The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump Drove Them Away...

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on how Donald Trump’s policies are hurting Nevada’s tourism economy, driving away international visitors, and squeezing families with rising costs. Ben then interviews Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford about his campaign for governor against Joe Lombardo and his plans to fight for the people of Nevada. Go to https://ground.news/MTN to cut through misinformation, critically analyze the news shaping our lives and hold the media accountable. Save 40% off unlimited access to Ground News with my link or scan the QR code on screen. Pre-order the new book from MeidasTouch, WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy, today: https://bit.ly/wtfamericayoutube 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 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

Shocker, the guy who bankrupted casino after casino in Atlantic City has targeted Las Vegas, the great state of Nevada. And I suppose this is his encore, his tariffs against the world, this Trump regime disastrous economic policy, really hurting the people in Vegas and Reno all throughout Nevada, frankly. Tourism is down. We're getting new flight data. I mean, Las Vegas airport passenger traffic plunged. 9.2% in August. And you see this trend month over month, decrease, decrease, decrease. As you look at the gas prices right now in Vegas, diesel is at a record high,

approaching $7 a gallon there, gas approaching a record high as well. I mean fewer visitors, of course, coming to Las Vegas. You take a look generally at tourism across the United States. right now. Visitors to the United States are on track to drop by almost two million year on year, and an incredible state like Nevada, which relies on a lot of tourism, is specifically getting hurt.

Quote, where the only major country in the world losing visitation, the head of the U.S. Travel Association said, it is mind-boggling, another way of saying, it's Trump. And maybe the Trump regime will say that left-wing U.S. Travel Association organization, no, it's just you. It's your tariffs against the world. It's your attacks on Canada, your attacks in Europe, your catastrophic wars, ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo. People are scared.

People are broke. And you are the one who had promised on day one, you are going to make everything cheap. So I'm just wondering, like, what is the governor? Joe Lombardo of Nevada actually doing. And here's the latest from Lombardo. He said, I'm not responsible for affordability. Sure, I've put my arm around Donald Trump in this regime on everything. But I can't control affordability in this state, really.

The guy who has vetoed a measure that would have expanded paid family and medical leave for government workers and mandated that private employers with at least 50 employees provide leave, legislation that would have provided free school meals following the expiration of pandemic funding, a bill that would have strengthened tenant protections by including safety and health standards in the definition of habitable housing. Another tenant protection measure that required landlords to spell out all fees and prohibited assessing application fees on minors, a bill that would have prohibited the sale of prescription drugs for more than the Medicare established price. So, I mean, I'm curious.

you know, what's Joe Lombardo going to do? It's a close governor's race right now in Nevada where the Attorney General Aaron Ford has pulled ahead according to some of the most recent polling. And I'm given the story right there and what a compelling individual, our Attorney General Aaron Ford is. You can see why.

But also I learned recently as I was zooming in on Nevada that Governor Lombardo is afraid to debate, that he's scared, that he's too afraid, to go on live TV and have a debate against Attorney General Ford. If you're too scared to turn down or to do debates, how are you supposed to be the governor of this state? I mean, look, I get it. You know, it could be scary.

Governor Lombardo, I get. I mean, look, it's not for everybody. But dude, this is your job. It's like a basketball player saying, I don't like to dribble. I don't really like shooting. Not my thing. So maybe do another profession. So they're going to do an open podium debate in Nevada right now where you're going to have

Governor Lombardo just not show up and you're going to have the Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford there debating nobody because the governor scared with all of this that's going on. I want to bring in Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford right now. Great to see it. We had you on about six months ago. And then we had Gianne at the beginning of this Trump regime as well. And we should talk about all of these developments.

But let's just start off with this idea that the governor of Nevada is scared to debate you. He's scared to show up. So you're doing an open podium debate. Is why a baffling? Yeah. Well, you know what? Let me just say, we can end the show right now. You started it so well.

I mean, you have absolutely perfectly described what's happening here in Nevada on the ground. It is he, Joe Lombardo, and the guy he calls his commanding officer Donald Trump that have devastated our economy. And you are right. He's afraid to face the facts on a debate stage with me. I am more than happy to discuss my plans, my policies, my programs, and defend why I want to proceed the way we want to. He should be willing to do the same, but he can't. He cannot defend against lying down for Donald Trump being the doormat for Donald Trump, Donald Trump at every single term, especially when it comes to these tariffs, tariffs that he said we should maybe feel a little pain from in the first place. And after I sued, because we don't need pain, we need the leadership.

And I showed it by suing and winning, this governor says we don't deserve a refund. This is the guy who's supposed to be representing the entirety of our state and he won't stand up. Now, I saw that you had a headline that says that it's mind boggling that we are losing tourism. It's not mind boggling. it's entirely predictable. This is exactly what we expected and anticipated when Donald Trump and his accolade on the ground here, Joel Lombardo, opted to agree with these notions of tariffs

and attacking our tourism economy. I'm going to be a governor that tries to restore that, and I'm looking forward to even an empty podium debate to tell that story. You reminded me. I think the Midas Touch Network broke one of those exclusives where we got some of the audio where Lombardo was like mocking the people.

You know, you was saying something. something to the extent of we deserve the, you know, this is, we need to inflict this pain on you. That's how you get better. Or he was saying these tariffs are going to be absolutely amazing. And so it's like, look, I mean, I think you would agree with me that if the tariffs, which we all knew were going to be horrible, if they turned out to be amazing and Vegas was thriving and Reno was crushing it and everyone was doing good and was like,

oh, what would you do? You would be tough to, you'd be like, I guess I was, I don't know, maybe all the economic knowledge we've accumulated in the history of humankind was wrong. But I mean, the reality is, is that he was wrong. Yeah. And it had serious consequences. And now he wants to pretend like, you know, a la carte.

I did this, but not this. And so I want to do it. It's like, dude, you're the governor, man. Yeah, look, and it's a great insight into the, frankly, the level of disdain that this governor has, for all of Nevada, beginning with this notion of us having to feel pain. We also heard about him having a small group discussion. We happen to hear about it, where he says that if you are one of those who are unemployed

right now, and incidentally, we've had, if not the highest, one of the highest unemployment rates for this government's entire tenure. He says that if you are unemployed, it's because you're lazy. You don't want a job that's available. You rather depend upon the government. You know, you have these no king's rallies. He says they must be getting paid, right? But even if you have a dissenting view, I got to

two words for you, he says, F you, right? This is the guy who is supposed to be taken care of us, and instead he is denigrating the entirety of the state, again, won't stand up. My plans are to fix the problems that he's caused. You run down a whole list of things he's vetoed. They're going to send those back to me, and I'm going to sign it so that we can lower the cost of prescription drugs so that you can free up housing in our state from corporations who are buying us up these homes and pricing us out of our neighborhoods so that we can actually have paid sickly, but bill that I actually sponsored when I was in the state Senate and actually passed. It got vetoed because we had a Republican governor.

There's a commonality there, right? I'm going to sign that bill as well. So again, he should come to the stage and quit running. He should quit kow town to Donald Trump and actually stand up for Nevada's. You know, I was wonder with a guy like Lombardo, you know, do you start when you run for governor? Do you start and you hate the state and your goal is just to cause destruction? Or do you start and you go, you know what? This is part of my ambition, it's what I want to do.

And then you get so captured by Moralago Golden Ballroom World and Trump doing crypto deals and all of this, that you then basically get so linked at the hip with his commanding general that you attack the state. To me, it's almost an irrelevant analysis in the sense that it's clear that when you and I are doing this interview, early October, 26. I don't want to mince words. Dude hates the state that he's the governor of.

Like, his actions show me that he actually hates Nevada. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. How else can you observe his behavior and not come out with the conclusion that when you inflict pain on the people, when you veto bills that would help the people at some point, you hate the people. And I know people go, oh, bed, you know, you can't say that. That's how I assess it. That's how I see. I'll give you the final word before we go and tell people about where they can learn more about your campaign. Well, listen, Nevadans have a choice right now. They can choose a folder in Joe Lombardo or a fighter in Aaron Ford. I love this state. And I represent the entirety of the Nevada family. We will continue to do exactly that we have the ability to change the direction of our

state for the positive. We have a guy who touts his bona fide as being top law enforcement officer and a sheriff and this, that, and the other, but he's out there endorsing a person who's in the F scene files, 5,000 or so times, right, who's been adjudicated a felon of 34 different times and actually endorses a person who has been an adjudicated rapist, right? You want to talk about character, he lacks it. And at the end of the day, we have to have someone in our office who's going to look out for everybody. You can check me out in that regard. Ford,Ford, Nevada.com. Hope to earn your support. Leadership, humanity, empathy, execution, as I've always said,

could we be like baseline, serious, then competent, then sophisticated, and then have people like you who have the experience to actually be public servants? I said, under people like Lombardo and Trump, like we don't even get to the floor of seriousness, It's unsurious and it's dangerous. It's why this race is so important. It's why you're leading in the polls right now. And we'd love to have you back on before the election. Everybody hit subscribe.

Let's get to 7 million subscribers. If you want the full story, how democracy got here, and how we take it back. Pre-order our new book, WTF America today. Just scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.