#1419 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | BlackRock Is All-In On Bitcoin

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss what Blackrock is telling investors about bitcoin & crypto, why so many people are becoming Republicans that used to be Democrats, how America is spending its money, Trump & Kamala, FEMA, and the job market. ======================= Buy book: https://www.amazon.com/Live-Extraordinary-Life-Anthony-Pompliano/dp/0857199927/ ======================= Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.xapobank.com/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to join. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up guys? Bang bang. Today we have Polina Pompliano on the podcast and boy do we got a special episode for you. You're gonna hear a bunch of unique thoughts that you haven't heard me or her talk about before. First, we start with BlackRock and what they're telling all these investors about Bitcoin and crypto. It's gonna really surprise you because it's gonna sound very familiar to things you may have heard before. On top

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  of that, then we get into why so many people are becoming Republicans that used to be Democrats. The data will shock you and I've got a theory as to why it's happening. On top of that, we get into how America is spending its money, where is waste, where's bureaucracy, what could be done to fix it? We then even get into some things around the two political candidates, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. We talk about FEMA, the response of the hurricane, a whole bunch of stuff that you're gonna want to hear. And then lastly, we even touch on jobs and why the 254,000 jobs that were created in September may just be like your favorite fiction book. You're really gonna love this episode. Here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:48Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:32Anthony Pompliano?

  You can spend anywhere with zero FX fees using their global card, or you can make instant payments with the Lightning Network. Head over to zappobank.com/pomp to join. That's X A P O B A N K dot com forward slash pomp. Go check out Zappo Bank today.

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Plana, what is our first topic of the day?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  We have BlackRock reporting that Bitcoin and digital asset adoption is growing faster than the internet and mobile phones. So at its recent Digital Asset Conference, BlackRock stated that this is just the beginning, while refusing to put a limit on the price of Bitcoin. What do we think?

• 3:12Anthony Pompliano?

  I love BlackRock's approach to all of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. They basically take everyone else's ideas that the crypto community has been using for a long time, and they repackage them up into the audience suit and tie type vernacular. And so I can think of an exact chart that came from Raul Paul, and I think Global Macro Investor, that showed that exact thing like five years ago. And so the beauty is, the message has not changed when it comes to Bitcoin or crypto. Now it's just the messenger changed. And because the messenger changed, it is being received better by a whole nother group, which also means that a lot of people in the Bitcoin and crypto community, their importance for the marketing of these assets

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  has been significantly diminished compared to Larry Fink and BlackRock. Larry Fink and BlackRock are the most important people in marketing Bitcoin and various cryptocurrencies. If they say something is good, the financial world listens. And so what we're watching happen now is these people, which by the way, the team at BlackRock, they're made up of Bitcoiners. They're made up of crypto enthusiasts. They know these talking points. They're taking these ideas, which are facts, and they're putting them into presentations with BlackRock's logo on it. And now all of a sudden, everyone's like, oh, this isn't some crazy person on the internet saying this. This is BlackRock.

• 4:28Anthony Pompliano?

  saying it. And then, of course, everyone gets really excited about it. And then they want to allocate to the asset class. And so what we have essentially done is we've memed the messages from the crypto world into traditional finance. And the new vessel is BlackRock. Thank you, Larry Fink.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's almost like they're blessing it. They're giving it their blessing.

• 4:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Hundred percent.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  That's probably very important.

• 4:50Anthony Pompliano?

  But by the way, none of that is negative. That is a very positive thing. That's what we need right now. The Bitcoin community, the online audiences, folks like us on this podcast and many others. We've taken this as far as we can go. Right? We've gone on all the TV stations. We've talked about it on all the podcasts. We've talked about it in all the newsletters. Without somebody else outside of the native community discussing this and putting that blessing on it. We're tapping out the audience. That doesn't mean that no one else would adopt Bitcoin. It just means that having that external third party come in and now say, no, we're on your side. Is going to accelerate the adoption. And that's where you see the ETF approvals, many other things are accelerating that adoption.

• 5:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I, many other people with big audiences in the community, people with podcast newsletters, et cetera. They're not the right people to go to try to convince a random sovereign wealth fund or a random endowment. To go and put money into Bitcoin. I've done that. I've been in those meetings, literally. We had the pension funds. We had a lot of people. Like, we talked to a lot more than said, yes. BlackRock shows up, your hit rate, your batting average goes way up. And that is really important for people to understand. Is we should say thank you to what they're doing.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  And, you know, part of this, part of Bitcoin's allure is that we don't know who Satoshi is, correct? And now I know you're going to have a lot of thoughts on this, so I'm excited to bring it up. But a new HBO documentary claims that they have unmasked Satoshi. It's set to air Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern, which is tonight, depending on when we air this podcast. You know, it may already be out there. But without having watched it, what do you think?

• 6:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Stop it. Stop it.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  I mean, it's called A Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.

• 6:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Stop it.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  What?

• 6:48Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like politics. If you view it through an entertainment lens, it's amazing. If you view it through a substance lens, it's depressing. If you view this documentary through an entertainment lens, entertainment value is probably going to be off the charts. It's probably going to have all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories, very loose evidence tied together. They're going to pinpoint a man who most people hadn't even heard of less than two weeks ago. If you view it through reality and substance, stop it. Let's not go there. Nobody knows who Satoshi is. The world is better off not knowing who Satoshi is.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Tell us more.

• 7:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Because Bitcoin's surface area for critics or attacks is drastically reduced when we don't know who Satoshi is. If I look at Ethereum, some people don't want to buy Ethereum because they look at Vitalik Buterin hopping around on a stage like a bunny rabbit. And they're like, I'm not trusting my portfolio to that guy. There's a lot of other people who say, I'm going to buy Ethereum because that guy's smart. I am going to trust it. But they're evaluating the merits of the technology and the network based on the person.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Whether you agree or disagree with him is going to determine whether you allocate or not. Bitcoin has the beauty of no one is determining their allocation based on the founder or the creator. And so imagine if the creator came out and they had a certain political leaning. Imagine if they came out and they had a previous criminal history. Imagine if they came out and an ex-girlfriend showed up and said, this person did X, Y, and Z. Those are the things that increase surface area in critics. Now, what's interesting about Bitcoin is we probably have reached a point where whoever Satoshi is, if it is unveiled, probably doesn't matter. Like, people will not be able to stop Bitcoin. But it's just more noise. Bitcoin doesn't need more noise, it needs less noise.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but people's-

• 8:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Let Bitcoin exist on its merit.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  But people's natural curiosity, they want to know. The people want to know who Satoshi is. I know you're saying about, oh, it's better. But how do you satiate that natural human curiosity?

• 8:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Curiosity killed the cat.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  I, how did I know?

• 9:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Curiosity killed the cat.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  You just learned this.

• 9:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Put your curiosity back in your pants and let the world just exist as it is.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  I believe what he meant to say is don't open Pandora's box.

• 9:16Anthony Pompliano?

  What'd I say?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't want to repeat it. But.

• 9:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Put your curiosity back in your head.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 9:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And just let the world exist how it exists.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Okay, but, but again, I don't think there's going to be a shortage of documentaries trying to unmask Satoshi.

• 9:31Anthony Pompliano?

  It's been 15 years. They had two, two times.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Was it, wasn't there?

• 9:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Newsweek.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Tom, was it?

• 9:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Harassing.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Newsweek. It was Newsweek.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Little innocent Dorian Nakamoto, my friend.

• 9:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I met him. He's a real nice guy.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Oh, he really.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Very confused as to why everyone wants to talk to him. But also, you're telling me the scoop of the century was uncovered by HBO documentary?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. I don't buy it either.

• 9:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Come on. Who's behind the documentary?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  You know that.

• 10:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Where's the money? Let's follow the money.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  But you know that people are going to watch this and people who maybe aren't that educated in the space. And they'll be like, whoever they claim it is, that person, their notoriety and fame will skyrocket.

• 10:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that it's going to be this guy Len Sassman is what the prediction markets are saying. You never heard of him, right? He's dead.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Okay. So they're not going to harass him.

• 10:24Anthony Pompliano?

  So that kind of solves one of the problems. Now, on top of that, what I would say is there's a hell of a lot of people that are just dumb. And they're going to watch documentaries regardless. There's a lot of documentaries that I've watched, which people who are actually experts about the thing or know a lot about the thing would say, I can't believe he believes that. He's just dumb. And so it goes back to, it's entertainment. It's not substance. Everyone calm down. It doesn't matter. Nothing's going to change. Put the documentary out, entertain some people. Maybe people will speculate about Bitcoin. All's good.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Are you gonna watch it?

• 10:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I'm not gonna.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Oh, I might watch it.

• 11:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't have time to be watching.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Oh, I got the time.

• 11:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't read fiction books. I don't watch, well, I do watch fiction movies, but other than that, I don't be dealing with fiction. I'm all about reality and facts.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  He watches movies either based on.

• 11:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Real life?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Unreal life or war movies, which I guess are kind of based on.

• 11:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So that's why I'm real.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:22Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like real life, real books, real stories, real movies.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  I also.

• 11:26Anthony Pompliano?

  If you.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Can't remember the last time I watched.

• 11:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You keep putting fake stuff in your brain.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Don't talk to me. I don't watch.

• 11:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Your brain becomes mush.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 11:34Anthony Pompliano?

  That's part of, part of the problem is imagine if everyone just read nonfiction books.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but some people get ideas from fiction.

• 11:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Name, name one you got.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  No, not me. I don't read fiction, but a lot of people.

• 11:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Do read fiction.

• 11:47Anthony Pompliano?

  We get along rational people.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Name, name, name a rational person that reads exclusively fiction books.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  A lot of people.

• 11:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Name one.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  I bet you a lot of people.

• 11:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Name one.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  On Wall Street do.

• 11:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No, there's no, there's nobody, there's nobody.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  But I gotta say.

• 12:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Quantitative that all they read is.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Is, is someone who reads a lot of nonfiction, some of these books could have been an email. Like they do not need an entire book to tell me that.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  But imagine the fiction books.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Oh, um.

• 12:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Imagine the fiction books.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Wait, I just had one.

• 12:22Anthony Pompliano?

  There's no difference between a child's picture book and a fiction book. All it is is more verbose.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  All right. So.

• 12:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, do you know that?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  The job.

• 12:31Anthony Pompliano?

  That's, hold on a second. This is an important thing is if you really think about it, right? A nonfiction book, good ones are very concise. Yeah, like three hour audio books. I'm not saying that How to Live an Extraordinary Life is that, but it is. Um, they're very concise and they're very factual. Just bam, give me the information, no chit chat, no fluff, no nonsense. A goo- good, let me put in air quotes, good fiction book. It's like you're talking to somebody who's drunk. The flowery dress moved in the wind as you heard the rustle in the trees.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  What kind of novels have you been reading?

• 13:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That is literally, it's like highly descriptive, verbose information.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Not always, not always, not always. Like.

• 13:12Anthony Pompliano?

  That is how people write.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  No, not always.

• 13:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you read Shakespeare?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Oh my God, you're crazy.

• 13:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, go ahead.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Um, what was the name of that author that he does not write like that?

• 13:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Memorable, you don't even remember the author's name.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I know him.

• 13:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Obviously not.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  I'm gonna remember after this podcast. It's okay. All right.

• 13:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Was it a good one?

• 13:32Speaker 02

  I was reading his memoir, but yes, he writes like he writes his.

• 13:37Anthony Pompliano?

  His fiction was so bad that you didn't even read it. You read the memoir, the reality. But I do think there is something about if you continue to construct all of these fake worlds. Like, for example, people might be surprised by this. I read the Harry Potter books.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  I tried and I couldn't get into it.

• 13:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I read three of them when I was younger.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  James Patterson is who I was trying to say.

• 13:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I read, please.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Okay, go on.

• 13:59Anthony Pompliano?

  You know what, James Patterson, James Patterson preys on people.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  No, he does not.

• 14:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, he does.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  He sells books to people who their life.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Along with Spider.

• 14:10Anthony Pompliano?

  They're trying to escape from into fiction.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  That may be a good thing.

• 14:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Some people's lives, they, it's almost like an escape for them. They're not all just give me the reality, you know?

• 14:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm just saying.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  All right.

• 14:25Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, go ahead.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Next.

• 14:26Anthony Pompliano?

  But by the way, I was gonna say from Harry Potter books, I learned nothing, zero quidditch. Like you've got a broom between your sticks or between your legs. Like be serious. Come on.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  You gotta broom between your sticks. Okay, the jobs number surpassed everyone's expectations.

• 14:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Quidditch.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  The latest jobs data should alleviate concerns that the US labor market is rapidly heading into a recession. Why are you looking at me so nicely?

• 14:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, because you're just speaking more fiction right now with the jobs report.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Okay, the gain of 254,000 non-farm jobs last month means that September was the strongest month for employment growth since March. But of course, now people want to blame the Fed for cutting interest rates by half a point because they're like, maybe you didn't need to do that if the job market is so healthy and strong. Go on.

• 15:19Anthony Pompliano?

  These organizations are the greatest fiction writers of our generation. 254,000 jobs in September. Whoops, until we later on revise down. Remember the million jobs they created over the last 12 months and they revised it down to zero? They just erased all million jobs. I don't believe anything they say.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Who, who is they? The media?

• 15:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Economic organizations, Bureau of Labor Statistics, there's NBER, all these guys, right? So these people want to say that 254,000 jobs actually happened in September? Prove it. Prove it. Show me the math. I want reality. I want nonfiction, not fiction, I want nonfiction. Show me the data because.

• 16:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You passed data. Y'all were cheating. They were cheating. It's like a teacher. I got a whole bunch of pupils.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Pupils.

• 16:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Sitting in the classroom. One of them keeps cheating. Keeps putting answers on the test. You go back and you say, oh, that looks good. And then you read a little bit more and you're like, oh, wait a second. This is horrible. F, F minus.

• 16:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the next time the kid takes the test. You probably don't believe your eyes. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. These people continue to inflate the job numbers. And so it is likely that the 254,000 is inflated. They'd be better off under promise, over deliver. That's not what they do. They over promise and under deliver. They put out a big number, then they revise it down. It's a trick as old as time. It's like you walk in New York City in any park. You got somebody with three red cups and a ball moving it around. That's what they're doing with economic data. Don't be a fool. Don't try to guess which one it's in. Just say, turn them all over. Show me the data. And so, yes, the job growth looks good. My guess is that it's actually not as good as they're saying.

• 17:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And people can try to criticize the Fed all they want. The Fed don't give rats ass about the job growth. The Fed is trying to signal to the market, we're here and we're serious. And that's what they did. And so asset prices took off. Bitcoin's been doing great and people realize the Fed is here. How about instead of blaming the Fed for job stuff? Let's talk about all the families that now can afford a home. That might not otherwise been able to because mortgage rates were too high. Well, those are coming down. What about all of the debt that Americans are in? That now those interest rates are starting to come down on a variable basis. And so now people can start to pay off some of that a little bit faster. Maybe the Fed actually did a good job rather than a bad job. Now, I'm not one to usually defend the Fed, but I am one to say that maybe people are just dumb.

• 17:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And they keep trying to evaluate what the Fed did, what it didn't do, whatever. It's been 30 days, actually less than 30 days. September 18th was the cut. We're not even at October 18th yet.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like the Fed, people are just gonna bash the Fed no matter.

• 17:59Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, I like to bash the Fed as much as anyone.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  It's been called everyone's favorite pastime.

• 18:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, listen, they do some dumb stuff too, but I think in this case. Give them some credit where it's due. It's been less than 30 days since they cut interest rates. Guess what? Imagine that how crazy this is. The Fed didn't have anything to do with September's job numbers. They cut in September. You'd really think that job numbers went a different direction in 12 days? No, of course not. On top of that, people may say they cut too much, but if they had had this data, they wouldn't cut that much. I don't believe that either, because the Fed probably knows the numbers aren't right. They know that the Fed or that the data is going to be revised down over time.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Do you think they'll, you know, do that promised interest rate cut again?

• 18:45Anthony Pompliano?

  My base case, again, could be more, could be less. I have no clue. I don't have a crystal ball. My base case is that we're going to get two more interest rate cuts this year, 25 basis points each, be 100 total basis points before the end of the year, got 50, then 25, 25. They're going to go into the holidays. But if for some reason they get more data that tells them not to, then they'll just say, hey, look, we did 50. Let's wait. Let's wait and see. That's okay, too. I don't think that the Fed can really make a mistake in the next 90 days. Let's see. But I don't think so, as long as they don't do anything radical. And as of right now, they're not planning to do anything radical.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Okay, here's a spicy one for you. More Americans now identify as Republicans than Democrats for the first time in decades, according to Gallup. More US adults identify as Republican or say they lean toward the Republican Party, which is 48%, then identify as or lean Democratic, 45%. This is interesting. The, according to Gallup measures, the 2024 election environment is more favorable to the GOP, and that's because it has advantages in US adults' party identification and leanings, the belief that the GOP, rather than the

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Democratic Party, is better able to handle the most important problem facing the country, Americans' dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, and negative evaluations of the economy with a Democratic administration in office. And you might be wondering, what are the top issues that Americans think the Republican Party can solve? It is, the ones they currently name as the most important are ones that tend to favor the GOP, including the economy, immigration, the government, and inflation.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Wow, that rhymed.

• 20:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I think there's two things that are at play here. In politics, imagine that there's a rope. And on that rope, you have a blue flag on one end, and you got a red flag on the other end. Democrats and Republicans. And then you got a flag in the middle. And that flag in the middle is the flag that determines whether you're on the left or the right. That flag used to be right in the middle of that rope. But then, the Democrats, not the Republicans, the Democrats took that flag, and they ran it real far to the left.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Like it took a war style?

• 21:16Anthony Pompliano?

  But the end of the Republican rope is still there. So what it did was it expanded the space between the Republican flag and the middle. It's not people running to the GOP. It's not people running to the Republican Party. It's people running away from the insanity of the far left. Ultimately, there is strength and there is weakness. People, humans, across the world are drawn to strength. They want to go to places where they're protected. They want to go to places where there is opportunity. They want to go to places where there is the ability to defend themselves, and they want to go to places where they can speak.

• 22:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All of those things come from a position of strength. Not all Democrats. I have a lot of friends that are Democrats. I've been Democrats on this podcast. I listen to both sides. I'm an independent. I evaluate every topic based on what I think the merits of that topic are. Sometimes I fall on the right, sometimes I fall on the left. Sometimes I don't got an opinion.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's very unpredictable like that.

• 22:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But one thing that I know for sure is that if you listen to what used to be the Democratic Party, and you see how it has basically been taken over by far-left insane people, I have some friends who are Democrats. They're like, I identify as a Democrat. I vote as a Democrat. All this, that's who they are. They're like, you couldn't pay me money to support the far-left agenda. Now, every Democrat is not far-left. It's just that the far-left has become such a dominant voice that I think a lot of people said, hey, you know what? Actually, I'm still standing in the same place I was. I am a center-left Democrat. It's just that now the spectrum has shifted so far

• 23:03Anthony Pompliano?

  that somehow I'm a Republican. And so if you think about this, I just posted a clip on Twitter this morning. The Teamsters president, they have supported the Democrats forever. They've given in the last two or three years, over $50 million to the Democrats. They've given less than 500K to the Republicans. It is a Democrat supporting organization. It's a union, it's the working people. The Teamsters president was on Theo Von's podcast and he said, "The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party of the people. We're not endorsing any candidate in this race. I polled our internal union members and over 60% of them support Donald Trump for president." He's like, "How did that happen?"

• 23:48Anthony Pompliano?

  His words, not mine. "The Democrat Party has not done what they said they were going to do for us." So, people are supporting the other candidate. He goes, "So, we're not going to support him in terms of an endorsement, but we're not going to endorse the current candidate." And so he's like, "We've given $50 million to the Democrats." Working people, party of the working people, handshake. We're supposed to be in bed together. But he goes on this huge rant and he says, "But how do we do that if you're not actually doing what we need?" And so what I took away from that is, "The Republican Party is trying to become the party of working people." So, my takeaway from that was not Republican, Democrat, I don't care what your politics are. Again, I'm an independent. My takeaway was more important.

• 24:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Political parties shift over time.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:35Anthony Pompliano?

  If you go back in history, what it meant to be Republican or what it meant to be Democrat is completely different. And so what they support, what their policies are, all that stuff shifts. Today, we are watching it in real time. You are watching the Republican Party significantly change their perspective on things like women's reproductive rights. You are watching the Democrat Party change what they believe on certain topics. And so the ground shifting...

• 24:59Speaker 02

  I think it's that group in the middle, right? Like, the people who were, used to be center-right or center-left are now like, "What the hell happened to my party either way?"

• 25:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Strength versus weakness. That is all this comes down to, is if you fear for safety, your personal safety, and this is not like some like voodoo thing.

• 25:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Plin and I live in New York City. We happen to live in a part of town where I don't think that I've seen a Republican walk in that part of town. Probably my entire life of living in New York City. They're all Democrats, proudly Democrats. If you said anything that was slightly leaning right, you would get dirty looks. We know a lot of people.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  They're like closeted Republicans?

• 25:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Who are now.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 25:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Identifying with the Republican Party. And the things that they will point at are literally, "This is crazy. I don't feel safe walking down the street. There was a shooting."

• 26:03Speaker 02

  But I gotta say, it's interesting. I'm part of some of these groups in the neighborhood, and I think a lot of people outwardly lean one way and then privately anonymously lean a different way.

• 26:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  But it's so interesting because.

• 26:18Anthony Pompliano?

  When people go in that ballot box, they're gonna vote with what's best for them, their family and their wallet.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And what's best for them, their family and their wallet is a strong economy, a safe country to live in, and a country that they feel like is going to continue to be strong over the long run. There was a point in time where you could point to Democrat leaders in this country that embodied that. If you go back and you look, you wanna know, over the last 40 or 50 years, you know who the two best stock markets were under?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Who was it?

• 26:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 26:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Those are Democrats. I look at the facts. Again, right, left, I don't care. Green, black, blue, yellow. Two best performing stock markets of the tenure of a president over the last 40 or 50 years, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  How dependent is that on their presidency versus the economic environment?

• 27:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. Of course. It has a lot to do with the timing. George Bush, only president in the last 50 years or so, that has overseen during his tenure, a downed stock market. Every other president has seen the stock market go up.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 27:24Anthony Pompliano?

  George W. Bush, because he stepped in, 9/11 happened when he was leaving, the global financial crisis was underway. And so, he got bookended by two crises that frankly had nothing to do with him.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  He got done dirty.

• 27:36Anthony Pompliano?

  But, he got done real dirty.

• 27:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But it doesn't matter because people really felt good about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's stock market, right? And so Donald Trump has had a epic run. At one point Donald Trump and but Joe Biden had the exact same S and P 500 return. Not anymore.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And so people want strength. They want a strong economy because that means there's jobs. They want to make money. They want to have financial security. They want to understand that we're going to actually produce GDP. They want to see the stock market go up. All those things are all in individual incentives. They want to feel safe. They don't want people invading their borders. They don't want people walking down the street punching people in the face. They don't want criminals who create crimes being let out later that day to go create more crimes. It's not that hard. And so what is a glimmer of hope? I heard Vice President Kamala Harris talk about she gonna build a wall.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Guess what?

• 28:36Speaker 02

  It's all shifting. It's all.

• 28:39Anthony Pompliano?

  In what world, if you go back to 2016 to 2020, if I told you that the Democrat candidate for president in 2024 is going to be talking about building the wall?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  And that people would be cheering it on.

• 28:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Imagine that. You would say there is no way that's ever going to happen. Here we are.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What if I told you?

• 28:57Speaker 02

  The Republicans would.

• 28:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That the Republican candidate would be talking about no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. You would say, no way. There's no way that the presidential candidate from Republican Party would be trying to give tax breaks to the working people.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  So they're trying to overlap a little bit, I think, to capture that middle of the people they've lost.

• 29:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Populist candidates.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:19Anthony Pompliano?

  People don't like hearing that, but they're the same candidate. Why are they on so many podcasts together? Because they both understand that's where the people are. Now, Donald Trump going on Theo Von, talking about cocaine. It's interesting. Kamala Harris going on Alex Cooper, call her daddy. That's interesting. So you look at this and you say they're doing the same thing. They're running the same playbook. They've got a lot of the same policies. Now, people will say, what are you talking about? Donald Trump wants to lower the corporate tax rate. Correct. Kamala Harris wants to increase the capital gains tax. Correct. But Kamala Harris also wants to give a $50,000 tax break to entrepreneurs. She wants to give a $6,000 child tax credit to first time parents. She wants to give a $25,000 handout. Bad idea.

• 30:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Handout for first time home buyer assistance. Donald Trump wants to do all these tax breaks. And so what they're doing is they're pulling on different levers. But ultimately, what is going to be the deciding factor is going to be, do people actually feel like you can be a strong leader? And I think, my prediction, as of right now, I reserve my mind, or I reserve the right to change my mind. I think that as of right now, we're going to see a landslide for Donald Trump. The reason why I think that's going to happen is because I think that there is, in 2016, there was a lot of closet Trump supporters. I think there's even more closet Trump supporters today.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  But also, I think that there's enough people who are fed up with not feeling safe and strong. And so what will really put people's brain in a blender is, as I sit here right now, and I think that Donald Trump's going to win in a landslide, which could be completely wrong. That's what I, that's what it looks like right now. Doesn't mean he's going to do a good job. Both can be true. There's a voting standpoint. Because guess why? I know a lot of friends who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and they thought that he was going to bring the country together. He was going to be less divisive. He was going to do all this stuff, whatever. They're sitting here right now, and they're real disappointed.

• 31:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you look at this stuff, and you start to kind of balance it. And you say, listen, who gets voted into office doesn't necessarily guarantee they're going to do the best job. But it also doesn't mean that the other candidate was going to be better. And so you've got to start to try to understand, okay, what are people feeling? What's the conversation? How do you keep a pulse on it? Now, I'm very aware, we're in New York City. I'm not talking to people in Iowa. I'm not talking to people in Texas. I'm not talking to people in Wyoming or Arizona or Minnesota or Florida or Alabama, New Orleans. I'm not talking to any of those places. But I do know that New York State, New York City is a pretty deep blue place. How many of our friends quietly have told us,

• 32:11Anthony Pompliano?

  "I think I might do something different this time."

• 32:13Speaker 02

  We, we had a friend recently who shocked me personally, who said that she woke up one day and was like, "I think I've been manipulated by the media." Do you remember that?

• 32:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I had the conversation with, this yesterday with somebody in our office. Somebody was telling me, "I read ABC, whatever." And I said, "That's great. You read the media narrative." I went and I read the source document. There was an incident, I don't want to say which one, where there was a police report. I went and I read the police report because I believed X that I'd read in the media and a friend told me something else. A friend that is very smart, not a conspiracy theory, you know, loving friend, whatever. And he said to me, he said, "Hey, I read that police report. I, I got a different view of it." I said, "You said that? Let me go read it." I went and I read it. I walked away from that situation, 180 degree different view. And I said to myself, I said, "Oh, my God. The media isn't telling the truth here."

• 33:10Speaker 02

  That's what she was trying to say. She was like, every time she was scared by something she read, she went to the source and she was like, "Well, that's not actually what it says. You kind of extrapolated the fear mongering side of that."

• 33:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Speaking of, there was a recent incident. I'm gonna, uh, forget the gentleman's name. He wrote a new book called The Message.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Now here, let me, let me break down, uh, what I think is, uh, as much independent thinking as you can do. I read an article on CNN.com and it said something to the effect of, and I'm gonna paraphrase, "Explosive CBS interview leads to, uh, reprimand of CBS reporter." I said, "Oh, wow. CBS getting controversial. Might as well be on X. Let's go check this out. Click on, boop, get on." I see a picture. On that picture, there's a guy who I'm told by the media is a bestselling author. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I checked, he's sold a lot of books. There's a reporter. Then there's two other journalists there. So there's three journalists, one person.

• 34:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I quickly scanned this article and in the article it says that the journalist gave a very harsh, over, you know, kind of rough interview to this person and was reprimanded by the CBS executives because people felt like he was being too one-sided in the debate. And really, the debate centered around Israel and Palestine, already a controversial topic.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  And the portrayal of it in his book.

• 34:34Anthony Pompliano?

  He wrote a book. And this explicit thing that the journalist said was, I believe they're friends, the way, because he made some allusions to they were friends. But about two paragraphs in, there was a link to the interview. Who cares what CNN said? Let me click on the link. It's on YouTube, six and a half minutes. Let me just watch this for myself.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Wasn't that explosive?

• 34:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I said, now watch. First of all, I'm still looking for the explosive part. I'm still looking for the hard, you know, inappropriate thing. But let me tell you what they ultimately said was inappropriate. He asked a bestselling author who wrote a book, who wrote some things in there that a lot of people think is controversial. He said, if you weren't who you were, if this book didn't have your name on it, if you didn't wear the clothes you wore, and if you had this book randomly in a notebook, and it was found in an extremist backpack, there's a lot of people who would think it's extremist writing. Again, I don't know. The guy, the author.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Coats.

• 35:34Anthony Pompliano?

  He said, well, and he started engaging, he started talking about it, right? And you could tell, he was like, listen, well, here's my perspective.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Yes. It was so good.

• 35:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Is, you know, I think there's too much of this one perspective in the media. I have this other perspective, blah, blah, whatever.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  I thought the conversation was iconic, and that's how, in an example of this is what journalism should be and what reporters should be doing.

• 35:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And so at the end, the journalist says, by the way, you're still invited to, it sounds like some party or something that they throw, right? Like, we can still be friends after this. Some people at CBS got upset. They had to reprimand the journalist and then other people at CBS got mad that he got reprimanded. So you know what I did? I went and I bought the book. You know why I bought the book? I have no clue. Maybe it's extremist writing, maybe it's not. I don't know. But guess what? Even though I watched a journalist and the author debate it.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know what's in the book. So guess what? I'm gonna go read the book and maybe I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna say, you know what? That is the most insane extremist shit I ever heard. Or maybe I'm gonna come out and say this is a nothing burger. I don't know. But until I go read the book, I won't be able to figure that out.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  That's not what I took away. What I took away from it is everybody was like, this reporter, how dare he ask these questions, et cetera, et cetera. I think that this was actually the best conversation that I've seen between a subject and a reporter on live television debating each other. And if you notice, the author wanted to explain his side. He welcomed the criticism. It's not like he said, how dare you ask me. So it made for good debate. It showed you multiple sides to the argument because it's not a black and white issue. And I wish if reporters would challenge politicians like that, then we'd have a much better society.

• 37:14Anthony Pompliano?

  You know why he welcomed the debate as an author?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Why?

• 37:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Because he's a nonfiction author. Because he wrote facts, right? From his view. Other people may say, those facts are wrong. Those experiences are not indicative of the true experience. People may vehemently disagree. But this guy wrote a book based on his experience going and doing this stuff. And so, "facts," I put in air quotes, because maybe they're facts, maybe they're not. But this guy wrote his perspective. And so, what ends up happening is, he wants the debate because it's substance. He didn't make up some imaginary fiction world.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Well.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  It's nonfiction.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  I'm about to blow your mind.

• 37:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I would love to hear that he wrote a fiction book first.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he's written many fiction books. But guess which one that was then turned into a film that Anthony likes that was not a nonfiction film?

• 37:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Which one?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Black Panther.

• 38:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  He was the author of that book.

• 38:04Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's under a different name or it's called Black Panther?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  It's called Black Panther.

• 38:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, well, that's a good book. I didn't read it, though.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  You didn't read the book, but you watched the movie?

• 38:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's fine. Alright, so hold on, but let's go back to this for a second. I do think that there is, uh, two examples that I've recently seen of journalists making it. Journalists are tired of getting beat up on. That's my theory. Journalists have been getting their heads bashed in online for a long time by people, uh, saying you guys are dumb.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  So now it's time to do real journalism?

• 38:33Anthony Pompliano?

  That would be amazing for the country. That would be amazing. I don't care, right, left, black, brown, white, yellow, green, alien, not alien, whatever.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  You got you.

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  If journalists get fed up, which I think we're at the tipping, I'm calling it right now. We hit the bottom of shitting on journalists. Because now I've seen two data points in the last week. I saw this interview on CBS. Again, I don't understand what people were upset about.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 38:58Anthony Pompliano?

  The author, I thought, handled the critiques well. He defended his position.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I kind of think he enjoyed debating it.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  He did, and I enjoyed watching it because I actually agreed with both of them.

• 39:09Anthony Pompliano?

  And you know what they asked him? They said, what's your goal or something? He said, to sell books. He got me. I bought the book. He got me. Great job, right? The journalists, you weren't there to sell books, but damn, you did a good job helping them sell books. But I also watched the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. A lot of people have been critiquing the media for propping her up and helping support her, doing all this stuff.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Did they ask tough questions? I haven't watched it.

• 39:35Anthony Pompliano?

  That was about one of the fairest interviews I've seen. They asked tough questions, but they gave her credit for things that they thought she got right. You watched that, you said, you know what? This is why 60 Minutes is 60 Minutes. They did a pretty damn good job. It's not perfect. I'm sure people got critiques. But man, they, they held her feet to the fire. They asked her a couple of times, that question she didn't answer, gave them the word salad. They said, let me spin that back up and ask again, right?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  The word salad.

• 39:58Anthony Pompliano?

  But by the way.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  But that's what journalism is. I love that we're like praising something where it's like, that's the basic job, is to ask tough questions, not to kiss the politician's feet, which.

• 40:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I heard, uh, if any. Anyone hasn't listened. I almost never make podcast recommendations. I recommended one to Polina. She listened. She liked it. I'm gonna make another recommendation. Megyn Kelly on the Sean Ryan

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the one you told me to.

• 40:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I told you, right?

• 40:22Speaker 02

  It's only four hours long, but it's good.

• 40:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Four hour podcast, but trust me, it's worth every second. Go listen to Megyn Kelly do it. She talks about the sexual harassment stuff at Fox. There's no, nothing left off the table. The most important part of that to me was for people who don't remember, Megyn Kelly is the person who has Donald Trump. When he was on stage, you know, you've called women fat, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And he said, mm, no, only Rosie O'Donnell.

• 40:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Objectively funny moment. The audience laughed. People at home thought he was somehow charismatic.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Not all people thought that, but yeah.

• 40:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, people, they've looked at it. It was a very slick move. Scott Adams talks about that is why Trump is Trump.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  He sidestepped the question.

• 41:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, not necessarily something that maybe I would say, but he did what he did. The audience laughed, etc.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Megan's.

• 41:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Megan is now talking about, she got massive heat. All the Trump fans hated her. People at Fox, like, what are you doing? Like, whatever. She talks about going into that debate in hindsight. She had years to think about this. And she said, I'm a journalist. We got candidates on stage.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  She finds it fun. She's like.

• 41:26Anthony Pompliano?

  She was like, I'm going to bring my A game and so should you. I am going to bring the questions that you don't want to answer. And you gotta answer the questions. Let's go. You want good TV? I'm gonna give you good TV. That mentality, that don't exist. Come on. That don't exist. You think that the ABC commentators were sitting there like, let's go. I'm gonna ask hard questions to both sides?

• 41:47Speaker 02

  No, but what's sad is that it is how it used to be. If you were going to moderate a presidential debate, it was expected that you would come with the most hard hitting questions for each candidate, not just one candidate or the other. Anyway, basics.

• 42:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have any other topics you'd like to discuss now that we've gotten that out of our system?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  I do.

• 42:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, what are the topics?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  All right, so this is kind of like a more overarching topic. Um, I'm going to give credit to App Economy Insights, how they make money newsletter. They broke down how America spends its money in is like point by point. So in fiscal year 23, the federal government raked in a staggering 4.4 trillion dollars. And it came from individual income taxes, social security and Medicare taxes, corporate income taxes and other revenue. The remaining revenue comes from things like alcohol and tobacco, estate, estate.

• 42:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Estate taxes.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Estate, estate taxes. Sometimes I forget how to say a word. Customs duties.

• 42:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So they brought in 4.4.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  And even fees from national parks.

• 42:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Would they spend 6.4?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And they spent, they spent, no, the net cost was 7.9 trillion.

• 43:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so it's even worse.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Broke. The US is like a broke boy. That's what they are. They spend more money than they take in. Broke.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they're, they're spending on healthcare, accounting for 22% of the net cost.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  They're spending on making the people dependent on them. That's what they're spending on. They're spending on bureaucracy. There is nothing efficient about the government. You ever been to the DMV?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  I have.

• 43:28Anthony Pompliano?

  That's not efficient.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:30Anthony Pompliano?

  You ever seen how many people work at some of these organizations?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Not efficient.

• 43:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Not efficient at all. You ever seen how many young, healthy, productive people depend on the US government?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Well.

• 43:42Anthony Pompliano?

  For prolonged periods of time.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  In last week's episode, we talked about how so many counties, what it was, it like 40, 50% are now dependent on the government?

• 43:51Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  It used to be 1%.

• 43:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, we got a healthcare crisis in this country.

• 43:59Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a immense amount of people. I think every single county in America now has at least 20% obesity. National crisis. Guess what happens? The people who are obese today are going to be the people who are future dependent on the government healthcare system. It's only going to get worse. So you can either try to solve the root cause or not. You want to stop healthcare spending in America in terms of not making it such a big drain because you got to support your citizens? Why don't you look at food regulation? Why don't you stop the food companies from putting all this poison in the food? That'd be a wild idea. Second, if you go and you look at how many people are getting

• 44:40Anthony Pompliano?

  benefits that shouldn't be getting the benefits, that'd be a wild idea. Again, we talk about the Leon Cooperman on CNBC saying, why am I getting a social security check? I'm a billionaire. That's crazy.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Big problem. What is the explosive controversial thing to touch is all the entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicaid. What are they going to do?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Are they going to be able to actually continue to pay this to people? Well, your population is going to be older and bigger than you thought it was going to be. They're becoming more and more of a drain. Keep borrowing all this debt, interest rate, or your interest payments is more than your national defense. You're shipping money to every war around the world, except for the war that your people are fighting at home. There was people over the last three weeks in North Carolina who were literally lost in the woods. Imagine being within a mile of your home, but feel like you're on another planet. You got no power, you got no electricity, you got no cellphone service, you don't know if anyone's coming to get you.

• 45:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're literally in your hometown. That's what the experience of many people in North Carolina was last week. And I get that there's a lot of people saying, oh, you guys are, you know, critiquing us unnecessarily. What I know is we wrote a check. I know a lot of friends who wrote checks. I know a lot of friends who went to North Carolina. I know a lot of people who I saw online who said, you know, I'm from Georgia. I'm from Alabama. I'm from South Carolina. I got a helicopter. I'm gonna come and I'm gonna try to find people. Why is it that in a moment of dire need that our citizens needed help? That you have private citizens that are so compelled to step in because they're watching the government?

• 46:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Forget all the nonsense, all the speculation. Put all that aside, let's say none of that's true. FEMA said, I'm gonna give you $750. You know what $750 can buy you? For the average family in America, probably two weeks of food. Maybe a little bit of gasoline. That's it. So what are those families gonna do after two weeks? What do you expect them to go? What do you expect them to be able to survive on? Instead, though, the average immigrant coming to America is getting debit cards, free cell phones, hotel rooms.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Not average immigrant.

• 47:12Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm sorry, illegal immigrant.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:15Anthony Pompliano?

  If you look in New York City, you get more aid showing up to New York City and staying in a hotel than you did if your house got washed away in North Carolina. That is insane.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  I don't know, that whole thing. We need to do an entire episode on FEMA because I have thoughts.

• 47:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh, if Polina wants to go down the rabbit hole. FEMA, FEMA, let me tell you how this works. If Polina's got you in a crosshair, you in trouble. Oh, boy.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I got, I got hot takes on FEMA. Anyway, I've always had.

• 47:46Anthony Pompliano?

  If Polina's got you in your cr- oh, I seen this be played way too many times.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  My hot takes started, I think, with Hurricane Katrina. So it's been brewing for a while.

• 47:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you mean where they left the people to die?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  It's been brewing for a while.

• 47:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, I know people.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  FEMA doesn't know I'm coming after them.

• 48:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, I know people who were in the National Guard, who were sent down there with weapons. To protect the stores because it was so bad, it was so dire that people were so in need that they were willing to do whatever they needed to be able to get food for their families.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember.

• 48:19Anthony Pompliano?

  The one thing Americans will never do, I truly believe that's the one thing Americans will never do.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  What?

• 48:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Is American soldiers will never turn their guns on their own people. And

• 48:30Anthony Pompliano?

  God forbid we ever got into fraction in the country. I truly believe that is that America in a very weird way.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Is still united.

• 48:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Had the people are united. The politicians may not be, but when push comes to shove, the people realize it's the people first those in power. And I think that the US in particular is very unique in that standpoint. I think there's a lot of countries around the world, you could say us first them, left first right, you know, one side, one side, whatever.

• 49:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I think in the United States,

• 49:07Anthony Pompliano?

  you see it. You see how people react to certain situations. It's us versus them, but it's the people verse those in power and influence, et cetera. I hope that we never get to any situation like that. I think that will be good, but I do think that um, American soldiers would have a very hard time turning their weapons on their own countrymen. And I think that speaks to the spirit of America and how um, maybe how much people really buy into the ethos and the values of the country.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Great note to end on. Thank you very much.

• 49:44Anthony Pompliano?

  See you guys next week. What's up, guys? I hope you're enjoying this episode, but I got a quick message for you. I just released my very first book. It's called How to Live an Extraordinary Life. In this book, there are 65 life lessons that I've picked up over the years. These lessons will teach you about money, investing, relationships, work, health, happiness, and much more. In this book, I wrote letters to each one of my children and I tried to share those life lessons with them. If you pick up this book, there's three things that I can promise you. The first is that it is very concise. The audio book is. Only three hours, you can listen to it on a long drive or on a rainy afternoon. The second thing is that you're gonna learn something. It's worth the price of admission just for the lessons themselves.

• 50:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And then the third thing is it will make you think more deeply about your life and how you try to live it. So go pick up How to Live an Extraordinary Life today. It's a quick read, it's very impactful, it's very concise, and it would mean the world to me for the support. Go check it out today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you buy your books. Hardcover, audiobook, it all works. Thank you so much for the support, and I'd love to hear what you think about the new book.