WTF Is This Announcement? Glad You Asked.

An important message from Ben Meiselas

By Ben Meiselas

Ben here. I need to tell you something.

As you know, this is not a normal moment in American history. That’s why six years ago, my brothers and I started MeidasTouch. In the beginning of 2020, MeidasTouch didn’t exist. There was a group text between three brothers during a pandemic, watching the country come apart at the seams, and asking each other the same question millions of you were asking too: WTF is happening to America?

What began as a group text venting our frustrations has blossomed into a massive, international, pro-democracy movement. And we are so grateful to have you on board.

That brings us to today’s announcement. Brett, Jordy, and I wrote a book. It’s called WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy — and right now, you can pre-order it.

Let me back up.

When we started MeidasTouch, we weren’t journalists. We didn’t come up through cable news or legacy newspapers. What we had was a refusal to look away, a commitment to facts, and an audience that was starving for someone — anyone — to just tell them the truth without spin, without both-sidesing atrocity, without treating democracy like a debate club topic. That refusal became a network. That network reached millions. And now it’s a book.

WTF America?! is not a book about Donald Trump.

I want to be direct about that, because it would be easy to sell it that way, and it would also be a lie. Trump is not the disease. He’s the symptom. The loudest, ugliest expression of a rot that’s been spreading through this country’s institutions for decades. Powerful interests. Gutted watchdogs. A media class that chose access over accountability, over and over again, until the public stopped trusting any of it. Trump didn’t create that vacuum. He walked into one that was built for him, brick by brick, by people who should have known better and didn’t care.

So the real questions this book asks are bigger:

How did we get here? Why did the institutions built to protect us fail when it mattered most? What are the tricks and schemes used by Donald Trump and his international band of authoritarians to co-opt democracies around the world. And what do we actually do now — before it’s too late?

But here’s what I need you to understand about this book, because it’s the whole reason we wrote it: it is not a eulogy.

We didn’t write 300+ pages of doom for people to read and close the cover feeling hopeless. We wrote a roadmap. Because if there’s one thing three brothers with no journalism pedigree and no institutional backing proved by building MeidasTouch from nothing, it’s this: the people who are supposed to have all the power don’t get to write the ending by themselves. History isn’t authored exclusively by authoritarians and the cowards who enable them. It’s authored by the people who refuse to shut up, refuse to comply in advance, and refuse to surrender the truth, even when surrendering would be so much easier.

That’s what MeidasTouch has tried to be since day one. It’s what this book is.

WTF America?! is the story of how we got into the most dangerous democratic crisis of our lifetimes, and it is an argument, backed by facts and hard-won experience, for how we get out of it. And unlike far too many books these days, we did not hold back any scoops from the public in writing this book.

We’re not journalists by training. We’re brothers who got angry enough to do something about it. Now we’re asking you to be part of this major moment.

Click to pre-order WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy today.

Every pre-order matters more than people realize. It tells publishers, retailers, and yes, the media gatekeepers, that there is a massive audience hungry for the unflinching truth. Help us send that message.

We built MeidasTouch together. Let’s put this book on every bestseller list together too.

— Ben