By Ben Meiselas
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In the dead of night, Donald Trump slipped out of the White House and boarded Air Force One for a trip to Asia. Twenty-four days into a government shutdown of his own making, Trump became the first president in American history to leave the country during an active shutdown. Millions of federal workers remain furloughed or unpaid. Food lines stretch from Boston to Milwaukee. We haven’t seen images of food lines like this since, well, the last time Trump was president. And while families wonder how they’ll put dinner on the table, Trump is off ranting about tariffs and lying about Ronald Reagan from 35,000 feet.
According to CNN, 1.4 million federal employees are currently either on unpaid leave or working without pay. Across the country, hunger is rising. “Food lines like we saw during COVID are back,” I reported. “Hunger in America is on page one of multiple news outlets.” In Tennessee alone, 690,000 people are facing a lapse in food assistance. In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel warns that 700,000 could lose access to the state’s FoodShare program. In Massachusetts, one million residents risk losing their food aid. Forty-two million Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which could soon run out of funds.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration refuses to use emergency funds to help. “Forty-two million people may starve to death because Donald Trump also wants to rip away the health care of 20 million Americans,” I said on the broadcast. Yet, somehow, Trump found time to arrange a $40 billion bailout for Argentina while bragging that the United States will now import beef from there, leaving American cattle ranchers reeling. “Screw you,” is essentially Trump’s message to American ranchers who have already been crushed by his tariffs.
Then there’s the bizarre revelation that a private billionaire, Timothy Mellon, a reclusive Trump megadonor, has “contributed” $130 million to the U.S. military to help pay troops during the shutdown. Trump praised him as “a great patriot,” but the math doesn’t lie: $130 million covers less than seven hours of military payroll. “That’s 6.7 hours of pay for our troops,” I explained. “So what’s that money really going to? The bunker they’re constructing where the East Wing once stood?”
This kind of shadow funding, untaxed, unaccountable, and facilitated by a sitting president, is not patriotism. It’s plutocracy. “At what point,” I asked, “does paying for the military by billionaires become mercenaries?”
As if that weren’t enough chaos, Trump used his Air Force One flight to lash out at Canada again for running an ad quoting Ronald Reagan’s 1987 remarks against tariffs. “Canada lied,” Trump claimed, insisting Reagan “loved tariffs.” That’s a lie easily disproven by Reagan’s own words. But facts don’t matter to Trump, whose orbit now includes a Reagan Foundation taken over by MAGA loyalists.
Even Trump’s own campaign emails read like parody. In a 48-hour window, he sent more than half a dozen messages to supporters, each one begging for money or offering phony “Patriot Awards.”
And it’s clear the American people are seeing through it. Trump’s approval ratings are plummeting, particularly among young voters and Latino Americans. “He’s despised, detested, and reviled in this country,” I noted. “Yet we still have a corporate media apparatus and billionaires who support this guy because he’s enriching them by stealing from the rest of us.”
That’s what’s happening in Trump’s America: food lines, unpaid workers, billionaires buying influence, and a president fleeing the country during a self-inflicted shutdown. The rest of us are left to clean up the wreckage and to keep fighting for a democracy that deserves better.
We refuse to treat any of this like it’s normal. This is not a moment for “both sides” journalist, so to be blunt, if that’s what you’re looking for, you can find another outlet. We are going to continue to call out Trump’s BS and expose the threats to our nation unapologetically, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the White House.
Watch my latest report above and check for new episodes of the MeidasTouch Podcast anywhere you find podcasts, like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
