MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 10/13/26

We've got a lot to discuss on today's episode of the Midas Touch podcast. We start with this weekend when Donald Trump announced a fake ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and then you had Zelensky and Putin both saying, we never really heard about this. Zelensky said, well, we'll agree to it if Russia stops striking our energy infrastructure. Russia continued to strike Ukraine's energy infrastructure, hitting a major plant in Kharkiv, and then Donald Trump blamed Zelensky for it and said, you see, you should have done a deal and you shouldn't be the president anymore. Now, this follows what Donald Trump did on Friday, announcing a Russian oil deal for Russian diesel, which violates multiple laws, a 2022 law, which is literally called the End Russian Importation Oil Act. Then there's a 2017 law that Donald Trump has announced, which violates multiple laws, a 2022 law, which is literally Donald Trump signed. Trump violated all of those laws. And you have the 2026 Lindsey Graham Russia Sanctions Act, which sanctions countries for doing diesel deals with Russia, which Trump just did. So we'll talk about all of that. And I'll talk to you about Donald Trump, sadly, has absolute immunity from the Supreme Court, but Treasury Secretary Besson doesn't and Mark Wayne Mullen doesn't. And so Trump will probably need to pardon them. And so we'll get into that. You have numerous strikes in and around the Strait of Hormuz by the IRGC in the past 24 to 48 hours. We believe there's at least six tankers have been hit in the Strait of Hormuz and also in the Gulf of Oman in a very short period of time. The IRGC was releasing videos of all of these tankers that it struck. And then earlier, UKMTO confirmed at least six of these strikes. I believe it may be more than that. Over the past 12 days or so, Iran seems to have struck close to 20, maybe even more tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. So you have diesel obviously continuing to surge over $107 a barrel. The market's not buying Donald Trump's. The market manipulation play with Putin about this Russian diesel deal, if you look at the deal and break it down as we've analyzed it at the Midas Touch Network, it's actually a very small quantity of diesel. And Russia also doesn't have a diesel surplus that it's really even able to export. If you break it down, it's like two to three and a half million barrels, maybe slightly more of oil. We're talking about diesel. We're talking about one and a half to two tankers. Full of diesel, right? Not all that much. You think about it, Canada is able to provide about one million barrels of diesel a day while Donald Trump attacks Canada. Though he had to pull back that attack on Canada and say, "Oh, maybe we do need your oil. Maybe that's where the trade surplus is actually coming from." So we'll talk about that as well. We'll talk about the attack on James Tallarico that was exposed. We'll talk about how Donald Trump's press secretaries refused. Donald Trump's press secretary is reposting QAnon stuff in the past and some really deep QAnon stuff. We'll talk about the Houthis continuing to strike Saudi Arabia. The King Khalid air base was hit. Lots of casualties. 12 people were killed, including, I believe, an American citizen was killed in King Khalid. 300 plus injured. I think the death count actually is now 14. It keeps on increasing. The injured, about 350. We'll talk about that. Saudi Arabia apparently is arresting American citizens there who are taking video footage of the Ansarala strikes as they continue to cover up what's happening there. Donald Trump also had the Department of Justice raid Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's Washington DC home as they try to arrest her or they're going to. Try to investigate her for ginned up charges. They haven't done that yet, but that's obviously where they're moving. Apparently based on nothing, but they're saying, oh, well, her dad filled out forms when they moved here. We'll break this all down on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Brett, Jordy, good to see you as always. Good to see you too, Ben. Good to see you, Jordy. A lot to discuss. I am just at my wits end with all of these media channels that decide to take Donald Trump. Claims at face value and then send them out and push alerts to all of their followers and act like they're real. I got multiple push alerts from very reputable news organizations yesterday. I won't call all of them out by name right now, but they all, the instant Donald Trump posted on Truth Social and said that we have a deal, energy ceasefire agreed to on all sides. They were quickly out with their articles and their push alerts to everybody's phones saying that we have a deal, energy ceasefire, Donald Trump says it. I was like, what are you doing? We're like, what, 10 years into the Trump era or something like that right now, and you are still falling for this crap? Then of course, Ben, as you said, you had Zelensky come out and say, it's the first time I'm hearing of this, but if Russia agrees, I'm happy to agree as well. You have Putin, Moscow just mocking Donald Trump, calling him out for market manipulation. Just the whole thing is so pathetic. This is what happens when you have a president of the United States, who is a gaslighter, a fraudster. This is what happens. All he has is the ability to make things up, not actually build things, only to destroy things and to lie. We've seen so many instances of this, even in just the past 24 hours. It's good to see you. I got to say, I'm a little upset for other reasons beginning the show, but right before we went live, I was going to adjust my camera because it was a little dark and I threw my headphones on my table and got back here, put them back in my ears. Then I realized that I must have thrown my headphones in my coffee mug in front of me. Then I put the coffee drenched earphones in my ears. Then all of a sudden, it's the worst feeling having wet in your ears. I had wet coffee smelling earbuds in my ears. Of course, I broke them. I switched to the big headphones for the show. Now my ears feel weird. I'm a little thrown off. I got coffee in my ears. I don't know, brothers. One of my ears is broken. I don't know, I'm just going to toss it over to Jordy. Jordy, what's up? You hazed yourself. Why did you haze yourself before we started the show? I would argue that wet socks on your feet is a way worse feeling than wet ears. Also, you gave yourself a coffee wet willy before we started. It's weird. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm excited to get into today's show. When you realize that Donald Trump is this byproduct of a media ecosystem that wants access over accountability, those push notifications, Brett, that you're talking about, start to make a whole lot more sense. It's really frustrating and really awful that we live in this era where it's like, I like a fourth estate. Let me just start with that premise. We need a strong fourth estate here. When our media counterparts in corporate media care about cozying up to power rather than holding power accountable, I think that's a real issue. That's a real big problem that we're seeing day in and day out. There's a lot of wild misinformation out there that I'm excited for you, others, and us on the show here to debunk. With that, Benji, where are we starting off today? A lot to get into. Yeah, look, a little later in the show, I'll show you some clips of an interview that Steve Bannon just gave because he basically gave the strategy. If you basically flood the zone and put all this information out there, the corporate news and media doesn't know how to deal with it. He also said that you're going to see all of these impeachments and all of these investigations if and when Democrats take control of the House and Senate, but we'll say that for a little bit later in the show. Let's begin as Donald Trump is heading to Ohio. Again, I'll be giving one of these deranged speeches. This evening, Donald Trump was asked as he was leaving, he goes, you said that Russia and Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire, but both sides have said they have not. Zelensky said that he would be agreeable to one, but there was no discussion. There's no details about it. Putin and the Russian Duma said that this is just kind of Trump doing the market manipulation thing. So nobody knows what you're talking about. So you want to explain like what that means? Let's listen. Mr. President, you said Russia and Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire, but both sides say they have not agreed to that. Well, they agreed. You know why? Because I said you agreed. That's why. They agreed because I said they agreed. And that thing has to get settled. That war is a disaster. Did you see the numbers that just came out this time? And isn't that everything? Doesn't that just sum it all up? There was a ceasefire because there is a ceasefire. We control the strain of removes because I say we control the strain of removes. Everything out of the guy's mouth is a complete and utter lie. And brothers, we were talking about this when he said it. It's just like, how humiliating is this for the United States that this is where we're at right now, where you literally have the person who has the most powerful position lying about something like lies about everything. Let's be very, everything is like, well, we'll talk later in the show as well, where the Trump regime DOJ lied to a federal judge that they weren't going to destroy the trees at a golf course, the East Potomac public golf course. And then they destroyed the trees and the judge said, so you just like lie to me about it. They lie about everything, but lying on matters all. And that's by the way, very serious. I don't want to downplay lying to the judge over something like that. But then lying about, I spoke to Putin and I spoke to Zelensky and they agreed to a ceasefire as Putin is striking the power plants in Kharkiv and the energy grid throughout Ukraine. And then Zelensky has to respond. So Zelensky responds and he's like, okay, well, I would be agreeable to it, but I want to also be clear. We don't have diesel refineries in Ukraine. We have energy grids. We have one diesel refinery, but the big issue is Russia's striking the energy grids here. So in order for us to inflict pain as well on Russia in response to what they're doing, we're hitting the diesel refinery. So Zelensky said, we're open to, if it's on energy broadly, we will stop striking diesel refineries. If Russia stops striking, the energy sector here. And Russia just continued to strike the energy sector. And then you had these leaks from the Trump regime to Axios and others that were like, no, no, what Trump actually meant is it's a refinery for refinery deal. In other words, Putin can stop striking Ukrainian refineries to which they don't, there really aren't any, right? But then Zelensky, you have to stop striking the Russian refineries because they're now part of a deal that Donald Trump claims that he made with Putin to bring in Russian diesel. And then, you know, the Ukrainians were like, well, that doesn't make any sense at all, but you know, what's Putin say? And then Putin wouldn't even agree to the refinery for refinery deal, by the way. And so I'll throw it back to you, Brett and Jordy, but you have that behavior taking place. Yeah. It's just genuinely sad to watch. I mean, this is the president of the United States we're talking about, and he is so weak and incapable of actually making a deal with anybody that has, his strategy has just been to post fake deals on his social media account and then hope people believe him. And then inevitably every party who he's kind of said this deal involved has to come out and put out statements calling Donald Trump a liar. I don't think we've ever seen weakness like this in the Oval Office, I would say in my entire life, but I would say in the history of this country, it's absolutely pathetic. And it is that, you know, strong men, you know, or weak men, masquerading as a strong man, it really just exudes weakness when he does things like that. And to Zelensky's credit, Zelensky is very good about kind of calling Trump's bluff on these things. Zelensky was like, look, I'd last night, I didn't strike any of, we didn't strike any of the Russian refineries. You know, Donald Trump said, let's do the ceasefire. And guess what? We're very amenable to this concept of an energy ceasefire. So we'll put our cards on the table. No ceasefire. We, we, we, won't be doing this stuff. Let's see what Russia does. And then what does Russia do? Russia struck six energy centers in Ukraine, showing that once again, they are the bad actors and they have no intention of stopping. It's the pattern that we've seen time and time again, where then stuff like that happens. And what does Donald Trump do? Does he then go, oh, Vladimir Putin, how could you do something like that? I thought you saw what I was trying to do with my tweets. No, instead he goes and blames Zelensky and he gets further mad at Zelensky and he has his, uh, you know, mouthpieces go out to places like Axios and say things like daddy, Trump is very mad at Zelensky. He thinks he's not being appreciative enough of Donald Trump. It's like, who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do you think you are? This is a guy who said that he would deal with this war within 24 hours, not even of getting into office, but of being elected, but I'll give them being in office. And it's of course just gotten worse and worse. And worse. And he's always just looking for an easy way out and everything that you have to, you have to look through every one of Donald Trump's actions right now, especially as the midterms approach as how is he trying to manipulate the markets? How is he trying to manipulate the outcomes of these elections? And don't fall for this crap. He knows that he needs a big win, right? Because he's a fricking loser and he's lost that everything. And he's completely destroyed the country. And quite literally every one of his, his initiatives, everything that he has attempted to do has completely been an utter failure of this term. And so he's looking for a win. Could I end the war between Russia and Ukraine? Could I end this, right? Could I solve this issue? Could I solve that issue? Could I solve Iran? And he's flailing. And when he's flailing, he just reaches for these kind of hail Marys. In this case, it was just tweeting out some BS that he had solved this thing and that there was this energy ceasefire that was just a lie, just made up, not even a little bit. He just makes things up. He is weakness personified. It is so frustrating to see, you know, play out day after day after day and be like, yeah, that's the president of the United States over there. He's behaving like a absolute lunatic. Also like a child. And I don't mean to like downplay his behavior. He's actually behaving like a child when he's like, oh, it's a deal because I said it's a deal. It's very, I know you are, but what am I like? It's so ridiculous when you actually see it and it's like, oh, it's a deal because I said it's a deal. It's so ridiculous when you actually see it and hear it with your own eyes and ears. And then for me too, it's like, we're not dealing with a fantasy football trade. It's a deal because I said it's a deal. What are you talking about, bro? Lives are on the line. We're talking about a ceasefire, Brett, to your point that you said that you would end within 24 hours of you being elected. You went back and you said, oh, I was being sarcastic. It's not sarcasm anyway, but you've said it over a hundred times. I have to imagine by now that you said within 24 hours, this war between Russia and Ukraine would be over. That you would end it. And now you just outright declaring the war is over. Again, very, very MAGA office of, I declare bankruptcy. You got to actually follow through here, Donnie. And you know something about bankruptcy. Going back to that, you bankrupted endless companies left and right. That's the other thing. You're not a great negotiator. You actually have no idea how to negotiate. You're not a great businessman. You're absolutely not. Who bankrupts casinos? Losers. Literally, the one rule with casinos is the house always wins. And you've yet somehow found a way to lose at that. And now you're bankrupting our country and you're bankrupting the world by just, I don't know, planting your flag and saying things are true when they're not. Yeah, you could say it. And maybe some of these mouthpieces over at Axios or wherever, they'll repeat it and try and run cover for you. But at the end of the day, lives are on the line, right? People are actively dying. And to me, that is the most upsetting part about this is he just seems that he doesn't, he just, he doesn't care about that. Yeah. And then, so as Donald Trump, again, is at this press conference before he was speaking in Ohio this evening, he says, I actually think that Putin wants to make the deal more than Zelensky does. The real problem is Zelensky, he says. Here, play this clip. So anything that could help our farmers, our ranchers, I like. And I do think this, Zelensky has to focus on making the deal, not talking about that. How are you going to make Putin? Well, I think, I think what's happening is he wants to make a deal. And we have to get Zelensky to want to make a deal. Where are you from? Poland. How is he showing? You know, your president's a good friend of mine. You know, I endorsed him. And he won. You know that. I know that. But, but how, how, where do you see his willingness to make a deal when he's striking Ukraine like he's him? I think they're going to make a deal. I think actually Putin wants to make a deal. He was speaking to a reporter from Poland and Trump was bragging about the right leaning president of Poland, but also Trump doesn't know the way politics works in Poland, that they actually have a prime minister who has more power than the president, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who earlier this morning at the Warsaw Security Forum said anyone who for reasons of betrayal, stupidity or money, wants to weaken Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression in acting directly against their own nation, the security of their own country and its sovereignty. He goes and calls out anybody who would be said so stupid to do that. And obviously he's referring to Donald Trump right there. And then, you know, real quick, I know you caught this already interrupt. But did you hear the mafioso threat there too, as he's going back and forth with the reporter? Oh, you're president. I have a good friend of mine. Good friend of mine. I helped get him elected. So the question can't be that bad. All right, let's hear it. Can't be that bad. I'm a good friend of your. If it's a bad question, I'm going to let them know when he's going to he's going to do something with you. That's the insinuation. Also, look, also, though, Trump's whole view about, you know, when he said I had the words for Zelensky and Putin, the words were this. Zelensky, you should surrender and you need to give all of Eastern Ukraine to Putin. That's what Putin wants. Give it up. And if you don't give it up, we're not going to support Ukraine. We're not going to give Ukraine interceptors. We're not going to give Ukraine weapons. We're not going to give Ukraine access to Starlink with Elon Musk in order to target the Russian ballistic launchers. We are going to cut you off. And, you know, the Trump regime originally cut Zelensky off and cut Ukraine off right away. NATO created this. It was called this Pearl program. It's kind of prioritize. Ukraine weapon program. You may have heard about it. P-U-R-L is the acronym. And then the Trump regime would very slowly give U.S. weapons, even for purchase by NATO and European countries, those weapons would lag. And then Donald Trump would tap Zelensky along, we'll get you interceptors, we'll get you interceptor licenses. And Trump never gave that to Zelensky. And Trump is just baffled. And he is angry at Zelensky for not surrendering, because that's what Trump figured would happen. And Putin's been saying, look, we're winning on the front. We are beating Ukraine. Zelensky should surrender. And that's Donald Trump's whole perspective is informed by Putin's perspective. Now, it's important to know that when Putin and Lavrov in Russia say that they want a deal and they believe a deal is achievable, what they mean is that their view is that most of Eastern Ukraine, I mean, I think it's all of Ukraine, but for now, they say the deal is basically give us all of Eastern Ukraine. We'll take that and then we'll do a deal. That's the deal. And so and Zelensky saying, no, you haven't achieved it on the battlefield. You said you would take over all of Ukraine in three days. There's basically a stalemate on the battlefield. And there's this drone trench warfare taking place. If anything, Ukraine's been able to, with a counteroffensive pushback against some of the Russian encroachment on the front, which is why what Putin is using right now is the Garen-4, Garen-5 jet-fueled versions of the Shahi drones. The Garen-5 is a cruise missile. Russia's really built up cruise missile and ballistic missile stockpiles that Zelensky doesn't have an answer for. There are no Patriot interceptors at all, pretty much, in Ukraine to stop the ballistic missile strikes coming into the Ukrainian city. So Putin's able to strike with however he wants to. But Zelensky's striking back, also. And we've been covering how, you know, he was striking these diesel refineries. 51% of Russian diesel refineries have been struck and are offline based on Zelensky's, as Zelensky calls them, the long-range sanctions, but really the FP-1, FP-2, these fire point drones, or there's the Flamingo cruise missiles and ballistics that are now being built. But Zelensky's targeted that also. We've been talking about the logistical, one of them's called Wildberries that's been struck. And now, when Zelensky's been targeting, are the data centers. The most recent one is in the Vladimir city in Russia. A data center there has been hit belonging to a company called Yandex. Yandex is like the Google of Russia, if you will. And they have all the different, they have a fintech company and the search company and the car companies, like all of the stuff are under Yandex. And, you know, and the big data centers that have all the servers connected to it. So three major Yandex data centers have been hit. And one of the things that we noticed right away, and other people commented as well, is it dramatically decreased Russian bots on X and on Reddit and throughout social media in general, a massive decrease in bot traffic. Once these data centers were hit, which shows you a lot of this stuff is being centralized as well. And coordinated, you know, as well in the United States, in Europe and across the world. And so you have a massive escalation taking place. And Donald Trump is just like, ceasefire because I declare it. And you know what? I'm going to now import Russian diesel, and that's going to be to the benefit of the world. When we come back, I want to talk about that. I want to go through the laws with you about why it's unlawful. I want to explain to you in detail why this so-called Russian diesel deal also isn't for a lot of diesel. Like it's actually a small quantity of diesel. I also want to talk about how it seems like it's probably Iranian diesel. It's probably not even Russian diesel. It seems like if you actually look at what's happening, Iran may be sending its diesel either through the Caspian Sea or through a land route to Russia because Russia's out of diesel because Zelensky struck it. And now they're just selling diesel. And if you think about it, where did the meeting between Putin and Pozeskian recently take place? Turkmenistan at the CIS meeting right before this was announced. And I wouldn't be shocked if what was coordinated was that. Can you picture also like Putin being like, look, I can watch. I bet I get this freaking idiot over here to buy Iranian oil. Watch, watch Pozeskian, watch this move. And then boom, the next day Trump is bragging about potentially buying oil from the Iranians. I mean, if anybody else did this, like first off, the United States would sanction them. Like there'd probably be like, you know, calls to have them prosecuted. Like this is traitorous stuff that we're seeing right now. Let me give the undisputed fact. It is undisputed that Russia is getting diesel from Iran. That's, you can see the Iranian oil trucks that were filled up with diesel heading into, you know, in Russia. So the only question is, is there a way to get diesel from Iran? The only question is, is that the diesel? And the reality is, is, I mean, you know, whether it is or isn't, it's part of the supply that Russia has of diesel that may be coming over. We'll talk about that and more. Let's take our first break of the show. A reminder, the book comes out next week that Brett Jordy and I wrote. It's called WTF America, The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. I can't think of a better title for the situation we're in right now than WTF America. So pre-order it right now so it arrives next week. Get the hardcover, get the e-book or the audio. I think you will. It's dedicated to the Midas Mighty. I think you'll love it. All right. We'll be right back after this. 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Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and at the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the Midas Touch podcast that sent you. It's always the best way to support the show. Let's go. Shout out to our sponsors, y'all. Links in the description of both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links. Use the codes. If there's an exit survey of them that we sent you, Benji, before I toss it. Back to you, Brett. How are your ears? Have they dried up? A lot of people are concerned. They feel quite uncomfortable. Really? Still? Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. I'm so sorry. It's not good. Don't haze yourself before the show. But it's okay. But it's, I'll be okay. I'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah. Benji. Outside the White House, Trump was asked, so what's your comment about Russia violating the ceasefire and that Russia was striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure, thermal power plants. Kharkiv and elsewhere. if anything, escalating strikes on Ukraine's energy sector after Trump announced the fake ceasefire. Let's take a look at what he said. I have to go and see. There have been violations violations on both sides, both, both, both. I mean, that's- Another both sides. So then the question at the end, I'll play his answer. The question was about the Houthis and what do you make of the recent strike? The Houthis also known as Ansar Allah in the region. They've been escalating their strikes on Saudi Arabia as they warned that they would as Saudi Arabia and MBS have escalated their strikes on the- Ansar Allah capital of Sana. The Houthis said, well, we're going to strike the airport. We will strike the airport. That's where we're going to strike everybody, the airport. And so MBS in Saudi Arabia actually stopped issuing the warnings to civilians. The defense department would always issue these warnings. If there were ballistics, they stopped like issuing them. And then they went on about everything at King Khalid airport, the main airport in Riyadh, like things were normal. And that this was, you know, some prior era where maybe Ansar Allah and the Houthis would be all talk or all bark, but no bite. But things are changing right now. I mean, we're seeing with this new weaponry, the new ballistics, the new cruise missiles, the new drones, right? The Shahid styles, and then the smaller FPV type drones, right? The unmanned submersives, everything has kind of changed. And it is something that, you know, the United States has not adapted to. And the United States proxies have not adapted to because they get their weapons from the United States, which are kind of antiquated and outdated based on the new way war is being fought, which you can see how Russia's war against Ukraine is being fought. So Trump has asked, well, what do you make of the Houthi striking King Khalid? Now, one American died, 13 others, but 14 people were killed at Terminal 3 and Terminal 4. There was a strike the other day. There are more strikes on Riyadh happening right now, by the way, as we're recording this. Hundreds of people were injured. So what's your response, Donald, to what's going on with the Houthis in Saudi Arabia? Well, the Houthis are misbehaving very badly. They're misbehaving very badly. No good. No good. No good. No good. No good. I mean, that's the President of the United States statement. I mean, there was one, I mean, don't do the press conference. You know what I mean? People are like, well, he speaks to the press all the time. Well, he lies about everything. Who cares? Who cares what the perceived access is if he's lying all the time? Then if he doesn't like your reporting, he bans you unconstitutionally. And then did you see going into this weekend? There was the reporting how the Trump DOJ is now doing an antitrust investigation against the media companies that would not be the White House pool reporters after Donald Trump banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House. Then other news companies were like, well, we're not going to be the White House pool reporting and cover what you're doing because we don't want to be complicit also in unlawfully banning these other media outlets. So then the Trump regime uses the DOJ to say, aha, antitrust violation for not covering me. Anybody, what are you talking about? Like have Newsmax or have one of these other state regime outlets cover you as the pool reporting. But this is the behavior. This is the MO of the Trump regime. One thing I want to point out as well, and this is what I was talking about before the break, a few things. Number one, going back to Saudi Arabia for a moment, and what Trump said about what he said about the Houthis. The State Department issued an alert about Saudi Arabia and saying to Americans who are here, be alert, be aware. There may be strikes in the region. It was actually not an alert that I think had the severity of what's actually taking place. It was a pretty mild alert. But then as you read deeper into the alert, it was like, and Saudi Arabia is currently, arresting American citizens who are videotaping and photographing the incidents that are occurring in the region. So make sure you abide by Saudi Arabian law and don't videotape or don't photograph the strikes by Ansar Allah. Otherwise, you can be subject to arrest from Saudi Arabia. And it's like, okay, Saudi Arabia is arresting. How many American citizens have been arrested? What's going on there? But Trump's response to all this is, they're misbehaving. They're very bad. Very, very bad. For those who are listening on audio, for those who are watching, we posted, just so you see what the exact alert is. American citizens have, this is an alert from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh. American citizens have been detained for taking photos of recent events. Visitors and residents are subject to local laws while in Saudi Arabia. I mean, recent events? Care to say what those recent events are? In any event, things are escalating, obviously, between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. And I guess what MBS thought is that he was part of the Trump mafia protection racket and that he could strike Ansar Allah and there wouldn't be any response and that the Patriot interceptors would be able to stop Ansar Allah's ballistics. And Ansar Allah, the way the IRGC has, has developed tactics and tactics that are very, very effective. And I think that's what's happening. Trump, U.S. technology that has not adapted as Trump launched the catastrophic war in Iran. It's exposed deeper systemic issues. But just even think about this. Think about it from this perspective. All of the U.S. military bases in the Middle East are above ground. They're exposed. Also, you have these data centers and other major infrastructure. It's all exposed. It's all above ground right now, right? How does Iran keep its bases? It's under the mountains. It's all underground. It's all hidden and concealed. So Iran was able to destroy all the U.S. military bases in the region. Like one by one, all those military bases are destroyed. And now the Trump regime is preventing sitting United States senators from even looking at the bases because most of those bases have been destroyed. And then you have Iran's top advisor to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khomeini. His name is Moshe Razai. And he said, if you escalate this war, this was his escalate the war against us, here's what we're going to do. We've identified $2 trillion worth of assets in the Middle East linked to the United States and the Arab nation royal families, data centers, cables underneath the Strait of Hormuz. You strike us, we cut the cables, and we will destroy all the data centers in the area. We know exactly where they are. Don't test us right now. And so I want to point out what's also I'll throw to you, Brandon, is Iran launched ballistic missile tests and drone tests. And they had an F5 and MIGs and all these planes. These Air Force jets were being tested over the weekend. These massive military exercises were taking place as well. They have their military. Like it's there. As Donald Trump's like, oh, no, that's not the case. And recall, there's been a cover up ongoing since the very first days of this war all across the region between our regional allies over there. If you remember, you know, what was one of the first things Iran did? They were striking Dubai a lot, right? And this actually plays into a few of the things that we've seen and applied other things that we're also going to talk about later in this episode. First, there was first the strikes in Dubai. And then there were the laws, there were the arrests that were happening there for anybody who was showing the public what was happening in Dubai, because that's their golden goose, right? That's they've hyped us up as a place where rich people could go. And you know, it's an oasis in the Middle East and go there and be safe and spend your money and live lavishly. I mean, this was the whole pitch of Dubai, right? And it was being destroyed because Iran was attacking Dubai and was showing that it was not a safe place. So they were arresting all these people who were actually showing what was going on over there. Now we're still seeing that we're seeing that in Saudi Arabia, as they don't want actual images to come out of the destruction of what's actually happening. We're seeing it from the United States government and covering up the the injuries and the deaths. I even just over the weekend, the Pentagon quietly added more deaths to the list, I still believe that the deaths are far higher than what they are even telling us. But it seems like when they get into kind of longer weekends, holiday weekends, you know, slower news, you know, when the news may not be as on, they'll suddenly just add to the death toll a little bit and hope that people really kind of, you know, don't catch on. And then of course, there's the disinformation efforts out there as well. One of the things we saw early on with the war when Iran was striking places like Dubai is they had all these influencers and bot armies and all these people putting out videos. They say, don't you feel safe? How could you feel safe in Dubai? Because I'm being protected by these incredible men. They had all these influencers putting stuff out. They had people like the Andrew Tates of the world putting out videos of them smoking cigars and throwing money around in Dubai and acting like everything was great. This is a pattern that we are seeing. It extends not only in the Middle East, but extends here to the United States of these disinformation campaigns, these psyops, and these cover-ups. Meanwhile, going back to MBS and Saudi Arabia, what's happening? Donald Trump has put the monarchy in Saudi Arabia in a very precarious situation. Here's just one example of that. I'll pull up this story from the Wall Street Journal. The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is now apparently moving cars to Saudi Arabia. He's going to be in Saudi Arabia for a while. He's going to be in Saudi cautiously between heavily guarded palaces equipped with bunkers accompanied by hand-picked security guards as the Houthi attacks intensify. Saudi officials say that the kingdom is running low on interceptor missiles and is struggling to protect its energy infrastructure and royal palaces. So now you have people like MBS who have tied themselves to Donald Trump in these efforts, tied themselves to Donald Trump in this war, thinking that he would have this United States security umbrella. Now he's dealing with the ire of his people. And I feel like the Saudi monarchy today is closer to being overthrown than ever before because people are so angry in that place and they're trying to do what they can now to keep all of that under control. So there is so much more instability that could still come from all of Trump's actions in the region. But hey, at least at the end of the day, they still got live golf. Oh, wait. No, they don't. You know, I think it's macro. More and more people around the world are finding out just what happens when you get close to the Trump family, right? Everything Trump touches turns to shit eventually. That's very clear from all of his failed businesses to everything that we've seen surrounding him with all of the lawyers that always get fired. And he turns on everybody. And the proximity to power, at least how people might view it as Donald Trump being the power, and they just want to be close to him so they could, I don't know, use him to get things done in their own way. So I think it's macro. More and more people around the world are finding out governments or whatnot is never worth the bite. That bite out of that apple is absolutely never worth it because it always comes around to just screw you. Also, just like on a separate note, I just feel like our adversaries in general smell blood in the water. Like the sharks smell it. And that blood is the weakness that is Donald Trump. They know that he is cognitively just addled at this point. He knows what he is doing. I'm not trying to give him an out. But what I'm saying is he's not equipped enough mentally or physically to really navigate us out of this situation that we never, we being the US, never needed to be in in the first place. So now what's going on? Everyone's looking around, making fun of the United States, making fun of our leaders, making fun of Donald Trump, because once again, he is proving to be an absolute failure. That's just a fact. He is failing this country. He's failing this country at the pump. He is failing this country's troops right now with the death tolls rising and rising. Again, that we know of, CENTCOM has increased it to 21 deaths. I personally think it's going to be much, much more when we're able to actually do some research and digging into this. And Donald Trump continues to fail us on a macro scale, just utter weakness. That's what we're exuding right now. And it frustrates me as someone who loves this country. I agree, Jordy. And I think it's beyond mental incapacity, which sure, that's one thing. I think it's far worse what the people see on him. And that's- Yeah, I think it's far worse what the people see on him. And I think it's somebody who is just easily influenced. It goes back to what Hillary Clinton said back in 2016, when Donald Trump had far more of his mental capabilities. And that's, you can't trust a guy who you could bait with a tweet. And all these people know that they could bait him, whether with a tweet, whether with their actions. And they know how he operates, and they know what he's looking for in a lot of these things, right? Donald Trump, he wants to be flattered. He wants to get these wins. He feels the pressure of the election. He wants to be flattered. The electoral cycle, the midterm elections, things like that. And so they know that, you know, Iran knows right now that they have, you know, Trump completely against the wall because he's flailing and his approval rating is completely crashed. And everything he's doing right now is a complete disaster. But, you know, when you look at people like Russia, they know that it's easy to manipulate Donald Trump for their ends. Everybody knows kind of how, what they need to do in order to, you know, win the election. And so they know that, you know, Iran knows right now that to influence Donald Trump because the guy is very easy to manipulate. And our adversaries who are, by the way, far smarter than Donald Trump. I mean, you have Vladimir Putin, who's an ex-KGB agent, who like quite literally, this is the kind of thing he did, right? Studied psychological profiles on people, understood how to manipulate people, understood how to take advantage of people. I mean, this is a cakewalk for a guy like that. Yeah. And it's why when Witkoff and Kushner are in Moscow and why they've showed up to Moscow nine times and only Kyiv one time, what's being discussed there? It's all business deals that could benefit the Trump family. Luke oil, foreign assets. If Trump, you just remove the sanctions, you and your MAGA billionaire friends and some of the royal families in the Middle East, you can get your hands on some of this Luke oil, Russian money. Or how about the Nord Stream pipeline can we entice you with it? There's trillions of dollars to be made if you do deals with Russia. Trillions, Donald. And Putin just says that. And Zelensky doesn't go there. And they have a different kind of prerogatives and different ways that they have to govern, of course. And so people like Zelensky and Prime Minister Carney and European leaders, they don't do the things that Putin does in order to ingratiate themselves. And then Trump views the kind of gangster mafioso style as being something that he looks up to and that he admires. I mean, Brett and Jordy, you're talking about how easily Trump is to manipulate. I mean, just look at the Russian diesel deal. Trump announces it. I mean, someone wrote the tweet for him or the post on Truth Social. 300,000 tons this month, then 500,000 tons next month. Then the 1 million tons will follow. And then it's like you break that down. It's two and a half million barrels of oil or that's three and a half, four million barrels of oil total. We're talking about that fits in two tankers. That's it. Every time we talk about Iran striking tankers, they struck six tankers in the past 24 hours. There was more oil or diesel or whatever was on those tankers than is in this entire Trump-Russian deal, right? And so we're talking about three million barrels of oil in terms of the global oil market. I don't know, a few hours max, a few hours max of diesel, less than a day's worth. And that's what Trump's bragging about is somehow going to bring the diesel price down. No, it's not. And the prices are going up right now. The price of diesel, the price of gas, the price of crude. And it's people talk about the price of crude as well. They're talking about a futures contract. So, Brett, I don't know if you can pull this up where the price of Brent right now, Brent crude is $107 a barrel. That's a futures contract for December. If you want to buy dated Brent, also known as spot Brent, like right now, it's like $150 a barrel. If you need to buy it urgently right now. And there's not just a shortage of oil, not just a shortage of refined stuff like diesel or gas. There's a shortage of ships. Because every time we talk about Iran striking ships, those ships are gone. And then less ships want to go into the Strait of Hormuz and take that trip. Even if they're getting paid $1.5 million a day, which they are getting paid for it. And then the way these ships are trying to sneak out of the Strait of Hormuz, the ones that do use this ship to ship transfer method, where smaller ships kind of link up with a bigger ship, a VLCC, a very large crude carrier, which is in the Gulf of Oman. The smaller ships, which are still big, which carry like 750,000 barrels, they hug the bigger ship. There's a hose that gets hooked up. And then multiple smaller ships fill up the bigger ship. And then the bigger ship leaves. Now Iran is striking ships in the Gulf of Oman, the bigger ships too. And the bigger ships were already reluctant to go through the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran's like, if you take your detect, your AIS detection off, or you turn it off, we're going to, we're going to view you as a hostile vessel. And we're going to strike you. So We've seen strike after strike and tankers be being hit east of Fujairah, basically Gulf of Oman, already outside of the Strait of Hormuz. And we've been seeing an uptick in those strikes as well. And then we learned the following as well. I think it's like 120 or 130 Russian employees of Rosatom, the kind of Russian state company, is working at the nuclear plant in Bushir. That's the nuclear plant. It's a JV between Russia and Iran for civilian nuclear, which the Trump regime decides are really civilian nuclear. But the Bushir plant is a JV between Russia and Iran. Russia is saying it's investing billions of dollars more in building new Iranian nuclear facilities. This isn't some state secret. They've announced it publicly. And they're sending more employees into Iran to do that. And then we know that Iran has been sending its diesel either through the Caspian Sea or on land routes into Russia. I mean, go look at a map of where Iran is, where Russia is. And when the Trump regime is like, well, we're blockading the Strait of Hormuz and we're blockading right by the Arabian Sea, right outside the Gulf of Oman. Okay, well, that's one exit. But you don't think Iran can figure out ways. They can. It's less efficient, but they can send smaller ships in the Caspian Sea. They can send trucks that go around. And it seems that there were thousands of trucks, quite literally thousands, filled up with diesel, filled up with oil, with other oil products that made its way to Russia, that makes its way to China and elsewhere, in addition to the original Iranian tankers that used the brief ceasefire under the MOU to get its, oil out to the various marketplaces. And so it is possible that the, because Russia's diesel capacity has been severely harmed. It is possible that the diesel that Russia is, that may be supplying to the United States as part of the so-called diesel deal, as I noted before the break, because of the way Iran is supplying Russia with diesel, because Russia is lacking its own diesel. So where's the surplus? That it can actually provide the United States. It's possible it's coming from Iran and that that's where Russia's getting diesel and they're sending the diesel to the United States. So I just want you to think about that. I'll make this legal point, but I've done a lot of deeper analysis on it before. There's a 2022 law, end importation of Russian oil act, which ends importation of Russian oil. So it is against that law, unless you certify under penalty of perjury that the war between Russia and Ukraine is over and Russia no longer poses a threat to NATO, then you can't do any deal with Russia for diesel or any type of oil. And then there's a 2017 law called CATSA, which Donald Trump signed into law in his first term, countering America's adversaries through sanctions act, which requires 30 days notice before doing a deal with either, Iran, North Korea, or Russia. And then Congress has the ability to basically reject or veto the trade deal if you do a deal with one of those countries. So it violates CATSA, the 2017 Trump law that he signed into law. It violates the 2022 end Russian importation act. And then the Lindsey Graham sanctions act says any countries that buy basically, and it's a group of countries that buy diesel or any product from Russia, they get sanctioned. So what does Trump do? He buys the diesel. And by the way, he said that he was imposing the tariffs on India because they got their diesel from Russia and they were getting oil from Russia. Then Trump goes around and does the same thing. Now, the Supreme Court gave Trump absolute immunity, but Besant and Mark Wayne Mullen don't have absolute immunity. Trump will likely pardon them. Now, Customs and Border Patrol agents who bring in this diesel and make sure that they're getting the diesel, they're getting the tax. In my opinion, a future DOJ could charge them as part of a racketeering enterprise. If they're bringing in Russian diesel, it'd be like bringing in drugs, right? If you're unpacking Russian diesel, you're violating the law. So anybody in Customs and Border Patrol, they would have to get the pardon also. And when Treasury Secretary Besant gave a general license to Russia to export its diesel, I believe that that is a clear violation of the law as well, for which he would have to receive a pardon from the Trump regime. So I wanted to tie this all together and point all of that out. Imagine being Darlene Graham and Donald Trump is just taking a huge crap all over your brother's legacy. And right after signing this kind of BS law named after your brother, he goes and the first move that he does is remove sanctions on Russia, cut a diesel deal with Russia, and do all the rest of the stuff that he's doing right now. You go out there at your debate and you have to be like, "I'm just going to do what Donald Trump wants because he's my guy." These people just have no souls. It's really, truly, it's just so disgusting. I think we got to take a break right now, but we got a lot more to talk about. I want to get into this Tallarico story too, because man, this thing completely blew up in the face of all of these MAGA influencers, maybe because they didn't have their Russian bots to help them out in uplifting this stuff. But man, they really stepped in it. And I think their whole kind of bombshell that they thought was going to take down Tallarico's campaign, they ended up stepping on a rake and this ended up actually hurting Paxton even more and discrediting all of these MAGA influencers. Not that they had any credibility to begin with, but if you had any questions about their credibility, I hope this settles it. These people are liars. These people are propagandists, and they just completely exposed their entire game and their entire propaganda network. So I'm looking forward to speak about this and so much more. Remember to get the book, folks, WTF America. We're almost a week away. If you're listening to this on the audio podcast, it's a week from release date. So now is the time that we got to go hard. Go pre-order the book anywhere you find books. Search WTF America, hit the QR code above my head, link in the description, hardcover, ebook, audiobook. Check it out. The book is dedicated to you. I'm so excited for you to get your hands on it. I got my hands on it. We all now got our hands on the book. We got the first edition print copies, the actual final versions, and I got the chills when I looked at it. It covers so many of these topics. It's also kind of like a guide on how to combat all of this nonsense that we've been seeing over this past 10 years and, as a matter of fact, these past multiple decades. So check it out. We're going to be right back after this. Don't go anywhere. Here's a gross fact. Traditional bed sheets can hold more bacteria than a toilet seat. Yeah, not exactly what you want to lay your face on. Am I right? Miracle-Made bedding is designed to fight bacteria and stay cleaner longer with silver-infused fabrics that actually prevent up to 99.7% of bacterial growth. Miracle-Made sheets are crafted with NASA-inspired silver-infused fabric that helps regulate your body temperature. Hot sleeper, cold sleeper, doesn't matter. 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Get the right life insurance for you for less at SelectQuote.com slash Midas. Go to SelectQuote.com slash Midas today to get started. Links in the description, both the YouTube and the audio. Use the links, use the codes. If there's an exit survey, let them know we sent you. I'm going to tease this just ever so quickly. I'm very excited for you guys to break down all this Tallarico stuff. Brett and Ben have such a comprehensive understanding of all this. And I just, I like giving people their flowers, you know, when you can. And you guys explained every facet of this to me in such great detail that, well, I'm excited for y'all to talk about it here. Did I? Did I make you nervous? No, you gave it. You did it justice. I'll pass it over to Brett. But it reminded me when you had those MAGA influencers back in February of 2025, holding the binders and saying, these are the Epstein files. And they all pushed it out. We got the Epstein files directly from Bondi. And these are the people who push anything the regime says. They're regime propagandists. And on platforms like X, where Musk controls the algorithm, and where these other tech oligarchs work. And they're all working closely with Trump on the data centers, and all of the stuff that they entrench their wealth. They put their, not just their thumb on the scale. I mean, they fully manipulate the algorithms in order to distort and poison the information environment. And we talk a lot about in WTF America, creating healthy information environments and spreading the truth and how these right wing oligarchs are destroying our democracy. I mean, you saw the report, even guys about, it's not just Elon Musk's control of the kind of algorithm on X and other things, what he spent close to $300 million since July on the midterm elections, pouring that amount of money. And remember where a lot of the money comes from also. It also comes from government contracts and the SpaceX deals and all of that is used to leverage the stock value of SpaceX. And a lot of the money also came from these royal families. families, which purchased the original debt to acquire X to begin with. And then they were given preferred equity stakes in the launch of the SpaceX combined company so that they got richer while SpaceX merged all of these companies and then put into it a lot of these companies that have government contracts as well. And so there's all of that at play I want to talk about as well. But Brett, talk about the Tallarico because this thing lived and spread and was born on X and pushed and it was absurd and defamatory, debunked, but let's talk about it. Yeah, and it's the perfect encapsulation of the entire GOP messaging strategy, propaganda strategy, whatever you want to call it. As Ben said, we have a whole chapter about how this works in WTF America, and it really fits perfectly into the exact plan that they tried to execute here with Tallarico. And I think we, as a source of good information, one of the things that we try to do is try to flood the zone with actual good information when these bad actors are flooding the zone with bad information. But I want you to remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter, now X, for far above market value, everyone is wondering, why would he do that? This thing doesn't make money. Why would, how is this a good idea? Well, I think you got to realize he did it because of this. Like he, in my opinion, wants to have a tool where he could spread his propaganda, reach people in the media, reach politicians, reach world leaders. X is the place where all of these politicians live. And he also made the oligarchs a ton of money by doing this with his various deals. And so let me just show you now, you know, I'll break down kind of what happened with this Tallarico situation, because it was so transparent. And frankly, it was doomed from the start. But the whole thing was just incredibly ridiculous. And as you guys know, you got James Tallarico right now, he's in this race against Ken Paxton in Texas. It's the first time in a long time where Democrats have a real shot of winning a statewide race in Texas, winning a US Senate race. A lot of these polls recently, including Trafalgar, which was like, which is like a mega poll, have Tallarico up right now. Paxton, probably one of the important pieces of context here is that Paxton also has been trying to avoid Tallarico at all costs. It's been, like, over 85 days now since Tallarico asked Paxton to debate him. Paxton refuses. He keeps making up all these various excuses. And Tallarico is even like, I'll debate you on Fox News. Like, I've agreed to do it on Fox. Brett Baer could be the host. Like, what are you afraid of? You're not going to go on Fox News. Like, I'll go on Fox News. Who cares? Paxton, still no. And so, you know, these MAGA influencers, and in my opinion, I think this was highly coordinated. And so, you know, I think this was highly coordinated. And so, with individuals in the Trump campaign, Trump aides, Trump adjacent officials, people in the Tallarico campaign, and these online influencers, as Ben said before, the binder class, right? The people who were there faking that they had the Epstein files, folks like that. And so, this all started a few days ago. You know, James Tallarico was out. He had the flu. He said he had the flu. James Tallarico is also diabetic. He was recovering from the flu. And so, this ex-account that was called like Tickle or Tickle Texts or something started circulating this random claim that there was a private flight that went from Texas to Ohio. And then she said that that private flight was carrying James Tallarico. Like, no evidence about this at all. Like, literally all she saw was that there was a private flight that went from Texas to Ohio. And then she made up this entire fiction that James Tallarico was on this plane. And this is how the story began. Absolutely insane. And so, then they basically make up that there is this mental hospital. Well, there is a mental hospital in Ohio, as there are across the world. But they made up that there's this mental hospital in Ohio, the Lindner Center of Hope. And this psychiatric facility is where James Tallarico decided to go because he had a mental breakdown and he's unable to recover and he's unable to continue with his campaign. So, of all the places, James Tallarico, who is in Texas, lives in Texas, has been campaigning in Texas, has decided to take a private jet to Ohio to go to this random psychiatric facility right off the bat. None of this makes any sense, right? And so, they hone in. And oftentimes, they do this, right? They will hone in on some innocent place, right? And then just like torture the people who work at that place with their deranged conspiracies. I mean, remember Comet Ping Pong back like in 2016 when they shot up the place based on these deranged, conspiracy theories. They don't care about the truth and they don't care about the lives that they ruin that were along the way. And so, there's this MAGA operative, this guy, and I'm going to probably butcher his name, but who cares? His name is like Ryan Amateur. Ryan Amateur. And he claims that he contacted the Lindner Center of Hope, this facility, and he said that at first he tried, but he couldn't get through because they required a confidential four-digit code for certain patient inquiries and he had an unsuccessful call. But he had an idea that he was going to call back and he was going to make up a four-digit number and get them to give him the dirt on James Tallarico. And so, then he circulates like this one minute of a phone call on the internet where the person's like, yeah, you know, this was a very confused person on the other lines. Like, yeah, the person got discharged, I guess, at the end of the day today. Sure. I don't know what you're talking about. They present this like this is proof that Tallarico was discharged from the hospital. Immediately, the timeline doesn't make any sense because they say that Tallarico was discharged on October 10th. Tallarico was literally at the Austin Music Festival on October 9th. He was with Casey Musgraves at the festival on the 10th. Like, he was already out and about on the back on the campaign trail when they say that he was just getting discharged from this hospital. So, right away, this didn't make sense. Then, you know, the full call eventually gets released and you see that a million times. Like, the person's like, I don't know what you're talking about. This person isn't here. Like, I don't know. And then, you know, he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then, like, finally, after, like, badgering them for many minutes, they're like, I don't know, maybe they were discharged. And then, they try to use that as, like, proof of this grand conspiracy. And I also just want to show you, like, all these people, I think, just have severe personality disorders, psychiatric disorders in their own right. Let me show you the two people I've talked about thus far. And I want to show you their appearances on the internet, the way they present themselves on the internet, and their appearances, what they look like in real life, just to show you the deception. This is just an example of the deception more than anything, right? And so, here's a picture right here of Ryan Amaker, for those listening. You see he has, like, an AI image of himself where he looks far better than he actually does in real life with his triple chin over here on the left. Looks like a sloppy, sloppy guy, dirty, you know. And then, you see over here the Tickle account that I was talking about. She uses an AI avatar. You can see her picture. I don't know if it's a mug shot or what this picture is of this woman who's supposedly behind the account. But then, you could see over here an image of someone who looks much younger, and it's clearly an AI image. And if you run it through an AI generator, you can see that she looks you see that it's a fake image of a fake person. So these are the people off the bat spreading this thing. And then they enlist this guy, Nick Sorter, who's also one of these MAGA operatives who's been arrested numerous times to then spread this BS. They try to get these MAGA outlets to cover it. They try to get the Blaze to cover it. They even try to get the Daily Mail to cover it. All them look into it and they go, this is never going to pass legal muster in us. So even these MAGA outlets and the Daily Mail are like, we're not touching this with a 10-foot pole. It seems like BS. And by the way, the guy admitted this when he was talking about it in a space. But that didn't stop them from continuing to try to amplify it, right? And so you saw all these accounts. You saw the Nick Sorter. You saw the people I was talking about. And then you see all the people from Trump World jump in, right? The Rick Grinnells. You see Elon Musk. And Elon Musk will respond with like exclamation points and he'll retweet the post because he knows as the biggest account on a platform like X that when he engages with a post, when he replies to it and retweets it, it then boosts it entirely in the algorithm and helps spread the false information. So Elon Musk is very much a part of this scheme. And all of these other MAGA influencers out there on X start immediately go into, this is a bombshell. Tallarico needs to drop out. This is ridiculous. This is what they've been hiding from us. I can't believe it. And even people like Megyn Kelly, who used to present themselves as serious people, even after being shown that this was all BS, are like, but this doesn't make sense. Tallarico is still not being tested. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. Still not being true. Still going deeper and deeper and deeper in their deranged conspiracy theories. And so eventually the timeline doesn't match. The whole story doesn't make sense. The facility comes out and releases a statement saying, James Tallarico has never been a patient here, has never been here. We don't know what you're talking about. James Tallarico comes out with a statement. He's like, guys, not only have I never been to this facility, I've never even been to the state of Ohio. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm in Texas. I was at the festival when you said I was at the festival. I'm in Texas. I was at the festival when you said I was at this place. None of this makes sense at all whatsoever. And then after the fact, you would think, oh, would these people admit fault? Would they say that they were wrong? No, of course not. They double down. They keep going deeper and deeper. And some of the things they said, I found deeply, deeply, deeply revealing. That guy Amaker, I was looking through his posts. One of the posts that I found of his, when somebody started to criticize his kind of scheme that he was trying to unleash on James Tallarico, he said, the point of this, he said, public humiliation is the end goal here. Really revealing his hand, not the truth. His goal was to publicly humiliate James Tallarico and try to tank his campaign. Then you had other people on these X spaces discussions. It's kind of like where they all speak to each other. And one of them made a very revealing comment by saying the following, and I'm going to quote it exactly. He said, whether it's true or not, whether it's true or not, people are going to be humiliated. He said, whether it's true or not, people deserve to know the potential of this. And then another one of these MAGA operatives says, it genuinely doesn't matter if he was in a mental health hospital or if he had the flu. I think it's actually kind of your whole thing is that he was in a mental health hospital. And now you're admitting that your whole goal was just to spread disinformation, lie to people, hope the story stick and hope that you were able to tank this person's campaign because they are beating your preferred candidate. And then you had another one of these MAGA operatives saying, it genuinely doesn't matter if he was in a mental health hospital or if he had the flu. And so that whole scenario really exposed this operation. And I think as we continue to pull the thread on the MAGA propaganda operation, I think we're going to continue to learn more and more and more because I noticed some accounts out there also who were tweeting and boosting this stuff. Like one of the individuals, one of these MAGA operatives is literally in prison right now. He's in jail right now. And he was still tweeting about this and boosting the stuff. So you wonder, "How was that account part of this operation? What could that be?" My theory, my working theory is that a lot of the accounts that are responsible for spreading the bulk of disinformation on websites like X are actually all run centrally by individual firms, run by people connected to Trump world or in the MAGA space. And I think there's a lot of evidence when you look to back it up, the way with the speed in which they respond to each other, the way they all uplift themselves, the way they all kind of tweet in the exact same style. I mean, you could tell, and there are some folks out there, and I'm not going to say specific names, but you'll see there are some MAGA influencers out there who are like 85 years old, have Twitter accounts, and they're very active. And they tweet not like an 85-year-old, and they are very sophisticated in the way they use Twitter and things like that. And it's my theory that these people, many of these MAGA people aren't even controlling their own accounts. They're all run by centralized firms who are pumping out this stuff and are using it to spread pro-Trump propaganda. And I think we're going to find out a lot of this stuff kind of as we go and as we continue to learn more as Democrats take back the House. One of the things that I hope they do, quite frankly, is subpoena these folks and get to the bottom of these influence operations, because this is, to me, in my opinion, election interference that we're seeing right here. Mm-hmm. I think a lot of it is coordinated with government officials. I'm curious if taxpayer money is involved. I'm curious if foreign bot networks are involved, because one of the things that I did notice, and I know there are some people out there saying, "Yeah, but the Yandex facility, taking that out, I'm not sure it would actually affect the kinds of bots that are affecting discourse on the internet." Anecdotally, I have noticed it tremendously online. And I've seen a lot of these MAGA accounts trying their similar tactics over the past few days to go viral, to get engagement to comments, and getting a fraction of what they normally get. And I think it's quite telling. And even in our own comments on a website like X, a lot less hatred, quite frankly, than we were getting just last week, because in my opinion, a lot of those bots are not operational right now. So there's some sophisticated propaganda going on right now. I think it's controlled by some of the most powerful people, and we see a lot of those people publicly joining in. So I think it's a good thing that we're seeing a lot of that. joining in, whether it's Elon Musk or Rick Grinnell, in boosting all of this stuff. And we know their ties to people like Paxton. We know the efforts that Musk is going to by putting in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into boosting the Republican Party. If you think he's not doing that with his algorithms on his app and the way, other things that he's doing behind the scenes, then I don't know what to tell you. But the point is so much of what we're seeing right now is astroturfed. This attempt to try to take down Tallarico completely backfired. It showed that these people are completely not credible whatsoever. It showed that they are complete hacks. And I hope that it is revealing and at least opens the eyes of some of the people who may have followed these folks, thinking that they were these truth tellers on the internet, telling you what the libs didn't want you to hear, and shows you that these people are just political hacks, hired hands, all that. Roderick Long It's a great breakdown, B. I don't have much to add. I just want to say that it also shows just how scared MAGA is of this Texas race, right? They've been trying to just throw things at Tallarico hoping it will stick. He's a vegan. Trump says vegan. He's a vegan. He hates meat. Oh, we need to hold our convention here now. Let's hold our convention here normally that we hold in swing states when there's big elections coming up. Let's hold it here in Texas, yeah? Oh, he's having a mental breakdown. He's in a mental facility. Also, just a side note, I feel for the people, even more so, who are in that facility getting treatment. They've just become targets in the backs of all of MAGA and this right-wing red pill outrage. That facility can't pick up and move. That location is there. It's stationary. The people getting treatment there are now all targets subject to this smear campaign against Tallarico. It's awful. But again, I just want to say they've been spiraling out. MAGA has been in total disarray. This isn't 2016. MAGA. It's not 2018 or 2020 MAGA, right? Yes, they get all of these talking points and now the musks of the world own these platforms and everyone puts their fingerprints on it. However, the messaging, as coordinated, Brett, as it obviously is, I also feel like it's having a harder and harder time sticking, which is why it's so obvious to a lot of people that they're working overtime to try and force it, try and try and force. It's not as natural as it came to MAGA back in 2016, at least to me. Because here's why. Because? Reality. Their altered state of reality is so divorced from reality. People are not living a golden age unless you're Trump and a select few of right-wing oligarchs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg and people like that. It's not a talking point that the American people are suffering right now and are struggling to get by day to day. You have diesel and gas prices that are record highs. And the Trump regime, Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden, it's Biden's fault. You can't expect us to make a change in two years. And it's like people like, no, that's not, Trump made it worse. We're aware. We've existed. We existed during Biden. We exist during now. We're doing way worse right now. And Trump promised he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It would be super easy. There would be no more never-ending wars. It would be so-called America first that everybody would be able to afford. Housing, electricity prices would be cut in half. Gas would be $2 a gallon. There would be a healthcare plan and people would be doing much better. And people are suffering right now. And people are like, what you're telling me is not happening. So it's not a talking point. having this impact when you keep shoving it down people's throats that this is great it's actually pushing people more away and it's like ah get away from me zombie like get away from me crazy people like things are not great i mean i don't need to show all these clips but you have maga mike johnson today saying that the economy is an a and that everything's an a and you can't blame mega republicans for what's actually happening in the straight of hormuz because the maga policy the trump policy worked but then this other thing just happened and so we can't be blamed for that you had darling graham whose last name really isn't even graham anymore who's changed her name so she can try to get votes in south carolina she was like you know who started the war in iran the democrats did they started the war we can't forget it's their fault right there and do we really want free health care government free health care no we don't it comes from somewhere we don't want to pay centers everywhere. And so she was delivering, I did a whole video on this, the Trump talking points with this kind of milquetoast, barely there delivery. And so she was saying the things that Trump said in her own, and it's like, what? You want data centers in our backyard that we need to put Netanyahu and Israel's interests above the United States? What are you saying? We need to blame the Democrats for the war in Iran. We shouldn't have free healthcare. Yeah, we want that. We want that more than $1.5 trillion going to the military industrial complex, which then the Trump regime goes and loses the war to Iran that we should never have been involved in. And we run out of weapons. Yeah, we would prefer the money be spent here in America. That's what we want. And if you actually look at the campaigns that Atala Rico or Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed, they're running, they're actually running a campaign saying, let's put the interest of actually America first. Let's actually do that. And here's how we're going to do it. Here's what America really wants. We don't want to give our money to billionaires and trillionaires while they screw our lives. No, we want to help Americans out. And here's specific, everyone okay? And here's specifically what we can do in order to make that happen. Let me toss it over to you, Brett and Jordy. Yeah, no, absolutely. And you see that difference in the messaging right now. I think one of the most brilliant things that I thought Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed did in the debate with Mike Rogers the other day is every time Rogers tried to reframe the debate and say things like, try to kind of make it a personal battle between him and Abdul Al-Sayed. Al-Sayed would go, see what he's doing it again, right? My opponent right now, he's doing it again. He wants us to make this about personal squabbles between me and him, but I want to make this about you. I want to make this about affordability. I want to make this about, you know, no data centers, your backyard. I want to make this about making your life better. And I thought that was just a really brilliant tactic to deploy there because right now, you know, what you're seeing is a lot of the Republicans, they don't know, they don't really have anything to run on. So all they have to run on is this blind allegiance to Donald Trump. And so they're just getting further and further and further away from what the people actually want when Donald Trump's approval rating right now is like an average of like 30% or something. I saw a crazy poll over the weekend and really despise these polls. And please don't believe these polls at all. As we head into election day, go out there and vote. But I saw a pretty stunning poll the other day that shows a balloon that popped. Oh my God, you scared me for a second. It was a balloon that popped over there in the other room. Never know what's going to happen. But I was just saying there was a poll over the weekend, just 5% of independent voters support the way that Trump is handling inflation. And it seems like the, only kind of line that they have right now is to just continue to say, oh, but Biden, but Biden, but Biden, but Biden. Let me tell you, people right now would be absolutely, if we went back to the prices when Biden was president, people would be like, thank you. Thank you. Things are so much cheaper right now. Things have gotten far more expensive than them. Then again, the peak of the inflation then was like what, 2021, 2022-ish. And Biden's whole term was fixing the problems that were caused by the previous administration. And by the time Biden's terms were up, inflation was down and continuing to come down. Interest rates were coming down. There were expected cuts at the Fed and Donald Trump came in and he reversed all of that with his own actions. The Biden people, man, it just cracks me. He's not president, but Biden, he's not president. The caravans are coming. Trump is president. If the Democrats win, we'll be in a recession and a depression. Trump still president regardless of what happens during this midterms. The lack of accountability that MAGA, the Trump regime, Republicans in general are willing to take or not take, I think also is speaking volumes to more of those sort of apolitical people where it's like, hey, buck stops with me type of leadership. Does anyone care about that anymore? Because that's what a lot of folks genuinely do care about and appreciate. And so when constantly we see MAGA sort of offload issues on, where's Joey be right now? Hopefully he's on his couch eating some vanilla ice cream. He's not the president. He can't fix anyone's problems now. Trump has been the president for two years. Not only that, the Republicans have controlled all three branches of government for these two years. And what do they have to show for it? Ice on our streets terrorizing and murdering our citizens. An endless needless war that we don't need to be in that's getting our troops killed. Gas prices out of control, inflation out of control. The Republicans and Donald Trump own all of that. Yeah, well, look, their logic makes no sense because it's not logical. There were things that Biden did that I liked, but let's say you hate Biden, right? Let's say they despise Biden and they're like, but Biden did this. Okay, but you disliked him. Biden didn't win. Biden dropped out of the race. So you're comparing your guy to the guy you hated? How does that even make sense to you at all? It literally makes no sense even if you do it. I digress. I just want to talk about this quickly, though, before the balloon popped and scared the crap out of me. You held it together really well. What did you say? Well, I had to be calm. I wasn't sure what was going on and then I had to deal with it. In any event, so the new press secretary, let's just say her background when some of her posts have been unearthed, Judd Legum did a really good job. Others did a good job as well. She would respond to a lot of people. She would respond to like deep QAnon stuff like this. Did you notice Trump drinking bottled water last night during his announcement? He drank at least two to three times. I've not seen him do that at his speeches or rallies. It reminds me of Q posts 765, 767 and 847. Or was it a signal for something else, by land or by sea? And Katie Zakaria, who's the new press secretary, she goes, I was wondering the same thing. And then she reposts, how Prague guru John Podesta isn't a household name as world-class underage sex slave upcover upper defending unspeakable dregs escapes me. And she reposts that. She's like, why isn't Fox covering this? She's also posted that former President Obama is gay and Michelle Obama has a penis. She posted that Putin fights the secret network of powerful elites. And she says the radical left Hollywood elitist are sick pedo cannibals. Changed my mind. There's like a lot more of her past posts, but that's the type of stuff that she posts. I wanted to talk a little bit about Besson, but I'll throw it to you before we go. Besson saying that Iran's going to cry uncle, and we don't need to show the clips. This weekend he was like, Iran's going to cry uncle. How do you say cry uncle in Farsi? And he said that in September. That's his new line. They're going to cry uncle. And then I talked earlier about it, but Bannon says, look, we have to flood the zone, get the media to just be overwhelmed and not know how to handle all of this. Brett, I'll let you take us out. Brett: I was saying yesterday that Besson is like the walking embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. He's the worst, objectively the worst. Borrowing caused surging. And his response to people criticizing him is to always be just as snobbish and as vile as possible and as cocky as possible. It's like, dude, you realize you're the worst, right? It'd be one thing if you were crushing it and you wanted to smack down the haters with your one-liners and your zingers and whatever. But you're objectively the worst, but you're acting like you're the greatest. It is absolutely ridiculous. But at the end of the day, I think one of the tough things is there's still a government to run and there are real problems that we have. And we have real, unserious, dangerous people at the helm, including this new White House press secretary who just seems like she's absolutely insane. And I'm looking at the things that we need for government to survive and rely on government on even in our own state here, Ben, in California. I mean, I'll just take a slight detour for a second because I do want to mention something important to me. You know that I try to talk about important climate issues. And I've been looking right now at what's been going on in Southern California over the past few days. And we've been seeing, I don't know if you've seen these images coming out of Newport Beach and Long Beach. Newport Beach Friday over here declared a local emergency. And when you saw these images and videos on the Balboa Peninsula, you saw like water up to people's knees in some spots. You saw like cars underwater, full streets underwater. And it was really honestly kind kind of scary to see. And one of the things that I'm worried about is not even what we're seeing right now, but what is being projected in the next few months, because forecasters are saying there's like a 63 chance that we're going to get this really strong El Nino this winter that they're calling the super El Nino. And it's going to be one of the biggest since they started tracking this since 1950, like one of the biggest ever. And so it's supposed to peak kind of right now around November through January. And it doesn't even just mean more rain because we didn't even see like a lot of rain here in Southern California over the past few days by, you know, seeing what we, by witnessing all the water levels kind of rising, but it pushes the ocean higher on the coast and like six to 13 inches, which is a ton. And so around Christmas, you could get these king tides stacked on top of that. And it could be a very dangerous situation. And like El Nino, it's like, it's a totally natural. It's been around forever, but because of climate change, everyone is now starting from a higher ocean than the last one did. And a lot of people don't really realize that. And so as we're looking at this unserious leadership that's out there, I'm trying to think like, who is going to help us here in California? You know, if this comes to be right, if more danger comes as a result of these higher ocean beds, these higher, you know, these high water levels and the effects that they're going to have on our community. here. Trump has been trying to constantly cut all of these people from FEMA. He's been saying that he doesn't want to have FEMA at all, that he wants states to basically do everything himself. He's been blocking FEMA aid to blue states constantly while giving a little bit of aid to red states. Right now, I think we're just looking ahead to a potentially dangerous situation, a lot caused by climate change, which folks in the administration continue to deny even the most basic existence of. Quite frankly, I don't see any world where California, if the worst, comes to fruition, gets help from these Trump officials who have proven themselves to be completely unhelpful and malicious, quite frankly, in the way that they approach these issues. There you have it, everybody. Get your copy of WTF America, The Way Out. Out of this hell and back to democracy. Check it out. Book comes out next week officially, so pre-order it now so it arrives soon. We're really excited about this. We dedicate it to you, first page, for the Midas Mighty and everyone else who wakes up, checks the news, and can help thinking. WTF. Pre-order it now. We appreciate y'all. 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. Let's do this.