MeidasTouch Sunday Message…

Hey everybody, it’s Ben Meiselas, co-founder of the MeidasTouch Network, here with my Sunday message.

If you’ve been noticing, I’ve been starting off Sundays a little differently lately, sometimes with an interview that I just did before getting to my Sunday message.

Yesterday, I shared my interview with Ambassador Susan Rice. This morning, I shared the major interview I did with Senator Kelly.

You tell me. Do you prefer that I start Sundays with my Sunday message first, or do you like getting these interviews first?

I was just trying something new. Anyway, I’ll stop blabbering and get into the Sunday message.

I’m having my coffee right now.

This is my favorite time of the week, as you know, because I get to spend time with you all.

We get to reflect on everything that happened during the past week and talk about what we need to focus on in the week ahead. So why don’t we start with some good news heading into the midterms?

Then I want to talk about Donald Trump’s latest scam, a very dangerous one involving Venezuela, and then let’s talk about what we should be focused on as summer winds down and we head into this incredibly important period.

First, some good news.

We’re really seeing the American people focus on the midterms now.

In these critical races, whether it’s Texas, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, or elsewhere, people are understanding the stakes and Democratic candidates are surging.

I also think it’s important that we focus on some of these sleeper states and races that the corporate media isn’t paying nearly enough attention to.

You’ve got a governor’s race in South Carolina where Democrats could win. You’ve got a Senate race there that could shock people.

You’ve got a race in Arkansas where Democrats are showing real strength against MAGA Republican Tom Cotton.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, perhaps to the point where I sound like a broken record, but Democrats have been dramatically overperforming in special elections.

If that trend holds, I think the type of historic message that could be sent in these midterms is actually being understated right now.

But I don’t want anybody getting complacent. Not for one second.

We have to keep doing the work and getting out the truth.

And while I’m talking about doing the work, let me make my ask early today. If you’re reading this and you haven’t become a paid subscriber to the MeidasTouch Substack yet, please become a paid subscriber. It’s been helping us out a ton. Your paid subscriptions allow all of us at Meidas to keep building this independent media infrastructure, hire more talented people, bring you more original reporting, conduct more interviews, and do all the rapid response work that is more important now than ever. We hope you’ll become a paid subscriber to this Substack today. It really does make a huge difference, and we’re incredibly grateful to everybody who has already joined to support this movement.

Meanwhile… while the American people are increasingly focused on the midterms, Republicans are freaking out behind the scenes.

I did a few reports yesterday and more today about White House advisers basically acknowledging that they don’t expect anything on the horizon that is going to fundamentally change the dynamic of surging prices. Inflation remains a major crisis and we may even be looking at interest rate HIKES again. Yes, hikes.

This morning, The Washington Post broke a really big story about the Secretary of Defense Order Book and the extraordinary pushback coming from the country’s top generals and admirals.

The message from leadership in the military has basically been “we don’t concur” with the war plan by Pete Hegseth. We can’t keep deploying troops like this. Resources are being stretched, weapons and cash are being depleted. There’s also been reporting about the Navy running out of money for payroll and having to find funds elsewhere to sustain combat operations. It’s a total mess.

That brings me to Venezuela…

Obviously, if you’ve been watching and listening you know we’ve done a lot of coverage of Trump’s attacks on Canada and how offensive and destructive they are. But Canada is going elbows up and they’re pushing back. Hard. As they have been since Trump was elected, by the way. Shoutout to the Maple Meidas. So what does Trump do? He announces another fake massive deal, this time involving… Venezuela!

Trump’s Venezuela “deal,” or should I say, “steal,” is absurd and dangerous. Trump wants people to believe there is suddenly this enormous amount of Venezuelan oil that is effectively going to become available to the United States, with talk of tens of billions of barrels in potential reserves and $100 billion of supposed private investment pouring into Venezuela. A few questions… Who are these companies? Where are the commitments? Where is the congressional authorization for what the Pentagon supposedly intends to do? Where is the written agreement? Anyone??

I have gotten deep into the weeds on Venezuelan crude over the past few days. Here are the basics of what you need to know:

Venezuelan crude is extremely heavy, viscous, and what they call sour. Sour refers to the oil’s higher sulfur content. You don’t simply announce that tens of billions of barrels exist underground, and suddenly, those barrels become part of the American energy supply. Extracting it requires a ton of infrastructure and investment. Processing it is complicated and then moving it into the global supply chain takes time.

And…the existence of potential reserves does not mean that oil is sitting there ready to enter the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve tomorrow. It doesn’t work like that!!

Yet, Trump throws out these insane and gigantic numbers because that’s what he’s always done. Announce the biggest number imaginable and hope everybody repeats it before anybody asks whether it’s real. We’re talking about the guy who was literally found liable in the court for fraud related to…making up inflated numbers. Who’s actually investing this supposed $100 billion? What companies are signing up for this? What happens when those companies have to confront the legal reality surrounding the structure Trump is proposing? Trump’s own government is simultaneously taking positions in federal court about the legitimacy (or rather, the illegitimacy) of Maduro, while apparently proposing arrangements involving the same Venezuelan governmental structure and officials. None of this makes sense, and I feel pretty strongly this whole sham will eventually unravel as all of Trump’s schemes do.

The point right now is to simply create the perception that enormous new oil supplies are coming. It’s part of this broader effort to manipulate expectations around energy prices while pretending everything is going according to plan. Obviously, we’ve seen versions of this with Iran too. Announce deals that don’t really exist, claim shipping is returning to normal, talk about tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz as though everything is back to where it was, even as the numbers tell a veeeerrry different story.

Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels/day were moving through the Strait of Hormuz. During the MOU period, it was around 9 million. Now we’re talking about 4M max, but likely lower.

This is why we have to stick with the facts, not Trump’s claims on social media, and not leaks from unnamed U.S. officials to their stenographers in the press.

And that’s what we try to do every day at the MeidasTouch Network. I’m breaking this stuff down, even if people in the corporate media think it’s too in the weeds and boring, because underneath all of the propaganda and chaos and all of the gigantic numbers Trump throws around aimlessly, there are basic facts. And people deserve to have them.

This is all part of the scam. It’s all part of trying to manipulate markets and create a perception that doesn’t match reality in any way, shape, or form

Simultaneously, the U.S. has never looked weaker on the world stage. It’s just a clown show.

You have the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, the BRICS meeting, and BRICS becoming increasingly important. Iran’s playing a major role in all of this. And Russia and China talking about major deals with Iran and other countries doing the same thing.

You had Bessent trying to hype up an so-called economic D-Day and threatening everybody with sanctions and the entire world collectively laughed in his face.

I did a long interview with Ambassador Susan Rice about where we are in the world right now and I also did a long interview with Senator Kelly. One thing I keep coming back to in these conversations is that it’s going to be very hard to dig our way out of this. I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

There has been real damage done to our institutions, our credibility, and our relationships around the world. But despite it all, we will dig our way out of it. And I hope one of the major ways we do that is through what we are building together here at the MeidasTouch Network.

I talk about this a lot in WTF America!?, which comes out in October and is now right around the corner.

We need to start thinking generationally.

We need to build structures that aren’t designed around one election cycle or one politician or gamified politics.

We need institutions that can last for generations and fight the viruses of disinformation, authoritarianism and division over the long term.

That is what we’ve tried to build with MeidasTouch, and one of the main things I talk about in the book is this community because this community is evidence of what can actually be built.

We can build an independent media infrastructure together. We can build an international pro-democracy community together. It has to be about building something that lasts.

So I think it’s going to be a very interesting week as summer winds down. I think people are going to see more and more clearly that Trump’s Venezuela deal is a fraud, which is why the rapid response work we’re doing is so important. I also think it’s going to create a great amount of instability.

I think we’re going to continue to see oil prices surge, and I would not be shocked to see record highs again this week. Trump will continue to flail. He’ll keep doing distraction stuff with Canada. He’ll try another stunt. That’s what he does. But let’s also always remember that a lot of this his effort to cover up the Epstein files and documents that include his name in the files.

So let me end where I started.

Please become a paid subscriber to the MeidasTouch Substack if you haven’t already. I know I ask you this a lot, but it has been helping us so much. Your paid subscriptions are allowing us to expand our reporting, conduct more interviews, respond faster to breaking news and continue building an independent pro-democracy media network that can actually compete with the corporate media and the right-wing propaganda machine.

This isn’t about one election. It isn’t about one week. It’s about building something durable together. You are helping make all of this possible.

Thanks for spending part of your Sunday with me. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for being part of this community. I’m incredibly grateful for you, as always.

And we’ll keep fighting together.

Ben