#1386 Phil Rosen & Anthony Pompliano | Donald Trump SHOCKS The Bitcoin World

Phil Rosen, the Co-Founder of Opening Bell Daily, and Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss President Donald Trump at the Bitcoin conference, what he plans to do, campaign promises, and his future plans including “bitcoin is going to the moon.” They also talk about the track market of the stock market under various Presidents. ======================= Buy and sell cryptocurrency in a tax-advantaged crypto IRA with iTrustCapital. Enjoy 24/7 access, lowest fees in the industry, and tax benefits for your retirement. Open and fund an account today at ⁠⁠⁠https://www.itrustcapital.com/pomp⁠⁠⁠ to receive a $100 USD funding bonus. ======================= Introducing Espresso - the world’s most interactive portable display. They have a portable screen that is incredibly light, comes with a nice stand, and the user interface is very easy. Anyone who listens to this podcast can go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠us.espres.so/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. They have a brand new offer waiting for you. ======================= Meanwhile is the world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Protect your loved ones with sound money built to manage life’s uncertainty and a broken financial system. Their BTC-denominated Whole Life Insurance policies allow HODLers to pass more BTC on to their loved ones and a tax-advantaged way to access BTC for liquidity during their lifetime. Visit their website at ⁠⁠⁠https://meanwhile.bm/⁠⁠⁠ to join the waitlist for a policy and to learn more. ======================= 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 I've got Phil Rosen here and we talk about President Donald Trump at the Bitcoin conference, his rousing speech, what he plans to do, why he's making so many campaign promises, and what you need to know about his future plans,

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  including why did President Trump over the weekend say Bitcoin is going to the moon? That's a direct quote coming from the 45th President of the United States. On top of that, we also talk about the track record of the stock market under various presidents, and why maybe the stock market doesn't actually matter nearly as much as you think it is when you're in the ballot box. This conversation covers a lot of ground. Phil and I have a lot of fun and we share tons of insights. So I hope you enjoy it. Here's my conversation with Phil Rosen.

• 1:13Speaker 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.

• 1:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by I Trust Capital. Are you buying crypto on an exchange because you're excited about the bull run? Well, I hope you're reporting your crypto gains to the IRS because they want you to pay your taxes. That's right, when you buy and sell crypto on an exchange, you need to pay the government taxes when you make profits. That sounds pretty taxing. There's another way you can buy and sell crypto without worrying about taxes. At I Trust Capital, you can buy and sell crypto inside of a tax-advantaged crypto IRA. Crypto IRAs are retirement accounts that work similarly to an exchange but with tax benefits. Let me give you an example. If you can buy and sell crypto on an exchange and you make a $20,000 profit, you have to pay the government taxes. However, if you do the same thing in

• 2:19Anthony Pompliano?

  your Roth IRA and you make a $20,000 profit, you don't need to pay any taxes. That's right, you get to keep all the profits and not have to pay taxes because it's in a tax advantaged account. So, opening a tax advantaged IRA at I Trust Capital only takes a few minutes. You have 24/7 access to the markets with some of the lowest fees in the industry. The bull run has begun and people are starting to see their accounts go up. So, start taking advantage of tax benefits with an IRA at I Trust Capital. You can start maximizing your crypto investment today. Go to Itrustcapital.com. That's Itrustcapital.com.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Today's episode is brought to you by Espresso, the maker of the world's thinnest portable display. Now, listen up. If you're like me, you feel like you are at a command center when you sit down at your desk. I got a gazillion tabs open and different windows for different activities. There's my web browser, my text messages, I have Slack open, and I got a Notes app. I normally work on a desktop and can be very, very productive. But everything falls apart the second I leave my desk. If I'm traveling, if I go to a coffee shop to do some work, or just want to work from the kitchen table, my laptop doesn't have enough screen space. I lose my command center and my productivity falls off a cliff. It's a major problem. But this is where Espresso comes in. They have a portable screen that is so beautiful that you think Steve Jobs came back from the dead to create it. The thing is incredibly light,

• 3:41Speaker 02

  it comes with a nice stand, and the user interface is so easy that I figured it out, how to do it in less than three minutes. If you listen to this podcast, you know that's not an easy feat. So, the Espresso team and I, we became friends. I got to know them because I really liked the product. And those screens, they now want to offer them to any fan of the

• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So we struck a little deal. Here's how it works. Anyone who listens to this podcast can go to us dot E S P R E S dot S O. Or that's too confusing. Just go click the link in the description. If you go to Espresso's website, they've got a brand new offer there sitting for you. You get a little discount and you'll get a beautiful screen. Trust me, I use mine every day. You'll love the Espresso screen and I think it'll make you more productive. Go check them out today by clicking on the link in the description. Today's episode is brought to you by Meanwhile. Meanwhile is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Operating on the Bitcoin standard, they do everything in Bitcoin. You pay in Bitcoin. They pay claims to your family in Bitcoin.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  You take out policy loans entirely in Bitcoin when you need liquidity. Meanwhile, Bitcoin life insurance has redefined what it means to hodl. Protect your family from life's uncertainty and a broken financial system. Build intergenerational Bitcoin wealth while the cost of living skyrockets in dollar terms. Get all the tax and legal benefits of life insurance now in Bitcoin. They are actively binding policies today. Whether you are a long-term Bitcoiner or are just considering it for the first time, a Bitcoin whole life policy could make sense for your wealth plan. Visit their website, meanwhile dot B M to join the waitlist and to learn more about the world's first Bitcoin life insurer. Again, that's meanwhile dot B M. Go check them out today.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Paul, hello.

• 5:26Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you?

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Good, good. Trump made a ton of promises this weekend at the Bitcoin conference. Can you tell us which ones stood out to you and whether or not you take them seriously?

• 5:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think first, anytime a presidential candidate starts to talk about campaign promises, you have to remember they are promises. And unfortunately, regardless of the political candidate, you don't know whether those promises will become action until after they're in office. And so evaluating promises is exactly that, their promises and their words. But he did say pretty much almost every single thing that Bitcoiners wanted him to say. He said that we were going to become the Bitcoin superpower of the world. I think he said that the United States was going to be the crypto capital of the world. He even Worked in a line Bitcoin is going to the moon. He said that the Bitcoin people were high IQ.

• 6:18Anthony Pompliano?

  He said that people in the room were under fire from the current regulatory regime. That he was going to fire Gary Gensler on day one. He also talked about the fact he thought that the taxation and the treatment of the asset should be changed. Make it much more attractive for people to hold and transact. And then the big one was, he said that he wanted to create a strategic stockpile of Bitcoin. And the way that he talked about it was, well, the government currently has about 210,000 Bitcoin. In its possession, they plan to sell it. Let's not sell it. Why don't we just go move that away from kind of the law enforcement agencies and move that on to kind of the balance sheet of the government.

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that Bitcoiners, obviously, you have the leading presidential candidate in the room. His mere presence gets their attention. And then he goes on a, you know, I don't know, hour long speech, talking about all the things that they care about. Of course, it's going to be well received, right? And I don't think that frankly, he didn't have anything that he said where Bitcoiners attacked them. And if you think of the Bitcoin community, they are excellent critics. And so for them to walk out of that speech and be like, that was pretty good. Is like, you know, a grand slam for any other industry.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  So something that he specified was the Bitcoin stockpile rather than reserve. What is your stance on what, what do you think he meant by that word distinction?

• 7:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So, nobody knows for sure. And this could be semantics, but what I took away from it was something a little bit different. So, Robert F Kennedy Jr. spoke the day before on Friday at the Bitcoin conference. And he explicitly said, not only did he want to hold on to the Bitcoin that the US government already has. He wants the US government to buy 4 million Bitcoin over the next 20 years. He thinks that we can do that by buying 550 Bitcoin per day. I think that's insane. Like, you know, he's got a lot of good ideas. I don't think this is one of them. I like the idea of buying Bitcoin for the US government, but 4 million is almost mathematically impossible. Now, he specifically used the language strategic reserve. And reserve means we go get the Bitcoin.

• 8:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Put it into the Federal Reserve or at the Treasury and it's essentially backing the US dollar. It's part of the dollar reserves, right? We have some gold, we've got other things, right? But we put Bitcoin in there. And so that was kind of what I took away from RFK. Now, after Trump spoke, Senator Cynthia Lummis came up on stage and she had a piece of paper with words on it that she said was a bill that she is going to introduce for the United States to create a strategic reserve of 1 million Bitcoin. She called it the Louisiana Purchase moment for this generation. And for those that don't know the Louisiana Purchase, the United States invested $15 million in the early 1800s,

• 9:22Anthony Pompliano?

  bought 530 million acres from France, you know, France losing into that trade, and the United States obviously was very prescient in doing so. Lummis's point was, why don't we go buy this Bitcoin? And if we buy a million Bitcoin, not a million dollars, but a million Bitcoin and hold it for a minimum of 20 years, then the price of Bitcoin should continue to appreciate and that should allow us some sort of relief to help pay off the debt. Now, she also called it a strategic reserve and made it sound much more like she wanted to back the US dollar. Now, what's interesting about Trump saying the word "stockpile" was it was coupled not just with the use of the word "stockpile," he also never talked about buying more Bitcoin. So he simply said, you know what, I think that

• 10:07Anthony Pompliano?

  we should just keep the Bitcoin that we have, and he stopped there. Now, there's some game theory at play here is if you lead the US government, you want to go buy Bitcoin? You probably don't want to go tell the world you're going to buy the Bitcoin before you buy it. Instead, you want to go buy the Bitcoin and then tell everyone, hey, we bought Bitcoin because then there's going to be FOMO, price is going to go up, all that kind of stuff. So you don't know how much of it is like gamesmanship versus he actually doesn't have a desire there. And then the word "stockpile" to me was almost kind of like, the government's just going to have this thing over here, but it's not actually backing the US dollar. We're not going to put it in the US dollar reserves. And so again, is it semantics? Because kind of like all government assets kind of sort of back the dollars, the full faith and credit of the US government, etc. is a little unclear. But it would have been so

• 10:49Anthony Pompliano?

  easy to just use the word "reserve." "Stockpile" seems like such an intentional word to use when nobody else was using that word, that I do think it is worth watching, if nothing else.

• 11:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Because if you don't back the dollar with the Bitcoin you're buying, do you think the dollar is not going to be valuable? I don't think that's Trump's position. It wouldn't be aligned with what he said previously. But it does ask a lot of questions about what are his thoughts about this asset?

• 11:20Speaker 03

  So my thought was, why would Trump or any presidential candidate be coming out to back an asset that a lot of Bitcoin investors buy because they think that the dollar is going to lose its value over time? What is your take on why you think a candidate is coming out so bullishly on it?

• 11:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, the short, simple answer is like they're pandering for votes. Right? Would be one potential explanation. And there's probably a hint of that in all of them, no matter how sincere they are, is they know by saying it now before an election is likely to convince people to go vote for them. And it's a big voter block. It's a very passionate voter block. They got a lot of money, all that kind of stuff. Now, if you get into more of like the nitty gritty of like the economics of it, I think historically, people thought that the dollar and Bitcoin were going to compete with each other. And it was just, hey, they're both currencies. You know, one's going to win and one's going to lose. Well, instead, we have seen is actually that as Bitcoin has strengthened, the US dollar has strengthened as well. And really, the losers in this kind of currency battle in this digital age has been the weak fiat currencies.

• 12:23Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's the non-US dollar fiat currencies that have been the ones that have been falling at the feet of the dollar and at Bitcoin. And so what I think we are starting to see, and again, you know, it's always hard to kind of predict the future, but it seems like people want to buy Bitcoin and hold it. And they want to use dollars for transactions. And so you can see with like stable coins as an example, you now have a digital store of value and you have a digital medium of exchange. The digital medium of exchange in US dollar stable coins has more transaction volume than Bitcoin. And so in the digital realm, you are getting people using the dollar more, but they're holding, you know, more than 50% of all Bitcoin in circulation hasn't moved in two years. And so they're more long-term holders, store of value, et cetera. And so I think that Trump, who is obviously very pro-US dollar,

• 13:07Anthony Pompliano?

  has not only tweeted, but also campaigned on the idea of the US dollar and the global reserve currency and the attributes of that. He is starting to realize, wait a second, this Bitcoin thing is separate and distinct from the US dollar. And the dollar is going to have to be debased regardless of what we do with this Bitcoin thing. So maybe actually the Bitcoin thing could benefit from a devaluing dollar, but it is not necessarily competing or trying to kill the dollar. And so I can kind of hold these two ideas in my head at the same time, without them actually kind of eliminating each other and me having to choose one or the other. What did you think?

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Well, I think, I do think it's very unusual that you have such a prominent government figure period coming out for a non-dollar asset. That was my immediate reaction to the whole speech and also his months-long campaign for Bitcoin. I think it's a lot of pandering. And I don't know if there's long-term promise, because Bitcoin seems very, it's anti-regulation, it's anti-government. And so that was the next component I wanted to ask you about. Trump says he wants to make the US the capital of crypto, or capital Bitcoin, whatever you want to call it. Is that even possible to have a centralized capital for crypto? Because

• 14:24Speaker 03

  that also seems antithetical to the values of cryptocurrency. So that's part one. But part two, would any other president besides Trump be able to fulfill any of these promises?

• 14:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So on like having a capital, again, we don't know for sure. But what I took away from it was just, hey, I want this to be the center. I want this to have a great intensity of, you know, mining activity and holders and all that. And really, maybe even the broader point was like, I want to encourage this versus discourage this, right? Whereas the current administration by many people's kind of evaluation is discouraging rather than encouraging. And so he's trying to, you know, kind of put himself on the other side of the table and say, hey, you have a choice, right? Do you want somebody behind you? Or do you want somebody kind of, you know, on the other side of the table against you in these candidates? And so the United States, you know, I do think that it would

• 15:21Anthony Pompliano?

  be a problem if the United States all of a sudden owned, you know, 10 million Bitcoin. Again, that doesn't mean that they can change anything about the actual system itself. But I do think that it would change kind of the way people looked at it. Right. And so that's one component. Two, about 35%, 30, 35% of all mining is in the United States now. It used to be 65% in China. A lot of it moved to the US and that's how kind of the US got such a large kind of percentage. About 10% of all mining is in Texas alone. So when you think of those numbers, those are pretty big numbers. Still not majority, right? But I do think the whole idea of like a peer-to-peer network, a decentralized

• 16:02Anthony Pompliano?

  network is you want to have some diversification geography-wise, holder base-wise, companies, miners, all the more that you get decentralization, the more that you kind of fulfill the promise of Bitcoin. And so I think it would be very hard for the United States to get, again, you know, more than a million Bitcoin or something like that. And maybe it's just like by the country showing up so late that like regardless of what their like instinct is to do something nefarious or controlling, they it's just too late now. And so they kind of have to get in line and just be one of many participants in the in the network, which would be pretty cool that like kind of the people beat them to it and were able to create enough decentralization that even governments couldn't kind of, you know,

• 16:46Anthony Pompliano?

  supersede what the people had already done.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the government regulation component is pretty interesting here, especially since I don't think they will be able to participate as at big a scale as maybe Trump wants. And so something he said, he said it twice because it got such a good reaction was that he wanted to fire Gary Gensler, who is historically anti-crypto. He's the chairman of the SEC. But a lot of the chatter online was that he couldn't actually do that as president. I'm not sure if he has the power to fire the chairman of the SEC. And I think Gensler's term expires in 2026. What did you, how did you view that when when Trump said it twice?

• 17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things about President Trump's delivery style is it's much more obvious what was written by somebody else versus what he wrote, or you know, what his thoughts are. I think that's true of all politicians. I just think they're usually, their delivery style is much more polished in a way that, you know, kind of, it's harder to tell what do they really think? And you know, how much of it is the speechwriter versus them? With Trump, like, he literally reads a speech, goes off, you know, a tangent, and you can kind of tell the difference between when he's reading versus when he's talking. Somebody obviously wrote in the speech that this was a point that he was gonna do. When he got the crowd reaction, then you could tell that Trump was like, "That's a great idea." Like, they love this. And that was where the showmanship

• 18:19Anthony Pompliano?

  and everything came into it. And so, the reason why I think that that's important is, you know, we just watched what is now coming out, and again, it's always hard to tell kind of exact details, but it is now coming out that there was a conversation between Barack Obama, former president, and current President Joe Biden, where Barack Obama basically communicated, "Hey, look, the Democratic Party is ready to invoke the 25th Amendment." And so, if you think of that on like, the most basic case, essentially, somebody or a group of people was able to remove the president from the race. Now, again, it's kind of convoluted, there's still information coming out, etc. But if you can remove the president from

• 19:00Anthony Pompliano?

  the race, the SEC Chairman, the CFTC Chairman, the FDIC, just name your organization, it could definitely be done. It may not be able to be done via executive order, it may not be able to be done, you know, in terms of like, "Hey, you report to me." Like, on day one, you know, the classic Trump apprentice, like, "You're fired." But, pressure campaigns, all that kind of stuff, I definitely think it could happen. One of the things, though, that I think is important to call out, is, you know, Gary Ginsler did get the Bitcoin ETF approved. He did allow the ETH ETF to be approved. And so, maybe he did it kicking and screaming, I'm not sure, I've never talked to him, I'm not, you know, privy to

• 19:39Anthony Pompliano?

  the conversations internally. But, in an abrasive regime, there was still quite a bit of progress. And so, if you do get a new regulatory kind of leader, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna be better. Right? Now, you'd hope so. And if you have a pro Bitcoin or pro crypto candidate, you know, kind of helping to guide that process, you would think that, you know, that's something they would optimize for. But it's kind of like, just be careful what you always wish for. Right? And it's the same thing with the regulatory clarity. People like, I want regulatory clarity. And then they get the clarity like, no, no, but I disagree. Like, well, did you want clarity? Or did you want your answer? And what they really wanted was their answer, not just the clarity. And so I think that this stuff is very, very complex. And, you know, as much as people like to yell and scream,

• 20:23Anthony Pompliano?

  there has been quite a bit of progress. And so in a weird way, you know, should I pose the question? Has Gary Gensler actually done more for the Bitcoin and crypto community than any other SEC chairman or commissioner before him?

• 20:37Speaker 03

  He's probably done more than Trump has for crypto.

• 20:39Anthony Pompliano?

  But just SEC in general, right? There's been multiple SEC chairman since Bitcoin's been around. Gary Gensler is the one who approved the Bitcoin ETF. Right? And so in a weird way, as although everyone is yelling and screaming at him, he is the one who got it approved. And people would look at who's pressured and, you know, kind of all these other details. But if you look at kind of results, Gary Gensler, on a results basis, in terms of ETFs as a measurement, has been the most friendly SEC chairman to Bitcoin and Ether. Which like blows your mind, right? Because you're like, wait a minute. It's been the abrasive environment the entire time. And, you know, people are upset about it. So I do think that, you know, kind of narratives and then results are very convoluted.

• 21:23Anthony Pompliano?

  People kind of, you know, confuse the two. And if this is the progress we make in an environment that people are unhappy, you know, the promise maybe is like, well, imagine what could happen if we were, you know, in an environment that people would be really excited about.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Where does Bitcoin go under Trump versus under someone else?

• 21:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think it matters, which may sound a little weird, but if you look at the stock market, stock market goes up under both Republicans and Democrats. You know, I think we're going to talk about this idea that like, only one president in the last 45 years has seen the stock market during their tenure go down. And that was George Bush. And it only happened to go down because he got hit with the global financial crisis, right? As he was leaving office. But if his... You know, presidency had lasted another year, year and a half, he would have actually been positive as well. And so asset prices tend to be much more structural.

• 22:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And I tweeted last week, I said, you know, the Fed chairman is more important than the president to the Bitcoin price. Same with the stock market, all financial markets, who the Fed chair is, is more important than who sits in the White House. And so I think that Bitcoin will continue to succeed regardless of, you know, who's sitting in a kind of presidential seat. What do you think?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  I agree that I think assets go up, uh, not because of who's in the White House. It depends on macro factors, who's running the Federal Reserve. And, you know, for stocks in particular, it's a, you have earnings and business cycles and investor sentiment.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  But something that I noticed the other day, I was writing, um, I was reporting on this on the stock market. And the S and P 500 has been pretty much equal under Trump and Biden. But the Russell 2000 small cap index, I think it was up 10% in Trump's term and it's pretty much flat so far in Biden's term. And the, the NASDAQ composite, I think tripled Biden's returns, like under Trump, it tripled Biden's returns. And that tells me there is maybe some discrepancy with maybe regulation or sentiment or interest rates, for example. What do you see as the drivers of those sort of performance gaps under each president?

• 23:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So what's interesting is the S and P 500 is probably more important as an overall, you know, kind of through history, kind of analysis than small caps or tech or kind of any subset. And dead even between Trump and Biden, like literally dead even, you know, through that period of their initial term. And if, again, you go back and you look over 45 years, it's up and to the right, you know, under almost every single president. The reason why tech may have been up more during Trump's era is, you know, Trump was leaving office right as everyone was becoming

• 24:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Zoomers, right? And everyone was on Zoom and on Facebook and all and like it was just this massive influx of both capital, you know, and liquidity into the market, which some of it was directly from Trump and his policies. Some of it was response to the pandemic and, you know, regardless of who the president was, they were going to go and put trillions of dollars into the market. And then also it was just like people were locked in their house. And so obviously tech is going to do very, very well. Now, what about small caps? Right? And so then you get into, well, maybe there's interest rate decisions that really matter there because you have really low interest rates. So the debt is be able to be used to fuel growth of these small cap companies, et cetera. So like you can kind of, you know, play around with a bunch of data, cut it up, try to figure out stuff.

• 25:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I think at the end of the day, what you end up seeing is the S and P 500, which is kind of the best representation of the US economy is identical under both. Now, I do think that Trump, if you put these candidates, uh, you know, Trump and then what is perceived to be Harris is going to be the Democratic nominee. If you put these two next to each other, Trump is much more for deregulation, much more for lower interest rates, much more for kind of economic growth, job growth, right? You know, national security, these things that you would think would be these great tailwinds nationally. And so if you could like hold constant the economic cycles and like all of the geopolitical situation and also any sort of public health crisis, et cetera,

• 25:44Anthony Pompliano?

  and compare policies, it would appear that Trump should do better, right? Given the policies he has, it's just not how the world works. And so we start digging into the data, you start to see this like really kind of crazy stuff where you're like, oh, you would think that a wartime president would see GDP going up, stock market, you know, flying, like all this stuff. And then George Bush actually was the only president last 45 years where the stock market was down. Oh, he got hit with the global financial crisis. If he didn't get hit with the global financial crisis, right? So I do think as much as policies matter and are very, very important, um, policies still have to be enacted and, and, you know, kind of operate within the regular world. Uh, and the world is just messy. It's complex. There's constantly things going on.

• 26:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, uh, for better or worse, sometimes, you know, the results of these policies in terms of how you would measure them, uh, are much more dependent on what happens in the world than the policies themselves. Um, and I think that the stock market is a great example where, you know, on the face, Trump and Biden being equal. But if you look at the actual policies in terms of pro-business, it would seem that, you know, the Republican side is much more pro-business than maybe the Democrat side.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  So I think what Trump brought when he was first president, he used the stock market as like a metric of his success.

• 26:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Hundred percent.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  And he would always point to it, say, look what the stock's doing and all that. And that became, it was after Trump, I think, that it became sort of this metric that we would look to as reporters and analysts. But it doesn't really matter who's in the White House. And I think now, since, you know, 2016, every president will say, oh, look how good the stock market is doing. But then they'll say the president doesn't control the stock market if it's going down. What are some of the indicators that you're watching for, or that you watch typically for how the stock market might do, rather than, you know, the president or policy?

• 27:35Anthony Pompliano?

  What you just described is one of Trump's KPIs was the, it was the S and P. And he not only, was it his KPI? He basically installed it as a KPI on the new presidential dashboard in the White House. Right. It was like, now we're going to watch the stock market. In terms of, you know, what is really going to drive the stock market? It's so dumb, but I really think it just comes down to what is the price of capital? And when you have interest rates that go down, you're going to have asset prices that go up. When you have interest rates that go up, you're going to have asset prices that go down. That is probably the single greatest driver is kind of, you know, price of capital slash liquidity in the market. And those two things tend to go, you know, hand in hand.

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, there are times where you might get a divergence. Right now, we have, you know, near all time high stock prices, but we have interest rates at, you know, over 5%. And so it can happen, but if you were to look, you know, give me 100 scenarios, 90 out of 100, you're going to get that relationship between interest rates and asset prices. And so again, interestingly, the Federal Reserve Chairman doesn't necessarily, is not an elected position. The president is not making interest rate decisions, although there are some candidates who they would like to get more control of that decision-making process. And so when you look at that, you say to yourself,

• 28:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Am I trying to predict whether the stock market is going to go up or down? Or am I trying to predict which policies are going to be more right? And what I've come to the conclusion of is if you're sitting staring at your brokerage account, you should be trying to figure out which direction the stock market is headed. If you're sitting in the ballot box, you should be making decisions based on policies. Right? And it's hard not to let those two things cross over each other. But the data, that actual math objectively, if you look at it, shows that the stock market is not going to be nearly as dependent on who the president is as maybe people would like to think. And vice versa is who ends up being considered a good president or not is not necessarily tied to is the stock market up or not? If you look, you know, stocks are near all time highs.

• 29:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Joe Biden has one of the lowest approval ratings in history. So obviously, the stock market going up doesn't just mean that people think you're a good president. And so it's this very weird dynamic of like, how do you separate fact from narrative? And I think people just understanding your brokerage account is different than the ballot box is probably a pretty important lesson to kind of internalize.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  Think that is fair. Thank you so much for having me, Pomp.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Thanks so much for doing this.