The real-life brothers behind the MeidasTouch digital media empire say building a resistance during Trump 2.0 is not that complicated: let your moral compass guide your actions. Anything else is just “weird”. (Paging Donald Trump). Ben, Jordy and Brett Meiselas join Nicolle in this episode to share their outlook on how to keep our democracy thriving, build community, shut down bullies and why their digital first approach is giving Fox News a run for its money.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Nicolle Wallace: I quit Twitter or X after the election because it wasn’t that anymore. It wasn’t, I couldn’t even find the comments.
Brett Meiselas: Something change over there or?
Nicolle Wallace: Maybe it’s the ketamine.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: Hi everybody, this is Nicolle Wallace. This is The Best People with Nicolle Wallace. And I truly have some of the very best people doing what we try to do, which is tell the truth, talk to each other, have a little bit of fun. I’m here with the Meiselas brothers, Ben, Brett, and Jordy. Back medicine and injuries are involved. All the rules are off.
I want to say something though about The Best People podcast and what you guys have done. You are literally doing the thing that everyone is trying to figure out how to do. You have cracked the code on the best way to be faithful to our listeners, to the people in the pro-democracy movement who just want facts and substance. And I want to understand how you did it and how you did it as brothers.
Ben Meiselas: Well, first off, it’s great to be here. You mentioned the back, so I’ll just give that reference to the people.
Nicolle Wallace: Like a disclaimer?
Ben Meiselas: The disclaimer is, is that since I traveled to New York about two and a half weeks ago, I came back with all of these back issues and there’s like an L5 S1 herniated disc and I’ve just been doctor to doctor to doctor. So that was that, but I would not —
Brett Meiselas: Yeah, so people are going to hear Ben in a rare form today.
Nicolle Wallace: I love it. I love it.
Brett Meiselas: I want to do a disclaimer at the top of this podcast. This is medication Ben, this is back pain Ben. And so, you never know what’s going to happen on this show. That’s what I’m so excited about.
Ben Meiselas: But the way we did it is that we never approached this to necessarily try to do it. We just wanted to speak to people. We don’t really have political backgrounds. We didn’t really approach this from like let’s be political. We wanted to help people. And we’ve really built this on just trying to talk truth and common sense and listen and understand what people are going through. And we found that the issues that are most important to people are often the issues that are not being discussed and the issues weighing on their minds and on their families are not being addressed.
And so, we listened, we heard, and we wanted to address it and figure out really not as like this political party or that, but just how as human beings we could fight for people in this country. And then more broadly, just people who want peace and want community and appreciate democracy across the world.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, a lot of what it is, is calling bullshit on everything that isn’t those things. I mean, I covered the same clip that you did on Fox News. You just did it so much better than I did. But the clip where Jesse Watters says, and it’s a sign of how demented we’ve all become that we didn’t all, I guess, cover it with outrage and shock, but it is acceptable for one of the, I think, higher rated programs to do a block where they come in talking about John Thune’s body and then insult Chuck Schumer for being effeminate.
(Begin Audio Clip)
Jesse Watters: I was at a resort a little while back and I saw Senator Thune at the gym. The man is jacked and the guy is in great shape and he lives hard. You look at Schumer, he’s built like a woman. Now, men do not want to be led by the party of women. Men want to be led by other men. So Democrats need to become men and then they can persuade men.
(End Audio Clip)
Nicolle Wallace: It’s weird and it’s gross. But you guys suffer no fools. Talk about how that stands out to you and how you covered it.
Brett Meiselas: I think one of the things that connects kind of everything that we do here is kind of going back to our origin story. And that’s that this was all kind of birthed as us kind of freaking out to each other in group text chats. And so, I think that idea of us not coming from a political background, other than I’ve been picking up flowers for politicians on Capitol Hill 20 years ago, I think that that allowed us to just approach things from this sort of outsider perspective. And I think, in a weird way, not having those sorts of political ties or connections actually helped us just approach things differently. I think we were and always continue to approach things just as three brothers who are kind of looking at the world and going, this stuff’s crazy, this is crazy, this isn’t normal and reacting to it how we would react to each other.
And so, I think that people feel that and they’re kind of led into our family dynamic of calling out the crap and just being worried about things and trying to figure out what action we could take about things.
Ben Meiselas: Well, you know, again, it goes back to listening to people and hearing what the concerns are out there right now. People can’t afford homes, they can’t afford to pay their rent, they’re worried they’re about to be kicked off of healthcare, they feel psychologically tortured, living paycheck to paycheck.
They care about the climate, people care about the climate. They’re worried that FEMA isn’t going to be there for them when hurricane season hits. They’re seeing FEMA not there for people during disasters already. They’re seeing a deranged and unhinged person in the Oval Office who’s like painted the whole thing gold, attacking foreign leaders there and destroying our alliances. And people are scared and they’re worried and they don’t hear people talking to them about those things.
And so, when I approach the coverage of a Jesse Watters, it is to reflect the outrage and put the BS radar detector on, but it’s also to let the viewer and the audience know why are they covering it this way. And it’s because they don’t want to talk about these other things.
The reason why they’re making this about, oh, John Thune is this masculine strong man, look at him in the gym and look at Chuck Schumer, he’s a woman, he’s a girl, look at that, is because they don’t want to talk about the fact that they’re taking away your healthcare. They’re shifting billions of trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. This is going to be one of the single biggest transformations of wealth from people who need the money to people who frankly don’t need the money.
And I just described that as the kind of weapon of mass distraction. And I think you have to then make that other connection, why does this matter to me, the viewer? And that’s how I try to shape those segments that I do.
Jordy Meiselas: You framed it there perfectly too when you were talking about the Jesse Watters. It’s weird. It’s just flat out weird. And I feel like, and this is kind of network-wide, folks have been gaslit into thinking so much of this is normal and it’s all become so normalized, and that it’s refreshing to an audience of people who are truly pro-democracy that are watching this in their rooms or with their families, isn’t this weird? And they’re being told, no, it’s normal. So then when they hear us reporting on it or you reporting on it, now they’re like, okay, I’m not alone, I’m not crazy. This is weird stuff that we’re witnessing.
Brett Meiselas: I think the deviousness of what Fox has done is they’ve created a alternative universe world of news that looks like news to people. And they throw in some news that is straight news and they do have good reporters on their staff. Like there are people who actually do a good job behind the scenes there, but they put up all the trappings of a news station, the chyrons, the sets, they have Fox Business Channel. They’re throwing all this information at you that you’re like, okay, I’m watching the news. I’m watching a news morning show. And then the things they are saying are just so outrageous, but I think people are so conditioned to believe that they are watching a legitimate news program.
And of course, every organization out there is going to have their tilt just by nature. But what they’re doing, I think, is far more nefarious than anybody. I think it’s clear that they are like operatives of the Trump administration, of the Republican Party. They have their talking points each day. They are coordinated, in my opinion, with what’s going on. And they use all these trappings of a news organization in order to do so much damage to the country every night.
Nicolle Wallace: I have so many worries as a mother of a son about the influence of the manosphere, but it just seems like it’s so obvious that the episode you have about Jesse Watters, I mean, that’s not masculinity. And I feel like young men are falling for it. But what are your thoughts? I mean, I think that there is a world where if you guys don’t take over the world, we’re worried about our sons.
Ben Meiselas: First off, people who are alpha don’t go around calling themselves alpha, number one, other men who do that.
Nicolle Wallace: There’s that.
Ben Meiselas: And look, where I grew up, my dad would say, Ben, being a man is standing by your word. Being a man means you push back against the bully and you uplift people and you don’t punch down and marginalize communities. I mean, the bully, when I grew up, was never like the cool kid or the person that we were supposed to follow. I mean, that was the bully, that was kind of gross. And the right-wing manosphere or whatever has built this whole thing around bullying and demonizing women. And that’s just, you know, that’s not okay.
And I think more men need to go out there and say, that’s not okay, shut the F up, and just stop it, like cut it out, like that’s not okay. And we can’t, going back to what we said before, you can’t hesitate with those things. We can’t be like, oh, should we be bullies? No, you shouldn’t be bullies. Do we need a Joe Rogan? No, we don’t need a Joe Rogan. I don’t want to launder in conspiracies.
I mean, the qualities that should appeal to young men or any people, but if we’re addressing young men, is you be a good person, you stand up for other people, you stand up for yourself, you don’t join like weirdo cults and have your brain washed, and you go about living a life, a good, decent life. And that’s what’s most rewarding.
What I said is what just needs to be said. I think it’s simple, it’s not contrived. I don’t need to do a $20 million study in masculinity to realize that.
Nicolle Wallace: Correct. Yeah, I mean, Ben, you call them, or you guys all call them the regime media. The way you do it is you’re, we’re so equivocal, right? Like I’m like, do I platform Fox? I don’t know, I don’t know. I wring my hands and then at the end I play something and I try to quickly get out of it and say, I only showed you that. I mean, you guys are so comfortable in the pocket of what you’re doing. And I think you’ve explained it, Ben, that you’re listening to people and there’s no space or distance between what people’s lived experiences and the content you’re providing. How are you going to scale that sort of lightning in a bottle?
Ben Meiselas: So if you think about our network, we have the MeidasTouch network, the MeidasTouch YouTube channel, about 5 million subscribers, about 350 million views a month on that YouTube channel.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s incredible.
Ben Meiselas: It’s been incredible that it has connected with the audience the way it has. But then we realize also that in order for us to scale and grow also, I think the best way to do it is to really promote other authentic voices, like a Katie Phang, as she pursues a career in independent media, but then also cultivating talent from kind of the ground up, like old school record industry style when they would use to go to like the local pub and hear which band was getting exciting in the community. We’re looking to see who are those creators of the future.
So a good example of that is, we partnered with a guy named Adam Mockler, he’s 22 years old, Gen Z, over a million subscribers now on YouTube. When we met him, it was in the thousands. And he’s one of these people whose an incredible debater. He goes on right-wing media. His style is slightly different than ours, but he’ll go on right-wing media and debate. But he has a Gen Z audience.
We have a channel led by someone named Tennessee Brando, and he speaks to people in red states. We have a legal channel with some of the top legal minds called Legal AF, where we can also platform the ACLU and all of these pro-democracy legal groups who never really get the attention to explain their filings. And so, to me, that’s how you kind of scale out.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, will you say more, any one of you, about what is the Meidas mindset?
Ben Meiselas: Yeah, I mean, I think the Meidas mindset, as we said from the outset, is listening to people, fighting for people, fighting for democracy, and leading with principles and values before leading with, here’s what the political expedient thing is to say, and not being afraid to say it. Like I’m not afraid to say we need to tax the rich more. I’m not afraid to say everybody in America needs healthcare. I’m not afraid to say DEI, I believe there should be diversity. I think that’s great, diversity is great. I don’t hedge on these things.
I think that when it comes to women’s reproductive rights, men should stay the hell out of it, and we should be as supportive as we can, and it’s not my place ever to lecture, speak to it, or even in any way offer my mansplaining opinion.
We’ve started with that foundation of, here’s what we stand for, here’s what we’ll always stand for, and where those beliefs align with a political party, great. But we said, we’re not chasing politicians. They can come on our platform and speak to those issues, but you’ll know where we stand on those issues in general. So I think just speaking truthfully on these issues and leading with humanity over gamified politics, both sides, to me, that’s the Meidas way.
Jordy Meiselas: And Ben, I just want to add to that as well, because I think you bring up such an excellent point. We’re not chasing politicians or people. People are inherently flawed. They’ll let you down. But values and strong core beliefs, I mean, that’s been really our North Star since we started, and this relentless relationship that we have with our community.
You know, I saw someone, a big name in the space, I won’t necessarily say his name here, but he said something that he never reads in the comments. I couldn’t disagree with that more. That’s so important to us, is to understand that immediate real-time feedback with our community, how are folks feeling about these issues every second of the day. And sure, it’s not always going to be pretty. Sometimes the comment section gets a little bit nasty.
But what we’ve seen is this way, we’re never talking at our audience. We’re talking with our audience. And in all this time as we grow, we’re having a conversation alongside our audience as we try and fight for these core beliefs.
Nicolle Wallace: I love that. And I quit Twitter or X after the election because it wasn’t that anymore. It wasn’t, I couldn’t even find the comments.
Brett Meiselas: Something change over there?
Nicolle Wallace: Maybe it’s the ketamine. But I conger for that. Like I’ve said, I miss Twitter from 2016 because I could find, sure there was other stuff there, and show me someone who doesn’t read their own hate comments and that person is lying. But you could also find your audience.
And I think, I always say I have a monogamous relationship with the viewers, like, and it really was cemented during the pandemic. But it’s harder and harder without X, and I’m on Bluesky now, but not all my viewers are on Bluesky. How do you scale that connection from what you’re sort of putting out there, the content, and the people that are consuming that so that it benefits everybody? That feels like the whole answer, not just to our politics, but to our media.
Brett Meiselas: I want to say this and I want to make it clear. And it’s related to your question, but I think it’s an important point to make, ‘cause it gets at exactly what you’re saying with what happened to X.
And ketamine aside, I think what’s going on is, in changing the algorithms that the way that he has with that app. And I think we are well aware of it here. We are all users of the platform. We’ve seen that shift. I think a lot of folks who use these social media platforms don’t quite realize that the information that is coming at them is not organic per se. It’s being pushed at them for certain reasons and there’s a finger being placed on the scale in whatever direction. And I think X is the most egregious example of that.
But I think far too many people get duped by it into thinking that that is the prevailing opinion of the populace. And I think politicians get afraid of it when they start seeing nasty comments that they’re getting. And I think there’s a world where I think we need to step back from the current kind of technological space that we’re in and understand that a lot of that isn’t real. A lot of it is kind of astroturfed. And I’ve seen my —
Nicolle Wallace: How do you do that? How do you, ‘cause I mean, fear is such a powerful emotion. How do you do that?
Brett Meiselas: Well, it’s hard. It’s really hard. And it’s something that scares me are these platforms and AI and what that means for it. When I look at a lot of the comments now that people get, a lot of the negative comments that come within the first few seconds of you making a post, they look like normal comments that are, you know, disagreeing with you. But I read them, I’m like, there’s no way a human being wrote this. I’m sorry, the punctuation is a little off. There’s something uncanny really about this comment.
And I’ll see, you know, on X, there’s all the blue check accounts, the accounts that pay to boost their posts. And so, the top replies will be these AI responses that are designed to make you feel bad about yourself. And that’s a frequent thing. And so, I think too often that’s then taken by politicians or media figures to go, okay, so this is what people believe right now. And I’m like, but is it, or is it what Elon Musk wants you to think people believe right now to push whatever the agenda it is?
Now, I think it requires a whole new level of media literacy that we may not even ever be able to catch up to because technology is moving so quickly. But I find when I’m able to read through these comments, I find that my filter, at least, I am able to tell, okay, this looks like AI, right?
But then there are comments that are constructive criticism that I think you need to be able to take and understand. And then there are comments that, you know, are concerned citizens who are making their thoughts clear. And I think it also requires us to step back and say, what’s real, what’s not real. are we being duped, you know, or is this legitimate? And the answers aren’t always so black and white with a lot of these things.
Ben Meiselas: But what I think is most important is building a real community, real people, real viewers who will follow you to whatever the next and new platforms are. Because people do yearn for a community, and whether it was with COVID or even before then, as things have gotten more digital, there have been a lot of barriers to people finding communities.
And what we see in certain situations is that people can find communities based on negative attributes and qualities, the other, hating on people, demonizing immigrants, and leaning into that. And then people can find community, though, with values and principles.
And so we’ve always tried to encourage that other type of community, let’s all join together. And that’s what, you know, our communities kind of self-labeled the Meidas Mighty. And that’s so important ‘cause wherever we go, the community’s always been there. And in fact, you know, they lead the way often.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: We’ll pause here. When we come back, we’ll have much more with Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas of the MeidasTouch podcast.
(Break)
Nicolle Wallace: You know, the right did this so much faster. And with the exception of your community, in a lot of ways better than the pro-democracy side. What did they figure out that, as you said, you’re the biggest for a reason. A lot of people are slow in pro-democracy and in the Democratic Party to figure out what you’ve all figured out. How did the right get this part so right so early?
Brett Meiselas: Well, I think there was an element of a lot of those right-wing creators at a certain point being kind of de-platformed for good reasons, and a lot of those, you know, after like January 6th and whatnot. And I feel like a lot of them went to these digital platforms and started communicating with people on these digital platforms. And that was the area where people were consuming a lot of their content.
And, you know, I could tell you right now how often, brothers, were we derided by having a digital-first approach over the past few years. I mean, people have written some really bad things about us for being too focused on digital. And the real way to reach people is by reaching people on television with, you know, GRP points and various things.
(Barking)
Nicolle Wallace: Oh, hi, dog.
Brett Meiselas: Oh, yeah, we know. We got doggies and babies and the whole bit over here.
And our focus was always like, there’s this passionate community of folks out here who are getting their information from these digital sources. So you could either abandon them and say that we only need to be here and anybody focused on this other thing is an idiot. Or you could accept the fact that this is where Americans are getting their information from.
And even the stuff that people are talking about when you go to Thanksgiving dinner or any gathering, a lot of the things that they’re talking about are things that percolated from a tweet to or by somebody’s Bluesky post or by a podcast.
And so, I think the 2024 election was a big wake-up call to folks. Like, holy crap, we should be paying attention to podcasts. We should be paying attention, you know, to these alternative forms of media. People are actually consuming content and are developing their worldviews in this way.
And so, I think we just, you know, we started with a very digital first approach just by the nature of, you know, low barrier to entry, you know, we could get our thoughts out easily. All you need is a microphone and a camera and you’re good to go. But I think part of it is that people on our sort of side of things, so to speak, I think they ceded the territory in a big way.
And by the way, it’s not to say, of course, you know, that going on MSNBC isn’t a great, you should be going on that. But you shouldn’t be ignoring, you know, all these other ways that people are consuming media, you know, as well. It’s why you should have a podcast. It’s why you should have a, you know, a TV show. It’s why you got to be reaching people where they are and people are everywhere at this point. It’s a fragmented audience out there.
Jordy Meiselas: Exactly, and that’s why when we started Meidas, it was very important to us at the beginning that we showed up on every platform. So, Nicolle, I’m in the same boat as you. I nuked my personal Twitter post-election. I mean, it’s a dumpster fire over there. But we still have the Meidas. And the brothers are still on it. So I let them, you know, check that territory out.
And it’s also because people are consuming their information in different ways. Just because something is resonating on a TikTok or a Bluesky, doesn’t mean that same audience is over there on Facebook or reacting to whatever news is over there.
Brett Meiselas: I remember TikTok, when we signed up for TikTok, people were like, isn’t that the app 14-year-olds use to do lip-syncing and dancing?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, right?
Brett Meiselas: And we’re like, no, there’s something here.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, yeah.
Ben Meiselas: You know, look, right-wing media, they understand the psychology of people, and they understand that people are suffering right now and are hurting. But see, they use it in a predatory way. They look at that fear, they speak to the fear, and then they blame another, and they build a community on that.
If you’re looking at the other side, you know, a lot of the audience really wants to know, are you my ally or not? Are you there with me, or are you going to switch and hedge on my very existence as a human being if I’m a transgender person, or if I’m gay? Are you going to hedge on that? Are you going to look at some poll-tested data and say that my life doesn’t matter to you, but you were with me before because all of a sudden, people are saying no to DEI?
You know, what I knew from my career representing Colin Kaepernick before embarking on this journey into media was when I started with Colin during the first Trump administration, nobody wanted to do a deal with us, nobody would return our call. We were persona non grata. We stood for something, we stood against what was going on. Then everybody who wouldn’t even talk to us wanted to do deals with us.
And then you have, you know, Trump comes back into power, or just more of the movement now anti-DEI, and then those people don’t return your phone calls. And they go, you don’t want to be one of those people. When you’re stepping into this space, you need to always be there with your audience and be a proud and loud fighter for your audience and say it with conviction.
And if you really don’t have conviction about these issues, then step aside, like don’t be in this space. Because if you do have convictions and you’re authentic and you truly care, it’s really not hard for me to decide how I’m going to program a specific segment or think about it because the values and principles lead and here it is, there’s not going to be a deviation from. I think that’s what’s often missing in, not just the politics, but just in the discourse, if we’re talking about what’s right-wing doing and what’s other people doing.
Nicolle Wallace: I want to associate myself with everything you just said, and I want to ask you to name names, if you think there’s anyone in the pro-democracy coalition that’s an elected official that’s walking that walk.
Ben Meiselas: You know, I think the Fight The Oligarch Tour with AOC and Bernie, and when I’ve seen Ro Khanna speak at that tour as well, you know, Ro Khanna will say, look, I represent the billionaires. I represent Silicon Valley. I have more billionaires in my district than anyone else. I’m saying tax them more. If I can say tax my own district more, nobody should be afraid of it.
When AOC and Bernie, as part of their speech, looked into the audience and said, we want to hear what you have to say. What does it mean to you to live paycheck to paycheck? And you would hear the people say, that’s the decision if I’m going to pay my rent or be able to put a meal on the table for my kids. Someone screamed out, psychological torture. And they listened, and then they spoke to those issues.
And here’s the wild thing to me. It’s borne out by the crowds. They’re getting crowd sizes at those events that are 2x-3x the Trump rallies and the Trump events during the presidential election. I mean, we’re talking about 30,000 people here, 19,000 people here in an off year, in an off election year.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, in February after, yeah.
Ben Meiselas: In February. And then you’ll have people go, well, I don’t really. I’m like, the people are telling you what they want. Like that’s clearly where people are right now, and where they always are. And so, speak to them, listen to them. So to me, people who emulate that model, I think are going to end up on the right side of these issues. And they should follow that model because that’s really where they are, not because of some coarse political calculus.
Brett Meiselas: I want to give a shout out too to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who I found fantastic. I mean, he’s somebody who’s been laser focused on the sort of kitchen table issues, so to speak, for the people in his state. And he’s also somebody who stood steadfast by his values in a state where I’m sure it could be very difficult to stand by those values. I mean, he’s been very outspoken for LGBTQ rights, a passionate defense of gay people, of transgender people in a state like Kentucky, and he holds a 67% approval rating.
I think you look at that, I think it flies in the face of all these other sort of poll tested ideas about what you need to believe, what you need to be saying in the Democratic Party right now, when you look at the governor of Kentucky with a 67% approval rating, who isn’t afraid to say these things. Because I think even if people disagree with him, they know that he is coming at it from a place of authenticity. And I think that’s kind of the most important thing.
And I think that’s one of the things that also connects folks like Andy Beshear, and like Bernie, and like AOC, and like Pete Buttigieg, who I think is the single best communicator out there right now, bar none in any political party, when you look at people like Wes Moore. I think you see passionate folks who are standing by their values.
Jordy Meiselas: Exactly. And I’m living here in Pennsylvania, and I just have to give a shout out to my governor here, Josh Shapiro, who’s an excellent communicator on the ground here. I think he’s hit every single county in Pennsylvania. And it’s great to see him on the ground interacting with folks, because his message here really resonates well.
Nicolle Wallace: You know, one of the things that folks say that doesn’t really bear out in your theory of the case, which is that if you connect to real people in their real lives, it’s a guiding principle that should sort of be that hot knife in cold butter and get you through any debate or news cycle.
The Democrats seem to have gotten wrapped around the axle of worrying about defending things that are so flagrantly unlawful, disappearing people and sending them to a third country indefinitely for no reason other than that they were mistakenly swept up by the Trump administration’s own telling.
A lot of Democrats are standing up, they’re protesting, some have been arrested. But it feels like the party, as a whole, has some timidity around the issue of immigration. They’re psyched out maybe that people waived mass deportation signs at the Republican convention and Trump won. How do you look at an issue like that, that Trump is clearly not doing what even his own voters were enthusiastic about? They were enthusiastic about deporting adjudicated violent criminals.
But take away the common sense deportations and there’s no public support for deporting people who have been in this country and made their lives here or have children here or central to a community’s economy. And the Democrats still seem to be timid about speaking out for them.
Brett Meiselas: Right. It’s one of those issues where the polls could be misleading on things. Because like you said, when you view the immigration issue as a whole, they might say, oh, they support strong immigration policy. You dig into that, do you support disappearing a person who was here on protected status and sending them to an El Salvadoran prison? Suddenly people aren’t so for that. And so, I think people need to stand for their values. I think they need to present the case for what they want to do on immigration policy. And I think that also needs to include a positive forward-thinking policy.
I feel like I kind of came of age, politically speaking, during the Obama era. He was the first president who I voted for. And I remember he had a very, I think he had a lot of clarity around this issue of immigration. And I remember him speaking so much about dreamers and the importance of ensuring that there are pathways to citizenship. And he also took the border quite seriously and I think deported more folks than even Trump did or anybody did. But he did it the right way when he did it. And so, I think folks can learn a lot from that.
But I think sort of bending over and saying, we’re just going to let Trump kind of do whatever he wants here because this is a losing issue for us, I think that’s a mistake. I think in the vacuum of your proactive ideas on an issue, you simply allow somebody else like a Donald Trump to come in with his slogans and just run roughshod over you when it doesn’t have to be that way. You could actually have a clear vision that you’re presenting to the American people.
Ben Meiselas: You know, if you think about, I mean, the stories that I’ve done also that have really resonated with our audience were stories on immigration. You know, we did an in-depth coverage of what went down in San Diego and the South Park area with the Buona Forchetta restaurant that was raided.
I did another story before that, actually, the three stories recently, I did a big kind of in-depth piece on what happened in Tallahassee and the ICE raids of construction sites there. And it’s going to harm businesses, you know, there.
And then I did one recently at Milford High School, the 18-year-old Gomes.
Nicolle Wallace: The volleyball student. Yeah.
Ben Meiselas: The star volleyball player at the team. He was going to play in the band at the graduation. He was, you know, racially profiled by ICE, detained and, you know, showing the human element as well. And this is where local media does a good job, I think, reporting on these stories. And I try to uplift a lot of, you know, what I see there, because sometimes if you look at a local media report of it on YouTube, it’ll get like 400 views on a big story like that. And it deserves, you know, easily 400,000 in the first hour.
And so, I’ll highlight, here’s a great reporter doing local coverage. And they often highlight the human element of it as well, which they show Gomes’ girlfriend, how the high school students all, you know, were out there protesting and did a walkout at Milford High School, how it’s impacted the entire community.
And again, it’s one of those issues where, you know, it’s not my job, and I don’t see my role as someone who runs a media and news network to coach any political party, this is what you should do, or this is what you should not do. But what I think we can do is show when you message with authenticity, a reaction that you get from human beings when you lead with humanity.
And then when I do reports like that, I talk about my personal story. I mean, you know, my daughter’s half Mexican. Her name is Ximena. Her mom’s first generation. Her parents crossed the border. And I talk about how it’s affecting her community, you know, in East L.A. and how people are very worried there. And so, I also bring in a level of personalization so that my audience knows that I’m not just a robot, like apparently Donald Trump thinks former President Biden is, and that I’m a real living human being. And here’s what I’m going through and make a connection on that basis.
Nicolle Wallace: What’s it like for your families, for you guys to be so huge? Not suddenly, I know it’s been a build. But what is it like for your families?
Jordy Meiselas: I think our parents are excited about it. What I think they like most about it, or I know they like most about it, is that we’re doing it together, and we’re doing it as brothers, and we’re doing it with the values and beliefs that they instilled in us growing up, and we’re putting that into the network, and to see it resonating on such a wide scale. They’re proud. They’re proud for sure.
Brett Meiselas: The funny thing, Nicolle, I was going to say, we all work out of our homes and our rooms, and I think don’t go out much. And so, just even the question kind of makes me laugh, because I have to sort of accept the fact that this is a very big platform and things. And when we do go out, it is cool when folks come over and say, oh, your podcast is the best, thank you so much for your channel, and all that stuff. But every day, we’re just kind of putting our heads down and doing everything. I think our parents are super psyched about us all working together, like Jordy said.
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Nicolle Wallace: We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with the Meiselas Brothers. Stay right here.
(Break)
Nicolle Wallace: What is the magic of the brother piece?
Jordy Meiselas: Ben?
Ben Meiselas: Jordy, you’re the empath. The empath of us.
Jordy Meiselas: What was that? And empath?
Ben Meiselas: An empath.
Jordy Meiselas: Yeah, you had it right the first time.
Nicolle Wallace: I can see that.
Ben Meiselas: Yeah, so you’re the empath.
Jordy Meiselas: I think it works so well, because we–
Nicolle Wallace: Brothers.
Jordy Meiselas: We know each other’s strengths, and we know each other’s weaknesses very well. And that was just inherent. You know, we’re very fortunate. We’re a team, and we’ve been a team, well, our whole lives. And that’s, you know, when we were growing up, we would make films in our front yard or whatever, or movies and things like that for school projects. And we’re always working together in various ways, and we always wanted to work together. And life just took us in various directions, Ben with law, Brett with digital, and me with my marketing background. And then when COVID happened, we were able to combine these skill sets and our past working behaviors with each other.
Sure, I get teased a lot by the brothers, but I got thick skin for it, and I think it made me a stronger person. And we combined these skills and we just put it all into the network. And fortunately, they were skills that played off of each other very well.
And like, we’re brothers that genuinely love each other. And we really, you know, view this as an incredible opportunity, not just for us, but something that we could really do for this country, and for, you know, just generations to come, not just for our kids, but for kids down the line. A media network that’s not just competing with Fox News, but surpassing Fox News.
So, you know, we’re incredibly serious about it is what we’re doing. But at the end of the day, too, we are brothers, and we get to have our little brother banter here and there. And it’s, you know, very familial. But that familialness that we have with the brothers, that’s exactly what comes into the network. And I think that’s what this pro-democracy audience, or the Meidas Mighty, as they call themselves, that’s what they feel, too. They feel this sense of family and community, and that’s the biggest thing.
Brett Meiselas: Yeah, I mean, what is a community, ultimately, but a big family? And so, you know, we actually start it, you know, at its core with the family element. And I think when we do these reports, and when folks go and they listen to the MeidasTouch podcast, and they hear us, you know, bantering or bickering, or, you know, reporting on what’s going on that day, and analyzing everything, you know, I hope it lets kind of folks into our family a little bit and makes it clear that this is, you know, not necessarily about any one of us individually, but about kind of us as a collective, and that we all have the same missions, and that we all, you know, want what’s best for the country.
And we may have disagreements here or there, but ultimately, we all have our kind of guiding North Star, that we want normalcy, we want an end to the chaos, and, you know, that we’re all in this together.
Jordy Meiselas: It’s always funny when people ask us about us, ‘cause I feel like we like, that’s when we get the most read.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, those are the worst questions. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I asked any of them.
Jordy Meiselas: No, no, no.
Ben Meiselas: Jordy’s an empath.
Nicolle Wallace: So let me try to hijack your genius for my day ahead. Like, what is your editorial process? Like, how do you look at all the shit that’s happened since you’ve, I mean, and I guess some of it is your intervals, right? Like, you’re out there, you’re responsive to the news. Like, I’m on when I’m on, and that seems like an important piece of it. But what is your editorial process?
Ben Meiselas: We have a full editorial team. It’s led by Ron Filipkowski, who’s our editor-in-chief. And then we have a guy named Asin (ph), who does all of the clips of everything from congressional hearings to big speeches, to clips from your show and other shows. And, you know, he breaks them down into the 90 second, you know, to two minute highlights of the most important things from the shows.
But we have a full-fledged editorial team of about eight people, and they go through everything. And we’re on a group chat with them. I refuse to, what’s the thing that you all want me to be on?
Jordy Meiselas: Slack, Ben.
Nicolle Wallace: Slack.
Ben Meiselas: I refuse to do Slack.
Nicolle Wallace: Me, too.
Ben Meiselas: And so we’re on a group text message. So I’m on like 35 different text message threads with people versus one Slack.
Nicolle Wallace: Has Hegseth added you to any of his?
Brett Meiselas: I mean, come on. We have not been added into any war plan chats, unfortunately, but we’re still waiting on the day.
Nicolle Wallace: Okay, it’ll come.
Ben Meiselas: On my iPhone, I probably have, I want to say 30,000. I take screenshots of everything.
Nicolle Wallace: I take screenshots too, yeah. We are dinosaurs.
Ben Meiselas: And then I look at the screenshots and then I kind of storyboard.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, yeah.
Brett Meiselas: Nicolle, do you also then write over the screenshots in an indecipherable scribble, your notes, and then give them to the rest of the team and hope that we understand it like it’s some sort of a beautiful mind document?
Nicolle Wallace: I’m going to stay out of that. I’m going to take the fifth. But I mean, I think that everyone has their own methods, and I appreciate that you shared them because, obviously, the end product is so perfect.
I want to ask you guys if you have advice for us, those of us still in the traditional media, but eager to be as connected to our viewers as you guys are?
Ben Meiselas: Brett?
Brett Meiselas: Well, I think, ultimately, whether you’re at a huge company or whether you’re starting on your own, I think it’s about you as an individual, right? I think the anchors, the reporters, the people who are using their voice are often the people who have the power and who have that connection with the audience. And so, I think you have to know your audience, you have to have respect for your audience and you have to understand they’re coming to you because they trust you.
It’s a world of such fragmented media where people do have a choice to get their information from a billion different sources that are being thrown at them every day. So why are they coming to you? And I think ultimately, if you could kind of answer that why or at least hover around that why, I think it’s super helpful. And I, certainly, do not need to be giving advice to you. You have the number one show and you’re the best.
Nicolle Wallace: No, but I’m always trying to, I mean, but I think it’s this moment where, and I always say this, all the news is on their phones. So they already know what happened, what are we doing? And I mean, Rachel’s our North Star here. And I mean, I think a lot of those stories that you covered, she also lifted up and a lot of the local coverage has been unbelievable on this front because it is by and large stripped of all partisan affiliation. It’s what you do, it’s just the information.
But I think this is a moment where if we don’t sort of dig down and make sure we know that we’re doing everything intelligently, I also think that all of us leaning on each other and lifting up the pro-democracy side, media, politics, it is, if you look at countries that have made it, and I want to ask all of you, if you think we’re going to make it as a democracy, but they’ve banded together and they don’t view other folks inside the pro-democracy side as competition. They’re sharing best practices. And that’s where I think we could all benefit from what you guys do.
Brett Meiselas: That’s funny. It’s funny you talk about competition ‘cause I’ve never viewed, when people ever ask like, who’s your competition? I never really have a good answer for that in terms of like in the space, ‘cause I’m always happy when others are kind of entering it and when others are coming out with their podcasts or going onto YouTube and stuff.
In my opinion, it’s kind of like a rising tide lifts all boats sort of thing where, ultimately, everyone’s going to be watching each other’s stuff anyway. So if someone can bring their audience into this new platform or this platform that we already exist on, then that’s great.
But I think one of the big things too also comes to an issue of prioritization. And as Ben kind of hit on earlier, people are scared right now, and rightfully so. And people feel pain and people are watching rights that they’ve maybe taken for granted for a long time, being stripped away from them. Some people maybe were told their entire life, you go to college, you get a degree, you’ll be able to have a job and have a family and have a couple of vacations a year and you get to live the American dream. It’s not happening for a lot of people right now.
And so, I think in a world where people are focused so much on these issues and they’re watching what’s happening every day from what’s going on inside this White House and just the callousness and the very like, whatever hurts the Libs is what we want to do, and just tearing families apart and ripping away people’s health insurance, and all these things that people have serious fears over. And then if somebody goes ahead and focuses on an issue that may be popular in the Beltway but isn’t quite what people are speaking about at their home, I think people just lose a lot of faith and lose a lot of trust in it.
So I think one of the things that we always try to do is just remain laser-focused on what we think are kind of the real biggest issues, what our audience is really concerned about, worried about, actions we could take. And I think that’s a big driving factor.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you guys optimistic? Are you optimistic that you’re on the side, that we’re on the side that’s going to win?
Ben Meiselas: I’m very optimistic because I think by now, Trump and Musk thought that they would have crushed all opposition and resistance. I think they felt very confident when they had all the people going to Mar-a-Lago and kissing the ring at first, that they had it all under control. I think people, really up until February, just didn’t even want to look at it. And there was this sense of, would there be a resistance? Would there be an opposition?
And I think right now the opposition, the resistance to this authoritarian regime, which is what I call it, I think is stronger than ever. I think it’s stronger than it was during the first term. I think it’s going to continue to get stronger.
I mean, look, I’m sad to see essential services get destroyed. It pains me to see the suffering that has happened and that will inevitably continue to happen based on decisions already made and what’ll happen in the future. I’m not naive to the challenges or that the effort is going to be, is full-fledged authoritarianism at the end of the day. But I am confident that the opposition and resistance continues to grow, that the regime continues to weaken, and that these values that made us, really the United States of America, starting with democracy and being a melting pot and actually having communities that lift each other up first, punch each other down. I think those values ultimately prevail, although it’s not going to be easy.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you worry about most? I mean, have they come for you guys, seeing your power and your connection and your numbers to talk in terms of resistance (ph)?
Ben Meiselas: I don’t worry about that. I don’t worry, yes. And frequently, and there are death threats frequently. There’s, you know, I don’t even want to get into some of this stuff to give anybody ideas of what could possibly, what they could do. But see, it even makes my dogs upset.
Nicolle Wallace: I was going to say, your dog does.
Ben Meiselas: But the personal side of it has never been a factor. The part that gets me worried and upset are things like what happens during hurricane season when FEMA is significantly reduced, you know, what’s going to happen if there’s another serious, and there already is, with new strands of COVID and measles outbreaks and E. coli. What happens when you have RFK Jr. covering of data and statistics? And that’s what worries me more than anything kind of personal.
Nicolle Wallace: I was thinking this, if we had another pandemic, I think the information ecosystem is different than it was even the first time Trump was there. And I think, you know, you talk about building a community around trust. You’ve also brought in experts and expertise. And I wonder if you’ve done any sort of scenarios where, you know, if something, the hurricanes are a perfect example. I mean, they’ve got people involved in emergency response who don’t know anything about the emergencies. Do you feel more responsibility as they’re purging the experts out of the government?
Ben Meiselas: Yeah, it’s why we are leaning into, as we build the platform, build all of these extensions. So you references Meidas Health led by Dr. Vin Gupta.
Nicolle Wallace: I love him, yeah.
Ben Meiselas: And it gives him a format in an hour to bring the top scientists, the top epidemiologists, you know, and they can speak to the audience. And rather than reinvent the wheel and create a whole other podcast for it, we bring that right onto our podcast feed. And we don’t look to those endeavors as saying, is this going to be profitable or not profitable? You know, we view it as that’s part of the mission, get the best science out there in front of the people, and this may save lives.
And so, when you talk about scaling, you know, we scale all of these channels, but we also start planting all of these other seeds, thinking not just rapid response for 24 hours, but what are we going to do 2, 5, 10, 15 years from now? And our plan is more of a 15, 30-year plan. The way we’ve always thought about things is what’s going to happen in 2032 and 2036, and where are we then versus where are we going to be in a specific election cycle?
Nicolle Wallace: Where are we going to be in 2032?
Ben Meiselas: Well, I think in 2032, we will be back where we should be. I mean, I think people will recognize all of the horrible things when they’ve seen Project 2025 in play.
And my view, going back to the last question where I’m optimistic, is I think we embrace diversity. I think we embrace that climate change is a real thing. And again, it’s going to be a bumpy ride to get there. But I think whoever’s going to emerge from the Democratic Party is going to be unequivocal, no equivocating, you know, and stand for these things. And that’s what’s going to be a winner.
I think that’s where people want to go. You know, I think it’s going to take a lot of work for America to regain trust in the international community. That ain’t going to be easy. I mean, but I’m confident in our future.
Nicolle Wallace: You guys have been so generous with your time. I could talk to you all day long. Can we do this again?
Brett Meiselas: Please. And anytime. And congrats again on the show. We’re so happy that you started it. And it’s really an honor to be on.
Nicolle Wallace: Oh, the honor is all mine. Jordy, I feel like I could help you with some pranks as the empath, right?
Jordy Meiselas: Oh, we could go with that.
Brett Meiselas: Don’t give him any ideas.
Jordy Meiselas: We can for sure get them back, absolutely.
Nicolle Wallace: I don’t know. I just, I feel like we could, you know, have a side chat, a side chat for all your good times.
Jordy Meiselas: I like that, yes, please.
Brett Meiselas: He’s going to need it.
Ben Meiselas: I’m all for it.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you guys.
Jordy Meiselas: Thank you so much.
Ben Meiselas: Thank you.
(Music Playing)
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