#1455 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Will The Fed Push Bitcoin Higher?!

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin hitting another all-time high, why the fed has such a big impact on bitcoin, SoftBank’s $100 billion investment, how Donald Trump will draw more investments in the US, New Jersey complex drone situation, how a reality TV show could fix government waste, and how Argentinian President Javier Milei fixed the economy. ======================= Meanwhile is the world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Protect your loved ones with sound money built to manage life’s uncertainty and a broken financial system. Their BTC-denominated Whole Life Insurance policies allow HODLers to pass more BTC on to their loved ones and a tax-advantaged way to access BTC for liquidity during their lifetime. Visit their website at ⁠https://meanwhile.bm/⁠ to join the waitlist for a policy and to learn more. ======================= Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on guys? Today I've got a great episode with Polina Pompliano. We get into a bunch of different details of current events that are going on. First up, we have Bitcoin hitting an all time high and why the Fed is such a big impact on the price of Bitcoin and how the Fed now is being held hostage by the market and what that means for Bitcoin price moving forward.

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  On top of that, we talk about Masayoshi Son and SoftBank's brand new investment of $100 billion in the United States and how Donald Trump is both an entertainer and the President of the United States is going to have a profound impact on more investment in the US. Then we get into why the New Jersey drone situation is so complex, why many people probably shouldn't have an opinion and what it means to be a critical thinker on the internet today. We then go ahead and we talk about government waste and why I think that we should have a reality TV show where we go into government offices and we just record a business person making these different departments and offices more efficient in 30 days. It'd be electric content and I tell you why. And then lastly, we talk about the Argentinian economy and how Javier Malley came in and in one year, he removed 123-year trend of running an annual deficit.

• 1:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And now Argentina is sitting there with inflation much lower and now they operate with a surplus. We explain how he did it, why it's important and what the US can learn from it. If you listen to today's conversation, you'll walk away with tons of unique insights and also a lot of information that'll make you think more critically. Here's my latest episode with Polina Pompliano.

• 1:48Speaker 01

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

• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:56Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:38Anthony Pompliano?

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• 4:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Plin, what's the first topic?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Bitcoin, is it an all time high, almost at $108,000 as we film this right now? What do you think?

• 4:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, Bitcoin is going up because the Fed is cutting interest rates. They're printing money. You have ETFs that opened up access to the market. You also have a bunch of public companies that are buying Bitcoin. You have a pro Bitcoin president that's assuming the White House. And on top of all of that, you then have an SEC chair who is resigning and you're replacing him with a pro Bitcoin pro crypto SEC chair. And so you have all of these factors that are kind of coming together as tailwinds for an asset class. And I think one of the most important things is people already have forgotten that we had the Bitcoin halving in 2024. So there was this supply shock that occurred. So there's 50% less Bitcoin coming into the daily supply every single day now.

• 5:02Anthony Pompliano?

  On top of that, you have Bitcoin that is leaving exchanges. We have an all time low of Bitcoin on exchanges at the moment. And so there's just not that much Bitcoin available. At the same time that that supply shock is happening, you have a lot of capital coming into the market. And I think Wall Street, sovereign wealth funds, large countries, central banks, but also just big hedge funds, big financial institutions. They feel like all of the career risk has been removed. Now we are watching Bitcoin go from a contrarian investment to a consensus trade. And when that happens, capital flows really, really fast. And so if you have a finite supply asset that is very scarce in terms of its availability, and you have a lot of capital pouring in,

• 5:44Anthony Pompliano?

  there's estimates as much as $3 billion per day coming into the Bitcoin network. Obviously, the price is going to go up. And so if you go back to November 1st, we were sitting at $69,000. Today, we're at almost $108,000, 45 days later. That is the type of speed at which an asset like this can move. And so I think people on one hand are surprised, but on the other hand, this is just economics 101. You just had to go to high school or freshman year of college, pay attention in one class, understand supply and demand, and you could have been the greatest Bitcoin investor of all time. Supply is limited, demand is increasing, the price has to go up.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  And it also comes at a time when the Fed is meeting this week and they're expected to lower interest rates. Will that matter for Bitcoin?

• 6:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It definitely matters for Bitcoin because if investors believe that cheap capital is going to come into the market, they push out on the risk curve. Now, one of the interesting things is we are going to find out whether the market dictates what the Fed does, or the Fed dictates what the market does. And what I mean by that is, at the end of 2021, in November, the Fed started talking about, hey, the market's overheated, we're going to raise interest rates, we really need to get, you know, kind of the frothiness down. And so that was the Fed dictating the market.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:57Anthony Pompliano?

  They said, we are going to raise interest rates because we need to do it. And then the market responded. Right now, we see inflation creeping back up. There's a pretty strong argument that the Fed should not cut rates.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  That's what I'm asking.

• 7:08Anthony Pompliano?

  So they've cut 75 basis points. They're expected to cut this week another 25 basis points. That was kind of the guidance in the second half of this year was they're going to cut about 100 basis points or so. But if inflation is creeping back up, again, strong argument to not cut rates, just pause, just let things go. The problem is that the market is pricing in the interest rate cut. And so if you surprise the market, it can have some really negative impact.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 7:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if the Fed cuts interest rates, that tells me that the market's in control right now. The market is dictating to the Fed what they need to do. Now, on top of that, what's really interesting is if you go and you look at the S and P returns in the second half of December of the end of the year, there is a very fast growth in stocks. So kind of the second half of the year, from December 15th to the end of the year, you see asset prices go up. People are preparing for the new year, they're rebalancing, they're doing all these different things, but they're getting enthusiastic. Hey, we're closing out the year. Let's try to eke out the last bit of return. And so you see in the stock market, 2% to 3% gained just in that last, you know, two weeks or so. Bitcoin, historically, in bull market years, has really done well in December into March of the following

• 8:17Anthony Pompliano?

  year. And so we kind of have this like three to four month period where Bitcoin historically has done very well. It looks like it's doing that already. Again, it was $69,000 on November 1st. It's going much higher. We're already at 108,000. It's going to go higher than that. And so again, if you are the Fed and you're cutting into what is already kind of a tailwind to asset prices, you're going to accelerate that. And so the question just becomes like, what would create a scenario or an environment for the Fed not to cut rates? It's really difficult to see a world where they are not going to cut rates because I believe that the market's in control right now. The market's in control right now is because we're putting a guy in the White House who believes that the stock market is the measurement for the health of the US economy and Bitcoin's price, he now believes that that is part of

• 9:00Anthony Pompliano?

  him taking credit. If the price goes up, he says-

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Didn't he, didn't he tweet, "You're welcome"?

• 9:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, when Bitcoin hit 100K, Trump said, "You're welcome." Because he now is looking at it as the Bitcoin price is basically a proxy for whether people are excited about Trump's presidency or not. If the price goes down, he'll be tweeting about it, right? But the fact that it's going up, he's looking at that as the market is enthusiastic, the market is excited that I'm coming into the White House.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  So Trump was president, I mean, not that long ago.

• 9:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Four years ago.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Right, four years ago. Bitcoin was quite a thing then. Why do you think he never, that was never kind of a priority for him then?

• 9:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, he actually was anti-Bitcoin.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  He was anti-Bitcoin.

• 9:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I think one of the big thought processes was Bitcoin is competitive with the US dollar.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 9:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Obviously, if you control the global reserve currency, you have the dollar, you can print it on demand, and you're able to use this to control interest rates, the flow of capital. There's a lot of things that you can do in terms of geopolitics, etc. You don't want someone to come along and create something that is going to take that power away or take that special privilege away. What now has transpired over the last four years is that people realize, wait a second, the dollar's more popular than it's ever been, and so is Bitcoin. And so this is a Bitcoin and dollars are rising together, and actually the competitors who are falling are not dollars or Bitcoin, it's all the weak fiat currencies. So people are getting rid of the weak fiat currencies and they're saying, "Hey, if I want to spend money, I want dollars." That's why stable coins have become so popular,

• 10:27Anthony Pompliano?

  $200 billion or so in the stablecoin market. If I want to save money, I want to do it in Bitcoin. And so you get, again, that's why I use the framework of, just like in your traditional bank account, you have a savings account, you have a checking account- You have a brokerage account in the digital world, your savings account, your digital savings account is Bitcoin, your digital checking account is stable coins with a dollar. And then your brokerage account is basically all these other assets that you can buy, sell, whatever, whether they're all coin stocks, etc. And so I think that Bitcoin and dollars kind of thriving together, that's like Trump's dream is he can basically sit there and say, hey, the US dollar is actually getting more adoption globally, it's more popular for bilateral trade than it's ever been before. And at the same time, this Bitcoin thing is also going and getting more popularity.

• 11:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So I can be anti-government on one hand with Bitcoin and kind of, you know, the fact that it's decentralized, it can't be censored, it can't be seized, etc. But also I can protect the interests of the United States and I can go and make sure that the dollar is successful globally. So again, it's just those two things happening together. We didn't understand that four or five years ago, everyone thought that they were competitive. Now that they're not, Trump's behind both.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And what do you think David Sacks will be doing as crypto czar?

• 11:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that David is probably focused on a lot of regulatory stuff. You know, it's, it's an interesting position because my understanding is a part-time position. So he doesn't have to give up craft ventures and what he's doing there. I believe that there's a key man clause where if he was to leave and take another full-time job, that would trigger a lot of stuff and there'd be kind of negative impacts on the venture firm and the funds and all that kind of stuff. So it's a part-time job. I believe he is not being paid for it is my understanding. And so if you're kind of working on this part-time, but it's a position of influence, not power, right? You can try to influence what's going on, but you can't show up and say, I'm in charge, do this. You really are going to kind of gravitate towards a lot of the regulatory stuff.

• 12:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And the nice thing is that David's really smart. David is very thoughtful. David, I think is very thorough, is very detail oriented. And so when you show up and you're able to have an intelligent conversation with people and say, hey, I have a specific viewpoint because of my time in tech. I've got a specific viewpoint because I actually worked on digital currencies in the past. He was COO of PayPal. And then he obviously is investing in kind of around all the AI and the big boom that's happening there. All of that stuff suggests that he is very well positioned to sit at the intersection of technology, politics, law, and kind of the future. Now, if he shows up and he's trying to influence regulation, a lot of it's education.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so it's a big time suck. You gotta go talk to all the different politicians. You gotta go talk to all the regulators. You gotta work on, hey, what do we think the frameworks should be? And so when you think of what are the frameworks, well, you have to really get at like, what are we trying to accomplish? You have to think through this and the second and third order effects. And so if you want Bitcoin, crypto, AI, et cetera, to thrive in America, okay, what does that look like? If there were no rules and we could just design a utopia, what would that look like? Okay. Well, what are the current rules that are getting in the way? What are the rules that we have in place that makes sense? Should we tweak them or should we demolish them? There's all these different kinds of things to kind of work on. And so I think the position that Sacks has is a position of influence. It's a lot of tedious work, but he's well positioned to do it. And then he also has the support

• 13:49Anthony Pompliano?

  of, I think Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, you've got the Doge organization, all that stuff is working kind of in parallel, if you will. And so some of this is let's go destroy and kind of get rid of waste, abuse, fraud, et cetera. But there's a lot of stuff like what Sacks is working on, which is, hey, we may need to update kind of the software of the United States.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:11Anthony Pompliano?

  The laws, the rules, like what is written in quote unquote code, we need to update this stuff. If you wrote software for a company 30 years ago, obviously it needs to be updated.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And so same thing here is there's just been a lot of change. It doesn't mean that the laws are malicious or were created in a way to stifle innovation. It just means that the world has evolved and so we need to update these laws. Some people may not like the updates on both sides, right? Sometimes the updates are going to be pro-growth, pro-business, et cetera. Other times, like TikTok is a good example. Should we ban TikTok? This was really highly debated thing. Trump recently met with the TikTok CEO. On one hand, there's a national security argument to ban TikTok. It's programming our children's brains with a bunch of nonsense, right? They have control over a very important media outlet, et cetera. On the other hand, it is very anti-American to ban a platform.

• 15:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, you know, we can look and say, well, China bans Facebook, China bans, you know, Google. But also, if we know that it is a certain type of country, a certain type of governance, a certain type of system, we don't want to recreate that. We don't want to emulate them. And so it's this, you know, kind of paradox of, on one hand, you've got the national security argument. On the other hand, you've got kind of the American freedom and, and kind of ethos and ideals. And so what do you do? Those are the hard things that I think that this administration is going to have to work through. And I don't envy them because I don't know if there's a single right answer. You know, you're always going to constantly make these trade-off decisions. But having people who have done that for a living in those positions to make those decisions is probably pretty effective.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  And I mean, it is fortunate for Trump to be entering the White House right as Bitcoin is entering a bull market?

• 15:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Or is it because he's?

• 15:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, he left, he left office.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:58Anthony Pompliano?

  When there was a bull market as well, right?

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Bull market in 2020.

• 16:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, 2020, there was halving. It was the halving year. So in May of 2020, there was a halving, right? Bitcoin was kind of going sideways. Going into the end of the year, Bitcoin went ballistic. It went from about $10,000 to $64,000 in March of 2021. So it's not like Biden showed up in January and all of a sudden, you know, in the middle of that run at 30, 35K, he was, he can take credit for the run from 10 to 64, right? He just assumed office. And so although Trump was kind of leaving office as it was happening, obviously, he was, you know, a part of that. Again, the Fed and the politicians, both through fiscal monetary policy, they basically laid the groundwork by printing trillions of dollars and suppressing interest rates to zero for risk assets to go up. And that's what people did is they basically said, hey,

• 16:46Anthony Pompliano?

  there's a Fed put in the market. I'm going out on the risk curve. I'm going to go buy these assets, fix supply asset, lot of capital coming in. And I remember writing in 2019, 2020, calling it rocket fuel for Bitcoin. They're going to print money. They're going to drop interest rates and we're going to get the halving. Well, guess what they're doing right now? We had the halving. They're cutting interest rates and they're printing money. It's rocket fuel all over again for Bitcoin.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And final question, but just really quick. How long on average does a Bitcoin bull run last?

• 17:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Depends on when you actually measure like it's starting. So an easy way that a lot of people point to is they look at when the havings occur. And then they say, how long from that having until kind of the peak of the bull market? Usually that is approximately 18 months. It could be 16, could be 22, whatever.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  I was thinking a year and a half.

• 17:33Anthony Pompliano?

  About a year and a half. So if you think in May of 2020, we get the having. The peak was November of 2021. Right? So like that, that's kind of a traditional bull market. What's interesting about that is the bull market technically doesn't start when the having occurs. Right? There's at some point when the market bottoms. So if you look now, the having was earlier this year. I think it was in April of 2024. But actually the market bottomed in November of 2022. So from November 2022 to April of 2024, the price was still going up. Right? And then we get the having and then here we go. And so it just all depends on like, where do you want to pick your starting point?

• 18:13Anthony Pompliano?

  But I do think that the having for about 18 months is kind of a good, maybe framework or barometer to look at. The other thing that I would say that is pretty important here is the four year cycle has been true up until today. The question moving forward is, has the market substantially changed? Because you are moving away from having lots of capital inflow from merely retail. And you're now moving to things like institutional capital flow. So for example, MicroStrategy gets added to QQQ. And so as being part of that NASDAQ 100, you now have trillions of dollars that is going to flow towards, you know, stocks that are in that index. Okay. If that's true, that means MicroStrategy is going to have kind of this persistent bid

• 18:57Anthony Pompliano?

  of people who are constantly buying it as the index goes up. Well, when that occurs, now all of a sudden he's got access to capital regardless of what's happening in Bitcoin. So it's kind of detached from, you know, the Bitcoin price movement. And so he can be a persistent buyer that smooths out some of the volatility. ETFs are another example, just because all of a sudden you get a Price coming down, whereas retail maybe was selling, you may actually see the ETFs are constantly buying. They're still getting capital inflow because it takes time for these institutions to get comfortable allocating to Bitcoin. And so one of the arguments, and I think I'm probably sympathetic to this argument, is that actually we are probably done with these really drastic four-year cycles. And so Bitcoin on the upside doesn't go up on a percentage basis as much as it did before.

• 19:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But also on the downside, will we ever see another 80% drawdown? Never say never. It's just the odds are decreasing that we're going to have those significant drawdowns. And maybe it's a 40 or 50 or 60% drawdown. So it doesn't mean that, you know, hey, Bitcoin will never go down again. It just means that there's a big difference between a 50% drawdown and an 80% drawdown. And so I think that's really some of the questions that the insiders, if you will, or the folks who spend all their time on Bitcoin are trying to figure out is, when does the market cycle peak? How big will the drawdown be? And how do you change your capital allocation based on kind of a lot of those factors?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yep. Great. Donald Trump and SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son jointly announced Monday that SoftBank plans to invest at least $100 billion in US projects over the next four years. Masay estimates that its US-based investments will create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, and plans to complete the work before Trump leaves office in 2029. You know I have a soft spot for Masay because I covered him a lot when I was at Fortune with his vision fund and the money and the mega funds that it was, it was nuts what was happening.

• 20:54Anthony Pompliano?

  World's greatest speculator.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Greatest speculator. I don't know about greatest investor, but so do you want to tell the people what happened with?

• 21:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, here's what's important about Masayoshi Son. So Masay, Masay runs SoftBank. A lot of people don't remember this, but for the young people out there, Masay was kind of a regular guy. He made some massive bets during the dot com bubble. He became the world's richest man.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And he was a world famous man, I think for like a couple of days and then it all imploded, right? He lost a lot. I don't think he lost everything, but he lost a lot. And then he's kind of staged this massive comeback. And he is known for making these massive bets. I call him the world's greatest speculator because he doesn't do anything small, right? I mean, this is a perfect example. I want to invest $100 billion. Now, there's a couple of details that are pretty important. He was already planning to invest a lot of money in AI and data centers, etc. And so this may be a little bit of like, hey, let's remake, you know, let's change the wrapping on the present, because we think that this is a kind of a better story. But a lot of this money was already going to come to the United States. But now that he is making a direct commitment

• 22:04Anthony Pompliano?

  for $100 billion, he's doing it with Trump. He understands that there's a lot of power to kind of packaging the story correctly. The second thing I'll say is these two are both entertainers.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Masa goes big. He understands exactly how to position and market and do all these things. And so you put them up there with Trump. It's electric content. Now, what I will say is, if our strategy as the United States is to call these very wealthy investors to Mar-a-Lago, to put them in front of a press conference, and then basically have Trump shake them down for another $100 billion, we're going to get a lot of investment in the United States. So for those that didn't see it, they were having a press conference, Masa was talking, and Trump basically said some comment, he goes, well, you know, you know, I'll just ask him right now. And so all the cameras are there. And he says to Masa, he says, you know, you're wealthy. Why instead of 100 billion, why don't you do 200 billion? You could afford it. Come on. You're

• 22:59Anthony Pompliano?

  a great guy. Why don't you do it? And you could tell Masa was very uncomfortable. Why I committed to 100 and Trump, come on, 200 billion. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And Masa goes, okay, well, we'll try. And then Trump immediately turns to the cameras, goes, okay, $200 billion investment. And they like move on. That is why there are a lot of people who are saying Donald Trump in the White House means America is strong. Yeah. America's strong means that our economy is better, our border is secure, we can create jobs, the GDP is growing, and people are better off financially. Imagine seeing Joe Biden.

• 23:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Stand in front of the cameras and ask Masa for another $100 billion. You just like, you can't even consider that happening.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  I don't think it's disputed at this point. I think that people generally agree that Trump is an excellent negotiator, but this was a rare moment where we got to see it in front of, you know, in the public, like in front of the cameras and not behind closed doors. And it's probably how he does it. He flatters you a little bit. Then he's like, come on, you're a wealthy guy. You can do, you can double it. And then that's how it goes. I, do you remember one of like the best things from Masa that I remember is, um, so as part of its vision fund, they invested in WeWork and WeWork was very promising company. We all know how it imploded, but at the time, this was in 2019, November of 2019, I wrote this. There was this deck, this slide deck that was circulating.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Wasn't the unicorn, that was their earnings. Oh, is it? Was it called the unicorn deck? It was their earnings deck that was.

• 24:34Anthony Pompliano?

  No, it had a unicorn on the, on the revenue chart.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So the earnings deck was circulating and I thought it was fake. So then I had to do research and I was like, wait a second. No, this is real. And I'm gonna, maybe we can pull up the slide that I'm talking about here, but it is amazing. There's one slide that is called hypothetical illustration of EBITDA and it features like a downward sloping line and the very bottom says future. And then that line goes bam, like up into the right, you know, whatever. And at one point, it actually appears to go back in time.

• 25:09Anthony Pompliano?

  The world's greatest speculator.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Whoever made this slide deck is incredible. It probably was Masa. No, but yeah, they're very, they're very good at creating things that people talk about, even if it's not positive all the time.

• 25:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, I think that this is great. The United States needs as much investment as possible. Uh, I believe that 65% of all equity value in the world is in the United States. Uh, I believe that the United States is the leader in AI and in Bitcoin. Uh, I think that those two things will continue. And so if you're an investor anywhere in the world and you want to make money, come to the United States. That's the message. And I forget who said it, but the best way that I. I understand how to describe this is the United States is open for business. If you want to do business, come to the United States.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Wait, and, and, and just to be clear, he says that he's going to invest a hundred billion in US based projects. Are these projects companies?

• 26:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Data centers, AI related companies, just a bunch of stuff, infrastructure companies, anything that he can figure out. Hundred billion dollars, a lot of money, right?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Well.

• 26:10Anthony Pompliano?

  If the United States is open for business, don't go do business in the museums of Europe. Don't go do business in places where the rule of law doesn't apply. Don't go do business in places where you don't know if you can get your capital out. Don't go do businesses in places where you literally don't know if there's corruption occurring. If you want to do business, come to the United States.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Well, and, and the thing is that it's interesting because it's unclear how SoftBank intends to fund this commitment. Because SoftBank reportedly only has 30 billion of cash on hand. So unless he's raising more money.

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't let facts get in the way of a good story. Come on, don't let facts get in the way of a good story. Maso is going to come up with a hundred billion dollars.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Who was it that asked the, the, was it the PIF? Somebody asked for, what was the story?

• 26:56Anthony Pompliano?

  No, he went and he met with.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  He was, it was Maso.

• 26:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, he went and he met with MBS and he asked, he said to him, uh, if you give me a hundred billion dollars. He says, I come bearing a gift. And I think it was MBS was like, uh, what, what do you mean? And he said, I want to give you a trillion dollars. And MBS was like, what? And he goes, yeah, first you give me a hundred billion, I give you back one trillion.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  So that's actually Trump's thing was actually from Maso's playbook.

• 27:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, just the whole, the whole idea is, um, again, if you think big, if you've got ambition, if you've got courage, if you are willing to, uh, you know, kind of take risk, it's the world's greatest speculator, right? He, he is looking for the big payoff. You gotta go big.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And so.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  He's known to go big for sure.

• 27:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Whether, uh, that's a good thing or a bad thing, you know, he's pretty rich. He's doing all right for himself. So, uh, yeah, maybe you don't win them all, but, uh, he wins the ones that matter.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he is in the conversation every like four years or so.

• 27:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly. He understands. But again, it's part of liquidity cycle. For the last two years, Masala's toolbox was drastically limited because there wasn't kind of cheap capital flowing around.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:04Anthony Pompliano?

  When cheap capital's coming to the market, Masala shows up and says, I'm gonna put $200 billion in the United States. Let it fly, Masala, let's go.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, okay. All right. Let's talk about these damn drones. I'm so tired of these things. What the hell is going on in New Jersey? I mean, beyond just there being New Jersey, like the drones.

• 28:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the drones are not just in New Jersey now. The drones are in a lot of different places.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Oh, damn. Sorry, New Jersey.

• 28:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that, I think that this is a perfect example of the complexity of the world that we're headed into. On one hand, you have kind of the coverage of this. So you have a lot of citizen journalists who are taking videos themselves, their source material, they're saying to themselves, what is this thing, etc. You then have other experts that are all coming out and saying, hey, I can identify that drone. Hey, I understand, you know, that flight pattern. Hey, I understand, here's a potential thing that could be happening. They're running military tests. At one point, there was, I think, a politician from New Jersey who was claiming that they were being launched off an Iranian mothership off the coast. A politician saying, right?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:07Anthony Pompliano?

  There are law enforcement officers that are coming out saying, we have no clue. We're not getting any information. You have the CEOs of drone manufacturers that are coming out and they're saying, hey, I talked to a friend at the Pentagon, etc. Bethany Frankel came out. She had a whole theory about it because she said she talked to a friend of the Pentagon.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  And just sorry to cut you off, but like Chris Christie said, this is exactly what happens when there's a bunch of sightings. He's like, I've lived in New Jersey my whole life. This is not quote unquote, normal. Like, there's definitely been a proliferation of these things. But he's like, when there is no response from the government as to what is this, then conspiracy theories flourish.

• 29:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, sure, but

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Well, the mothership in Iran, like.

• 29:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, but like, again, it's pretty irresponsible of a politician to be saying that unless they have confirmation of it. And here's the thing is, we can't say what's true and what's not, who's irresponsible and who's not, because we don't know the answer yet. So what if it comes out that that's true? What if it comes out that they are looking for some sort of bio, you know, chemical,

• 30:11Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, bomb or some sort of weapon? What if they are just running a drill and they're trying to measure what is the reaction from people? What if they're just testing the actual technology? Right? We don't know what the answer is. And so I think part of being on the internet is you get this massive, kind of overwhelming fire hose of information. And so you need to be good at two things. First is you need to be good at filtering. What are the things that I should be paying attention to? What are the things I should not be paying attention to? What are the things that I should have an opinion on? What are the things I should not have an opinion on? You can't have an opinion until you get information. And so one of the things that is really interesting is if you go back to 2020, very early on, it was clear that the lab leak theory was probably right. But it wasn't because it was just some conspiracy theory.

• 30:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It's because you were able to read a lot of documentation and you were able to think critically about, hey, there's this lab that is studying this exact thing that's in the same city of where this thing originated. Here is a bunch of people who are in the area who are saying that it can't be from the, you know, kind of delivery mechanism in which they're saying blah, blah, blah, whatever. And you think through it and you say, okay, like probability wise, this is likely true. When you go and you look at this situation, I don't think that there's anyone who has concrete evidence or information that is overwhelmingly kind of the dominant thing that you can conclude if you were thinking critically about it. And so if you can't come to a conclusion by thinking critically, actually, you probably shouldn't have an opinion. And I think that's one of the hard things about the internet is the critical thinking. We all know that is a challenge and something that everyone, you know, is trying to do.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But also understanding when to have an opinion and when not to. If you go back to the Daniel Penny situation, I think a lot of people were surprised that I took such a hard public stance on it. What they don't realize is I only did that after I watched all the body cam footage that was available. Watch the interrogation. I listened to and watched some of the coverage of the actual trial itself.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  You also are a veteran. You have a unique insight.

• 32:04Anthony Pompliano?

  There was a bunch of stuff, but, but the point being that it's not like I just saw a headline and was like, hey, here's my position on this. It was very much, I want to go and see the information for myself. And then once I was able to see that stuff, it was clear to me. Hey, here is how I personally feel about this. Here's how I personally believe we should be handling this. And so I had confidence to come out and say, here's what I think. I haven't talked about the drones at all, right? And the only thing that I did was I shared a video and it ended up being a digitally altered video. Right? Where somebody was like shooting at the drones. And then you say to yourself, wait a second, like now we can't even trust what is the actual thing, right? And when I shared that video, it wasn't me concluding, oh, I believe X or I believe Y or whatever. It was just like, dude, it's now at a point where people are shooting at these things.

• 32:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And then that turned out not to be true. And so I always think of these situations as, uh, how clear is the water? Right? In certain situations like the Daniel Penny thing, uh, it was very clear to me by the time I said something. It was like being, you know, where's the Bahamas, right? It was crystal clear. You see the, you can see the bottom. Right now we're staring at like swamp muddy water in Florida. I got no opinion yet because we don't know enough. And so I think that just being able to kind of, uh, oscillate back and forth between having strong opinions and saying, hey, I don't have an opinion because I actually don't know what the information is. I don't know where, uh, this is headed is really important for people moving forward.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  I know. And it is interesting, like especially on Twitter now, or just anywhere, um, to be like, what's true and what's not. I mean,

• 33:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they should get the drones out of the sky. I'm not cool. Just generally the fact that,

• 33:38Speaker 02

  But who is, we don't know where they're landing.

• 33:40Anthony Pompliano?

  We don't know, right?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Maybe delivery.

• 33:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I mean, it's also crazy because, uh, you know, two, two other things that, uh, this reminds me of is one, uh, there was the balloon from China that floated over the United States and, um, we didn't take it down. Which, oh, you know, that kind of struck me as like, that's weird. Um, but then also I saw a video online, uh, maybe two weeks ago. I think I showed it to you of a guy in Florida. He was sitting in his house. There was a drone that went, uh, near, it was hovering over his house. He went outside, he kept telling it to go away. It wouldn't go away. So he went inside, he got a pistol.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Oh gosh.

• 34:14Anthony Pompliano?

  He came back out and he shot the drone.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  I did not see that.

• 34:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. And this guy was like probably 65 years old. He was a little overweight, just like classic, you know, Florida guy, whatever, live in this neighborhood. And he shot and the police are there and they're questioning him with the body cam. And he just tells them exactly what happened. And they're like, we appreciate you being honest. We did not expect you just to tell us what you did. He's like, well, what am I gonna do? Lie? He's like, things hovering on my property. He's like, it's bothering me, right? Whatever. And it turns out it was like a Walmart drone or something and he shot it and he created more than like $10,000 of damage. Well, hold on a second.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  That's what I mean.

• 34:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And so he does this. And after he tells the whole story, he says on video, he says, uh, so how much trouble am I in? Am I in a lot of trouble? They're like, yeah, you're gonna get arrested. He goes, okay, fine. That's whatever. Right? And he gets arrested, but he's like telling his neighbor and he's basically like, hey, they got drones flying hovering over my house.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you go back to this idea of like, who owns the air above your home?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Do you remember, do you remember Yvonne?

• 35:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Bulgaria.

• 35:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. There's a guy, he's a farmer. I think we could call him a sheep herder.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  He's just a regular guy.

• 35:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, he's got sheep, so he herds the sheep and he's got a little farm. This depends, you know, he's, he's very versatile.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  In the mountains of Bulgaria, yeah.

• 35:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And I became friends with him. He speaks no English. I speak almost no Bulgarian.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  We see him every time we go.

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  That's my boy. You know, we're, we're, we're cool. Uh, he was very worried last time I saw him, uh, because everyone was telling him he should stop driving his car, uh, because of ESG concerns. I very quickly explained to him via my interpreter, uh, don't worry about the ESG stuff. They're all lunatics. But he kept pointing at the sky every time a plane would go over. He goes, they tell me not to drive my car, but then they fly the planes. Who's doing more damage? It's crazy. And I said, Yvonne, you were born for the internet, my brother. You were born for the internet.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Instant star.

• 36:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So yes, look, I think that this stuff happens, you know, everywhere. It's, uh, you know, a story as old as time, but still, uh, I do think that, uh, the drone situation, very peculiar.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Peculiar.

• 36:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but, but I think, uh, until we get more information, I reserve my right to state my opinion.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  By the way, I just want to tell the people that Anthony really loves my sweater today. He complimented it like 17 times, right?

• 36:28Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the next topic? Before I say things that you were.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Okay. So, um, so you tweeted earlier.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  There should be a reality TV show where business leaders go into government offices and have to turn around the operation within 30 days. Bar Rescue or The Profit, but for government offices. Content would be electric. Taxpayers would win. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. What do you mean by that?

• 36:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So if you go into your local DMV office, if you go into the post office, if you go into TSA checkpoint at the airport, whatever, do you think that they're optimized? No. Well, we're paying for that. So if you really want to increase productivity, increase customer service, drive the actual result of what this is supposed to be doing, you should simply have a business person go in. Imagine Elon Musk running a TSA checkpoint.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Imagine any one of our friends that is a good operator going in and running the DMV for 30 days and film it. And the reason why you want to film it is because you want to expose how insane this stuff is. So Bar Rescue, for anyone hasn't seen it, John Tafer goes into these bars, he basically turns it around. And it's stupid stuff. How are you the bartender and you don't know how to make the drinks? There's no aspiration for excellence. You are the bartender. What do you mean you can't make certain drinks? Learn. What do you mean that we can't keep the tables clean? What do you mean we can't figure out how to get a lot of people into the bar efficiently? Serve them, have quick turnovers of the tables, get them back out, get more people in, drive revenue.

• 38:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Do the things that are necessary to run a world-class bar. The Profit, similar type of thing, rather than it just be bars, they go and they do it at small businesses. Imagine what could happen if you put talented business executives into these organizations and you said you have 30 days, turn this around. Because ultimately, that's what we need. We need a turnaround of these government departments and these government offices. Yes, you can fire a lot of people, you can get rid of a lot of abuse, waste, fraud, et cetera, but there's still going to be some degree of people that are left and they got to do their job. And so establishing a bar of excellence, holding them accountable to it, and then filming it would completely change the dynamic.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  How much of it is, do you think that because these jobs... Unfortunately, across society, aren't like the aspirational jobs for young people that people just like aren't that excited to go to work. I mean, I was, I was a waitress in college. Let me tell you, I'd be fired day one if there was bloat and government. If Doge came into the restaurant, I'd be gone, gone in 30 seconds.

• 39:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Good.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  No, but that's what I mean. Like because it's something people normally do part time to, you know, make a little bit of

• 39:20Anthony Pompliano?

  There's no part time government employees in these organizations, right? 97% of them, they, they are full time employees. They work from home. And by the way, we put work in air quotes, they're not doing shit.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Wait, what do you mean they work from home? TSA does not work from home.

• 39:33Anthony Pompliano?

  TSA doesn't, but something like over 90% of government employees, I think. Well, you fact check me. There's, there's some insane percentage of government employees that work from home. Some of these government departments, they only require.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 39:47Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the number?

• 39:48Speaker 02

  60%?

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  60% is, is the number one. When did that come out?

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Uh, May 2024.

• 39:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, I think it's higher now, but let's just take 60%. So it's not 90, let's say 60%. 60% of all government employees. It means one out of every two employees works from home. What are we doing?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Do you remember when we got our marriage license?

• 40:08Anthony Pompliano?

  What are we doing?

• 40:09Speaker 02

  That woman was, oh no.

• 40:09Anthony Pompliano?

  This is not serious, right? And so you look at that and you say, do you really think that the government employees working from home are being as productive as possible? No. So instead, what you should do is you should force them to go and be productive. It's a job. You're not there to play around. You're not there to have fun. You're not there to hang out with your friends. You're there to work. And so by instilling this, there's a lot of people who say, oh, that's an old school mentality. It's old school for a reason. It's a timeless principle. Get people in a room and make them work hard. If they all work hard, then you will be productive. But the whole idea here is how do you make someone work hard? You can't sit there and use punishments exclusively.

• 40:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You also have to get them to instill a sense of service, right? They work for the American people. How many people who work at the DMV or the TSA or et cetera, have pride in their job because they feel like they're serving the American people?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 41:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Not that many. Right? It's not nearly the number you would think it is. And so if you have people who don't like their job, but they're there because of benefits, or they can't be fired, or whatever, then you get out of the employee what you are ultimately putting into the job. And so if you go in and you say, hey, we're going to take pride about this, completely changes the environment. And so that's what I think is needed is, again, I'm half joking, but I'm actually pretty serious about this reality TV show. Go to one office, pick any post office in the country, pick any DMV office, pick any TSA checkpoint, and put Elon or a no name business executive and tell them, your job at the TSA is to get this line moving.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  No, you know what? The DMV really needs some work because you make an appointment and then you still have to wait in line for three hours.

• 41:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, it's crazy. It's insane. And so if you say to yourself, hey, we're going to create the most efficient DMV office in the country. What DMV office do you think has that as their mission?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:08Anthony Pompliano?

  None, zero. There is no aspirations of excellence.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  But that's the problem. How do you instill aspirations of excellence?

• 42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  You fire 95% of the people that are there who aren't excellent. Start there. The second thing you do is you build it from the ground up and you say, what is the goal of the DMV? How are we measuring success? Who are the types of people we need in these roles? Who actually wants to be here? Who takes pride in this thing? And how do we make it cool to be part of this?

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you blast it around the national media, that X office is the number one most efficient world-class DMV office in America.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  And also you get to be on TV or whatever, reality TV shows.

• 42:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, you completely changed the dynamic of this where people are proud, right? They take pride in it, but that's not what's going on right now. It's all a bunch of just waste. And so instead, what you get is, if you go to the DMV, you know what you feel like? You feel like you're the nuisance. You're bothering the workers there.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  That is how I feel.

• 43:08Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy. What are you talking about? I'm bothering you. You work for us. Your job is to make this easy for us. Your job is to make sure that this runs efficiently. But when you talk to the people there, you feel like you're bothering them.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's not to say that everyone is bad. I actually go to the DMV and I met a ton of nice people.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But it takes one bad experience and it sours the whole organization. And so it just goes back to if you have someone, if you go to a restaurant, it's a well-run restaurant. General manager, somebody, they'll come by, they'll check on the table, they'll say, hey, how's it going? Right? Is there anything we can be doing better? Great. I'm so excited that you guys are having a great day today. Maybe they'll send out, you know, an extra basket of bread or something like, like you just feel like, hey, these people care. And these people are trying to get better. If you go to the DMV, you're like, can I borrow a pen? They say, no, you're supposed to bring your own pen. Right? Oh, you filled out the paperwork a wrong way. Go to the back of the line.

• 44:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, it just comes off in this completely abrasive way. And so I just think that if you really want to turn this stuff around, you have to take drastic action. The best way to take drastic action is to go in there with cameras. Show the American people what's happening and change it.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you change one, the beauty is a lot of other ones will get their act together before you show up.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Americans love a turnaround story. Okay. Speaking of a turnaround story. Argentina's economy exits recession in milestone win for Javier Javier Malay. Argentina emerged from a severe recession in the third quarter, making a milestone for the Libertarian president in his bid to end the country's long-running economic crisis. This, he's been in office for one year, during which time he has unleashed brutal spending cuts and a fierce deregulation drive. The program has brought down the country's triple-digit annual inflation and made him one of the most prominent leaders of the global right, winning glowing endorsements from the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

• 45:17Anthony Pompliano?

  You didn't even mention the most important thing.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  What?

• 45:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Because they went from having an annual deficit to a surplus in one year. He went in there and when he campaigned, he walked around with a chainsaw. And that man. He kept his campaign promise. He brought a chainsaw and he destroyed government spending. And guess what? Argentinians are better off for it. And they now have a surplus. Inflation's down and it worked. The United States, we need to do the same thing. And the hard part to swallow is that the government's gonna fight the change? It doesn't matter. Get it done. Get rid of the waste. Get rid of the abuse. Get rid of the fraud. If Argentina can go, in 123 years, they have not had a surplus.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:00Anthony Pompliano?

  123 years. The United States had one 25 years ago. So if Argentina can turn around 123 year trend, the United States can do it. It may be hard. It may not be fun. It may be tough. People are gonna lose their jobs. But get rid of all the waste. Get rid of all the government spending. Get back to a surplus. We can do it if Argentina can do it.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  It's something you always say about like, short-term pain, but long-term, you know, growth. JP Morgan said it expected Argentina's economy to contract by 3% this year, but it is projecting 5.2% growth in 2025. So it's like, short-term pain, long-term, great.

• 46:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. But if you get rid of the government spending, what you do is you get back to measuring success. That's the part that, to me, is almost hilarious about the government. What is the measurement of success? How do we know that people are doing a good job? If you can't fire people, and you also don't have pride in your job, what's going on? Now, here's the crazy part. I actually think that there's a lot of government employees that are similar to the team at Twitter. So there was 8,600 people at Twitter, 8,500 people, something like that. Today, there are somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500.

• 47:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Huge reduction in workforce. The company is doing better than ever in terms of user growth, time spent, et cetera. And those 1,500 people, they're hardcore. They're working hard, right? I recently spent some time with them. They're really working hard. I think that inside the government, 10 to 20% of the employees actually want to do a good job. They actually want to work hard and they feel like they're being stifled because of the bureaucracy, because they got idiots that they're working with that aren't taking pride in their job. And they're getting lumped in with the people who shouldn't be there. So if you go and you actually get rid of the bad employees, it allows the good employees to thrive, right? It's kind of like if you've got, you know, a plant, but it's in the shade and it's got a bunch of stuff around it.

• 48:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It can't grow. When you remove all this stuff, then the plant can grow. It's actually addition by subtraction. And that I think is the opportunity is go find the good people and give them more responsibility. Give them more opportunity. Let them do a good job. I know some of these people and they feel like, why am I doing this? Get rid of the colleagues that aren't pulling their own weight. Move them out of the way. Get the good people going. Bring in other good people. Improve it. Make it a high status thing. But one of the most high status jobs that you can have in America today is Doge. Going and working at Doge is better than going to Harvard.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  How about that California governor saying he, he had Doge before Doge existed? He was doing Doge.

• 49:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Stop it. Stop it.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  We're all doing Doge before Doge.

• 49:08Anthony Pompliano?

  You're so, you're so good at eliminating government waste that you personally had to go and pick up trash from the homeless problem in your state. Stop it. There is no governor in the country who has been eliminating government waste, abuse and fraud to the degree that is being spoken about right now at the federal level. Name one department that the state of California shut down. Name one department where they did large layoffs.

• 49:54Anthony Pompliano?

  That is against everything that a Democrat governor stands for. It's all about increasing the size of government. I bet you could fire 30 to 50% of all government employees in the state of California. And most people wouldn't even notice. Think about that. That's crazy. If Twitter, which was not nearly as bureaucratic and inefficient as the government, could go from 8,500 employees to 1,500.

• 50:34Anthony Pompliano?

  How many at the government at the state level in California could be removed?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't like the idea of people losing their job, but I like it even less is people going to a job and being inefficient, wasting taxpayer money. And that's just the reality of the situation. It's a hard conversation. Somebody's got to go in, somebody's got to figure it out. But if the governor of California says that he's doing Doge, show me where the cuts are. Don't show me the nonsense. He says he's reclassifying jobs. Don't give me the bureaucratic paperwork nonsense. It's like, you know, you ever go to in New York City, you see the guys with the three solo cups and moving the ball around? That's what the governor's doing. He's playing this game. He's like, oh, where'd the waste go? Where'd the waste go? Right? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, was that French laundry? Right? Come on, stop it.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  How you know about French laundry?

• 51:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I pay attention when people are not willing to do for themselves what they tell other people to do.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Instead, go. You want, you want to say that you're Doge? Show us where you got rid of waste. Show us the dollar figures. Right? Because that's the other thing is when you're playing the solo cup game and you're moving the ball around and no one can see where it is, the sleight of hand, you don't talk in specifics. Don't tell me how you reclassify jobs. Tell me, what is the dollar amount you see?

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think I really do think that this is probably going to be one of the most dramatic things we see in this administration is because all these private business people are going into government. There's going to be a lot more like measuring of things and specific numbers and growth. Like, I don't think KPIs are necessarily a part of government right now.

• 52:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Imagine creating a bonus pool at the DMV for the number of people served per day.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you, and if you, and if you hit the milestone, everyone in the office gets a bonus.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 52:34Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that's like a foreign concept in the government.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  And, and what they don't, what government officials don't understand is that even if you just cut the bloat on a level, a small level, let's just say like the DMV, just the DMV, nothing else. It's the most public facing thing. Everybody has to go to the DMV and it's the one that would have the most profound effect on people in their psychology. And Americans being like, you know what? Like my taxpayer money is going to something that is efficient because they see it, they experience it, you know?

• 53:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. I think that when you pay your taxes, you should get a receipt.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Okay.

• 53:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Itemized. Tell me, tell me what I bought. Show me what I bought.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would love to, I would love to select where they go.

• 53:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, that's a hold. That's another can of worms, but just show me, what percentage? Where'd it go?

• 53:24Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it would be chaos if they did that.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, they can't.

• 53:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But imagine, imagine if they had to tell you.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  When we pay our taxes, we do an itemized list of everything.

• 53:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you gotta tell them where the money came from.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:36Anthony Pompliano?

  But imagine if they gave you an itemized receipt. You gave me X dollars. Here's where it went. If you saw where that money went, you'd have a lot of questions.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  I'd be like, I'm a proud supporter of this bridge.

• 53:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, it was looks infrastructure, so like, like, all that stuff is needed.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  It's important.

• 53:53Anthony Pompliano?

  But here's the crazy part. Imagine if you said, hey, uh, I'm paying more of my taxes to the interest rate on the national debt.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Than I am to defense or to healthcare or to education. What's going on here? I'm working for three months a year to pay off the interest expenses on a debt that I didn't create, that some hooligans in Washington DC created. Cause they're spending people's money that's not theirs. You go down that rabbit hole, be a lot of change.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Next time.

• 54:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Thank you guys for watching.

• 54:35Anthony Pompliano?

  See you guys next time.