MeidasTouch RESPONDS to BREAKING NEWS on Day 1 - 1/20/25

We off?

30 seconds of carefree bliss.

Oof, like winding your hair carefree.

Oh, like using Clorox disinfecting all-purpose cleaner in the home carefree.

Yes!

Like dog-slobbing on the coffee table and cleaning it with Clorox carefree.

He's on a roll now.

Spit toothpaste on the faucet.

You got it. You got it.

He nut butter on the light switch.

Oh, spritz spritz.

Yeah, spritz spritz.

Clorox, man. Clean feels good.
Okay, we're back. Use as directed.
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That's MantisX.com. A complete inauguration fail.
Donald Trump tried to pretend that it was too cold to do the inauguration outside the Capitol. The reality was that he was afraid of those teeny tiny crowd sizes that he draws, or I should say doesn't draw.
But what a weird event. We'll break it all down.
But of course, we don't show the audio or video of Donald Trump, but we'll talk about how pathetic and low energy it was. Talking about pathetic, low energy disaster.
Doge. What's going on with that Doge thing, that fake governmental agency? Well, we do know Vivek Ramaswamy is being pushed out.
I guess he's incompatible with the fake agency. That lasted negative Scaramucci.
See you later, Vivek Ramaswamy. Who's going to be the next to fall on the Trump see you later bingo card? Or talking about who's latest to fall.
You've got the Trump meme coin falling, this meme coin madness at this inauguration party for the crypto community. At or around that time, Trump dropped a meme coin and then it quickly made billions of dollars.
And then Melania dropped a meme coin and then it started losing billions of dollars. and then it quickly made billions of dollars.
And then Melania dropped a meme coin, and then it started losing billions of dollars. And then Donald Trump's pastor, or the pastor, not his pastor, the pastor who spoke at the event today, he dropped a meme coin.
They're all dropping meme coins, apparently. The grift gets bigger.
And I guess a new mark is made every day in MAGA. We'll talk about that and more, but I don't want us to ever be distracted.
What did Donald Trump promise? He said, peace in Ukraine today. Well, that didn't happen.
So that's a promise broken. Didn't Donald Trump also say on day one, there's going to be so many jobs.
You're going to be so upset because there's going to be so many jobs. Well, that's not happening.
Donald Trump said prices were going to be lower. That's not happening.
The prices of goods and other things are increasing. Housing's not more affordable.
And so it's important that we not get distracted by Donald Trump's WMD, weapon of mass distraction. We'll talk about what went down in some of the weekend shows as these MAGA Republican leaders like MAGA Mike Johnson and Byron Donalds were just incredibly weird and creepy.
MAGA Republican Congress member Byron Donalds referred to Donald Trump as his, quote, daddy and says, daddy's home. Daddy's home, everybody.
That's really strange. And then MAGA Mike Johnson was asked a pretty basic question on Meet the Press about lowering prices.
And are you going to put anything in some of this legislation to help the billionaires that may lower the prices? And MAGA Mike's like, well, it's very complicated. You say very, very complicated.
But speaking about the billionaires, how weird was it that they were sitting right next to the cabinet of Donald Trump, who many of them are billionaires as well. Trump has like his billionaire cabinet next to the actual cabinet.
It was very strange. You had Bezos's wife, which she was wearing was a bit unique.
And then you had Zuckerberg taking a peek at what was a bit unique. Photo speaks a thousand words.
I guess we'll cover that. And also that weird TikTok scheme that Donald Trump was trying to pull where like TikTok shut down for 24 hours.
And it was like, we are working with dear leader Donald Trump to try to fix this. Praise be, praise be, he's trying to fix it.
And then they took it down for 24 hours. Then it went back up in 24 hours.
They were like, Donald Trump, President Trump, he saved us. He saved TikTok.
And by the way, there was no reason for them to take that thing down. The funny thing is, is that all these billionaires, they probably thought they were like so smart with this scheme, but it seems like people are seeing through it.
Frankly, it seems like people are seeing through a lot of this crap, and it's just so important. Again, WMD, Weapon of Mass Distraction, let's focus on what's happening.
Let's not make the same mistakes of the past. Let's call him out, and let's make this a sophisticated resistance where we're calling him out each and every day on the right things.
Brett, Jordy, how are you guys doing? Doing well. It's great to see everybody.
Very dark day, certainly, but I want to thank everybody out there for joining us earlier today for the Puppy and Kitten inauguration. We opted as a network here to not air the inauguration live.
And we opted instead to go head to head with the inauguration with some counter programming with some puppies and kitties. And then that evolved into having some cute goats and pigs and a bunch of all sorts of animals.
And you all submitted your animals. But even more importantly than that is that this incredible community raised more than $80,000 for the Humane Society who who they're doing incredible work helping animals affected by the fires here in Los Angeles.
I want to thank you all. I mean, that was beyond our wildest expectations.
We set our initial goal at $10,000 saying, you know, maybe we'll be able to raise $10,000. Wouldn't that be incredible? And then we had to keep increasing the goal.
And you could see that we have it going during this live as well. People could still donate to the Humane Society.
We figured why not just leave it going for whoever else wants to donate. But thank you for turning what was a dark day, bringing some light to it here, doing it for a good cause.
And we're very grateful. That being said, we got to report the news.
We got to stay on top of everything and we need to make sure that we are all prepared for what's ahead. And so I'm excited to go through the news with you.
And on that note, I'll turn it over to Jordy. Excited to get into the show, but Brett, I just wanted to emphasize that again.
That's why I always shout out the Midas Mighty at the end of the show. It's this community is unwavering.
This community is here for the long haul. In the face of darkness, which was today, this community continues to be a beacon of light.
We've raised over $80,000 during our stream earlier today. Again, the goal of that was 10,000 and all of the proceeds go into the Humane Society Emergency Animal Relief Fund.
Shout out to the Midas Mighty Man. Unbelievable, undefeated.
I love y'all so much. It was amazing to see, and I'm glad we're keeping it going during tonight's show.
Look, we're not showing video or audio of Donald Trump. We're still going to explain what went down.
I mean, we are a news network after all. Let me explain to you why I think it's so important though that we have independent media.
May I show you exhibit A right now? And this was brought to my attention by others who they tried to dabble with the coverage and they chose NBC because they're like, yeah, obviously Fox is an issue, ABC, Stephanopoulos, or as Trump calls him, Slopadopoulos, who has settled the case, so I don't want to watch them. Maybe NBC is a safe place to try to watch this.
Maybe they'll give actually some decent coverage and function like the fourth estate. If you turned on NBC, this is what you saw.
Here, play this clip. Now the boos are picking up again, as you can imagine.
They're putting up a live feed of the pictures you guys are seeing and seeing the reaction of all the Trump supporters here. The loudest boos so far have not been for President Biden or Vice President Harris.
The loudest boos so far were for former Vice President Mike Pence when he walked in. OK, now the boos are picking up again, as you can imagine.
You have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and obviously former President Bill Clinton as well. I would say the booze now, probably louder than it was for Vice President Mike Pence.
So pretty interesting to watch this kind of in real time, and how sort of MAGA world is watching big, big boos right now, as you can imagine. I don't know if

you guys can hear it over my mic, but boy, is that striking? Former President Obama. Yeah, former President Obama getting a resounding, as we would say in New York, a Bronx cheer.
Okay, what the hell was that? I mean, truthfully, is that the definition of media malpractice right there. You are at a MAGA event and you are reporting on their booze and like reporting on their booze as though you're like reporting on a car chase.
It almost had that tone of like this like live event. And here they come.
They're turning right. They're going on the highway.
Boo. Okay, you are hearing more.
What do you expect this MAGA crowd that is literally in a stadium to watch the inauguration? How do you think they're going to respond? Why is that striking to you? And why is that something that you're even reporting on on so i feel very comfortable and confident that the puppy inauguration was the absolute right way to go and that's how they're going to report on things going forward gamifying propagandizing i don't even know what the hell that was jen that was wwe i mean that so that, Tom Lamas, not my guy. That's Tom Lamas doing all that nonsense.
If you guys remember, Tom Lamas is the guy that I keep bringing up because he seemingly keeps continuing to do these ridiculous things. Just like at the RNC, when he told America, he said, Hulk Hogan just gave one of the most passionate speeches that I've ever seen.
Tom Lamas, you got to chill out, man. If this is how America is going to be getting their news from Tom Lamas over these next four years, we are cooked as a society.
I'm sorry, but that's why I'm so grateful again for the Midas Mighty and 30,000 strong we had during our live stream today showing up. It blows my mind, even from the camera angles for the audio listeners, what we just witnessed right there was the WWE-fication of politics, plain and simple, courtesy of Tom Lomas.
NBC liked that clip so much also that they put it on their social media. They were proud of that.
That was like the clip we just played was from their TikTok. So they reported the inauguration in that way.
And then they were like, this is great. This is gold.
Let's now post this on our social media account, because this is what folks have to be seeing right now. And it's just such an indictment of the media as it stands right now.
And I think one of the most disheartening things that we've seen in this sort of Trump 2.0 era has been the immediate capitulation. And that is honestly even putting it nicely to call this capitulation of all the powerful people who you would expect to be actually pushing back against people like Donald Trump.
So whether it is the owners of corporations and companies who have employees that they should be worrying about protecting and policies and values that they claim to uphold, or whether it's the fourth estate, the corporate media, whose job quite literally it is to hold people like Donald Trump and those in power accountable, or whether it's those like TikTok, all these various people. You see this just complete and utter capitulation to Donald Trump.
And right now, there are very few voices out there who are standing strong, who remain unafraid to actually report what's going on, unafraid to actually counter and challenge this incoming administration. And that's why independent media is so crucial at this time, because on the other side, you have the NBCs of the world, the ABCs of the world, the Washington Post of the world, you name it, who have just completely bowed down to fascism.
I don't understand why in general. The idea of being a billionaire and having so much money just feels a little bit gross to me in general, but whatever.
I set it aside. But what's the point of being a billionaire? Like if you're a Bezos or a Zuckerberg, if in reality you have like zero power, like wouldn't part of the evil billionaire kind of thing or whatever, like to then have the power to like, here's how I'm going to do it.
So you have all of this money. And they used to call it F-U money, right? Like they used to be like, I want so much money, I want F-U money.
What's F-U money if you can't say F-U? I don't understand. It's a really great, it's a great point.
And you know, it's like, okay, the stock market went up 55 to 60% under President Biden. Objectively, those are great returns, right? If you told me, hey, if you invest in this over the next four years, you'll get a 50% to 60% return, right? So they're criticizing that as like, whoa, things were so bad.
It's like, really? You think it was that bad? I mean, look, I don't believe the stock market should be the metric for our economy there's other metrics that biden should be rated on which were i think all pretty good i mean 16.6 million jobs created never consecutive months where jobs were lost um you had record gdp growth his inflation reduction act was bringing our inflation down more than any other country i, it was doing a pretty good job until Trump started giving all of these threats and doing the whole, you know, Trump shtick, 40,000 plus infrastructure projects. I could go on and on and on.
But now these MAGA billionaires needed to have like, it wasn't enough to have 50 billion. It had to be 300 billion.
And then that wasn't enough. It had to be more like, what are you doing with all of that money? But then you have zero power.
And then you're just kind of like sitting there under Donald Trump's thumb. And like, they were all like, really, it was just like a weird thing to see them there lined up.
I mean, look, just take a look at them right there. Like we'll go objectively a weird group.
These are objectively really weird, like really weird people. Like, let's just be real here.
And then you have like Bezos there, you know, with his wife. And I mean, like, wait, what is this? Like, you see how she's like dressed with the shirt open.
And then you have Zuckerberg standing or sitting right there, like just kind of looking like down at her shirt or,, at her shirt or, you know, what she's, what he's looking at. I mean, the whole thing is very, very strange there.
You have Melania wearing this like weird funeral hat. It looks like she's, uh, looks like her hat is like the roof of pizza hut.
And that's what she's wearing. And that seems quite strategic though.
If you'd look at it, at it, because Trump here in this picture that we're showing from this video clip, Trump tried to greet Melania with a kiss on the cheek. As he got within proximity of Melania, the hat acted as a blocker blocking Trump.
So he had to give this air kiss. The social distancing hat.
Yeah. So perhaps it was strategic for Melania to ensure that there was at least about eight inches of separation at all times.
My wife likened the hat to the Hamburglar. And I thought that was, shout out, Lex.
I thought that was funny. The whole thing, I'm like, what are you wearing? Weird vibes.
Weird vibes. It was in the rotunda.
Like it felt very small. It felt very pathetic.
I felt like a funeral, honestly. As all of the corporate media, too, was trying to be like, this was an actual headline from the Washington Post.
How's Donald Trump conquering D.C.? I think a headline from CNN was, Donald Trump is known to push the boundaries of the Constitution. I thought there was another headline.
This may have been from NBC. How is he more popular now than ever? It's like he isn't.
He objectively isn't. He is the least popular president, I think, in history leading up to an inauguration.
It's supposed to be a honeymoon period. And for Donald Trump, the nation already wants a divorce from this guy and many want a restraining order.
I mean, the AP poll has his pre-inauguration approval rating at 41%. This is supposed to be when it's like 70%, right? Obama's was like 78%.
Clinton, George W. Bush were like 72% approval.
Biden was somewhere between 67% and 72%. That's popular.
41% when you won the presidency, that's not popular. That's not conquering.
That's not achievements. And CNN, stop with the freaking normalizing, oh, he's been known to bend the constitution.
You mean violate it? We'll talk a little bit in the show about this meme coin thing. I mean, when you are going to be signing executive orders on crypto and the day before your presidency or 48 hours before you're dropping a shit coin, as they're called, because these things are so grifty and scammy.
It's like what the Hakua girl, you are doing in the presidency what Hakua girl did, whose name is based on a sex act that got her famous. And your allocation is basically the same as Hakua same as we'll talk about that, but that's what you're doing.
That's so demeaning to the, I don't care what political party you're from. You should be like, oh, gross.
This is just absolutely disgusting. But folks, I always need to bring it back to WMD, weapon and mass distraction.

Because notice what Trump did say today.

And again, I don't show the audio and video.

Don't worry, you're not going to hear his voice.

Trump goes, they all said inflation was the number one issue.

I said, I disagree.

I think people coming into our country from prisons and mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that I know. Really, because the whole thing that was spewed seemed to be about inflation, grocery prices, egg prices.
He did talk about Hannibal Lecter and he did lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs. But let's be clear, border crossings under President Biden were lower than under Donald Trump.
That's the objective data. They were as low under Biden as they were under Trump in April 2020.
Do we know what April 2020 was? COVID. The reason border crossings were down under Trump was the same reason that gas prices were down in 2020.
People weren't driving. People weren't crossing the border because there were mass casualty events taking place in the United States where there were mobile morgues, where there were food lines in the United States because Trump said, like a miracle, it's all going to go away.
But notice what he's saying here, that he's saying that inflation's not the number one issue or the big issue right there. It absolutely is.
President Biden was getting it under control. It was caused by Donald Trump adding $8 trillion to the debt.
That's what caused it and Trump's mishandling of COVID. So it's a shock to the system when you have to restart the economy with the American Recovery Act, which is what President Biden did.
But now Donald Trump's like, oh, that's not a big deal. It's not inflation.
Why? Weapon of mass distraction. He's not going to be able to get inflation under control.
What else is Donald Trump doing as a WMD, a weapon of mass distraction? During his inauguration speech, talking about conquering other countries. We should take it seriously because Trump has the ability to do it now.
But Trump on the Panama Canal, quote, we didn't give it to China. We gave it to Panama.
We're taking it back. Excuse me.
First and foremost, it was a lease. It wasn't give.
It wasn't we're taking it back. You're talking about conquering a nation.
the president of Panama responded and foremost, it was a lease. It wasn't give, it wasn't, we're taking it back.
You're talking about conquering a nation. The president of Panama responded and said, no, you're not.
We are a sovereign nation. Get the hell out of here.
I'll do a whole other hot take on that. Then Donald Trump spent time saying, henceforth, it is official policy, penises and vaginas.
That's what we're going to talk about penis and vagina inauguration it's the same stuff they do there are only two genders male and female okay what do you want me to say oh what do you want me to say you you want to spend your time attacking the transgender community marginalized marginalized community, and say, male, female, biological. We're not going to fall for that.
First off, do not attack marginalized communities. It doesn't make you an alpha to behave.
It makes you freaking pathetic to bully marginalized communities. But I'm not going to be distracted focusing on a transgender volleyball.
We're going to stand up for the we're going to stand up for the community, but we're not going to get distracted. Oh, the outrage, the transgender volleyball player from San Jose State.
No, we're going to hold you accountable and say, where's the peace in Ukraine? Wasn't that supposed? Excuse me. What time is it? Wasn't there supposed to be peace in Ukraine today? Didn't you say you're such an excellent dealmaker that you would, by the way, that was supposed to happen after the election, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
I shouldn't give you any benefit of that, but I'll say you meant today. Hmm.
What time is it right now? There's no peace in Ukraine. Didn't you say, I'm going to go to Putin with your accordion, little tiny fingers and accordions.
Then you go to Putin. Here's what I'm going to do, Putin.
And here's what I'm going to do, Zelensky. All right.
All right. You do this.
And then you do this. And boom, I'll get it done.
It was not done. So, hey, NBC, instead of reporting on booze at a Trump event of Obama, that's not exactly breaking news that that's going to happen.
How about you go and report the facts like there was no peace in Ukraine today, which was also one of his promises. And also jobs aren't being magically created like a miracle, like he promised.
How about you do your damn job, corporate media, or just cut your own cords, because people are going to cut it, because you are absolutely pathetic right there. Nice, Benji.
Worth mentioning real quick, it was 25 degrees. It wasn't dangerously cold, Caitlin Collins.
That's a weird framing for her. Due to the dangerously, this is what CNN said.
Due to the dangerously cold conditions, we're moving – the inauguration is being moved indoors. It was not dangerous.
It was 20 – it's colder here in Pittsburgh. It's eight degrees.
It's free. I've walked Mellow three times today.
I don't want an award for it. I'm just saying like – Jordan, did you notice what they did today also? What they did.
Which I'm not even going to take their bait and do it here.

It's not even, it's not worthy of our time.

But they were praising Trump, doing the whole boo coverage, and then still attacking President Biden, now former President Biden.

That's what they were spending their time doing.

Hey, guys, you know what?

I get it.

Trump's in office.

We're going to magically fix all of the things that you claimed you were going to fix. Ain't happening.
We're laser focused. Corporate media, I guess, is focused on kissing the ring.
We've got a lot more show, folks. Let's take our first quick break.
One thing to remind you all of as well. You've got patreon.com slash Midas Touch.
We got a massive surge of patrons during the

puppy inauguration. So thank you to all the new people who join our Patreon.
Also, we have

MidasPlus.com. That's where our editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski, does some incredible daily

reviews of all of the news. I also write a bunch of articles there.
That's MidasPlus.com. Check that out.
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Links in the description of both the audio and the... Midas.
Thank you. this too long because one of my like superpowers that i like to say i have is like i could read someone instantly i just need literally a minute tops if that and when i saw him on the rnc it was like the first time i really saw him i'm like oh this this guy but you know why because it's also disingenuous like that whole crew actually rubs me the really like a really wrong way that whole network nbc crew and again i don't believe it, but like the Savannah Guthrie, the Kristen Welker, Hayley Jackson, Lester Holt, Tom Lomas.
I haven't been thinking about this all day. It upsets me because it's like a poison pill, if you would, like a hidden poison pill where just the everyday American is just tuning in for news updates.
And all of a sudden they're getting the WWE-fication of politics in our world. They're not getting the news.
They're not getting facts. They're being entertained, quotes around that, because I made the mistake of tuning in earlier and just, I was ripping my hair out watching this, just screaming at the TV.
And then fortunately we were doing the puppy stream. And so I went immediately back to that because it was on watch.
What they were doing, their coverage was unwatchable.

Honestly, it's worse than Fox because at least with Fox News, you know what you're getting is bad and those players are bad. What NBC has been doing, it's scary.
Frankly, it's upsetting. By the way, I think you say his name Yamas, but I'm going to allow the mispronunciation because of his disrespect to our,

but here's something else though. You got to remember, NBC is the reason why Donald Trump is president.
It's just a fact. NBC built this mythical persona of Donald Trump, which is not reflective of reality by creating The Apprentice, by editing Donald Trump to look a certain way, by putting this image

into people's minds of him as a successful businessman, even when the facts do not match that, to say the least. And so NBC is the reason for all this.
And I think they get a pass because they have MSNBC and people think that's a network that is on their side. The truth is none of these corporate networks are on your side.
Like,

it's just the fact. It's not to say that there aren't people I, you know, I think do great work

at these networks, like there certainly are. But all these corporate structures are all designed

to just make as much profit as possible. And they've done so by building up some really

villainous people, including Donald Trump. Look, NBC is owned by Comcast, right? Comcast has

Thank you. much profit as possible.
And they've done so by building up some really villainous people, including Donald Trump. Look, NBC is owned by Comcast, right? Comcast has its corporate agenda where it feels it needs to suck up to Donald Trump.
And they feel that they need regulatory benefits from Donald Trump and they're going to behave the way they do rather than stand up. And then by appeasing him all of these years, they've now, again, basically taken away all of their own power in doing that.
It's counterintuitive. I mean, as I said in one of my MidasPlus.com posts, when Donald Trump was calling these media companies failing, they weren't failing, actually.
That was the thing. They were not failing media companies.
But then they took on that persona and became failing, right? Everything Trump touches dies. And now they actually are failing now.
And they weren't before. And independent media is growing now because they embrace the Trump loser mentality by being afraid of this guy.
It's ridiculous. Anyway, let's go back to what was going on in this inauguration.
I'll give you a few more data points here. And then I want to talk about this Trump shit coin situation, this rug pull.
That's one of the big words. I think we're going to call this the rug pull presidency.
The main word, the word of the year in 2024 was brain rot, which I think is a precursor to rug pull, right? 2024 was the rot, which gave way to 2025 as the rug pull. And just so you know what that term means, if you don't know rug pull, the rug being pulled from under you, conning people and then removing the rug and then they fall flat footed or flat on their face after they are, you know, after they're conned.
I think that's what that means. Anyway, now Trump goes, instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries and we're going to create the external revenue service.
All right. Let's see how you actually implement that.
It makes no sense. And again, tariffs are taxes on American corporations.
I don't know what you're talking. It's just ridiculous what you're even saying.
It'll only make prices higher. It'll result in retaliatory tariffs.
So that ain't going anywhere. More distraction from Trump.
We will not forget God can't do that. Well, apparently the pastor at the inauguration view of that is I must create a meme coin.
God wants me to create a meme coin. How about the fact that Trump is maybe like the only president to not actually have his hand on the Bible while he was being sworn in.
Noticeably forgot to do that part, despite all of the talk that he has out there. That is true.
That's a great point. Yeah.
So for those just wondering, or who watch the puppies and want a little bit of information about what went down, Trump did not place his hand on the Bible. And then the day before, one of the individuals who Trump is involved in that company that sells the Bibles said that Trump would place his hand on the Trump Bible that they were going to then sell limited edition Trump Bibles that he was going to use at the inauguration.
I mean, honestly, like if you're a religious person, you know, or even a non-religious doesn't make a difference. But like for those who are like, you know, the symbolism of the Bible is so important.
Like, really? Like, just imagine if Obama or Biden didn't do that. It would be the front page of Fox and every corporate media network.
Donald Trump then went on to attack Nancy Pelosi and he called Adam Kinzinger a crybaby, just stupid stuff. He then went on to attack General Milley, former four-star general.
One of Donald Trump's first acts to show how big and tough he was is he took down the portrait of General Milley that was hanging in the Pentagon. Real strong gesture to get rid of that painting.
I'm sure Milley's like, oh my gosh, I worked and gave all this service so that my painting could be hung in the Pentagon. But it's just a petty, silly, loser move that that's what he was going to do.
Everything he was doing was so petty. I mean, the inauguration speech was, I think we all expected it to be dark.
I mean, this is the guy who led the first time with American carnage. And this was a version of American carnage.
And the speech was not a speech that a president gives. It was a speech of a very petty, very small, very tiny individual, very vindictive, the opposite of gracious, just absolutely disgusting from start to finish, felt more like a Trump campaign rally at its most deranged than a president of the United States actually taking the oath of office.
And those immediate actions relating to Milley are a perfect example of that. Trump's comments about Nancy Pelosi, where he said that she's a criminal.
I mean, he said that Nancy Pelosi is guilty and that she's committed criminal offenses. It shows you the vindictive nature and the presidency of retribution that we are about to see.
And that's why I get so frustrated by the media's endless bashing of Biden to the very end. And I'm sure they're going to continue to speak about this too over the next few weeks, because once they get started on a Biden topic, they can't shut up about it.
They need to talk about it all the time. Of course, not the accomplishments, just when they want to hate on it.
And so obviously, President Biden today did his last minute pardons. He pardoned members of his family.
And he pardoned the January 6th committee. He pardoned the officers who, uh, spoke at the January 6th committee and the media was very vicious on Biden for this.
Like they were like, oh yes, we get to attack them. How dare you? And I saw some other kind of, you know, online networks and stuff rushed to be like, this is disgusting.
How can you be pro-democracy and do this? What a vile person, what a vile thing to do. How dare you, Joe Biden.
And it's like, at a certain point you have people who are like, why is President Biden, why is he treating Donald Trump like a normal person? Why is he even meeting him with grace, inviting him into the Oval Office, shaking his hands, having tea with him in the morning? Why is he doing that? And President Biden is a guy who believes in tradition. He believes in the office.
And we asked him about that. He explained it to us in Ben's interview with him.
But then he goes and he does the things that actually show that he does view this incoming Trump administration as a threat, that it's not just bluster, that it's not just campaign rhetoric. And when you see President Biden issuing these last minute pardons to people like Liz Cheney, to people like the other people in the January 6th committee, the officers, his family, et cetera, you can't help but feel that's like an ominous, very ominous thing.
And that President Biden is doing that because he, I think rightfully, expects the absolute worst from this incoming administration. And he wants to, while he has the power, he wants to protect those people who actually stood up and defended our democracy rather than look back and see the Trump administration at the very least, at the very least, bleed these people dry, torture them for the rest of their lives in legal paperwork and money and bills, destroy their lives, because that's what Trump's plan was here.
And so President Biden goes, I have a way that I'm going to prevent this harassment. I'm going to prevent these acts of retribution.
I'm going to take it. And then in the same day, while you have all these media networks yelling at Biden for doing this, and by the way, I hate that Biden had to do it.
I hate that he had to do it. And I had mixed feelings on the idea of doing it because none of these people are guilty.
These are all patriotic Americans who serve their country in the best way possible. But I understand 100% why he does it.
But while the media is bashing Biden, what is Donald Trump saying? He is calling the people who Biden did not issue pardons to criminals. He is hinting that he is going to prosecute them.
He is carrying out his retribution against people like General Milley, who President Biden did pardons in other ways by removing his painting. So you're seeing the actions of retribution.
You're seeing the rhetoric. You are seeing even all these officials in the Republican Party.
And I saw their tweets even last night, some of these Republican Congress people tweeting like, buckle up, Democrats. We're coming for you.
You better lawyer up. We're about to bring the hell of the legal system on you.
You put it all together. You have to realize that what we are dealing with here is serious.
It's not just rhetoric. We have to take Donald Trump at his word when he says that he is going to enact retribution on his political enemies.
And so President Biden did take him on his word. And honestly, like enough of the media jumping on every single move.
I wish, I wish President Biden did not have to do any of this. And it makes me sick that he had to do it.
It doesn't make me feel good that he had to do it. But I completely understand the need because these are not normal times.
And I don't understand why these networks cannot accept that fact. It is maddening.
Sorry. For the holier than now, C shell clutching, pearl clutching, necklace clutchers out there, keep that same energy these next four years.
Keep that same energy. Let's see.
Well, look, keep that energy when you're looking at things like this. You had Elon Musk giving a speech at one of these inauguration events.
You can judge for yourself what this hand gesture was that he did twice,

but this is what Elon Musk was doing. For those who are just listening on audio, you may have seen our reporting on this otherwise, but you can look for yourself.
Also, as soon as that event was done, Elon Musk arrived at the White House right away. He's got got an office right there, I mean, literally in the executive building that's attached basically to the White House.
And this is where he is. He's an unelected billionaire and never in the history of the United States would you ever have a situation like this, that the oligarchs are actually in the White House influencing and basically serving as a shadow presidency and a shadow government, just taking up the position right there.
I mean, just think about that. I mean, think about McCain-Feingold, a bipartisan piece of legislation that was intended to try to keep this exact situation from happening.
Bipartisan, right? And then the right-wing Supreme Court in the Citizens United case said, actually, we got to protect corporations and their First Amendment right to buy presidencies. That's what the Citizens United case basically said.
They have a First Amendment right to spend their money however they want to spend their money. And there's cause and effect that then leads to this situation.
And again, that was a, think about bipartisan efforts, the ability to get Democrats and Republicans to agree on anything. They agreed that that was needed.
And then the right-wing Supreme Court struck that down. And then you got this MAGA mutation developing then from the Tea Party movement springing into MAGA.
And this is the state that you have right now. But speaking about Elon Musk, he's supposed to be leading this fake government entity called Doge.
And that was actually hit with a lawsuit. One of the first lawsuits that were filed were filed against Doge.
And by the way, if you go back, and Brett and Jordy, you may remember this. In some of my reporting about a month ago, what I was saying is, remember I was calling Doge a quasi-governmental entity? And I was saying that it's still based on how it's being represented, now falls under all of the federal rules of government agencies.
You can't just be like, we're not going to recognize federal labor laws and government laws, but we're going to be this kind of government agency. So what the lawsuit said is, look, you're violating the Freedom of Information Act.
You're violating all of these other federal agency acts. You weren't created through the Administrative Procedures Act.
And so this lawsuit, which I think is very meritorious, is basically looking to shut down DOGE, number one, but also we want all of the communications relating to DOGE, all of Elon's text, all of Elon's emails, Vivek Ramaswamy's, that should become public as well. And this entity needs to be shut down.
I think whether you're in front of a right-wing court or a left-wing court, whatever, it's a strong lawsuit against Doge. One of the other things to mention as well is Vivek Ramaswamy, see you later, bye-bye.
He's done. He's gone.
He lasted negative Scaramucci's. They pushed him out.
Remember, Vivek Ramaswamy was basically saying the same thing Elon was saying. They weren't saying really different things.
They were basically saying that Americans can't do STEM jobs, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, because the culture in America is dumber and Americans are stupider than people from India. So we need to expand the H-1B visa program because Americans are too dumb and too stupid to hold STEM jobs.
They literally almost said that kind of word for word, inferior to STEM workers from India. And then Donald Trump was like, I actually always loved H-1B.
If you look back, the entity of Trump that used H-1B was Trump Modeling Agency. That's how they got the models here, that they were all geniuses and got H-1Bs and Einstein visas to basically bring the models into the United States.
But Vivek basically said, Americans are too busy watching Boy Meets World. And they would not like Steve Urkel.
They would like Stefan. And that's the big problem with American culture.
And then Elon Musk was basically saying the same kind of stuff, but money talks and Elon Musk is in. Vivek Ramaswamy is being pushed out, negative scararamuchis.
I don't even know what's going to happen with this, Doge. The whole thing never really felt like it was a well thought out other than kind of a gimmick to begin with as just a pretext to get Elon that office right next to the White House.
But the oligarchs are in the White House, literally, not figuratively. They are actually in the White House right now.
And Elon has an office there. Just think about that.
And again, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, that should piss you off. And if you're a MAGA voter, if you're a Republican who voted Trump, right, you got the rug pulled.
That's ultimate rug pulling. You got the oligarchs running the show right now and prices aren't lower and there's no peace in Ukraine and housing's not affordable.
Focus, focus, focus. Let's take our last quick break of the show.
Reminder, patreon.com slash Midas touch Midas plus.com. Thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors as well.
Thank you for everybody who watched our puppy inauguration. We'll be back.
We'll talk about that rug pulling with Trump's meme coin, what these MAGA Republicans are saying on the weekend shows, trying to justify the rug pulling, the promises broken. We'll talk about that and more.
Let's take our last quick break. Today's episode is brought to you by Ali.
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Let them know we sent you. Can I just say, brothers, that Scaramucci, especially when we refer to it as a negative

increment of time, it's just my favorite measurement tool to measure anything time related. So yeah, tough for Vivek there, last thing, a negative Scaramucci.
Impressive almost. Impressive, not impressive.
I'll tell you what is impressive, though. the Daily Star, this UK tabloid, their front page was, we're not 100% sure they're right, but one in 25 Brits insist the orange man baby is a zombie.
Wow. And that's kind of how you have to deal with him and talk about him, especially when he does things like this.
Look, even the crypto community was confused when Donald Trump dropped a meme coin on Friday and they thought it was he must have been hacked. Like, how could this be real? You're dropping a meme coin.
And then you look at the allocation of the meme coin and about 80 to 90 percent is owned and controlled by insiders.

10 percent liquidity on the actual market of these meme coins. And by the way, Trump tried to claim it's not like a meme coin because he didn't want it to be considered like a security.
So they wanted it just to be like, this is a meme and all you're showing if you buy this meme is that you love the symbol dollar sign and the letters, T-R-U-M-P. And you're showing affection for the community that likes numbers and symbols and letters.
So here's how it went down. Trump posts, my new official Trump meme is here.
It's time to celebrate everything we stand for winning. Join my very special Trump community.
Get your dollar sign Trump now. Go to get Trump memes.
Then you go to it. And it's like you buy these things with a debit card or you buy it with crypto.
Then you take a look at the fine print and it says Trump memes are intended to function as an expression of support for and engagement with the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol dollar sign TRUMP and the associated artwork and are not intended to be or to be the subject of an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type. GetTrumpMemes.com is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign or any political office or government agency.
See terms and conditions. And when you look at the terms and conditions, it's all of these liability waivers that basically say you can't sue Donald Trump or you can't sue Trump memes.
And so basically it's this thing that actually looks like a security, the same thing as almost like a stock, but it's unregulated. So it has all of this, you hype it up.
People say, this looks like a pump and dump. You hype it up, 80% to 90% is held by insiders, meaning they're not the ones who actually buy this thing.
They just have 80% to 90% of the supply. When I'm saying that there's 10% liquidity, that means the public basically gets around 10% or maybe slightly more of this.
So if they're all buying this and they're increasing the value by buying and selling this thing and the value is increasing to say $60 for one or $70 for one. Well, then you look at the allocation and you go, what's the quantity that's out there? And then you go, okay, the quantity that's out there, meaning the liquidity that's actually now trading on the market, but Trump's trying to claim, oh, it's actually not trading.
It's just people selling these memes, but that then gets a value. So then you can say, okay, if the value of the 10% is being sold at X dollars and Trump or the insiders control 80 to 90%, you can actually be like, holy crap, Trump's net worth just increased at one point by like $60 billion.
$60 billion with a B, like became one of the wealthiest people in the world and in America on this meme coin thing. And then his other wealth comes from Trump media.
But get this, Trump media never made more than close to $3 million in revenue a year or $4 million in revenue a year. It's not making significant profits, but he's making huge amounts of money holding securities or paper that people are investing in because it's him.
And again, it's this murky area of crypto. Are foreign governments buying it? Who are the people who are buying this? And it's all clouded in crypto wallets.
This one crypto wallet holds this. This other crypto wallet holds this.
And then here's the thing. Biden's SEC was trying to regulate this stuff and say, these memes are securities.
They should be regulated no different than the stock market because let's

be clear, what's riskier, a meme coin or IBM stock? Why is IBM stock or Apple stock regulated by the SEC as a security that's on a market that has all of these requirements but meme coins aren't. The whole reason why there's an SEC is because once upon a time, people ran all of these scams with things like meme coins, but they were stock certificates and papers that were not regulated.
That's why there was this experience that created the SEC. So these meme coins are end run around.
And frankly, if there is a place for crypto, and I think there's a place for crypto, I'm not anti-crypto, but this type of crap gives it a horrible name. And then Melania got into the action.
She created her own meme coin called dollar sign Melania, which looks like Smelania. And then when Smelania came out right around that time, it also, whether it was coincidence or whatever, then it started driving down the price of the Trump meme coin.
And at one point that Trump meme coin was down like 60 plus percent, meaning the rug was pulled. Lots of people lost massive amounts of money.
Imagine buying that at the top of the market and then losing and putting your life savings into this thing,

thinking that you're going to get rich because all these people are making all of this money.

And then boom, it falls like crazy. And then you don't have the ability of the DOJ or SEC

to do anything because Trump controls it now. And you can't go after Trump because he now has

immunity as the president. It is a nasty, I don't care what political party.
This was a nasty game that Donald Trump pulled on the people. It screwed up.
And again, are your prices lower? No. Is there peace in Ukraine? No.
Is housing more affordable? No. Was he spending time doing that? No.
Him and Melania were releasing meme coins. That should piss you off regardless of your political party.
Ben, you're being a little bit of a hypocrite here because I don't remember you having the same energy when Biden released his crypto Bitcoin. Oh, wait.
No, Biden never released a meme coin? That's not something that actual presidents really do or first ladies? What are we living in? How is this just going completely unchecked? This is one of the greatest grifts of all, not great like this is all, this is one of the biggest grifts of all time happening and playing out in real time right in front of everybody's faces. And what does corporate media do? Okay, whatever.
They treat it like a joke. I saw the way they were part of it.
They're like, oh, look at this wacky dude. It's a meme.
You're selling it. I mean, it's in my opinion, pretty clearly a scam what we're seeing.
And we're just seeing corruption and scams and grifts at their highest levels that we've ever seen in our entire lives. And just the message this sends in so many different ways.
First off, Ben, I agree. I think crypto is obviously here to stay.
And I think that there are folks out there who want crypto to be viewed legitimately. These meme coins do everything but that.
These meme coins delegitimize the entire cryptocurrency industry. But people, like the people who are standing behind Donald Trump at the inauguration today, love this because it's completely unregulated.
They can move money around basically secretly in large sums of money and transfer wealth and create fake wealth out of nothing despite having zero benefit to the economy whatsoever. it's also got to be just honestly right really I know we're so far past this point but just think of like

kids growing up today and

like in to the economy whatsoever. It's also got to be just, honestly, I know we're so far past this point, but just think of kids growing up today.
And in the past, when you tried to teach a kid the value of a dollar, and that you work hard, you make money, and then you see these people who they may look up to basically scamming their way into becoming billionaires overnight with these get-rich-quick schemes? Do you think they're going to value actually working hard and trying to contribute to our society? Or are you going to create this whole new generation of people trying to grift and scam their way to the top and do what people like Elon do, what people like Vivek, like Trump? They're going to view it in that mold. They're going to think that this is how you gain success.
And quite frankly, look at this moment in time, they're right. And I think that the issue is that President Biden, the former SEC, all of them, they just wanted to regulate these industries like Ben was saying before.
But the reason why these oligarchs who are hanging around Donald Trump like them, and it's not just because the stock market's up, they've had record profits over the past few years, they should love them. But now all of a sudden, they're getting a green light to just smash through any regulations don't exist anymore.
Rules don't exist anymore. They could just become richer and richer and richer and screw regular people over with no consequences.
And they appreciate having that ability, having that open season. As long as they're nice to Donald Trump, they get to do whatever the heck they want.
And we see that with this TikTok situation as well, with the CEO of TikTok, the way he was sucking up to Donald Trump as we saw this entire TikTok situation emerge where TikTok decided that they were going to go dark before Donald Trump took office after the CEO had had a meeting with Donald Trump recently and was at the inauguration today. And of course, it was a bipartisan bill that had banned TikTok.
Actually, this started, of course, back in 2020 when Donald Trump wanted to ban TikTok, not for national security reasons. Donald Trump wanted to ban TikTok because TikTokers were being mean to him.
And TikTokers, remember, they reserved all the seats that Tulsa, Oklahoma rally, and Trump gave a rally in front of like an empty crowd during his 2020 campaign. So Trump was butthurt by that.
And he decided that he was going to ban TikTok because his feelings were hurt. And there certainly are actual national security implications of TikTok.
And when this Ukraine funding bill was coming and the Republicans were holding it hostage and saying, no, we're not going to fund Ukraine, ultimately Republicans put into this bill, I would call it a poison pill, but it didn't end up poisoning the bill, but they put in this TikTok ban in this bill. So if you want Ukraine aid, then you also got to vote for this TikTok ban.
That's how this all started. And I think a lot of people forget about that.
Are Democrats on the hook for this also? Yes, 100%. But at the end of the day, also more Republicans did vote and end up voting for this.
And the bill passed. TikTok was under this ban and divest.
They took a very firm stance that they were not going to divest, which quite frankly, and as someone who enjoys TikTok a lot and likes the app and thinks it's a great place for expression and small businesses and creators, I do think it's quite suspicious that TikTok refused to dish off the algorithm to an American company when it would have enriched them a lot. I think that speaks a little to their intention.
But then to pull this end runaround to try to put, hail Donald Trump as a savior in order to curry favor with Donald Trump and save the business, to me, that was, it made me feel almost dirty going back on TikTok and seeing those messages that they had, basically just fawning over Donald Trump, playing to Donald Trump's ego in a way that I thought was quite manipulative, and quite frankly, just straight up propaganda coming from China through to TikTok in order to heap praise on Donald Trump because her adversaries certainly know how Donald Trump operates. So we saw these messages on TikTok that were just fawning over Trump, like the first one saying that TikTok has been banned and unfortunately this means you can't use it.
We're fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution. And then when it came back, not even 24 hours later, they said as a result of Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the US.
You can now do all the things you love. Well, Trump wasn't in office yet.
President Biden had already told them that he wasn't going to act on any sort of enforcement for this law. Trump had already said that he wasn't going to do anything for TikTok.
So they just tried to give Trump this kind of savior complex, give him this win for no reason other than to just try to save their company and to just manipulate the public in this very kind of devious way. The funny thing that I've noticed, because I'm on TikTok quite a lot.
I post a lot on TikTok. Follow us there.
I like TikTok as a platform. I do.
But the TikTokers, I think, were a bit smarter than they were anticipating. And the TikTokers are pushing back and they see the open propaganda.
And I know a lot of them are disgusted. And so a lot of the people, the TikTok creators I know, have also taken kind of brief hiatuses from TikTok in protest.
One of the funny memes that have been going around TikTok are people praising President Obama for saving TikTok just as an FU to the owner of TikTok and to Trump to say, oh, thank you, President Obama for saving this because it's just so ridiculous, like obviously, you know. And so you see this sort of, you know, resistance happening on that app as well.
But this is what the birth of this presidency has brought us. Just endless kind of scams, endless grifts, endless kind of psychological operations.
It's all designed to confuse. And at the end of the day, it's all designed to make those people who sat behind Donald Trump at this inauguration and the people like them and the people who work with them, the oligarch class, the billionaire class, it's all designed to make them richer.
It's all designed to take away the things that are designed to protect you, the laws that are designed to protect you, the regulations that are designed to protect you, all under the guise of freedom. They're going to use the iconography.
They're going to use the language. Oh, we need more freedom here.
We're going to need less regulation. Da-da-da-da-da.
Look past the BS. Look past, as Ben says, the weapons of mass distraction, and look at what Donald Trump is actually doing.
Look at what these people around him are actually doing because their actions sure as hell speak a lot louder than their words on all these issues. I want to mention two things.
First, I think it's important that we also mention developments with Donald Trump's pardons and commutations. When it comes to commutations, that basically just means reducing the prison sentences of individuals.
So one of the things that Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, sentenced to 22 years, the DOJ called for terroristic enhancements, someone who's literally one of the most dangerous people out there. And whether you were a Trump-appointed judge, a Democrat-appointed judge, a Republican-appointed judge, they made it very clear over the past few weeks, do not commute or pardon these types of people.
Stuart Rhodes, Enrique Tarrio, these violent people. Enrique Tarrio's mom saying that Tarrio's been released and Trump's commuted that sentence.
We're hearing about a lot of other violent insurrectionists as well, whose family members are talking about them being released. It does indeed seem that Donald Trump's going to, whether you are violent, you get a commutation.
And if you are nonviolent, you get a pardon. But this is one of the first acts that he is going to clearly be doing.
We'll get you more details on that. I'll do a full take on this as well.
And this is coming from the family members of Tarrio and other individuals as well. And again, while this is vile, disgusting, despicable, dangerous, pick your word, this is a wake-up call, I think, to Americans that this was someone convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Convicted. Juries saw this and they said, sedition, sedition.
And Donald Trump said, I'm pardoning them. They get to go.
It should be noted that Enrique Tarrio was in the White House, hanging out in the White House, in the residency area back in December of 2020, which I know corporate media was too afraid to talk about then. But again, we're not dealing with lower prices.

We're not dealing with peace in Ukraine.

He's out there pardoning seditionists and commuting the sentences of seditionists. It is absolutely, absolutely despicable and vile.
next thing i want to mention, Martin Luther King Day. It is a time for reflection on Martin Luther King's legacy.
And as his daughter, Bernice King, also talked about, enough just quoting Martin Luther King, especially by people who don't understand what his legacy really is about mass, strategic, nonviolent protest were the words that she used. She goes, if you want to honor Martin Luther King Jr., remember what his real legacy is about.
You don't need to do empty quotations of him. I think it's important that we all reflect on that here today as well.
His actual legacy and when we, the people, will be called upon as well to do mass, nonviolent protests and how with the incoming that's going to be taking place, we remain united and we make it clear that our voices be heard. I'm not going to pretend that the next four years are going to be puppies and kittens.
I think it's helpful that we did what we did today. The fact that we raised $80,000 plus for the Humane Society, I think was a helpful thing.
By the way, I'm open to doing that once a month and on other special occasions. It's a fun way, I think, to bring this community together.
But again, life isn't all puppies and kittens. The network and the news we do and our work here goes on.
And it's important that we remain fearless, unapologetically pro-democracy, and we stand strong no matter what is thrown our way. We never obey in advance or ever.
We never kiss the ring, and we always stand up. We always stand up for peace, for love, for compassion, for freedom, for our democracy.
And that's what we're going to do here each and every day with you, the Midas Mighty. I want to thank our pro-democracy sponsors.
The fact that they're our sponsors, that helps. That helps our show.
Also, Jordy negotiates great discount codes with them. And so that's in the description.
You could support our sponsors, tell them Midas sent you. It's always helpful.
There's patreon.com slash Midas Touch to help grow this community. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Midas Touch.
Patreon.com slash Midas Touch. And also you can check out our sub stack, MidasPlus.com as well.
Read Ron Filipkowski's daily recaps. A lot of breaking news there.
That's at MidasPlus.com. Check it out there.
So thank you for everybody. I will make sure you subscribe here to our YouTube channel.
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We're not going

anywhere. We're going to fight by your side every step of the way, as we did today, as we'll do

tomorrow. So thank you very, very much.
We appreciate you. Jordy, you want to take us out?