Thursday Afternoon Breaking Updates with Ben 7/30/26

The MeidasTouch Podcast

Ben Mays delivers urgent breaking news analysis on escalating global conflicts, exposing U.S. military failures, Trump's dangerous rhetoric, and systemic disinformation. He details Iranian drone strikes on Jordan’s Muwaf

Key takeaways

• Iranian drones struck Muwafik air base in Jordan, possibly destroying F-35s; satellite imagery from European/Russian sources confirms damage.

Transcript preview

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Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. Welcome to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Mays, and this is our breaking news here. And I say our because this is all about the community right here. And I just want to say at the outset of this show, how grateful I am for this community. And, you know, as we are kind of putting the finishing touches up on the book promotional tour, the WTF America, I just want to say like everything we're trying to do is to honor you, the audience and to dedicate it to you. And I, you know, I always am making sure that you're front and center of my mind. And so even though it's authored by me, Brett, and Jordy, I make sure in the book that one of the central lessons is this community. And as we break down the breaking news today, I mean, we're talking about stuff that corporate news is completely ignoring. that's the real story about what's actually happening right now. And there are wars throughout the world right now. All of the kind of fearmongering of Trump and MAGA during the Biden years of, oh, there's going to be war everywhere, and Biden's being weak and all of these things. Actually, with Biden, there was no new never-ending wars initiated by the United States. States. And under Trump, the wars continue to spread. And so we were very early in reporting this morning on Russia's strikes in Western Ukraine in Leviv, massive strikes in Leviv, lots of casualties, but that the Russian ballistics went into eastern Poland. And there were sirens. going on there in Lublin. And in this Lublin area, that's where Zelensky was meeting yesterday with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. And one of the things that I've flagged, actually, and what's concerning to me, and I know we show lots of videos of Zelensky striking these Wildberries logistical facilities in Russia, that's like the Amazon that they have in Russia. and Zelensky's destroyed a lot of these. A lot of cargo ships, tankers in the Black Sea, in the Sea of Azov, right by the Black Sea. I know they have. You know, Russia is striking a lot in Ukraine as well. I don't want to paint this picture sometimes of like, oh, it's just a one-sided victory. Ukraine's taking a lot of casualties as well. And a lot of residential, a civilian areas are under constant. instant attack by Russia and a lot of Ukrainian tankers and cargo ships are also being hit. But one of the things that actually concerned me before is when Trump has been, I believe, pretending that he's more sympathetic to Zelensky getting interceptors and giving Zelensky a license. First off, we don't have the capability really to give interceptors right now. our interceptor stockpile has dwindled where the U.S. is running out of interceptors. So when Iran strikes our bases like the Muawfiq base in Jordan or the base in Kuwait or Bahrain or wherever, the U.S. sometimes is not even shooting its interceptors because every fat interceptor costs like $12.5 million. dollars. Every Pack 3 Patriot costs around $4.5 million. And so we are running very low on our interceptors. But what certainly concerns me is I don't trust Trump with anything. And so when he tells Zelensky, you know, let's meet. We may give you these things. You know, tell me about what's going on in the war, my own red flags is, is Trump just going to reach out to Putin right away and say, look at what Zelensky's been telling me, or can you believe that I said this to him? And then, you know, yesterday, when Donald Trump was asked a question about Zelensky, are you going to help Zelensky? What was Trump's answer? Well, I just want him to end the war. It'll just be easy. Just Zelensky, you got to end the war. What does that mean? Just to give up all of eastern Ukraine. And when you start to see the Laura Loomers and the Tim Pools and all of them kind of start to act like, well, they're no longer pro Russia and they're pro Ukraine. And then our corporate news kind of gives them these glowing profiles, like profiles and courage. I'm like, okay, first off, all of these people all of a sudden are saying this, that does not raise kind of red flags to you before just glorifying these people as, oh, now they've changed. I don't know. That's a red flag. And then for me, it's like one of Trump's tactics in order to try to get people to submit is he'll use all these manipulation tactics, including like love bombing. And then he'll pretend that he likes you and that you're part of the crew and he's got your back. But he doesn't. He doesn't. This is Donald Trump to Putin bootlicker. That's who he is. That's who he's always been. and I view what Trump is doing as actually just another strategy of figuring out how to ultimately deliver Eastern Ukraine to Putin. That's, you know, you can call me conspiracy, but that's kind of what I believe is actually going on. And I think Trump will drag on these discussions. Okay, the license is coming. The license is coming. Don't worry. We'll get you the interceptors. And then I think that never actually arrived. You know, when Zelensky was forced to be independent of the United States and Trump, that's where they developed all of these innovative weapons, the FP1s, the FP2 drones, long-range drones, the FP5s called the flamingos, right? They were forced to do that because the U.S. was not only not giving Ukraine the weapons, but promised that they would be giving Europe the weapons to give to you. Ukraine for sale. And then because of the catastrophic war in Iran, I think that is partially one of the reasons we run out of interceptors, but also Trump has slow rolled that process. So I want to flag that because Trump promised on day one he would end the catastrophic, this catastrophic war, Russia's war on Ukraine. And here we are recording this live July 30th. And things are escalating. Russia had to impose export controls on its crude because Ukraine is successfully striking its major refineries, especially those FP5 flamingos have been able to reach very long distance, and the FP1s and FP2 drones have been able to hit deep within Russia. And so Russia's reeling when it comes to its ability, its refineries to work and operate. But also, Ukraine is being hit, too. So things are worse there. Then you look at the Middle East and before we went live, you had Saudi Arabia striking in Sana, the capital of Yemen. The Houthis control that area. That's Western Yemen. The Houthis had previously retaliated on another Saudi Arabian strike on Sana, and the Houthis blew up three major refineries in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia signaled via Axios and Trump's stenographer that it wanted de-escalation, which I believe was kind of a form of deception because they didn't want de-escalation. I think Saudi Arabia is actually preparing for a potential ground invasion of Western Yemen. And so they leaked this, I believe, to Axios, and they sent MBS's brother to go to the United States, I think as part of a decoy before these strikes took place because Barack Ravid and others at Axios published. Saudi Arabia wants de-escalation. Well, it actually seems like escalation has taken place. So what I expect to happen shortly is the Houthis, obviously, part of the access of of resistance with Iran will now strike more refineries in Saudi Arabia. So I expect that to happen. You had the United States launching more strikes in Iran. We'll see ultimately if the escalation is what Donald Trump threatened. But one of the things that occurred yesterday, and I reported on this, on the various shows we were doing, Donald Trump goes to state regime media Fox. we're going to blow the effing s out of them is what Trump said. Blow that. Just think about the president of the United States speaking like that. We're going to blow the effing s out of them. I mean the day before we're working towards a deal. They want to do a deal. Everything's going to. We're going to blow the Fing S out of them. They want to do a deal, but we're going to blow the Fing S out of them. So Trump says to Trey Yinks over in state regime media Fox, we're going to blow the Fing S out of them. to which Iran then responds by sending a drone to strike the Damiana port in Egypt. Why did they do that? Well, they then sent a warning to Pakistan and Qatar and the other mediating bodies. And Egypt also has attempted at times to be a mediating body that we can expand this thing, Trump, beyond Hormuz, beyond Bob El Mondeb, right, straight of Hormuz, Persian Gulf, right? Bob El Mondeab Red Sea. And then the port of Damiata, Mediterranean, Egyptian port. We can go there. And that was the message that Iran wanted to send. We can escalate this in other locations if we want to also. and then working with the Houthis saying, if Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, if you all think that you're going to avoid the control by Iran and the Strait of Hormuz and the Houthis and Bob El Mondeb by trying to build pipelines, whether it's from Fugera with UAE, whether it's pipelines that go from the east to the west in Saudi Arabia, we're going to strike those pipelines. We're going to hit them. We're going to destroy those pipelines. And the Houthis in Iran, they're not bluffing. I mean, they're doing these things. And so the United States did strike areas of Iran. They hit Keshim. It looks like they killed a family in Keshim, like a civilian family. In Keshim during the U.S. strikes last night. The U.S. hit some other areas. It wasn't yet the we're going to blow the Fing S out of them. That's not the show. But it was still a strike of significance. then Iran responded, and I'm going to do a video on this in a little bit as well, by hitting, once again, the salty Muawthic air base in Jordan. That's where those three service members were previously killed. There's another service member killed in Erbil in Iraq. But if you looked at the imagery and the satellite footage that we have access to here, it does appear, go back to the other one there, Jeremy first, because we'll show Kuwait in a moment. But in this Muwafik, salty base in Jordan, it looks like one, maybe two F-35s were destroyed by Iran. And, I mean, we can see where those F-35s were positioned. And the intelligence Iran has is kind of scary good, whether it's being provided by China, Russia, or whoever. Because it seemed that those F-35s were just moved in and boom from the footage. Now, is it possible those are not F-35s, but they look like F-35s from the satellite footage? Possible. But those look like the F-35s. And it looks like multiple, at least one, but probably multiple. But clearly something, I mean, the base was hit. Mouafik was hit again, hard. and that's in Jordan. Then in Kuwait, we're seeing the satellite footage as well. We can show the other one now, Jeremy. And this is Ali al-Salam Air Base in Kuwait. Two drone hangars look like they were fully destroyed. And this is an area. The satellite imagery confirms the impact by Iran's drones at the hangar where Iran claimed that they hit. Now, CENTCOM has banned U.S. private companies. from publishing this type of satellite imagery. So we get this from Sentinel 2, European-based, Russia, satellite imagery, Chinese satellite imagery. Now, is it possible that this is AI and it's manipulated and it's not real? Sure. Possible. But what we've seen sad, this is a sad thing to admit, as someone who considers themselves the patriotic American. And I think the ultimate form of patriotism is criticizing when you have a fascist war criminal regime like we do right now in the United States. If you want to call yourself patriotic, I think that's your duty to call out what's happening. But you have CENTCOM posting absurd lies. and it seems that when I see the satellite imagery on Tasneem or Mares or Farr or whatever, that it tended to prove to be accurate, right? The U.S. would deny that there were these casualties or these deaths. And then we would learn, no, those deaths happened and the casualties happen. They just reported it later once they were basically forced to. And so you take a look right here about what ZENCOM is putting out. This is what they say. Over the past few hours, Iranian state media continued to report false claims by the IRGC. Three in particular, first claim. The IRGC claims free and open routes through the straight of hermuse are dangerous for commercial vessels. Like, let's just take that one. Okay. First claim by the IRGC. IRGC claims free and open routes through the straight of Hormuz are dangerous for commercial vessels. And the U.S. is saying that's false. Okay, you lose all credibility after that. What do you mean that's false? Of course, that's a true statement by a run. I mean, objectively, you're saying it's not dangerous to cross the strait of Hormuz. You're saying false. You make us all stupid. Stop. Of course it, by the way, saying it is dangerous, that's just an objective damn fact. That's not a, oh, my God. So if you're lying about that, if you're saying that the IRGC, is falsely claiming that it's not safe to go through the Strait of Hormuz. If you're saying that that Iran claim is false, then you've lost me on everything. You have zero credibility when you then say over here, no U.S. aircraft were destroyed or damaged in recent attempted Iranian attacks. All missiles and drones were intercepted or failed to reach targeted areas. This is not, it's just false. We know it hit targeted areas. Now, if you want to make the argument that