Trump's IRS Settlement, Massie Loses His Seat, & Zuck Caught On Hot Mic AI Layoff Plans | Tom Bilyeu Show Live

Tom and Drew break down a stacked news day starting with the Trump DOJ signing off on a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" settlement that wraps up Trump's pending lawsuits and grants tax-investigation immunity to him, Donald Jr., Eric, and the Trump Organization for any returns filed before the investigation date. Tom unpacks why this functions as a soft self-pardon, why the slush fund framing is structurally dangerous regardless of the merits, and why presidents need to operate knowing every move will be scrutinized after they leave office. From there, the guys get into Trump claiming he paused a bombing campaign against Iran an hour before it was set to launch at the request of GCC nations, US bond yields hitting their highest level since 2007, and the AIPAC-funded primary takedown of Thomas Massie in Kentucky — the one Congressman wearing a pin tracking the national debt, now removed by lobby money in the most naked display of money-in-politics this cycle. Tom delivers an extended argument on the overproduction of elites — why too many people are being pushed into white-collar tracks the economy can't reward, how this fuels the resentment cycle driving political instability, and why historical empires (including pre-Revolution France) collapsed under the same dynamic. He walks through the Niall Ferguson book on the Rothschilds as a case study for understanding the meta-rules of how the world actually works, and pushes back hard against the Jeff Bezos pitch to exempt lower earners from federal taxes — arguing that everyone paying in is the only mechanism that keeps the government accountable. Plus: Mark Zuckerberg's leaked audio explaining why Meta is recording employee computer use to train AI amid the layoffs, why Tom is heading to Piers Morgan to debate AI displacement, how Kobe Bryant's pivot from basketball to filmmaking models the right mindset for navigating technological disruption, Ashley St. Clair's claim that Elon had access to 2024 election data, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson saying she "felt seen" being called a communist by Trump. This one is dense. Tom is in deep-dive mode the whole episode, particularly on the central banking and inflation theft mechanics that he argues are the real engine behind almost every political fight currently dominating the news cycle. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. It's weird to say good morning because where we're at, Drew, it is very much deep in the afternoon. But nonetheless, everybody, I hope you are all doing well. I know that Trump is doing well because Trump's DOJ has signed off on an IRS settlement

• 1:26Tom Bilyeu?

  that is going to leave him, his family, and people that have walked by him in the past immune from tax investigation and from his prior filings. That one's wild, has a lot of people up in arms, understandably so. Trump says that he paused a bombing campaign against Iran just an hour before it was supposed to begin at the request of several GCC nations. This all feels ridiculous to me at this point. US bond yields are getting out of hand as they hit the highest level since '07. Bad enough that I'm writing a deep dive about it. AIPAC takes credit for helping to defeat Thomas Massie in the Kentucky primary. And Drew's gonna have something to say about that amid AI-related layoffs.

• 2:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg explaining why he's recording his employees' computer use and feeding it to AI has surfaced and the backlash has been swift. People are feeling some type of way about what's going on with AI. In fact, to the tune, we're headed to Piers Morgan tonight, everybody, to talk about that exact thing. So if you're a fan of people screaming until they're red in the face, be sure to join us. I don't know when it's gonna air. Presumably, the next day or two, we'll see. And, speaking of things that make me red in the face, the new mayor of Seattle said she felt seen, and I quote, "when called a communist by Trump." Oh, goodie. Drew, how we doing? You were up late last night, partying?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  So we're staying right by the Arsenal Stadium. So everybody and their mom was outside, literally, like moms and babies and all types of things. So they just won their championship last night. So yes, it was, imagine downtown LA after the Dodgers win times a thousand because British are just so much more rowdy. So yeah, it was a fun time.

• 3:13Tom Bilyeu?

  This is the Premier League. So you guys had a good time?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  It was a good time.

• 3:15Tom Bilyeu?

  That is awesome, but you sound like you're dying now.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  No, it's just, I need to come up. So, okay, if I made a complaint to HR, Tom, and then you just settled it, and then I was just immune, and me and anybody I might have hired, and my future people that I'm hired, they're all immune. I feel like that's a good deal, and we can make this happen. Trump's DOJ, 1.7. I don't even know where to start on this. If it's the number, it's the audacity, it's the setup of the fun.

• 3:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's take them one at a time.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  This one, this one is rough, to say the least. Now, obviously, getting into

• 3:49Tom Bilyeu?

  the specific details of what it actually is, is probably important. So, it, the shorthand of it is, this is an absolutely grotesque abuse of power from where I'm sitting. But what he is doing is he had all the big lawsuits that had remained unsettled. So when he was, during the Biden administration, you had somebody at the IRS leak his, it was a Boz Allen contractor, leak his tax return.

• 4:19Tom Bilyeu?

  He then sued for $10 billion, which is absurd on its own, but nonetheless, that's what happened. And so now that the DOJ is back under his control, he, the DOJ has signed off, so Todd Blanch has signed off on a deal that basically wraps a bunch of things that Trump had going at the same time. So the Russia investigation, I think, one other thing as well. So we had all of these lawsuits that were pending. They wrap it all together and they give him this incredibly sweetheart deal on an addendum, which Blanch didn't mention in his testimony, that says that, okay, in addition to him wrapping up all of these sayings and no longer pursuing them and he doesn't get a payout, but they've created this fund.

• 5:04Tom Bilyeu?

  There's two things that are giving people heart palpitations. One is the 1.776 billion, obviously a reference to 1776, trying to make this feel nice and patriotic, that will go to people who feel that they were wrongly persecuted. And to be honest, I think that the government does wrongly persecute people. And so from that perspective, I love it, but it can't come from the guy doing it. And that's where this just gets completely absurd, is you can't be mixed up in it and be the one to essentially give yourself a pardon, which I think is how this feels to a lot of people. I'll certainly speak for myself. This feels like a variant of the president pardoning himself, which they absolutely cannot do. You can't do that.

• 5:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So the legal precedent on which this stands is questionable, but you've got the two elements. So you've got the slush fund that is made for people that are saying that they were wrongly persecuted. This will almost certainly include January Sixers. And then you also have the second part, which is that Trump, Donald Trump Jr. And Eric and the family organization, I think, were the actual named entities. All of them are immune to investigation for tax returns filed before the date that the investigation was launched. So it's not like on into the future, which was the one thing that I found a little

• 6:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Bit of solace in, but if I'm honest, I expect this to be legally struck down. Certainly not while he's in office, probably not unless it goes to the Supreme Court. But this will almost certainly be challenged, AKA struck down by any subsequent Democratic administration. So it's a bit performative for now because the DOJ, the IRS, none of them were going to go after Trump while he's in office. So take that for what it's worth, but this is just in a laundry list of things that look absolutely terrible. This is one of them. So even if all we had was pure optics, this is still a terrible idea.

• 7:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And the odds that this is pure optics, given how recklessly this guy has traded, for instance.

• 7:17Tom Bilyeu?

  If ever there was somebody that we would want to be exposed to just a good old fashioned audit. And I, here's the thing, I hate that this guy has been gone after as ruthlessly as he has. Because so much of what happened in the past really was bullshit, or it seemed like bullshit. And from that perspective, I was just like, the Democrats weaponizing the DOJ against Trump is such a bad look. This is going to come back to haunt them. And so it gives him enough cover, certainly with his base, to go after something like this and do it, when in reality, you want your president to know,

• 7:58Tom Bilyeu?

  when I get out of office, they're going to go through everything that I did, I better be above board. I need to have my nose cleaner than anybody else. And him being able to do this, at least for stuff that was before that date, it's just terrible. Now, I don't think it covers things that he's doing while the president, that would be the only sort of good news to come out of this. But I would need to look deeper into it to be confident in that statement.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Because I have a feeling that some of the things that he's doing from a trading perspective fall into the same kind of corruption that we're seeing with members of Congress in the Senate. It is so out of hand, it's gotta be nipped in the bud. And if he feels like he's got carte blanche, good lord.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wanna hear it from him. He was asked about it yesterday. He took questions from reporters. And then we could jump to some of the speculation, because there's definitely been rumors flying around, who's gonna benefit from the fund? Why is he doing this? Where's the trust? How is that money gonna be dispersed? Some people are saying this is just his way to buy elections. But again, let's see how he thinks he should do it, and then we'll talk about it.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  The Justice Department has this new fund that was announced today, $1.7 billion. Why should taxpayers pay for the Januaries?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Well, it's been very well received, I have to tell you. I know very little about it. I wasn't involved in, in the whole creation of it and, and the negotiation. But this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated, horribly treated. It's anti-weaponization. They've been weaponized. They've been, in some cases, imprisoned wrongly. They paid legal fees that they didn't have. They've gone bankrupt. Their lives have been destroyed. And they turned out to be right. I mean, it was a terrible period of time in the history of our country, and they worked on it. I know the Justice Department, it's really been working on it very hard. There's been numerous other occasions over the years where things like this have been done. But these were people that were weaponized and really

• 9:53Speaker 03

  treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt, with corrupt people running it. And they're getting reimbursed for their legal fees and the other things that they had to suffer.

• 10:04Tom Bilyeu?

  This is really gonna get wild over time. And when you have both sides warring against each other, and they're able to use the bureaucracy against each other, or to try to protect themselves, like, it is really distressing to see how visible our slide into a, I mean, we're not a banana republic yet, but boy, are we getting close. Like, it is really, really unnerving. And I'm really, so my goal is gonna be, however quixotic this may become, my goal is gonna be to try to paint a picture for how all of us can move forward together, in a way that is sensible. So, my appeal to people, young and old alike,

• 10:49Tom Bilyeu?

  but especially to the young people that are gonna be taking over this country.

• 10:54Tom Bilyeu?

  You really have to create something where the playing field is fair, where as you create policy, you know that it's going to be used by you and against you. And so you want something that really is fair, that is just completely ignorant to who this is going to help or hurt in the future. And right now, instead, what we see is people like tailor making things specifically for themselves. And as a CEO, Lisa and I talk about this a lot, is whenever you make a policy, like someone may come to you and they have some crazy extenuating circumstances. You think, wow, I really want to help them. And then you think, but how do we make this a policy that affects everybody? And when you're forced to do that, it really does make you step back and go, yeah, I don't know who this is going to apply to.

• 11:38Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I need to be way more thoughtful about what this policy is. And we're not doing that anymore. This is just complete like, it really was weaponized against Trump. There's no doubt about that. But now they're going to try to selectively protect themselves. And so the next administration is going to try to selectively protect themselves. And so this just turns into madness. And nobody has a sense of, I am beholden to the people of America. And look, I get like a lot of the things that we're told about Washington or Lincoln or whoever is mythology. I understand that. But in a world where we have a breakdown of mythology, given the volume and velocity of information that social media brings to the table, you really have to have people, you've got to seek people out

• 12:23Tom Bilyeu?

  that want to live up to some of that mythology, that want to tell us a story of what we look like at our greatest. And when all we have is example after example of being,

• 12:40Tom Bilyeu?

  of doing the thing that is best for yourself, being incredibly selfish, it is.

• 12:47Tom Bilyeu?

  I think it is dangerous when you forget that kids just soak all that up. So adults may have already made up their mind as to whether or not they're going to do this, but kids really haven't. And so if they look out into the world and they just see a never ending parade of bullshit, they see a never ending cavalcade of people yelling and screaming and hating each other and shooting each other. I mean, it's just the world that you will leave behind is one of madness. And man, do I want to see us reel that in.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really unfortunate too, because it's one of those things where like when you really mess up as like a teenager and your parents kind of sit you down and they say, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed.

• 13:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  It's one of those situations where it's just like the crypto coin was bad enough. The Howard Lucknick sons being on the board of the company that manages the tariff reef that was bad. Like, there's all these things like, yeah, that looks nasty, but okay, maybe it's not that bad. Okay, that is a little weird. Normally presidents don't do that, but that's a little bad. I feel like when it comes to this, when it kind of falls right into his feet, like, yes, I did to make this fund. Yes, it's going to help those people that were benefited. Yes, those are my supporters and yes, this is ahead of the. And it's just, is it really just this transparent how we're operating in politics?

• 14:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, it's interesting. So I have less of a beef with the slush fund for people who've been attacked by the government. Unless he deploys all of that money during his term, that I would dislike. But having the government being accountable to the people and not trying to intimidate the people, but being like, coming into service and being like, my job is to make your life better and I will be judged accordingly. So that like, I really do think that the justice system has been weaponized, but I would very much want something like that to be put in place, knowing this is going to also fund people that I don't like. And if you can do it with that sense, okay, cool.

• 14:44Tom Bilyeu?

  And obviously a balanced budget, because you know how I feel about cutting more checks. But that part, that one doesn't get under my skin. It's interesting. It seems like that may bother you more than the tax returns, unless I'm reading that wrong. The tax returns to me is the far more traumatizing. And I get that he doesn't want to be in that fight. And I get that he doesn't want to leave himself vulnerable. And I get that he knows that as a president, he can't pardon himself. And I get that he knows when he gets out of office that he's going to be attacked. But man, like, this just isn't the way. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere.

• 15:28Tom Bilyeu?

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• 16:13Tom Bilyeu?

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• 18:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  You believe that he's gonna get some of that money, it's gonna end up coming back to him.

• 18:53Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think the 1.776... I mean, Jesus, I'll never rule that out, that it goes out and somehow comes back. I don't think he's stupid enough to take it directly. I think he's doing so many other things that in the fullness of time, we will look back on and go, "That was just blatant corruption. That was blatant..." Whether it meets the technical definition of insider trading, the spirit of, "I have information that you don't." And, "Oh, look, somehow, some way, that information is making it back to the people that are investing on my behalf." Maybe I'm cynical. I'll accept it. I am not the one that should be making this decision. It does not matter that I look at it and say that this looks terrible. This is the kind of thing that should be investigated by an independent party.

• 19:37Tom Bilyeu?

  And I feel like both sides of the aisle have just completely gone, "Independent." What do you mean? Like, this is a sword that I get to wield when I'm in office. And I had a realization when I was in Italy, that it's a very sad thing that we are living in a time where people do not build monuments to the things that matter to them. Again, mythology, I fully accept that. But to tell ourselves a story in the physical world, I think is really important. And we... The only story that we could plausibly tell ourselves right now is, "I hate you, you hate me, and we're willing to fight about it." And instead of going, "What are our shared values?"

• 20:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And I want to focus obsessively on what they are, I want to articulate them, I want to say them out loud, I want to live according to them, and when I betray those principles, I want people to call me out on it. That's part of the interesting thing about doing the lives is, people will make me either say, "I have evolved my beliefs and I no longer believe that thing that I said before, which is why I'm now contradicting myself," or they will harangue me if I get, you know, if I start saying something different just because it ends up being convenient for me. And so, being held accountable to my belief system, to having to articulate why something has changed, I think is incredibly meaningful. It's part of the reason I find the deep dive so useful. It forces me to say, to plant a flag and say, "In this moment in time, this is what I think and believe, and this is where I think it goes."

• 21:09Tom Bilyeu?

  We just don't expect that out of our politicians. We don't as a society concretize those beliefs into physical things so that we can all say, but wait, like is the thing that we all said matters?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 21:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And I get it's partly because we can't agree on what matters.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Good to bring that point back up, though. I think we used to be at least on the same page that corruption, politicians getting exorbitantly wealthy while in office, all that stuff was gross and we didn't necessarily like it. And it was just when it was Nancy Pelosi, everybody had the smoke, everybody was mad, everybody was on board, we really need to have a change. But now, whether it's the Trump announcement, he's been also been trading, there is now these corruption, there's now Mike Johnson is justifying it. Now people are like, well, you, if I was a CEO, I have insider information, I'm allowed to trade my company, why can't politicians do this? And there's kind of this backwards okaying and kind of revisionist history of how I felt about corruption and it's not as bad as I thought.

• 22:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  To me, that's the most, that's more, that's more important versus what is that, what the headline is saying. It really doesn't matter how much the fund is, it really doesn't matter what the lawsuit was. It now matters that everybody says corruption was wrong four years ago, three years ago, probably give me two and a half, you would say that. But now it's, well, it depends who's doing the corruption or what's your definition or how do you define corruption? And it's just a slippery slope of us just kind of, it's another thing that we lost from the moral aspect of the society.

• 22:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I think what we're seeing.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I get it. I'm living in Pollyanna land.

• 22:40Tom Bilyeu?

  I love that.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  That was supposed to be the societal agreement, you know what I mean? Now corruption is cool and well, we'll see what happens. And it's like, wait, this was five alarm fire a couple of years ago when Nancy Pelosi was doing it. And then now that Trump has gotten so wealthy in office, it's kind of like, yeah, well, he's rich now, so that's how rich people are. And it's just kind of, I don't know.

• 22:58Tom Bilyeu?

  I think the, the part of it is like two degrees off from that and it's. I don't think when my team does it, that it is corruption. And they can either, they actually delude themselves into believing that it's not corruption. Or they're just willing to lie. And so the thing that this drives home for me is populism is all about team sports. When, if people could just look at things rationally and say, I don't care whose team gets me to where I'm trying to go. But I have a very clear end goal that I'm trying to get to. I've articulated mine a gazillion times, will do it a gazillion more, and that is have a thriving middle class. And if you can say, this is where I'm trying to go, and then we can talk policy and say, why we think it will get us there.

• 23:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And then as we begin marching down that path, we can either show that it actually is working, or it's not working and we need to pivot. But when it is simply, I'm on a team, this is my identity. And so whatever happens on this side, I'm going to justify. That, that is, is a nonsensical way to live your life. Like, again, the only thing I'll say is the only person I will make foolish decisions for is my wife. I get why people will go to bat for their kids or whatever. But like, outside of that, like, any of that stuff is just, it's toxic to the culture. And so people have got to find a path back to,

• 24:16Tom Bilyeu?

  these are the things that are objectively right. And I don't mind myself being held accountable to this either.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Copy that, copy that. Also, in similar ridiculous things, Trump said he was about to buy me Iran, but changed his mind because the GCC didn't really want him. You kind of said it in your read up top. Is this just him kind of saving face? Or do you think that there was some type of back order deal that actually stopped the bombing? And, and changed the landscape of the war right now?

• 24:42Tom Bilyeu?

  When it comes to Iran, Trump is in over his head. That is the reality. He's no longer able to predict the outcome of his, of his behaviors. And because he does not know, if I do this, I will get this reaction. He doesn't know what to do to move forward. And so to me, the whole idea of Trump always chickens out, that's a stupid mentality. That's a dumb way to read him. The reality is that if you think that you can get something by pushing forward, you push forward. The second you think you can get what you want by moving backwards, you move backwards, whatever. So I've never had a problem with that. This to me is not like indicative of some personality flaw where. He's just afraid to move forward. This guy will do the dumbest, most aggressive shit ever. Reading him as somebody who's scared, I think, will yield very little predictive validity. The thing that has predictive validity in this moment is he is uncertain.

• 25:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Because, and it started coming out when Whitkoff was saying, "Man, Trump and I both expected them to capitulate, and they're not capitulating as we're building up all this massive force." And that should have been their first clue. You do not understand the calculus that they're running. And so now, as this gets more and more complicated, it's just harder and harder for him to figure out which direction he should be going. Now, I do not have a crystal ball, so I don't know that this will end up being true. But the thing that is starting to worry me the most is that if you look at the moment where everybody said, "Okay, the British Empire is done", it was a Suez Canal moment. They could no longer back people down with the strength of their navy. And this may end up being our Suez Canal moment. We'll see. We're still in the middle of this. The future is uncertain.

• 26:12Tom Bilyeu?

  But boy, oh, boy, when I hear him say, "We were an hour away", even the way he said it, I don't know if we have the clip, but even the way he said it, it's the one where he's standing in front of the White House Ballroom construction. Even the way he said it just sounds fake. It sounds like someone trying to perform in a way that he doesn't always. There are often times where he says something, I'm like, "Well, even if he's wrong, he believes what he's saying." This is not one of those times. Like, he sounds like somebody who's trying to posture and say, "Yeah, yeah, they really better worry." But you can only say that so many times and then not push forward before people go, "Okay, this is BS." Now, by the way, this is not me hoping he pushes forward. This is me hoping he finds a resolution. But the way that I'm reading all of this is that he is just unsure what path is going to yield the outcome.

• 26:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Asymmetric warfare is the thing people keep losing sight of. We can be the strongest military in the world, but if they don't have to win a military victory, they just have to win the, like, strategic victory of dragging this out long enough that it's... If their people are starving and they can just kill enough of them that they'll stay silent and we have an actual political process that however much it's limping along is still real, then Iran knows they just have to keep dragging this out and keep dragging this out. So you have two entities that both think the longer we drag this out, the more of an advantage we have. But right now, it seems like Trump is leaking credibility way faster than the Iranians. The Iranians don't even have anything to prove at this point. It

• 27:37Tom Bilyeu?

  is just, I retain power or I don't. And if they retain power, then they can complicate matters forever. And the rest of the world, why they have to join in a military response, which they are not going to be fast to do if the US has to tuck tail and leave. And otherwise, they're going to end up paying fees to go through the Strait of Hormuz. And look, over time, people will find ways around it. But it opens up a can of worms where other countries are going to start charging a fare for transit through their seas. So this is a moment of tremendous uncertainty leaking off of the president from where I'm sitting.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, here's the clip. We were able to find it.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  How soon were you striking?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  I was, I was, I was an hour away. We were all set to go. You're talking about yesterday?

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  We were going to be striking very, it would have been happening right now.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Plans?

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was all done. The boats, the ships are all loaded. They're loaded to the brim. And we were all set to start.

• 28:37Tom Bilyeu?

  There's just something about it. Look, obviously, I have a belief in my head and so it's entirely possible I'm just painting it on him. But yeah, this is not somebody who sounds confident in exactly what they're doing. They know they're going to get out of this what they want. And that, you know, they've got the itchy trigger finger and so you better believe that I'm going to follow through with this. He doesn't have the political capital to keep going. You've got something coming out of the Senate now. It was, it's not like an actual resolution or anything, but they put it forward to actually get it voted on where they would have the Iran War Powers Act. It's something like that, which would force Trump to go to Congress to get approval before he could restart the war.

• 29:20Tom Bilyeu?

  And if, if that ends up happening, I just can't imagine that they'll vote for it. Not with things as they are currently. Something new would have to happen.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there was some speculation on that, too, that the reason that that was able to pass this go around is because a lot of people lost their seats. We'll get to Massie and everybody else later on in the show. But in general, I was having a conversation with my London friends. They were like, yeah, man, you lot are going through a lot. You know, Trump is out there. It's kind of crazy how much longer is he's your president? And I was like, oh, we're just getting started. He has like two and a half more years left. So now that we're entering kind of this last home stretch, I would call it, because midterms, there's always going to be some reshuffle. His legislation is definitely going to slow down. That happens with every president. It's not specific to Trump. But now that we're about a year and a half in, he got a couple of wins, big beautiful bill, Trump

• 30:10Speaker 01

  account, Trump RX. He got a couple of losses, tariffs, I will say the Iran war, everything, corruption, trading, policy-related things like that. Are you still confident that he could pull something together and kind of land this plane in some way that won't make Americans, and more importantly, the middle class, in a better, in a worse situation than when he entered office?

• 30:32Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, I think you have to look at the directionality of the choices that you've made, and the directionality right now is bad. So you've got the bond yields, the long-term bond yields are going up. Your Fed is in a position where they can't afford to cut right now, but they absolutely have to cut. And so they're backed into a trap where if they cut, then they can refinance the debt, but they'll let inflation just rip. And because of what's going on in the Middle East, you've already got inflation now going crazy. So we're back up to almost 4% and rising. So when you look at, I think it's called the

• 31:10Tom Bilyeu?

  PPI. So the PPI is what producers pay. It's literally producer price index. And that is at 6%. So now, it doesn't mean that they're going to pass it all on to consumers. And so maybe it really does settle out somewhere around 4%. But I could also see it going higher. And the longer that things drag out in Iran, I could see it going even higher. So anybody that's making decisions, if they are going in the wrong direction, they better have a very concrete answer as to why this is actually going to turn around. Now, I can steel man their argument, but your question was how confident am I? I'm low confidence. But the steel man of the argument goes like this.

• 31:51Tom Bilyeu?

  This is a temporary thing while we wrap everything up in Iran. I really want a diplomatic solution. I still am confident that we're gonna get it. Dear American people, I hope you're not saying that you want me to bomb. I hope that you agree with me that if we can reach a negotiated settlement, that that would be preferable massively. And I've been very clear and consistent, what he will say, on the fact that this is all about nuclear weapons. They have not backed down. We've got a new idea, which is called the Ring of Death. We're gonna place a ring of death around the site where the buried material is and let Iran know. All right, if we're at a stalemate, I'm just letting you know that if you cross that line of death, we will kill you instantly. We are watching from satellites. We will drop bombs.

• 32:35Tom Bilyeu?

  You will all be dead. And so with that, we, America, now claim victory. If you don't open the strait, though, then we're gonna have to come back and start blowing some shit up. And we see if they end up making good on that threat or not. And by the way, assuming whether we have to do it militarily or we get a negotiated settlement, dear Americans, that will then flood the market with oil, which is gonna drive the cost of oil down. So yes, this will have been very unfun, but you will watch the bond rapidly come back down. It will come back down on the news. You won't even have to wait for it to work its way through the economy. This is all just a mild blip. Hang in there. Like, on the other side of this, we're gonna be better off.

• 33:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, and by the way, we've got like 110 empty tankers heading to the US. The US is now going to be the gas station of the world. We're negotiating new deals with China. They're gonna be buying more oil from us. Everything is gonna look brighter. And so you can paint the picture. It's only a question of, do I trust that in the hand-wavy part of that story about they eventually agree, Ring of Death, all of that? Like, oh, we somehow get the Strait of Hormuz opened back up. Does that actually happen? Or does this become the moment where Iran is able to back down the US military by saying, we can blow up just enough of these ships that people won't go through the strait?

• 34:00Tom Bilyeu?

  And they will come to us, hat in hand, and they'll pay the $2 million fee. And then it's gonna be on you, America, holding your blockade, because we'll let people through. All you have to do is pay a fee. And so if the world opinion goes to America's the asshole, now we're in a pretty rough spot. And so. It is going to bring a lot of things to a head. So I am optimistic. I am not confident. I think that when you decide to start a war, you have to remember how unlikely it is that you'll be able to get out on your own terms, especially if you're not willing to go to total war, which is always the part of my story that hopefully makes everybody deeply uncomfortable,

• 34:45Tom Bilyeu?

  which is, yeah, if you're willing to kill everyone, then you can win. If you have the strongest military, you can effectively win any war. But, ooh, that is a terrible fucking solution.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you will have to kill everyone because once the reporter and media and dissent, like, there's all these other variables on the table for sure. All right, let's jump over to Kentucky now. And honestly, all around the world, Trump was, I think it was 20-0 in all his endorsements in the primaries in different states yesterday. So he has pretty much flipped the board. People are now rephrasing the entire conversation as people who are dissenting from MAGA. They might have a base online. They might have some YouTube and podcast views. But when you're in real life and you're actually talking to voters, they're still all on board on Trump. MAGA is still a movement. And Trump winning against Massie as the biggest race kind of shows that's popular.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Did you have a similar takeaway?

• 35:42Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, it is, it is pretty wild that he, the whatever, the CNN guy has been trying to tell us for a while that among MAGA Republicans, he has 100% support. So the debate was always, and to be honest, I kind of laughed at that because I was like, well, how much of the base is actually MAGA Republicans? And I would have guessed that it was substantively lower than it is. But if the Massie race is anything to go by, it's like 60-40. So it's like, it's, it's not like some slim ass margin, like he won handily. So if that is any indication, if the Republican Party is a 60-40 split in Trump's favor,

• 36:25Tom Bilyeu?

  then he's still, like we just saw, going to be able to pull a lot of rabbits out of the hat. So it is an interesting question that is eternally being asked, which is how much do the voices online represent the voices in reality?

• 36:42Tom Bilyeu?

  It is a very difficult to pin down question. And we're seeing right now that there's a lot more juice. For Trump than I would have thought.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it reminds me about the press conference that wasn't a press conference that he did earlier in his term, where he was like, I'm gonna talk to everybody to the nation on Tuesday, and I'm gonna do all these things. And he basically was just reading out his tweets from the last two weeks. And that kind of, we talked about it, it solidified to me that, okay, his base is, they're not chronically online YouTubers. They are the older folks who are still watching traditional TV, who go to bed at 7 o'clock, who watch their stories, watch their news, and that's their day. So, a lot of times, having that TV commercial donation money and able to attack that older population on traditional media, you can definitely reshape the narrative a lot easier than you can on a podcast or something of

• 37:34Speaker 01

  a lot of these alternative medias. Let's pull up this tweet. This is from Hawk I Enjoyer, talking about the Massie race specifically. He said, someone who has never, someone you never heard of, declined eight debates, and this was your point, you can't, you shouldn't be a politician if you decline debate, and took 20 million in donations from, I'll say AIPAC, not Israel, won a primary from an eight-year constituent, we're cooked. This is the underbelly of that conversation, though. Is this just lobby's gonna lobby, and Massie pissed off the wrong lobby, and they got him out of there?

• 38:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this, this is a naked display of money in politics. This is why you should hate everything about money in politics, and why we need somebody to put forward a better way to do this, and then we need to pressure the life out of our Congress to actually pass something like that, which of course is going to be very difficult. But this, this is wild and grotesque, and it, I beseech, all the rich people out there that are throwing money around in politics, do you guys not get the moment that you live in? Do you not understand how the internet works? Like, this stuff is going to be dissected and broadcast over and over and over. And every day, you lose one of the older people that you are counting on, that don't have access or don't avail themselves of the velocity

• 38:51Tom Bilyeu?

  and volume of information, and you are telling yourself a story that is completely nonsensical, which is that- You still have the power, you can do things as normal, but you are radicalizing generations of people, not just a generation. These people are going to be unforgiving as they amass more power, as they become a bigger part of the voting block. And so seeing people make such a stupid rookie mistake is just absolutely wild. You are playing such a short-term game that doesn't need to be played like this. Like, if you want to be inspired by somebody who's just willing to take people on, on the strength of the ideas and the actual, like, record of what the person has done,

• 39:36Tom Bilyeu?

  look at Spencer Pratt. So you've got somebody who just says, hey, this is what they did, this is what I plan to do. And if your guy, Gal rain, can't win on, this is what he did, this is what I'm gonna do, now we have something that is going to radicalize people. I promise you, because the people who are online, whatever percentage of the base that is, it grows by the day. Because people are growing up in this environment now. This is just how they're going to get their information. And so they will always be awash in an amount of information that the people that I think you're winning over, if the numbers actually reveal what I think they reveal, that you're swapping younger voters for older voters, and that constituency is going to die off. It is a bad trade.

• 40:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And if you need to look at anybody to see how fast things can change, you don't have to look any farther than AIPAC. Man, they went from like default, like Judeo-Christian, like we're in this together, to being seen as the global villain.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  And now you have to answer that question, did you take AIPAC money before you can run?

• 40:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  But here's the demographic breakdown. So from 18 to 29-year-olds, that's 10% of the voting block. Massie, 179%. 30 to 44-year-olds, about 23% of the voting block, Massie, 165%. But even the older you get, the older it gets, one, the more people are voting in that generation, and two, the more people were voting against Massie. So from 45 to 64, 35%, the largest base, it was still 53% Massie, but it was a 65 in older crowd, 33% of the vote that swept them, 65, 35. And remember, this is an eight-year incumbent, so these people 65-plus, they have been around with Massie, they've known Massie, like, so.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  It's it's just crazy to see how stark these demographic pictures are coming after how much energy and online was about Massie over the last couple of days. But to your point, lobbies go on lobby.

• 41:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Lobbies are gonna lobby, people are gonna pursue financial interests and ultimately, we're all gonna pay the price for this. People have to build a mental model of how the world works. People have to begin to connect the dots in a way that's grounded, that allows you to make different choices and get a different outcome. Don't build a worldview that is hopeless. But we really do have to look at the way all of this is transpiring. We are in a position right now where basically the American economy is being strip mined. And by that, I mean, in fact, let me be very specific about what I mean by that. They are leveraging deficit spending and money printing to take money from everybody. But obviously, it's going

• 42:13Tom Bilyeu?

  to disproportionately hurt the middle and working class. And they are able to create a funnel into assets. And you're you're talking to somebody who benefits from this tremendously. And I'm screaming as loud as I can to stop this for the love of God. And so when you're looking at somebody as a politician, whether we want them in power or not, just think obsessively about that. The guy we just booted out was the one motherfucker wearing the pin that tracked the debt. Like, this is so infuriating. So yeah, the great news is that we have a voice. And so we don't have to be just online denizens. We actually can make our voices

• 42:56Tom Bilyeu?

  heard, not in a psychotic way, just make a better argument. Make a better argument. That ends up being, I think, the most important thing, cause and effect. Why does making this change lead where we want? And so what I'm beseeching you all to do, the more you understand it, the more you'll be able to articulate it. And if you don't understand it, then all you're left with is the emotional side of it. And look, I'm preaching to the choir. I appreciate you guys being here. I'm really grateful for all the people that tune into the economic deep dives. I'm really trying to paint a picture for for what is actually happening, so that people can understand it, they can make better decisions. But it it is admittedly heartbreaking that of all the people to get booted, it's the guy that

• 43:38Tom Bilyeu?

  is most aware, which of course is why he got booted. I trust me, you don't have to point that out. I'm aware of the irony. But we've got to pick that up collectively. We've got to carry that torch. Yeah, otherwise, we really are cooked.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And a lot of people are taking victory laps around Candace Owen, Jake Shields, Dave Smith, Tucker Carlson, including Meghan McCain, who tweeted out, "Shout out to Tucker Carlson, who was 0 for 5 in candidate endorsements." So a lot of people are saying Tucker Carlson and Thomas Massie lining with him, talking about the Epstein files, alleging Trump being in those files, that was the beginning of his downfall.

• 44:16Tom Bilyeu?

  And Well, so, I mean, there's an interesting story to be had there, which is, I'm not sure what those guys are doing. When I look at them, I won't put Dave Smith in there. I think while Dave Smith and I come to different conclusions, Dave really does seem to be trying to track cause and effect the best he can. I think he's gotten too myopic on one topic. But when I look at those guys, they map better to, "Oh, this person's trying to get clicks." Then it's like, "Got it. Like, you found white space. You know you have to say something different. You have to say it in a way that like really hooks people." I get the temptation as somebody on the internet, "Oh, boy, do I understand it."

• 44:58Tom Bilyeu?

  But it is really bad long-term. And especially like, I often think, "Okay, what if I'm on the wrong side of this issue?" Like, I think about that a lot with AI. "What if I'm on the wrong side of this issue?" Because I really think, and obviously I've been predicting this for a long time, I think it's going to get violent over AI. And I will clearly be on the quote-unquote "wrong" side of that. But because I actually believe that we've got to do it well, it's not going to not happen. I've made that case many, many times. So now, how do we do it well? I think that's where the focus needs to be. Every technological transition in history has led to more jobs, not less. So we should be with an eye towards that.

• 45:40Tom Bilyeu?

  But nonetheless, the temptation to, ah, let me just, let me just go over here.

• 45:46Tom Bilyeu?

  You feel that pull. I think it's a mistake. And in the fullness of time, you're either gonna be right or wrong. And if you can look yourself in the eye and be like, well, I really believed it, you've at least got something. But man, if you're just saying whatever you think you need to say to be popular in the moment, ack, ack.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  That brings me to Ashley St. Clair, Elon's baby mama. I don't know if you've been tracking that.

• 46:07Tom Bilyeu?

  I have. I'll be interested to see how you make this transition work.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  No, because it seems like she's saying that Elon was behind the rigging of the 2024 election. And so to your point of there's white space in the market, you know, some people are trying to clip. This is the same woman who tried to start a show, who was also in the media influencer like sphere. So is it just, I have access to Elon, I have information people don't know, this is my white space? Or do you think there might be credence here to the technology savant Elon might have had a little bit more to do with the election than we were led on to believe?

• 46:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, the fact that she actually in this clip, and we should play it, but.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  It was just four minutes. I don't want to play the whole thing.

• 46:46Tom Bilyeu?

  It's too much. I think it's towards the end that she says, how the hell did you have access to election information? Anyway, I mean, we don't need to play it because that's what she says. That's the part where I was like, yeah, that's a very good question. And I'm not saying it doesn't have a reasonable answer. This guy is somebody that, given the access to data that he has on X, he may be able to correlate trends on X with things that happen in the real world. It's entirely possible, given that he would be able to go back through election history for, you know, as long as X has existed and be able to identify patterns using large language models to go in and correlate the data. Like, that kind of thing exists. It's very real. It's above board, all of that. And so it's entirely possible he was just doing that.

• 47:28Tom Bilyeu?

  So I'm not going to leap to he did something bad. I'm also very open if somebody's got the evidence. So that's certainly possible.

• 47:37Tom Bilyeu?

  But she's asking a question that needs to be asked. How did he have access to that information? It would be very wonderful to know. What was he doing? Because the fact that he left hours early and said, like, cool, I've got it. My data shows that he's gonna win. At a minimum, it'd be great for polling. Hey, here's the like, real information. So do I look at her as a grifter? I don't know her well enough. So it's, look, everybody's gonna use what they have. And as long as she's being honest. Great. Now, you know me, I do not like the air dirty laundry.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:15Tom Bilyeu?

  So if you, they have a kid together, right?

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:18Tom Bilyeu?

  So I mean, you share a child, man. And so like, there's just, I, I have a different moral compass when it comes to that stuff. So um, I will say this, if Lisa had an affair, cheated on me, I'd be devastated. I am not going to go online and talk shit. It's not gonna happen. Like, that's a betrayal of who I want to be. I don't give a fuck about who she is. Um, and so, yeah, that's just me.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  We'll see. This is just something that as we were having speculation about different groups and media entities, I was like, oh, that's interesting. I don't think I asked you about that, that actually is a clear question yet, so.

• 48:53Tom Bilyeu?

  I, here's what I really, this is the far more interesting thing. Like, it will never cease to amuse me that the richest, most powerful guys in the world, evolution is undefeated. It, it puts this fucking algorithm in your brain that's like your dick, really wants to go in these places. And they cannot help themselves. When I hear her talk, I'm like, she's young and good looking, I guess. But like, are you really gonna risk like all this? Like, somebody putting you on blast forever and ever?

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Was it worth it?

• 49:24Tom Bilyeu?

  No way, dude. Like, the greatest piece of advice for young men, don't stick your dick in crazy. Like, and if you can't determine who's crazy, there's your answer. Like, yikes, man. You've really got to be careful with this shit. Yeah, hard pass. But that shit makes me laugh until the end of time. Like, it, it is so easy to make guys act a fool with sex. Like, just fucking sex, man. It is really, like, it does do something to your brain, I will be the first to admit. When you see something that turns you on, it is like a hand reached inside your brain and just squeezes. It's really bizarre.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter how many IPOs, it doesn't matter what your TJ M and A deals you have on the table.

• 50:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Jeff Bezos is still sending that dick pic. He's still sending that dick pic, dude. That is wild. The one promise I make, God forbid something ever happens to my wife, I'm not sending dick. My wife, girlfriend could literally plead with me. No, I'm not falling for it. I'm not falling for it.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Never said it. Not doing it.

• 50:20Tom Bilyeu?

  That shit is wild. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned.

• 50:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  This is Jeff Bezos talking about raising taxes isn't going to do what we think it's going to do.

• 50:37Speaker 05

  Some people talk about, you know, making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes? Why is somebody at all? Why is some, why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes? That's $1,000 a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And so, and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It's only 3%. We can find 3%. So, we don't have, it's a small amount of money for the government, you know, that.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  And really, it's, and the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know, we shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.

• 51:38Tom Bilyeu?

  So, I'm, I love the sentiment and I'm going to violently disagree with what I think it does to the psychology of the people. If you're not paying any tax, then you don't go, are they spending the money wisely? The government is being defrauded at a level that is grotesque, like properly grotesque. And I love the idea of giving people money when they need it. But when you actually start looking at what is the problem that countries? So, everybody will point to the Nordic countries and they'll say, just model them. And then you look at it and you realize the reason you can't model the Nordic countries is because we do not have homogeneity of values.

• 52:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And more importantly, we don't have homogeneity of values that say, I'm only going to take the absolute minimum of what I need. And I'm going to hold myself and others accountable to making sure that they're contributing to the system. Only when you have that mentality, do these systems of trying to take care of everybody work. So when you have a multicultural system like we have, multicultural is a stand-in for different values. And when people have competing values and you create a system that can be taken advantage of, people that have a value system that says, um, this is mine for the taking, or have a value system that says, well, if somebody else is taking, I'm going to take, then everybody starts taking. And that's the exact situation that we find ourselves in now.

• 53:04Tom Bilyeu?

  It doesn't work because of the way that the human mind is. And getting people to understand that, so people have to be paying into a system so that they will go, is my money being spent wisely? And then I hope that people start going, yo, we need a way smaller government. Right now, instead, what we do is people will take Jeff Bezos's advice. And by the way, that's advice is trying to keep him from being, uh...

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Text?

• 53:31Tom Bilyeu?

  What, what is it? Eighty-sixth? Wasn't that the one that got, uh, the, the guy like, I found some seashells. Uh, it's gonna stop from getting seashelled. So, um, I get why he's saying it, but the reality is you, you do want people paying into a system so that they will be scrutinous of every single dollar and holding the whole system accountable to, are you yielding results or not? And we're, we're just not gonna get out of this madness until we have a system like that. Okay, park that idea. I do wanna look closer at sovereign wealth funds and figure out, like, what's the gotcha there? Is there a gotcha? Should we be doing it? Does it work with a, a diverse society? Or does a sovereign wealth fund only work if you're Norway?

• 54:14Tom Bilyeu?

  So that's gonna be something that I'll look into in the not-too-distant future. Because it does unnerved me that for the most part, the only countries that have it are monarchies. Uh, and so, uh, that seems like a pretty bad trade. Um, but Norway does have one. And so, is there something? America has so much wealth. Anyway, I haven't looked closely enough at it. My default position is it's a terrible idea, but that's just a default position. Um, so, yeah, this is one where... Jeff Bezos is so smart that I know he knows how this whole system works. And I know he knows that just continuing to push taxes higher and higher.

• 54:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Because once you're like, why should the nurse who's making 75,000 pay any taxes? It's only 3%. Then it's like, well, why should somebody making 100,000? Then it's like, well, why should anybody in the medical profession? Even the guy making 500,000, that would be, I mean, he's helping people, Drew. And so it becomes like this complete madness that spirals out of control. When what you should be doing is saying, we should spend less money. Because we are spending money fraudulently. We're spending money stupidly. We need to restrict. Then from a place of, alright, we've got a nice balanced budget. Small government that isn't like just taxing everybody to death. What is the thing that we care enough about? That even I, as somebody who's not making a little bit of money, or not making very much money. I would want to contribute to that because that feels so right, so good.

• 55:37Tom Bilyeu?

  And then only when somebody is temporarily in need, do we go, alright, cool. Like, here's the handout that you need to get back up on your feet.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  When you say, so to you, what's the means testing of it? Because you say temporarily in need. That I'm like beaming in on that. It's just the means test. Got it. This is same interview coming from a different angle. And then this is more specifically, the call for an increase in taxes? Isn't necessarily the also going to benefit that teacher in Queens? He keeps bringing her up. I don't know if he knows somebody, or maybe he sent her a dick pic recently. I don't know.

• 56:12Tom Bilyeu?

  He has a focus group.

• 56:14Speaker 06

  He's made a reference to you and others. Are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes. A lower tax rate than maybe I am, for example.

• 56:27Speaker 05

  These people sometimes say that, you know, I don't pay taxes. It's not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. And it's a perfect, again, if people want me to pay more billions.

• 56:37Speaker 06

  Right.

• 56:38Speaker 05

  Then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that this, that that's going to solve the problem. You could, you could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens.

• 56:48Tom Bilyeu?

  He is so right.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  And I think that's the part I wanted to kind of click in on.

• 56:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Which so is the question, why won't it help?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why is he right?

• 56:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so the reason that this isn't going to end up helping the teacher is the thing that is hurting the teacher is that she cannot save her way to prosperity. She is not earning money at a faster clip than inflation is stealing it from her. And that really is it. And I know that people get bored of me saying it and I wish like it is on. I'll be honest, it is grotesque that humans, we all do it, but that humans get bored of hearing the truth and yet still don't do anything about it. Like for all of Brian Johnson's measuring of his girl's vaginal microbiome and how many erections he gets, the reality is eat right, sleep like that. It's like 85% of the fucking battle. He even did a list of like, here are all the things. They were all boring. It was none like take CoQ10 or anything like that. It was just like some basic bitch shit.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  His sleep, stay in the bed for eight hours.

• 57:42Tom Bilyeu?

  Exercise.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Wake up in the morning.

• 57:44Tom Bilyeu?

  It's like it's just the basics. People don't want to do the basics. But the reality is if the government would stop stealing money through inflation, this problem goes away because people can save their way to prosperity. So once you break that, now you have an immoral system that tells people you must go gamble or extract from the government if you want to make money. And so you create a system where instead of people being able to grow and get better as a person and work hard and contribute more and therefore get more rewards. You create a system where they're incentivized to be a political actor that goes in and tries to siphon off as much as they can. And here's a new idea. I've talked a little bit about this.

• 58:28Tom Bilyeu?

  But the overproduction of elites is almost certainly a way bigger problem than I have given a credit for. And the idea that when the government starts guaranteeing loans or securing loans for people to go get a degree that the market is never going to reward, underwater basket weaving. It's like, cool. You have a degree in underwater basket weaving theory. And the problem is nobody gives a shit about that. So you're not going to get paid to do that. And so now you've got a bunch of loans. So you're probably never going to pay back. And so that creates resentment because that person feels like, well, I should be able to do something with my underwater basket weaving theory degree.

• 59:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And I'm out here now and I'm driving an Uber and that's shitty because I'm one of the smart ones.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:15Tom Bilyeu?

  And so what the fuck?

• 59:16Speaker 01

  I went to college. I did everything right.

• 59:17Tom Bilyeu?

  I got my degree. I did what you told me to do. But what the market is telling you is, yeah, the market doesn't give a shit about your degree. And so by the government facilitating that, we create this resentment loop. We create a potential like missed opportunity in the economy, if nothing else, where that person could have done something that would contribute, but now isn't doing something that contributes. And then if I really want to just trigger people here, but I mean this sincerely, we really have to come to grips with this. When you look at women and say, okay, cool, like go get whatever degree, even though the world is not going to reward you for that. And then they do that thing instead of raising a family, which in my mind should be culturally rewarded. It should never be a trap.

• 1:00:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Women should never have to have kids if they don't want to have kids. My wife did not have kids. My wife, love her to death, yay. But if she can't do something that the world wants, then that just is what it is. So on that, I think that we have to face that there will be consequences to the way that we have set up society. And we have essentially forced women to go into work because of inflation. And then on top of that, we've then let a large number of people, many of whom happen to be women, go get degrees that the economy is never going to reward. And so now they're pursuing something that from an economic standpoint, people are like, nah, not into that. But they have to work because of inflation and they got a degree that doesn't make sense.

• 1:00:43Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's like you just get this really shitty resentment cycle, drag in the economy, missed opportunity, fewer kids, all for what?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Let's take a step back.

• 1:00:54Tom Bilyeu?

  I actually want to answer that. All for what? What, what, what? So that the bankers can steal your money. Like actually for real, for real, for real. The Epstein class is the meanest way to say it because they're not all going to be from Epstein Island. But that creates the right sense of like this loosely entangled.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Nefarious group of actors.

• 1:01:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Nefarious group of actors. Thank you.

• 1:01:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Dude, once people start like actually seeing how those Lego pieces fit together, it's like, ooh, I don't like this. This is not good. And so, sure, take more money from Bezos. Uh, it won't help because your problem is actually something else.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  All right. You lost a couple of people with the, um.

• 1:01:39Tom Bilyeu?

  I was gonna say, there's no way.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, the elite overproduction, but I think they just don't know the pieces of like the equation. So what do you mean by elite overproduction specifically?

• 1:01:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so it's overproduction of elites. So just to make sure I said it right.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what's, what's like an elite in this case?

• 1:01:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep, the overproduction of elites are people that are doing, um, call it like almost philosophical jobs. They're not building or creating a thing. They are doing administrative work. They are, um, doing philosophy. They are consulting. Now, I'm not saying all people in those fields are all falling into the overproduction category, but this is a thing, like if somebody has a degree in, um, you know, whatever, uh, Wisconsin butterfly studies, and they then just cannot get a job doing that and they end up being an Uber driver. That's the economy saying, we actually need somebody to transport people around. We don't need somebody to tell us about Wisconsin butterflies.

• 1:02:40Tom Bilyeu?

  So that is, um, what I mean. And this is like a known thing. This is not Tom making up the phrase, the overproduction of elites. This is part of when you look back at a society and see how it breaks down. This is what ends up happening is you're always going to have a group of elites, the iron law of oligarchy. So oligarchy simply means small number of people. So there's always going to be a small number of people that run the country. And you always hope that it's because they're legitimately smarter. And so it's like, oh, this small group of legitimately smarter, more driven people are running the country because they're the right people to run the country. But then as a parent, you go, well, where do I want my kids to end up? Do I want them out doing a backbreaking job in the fields? Or do I want to say, hey, this one's really smart.

• 1:03:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me send them off to the training or to the schooling or whatever in China would be. We were trying to get them on a government track because that's the most powerful, you know, other than being an entrepreneur, that's like the best place to be. And so we started telling kids like, oh, you really want to go to college. And so trade schools just started dying off, dying off, dying off. Nobody raised their kids and said, blue collar is dope. You want to be blue collar? Shout out to my friends back in Tacoma who legitimately aspired to being literal pipe fitters. They know who they are, fucking love them. And they just like, from the time they were kids, man, like I straight ahead, I'm gonna be a pipe fitter. And that's rare now. Like, we don't tell kids, go be a pipe fitter. We tell kids, yo, you're going to go to college.

• 1:04:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, in my family, it wasn't even an option. You were going to college. And so I remember one of my friends being like, oh, you're gonna go to college? And I was, it was the first time it occurred to me that you could even not go to college. That was not something I ever considered. It was like, yeah, you go to college.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  But I, I think it might be the word elite that's, that's tripping people out. Cause there's people in the chat right now that are saying like, Tom, you are the elite. Tom and his friends are the elite, not some random psych major. They're not the elite.

• 1:04:35Tom Bilyeu?

  They are, they're, they're being groomed to be in the quote unquote elite. So, uh, so I get it. This word is carrying a ton of baggage that people already have. If, if you think of elites as they're the rich bad guys, the statement is going to be very confusing. But they become the bad guys because you overproduce. And so this is the French Revolution. The French Revolution was not about poor people rising up. When, when you start researching the French Revolution, I think it will take up a different place in a lot of people's minds. So the French Revolution is not a bunch of poor people who are like, we can't afford bread.

• 1:05:12Tom Bilyeu?

  It was the overproduced elites who had the free time to say, like, I'm not getting ahead the way that I thought I was going to. I'm a part of the, you know, the gentry, I'm a part of the, uh, what are they called? Cordons or whatever, courtiers, like I'm in that class, but now I'm not able to make enough money because I've been raised to be a part of this, but there's way too many of us. There's not, the, the economy. Me is not making a demand for more of this small group of people. So really, I should be out being a plumber, electrician, schoolteacher, whatever. But instead, I'm trying to get up into this rarified air. And so we just pump them out, pump them out, as if that's what they're gonna do.

• 1:05:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, they don't end up doing that thing, and that is precisely what causes the bitterness. So they end up falling back into some other job, feeling very angry, feeling very displaced, like this is not the future that I was promised. And therein lies the problem. They are called, when people talk about this problem, they are called the elites, because they match, like, they've been highly educated, they are going after white collar jobs, that kind of thing. That is what people mean when they say the elites. They don't mean the secret cabal of billionaires, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  I think that helps. I'm waiting for the chat to kind of catch up to that. But I do think that that's a better way to kind of ground it. So I think you nailed it with the blue collar versus white collar. That might be another one. Like, so there's a lot of people who went to college for, I have a really good friend, she went to college for urban planning, when got a master's degree in urban planning. She manages the Applebee's. I love her to death. But that's elite overproduction. You went to school to get a really bushy degree when you could have done something that didn't necessarily need a degree.

• 1:06:59Tom Bilyeu?

  You could have gone straight out of high school into the Applebee's, but your parents didn't raise you to do that. In fact, one of my most successful family members went straight out of high school to work at KFC. And that motherfucker was so good at frying that chicken that he ended up, like, running, first one, then two, then three, then eight, whatever, just like, ah, up, up, up, and just absolutely killed it. And that was him going, I don't need to go to college. I get where my track is. I'm just gonna head straight down this path. But you can imagine, it was almost like scandalous. Like, what's he doing? He's smart. Why is he fucking around with KFC? But it was like, he fucking smashed it.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Nice, nice. So that is kind of the problem. And I think that a lot of times when we're talking about the economy specifically, I'm gonna jump over to the bond yields and things like that next. It seems like we were forgetting some of these. Put variables of this experiment that we're all in, you know, if it's if you are looking at ice on a table and you turn on the heat, the ice is going to melt a little faster than if you turn on the air. And I think a lot of times we're looking at the economy, we're looking at our paychecks, but we're not thinking about these inputs and outputs that are happening around whether it's government policy, whether it's international, domestic conflict, whether it's supply chains. There's all these nuances that we don't necessarily talk about as much. And I think elite overproduction is one of those things that kind of gets swept under the rug, but

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  that is a thing, it does need to have a fix, and that is one of the reasons that traditional empires have had problems in the past.

• 1:08:24Tom Bilyeu?

  That's very well said, and now I'll add an element to that, which is

• 1:08:30Tom Bilyeu?

  a failure to understand the physics of the human experience makes solving the problem impossible.

• 1:08:38Tom Bilyeu?

  The people who quote unquote secretly run the world, first of all, assume they are warring factions. These are not people that get along. These are the people that kill each other in the night and all that shit like these are like if you're really going to mentally map them well, some of them, maybe it's 10%, but some percentage of them are evil. And they are evil and they are wicked smart and they have no conscience whatsoever. They certainly act like it. And so it is, you know, not a place without its dangers. I bring that up only so people understand that the world works in a certain way. It is run by humans. The human mind has tendencies that will play out over and over and over.

• 1:09:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And as you begin to map, that there is a difference between you were raised in an environment and you assumed that's simply how the world is, was and always will be. Only to discover that's not true, and there are some people who have figured out the meta rules. And when they are Um, well-connected, very smart, and they understand the meta rules. Then they start playing a game that controls society. And so those are the people that move us forward. Now, because I know that people immediately when I say that, think of the Jews. I will point people towards a book literally about the Jews.

• 1:10:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's a book about the Rothschild family. I think the title is just The Rothschilds. Uh, somebody will have to fact check me on that one, but um, it's written by Niall Ferguson. It's spelled weird, N I A L L, I believe. I think people say Neil, but in my head, I always say Niall because it's spelled so strangely. Anyway, uh, Niall Ferguson, look it up, phenomenal book. Now, the reason that the book was so interesting to me is it walks you through the series of realizations that um, the like, the first Rothschild who like gets wealthy, he has to have for him to, because he literally starts in the ghetto. And it's actually an incredible story of rising up and understanding what it takes to create a dynasty.

• 1:10:46Tom Bilyeu?

  I get it. Most people are going to read it and they're going to be so skeeved out. They're going to have a heart attack. But like, if you just read it for the banality of, oh, this is how this works. Okay. So if I do this, like, and how it was that, because this is like a hot, highly volatile time. He's living through the French Revolution. And so he um, ends up figuring out uh, that diversification is really important. And he's living at a time where geography matters a lot. And so he ends up sending his different sons to different cities. And it's like, okay, you're going to start a bank here. You're going to start a bank here. You're going to start a bank here, so on and so forth. And then he said, okay, every Rothschild has to um, partner up with um, politicians. Because this is just how the world works.

• 1:11:31Tom Bilyeu?

  And so you just start reading like, oh, wow, that really is how the world works. And oh shit, okay, so this is exactly what's going on. And so if people begin to map out, like,

• 1:11:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Exit out of the like wolves howling, this is dark, this is evil.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  They have black hoodies on and they're just.

• 1:11:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Right. And then just be like, it's a guy.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's a guy that has kids and he's like at home and he's like, fuck, like, how do I get out of the ghetto? And he's like, okay, well, I've got this one patron who's pretty wealthy. Like, if I could really find him cool shit, I bet that I could like become the guy that he goes through, goes to for these coins. He literally just started selling coins. Uh, like collectibles. It's like the Pokemon version. It's so crazy when you like, read about it and you see it really is a guy that's like of that time, he's just, uh, he's selling collectibles.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  He's a collector.

• 1:12:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And so it'd be today, it's the guy hustling on Pokemon cards, which by the way, is the fastest growing asset class of the last five or 10 years. So this analogy is actually more accurate than you think it is. Um, and trades that up to make enough money that, uh, he ends up starting to lend money. And then once he's lending money, then he ends up starting all these banks and sends his kids. Anyway, it's a truly brilliant story of just guys. And so they start figuring out and like some brothers do better than others because some of them like have, you know, more of that, like, I'm not emotional. I just fucking do my thing. And, um, and so, and others are more panicky or just like being in France during the French Revolution and they're like writing that brother like frantic letters, like bury your shit in the backyard, like for real.

• 1:13:06Tom Bilyeu?

  And, uh, at one point he's literally having to bury things in his backyard because he knows if they find him, find them, that they'll either kill him or take it or whatever. I'm just absolutely wild. So I want people to have a real picture that things like inflation, they're not laws of nature. They're a manmade thing. There are people that, I mean, look, the system is complicated enough that it's very difficult to understand like all of it, all of it, all of it. But there are guys that really get how all of this works. And so when they make a decision and they do a thing, it's because they understand how to manipulate the system because they know the meta rules. And so anyway, this show is watching me largely try to cobble together as many of the meta rules as I can.

• 1:13:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, and I will obviously speak freely about what I find and I'll hold as many in my working memory as I possibly can. But yeah, the world works in a certain way. If you can master the way the world works, you can get ahead or at least not be abused. And you can understand when things go wrong, what's actually happening instead of the dumb shit that we hear AOC, uh, or Mom Donnie scream about because that's all bullshit. And that there are physics and you can align yourself with them.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  People still don't like this elite thing.

• 1:14:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting. Is it they don't understand it or they don't like it? They just think it's not real?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  People are thinking this is your theory and I'm trying to like argue that like, no, this is a historic, like this is a term, kind of like the GDP of a country, like the

• 1:14:30Tom Bilyeu?

  It's known as the overproduction of elites. This is not Tom Bilyeu saying the overproduction of elites. Now, you may think that I'm over indexing on the importance of the overproduction of elites. That I would certainly understand because even I'm, I have talked about it before. I know it's a phenomenon. I've never put a ton of weight into it. I went out to dinner recently with somebody who made a very compelling pitch that I am underestimating the power of that. And they seemed a little less excited about talking about it in public. So I'll let them go unnamed. Very bright, very well-meaning person, just really trying to get me to take this idea seriously.

• 1:15:15Tom Bilyeu?

  And so this is me beginning to explore, not me like saying this is our problem. But by the end of the evening, I was pretty convinced that I, at a minimum, I need to look more closely at it.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I got it from Redyard when we were talking about, that's when Mouse Utopia was big and he was just talking about in general, when you have people that were promised a job. So the, I think people are so caught up in the over, the word elite, they forget the rest of the claim, which is the reason it's an overproduction is I was promised a silver spoon in some capacity. I was supposed to be the philosopher that got into the Senate that got that seat. I was supposed to be the art history major that curated the MoMA. And the fact that I have this degree, the same degree that this other person has, but I don't have that job. Now I have a disconnect with society. I'm no longer in, I want to criticize it. I want to take it down. So me and my friend who's a film major who didn't get his film done, me and my friend who's a philosophy guy

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  who didn't get his book published and all these other people come together and now we're angry at the, the positions that we thought we were going to have. And now we want to overthrow the government. So that's like the cycle of the beginning of the overproduction of elites.

• 1:16:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And this is also part of what people talk about with Marx, is that Marx was an overproduced elite. And meaning that he thought his life was going to be one way and his parents were like haranguing him. You're so smart. Will you please just go get a job? And he was just like always on the outside of that.

• 1:16:42Tom Bilyeu?

  Where you, like you said, I was supposed to get the contract, I was supposed to write the book. This was supposed, I was going to be the doctor that gets picked up at the college. And I forget what the status, but there's a distressing number of PhD students that never get to actually teach. And so there's just not that much room for PhDs in academia. And a PhD is largely for academia. And so if you get a PhD but are not able to enter academia, it's a bit like that's the perfect example of an overproduced elite. You've got the doctorate, but you're now doing something that's not tied to your actual doctorate. So anyway, you explained it very well. Uh, and hopefully people sit with that. And by all means, if they think that it's a non-entity and this doesn't matter at all, hey, fair enough.

• 1:17:24Tom Bilyeu?

  We'll debate the point. I think they're wrong, but I'm early enough in exploring it that may not be able to explain it well enough to get people over the hump.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  All right, let's jump into the bond yields because we were still talking about the economy. For the US, excuse me, it has hit one of its highest levels since 2007. And we all understand what happened in the coming years after that. The 30-year note yield rises to 5.18%. There has been this invisible line that we've been, I've been hearing about that when the note gets closer to 5%. That's when US panics, policy stops, we're no longer at war anymore, everything is peace. So that's kind of our stress number. Why is 5% that barrier? What does it mean going over a 5% being under? Kind of help give us context on why 5 is a good line in the sand.

• 1:18:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so the reason that the interest rate on bonds, treasuries, they're essentially the same thing. There's different flavors, but the reason that it matters is that this is going to be the cost at which you at home can borrow money. And so if you want to, and it's always long-term, that's where people start really talking about is the 10-year. Could be the 10-year, the 20-year, the 30-year, you're going to hear all of those numbers being Talked about now because they're all starting to break bad. So it really is the indication of how expensive are things like home loans, car loans going to be? Things that people take out a loan for long periods of time, college debt, stuff like that. So as that goes up, life just gets more expensive. The things that really matter, a house, just to keep it very easy.

• 1:18:58Tom Bilyeu?

  And so when houses get too expensive, then people start pulling back. So when there's not a lot of money in the system, because money is expensive, that gives the system the incentive and the impulse to pull back. When you pull back, that's basically the definition of a recession. If you pull back far enough, you get into a depression. Because if people aren't spending money, then money's not moving around the economy. Goods aren't being purchased, employees aren't needed. Then people are getting laid off, then they don't have money. People pull back even more because even fewer things are being purchased. This is why, this goes back to what I was saying about, once you understand how the economy actually works. Like, I think people just think of it as, well, I go and buy groceries and

• 1:19:42Tom Bilyeu?

  I go to the store and buy some clothes. And it's just, it's a thing I did because I wanted those things or I needed those things. And what you have to understand is, the world you live in is predicated on the fact that you're going to do that. And the very second that you stop, the entire structure of your life begins to break down. So there's nothing mystical about a recession or a depression. It is just people not either having enough money to spend or having money but being paranoid, and so they don't want to spend it. And so that's why, like, when you do stimulus checks, the big fear that the government has is that you're going to save that money.

• 1:20:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Because if you save it, which would be smart, well, it'd be smart in a non-inflationary environment, then it doesn't help. And so they will have just cut a check and done nothing with it. But if you go out and spend it, then it gets the economy moving again. And so that's one of those things, I think, most people just don't think about the economy. They don't understand that our entire way of life is predicated on buying and selling things, period. So if the cost of money Goes up too high, then the system begins to slow down and it can choke to death and stop. There are very complex ways that that can play out. Watch my video on the Eurodollar. And then there are super mundane ways, like your boss lays you off because there are just fewer people buying the widget that you guys produce.

• 1:21:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And therefore, there's not as much revenue coming in, so they're gonna have to let you go.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  This is also seems like a global phenomenon because the G7 nations are collectively at 4.7. So it seems like everybody's feeling this numbers crunch globally too, so it's not just a domestic problem.

• 1:21:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Very well said. So traditionally, when this kind of thing happens, it's only happening to one country. And so if you look back over the last, over the last a lot, like 50 years or something. If one country went over 5%, they were all by themselves. Now, when they start going over 5%, it almost always leads to a crash. So the stock market is gonna come down. And now, for the first time, it's like four of the seven G7 countries are over the line. And then the other three are showing signs of stress, so there's basically nowhere to go. And the three that aren't as high, aren't as systemically important.

• 1:22:08Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's like, the four big ones are all like alarm bells blaring, sirens going off, lights flashing everywhere. And then the ones that are only showing signs of stress, everybody's like, yeah, well, you don't really matter anyway. So it's like, this is, this is a bad sign. So it's just a question of whether it's a temporary blip. And that, hey, like I was saying before with the role play on the Strait of Hormuz. If, as soon as that opens, costs come down, then it will have been this very temporary thing. And the bond yields will come down effectively immediately, literally on the news. It is the second people believe that their money is safe at that rate, then they'll move on it.

• 1:22:52Tom Bilyeu?

  It's not like something actually has to happen. The oil doesn't have to reach the destination. They just have to believe, oh, everything's gonna be fine. So let me try to explain how this works mechanistically. If this is interesting, ask, I'll go deeper. If it's not, we'll leave it at a short explanation. So for the government to raise money, they create an IOU. They call that IOU a bond and they sell it to you and they say, I'm going to charge you a hundred bucks for this, whatever. Just to make the math easy. And they go, how much interest do I have to pay you for you to be interested in giving me a hundred bucks? And you go, 5%. Cool. Here, you give me the hundred bucks and every year I'm going to pay you 5% on that money. And that's for you taking the risk.

• 1:23:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, the percentage that you are getting is known as the yield, but you can sell that on the secondary market. It's actually the secondary market that people are talking about. This is the thing that changes in real time. So you now go, I don't trust these motherfuckers. Whatever they're doing in the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, no, no, no. These guys are fools. I do not trust them to not have to raise, raise, raise, raise, raise, raise. People, they don't buy it. They're going to make you charge seven, eight percent, nine percent, whatever, to hold money for 30 years. So I gotta get out from this 5% bullshit. So now what I'm going to do is I want my principal back, which by the way, if I just held until maturity, I am going to get my principal back.

• 1:24:19Tom Bilyeu?

  But because of inflation, it might not be worth enough to have warranted the 5%. So financial repression is when the government intentionally holds that interest rate below the inflation rate. So they know you're going to get paid in less valuable dollars at the end of this. You will have lost money.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  They gave you back $98 instead of the hundred based on the basement.

• 1:24:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, or 80 or 60. And so what people do is they say, on the secondary market, I'm going to sell this for $80. Now at $80, that 5% for the secondary person becomes like 6.2% or 2.5%. Some of my mental math is not great, but that's close. And so now people go, yields just went up. And so now what the market is saying is 6.25 is the real rate. And so if the government wanted to reissue or raise debt that day, they're gonna have to pay 6.25%.

• 1:25:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And that's the thing that very much must scare the life out of the government. Because if they want to raise money, and they will have to, right now, we print $40 billion a month. If they want to raise money, they know that they're gonna have to raise it at that elevated price. And so when you think about keeping the numbers manageable, 4.5, cool, no biggie. North of 5, we start to be in bad territory. So everybody says that at 4.5, Trump always does something that alleviates that. Because it's all fiction, it's all in the head, it's all people going, mm, I trust or don't trust you. And so the reason that the price has to go up is people have to be incentivized to buy it.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  And then is that's a treasury that controls that, or is that part of the, like that bond yield, that percentage? Who says it needs to go up and needs to go down? That's just market?

• 1:26:12Tom Bilyeu?

  The secondary market purchases.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:26:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Which then, I mean, it could also be set at auction, okay, so there's another way, so. In fact, the government just did this. At auction, they actually had to sell at over 5%. So at auction, I forget how many billions they sold, like 25, I think. They sold 25 billion at 5.028 or something like that, and it's now up to 5.186 or something. These are ballpark, they're very, very close to being correct, they might be a little bit off. And so that's where people are like, oh shit, even at auction, these guys now are up over 5%. So it's not even just the secondary market.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  So people do not have long-term trust in the stability of America based off of that?

• 1:26:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct, because the trust is all based on what they are going to force you to pay them in interest. So it's like, if I'm gonna give you that money for 10 years, you're gonna give me, and then they're gonna set a price.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  If I love this place, it's good, give me 3%, I'm not going anywhere, I trust you guys, it's fine.

• 1:27:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  Now it's getting dicey, 5, 6, 7, got it.

• 1:27:09Tom Bilyeu?

  100%. So you can take that rate as a vote of confidence or lack of confidence in the government's ability to repay. At a return greater than inflation.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Got you. Okay. I think we landed that with there, that we landed playing with that.

• 1:27:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  All right. I want to jump over to the announcement from Meta. So it was announced there 8,000 layoffs that are going to be happening, starting in Singapore and going across the global offices. Different teams will be impacted. But there was leaked, like a leaked audio from Mark Zuckerberg's all hands meeting, which is less about the layoff and more about the AI computer tracking that's happening to employees. Break it down for us.

• 1:27:53Tom Bilyeu?

  No, no, no. You gotta play the clip on this one.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. We going through it.

• 1:27:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, this one is, how long is the clip?

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Six minutes.

• 1:27:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay. Well, we're not gonna do that.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  I can give this setup because he, he loops a little bit, so.

• 1:28:06Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. Give the setup. So can you share more on employee device tracking? I think the way that it was announced left folks.

• 1:28:15Speaker 06

  So, okay, let's, let's talk about what we're doing. You know, like Alex just said, going into what makes these AI models great, right? There's basically a few key ingredients. There's getting the research and the architecture good. There's having good infrastructure, which is both the quantity of compute, but like as important, if not more, is, is also just like how efficiently can you use it? How reliable is it? What like, what is the, the quality of that? And then the third piece, which is in, in some ways, it's hard to say that I need these are more important than the other because they're all necessary, is effectively the data and

• 1:28:52Speaker 06

  what knowledge it learns. So we're in a phase where basically the AI models learn from having real, from watching really smart people do things. And if you're trying to get it to be able to, be able to do certain capabilities, having it be able to observe really smart people doing those things is, is very important.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  I feel like that, that kind of gets us in context of what is going on, right?

• 1:29:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so this is, this is part of the bigger backlash around AI that people are starting to see. And I have a PSA. I'm literally wearing the shirt from the Neon Future comic right now as just a reminder to people that the backlash against AI is going to be swift. It is going to be aggressive. Young people, old people, like they are going to be joined at the hip on this one. And if we do not come to understand how. Violently their reaction, they're going to react to this. We're going to be completely caught off guard. So Meta's 8,000 layoffs are not the real story. The real story is

• 1:29:58Tom Bilyeu?

  the anxiety that that kind of thing is now creating for the employees. So on May 20th, about 10% of its global workforce at Meta is going to be, they're going to start the process of reducing them. But the problem is Zuckerberg is saying up and down, look, this isn't about AI in that they're going to replace you. This is about us having to make a decision between the cost structure of our employees and the cost structure of building out the AI data centers. And just as like cold CEO math, I think it's absolutely correct. That is the decision that he has to make. I think that AI really is that systemically important. I think that whoever loses AI is basically just going to lose.

• 1:30:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And so if he wants to be a player in the new economy, he's got to find a way to win with AI. But the problem is, as you're telling your employees that this, we're not replacing you with AI, we're just making a decision between the two, like, what do we have to invest in? And we need to make these investments in the data centers. And that's the thing that's going to pay off more in the future. It doesn't mean you guys aren't amazing. That's like in a thought bubble, right? That's hanging out there. And then he's like, uh, we're also going to be monitoring everything that you guys do. Uh, sorry, Mark, just real fast, why are you going to be doing that? Oh, because you guys are super smart. We have to like be able to track this stuff and see how super smart people use it. So

• 1:31:28Tom Bilyeu?

  that said, super smart people will not be needed anymore. Now, he doesn't say that part, but that is exactly what people are worried about. Now, here is the thing.

• 1:31:38Tom Bilyeu?

  I get I'm so on the wrong side, wrong side of this issue from what is going to be popular. The only thing I can promise you is I will always say what I believe to be true. Here's what I believe to be true. Every technological revolution in history has ended up creating more jobs than it replaces. The people who get replaced will forever have an option to upgrade their skills to the new economy or to fall behind and to not do it. Now, we can say that we just give old people a pass or whatever, and we say they're never going to learn it. I will never accept that. As a I'm on the bottom rung of old now, as having officially crossed into 50s. I like to think it's the bottom rung.

• 1:32:23Tom Bilyeu?

  At a minimum, it is the bottom rung of old, and I just still completely hold myself accountable to upgrading my skills, to understanding this stuff, to being able to use it as well as anybody else. And that I have a broader spectrum of understanding of just a whole lot of things. So I should be able to use it better than somebody who's really young. And the only thing they have going for them is that they grew up with it. So I don't think we let old people, and myself very firmly in that group, off the hook. I think people have to face that in a society that technology is a promise of a better tomorrow. It is always going to be developed if it promises an advantage and that you have the opportunity to embrace it. And I think people should embrace it because they are going to get left behind.

• 1:33:07Tom Bilyeu?

  The only alternative is to allow them to become an unproductive member of that society. We will not be able to survive that. The energy will move somewhere where they make sure that people are contributing productively to the group. So instead of looking at AI as this thing that's going to replace you, we'll get to the the fast takeoff autumn artificial general intelligence in a minute. I'll come to that. But right now, instead of thinking this is going to replace me, think of it as it's going to replace your current job. So make sure that you're not stuck doing just your current job. You need to be evolving and saying, OK, how do I leverage this to do this in a new way, a different way? How does this open up new possibilities?

• 1:33:51Tom Bilyeu?

  What does this allow to be possible that wasn't possible before? And I know this example seems ridiculous, but once you understand this is literally what's going to happen.

• 1:34:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Knock her uppers, which is what they were actually called, all went out of business as soon as the alarm clock was invented.

• 1:34:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Lamp lighters were all out of jobs as soon as the electricity came to town. Okay, so forever and ever, we have been replacing old jobs because a new technology comes along and it's just, well, that thing isn't meaningful anymore. The market doesn't care about it. Meaning, I mean, if I can just say it grossly, you guys don't want to pay for that shit anymore. You're just like, that's not valuable. That's not where it's at.

• 1:34:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Because that happens always and forever, all of us need to be prepared to upgrade our skills. So I understand, I really understand. I feel much of the anxieties that even young people feel. I don't have the economic burden. I get it. But that doesn't mean that I don't feel it in terms of, I want to tell stories and make video games and a big part of my brain is just like, I don't think that stuff's going to matter in the future. I think it's going to be so different. But anyway, nonetheless, the world is going to change. And so having young people adopt a mentality of, I can take whatever comes my way, I'm going to adjust with this, I'm going to learn this new thing and this is going to be awesome,

• 1:35:18Tom Bilyeu?

  I think is a far more useful mindset to have than being so scared that you boo it. A minor example from my own youth, when I was in film school, 3D animation came out and I was devastated. And for years, I refused to see Toy Story because I thought that it was destroying an art form that I really loved and respected. And then, once I finally caved and I went and watched it and I was like, whoa, this is really going to make things better. And this is how this stuff works. I get it. We are comfortable with the way things are. We have much higher ability to predict where things are going because we know it. We know this way of doing things. And looking out into the future is scary.

• 1:36:01Tom Bilyeu?

  And these kinds of moments of disruption are devastating for people that are unwilling or unable to adopt to the new way of life, but it creates- Tremendous opportunity for the people who are. And so I don't want to see anybody who could make that transition and capitalize on incredible opportunities, give up that opportunity out of fear. Fear will stop you from doing just about everything in life. And I have a rule in my life and the way I articulate it to myself is I never stand still. Now, that has cost me dearly in the past, but it's also the reason I've been as successful as I have been. So especially if you're young, like just have that rule.

• 1:36:46Tom Bilyeu?

  No matter what comes your way, you're going to master it. I'm going to learn this thing. I'm going to get great at this. I'm going to be better than everybody else. I know that sounds anachronistic, but that, that is really, truly, I beg of you to hear me. It is the human experience. This is how the human animal works. We have become the ultimate apex predator for exactly one reason. We are not the strongest. We are not the fastest. Maybe we're not even the smartest, but we are the most adaptive to change. It is our ability to adapt and change that has led us to just completely take over the entire world. One day we will almost surely be out in the cosmos, all because we can adapt to change. So don't let the fear consume you. So many people are going to give in to the fear.

• 1:37:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Navigate this moment well by gaining the skills. That would be how I would beseech you. So when I hear this thing at Meta, I would think, oh, he's definitely replacing my current job. A thousand percent. I am actively training this AI to take over for what I do. I know the words I'm saying right now are training an AI. And that one day people will just be able to go, uh, what would Tom say about this? It'll just tell you and you can be like, nah, that's fucking stupid or whatever. But the AI could already be, there's a thousand, there's more than a thousand hours of me out there talking. So in no uncertain terms, I have given the AI what it needs to replicate the thing that I do today.

• 1:38:12Tom Bilyeu?

  But if I can do, learn and become capable of novel things in the future, then I'll always be able to stay a step ahead of something of AI. Okay. Now, if we get to artificial general intelligence and it gets into a self reinforcing loop where it becomes better than us at everything, I will just say the following.

• 1:38:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Magnus Carlsen would get his ass handed to him by a chess program running on a phone right now, but we still find it interesting to watch him play. He still finds it interesting to build that skill set, as I think we will as humans, continue to find things interesting, to continue to find humans interesting. And if you have any interest in a world of abundance, where nobody, and I mean nobody, not schizophrenics on the street, nobody has to worry about getting the things that they want, then you should want costs of labor to drop to zero and the cost of energy to drop to zero, which almost certainly would happen with artificial general intelligence that's self-reinforcing, that can learn on its own. So the chasm obviously

• 1:39:20Tom Bilyeu?

  becomes very scary. I share that with you. I'm as, I've been thinking about this for a very long time. So I'm as worried as anybody about crossing that chasm. But nonetheless, this is largely going to come down to whether we keep our heads on us and move forward. And I know I've said this before, but the only way to stop it would be a level of catastrophic violence that I don't think people understand. And people have suggested actually nuking the data centers. That is a horrific idea. It's a terrible idea of such epic proportions that I really hope nobody's that fucking stupid. But there you have it.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, your Pixar analogy really drove it home for me because when movies were first created, it was silence. And then talkies came and that ruined the industry.

• 1:40:07Tom Bilyeu?

  For actors that had a terrible voice or couldn't memorize lines or whatever, it was terminal. So they could no longer do movies. I get it. But there are other ways to express yourself, whether in front of the camera, behind the camera. And it's only when the resentment builds up where it's like, no, I must interact with it in this way, or I just don't care anymore. That is, that's like, to me, that's like being an athlete. And you just know, when I get injured, or I hit a certain age, everything I've ever cared about is over. I saw. And you've got to find a way beyond that. In fact, thank you for bringing this up because Kobe Bryant, never met him. When he died, it was like being punched in the gut. And it was like being punched in the gut because when he finished basketball, he went into film.

• 1:40:52Tom Bilyeu?

  And he won an Academy Award. And this was exactly as I was transitioning into Impact Theory. And so when I heard that he was moving into film, I got so excited because I wanted to compete against him. And I thought, oh, my God, like, this will be so fucking cool. I was so inspired that this guy won an Academy Award with his first short film. I was just like, how fucking good is this guy? But he didn't go, oh, I blew my Achilles heel. I'm never going to be the same. My basketball career is over. This sucks. Life isn't worth living. He was like, oh, fuck it. I'm already on to basketball. He pointed all of that drive and tenacity and intensity onto something new. And was learning the language of it and falling in love with it. And I'm so inspired by that.

• 1:41:36Tom Bilyeu?

  I want to see other people embrace that same thing. Oh, I'm not doing this. Like for me, I, I just thought I was going to be a filmmaker. And when I was in business and was like, I may never get out of business. This may be the rest of my life. I had to fall in love with it because I'm not, I'm not going to be here miserable. So let me find a way to connect with this, to do something interesting. And it was that where I was like, I want to bring filmmaking and storytelling into a protein bar company. It was exactly why we did social media before it was called social media. Which is exactly one of the reasons that we ended up being so successful. So what you had was a guy that was like, fuck, maybe I'm never going to be a filmmaker. And I start doing that, ends up being insanely successful.

• 1:42:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Then, by the time I actually exit the company and now have the financial wherewithal and I could do movies, film's not really a thing anymore, not like it was. And so I was like, whoa, like, the 15 years that I spent getting wealthy enough so I could be in film were actually the last 15 years of film's relevance. It was devastating. And so I was like, oh, what am I going to fall in love with next? Became video games. So, and if and when. Go away, it will be something else.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  It'll be another thing.

• 1:42:41Tom Bilyeu?

  That is a mindset. That is, it's not that I don't feel the loss or the mourning. It's that I'm like, okay, well, um, I need to find a way to connect with this. And by the way, because obviously I don't expect any credit for that now that I'm wealthy. But I was doing that when I was fucking broke and everything I had was on the line. And it was like, if Quest doesn't work, and trust me, in the beginning, this was not self evident. If Quest doesn't work, I lose my house, everything's gone, I'm fucking destitute on the street, like not a good scene. And it was then that I was like, I'm going to inject the things that I love into this and I'm gonna find a way to love this. It was when I started saying, whatever you do, you've got to say, what would I enjoy even if I were failing? Because the success can't be guaranteed. That was me in the maelstrom of like, yeah, I don't know where this goes.

• 1:43:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Like this could end in absolute abject poverty. And in that time, I was saying the same things.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  It's interesting. I don't know. I, I feel myself conflicted because I think right now there's so much pain that people aren't even listening to the nuance and the opportunity. They just, it's another thing attacking me. It's another thing taking my job. So they missed that, that.

• 1:43:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Fourth turning.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that context. But it's one of those things, if you are using AI, you realize how easy it makes your life in certain aspects. How it closed the knowledge gap on a lot of different things, how there's going to be so much implementable information, not just information that we got on the internet that we had to listen to some other guy charge us to get. It's like, I can take this information and then do it. I can make, wanna make an app and then do an app. I can wanna make a website and like create a website. So it's like, the barrier to entries are disappearing. So that should be a benefit and that should be exciting for some people. And I just hope that in the midst of everything, wars, foreign and domestic, we are able to see the opportunity in front of us.

• 1:44:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. Fingers crossed, Drew. Well said.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  All right, let's jump over to Seattle.

• 1:44:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's do it.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  Where Mayor Katie Wilson orders police to not arrest offenders for open drug use citywide. I did not think that was the first sentence on this story. She's 43 years old and has relied on her parents for financial support. Our major cities are literally destroying themselves. Wow. Um, okay. So this tweeter had, um, problems today, but let's, uh, hear from a press conference. I had the honor of being noticed by the President of the United States.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Who called me a.

• 1:45:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Very, very liberal slash communist mayor.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  And cheers.

• 1:45:14Tom Bilyeu?

  It's it's nice. It's nice to feel seen.

• 1:45:18Tom Bilyeu?

  That's all I'm gonna say about that. Yeah.

• 1:45:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And she jokes with the future of all the the children of Seattle. That this winds me up, man. The it's it is a level of um historical ignorance, economic ignorance, the nature of humanity. It's just um whenever you scratch the surface of socialism, communism, you get resentment. And it is so dark and so sinister. It's so dark, Drew. It's so dark. Uh and yet people love it. They find it funny. They snap for it, clap for it. It's uh yeah, it's wild. But it get what you vote for, I guess.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  It's it's a predictable problem, though, because I feel like even with people who who feel some type of way about these policies, who like these policies, you cut them a big enough check, they're no longer socialist or capitalist anymore. And it is.

• 1:46:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of just running into the reality of um money is high utility. So once you get to, if you can answer the question, what is money? And the when, once I realized that money is the medium in which we capture how much the world values what we do with our time. And you you have to like, how else would you store that, right? It's like money is a battery for the um the energy that you create for the world with your time. And it it's it gives you a way to hold on to it. And it also tells you what the world thinks of the way that you're contributing to the group.

• 1:46:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Because if they give you very little for your time, then they're telling you that they don't value it very much. And so it's like, well, do I need to do it differently? Do I need to do something else entirely? Like, how do I get to the point where the world values what I'm doing more? And So, once, when someone goes to write you that check, it is suddenly as if, like, the thing that you do with your time is more magical, because you can now deploy that against anything. Money can buy time, money can buy experiences, money can buy food, shelter, luxury. I mean, it's just, all of it is transacted in money. The only thing that money can't buy is, I mean, maybe respect,

• 1:47:40Tom Bilyeu?

  but you can even get, with money, you can get people to mimic respect. That's what's wild. Like, so, money is ultra, ultra-high utility. And so, anybody that has, like, a negative view of money, it's like, what do you mean? That, that, that is like having a negative view of being able to capture the enthusiasm with which the world meets you for the things that you do with your time.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Well said. Reptoid3866, resentment? Are you effing kidding me? When the system, a person, when the system a person exists in generates 10 failures for every success story, it is a failed system by any metric. American capitalism is far worse than that.

• 1:48:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Would you say that you resent capitalists? Ayo.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  I don't have to scream that, "Punupow." I did that right there. That was the setup.

• 1:48:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Ah, so, yeah. Thank you for proving my point. Um, so, okay, this is where we have to begin to tease apart. So, all of the anger that you, Reptoid?

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Reptoid.

• 1:48:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Reptoid, all the anger that you feel is completely justified. So, I'm with you on that. Forgive me for teasing you. I totally understand why you would be furiously angry at the system that you've encountered. The thing that, what I'm trying to convey is socialism, communism, it doesn't work. And the reason that people keep pushing for it is it feels right. The reason it feels right is because it's about confiscating from those more successful and giving to those less successful. And the confiscation feels better than the distribution. That is the very unfortunate part. There've been studies done, cross-cultural, and literally, a cross-cultures. People will choose the option that is bad for them as long as it hurts.

• 1:49:24Tom Bilyeu?

  The person that they don't like. And so, once you accept that that is a program running in the human mind, then it becomes clearer because it is such a failed system. When asking, okay, what do we do to make a better system? I certainly understand that you want a better system. As they say, capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others. And that, I think, is a great way to sum it up. Now, the problem is, in America, anyway, we don't have capitalism. We exited the capitalist system a very long time ago. Now, we have certain elements of it, and we certainly have the element

• 1:50:00Tom Bilyeu?

  that mimics capitalism, which is the siphoning of wealth from everybody. But it, again, it hurts the middle and working class because it siphons from everybody and then gives back to asset holders. And that mechanism isn't capitalism. So, that mechanism, I don't know what name you'd give it other than theft, political evil, I don't know, but it certainly isn't capitalism. Now, if we want to say that capitalism creates a flywheel where the capital is going to get hoovered up into a small number of hands, I would say, look at history. So, what ends up happening is, for the most part, once you break up, what do they call it, birth dynasties?

• 1:50:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, once you get rid of monarchies, it doesn't really happen. It tends to be t-shirt to t-shirt in three generations. So, it's very difficult for subsequent generations to hold on to the wealth, and they usually lose it. So, even in America, only 30% of people have, that are billionaires, or actually, I think it's like multimillionaire or something, only 30% have inherited their wealth, 70% have made it themselves. And then the question becomes, of the 30% that have inherited it, over time, how many of them will cycle out? So, the bad news is, the system, the central banking system that allows for the inflation game to be played, that is one way, because now it's just assets, assets, assets. And as long as you don't sell your assets, they'll keep going up in price.

• 1:51:28Tom Bilyeu?

  So, anyway, that would, my hope would be that I could convince people to assess it from the lens Of cause and effect. All right. Love you guys bunches. Thank you. We will be back on Friday morning. Make sure you join us. All right, guys. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water and you're done.

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