MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump voters expressing publicly how he has been terrible for America and Meiselas interviews legendary actor Jon Cryer about his perspective on Trump’s disastrous presidency and his hit podcast which has historical parallels to the current moment. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are Trump voters saying about his presidency?
I'm seeing a lot of messages like this from business owners who, for whatever reason, supported Donald Trump in the election. This is from Craig Fuller, who runs something called Freight Affiliated Media. They do market intelligence for freight-related services. He goes, I enthusiastically supported Trump's victory in the November election.
Chapter 2: How has the business community reacted to Trump's presidency?
I thought I was voting for a pro-business policies and small targeted incremental tariffs. I did not vote for a neutron bomb to wipe out supply chains and small businesses 100 days in. Or Azalea Banks, a musician who said, OK, I think it's time everyone who voted for Trump admit that we made an effing mess here. Like, This is an absolute disaster.
And this was after she bragged about voting for Trump following the election. You know, and then there's just things every day that just makes you, I guess, scratch your head is an understatement like this. Putin gifted Donald Trump a portrait of himself raising his fist after the Butler, Pennsylvania incident.
And Witkoff, Donald Trump's special envoy to Russia, said how touched Donald Trump was by the painting commissioned by Vladimir Putin. But look, I think the business community is getting it right now. The front page of the New York magazine was this cartoon right here, a political cartoon. I did not think for one second he was going to go this crazy as all the Wall Street bankers see the
market imploding as the U.S. economy is now behaving like that of a developing country. We're seeing op-eds written by conservative economists talking about that. And then just the message boards you look at from the conservative message boards, and it's all people saying, I'm not too proud to admit it, but I feel stupid now. I want to bring in
Chapter 3: What historical parallels does Jon Cryer see with Trump's presidency?
friend of the show, John Cryer, your Midas Touch fan, which is great, the producer of the podcast, The Man Who Calculated Death, which I want to talk about as well because it focuses on the scientist who built the first cruise missile or Adolf Hitler. And these times are not too dissimilar from those times. But first off, welcome to the show. And what do you make of this mess, John?
Thank you so much.
Chapter 4: Is Trump's presidency worse than expected?
It's great to be here. I'm to some degree amazed that some people are being that candid about it, only because we're three months in. I mean, this is pretty remarkable. This is supposed to be a honeymoon. This is supposed to be Trump's honeymoon. Trump's honeymoon is very bumpy so far.
And, you know, a lot of the sort of more cultish aspects of Trumpism will be much, much harder to dislodge from people because it's similar to Brexit. You know, there's very few people in Britain who are willing to just say, wow, that was just a dumb idea. I can't believe I fell for that.
Chapter 5: How does fear play a role in Trump's governance?
You know, as supposedly Mark Twain said, that it's much easier to con somebody than to convince them that they've been conned.
John, what's your overall assessment of just what's taken place, just you personally, in the past 100 days? Worse than expected? Is this what you expected that he was going to do? How do you try to, you know, speak about this or come to some understanding of what the hell's going on?
Well, I come at it, even though I'm an actor, I love history. It just keeps repeating. And this type of thing has happened in authoritarian governments in the past. Berlusconi attempted it most recently. This has happened before. And he is as bad as I expected. I had pointed out before the election that it won't be tanks on every corner.
Chapter 6: What does Jon Cryer think about the cult of personality around Trump?
He'll be turning the United States into an authoritarian state through fear. It's going to it's it's it's people being scared for their jobs, people scared for their businesses and him using the levers of federal power for revenge, which is what he has said he would do. He said he would do that. I mean, I didn't have to be Einstein to figure out that he was going to be doing this.
And that's why I think the point that you were making, which was that, you know, that a lot of these folks seem surprised about this when he talked about doing almost all of this. And by the way, I still feel I have Trump supporters in my family. You know, I feel for them on some level because we in the entertainment industry created this guy.
Chapter 7: Why does Jon Cryer compare Trump to Charlie Sheen?
You know, we created this image of this billionaire, brilliant guy. And it was never him. He was always kind of a moron. He was he doesn't he still doesn't understand what tariffs are. how they work on the most basic level. You know, he's he's you know, he's got these weird sort of this weird fox brain that's just been addled by 40 years of Fox.
And so he actually believes this this this war to, you know, this trade war to onshore these these manufacturing jobs will actually work. You know, it's you know, there's a million reasons that it won't. And, you know, I I this is this is as bad as I thought it was going to be.
You know, I think you once made a statement saying that Donald Trump is almost like a Charlie Sheen of politics. And you said, look, there's charismatic aspects of Charlie Sheen. I liked working with the guy, but, you know, there was a lot of other things going on.
Yes, that's an understatement. A lot of things going on is going to be on his tombstone.
We're not going to go into that, but. You know, this malignant narcissistic profile, you know, this personality of somebody who's able to, I think one of the words, the things you said is like just totally full of shit. Like someone who could be totally full of shit but who can convince people of things to just do things against their interests over and over and over again.
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Chapter 8: What misconceptions do people have about Trump's business acumen?
I mean, and you see that he talked about the cult aspect of it. So I don't know, maybe speak to that, because in the entertainment industry, you see these charismatic personalities who are able to, you know, get people to do things against their interests frequently.
Yes. And but to be clear, as as as many of the issues that that Charlie faces, I do think he'd be a better president. I don't know that it's fair to to completely lump the two of them together. No. The thing I was pointing out was that that at the time when I made that comment, Charlie was still just going off and saying whatever stupid tiger blood. comment he was making.
And, you know, we Trump has always been comfortable with saying whatever stupid thing he said, because most people sort of wrote him off as as harmless and didn't hold him responsible for those things. And I think part of his allure to the people who like him is that he says whatever stupid thing he's thinking, you know, they say, well, you know, that's that's him being authentic.
But, you know, he he And I've always... He's that old guy at the end of the bar who thinks he knows how the world should work. But he's really kind of a loser. And unfortunately, people bought into the mythos that that we created in the entertainment business through Art of the Deal, which was ghostwritten by a guy named Tony Schwartz. You know, Trump didn't write it.
He didn't write any of the books. You know, The Apprentice was, you know, they had to work so hard to make him look like a billionaire on The Apprentice. They had to, you know, that boardroom was a set because the real Trump Tower looked so cheesy. You know, it was common knowledge in the business that he was not a particularly successful real estate magnate, but he was a fun character.
And that character has really stuck with people for all these years. There's still people who are surprised that he doesn't actually have a lot of business acumen.
John, why do I think the headline coming out of this interview is going to be John Cryer? Charlie Sheen would make a much better president than Donald Trump.
That's fine.
Let's pivot, though, to talk about your podcast and your podcast in general. The most recent one you produced is The Man Who Calculated Death. You're focused on death. a scientist who built the first cruise missile for Adolf Hitler. It then kind of goes into this murder mystery aspect as well.
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