MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas breaks down a disastrous weekend for Republicans on the news circuit as they struggled—and failed—to defend Donald Trump’s latest wave of indefensible decisions and scandals, exposing just how broken the MAGA message machine really is. Thanks to Manukora: Head to Manukora.com/MEIDAS to receive $25 OFF your starter kit! Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Get Meidas Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What disastrous appearances did MAGA Republicans make on TV?
The MAGA Republican leaders had a series of disastrous appearances on Sunday news. Let me just break down for you what took place. And it's just shocking the audacity of this corruption and incompetence, for example. Here you have Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on air traffic control systems. He says the lights are blinking. This is like an emergency moment, folks.
We may be in serious trouble. This is the Transportation Secretary saying, I don't know, fix it. Do your job, maybe.
Here, play this clip. The Congress and the country haven't paid attention to it, right? They expect it to work. And so now I think the lights are blinking, the sirens are turning, and they're saying, listen, we have to fix this because what you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country. It has to be fixed.
Chapter 2: Why is the US air traffic control system in crisis?
And so what we're having is some telecom issues, but we're also having some glitches in our software. As the information comes in, it's overloading some of our lines and the system goes down. So I'll just tell you specifically in Newark, We believe we're gonna have it up and running in short order. We're gonna be able to fix that glitch.
And we feel a little more comfortable about our primary line that gets the data in on radar. And our redundant line is up and working as well.
I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't be getting our transportation secretaries from the real world road rules challenge. Maybe we should have people working to actually fix things instead of people like Sean Duffy, who are posting like bachelor photos of himself saying hashtag Latino wife, saying that his wife made him carne asado tacos. I mean, what the hell are we talking about here? He
That's what he actually posted. Here is Sean Duffy again talking about how concerned he is about all of the airspace. Play this clip.
You talked about the fact that this might not be confined to Newark. Are there other airports that you are concerned about right now?
I'm concerned about the whole airspace. The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly.
But we should also recognize we're seeing stress on an old network, and it's time to fix it.
Bottom line, is it safe to fly in the United States right now?
Listen, we are the safest airspace, for sure. And traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it, my family takes it. But again, that doesn't mean you don't look over the horizon and say, hey, if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life? Of course it could be, which is why we fix it.
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Chapter 3: What are the concerns regarding habeas corpus suspension?
This is Congressmember McCaul, who seems to think it's a good idea.
Here, play this clip. This past week as well, White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller said. Habeas corpus can be suspended at the time of an invasion, saying the administration's looking at ways to potentially do away with due process for undocumented immigrants. You're an attorney. You're someone who deals with homeland security issues and immigration being there from the Lone Star State.
Is suspending habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants a good idea?
Well, this was done by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. It's a very extreme measure to take. Any person in the United States under the Constitution has due process rights. So I think the courts are going to decide this one as to whether this invasion in fact constitutes what would be a state of war. Some would say it would.
People in my state of Texas see an invasion and the drug cartels and the danger that they bring into my state and in this country. I think that will be a very interesting legal argument before the courts.
Well, curious to call it an invasion, especially when the administration likes to remind us that the border crossings are, of course, at a historic low. So that'll be part of the legal debate, I suppose.
They have gone down substantially, yes. They sure have.
Shifting gears to MAGA Republican Senator Barrasso from Wyoming, he's asked a question about Donald Trump and the regime statement that little girls should now just have one doll, one pencil, and pay more for it, that the Trump regime is imposing central planning on Americans and American children, telling them the amount of pencils and dolls that they can have. And Barrasso's like...
He's a master at messaging. This is how you do it. Here, play this clip.
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Chapter 4: How are tariffs affecting American consumers?
So we do expect a 10% baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable future. But don't buy the silly arguments that the U.S. consumer pays. Businesses, their job is to try to sell to the American consumer. And domestically produced products are not going to have that tariff. So the foreigners are going to finally have to compete. They're going to have to compete.
What happens is the businesses and the countries primarily eat the tariff.
You've got Senator Barrasso asked another question. He's the senator from Wyoming. And here he's asked, what's your message to the people of Wyoming who have to pay more? And Senator Barrasso's like, people love it. They love paying more. Whatever Donald Trump tells us here in Wyoming, we do. He says, you pay more, we pay more. He says, one doll, one doll. Whatever dear leader says. The hell?
Play this clip.
You expressed real concerns that prices have increased at stores like the Dollar Tree, for example, which you talked about how important a store like that is to Wyoming, to rural communities in particular. And now the Dollar Tree says that the tariffs could actually push them to raise prices again and that they may not be able to stock some of their goods.
What do you say, Senator, to the people of Wyoming who hear that, who rely on stores like the dollar store and they're worried?
Well, I travel around Wyoming. People in Wyoming are very happy with the president and what he's doing to help our economy. Tariffs are just one tool as part of our comprehensive economic plan. We're trying to get that passed in the very near future in Congress, focused on both the safety and the prosperity of the American people.
We are focused on lowering prices, raising wages, and bringing jobs back to America. And that's our focus right now in Congress.
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Chapter 5: What is Senator Barrasso's stance on Trump's economic policies?
Next, you have MAGA Republican Senator Tom Cotton. He talks about he's asked a question here about Trump's special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, using Kremlin interpreters and not going through the U.S. embassy. And again. If you're MAGA, you got to be in the cult. So according to Tom Cotton, this is brilliant.
If Trump says use the Putin interpreters, use the Kremlin interpreters, show up with cough with no one from the embassy and no one who knows Russian. Just show up on your own and use a Kremlin interpreter. Here's what Cotton says. Play this clip.
NBC is reporting this weekend that Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, during three high-level meetings with Putin, didn't use his own interpreter, instead using an interpreter from the Kremlin. Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told them this. He said using the Kremlin's interpreter was, quote, a very bad idea that put Witkoff at a real disadvantage.
McFaul went on to say, I speak Russian and have listened to Kremlin interpreters and U.S. interpreters at the same meeting, and the language is never the same. If that reporting is accurate, why would we agree to that?
Well, first, I don't necessarily credit that reporting. But second, Steve Witkoff is a very skilled and capable negotiator. He has the president's total trust, and he's 100% loyal to the president. He's doing what the president has asked to try to get Vladimir Putin to the table with Vladimir Zelensky to get to a ceasefire.
So I have confidence that that's what he's doing on the Ukraine dispute, just like I have confidence in what he's doing right now in Oman negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program.
That's what they're going with here. Here's Lutnick again. Again, some call this guy Nutlick. Some call him Lutnick. You could call him whatever you want to call him. Here he is on what his message is to dock workers who are losing their jobs. His message to the longshoremen is enjoy it. You deserve it. You deserve not to have your job. You don't believe me. This is what he says.
This is his own words.
We've got reports out on the West Coast that there are hundreds of dock workers now out of work as those ships are not coming in, the ripple effect there hitting the trucking industry and others as well. One union official out there says it's beginning to manifest itself as real loss of jobs and income from our members. So what do you say to those American workers?
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