.

Before you go, our book, WTF America, is available for pre-order now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To pre-order, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.