Critical Monday Message from Meidas…STAY FOCUSED!! Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network May 12 By Ben Meiselas We don’t fall for the distractions here at the MeidasTouch Network or the obvious traps that try to pit pro-democracy voices against each other. That’s one of the keys to our success and growth. I see too many good people who are too focused right now on pointing fingers about the 2024 election and about messaging and branding—looking back and pointing fingers—that they are forgetting, fundamentally, that politics is about people. We shouldn’t think about cooking up “political brands” in a lab to try and connect with people. We need to keep it simple. We need to be humble and just shut up sometimes and listen to people. Listening is far more important than hearing ourselves talk. We need to understand what people are going through and connect with them as people and human beings—not as robots. We need to connect with empathy and genuine concern for the human experience, to fight for people and make their lives better, and talk about specific ways we can help people live better lives. Let me lay out my basic agenda that I fight for every day with my reporting. I believe Americans should get paid a wage with dignity. I believe that all Americans should be able to afford a home and not worry about getting evicted or foreclosed on before they go to sleep. I believe that living paycheck to paycheck is psychological torture, and Americans should not live in fear of imminent peril or bankruptcy. I believe all Americans should have good healthcare that is cheap or free, and that all Americans should have access to affordable education. I believe that the true VIPs in our country are our veterans, and they should be treated with the highest respect. I believe we need to tax the rich more—and they should not pay less in taxes, both in actual amounts and in percentages, than Americans making far less. I believe we should not bully marginalized communities. We should treat people with respect, uplift marginalized communities, and not punch down. In my view, any day we are not talking about or reporting on this is a missed day and a missed opportunity. That’s why I don’t give airtime on our network to these 2024 postmortems in May 2025 that are still occupying too much time on cable news and abstracting the problems real Americans are facing. Americans living paycheck to paycheck don’t have the luxury to be chatting about some of this messaging infighting I’ve been seeing all over lately. We are very intentional about the programming decisions we make on the MeidasTouch Network and intend to stay focused on what Americans are actually going through. This is why it’s important not just what we cover but how we cover it. I think that’s what sets MeidasTouch apart. It’s not just that we cover Trump’s reckless and malicious “on-again, off-again” trade war against the world, but that we focus on how regular people should not be used as pawns or non-consenting extras in a market manipulation shell game or dystopian reality show run by billionaires. We shouldn’t feel like living life as an American is like being in Squid Game, but that’s what it’s like under the Trump regime. What will he post today and how will we survive it? That’s not how we should be forced to live and exist. Similarly, we shouldn’t just report on Trump getting a $400 million 747 jet from Qatar as an obvious conflict of interest, but we must also show the contrast between Trump unlawfully enriching himself with gold-plated jets from the Middle East and regular Americans struggling to afford groceries or being denied health coverage. I wanted to write this post today to remind us all not to get lost in some of this infighting I’ve been seeing consuming too much time. We have to stay laser-focused on being good and caring human beings who genuinely want to build connections to better the lives of others. Trump sees the suffering of people and preys on it with fraud and subterfuge. We must recognize the root cause of human suffering, empathize with the experience of it, and offer authentic solutions that come from a place of actual caring and genuine understanding. On a final note, this is a big week for our network. As you can see from the picture we used for this Substack post, my brothers and I are all here together in New York for the Webby Awards tonight. We got the incredible honor of winning their Podcast of the Year award, which is their top honor for all the podcasts in the world. Remember to add the MeidasTouch Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to help keep this momentum going, and leave a 5-star review if you can. This achievement would not be possible if it weren’t for you. So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you!! We will post some photos tomorrow from the event. Our network continues to lead all cable news in views and podcast downloads thanks to our subscribers here. Our competition has billions of dollars funded by right-wing oligarchs, and we still get more views than them thanks to our subscribers here. Let me be blunt. Your help is so critical to our growth. So please, if you can, subscribe now to this Substack to help grow the MeidasTouch Network and to access all the content on our Substack as well. We are getting closer to our May 2025 subscriber goal, and your help today would be invaluable. Meidas+ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.