The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump Goes Silent as DC Turns into Toxic Dumnp

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

Meidastouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump going silent after his disastrous event turned Washington DC into a toxic dump with worst air anywhere in the world today. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! MeidasTouch relies on SnapStream to record, watch, monitor, and clip the news. Get a FREE TRIAL of SnapStream by clicking here: https://go.snapstream.com/affiliate/meidastouch/meidasnews?utm_campaign=4490308-affiliate2025&utm_content=customerpartner Support the MeidasTouch Network: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Add the MeidasTouch Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-meidastouch-podcast/id1510240831 Buy MeidasTouch Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Follow MeidasTouch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Facebook: https://facebook.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Instagram: https://instagram.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@meidastouch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For just 499, try our new 30-day beginners pass and uncover generations of family stories. No experience necessary. You've got questions? We've got ancestors. Offer ends July 22nd, 2026. Visit ancestry.ca slash beginners for details. Terms apply. Donald Trump has gone silent after his disastrous Fourth of July event where he has now turned Washington, D.C. into a literal toxic pit. Of course, Donald Trump's destruction of the United States of America's democracy turned it into a toxic pit. But quite literally, the air quality is so bad right now in Washington, D.C., following that fireworks display, where there was so many fireworks in the same, location. You couldn't even see the fireworks. All you saw was a cloud of smoke. And as everybody warned, this was going to put very dangerous chemicals into the air. Let's take a look at what's happening in Washington, D.C. right now. Hazardous firework induced smog continues to hover over Washington,

D.C. this morning. Avoid outdoors if you can. The air is so filled with microscopic particles, that it is potentially very, very harmful for people who breathe it in. And so while it is slightly cooler today than it was yesterday, D.C. right now quite literally has the worst air quality of any city on planet Earth right now. That's how bad it is. It's the highest alert code right now for dangerous air quality as a result of what Donald Trump did. You know, his last Post was, again, attacking the United States. And this was his last message on July 4th. Over 273 Americans have been shot since the Iran War began in Chicago. You mean since you did an unlawful and catastrophic invasion of Iran and then you destroyed the American economy. You know,

also, Donald, you don't have to invade cities with ICE and border patrol. You know, if you want to, you can fund the FBI rather than, you know, firing all the FBI agents because you're afraid that they're part of the deep state that's out to get you. In any event, just take a look at some more of these photos of what the air quality looks like in Washington, D.C. It's still covered by smoke. I mean, it just looks like, you know, just a massive amount of smog. Here's another image right here. Hazardous smog choking Washington, D.C. residents. Residents are urged to stay indoors after Trump's fireworks display, just so you can see for yourself what those fireworks look like. You know, normally, a great fireworks show isn't always measured in its

size, although, you know, you can say, you know, a large fireworks show can be very compelling, but usually a fireworks show has, you know, a rhythm, a pattern, you know, it builds to this crescendo, right? You know, the Trump fireworks show was a little. literally just dumping a bunch of fireworks all at the same time and just blowing things up. But isn't that also kind of just symbolic of this entire Trump regime? Just blowing things up saying, oh, we're going to set the Guinness Book of Records, but then actually making something look so ugly and dangerous and then ignoring all of the consequences. And so a tiny man needs to do something like this.

And again, I've seen big fireworks shows internationally in Manhattan. Like, it could look really cool. not this in my opinion. Take a look at what this looked like. What the literal F. Here, play this clip. Now, even the MAGA supporters are like, what's going on? Here are some like MAGA supporters of Donald Trump.

Spent an hour and a half in a line, barely moved. We left extremely disappointed. Logistics were terrible. The fair was one of the main things I wanted to do while here. Instead, I and many others just stood in a line, terrible. You rotten mother. F's, my family and I have been in line for two hours. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Another person says, if you cared about safety, you'd exhibit better event planning and execution. Much of what I observed was entirely predictable. I presume you have little better than interns running your comms and contingency planning. Yesterday was disgraceful with basic heat safety measures completely overlooked. Who made the call to lock people out of the state fair yesterday, removing access to water and cooling centers? Trump, his whole life, Donald Trump, he destroys things, he bankrupts things. This is what he's done since the 1970s. Frankly, before that, why do you think his dad needed to send him, you know, to the military boarding school that he had had to attend? He did it for disciplinary reason.

All the guy knows, I mean, I'm sure there are good ones and good reasons to go, but he went for disciplinary reasons. His whole life has been breaking things, destroying things, bankrupting. That's, that's who he is. He's not a build, He's a destroyer. Joe Flood posted this image. Everything around the reflecting pool is covered in a fine layer of ash. Who knows? Maybe the ash will kill off the algae.

He also posted the following. Workers are in the reflecting pool this morning, now removing the debris and ash from the fireworks. Also, you can still see it looks green. As Scott McFarlane, who runs the Washington DC Bureau for the Midas Touch Network, says the morning after, As we showed you last night, the speech that Donald Trump gave was relatively empty. Yeah, maybe a thousand, two thousand people, you know, of the diehard magas who follow him around everywhere were there.

You know, it was people like this, like, you know, dressed up with the red, white, and blue hair and the maga Trump everything and the Trump tattoos. And these people follow Donald Trump around wherever it goes. But there was massive empty areas, empty seats everywhere. Trump's speech was low energy. He was falling asleep in that makeshift. trailer building that they were, you know, having him and Rubio and all of these people as he was like watching himself, watch himself on state regime media, Fox. There were, you know, close to a hundred hospital-related incidents that were taking, but that we know about it could possibly

be more. You know, and then as I talked about this morning, one of the things that Donald Trump was absolutely terrified of is you contrasted what was going on in Washington, D.C. to what was happening at the same time in Tehran. I mean, just think about it. Iatollah Khomeini's funeral was taking place on July 4th. You had dozens and dozens of countries show up to Khomeini's funeral. You had millions of people show up for the Ayatollah's funeral in Tehran and in cities across Iran. And you had something projecting over there in Iran that was, you know, very different than what you saw in Washington, D.C. And I think, you know, Iran was aware of that. And they, you know, showcased it as well, you know, and highlighted it while Donald Trump was out there, you know,

polluting the United States with that bizarre kind of fireworks. I'll show you what they were saying on state regime media Fox just so you see how their propaganda works, you know, all the hosts after that fireworks show that I just showed you there. And I mean, I guess, you know, there's a lot of fireworks. It was dangerous, you know, in the sense of, concentrating all of that. It was loud. But this is not the way you run a fireworks. Like a cool one, as I mentioned, has rhythms, patterns, you know, these fireworks go first, then these ones go first, then the sizzling ones go. And then, you know, they, then they have the different, they just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. You know, you know, as my little daughter,

Jimenez says, who's 20 months, pop up, pop up, pop up, pop in, pop up. That's what it was like, and so state regime media was like, oh my God, did you see that? That was the greatest firework. show ever. It broke the Guinness Book of Records. I didn't really see a lot of it because a lot of it was covered in smoke. I didn't get to see it. This is what they were saying on state regime media. Let's play it. We have just witnessed the largest fireworks display in the United States history. It's a new joke that it broke the Guinness Book of World Records for 851,000 fireworks. It was all the way around. This entire place.

Yeah, it wrapped us. You could see it for blocks. It was unbelievable. You know, what's so amazing about this, there's one part of the story. You spoke to President Trump. I spoke to President Trump. At the time we're being told, oh, might rain until two. He said to me, I don't care if it's 2 a.m.

I don't care if it's 4 a.m. And I'm thinking, you're still going to come. And I have a phrase that I use to tell him all the time, I said, God loves Donald Trump because it worked out perfectly. God bless America. And then Donald Trump sent out his propagandist like Doug Bergam, his interior secretary,

who just got sliced and diced on the morning shows and just shows how pathetic and weak this regime actually looks. Watch Dana Bash asking Doug Bergam a very question, very basic question about the bottom of the reflecting pool. Like, we all saw that because they poured hydrogen peroxide in the reflecting pool after it was infested by more algae than I think in anybody's worst case predictions what it was going to look like, it started to peel off and it started to form. I called it like the Stingray mutant,

like algae pool lining looking creatures. That's what happened. And then watch what Doug Bergam says, though, though. It didn't peel off. It was vandalized. It was the vandals. Here, play this clip. half miles of expansion. But it peeled off. Why? Why did that happen? Do you know?

It didn't peel off. There was there was vandalism. There was box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There was people literally trying to destroy part of a monument. The reflecting pool is not just a pool on the mall. It is part of the Lincoln Memorial. And if anybody says that they're going to go and vandalize that, it's no, it's no different

than if someone was throwing paint on looking at it. And you're 100% sure that what happened with the liner was vandalism. You can prove it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. we can and we've, and as we drain it, we've got all the photographs we can see. I mean, there's no possible way. The photographs of a person or people cutting a 300 or 350-foot gash in the bottom of the reflecting pool? Dana, I'm not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not think. This is an industrial liner.

Every farmer and rancher in America that's had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed on liner knows that you literally, literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off. This is like a strong material. And it's the size of eight football fields. And the only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it. And so the, but the pool itself, it's not leaking. It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day. It's finally been fixed by President Trump. And the American flag blue is working perfectly. And again, it's beyond me. Why? I mean, the real scandal is about the fact that the state of our capital was in such total disrepair that some people, no one was reporting about the pro

Hamas refini on the, the, Mr. Secretary, you and I talked about this last month. Yeah, and we're still talking about it. Well, because it was July 4th and the reflecting pole was closed. It was closed because it's surrounded by fireworks. It's closed every year on the 4th of July. But it was closed prior to that in order to fix the reflecting pool. No, it was closed because the fire, the largest fireworks display in the country we talked about was set up and it lines either side of the refurb. You can't have people around fireworks when they're being set up. Now that the fireworks will come down, the fence will come down.

The fence will come down. The fence was there because of the fireworks. Copy that. And then George Stephanopoulos got his opportunity to cross-examine Bergam right here. When Bergam's like, the reflecting pool was a huge success. And Stepanopoulos, like, why are you draining it if it was a huge success? And then Bergen was like, 99% of the pool bottom is perfect. Okay, well, if 99.9% of it is, is perfect. And what are you saying? You're just contradicting yourself. So 350 foot of the lining

was destroyed, but 99% of it is perfect. And it was just around, it is making up the stupidest stuff here, play this clip. So the reflecting pool has been a big success. And we've got a very, the 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that's going to be repairable. And that'll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward. Well, you say it's been a success. But the pool, is going to be drained this week, isn't it? We don't know if we need to drain the whole thing or not because, you know, the cutting happened on the edge.

And, of course, it slopes from the edge. It's not a flat bottom pool. It slopes from the edge to the middle. And so we may be able to partially drain it and do the repair to be able to fix it. We may not have to drain the whole thing, but it could go very quickly. And, of course, again, when you're talking about 340,000 square feet of surface, even though there was, you know, damage done by vandals that was there. It is a small, small, 99.99% of the pool bottom is perfect. The leaks have stopped. And so this will be quickly move on. And again, I think

the press should move on too, because we've got great things going on. This is the kickoff of our 250th year. We're going to continue to have celebrations around the country. And, you know, the real story here is how did we let this nation's capital fall into such a just repair where we had. Stephanopoulos then continued to grill Bergam and say, you know, the president repeatedly claim vandals cut it. Do you have video of that? I don't have video of it.

But if they were to do it again, we would have video of it. Watch what he says. Here, play this clip. The president has repeatedly claimed that vandals cut a 350-foot gash in the pool. That's a claim that's echoed in illegal filing by your department. What specific evidence do you have to back up that claim? Well, we have the actual cuts that were made into the industrial liner, and that's a, you know, been measured out. So that's just a fact that that's what we've got to go back in repair.

Well, it's multiple gashes that add up to 350 feet across that. And so, and again, some of this happened early on. There was a where we've installed more cameras. I mean, we weren't expecting that we were going to have a small group. of people that wanted to try to destroy effectively what is part of the Lincoln Memorial. There's plenty of cameras around the Lincoln Statute and around the memorial. The reflecting pool had gone for, you know, decades without vandalism. But now we've got, you know, we've got cameras up and we've got more eyes on it. And we'll, you know, we have to, that's part of the

job of the National Park Service, the U.S. Park Police, is to protect our monuments. And, and so we're in better shape now. If anyone were to do something now, we would have better video evidence. of that. But you don't have video evidence of people making those gashes. Well, we do have video and we do have eyewitness reports and that's up to the courts now. So that process will go forward in the legal system. How much more is this going to cost? I think it's going to be a small number because the majority of the work was related to the labor and the materials for the liner. And, of course, the new nanobbubbblers system, which is taken care of.

won the battle against the algae, which is something in a, you know, in a shallow pool and hot weather has been a historic challenge, but now that's working fantastically. If you're down there today, again, as the fireworks get cleaned up from the incredible show we had last night, spectacular event celebrating our 250th, as the fences come down, we clean that up, anybody that's there and anybody that was there last week before the fireworks started being installed on either side of the reflecting pool could see that the water was crystal clear. So that part's been taken care of. So again, we are we are, you know, on to the next thing because this has all been done so well. Mr. Secretary, thanks for your time this morning.

Thank you, George. Up next, John Carl. More of Dana Bash cross-examining, let's play it. But not a chance. How much is it going to cost to fix? And are you going to use the same company that you did in the no-bid contract or were you open it up to new bids? We'll use the same company because they did a fantastic job. I mean, even with this damage of the gash that we're talking about, you're talking about, again, this is the size of eight football fields. It is eight acres, and we're talking about like 0.001%. Thankfully, the vandalism was small.

It was bad. It could be cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair, so then it could fall into a felony thing. just like damaging any other government property could. But it is a, you know, this is the job that was done to fix the reflecting pool was done extremely well. And hopefully we can move on to this and just talk about, you know, how we continue to do things like take care of the, this is a deferred maintenance problem. We have deferred maintenance.

And then on state regime media, which calls itself Fox, they figured, you know what, let's bring on Benjamin Net and Yahoo. So Benjamin Net, just so we know, in the past 48 hours, there are. been more violations of the ceasefire, the MOU. I mean, take a look right here. Netanyahu and the Israeli forces demolished an entire neighborhood at Benjabal in the Al-Dawar neighborhood in southern Lebanon. More attacks on Lebanon this morning and Israeli airstrike target of the town of Kuhnine in southern Lebanon. Another violation of the MOU. I mean, Netanyahu clearly wants the United States to be dragged back into this war. So our economy. can be further destroyed and more people can die to quench Netanyahu's bloodthirst, apparently.

Also, Netanyahu announced that they will not be abiding by the Supreme Court ruling in Israel. There was a Supreme Court ruling that basically said that Netanyahu is trying to stop their media entity regulation body from doing its job. And then the Supreme Court said, no, you have to let them do their job. Very similar to how Trump is, like, defunded and tried to stop all of these regulatory entities. and the Supreme Court said in Israel, that's illegal. And Netanyahu said, well, I'm not following what this Supreme Court is doing right here. But in any event, the Netanyahu went on state regime media Fox after violating the ceasefires,

after pulling America back into war, after violating Supreme Court orders. And he says, we are not in a permanent state of war. Me and Donald Trump do multiple peace deals. Me and Donald, we're the peace presidents. We do peace everywhere. here play this clip oh we're not in permanent state of war i myself with president trump we brought to the fourth four peace deals that's what we did it's abraham accords and i believe with uh the weakening of the iran which has been achieved by our common action uh our common military action

i think we're going to get more because uh because countries would like to align with us uh and to protect their future and also their prosperity israel is a powerhouse i mean it's a It's an engine of innovation, of AI, of quantum, of just of everything. And then he says, everybody, all these countries in the Middle East want me to annex them. They ask the Lebanon, the Lebanon Christians say, Mr. Netanyahu, can you annex us and take us over? So that's why I do it. They asking me to take them over. Here, play this clip. We also take care of our friends, especially the Christians in the Middle East. The Christian villages in Lebanon, some of them have actually asked to be annexed to Israel

because we protect them against the Hezbollah fanatics who want to kill them. And we do the same things with Christians everywhere. Well, you're leading Christians in the Middle East. You're touching on it. Ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. That's an understatement. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers.

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