9/20/20 Ben Meiselas, One of the Golden Boys with the MeidasTouch
Ben Meiselas is the co-founder of the MeidasTouch Network (MTN), which he started with his brothers, Brett and Jordan. The MeidasTouch is responsible for thousands of anti-Trump videos on YouTube and other social media sites. They have posted over 6,500,000 videos and have over 1.6 million subscribers according to YouTube.
Ben and his brothers promised to always state the truth on their MeidasTouch vids. In the 11/28/2020 issue of the “Hollywood Reporter,” Brett stated, “We are very careful and put a lot of thought into our messaging and into everything that we create, but we also don’t sit on it for weeks to make sure that everything about it is absolutely perfect. [emphasis added]. We need to be current. We need to be provocative. We need to be truthful and on top of it and continuously get the message out.”
A Google search showed some cracks.
During the December 2020 debate between Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), a strand of her long hair appeared lighter than other strands. Her critics claimed that this was proof that she was wearing a wire, and Ben was one of those critics. He shared this theory with his 100,000+ followers. The allegation was soon refuted.
The Meiselas brothers’ transparency took another hit after an interview with Seth Hettena, a freelance writer for the Rolling Stone. He interviewed the brothers in December 2010, and the article ran in the April 2021 issue. The headline read, “The Trouble with MeidasTouch,” and the opening continued, “The brothers behind the breakout anti-Trump PAC are the golden boys of the #Resistance, but when ‘Rolling Stone’ took a look beneath the surface, their response turned Trumpian.” Ouch!
Mr. Hettena continued, “The group spent more than $1 million on an advertising strategy that it calls revolutionary but campaign veterans and independent experts say is nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections. And despite its promised transparency, MeidasTouch’s financial structure makes a dollar-for-dollar accounting of its spending impossible — and, according to a former Federal Election Commission attorney, raises some of the same legal issues that got the Trump campaign into trouble in 2020.” That had to hurt.
The brothers made the declaration that they had supported Democratic nominees with their money. Mr. Hettena made the distinction that MeidasTouch were using other people’s money, not their own.
The brothers used their platform to protest Mr. Hettena’s article in a 40-minute rant. Among other statements, Ben declared that he doesn’t earn a salary for his work on MeidasTouch and that he has also shut down a significant portion of his law practice since Covid started. He described Mr. Hettena as a hack freelance who wants to write a journalistic hit piece on them because of their SuperPAC status.
Is Seth Hettena really a hack? To find out, I did a background check on the investigative journalist. A Google Scholar search yielded many links. I learned that he wrote two books: Trump/Russia: A Definitive History, which documented the two world leaders’ history together. Jane Mayer, author of “The New York Times’bestseller, Dark Money, wrote "Hettena is a first-rate reporter and wonderful story-teller, and the tale he tells here is mind-boggling.”
Hettena clearly supports the anti-Trump rhetoric created by the Meiselas brothers, but he has a problem with their SuperPac status. For starters, the reporter stated that after the brothers declared a six-figure advertising airtime buy, a search of invoices TV stations filed with the Federal Communications Commission shows the group spent less than $80,000 worth of donor money.
I don’t share Ben Meiselas’s opinion that Seth Hettena is a political hack. He has written two well-received books and was endorsed by a New York Times columnist. In addition to The Rolling Stone, Mr. Hettena has written for other reputable journals like The New Republic, and he is currently working on an expose of the CIA and Navy Seals in Iraq. Mr. Hettena applauds the MeidasTouch Network for the good that they do. His problem is with SuperPacs in general, an opinion he shares with many others. The Brennan Center for Justice outlined those concerns on their website. as documented in their blog “10 Years of Super PACs Show Courts Were Wrong on Corruption Risks.
The MeidasTouch continues to air hundreds of videos per month. The ex-president is less of a focal point in these videos as the brothers have targeted other far right Republicans as well.
As the saying goes, nobody is perfect, which clearly applies to the Meiselas brothers. But I applaud their efforts trying to keep our nation intact.
