MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 10/6/26

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As the Trump regime tries to claim more oil is getting out of the straight of Hormuz, then before the war began. That's just completely false. We're seeing escalation in Yemen. We'll talk about advances by Ansarala the Houthis, the strikes in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's invocation of the so-called Mecca-Pak with Turkey in Pakistan, saying that they are all going to contribute troops to a potential offensive against Ansarala. Things are spiraling out of control there. Indeed, it appears that there is this massive regional war taking place. Then we'll talk about what's going on in Ukraine. Russia strikes there, continue to escalate. Zelinsky said, "Look, if Putin's going to give us a devastating winter, we're going to give Moscow a devastating winter." Ukraine's developed new technology to strike deep in Russia. Russia's developed new technology to strike deep in Ukraine. And Donald Trump continues just to post memes on social media of him, and Xi Jinping, and Post saying, "Look how young I look or look at this photo of me and Xi, or Donald Trump, rants and raves about why isn't the media covering how many people are attending these events that I'm doing across the country?" I mean, we're in Dayton, Ohio, in a high school gym talking about the aspirin that you take, or talking about how you want data centers everywhere. I mean, it's enough. People in the United States are suffering. This isn't a talking point. People can't afford things. Gas and diesel continues to surge right now. People can't afford homes. The 30-year fixed mortgage could hit 8 percent in a month or two. The Treasury yields 30 or 20-year are approaching 6 percent right now. Things are tough, and the Trump regime just continues to lie and continues to say. Everything's great, isn't this the golden age? We'll talk about that and more. We should talk about the Trump interference, of course, in South America, in the Brazilian elections, where Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the prior insurrection is President Jair Bolsonaro, won the first round of the Brazil election against President Lula. There's a second round. It's still possible Lula can pull it off, but it certainly looks like it's going to be an uphill climb, but we saw Trump and all of the right with oligarchs, manipulating the algorithms in Brazil, doing everything they can to interfere, along with Israel and the Mesod, into this election. We're seeing this over and over again in Brazil, in Colombia, in Ecuador, Venezuela, of course, throughout the Western Hemisphere and the Trump regime, trying to do everything they can to get Alberta to secede from Canada. There were reports this weekend about more efforts by the Trump regime and mega operatives, working with secessionists in Alberta. Basically, the exact same tactics we see from Putin and Europe and Eastern Europe, Trump's doing here in the Western Hemisphere. And so we've got a lot to discuss. Let's bring in Brett. Brett, great to see you as always. Great to be with you, Ben. Jordi is dealing with some family stuff. I hope to have him back soon. It's good to be here. Midas, mighty. Man, I mean, I think we have to just look ahead, you know, it's crazy. We have what, under 30 days now, until the midterm elections here in the United States, you're seeing Donald Trump and their Republicans become increasingly rattled, increasingly unhinged. You're seeing the tactics being used, increasingly desperate. We have, of course, seen the taxpayer-funded advertisements airing during national football games and other shows on TV. Just using taxpayer money to run political ads, just completely illegal stuff. And then you see the various Trump stunts, right? Whether it's promising, I'm going to give you, you know, $5,000, never going to happen, or him looting the treasury in order to give people $100 check, saying, "Obama stole your money, and I'm giving it back." I mean, the level of desperation right now is really palpable. And every time Donald Trump does one of these moves or Republicans do any of these things, you just see the widening, you just see the gap right now, increasing with the Democrats, really starting to surge in a big way. Republicans continuing to fall off. You're seeing a lot of these sort of late deciders, so to speak. Folks who are making their decisions in the kind of final moments of this election cycle, breaking for Democrats in a big way. A lot of these groups who maybe were, you know, could go either way with the parties, you know, Hispanic voters, young voters, breaking heavily right now towards the Democrats ahead of the midterms. And so all the warning signs are there right now for Trump and the Republicans. Which is why you're seeing this increasingly erratic behavior even for them. We're going to break it all down. Everything that's going around here and around the world. Ben, where do you want to start? Well, you just look at Gallup polls. Third quarter party ID with leaners, Democrats lead 50 to 39 percent. This is a Democrat plus 11, which is the largest quarterly margin recorded for Democrats. Since the first quarter of 2029, and in 2024, this exact same poll was plus four for the Republicans. So you talk about a 15 point or so switch there towards the Democrats of party ID. And again, you talk about the desperation from Donald Trump. And you talk about what's being spewed by this regime. I mean, here's a post that he made. He's heading to Nebraska where he'll be giving a speech now. We've seen the speech in Ohio. We've seen the speech in Texas and Oklahoma. It's deranged. He'll say things like, James Tolerico is vegan and he eats the meat. But he hates it and he throws up and vomits on himself. And like, vomits all over him. She says that I'm so strong and she really likes us here. I really love Kim Jong-un. By the way, Kim Jong-un tested a new ballistic missile over this weekend as well sensing the Trump regime's weakness. But it's just the ranting and ravings of a complete lunatic. And like, here's what he posted on his way to Nebraska. And also, we should note, he's going to Nebraska, right? The fact that Nebraska is in play tells you a lot. The fact that Kansas is in play tells you a lot, right? I mean, this map is broadening right now. I mean, mega Republicans are pretty much pulling all of their money out of states like North Carolina, where they're basically conceding people like former governor Cooper is going to win that Senate race. And just think about, he had Donald Trump push out Tom Tillis. Then they ran Michael Wattley in North Carolina. The former Magistoo, Jaren C chair. Democrats ran a really good candidate and former governor Cooper over there who's just wiping the floor with Wattley right now. And we're seeing that play over and over again. I mean, Trump picking, you know, disastrous candidates who fit the kind of mega profile of corruption and disgust in this Ken Paxton in Texas, right? I mean, he was caught on audio earlier in the day saying, ah, you know, look, this is what's going on with Washington DC sending me all of the messaging. And, you know, I get my marching orders from the Republicans in DC. So I can't even be myself here. I'm just a stooge of DC basically. And you have people like James Tolerico in Texas and Dr. Abdul El-Sahed, who appeared on Fox today, I mean, they're running strong, kind of fearless campaigns. I mean, sending these messages directly to the people. But I digress Trump's post from a little bit earlier, regarding the pediatrician, Dr. Annie Andrews, who's running for that Senate seat in South Carolina against Darlene Graham, Lindsey Graham's sister, late Lindsey Graham's sister. And she doesn't really know anything about Taiwan. And it's connections to China. I don't really know that people don't hear care about no Taiwan and no Taiwan and China. Well, you probably should care if you're the United States Senator and all these geopolitical issues are what's impacting prices and what's impacting people's cost of living here. That's kind of what your job is. In any event, this is the line of attack by Mago-Republicans and Donald Trump on pediatrician, Democratic candidate for the Senate seat in South Carolina. Annie Andrews, Trump says. Annie, Tranny Andrews is running against our wonderful Darlene Graham for the Senate in South Carolina. For years, my dear friend, Lindsey, would say that Darlene is the finest most reliable and one of the smartest people I have ever known. He would then always add also the most loyal. And then he says, you know, when you talk about Annie Tranny Andrews, she's in favor of transgender for everyone. Open borders, defunding the police. It's the same script. But I mean to say, Annie, Tranny Andrews, I mean, what are you? Just like a demon. You know, when you see Pete Hegsiff giving these speeches that look like Nazi rallies where he literally uses like the same backgrounds that Hitler used, like looks like he's dressing up, honestly, in my opinion, looks like he's dressing up like Hitler in these outfits, that Hegsiff, and he'll be like, no more trainees, no more weirdos, no more, and it's like, but dude, what are you, what are you doing right here? I mean, the Iranians, I mean, what are you doing right here? I mean, the Iranian embassy pointing out the similarities between Hegsiff's speech and Hitler's speech, and this is what they're doing, just punching down attacking marginalized communities, that's what they've got. Oh, you're training, you know, and just using these pejorative hateful, just hateful rhetoric prep. I think it's absolutely atrocious that they continue to just, you know, pick on the most vulnerable communities and try to use that as campaign fodder, like run on your record, oh, you can't because you've completely destroyed the company. The thing is they always go back to the country, the thing is they always go back to these cultural issues because it's all that they have. I mean, and I think people should just ask themselves, right? Even the most Republican, the most mega people in the world should ask themselves, right? I mean, they've been attacking trans people now for what, for the past decade, much more, but they've really ramped up this cultural issue over the past decade targeting these people who have done nothing, but try to live their lives. They've been attacking immigrants relentlessly and saying that their deportations, mass deportations separating families, separating otherwise law abiding people in this country is going to make your life better. And so now we see the results of all this stuff, right? And so has your rent dropped? Are groceries any cheaper for you? Are wages covering the bill better? Did your weight at the ER get shorter? Are your hospital bills less? Are you spending less on health care? Are you spending less on education? Is there less of a gap in wage inequality? I mean, no, all that stuff has gotten worse. They promised you that these people were the enemy and that if we continue to attack these people that your life would get better, but we're seeing the actual results of that. And it's that this is all a distraction because the people who are making your life worse is not the trans community. It's not the immigrants. It's people like Donald Trump and his billionaire ilk, the Epstein class who are taking away as much as they can from this country for themselves extracting the resources of this country like they do to other countries by the way and they're leaving you with the bill. Right. I mean, you have Dr. Annie Andrews running a campaign on things like this. South Carolina is at the bottom of every list. We should be leading and at the top of every list, we should be ashamed to appear on a recent report ranks our state among the worst places in America to live and to work. Listen to what she had to say here. Let's play this clip. I mean, you know, I say this a lot, but South Carolina continues to be on the top of every list you want to be on the bottom of and the bottom of every list you want to be on the top of. There was just a story out yesterday or today about how South Carolina is ranked one of the worst places to work and one of the worst places to live. And we can do better. These are policy choice. And I would argue the fact that we continue to be on the bottom of these lists is a reason that we start trying something new. Thank you for saying, but I think it's very revealing. Like you said before, that Donald Trump is even focusing on this race in general. South Carolina should be a shoe in for the Republican party. They shouldn't have to worry about this race at all. But I've been seeing in the past few weeks that a lot of Republican operatives are actually now panicked about this race. They're panicked about the rise of Annie Andrews. They feel like Darling Graham was just kind of forced upon them by this mega corrupt machine. And now people are looking for other options, especially as all this other stuff in the country continues to fall apart. Sorry. But we need to also people to forcefully push back as we try to do here at the Midas Touch Network from a leadership position, I think within a opposition and a strong opposition party by the Democrats or whatever you have. I mean, when Donald Trump's out there behaving like this, I mean, there should be, I think coordinated messaging that appeals to an audience in 2026 calling this disgusting and vile behavior out and not being afraid. Well, if we stand up for the transgender community or if we stand up for LGBTQ or if we stand up for this or that, you know, how is that going to impact us? You have to just speak with moral authority and strongly support communities, marginalized communities. It's not, you know, don't get lost in the head fake and the hate of the mega Republicans and call this behavior out because as I've always said here, it's loser behavior where it's like, all right, we're losing in South Carolina, what are we going to do? Let's call the opponent a tranny. Let's do that. That's the strategy. It's like, again, it's mean, it's pathetic. It is bullying and like we should expect so much more, we should expect so much more of leaders, especially people in the highest positions of power, you know, then this behavior that we're seeing. You know, so you had Donald Trump in the White House lawn or on the White House lawn erupting on his way to Nebraska earlier in the day, and the press was asking him all of these questions about, you know, the various retreats by US military assets in the Middle East, as well as US military assets in Europe. So the US aircraft carrier, the George HW Bush left the so-called blockade in the Arabian Sea. It's now in Puket, Thailand. There's only one aircraft carrier right now in the Arabian Sea. That's the USS George Washington, which was brought here from Asia was the only aircraft carrier we had in the Pacific in Asia. And there's the USS theater Roosevelt, which will get to the Arabian Sea Middle East area by the middle of November after the midterms. But even the one carrier that's there, the USS George Washington, it's over 1000 kilometers away from like the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz and that area. And the Trump regime doesn't really have a lot of assets in the area. And also we learned that 12 B1 bombers that were in the Royal Air Force Base Fairford, which is in the UK, all 12 of the B1s were removed. Apparently Benjamin Netanyahu told UK intelligence that there was an Iranian plot on these B1s and then that's why Trump said he removed the B1s because of this intelligence that came from Netanyahu, which there's a lot of questions around that, especially as we've seen a lot of these incidents arising leading up to the elections taking place in a few weeks over there. In Israel, we're Netanyahu's up for re-election. But you have those assets being removed also earlier, like two weeks ago, there were five people arrested, but they were released on bail. So, and there was like, well, these people are linked to the IRGC, well, and you release them on bail, that doesn't really make a lot of sense right there. But Trump was asked, so what was the threat that prompted you to move these planes out of the UK, very kind of quickly, almost on an emergency like basis. Or remove these B1s, so what happened to play this quote? What's the threat that prompted you to move those planes out of the US? We had an idea that they might be a threat, and why would I leave them there? It got very little money to move them relatively closely. But now we had a threat, and if we're going to be threat, we would just move them and that's going to alleviate that. And we actually know the people that made the threat, and they got themselves going to be lost. They would be linked to Iran. They would be linked to Iran, and he just says words. It was a threat, and we got a threat, and it was very much a threat. And so we dealt with the threat. The guy says so many words, but so little. You know, it's something I was thinking the other day about, when you see Trump, and you see Hexeth, and you see Netanyahu, and all these leaders. The issue about when you lie about everything is that you cannot be trusted about anything. And so these people have zero credibility on any matters whatsoever. So their words simply don't mean a thing. He could say anything. He could say anyone's behind this, and it could be true quite frankly, but they can't be trusted to give you accurate information. Well, I think we all know that. That's why we need to build this healthy independent media environment because we recognize that we build up our resiliency to that. We showed the clip so we can call it out and bring back the actual facts of what's happening. But remember, over the past two weeks, remember what we've been saying, don't believe the corporate news and anybody claiming all of this oil is getting out of the straight of hormones. We said it's lies. It's not true. It's false. You're going to see all this made up data. And you start to feel like when you say this, like a bit of a, you know, I don't want to say that conspiracy there, like you start to say, you know, why aren't a lot of people else reporting on this? And I'm seeing on the satellite footage certain things. I'm seeing the US tanker, the US aircraft carrier move to, you know, in the Indian ocean and it's leaving the blockade. I'm seeing tankers and the straight up hormones that are on fire. I mean, I'm seeing satellite footage of certain Saudi Arabian refineries and other kind of oil storage facilities on fire. I'm seeing Yan Bu, I'm seeing Jedah, I'm seeing areas in Riyadh and Saudi Arabia that seem to be it by Ansar Allah. But I'm not seeing any statements about it coming out. And so you start to think like, well, what's happening here? And then you had all of these people pushing out this Trump propaganda. More oil is getting out in the Strait of Hormuz then before the war. Or basically, there's the oil, oil, or 80% or 90%. And so I've been saying it like this. I've been saying, look, put it this way. Even if let's just assume for the sake of argument, something that's not true, but just assume for the sake of argument, the same amount of oil is getting out of the Strait of Hormuz then before the war started. Well, what's different though? Well, it now costs one of those very large cruise ships, the VLCCs or these other tankers. It costs about 1.3 million to 1.5 million dollars a day for those ships to leave the Strait of Hormuz and to travel. Whereas before the war started, it was about 30,000 to 50,000 dollars a day. So that adds, in and of itself, about $33 per barrel of oil just based on the transport cost. So even if you assumed you were getting out the same amount of oil, because of the risk premium that Iran keeps striking tankers, the increased cost per barrel is astronomical. But not only that, the same amount of oil isn't getting out through the Strait of Hormuz. And we've been covering now for the past seven days, I hadn't seen it anywhere, like another tanker, another tanker. And maybe you were watching or listening and you were like, am I hearing this? Are you just making this stuff up that these tankers? And then today, the UKMTO group started doing it from past attacks and strikes. So okay, October 3rd, October 4th. Then there was clearly that there was 12 tankers as of this morning that were hit. Then there were like two more hit today over the past seven days. And so that's actually what's been happening. And one of the other kind of basic things that we can ask ourselves about how much oil is really getting out. If so much oil was getting out of the Strait of Hormuz, then why is it that the US had to draw down another 40 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? And why at the end of last week did Donald Trump shake down Europe to withdraw 100 million barrels from their crude and diesel strategic petroleum reserves? If all of this is getting out, and if Donald Trump is right, which he isn't, and claims that we're filling up our strategic petroleum reserves from all of this Venezuelan oil, there's in 65 billion barrels or whatever number he makes up. There shouldn't be any issues at all, right? The same way when Donald Trump claims that he brought in 21 trillion dollars the past year, he said, "Nobody did it. Biden didn't even bring in one trillion." No, you didn't bring in one trillion. When Trump says he brought in 21 trillion, you know how easy it is to prove its false if he did, then why is our national debt over 40 trillion dollars? Why did it increase? Why is our deficit increasing under Donald Trump? Why is federal spending up? Because we're not bringing in 21 trillion dollars. And everything about a bread is just utterly false. That's what's really going on. And none of them get on the same message, right? The other day, JD Vance was in an interview and he was like, "I promise, we got 19 trillion in investment." Then Trump goes, "We got 21 trillion in investment." At least if you're going to lie, at least try to get on the same numbers over here, right? Don't just be throwing things out. But as, you know, Ron Phillips, Kowski Arditer, and chief here at Midas Touch said earlier today, he said, "The last time the strategic oil reserve was this low, Olivia Newton-John had the number one song in the country. And Trump's worry right now simply is not to try to ensure that we have long-term sustainability with our oil and diesel supply. His concern right now is, are there any short-term band-aids that I could put on this issue to try to lower gas prices just a little bit in the next 30 days before the midterms happen? It's the only thing that he cares about. So he's going to keep trying to pull these various. It's the reason why he's begging, you know, Europe to release those reserves. It's not because he wants to help people long-term. It's because he wants to try to get more votes in the election. He tries to act like he doesn't care about the election in regards to the war, but he very much does. So he's trying to say before the war happens, look, the gas prices are starting to come down even though he, in the next breath, he'd say, they're already low, right? He'd say, look, they're down 20, 30%. I'd be to the sense. I'd be shocked if he didn't say something like that in the coming weeks. He'll find like kind of select gas stations across the country with his moves that happen. But what he's creating also is just a long-term disaster. As we've kind of explained what would have happened if he did that export ban on diesel here in the United States, he wants all these short-term fixes, even if it destroys the country's oil and gas supply come, you know, December, January. Well, look, let's say he did into all of these schemes and scams and frauds all along. Maybe he would have tricked the market now, right? But the market knows what he's doing. Like they see it and it's far more difficult for him to manipulate it, even when they actually did release Brett a hundred million barrels in Europe and they frontloaded it, right? That would normally you think, well, that should make a big difference in the price of oil. It didn't. It didn't. I mean, it had a temporary impact, but it didn't have actually any sustainable kind of long-term impact to bring the prices down. All of this fraudulent behavior has now put him in the position where none of these things are significantly moving the markets and he's degrading the actual capacity and capabilities and structural integrity of things like our salt caverns and the reserves. And you see it everywhere, right? I mean, it's the same thing. It's analogous to what Besson's doing in the bond markets, right? He thought that he could pump some money in and that, you know, that would help things, but the bond markets were like, if you were not falling for this crap, that's a drop in the bucket to what's happening right now. And so, and we'll get to Besson to, you know, a little later in the show, but you're seeing right now, they're trying to fool the markets with their same scams and schemes and the markets are saying, get that out of here. I always see what the markets weren't used to. And look, they're easily manipulated. They're being controlled by oligarchs, so let me not give them too much credit, okay? But at first, it's hard, you know, with something that is like the architect of the way markets were structured post-World War II is the United States, right? So when the US is saying things that you would never expect to happen, you know, perhaps there's an explanation there about why early on you saw the ability to, when you harness the credibility, the full faith and credit of the United States, right? Why it would move things. But then after a while, where you deplete that full faith and credit and it just becomes a massive scam and grift, well, then it builds a resiliency and every time you do one of these moves, a Besson $6 billion buyback scheme or, you know, trying to prop up the yen or one of these schemes with Trump of releasing 100 million barrels from Europe. It's then viewed as pedic. And so it's, oh, things must be way worse than you're saying. And so people are positioning themselves for very long positions of the prices rising, not the prices falling. Folks, let me just put it kind of in another simple way before we go to our first break. Let's just assume everything resolved today. Let's just assume, you know, there was a deal and it was the perfect deal, all right? And that'll never happen, right? The perfect deal between the US and Iran and let's say Iran gave everything that we want, which is not happening. I'm just giving you for the sake of argument, okay? Under that scenario, we've already lost three billion barrels of oil. Three billion barrels are gone because of this. And so what that made three billion barrels, okay? So what that means is 2029, 2030 would be the earliest. You would see a recovery into prices that looked like they did really before the war in terms of what you were paying at the pump. If everything was solved today, stabilization would take place 2029, 2030. And it's important, we note that because when the Trump regime tries to give all these scams and then they try to blame the Democrats or whoever's going to be the next president, the next president is still going to be dealing with being handed a pile of crap, a dangerous pile of crap from Trump. Frankly, the way former president Biden was and had to deal with it, but then I'm not going to say sound familiar. Yeah, but you know, but then the arsonists claim that they were the ones who were going to fix it. They would put out the fire that they created. Let's take our first break of the show. A quick reminder, WTF America comes out October 20th, pre-order WTF America, it's the book that I wrote with Brett and Jordi. We each read from the book for the audio. We each take different chapters. There's a photo right there of us in the studio. reading the book and doing the audio. There's an e-book, there's an audio, and then there's also the hardcover book, and the pre-orders are really important to publish, so help us continue the momentum there. All right, let's take our first break of the show. We'll be right back. You know those pieces in your closet that you always find yourself wearing on repeat, the sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants, or that t-shirt that you always reach for. Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool. The styles are timeless for style and design to become the dependable pieces that you reach for day after day. Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60, giving you the softness and quality that you'd expect from luxury brands, but without the luxury price tag. 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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 mightest touch podcast that sent you. It's always the best way to support the show. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you thought about trying therapy with our long term partner BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide, with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Your mental health doesn't know its world a mental health day. Stress does not politely wait until October 10th. Burnout doesn't RSVP, and your brain definitely does not check the calendar before deciding to spiral at 11.47 pm. Mental health is part of regular life. Therapy isn't just for big life choices, it can be a place to talk through smaller things, the work situation taking up too much mental real estate, or relationship dynamic, you can't quite name, or simply the sense that something feels off. 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By the way, this was someone who was actually convicted of the connection with the insurrection sentence to like over 30 years in prison, and Jair Bolsonaro's son and family ran in critical election positions. His son Flavio ran for president against president Lula, and other family members of Bolsonaro ran for different seats and they're senate and they're Congress. Pretty much all the Bolsonaro's and the Bolsonaro clan, all the people close pretty much one their races. Flavio Bolsonaro his son won the first round of the Brazilian election. It was close. It was 47% to 45%. There's about 9 million votes or so that I guess can still be fought for who voted for other candidates in round two. So it's going to be hard for president Lula to pull it off. But one of the things we were seeing in Brazil is a lot of censorship by the algorithms and the media companies and the corporate news there of the ads by president Lula online. We saw a lot of that there. We saw massive amounts of interference within the election by Trump, by Israel, and by that kind of, you know, that group that have been going South America to South America country. I won't do the whole analysis here as well. But you know, Trump has various so-called bagman or agents who are all throughout South America. One of the most prominent ones is a guy named Ferdinand Saramedo who was arrested in Bolivia for engaging an attempted femicide or outleg to have engaged an attempted femicide killing his or attempting to kill his pregnant girlfriend because she allegedly knew too much. She was a lawyer in Bolivia and there were three hitmen who shot her in the face and she survived. Saramedo was arrested. There were all these text message from him that were uncovered by this independent prosecutor in Bolivia, but the president of Bolivia, President Paz, had the independent prosecutor arrested. This was coordinated with Marco Rubio and Trump. They basically kidnapped the independent prosecutor and accused him of working with the narco traffickers when he was exposing the narco traffickers. And so they wanted to kill the investigation into Saramedo who's tied at the highest level to Brad Parskell and Trump and all of the kind of mega people. But country by country Donald Trump in the Western hemisphere and also he wants to work with Putin's group to undermine the European Union and underpind leaders there. But we're seeing this play out in all these South American countries from Columbia to Argentina to Ecuador. And one of the things that the Trump regime will do is they will shut down embassies, they will tariff the hell out of countries and try to inflict economic pain and create problems in these countries and then say, well, these problems go away if you vote for, you know, if you vote for our pick, the mega pick over there. And so this is deeply dangerous. It's playing out. And also it's leading as well to the pain. This isn't abstract also, right? This is furthering the pain that the people feel in the South American countries that you're feeling as well. This is directly leading to higher costs and leading to cost of living issues over here. And it's causing just such massive amounts of global instability throughout the world. And we're seeing this like there's no place you could look to in the world right now and being like, all right, that's chill. Like things are all right. Like everywhere you have this massive turmoil and it's being caused by in large part Trump, but you also have of course Putin's invasion of Ukraine. But it's it's Trump destroying the post-World War II kind of U.S. architecture in this new multilateral world for me, bro. Yeah, I think it's, you know, you see a deliberate move by Trump to weaken and destroy any sort of countries that he doesn't like. And then he tries to use their failure as countries caused by Donald Trump's actions to then justify what justify taking them over, justify war, justify getting a new leadership. You've seen what he's been trying to do with Mexico, right? He hates the Claudia Scheinbauer so much because she is a left-leaning, you know, pro-democracy leader that he's been trying to do anything he can to de-legitimize her and try to destroy her. But she's been able to, you know, remain strong in that country. But you see that Donald Trump has had, he's been very effective in other places throughout Latin America in doing just this. And you see the strategy right now, right? It's happening in Cuba, you know, just isolate Cuba. And of course, this has been a strategy of the United States, by the way, for a long period of time. But make the people suffer, cause instability, then say it's the government that's causing the instability and it's there, there are issues and they're unable to provide for their people and then used to justify your invasion or your overthrow of that government. In many ways, this isn't a Trump-specific phenomenon, though Trump is much more obvious about it and Trump is actively doing it right now as we speak. But it's a strategy that we've seen deployed by the United States government, quite frankly, for many decades. And when I look to what's happening in Brazil, I can't help but see the parallels, despite the fact that Brazil is, you know, not incredibly close to the United States in distance and location. You can't help but see the parallels between what's happening in these elections down there and what happened in our elections here in 2024. Because it's not even just the, you know, Bolsonaro and Lula, but you're seeing all these kind of local races, they're sort of, you know, senate races and things like that. You're seeing the Bolsonaro aligned, politicians gaining seats. You're seeing that far right get further entrenched within the government there. And that's going to have the same ramifications that had there that it had here in the United States. It's like, frankly, like watching a fast-moving car crash happen. And we saw what happened here. And we want to be like, no, don't do that. This ends in disaster. You're going to put the guy's son who was the corrupt guy who was imprisoned for trying to throw an insurrection, which was actually the right decision, the right thing to do. You're going to put his son in so that he could free the guy so that this family can be even stronger so that they could then seek revenge on all the people who try to actually get justice for these crimes. I wish there was something that we could do to stop it, but that's why these international movements, these international communities, it's why our coverage needs to be speaking about these issues. And it's why Americans have to be informed about what's going on around the world. Because what's happening in our democracy here is what's happening around the world with this network of oligarchs internationally. Right. And it's very rare to have a leader who kind of has the charisma, the intelligence, the diplomatic skills of someone like a prime minister, Karni. Right. It's just a very rare thing. I mean, even if you go back in time historically and you look at some leaders of kind of Western democracies, occasionally, you'll have, of course, some incredibly inspiring figures. But I mean, if you just look at some leaders, just the kind of technocratic, boring, getting things done, bring people together, the type of stuff that former president Biden was attacked for being, you know, when, you know, if you look at actual deals, you want to talk about deals, and you take a look at the pieces of legislation that were actually passed. And the compromises that were forged was actually a bunch of hard work and took skill to actually develop these things. But in 2026, you know, it doesn't have that inflammatory edge, you know, that is, you know, that transcends the kind of, you know, just, just the right way to, you know, to hit voters. And so I think that, you know, again, as you increasingly look the rise of these demagogues and authoritarian, you have to study the patterns that are developing right here because you have to build the machinery to stop it. And as I've always been saying, authoritarians are linked internationally. And what they're doing is combining forces. And this is an entire wave that's going on across the world. And too frequently fighting back, people think just in terms of an election. And that's important. Options are key, but if you're just thinking, how am I going to win this election? And it's about an election when these authoritarians are saying, how do we control all levers of the algorithms? How do we control all levers of the media, the information that people are getting? How do we structure that? How do we control the legal systems? They're trying to rig the game before it even starts. And so we have to recognize that. And that's why we always emphasize, Brett, as you say, the international aspect of all of this. And I think Prime Minister Karnie gets that more than anybody. And it's why he's forging these alliances internationally. So I pay close attention to that. Now, as gas and diesel prices continue to surge as well, hitting record highs, Donald Trump now says, in this way, he keeps on saying, this is the MAGA line. We're getting more oil out of the straight of removes than ever before. The real issue is the refineries being hit in Russia by Ukraine. And it's Gabby Newsom's fault, right? As they say, it's California's fault, it's Newsom did it, Enzelinsky did it, and that's who we need to blame. Here, let me just show you, let's play this clip. They are causing a lot of problems. The lack of refineries in the problem. We have tremendous amounts of oil coming out of the hormones straight. We have that so good. But we have a lack of refineries because of the war, having to do mostly with diesel. See, this is actually where he's most comfortable, blaming. The catastrophe happens. People are scared, rather than offer solutions, where his zone is blame. It's loser behavior, but that's his whole life. Bankrupts the casino blame. Bankrupts this company blame. This conspiracy, that could blame, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame, and never accountability, never actually building or forging solutions. Let's be very clear. He promised he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours in 2024. Obviously, he failed to do that. He said he had magic words, probably a red flag when someone says they have magic words. I have magic words. I'll tell Putin these magic words. I'll tell Zelensky. He said, "In 2024, I can't tell you the magic words, but I'm going to use them and it would be so easy to resolve." Well one of the things that Trump has also done by threatening to destroy the civilization of Iran, by blowing up Iran's main bridge, by blowing up bridges and infrastructure all throughout Iran, with the war crimes there, with the invasion of Venezuela, Trump has also normalized the idea that civilian infrastructure is fair game. And to me, it's not coincidental that as Donald Trump escalates civilian strikes as Trump started blowing up bridges, we see that kind of permeate as well. And whereas the US would once be able to call out the destruction of bridges or have moral authority or clarity over there, what's the US going to say, as Russia threatens this that and the other, as we're seeing in stability across the world, what can the US actually speak from any type of clarity, or even pretend clarity, when the Trump regime has engaged in all this behavior? It's gone. It's gone. And so Trump is blaming the rise in crude and diesel, which in large part is being caused by the catastrophic war in Iran, Iran controlling the straight of Hormuz, what we're seeing in Bob El-Mondop, Ansarallah, the Houthi striking in Yemen. Again, today we saw them strike an area in Jeddah. We saw Riyadh on fire again. And we've been seeing Ansarallah be able to strike a Yambu and other areas in Saudi Arabia. We're seeing right over here, Donald Trump blame the war that he promised to resolve in 24 hours. Instead of the war, he said he was going to resolve in four to six weeks, which he still hasn't resolved and we're in October right now. And so it's just blaming this. It's a Ponzi scheme of blame taking place. And guess what? You're paying more for it. Dude, you promised you would resolve the war and you created 24 hours. You promised the war in Iran would be four to six weeks max. And now when he gives speeches, Brett, what does he say? He goes, "We won it. We won it in one day," he says, regarding Iran. I've just decided to stay there longer. I had to do it. But we've already won that. There is no issue. More oil's getting out. It's not just not true. And this is what we're going to see over and over and over again. And meanwhile, the underlying condition, the patient keeps getting sicker and sicker and sicker. It's the doctor lying to the patient. It'd be great for the patient to hear, "You're better. You're not sick. You're super healthy. You're doing amazing." But if they're sick, they're sick, and if you tell us sick patient, they're healthy, it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. That's what's happening to the country. That's what's happening in the world. And Brett, when I was citing that number, three billion barrels of oil lost. You know who I was citing? Not a Democrat, not a political person. The CEO of Aramco. I was citing Saudi Arabia's Aramco CEO. That was that stat. So that's why I'm giving you that, that over there. Radical lib. Radical lib. Saudi aramco CEO. All right, Ben, whatever you say. Yeah, the issue is the problem is about 25% or so of this country likes being lied to. They like being the patient on their, on the hospital bed and the doctor giving them false hope and false information while they get sicker and sicker and sicker. The good news is that an increasing number of people are realizing that their doctor in this case, Donald Trump is completely foolish yet. And so that's a good thing. And so we have these, you know, moments in our system here in the United States where people actually get to rise up and they get to rebuke the people in charge and they get to take the very small steps of taking back their country. And there's one such opportunity right now with these midterm elections coming up within the next 30 days. And so I think that's why you're seeing the tide turning in such a big way because people are looking and they're saying, hey, you know, even a lot of the most ardent supporters, hey, I was supposed to be feeling better by now. I was supposed to be getting, I was promised checks, I was promised cheap gas, I was promised no wars, I was promised all this stuff. My life has only gotten worse. They told me that if we got rid of the immigrants that my life would be better, but my life is actually worse right now. How the heck is this happening and then assure enough, they look to the people in power. And this is why we're seeing Trump right now start his next blame, right? next line of blame, which is if the Democrats get into power, because he knows that it's more likely than not that the Democrats will take at least the House of Representatives and potentially the House and the Senate, which would be a complete rebuke of Donald Trump and the Republicans. But that's why you already see Trump planting these next seeds for who to blame. If they win, we're going to have a great depression like 1929. First off, it's not like I don't know how that is a knock even on Democrats here. You'd still be the president of the United States. It would be the Donald Trump great depression. And so I think everybody should actually listen to what Trump says there that he is predicting a great depression in the second half of his term. And you could say, oh, yeah, but he's saying that if the Democrats take control, well, they're more likely than not to take going to take control. Donald Trump knows that. So you just need to remove that fact and say, Donald Trump is predicting a depression in his term. Donald Trump thinks that his policies, he's acknowledging it out loud, will cause a great depression, the likes of which we have not seen since 1929. I think that's an incredibly damning admission and also just the most horrible messaging imaginable going into the midterm elections. It's also why I say he hates the United States of America, even though he's in office right now. I'm not rooting for a great depression just so I can be like, damn, we got to, you know, you want the economy to do great. You want people to do well. But guess what? The numbers are in. Trump did his tariffs against the world. We called it out because we knew what the outcome was going to be. We studied tariffs. We studied the history of tariffs. We saw how tariffs accelerated the great depression. We saw the outcome and we knew that a tariff is a tax on American importers and American consumers, not the foreign country. So we don't regurgitate the BS. We knew what was going to happen. So we call it out. And I always thought the irony is is that Donald Trump's biggest revenge on Democrats, his biggest effu to Democrats. And the way he really could have entrenched power inside his regime is if he was just a good president, right? Imagine if he actually just went in there and he didn't take a bulldozer or everything and he didn't screw everything up and he let the economy recover and he actually let the economy grow and he let prices come down and he let mortgage rates come down. He let there be rate cuts, all this stuff. No wars, right? Imagine if he actually did those things, Democrats would be in really bad shape right now. He would be able to say, look, I told you that things were bad before. And yes, he would be taking credit for the things that Joe Biden had done, right? And the Democrats had done. But he'd be able to say, look what happened under my presidency. I took over the country. It was this. Now we see prices down and now we see interest rates down. Now we see mortgage rates down and now we see our, we have fewer troops overseas. If Donald Trump wanted to actually be a good president, it would have been lethal for the Democrats. But instead, he managed to do everything imaginable to destroy as much as possible. And you can only break things for so long before people start to catch on. You know why though, because it is a failure by design. That's the outcome, actually, that people like Trump, that Flavio Bolsonaro, that Javier Malay, that, you know, you name the dictator puppet that Trump put in, you know, the victor orbons of the world. It's a failure by design because what you are doing is you are taking people's loaves of bread away. Taking from the people and then you dangle in front of them, crumbs and then you don't give them the crumbs and you take and you take and you take so Trump and those right wing oligarch, the AI tech bros who are at the White House, they've made a killing. They've made a lot of money, way more money and they've rigged the tax code so they can avoid paying taxes, they've screwed everybody over, they've made more money, they've insulated themselves from having to pay future taxes. Heck, Donald Trump even went so far as to file a lawsuit in his personal capacity against the federal government to give himself immunity from any investigations into tax crimes. And that's what he literally sued, sued the government while he was in office. And so people, it's designed to screw over the people, but then to inflame the divisions and we see that in the US, we see that in Brazil, we see that throughout South America, we see that throughout Europe, we see that and you know, and you have to have, it's a rare type of leader, you know, in a prime minister carny, but you see like Chancellor Mayors of Germany, you know, he, he doesn't have that it anymore, you know, someone like French President of Manual Macron at this point in time, you know, maybe earlier on, you know, but right now he looks tired and he's trying to hold things together, but like, you know, you, you have to find it's a rare leadership dynamic. And also though when you're trying to forge consensus and compromise and, you know, avoid bringing corporate money and avoid corruption, you know, all these kind of right wing corrupt people, all they're looking for when you try to profess that I'm different, is anything to show that you're a fraction of what they are, and they'll pounce on that and I'm like, look how bad you are, look how bad you are, and while they're as corrupt as can be. So it's also a different set of rules, but we have to fundamentally get that dynamic. We have to understand that that's what's at play. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show, a reminder, WTF America is the book that Brett Jordy and I wrote together, and by the way, Ben, some of the things I'm most proud of in this book is our analysis of the international landscape and all the research that we did in dissecting what's going on across the globe here and connecting it to this moment. You know, it's, it's, well, frankly, one of the things I am most proud of in this book because I think it explains so much of what's happening beneath the surface, nobody's the surface, what's happening right before our eyes, but that's so many folks aren't paying attention to. I know there are a lot of people who prefer listening to the books and you could pre-order that now. There's a QR code right above my head for those watching and I'll link in the description, and it's also available for pre-order and e-book, you know, if you do a kindle or nook or any of those sort of things, and of course, it's a lot of people who prefer listening to the books and you could pre-order that now there's a QR code right above my head for those watching and I'll link in the description, and it's also available for pre-order and e-book, you know, if you do a kindle or nook or any of those sort of things. It's available in the hard cover, which is always super cool to have pre-ordered, super important. Our publisher says they're the most important, so make sure you go and check it out now pre-order today if you haven't yet, and if you have pre-ordered, let folks know in the comments, we are so grateful for everybody who is supporting us, and I think we're really going to make a statement with this thing, we got more to talk about, we'll be right back after this quick break, don't you go anywhere. Are you tired of having a drink after a long day? I'll need a wake-up hungover and bloated? That's why I've been loving Willie's THC infused the social tonic. Willie's is a premium THC infused the social tonic, crafted by the legendary Willie Nelson, and let's face it, if there's anyone I trust to have the best cannabis, it's Willie. It's an alcohol alternative that actually works. In about 15 minutes, you can feel a relaxing, uplifting euphoric buzz without the hangover. 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Discount codes for all of those sponsors are in the description below. Definitely miss Jordy on this episode, look forward to him being back later. This week, Brett, I woke up this morning to see two different headlines of the same event. This was the headline from CBS State Regime Media. Former speaker of the house, Dennis Haster, who represented Illinois for two decades in Congress and was later jailed for violating banking laws, has died. Miss something there. This was the State Regime Media Fox headline breaking. Dennis Haster, Longest Serving Republican House Speaker, died at 84, definitely miss something there. The Midas Touch headline, Dennis Haster, the Longest Serving Republican Speaker in History has died at 84, Haster admitted in federal court to sexually abusing boys he coached as a high school wrestling coach, a federal judge called him a serial child molester. He was a registered sex offender. I mean, Brett, this guy is a petto. This guy is, I'm going to say our headline was the most accurate out of those headlines. I want to remind folks too, this guy was in power. He was the Republican Speaker of the House and he was a serial child molester admitted to sex abuse crimes against children. And by the way, he only ended up serving something like, I got to look it up, I think it was like 15 months or something for crimes related to it, not even necessarily for those crimes. He was in, and this isn't like ancient history, not that would make it any better. He was in office until 2007. And I feel like the Republicans have just kind of brushed this all under the rug and they don't want anybody to talk about that. They recently, in recent modern history, had a Speaker of the House who was a serial child molester. And so how was Fox covering it? We saw Ben Fox running that headline where they certainly didn't say any details in that headline, simply saying that he was dead at 84. But on Fox's coverage this evening, they did a whole in-memorium segment about how great he was, Dennis Hastert and Moriam. And you could see AC and our editor here posted it online and he wrote Fox runs an in-memorium segment for former Republican Speaker and admitted child sex abuser, Dennis Hastert. Well, I think that's Epstein class solidarity, and there have been. Yeah, and look, you see all these Trump regime officials also, and Donald Trump made a post like this also saying, you know, this person was the most corrupt as hell president imaginable and it was like a photo of Obama. And this was President Richard Nixon, and the Trump regime is what launching an investigation into whether the DOJ was weaponized against Nixon, like this is where they're putting their resources as well. And you know, you talk about the mega Republicans and the glorification of the word corruption doesn't do it justice, right? I mean, we're used to corruption, which is horrific and should be called out and prosecuted. But this Trump regime war criminal Epstein class cartel racketeering enterprise, it's unlike anything, you know, ever, ever fathomable, when they're like, oh, well, I mean, I think we have this clip of JD Vance, where, you know, he was on the tarmac today and joined base Andrews and he's heading to Alaska. And he was asked, so what do you think about Donald Trump using taxpayer dollars? I think we have this one right when taxpayer dollars to put all of these ads, all of these ads on TV, like during football games, he's like, weird, fascist ads. And he's like, we shouldn't forget that Obama did it. It's like, no, he didn't, what he, Obama didn't do it and stop with everything, Obama and Biden here, watch what JD Vance says here playing this clip. Well, look, if you look historically, you know, go back to the Obama administration with the Affordable Care Act, you have the people's government using tax dollars to advertise about what the government is doing. It's a part of actually, I think living in a constitutional republic, you have to be honest with the American people about what you're doing, about what's going on. And part of that is getting out there and telling the message. So I don't think there's anything unusual or unorthodox about it. I'm sure that some people probably don't like it, but if you look at the message of those advertisements, they're not partisan, they're not, you know, it's not like we're advocating for a particular candidate, we're trying to tell a story, I think, about how great the United States of America is. I mean, these are sick people and then they just move on to the next question. It's like one of the ads literally, and you saw a reporter actually try to start asking it and then she stopped was that one of the things about the ads is that it was literally a Trump campaign ad. He could say that all he wants, it was literally a Trump campaign ad that they switched the disclaimer on the bottom to be paid for by Donald J Trump 2024 to pay for by the US government meeting paid for by the US taxpayers. And so now you have Trump going out there and he was like, well, there was nothing wrong about me running these ads in the first place using US taxpayer dollars and then everybody loved it and thought it was amazing. Now I've decided that I'm going to start funding these ads via my pack, MAGA ink. By the way, I don't even think he's supposed to really be coordinating with the packs in that sort of way, but he just we have no laws anymore and he just admits that he coordinates with all these organizations. But now he's saying that going forward, he's going to start using the pack, by the way, he has hundreds of millions of dollars in this. There was no reason for him to even be using taxpayer dollars in the first place for this kind of propaganda, which is highly illegal. And once he has packed money so be it, people want to donate to Donald Trump and give their harder money to Donald Trump, okay, that's your prerogative. But don't use my tax dollars for your fascist propaganda. Right. And as I mentioned earlier in the show, you have the maliciousness, you have the evil intent. But then you also have the sloppy and incompetent execution. So it just makes it extra worse. I mean, we can reflect on what would happen right now if we really did bring in $21 trillion. Like if he really did it and all of a sudden the debt was not over $40 trillion and Trump's responsible for 30%, but it decreased 30% and the idea has worked. And then rather than $40 trillion, all of a sudden we were like $22 trillion in debt. He took it down and then there wasn't a deficit. There was a surplus like under former President Clinton where the debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore was the lock box. And what did they do with the extra money? Because there was actually a surplus. What would happen if rather than what last month, 29,000 jobs created, but we know that will probably even be revised down to probably negative jobs for that month. As former President Clinton said in a recent speech at the Clinton Global Initiative speech that he gave, he was like, we had a lot less people living in the country alive when I was in the office in the night tonight's just based on population growth. He's like every month I did 250, 300,000 jobs. So like, what are we bragging about? What are we even talking about here? But imagine if every month we were seeing numbers, heck, that looked like Biden's job numbers where it was like 250 or 300,000 jobs being created, right? When you did a comparison of the September job numbers this year to Biden, September 2024, Biden did like 250,000 jobs in September 2024 and Trump did 29,000 jobs in September 2026. But imagine if you had 300,000, 400,000 jobs created. And imagine if we had $2 gallon of gasoline right now and that people were able to afford homes and that the fixed mortgage, 30 year fixed was 3.5%, 4% max, right? And all of these things were happening. And then Trump's cruel stuff, he was like, well, it's cruel, but look at all of the things that have happened and you'd be like, yeah, but do the ends justify the means and I would still argue that the ends don't justify the means. But here what's very clear is that the ends and the means are awful, evil and not working. It's just the reality. So stop selling me that this is a golden age when it's not. And all of these Trump regime people are like that. I mean, look at this. This is Treasury Secretary Bessent early September. He's cocky. He's confident. You know, he's not, he's a loser, but he's projecting it. He goes, "I am the house and I control the bond market." So you think the bond market will be able to rise and hit these all-time high treasury eels? I've got my plan. Bet against me if you want to. Here's what he said here. Play this clip. Whenever people say, "Oh, well, treasury secretary is taking a risk." It's my dream. I have asymmetric information. I am the house now, so when we intervene with the Japanese yen, I have pretty good insight into what the bank of Japan is going to do, what Japanese policy makers are going to do, and you bet against me if you want. Bet against me if you want. The market did. The market saw him trying to do a $6 billion bond buyback scheme and trillions of dollars in the bond market, and the market said, "This guy doesn't know what he's doing." This is like a poker player or something who is holding the cards the wrong way and showing everybody his cards and trying to bluff. It's like, "Dude, we know your hand sucks. We could see it. We know your hand is a piece of crap right now. So you can't actually lie to us. You can't bluff. You're not the house. If you are the house, you're the house of a Trump casino. So congrats. You're at the place where the only casino in the world where the house loses." Then it's like what's that mean from SpongeBob? Five minutes later. It's like three weeks later, treasury yields went on a vertical lineup. After the 20 year and the 30 years of freaking approaching 6% right now, interest rates were raised as well. And watch what he said in his interview with Axios this weekend. Let's play it. And like I said, that I can't control the bond market. What I can do is try to get people to slow down and think because my job in the financial markets for 30 years was to be outside the door, ear to the door when policy was being made sometimes for with myself over the transom and think like what policy makers going to do should do can do. And now that I'm in the room and what I meant by I in the house is that I have superior information. Like people could ask that obviously the Japanese would have liked for us to intervene the in the end at some point anytime since January. Why did we do it then? Or should sit back and ask themselves that rather than oh, we intervened in that. Yeah. We are sitting back and asking ourselves and we're also judging it as being utterly stupid. And for a short period of time, yes, you did move the end. And then it became clear that you couldn't stop what was happening and the end continued to collapse. And it was a waste of money. And then you also did some bizarre market, some bizarre currency swap with the Europe Central Bank and didn't alert them. And so you pissed them off as well, which just leads them to want to sell more treasury bonds and retaliation when you try to do that and people like, dude, what are you doing? And dude, I could show you anybody in this regime. I mean, I showed you the best in clip. I showed you the JD Vance clip. This is Trump's top national economic advisor, Kevin Hassett over here. And he was on CNN with Jake Tapper and Tapper is like, but it is true. I mean, prices are up now from where they were when Biden handed over the economy to Donald Trump. Like they were at this level under Biden. Now they're higher under Trump. Inflation is objectively higher. The prices of everything is higher. It's just a fact from where they were at the end of the Biden term to where they are now. And you look at some things, they're very high. They're very much higher. Like it's not even close. And Trump said, I will reduce electricity prices in half. I will make sure gas is $2 a gallon. I will make sure you are able to afford homes. I'll end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Your watch what Hassett says. Let's play. Oh, prices are high in the sense that inflation went up about 20% under Joe Biden and the inflation rate has gone way, way down. If we look at the three month moving average of the PCE data that came this week, that core inflation is running now at 2%, which is the Fed's target. The top line inflation is at 1% because food prices and gasoline prices are dropping faster than everything else. And so we're making progress. But in the end, the way that we make up the Biden inflation for folks is we give them income growth. And the income growth is coming. You mentioned the hourly wage. We just got great sets of data, big reductions in poverty. But also if you look at the weekly wage, those numbers are really promising because we gave no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. Well, a lot of middle-class workers are working longer weeks and making more money and not being taxed while they do that. It is true that inflation was very high under President Biden, but when President Biden handed over the presidency to President Trump in January 2025, it was 3%, and it's currently 3.4%. I'm no economist, but it does seem like that's going up. Well, you know your economics pretty good, but that means you also know that when we handed the economy off to President Biden, that inflation was 1.5%. And right now, we've got some kind of inflation at 1%, and the inflation has come back down. Well, it's actually the end of COVID. That was the problem because COVID was right at the end and then they did this massive stimulus and that's where the inflation came from. Was that the end of COVID? They lie about everything out of their mouth as a lie, you know? And here's the thing too, you know, to the people in Brazil, to the people who are looking at this model. And they're like, the system is broken, we need to just destroy it with an authoritarian. I actually do think in many cases the system is broken, but it needs to be fixed with smart intelligent people who actually can deliver for Americans and not deliver for people throughout the world also in the various countries and actually show that you care and not just be some milk toast person who just perpetuates a status quo that obviously leads to not just like a Trump, but leads to an Orban or leads to a Bolsonaro or leads to, you know, you name the authoritarian Magalike figure abroad. That's one of the things that, you know, we see, but like in Brazil, what do you think is going to happen? The situation that's there now is just going to get worse. You can follow this template, it's going to get worse. And then in four years, there's going to be an election. And then whether it's a Lula or a person like a Lula, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to underestimate Lula going into round two. So I'll be clear about that, you know, he's pulled out lots of victories and there's a lot of investigation into the interference. So we'll see what happens. But you know, are they just going to see saw back and then they're going to see saw back to the authoritarian, then back and forth, then back and forth. And meanwhile, in China, you've got people like she who were just sitting back and they're just like, okay, we're going to think through the 50 year plan and the 100 year plan and the civilization plan and we're building and building and building and building while you see this kind of constant tumult. And as I said, this constant tumult is what we talk about in the bookbred. It's an unsustainable model. And so, you need somebody with the charisma of an Obama. You need somebody who's able to really inspire and rally. And then when they're in power though, they also have to just, you know, I think wheel the power, wheel the authority for good and not just have the stalemate and not just go through the motions, you know, really wheeled it as strong as can be because, you know, if we have, you know, where do you end up? You end up four more years of, you know, the Trump terms over, you get someone who's expiring and exciting. And the first 18 months are amazing. Then all of a sudden, you know, the problems start to all be blamed on that person or maybe they're not amazing already. The machine starts to blame that person. Then you have the swing back in the midterms. Then you have the swing back to somebody else the next year. Like that seesaw has to end in what we talk a lot about in the book is like you have to step back and you have to look at the system and you have to say, well, what are your values and principles? Why are we even doing this? What's the goal of us all as Americans here? What are we trying to achieve? And I often point to what Mayor Mom Donney's doing in New York City as an example of actually rolling up your sleeves and getting things done, you know, for the people and on a day to day basis. It's just, Brett, I think we made the point before, you know, like he's delivering on the things he said he was going to be delivering for and, you know, and just documenting it, taking advantage of all modern social media and just getting the message out, Brett. Yeah. You got to do the work. You got to do the work for the people, right? Because people will realize you're scamming them at a certain point. And I think that's why you're seeing a lot of the Trump people start to defect, you know, I think certainly not as many as, you know, people would probably hope for it. But we're seeing a lot of these folks who are the more swing-y-type voters who voted for Trump say, "This guy promised me all this stuff and he is not delivered for me. In fact, he's done the exact opposite. He's made my life worse." And he continues to make promises which don't come to fruition. And by the way, Donald, you owe me, you know. over $10,000 in money that you've been promising me. These elections have consequences, and it's also important, you know, not only on the citizens to go out there and vote, but on the politicians to deliver for the people. You have to make it clear to the people why you deserve their vote. And I think that is, you know, one of the most essential things that any politician could do, which leads to long-term trust between voters and politicians, make sure that they are aware that you are actually fighting for them. It's why I think so many of these attacks that we're seeing from Trump and his accolades right now when their closing message, you know, 30 days out from the election is Talleriko throws up meat and tranny Andrews and all the other disgraceful attacks they're doing. People are suffering right now. People are paying really high gas prices, really high energy prices, really high grocery prices. That language doesn't do anything to help any of those things. And when people are in dire straits, I think that, you know, kind of, that line of attack is increasingly ineffective. And I guess we'll see in a few weeks how this works out for Trump and the Republicans. - Well, it's been a great episode. We missed Jordy. We'll keep putting up new videos of breaking news throughout the day, including what happened in Nebraska and Trump's deranged rally over there. You can watch that after this live ends. WTF America is the book I wrote with Brett and Jordy. We wrote it together. We each read different chapters for the audio book. And so download the audio book once it is available, but pre-order it now, pre-order the audio book, the e-book and pre-order the hardcover or all of them? - Yeah, all the above, again, all the above. - You know what I actually like doing for the, and even when I listen to an audio book or get an e-book, my new thing has been that I also get the hardcover so that I could have it. I like having like, it's like a trophy, right? Like I read this, right? And it helps sear it into my brain. So if that's something you're into, then do it. Check it out. - Thanks everybody so much for watching. We'll see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. ♪ The Midas Mighty stand in strong ♪ ♪ Against the fascist we sing our song ♪ ♪ We will get it right when ♪ - 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. (upbeat music)