Snapshot · The MeidasTouch Podcast
Bill Pulte serves as acting Director of National Intelligence without passing a security background check or having prior national intelligence experience.
Where this was said
At 11:21 · chapter starts 10:40
Meiselas introduces a chart comparing stock trades made by U.S. presidents since 1990. Every president before Trump barely registers — even Trump's first term shows some activity but nothing remarkable. The current term is in a category entirely its own: 21,000 trades across 8 investment accounts, averaging 80 per day. Trump is played again defending himself, claiming he has 'many people' managing a 'blind account' and that he never speaks to them. Meiselas then plays Trump calling the Qatar jet 'maybe the greatest commercial plane ever built' and noting the first flight will be to the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library opening. The juxtaposition — extraordinary personal enrichment alongside a foreign-gifted luxury jet — drives Meiselas's central argument about Trump's priorities.
Trump told Bill Pulte, his acting DNI who has no security clearances and no national intelligence background, that he could 'declassify whatever you want.' The Senate has withheld FISA reauthorization partly because of Pulte's appointment.
A total of 8 states have filed lawsuits against social media platforms, including an ongoing case in Tennessee, using product liability and public nuisance theories to seek accountability.
France built 56 nuclear plants in the 1970s and now has the cheapest energy in Europe, making it independent of Russian or Middle Eastern energy geopolitics.
Estonia has a single tax form, a law preventing the government from asking citizens for the same information twice, and a flat rate of tax — enabling competitive taxation.
Portugal's Lisbon, once a city with a major heroin problem, legalised drugs and redirected enforcement spending into rehabilitation and housing, dramatically reducing crime.
The first Boland Amendment banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras passed the House unanimously — yet the Reagan administration ignored it.
Over just two years, Saudi Arabia alone donated $32 million to the Contra rebels, giving loosely affiliated factions millions they had no way to spend on arms.
The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty raised $6.3 million for the Contras but only $3.3 million reached them — a shockingly low 52% program expense rate.
Richard Secord and Albert Hakim marked up their arms shipments to the Contras by as much as 300%, making enormous personal profits from the covert operation.
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, tapped to run the entire covert Contra support operation, had no prior experience in covert operations whatsoever — he was learning as he went.
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