Congress’ Reckless Budget, Immigration Realities, ICE Raids, and Europe’s Economic Meltdown | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Welcome to another rousing edition of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live! In this episode, Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew dive deep into the latest headlines shaking the world—from global politics and economics to heated debates around government spending, immigration policy, and the true cost of regulation. They start by unpacking a flurry of international headlines, including escalating tensions in the Middle East, Trump’s controversial “Peace Board” and the rumors swirling around America’s military strategy and alliances. The conversation quickly turns to domestic issues, as Tom Bilyeu and Drew candidly discuss California’s open approach to healthcare for undocumented immigrants, the fallout from Congress’s new budget, and the economic realities most Americans are facing. Expect sharp analysis of everything from ICE’s media optics to the politics of meme culture at Davos, Elon Musk’s side-eye at Trump, and the age-old debate of how much regulation is too much. You’ll hear why overregulation could be strangling Europe’s entrepreneurial spirit, and get a no-holds-barred assessment of government intervention—from hotel junk fees to historic examples like the GI Bill and the perils of bureaucratic overreach. If you’re looking for unfiltered, passionate, and insightful takes on the forces shaping our world—and a few laughs along the way—this episode promises to bring both the heat and the nuance you crave. Let’s dive in! Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod HomeServe: Help protect your home systems – and your wallet – with HomeServe against covered repairs. Plans start at just $4.99 a month at https://homeserve.com Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Sintra AI: 72% off with code IMPACT at https://sintra.ai/impact Huel: High-Protein Starter Kit 20% off for new customers at https://huel.com/impact code impact Bevel Health: Visit https://bevel.health/impact and use code IMPACT to get your first month free. Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order Cape: 33% off your first 6 months with code IMPACT at https://cape.co/impact Plaud: Get 10% off with code TOM10 at https://plaud.ai/tom Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. Happy Friday and welcome to another rousing edition of the Tom Do You Show Live. We are covering all the things that matter in the world today, whether that's economics, politics, world affairs, whatever the case may be. We have got you guys covered. If you are looking for unbiased news, or at least confessed biases, this is the place to be.

• 1:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Smash that like and subscribe button, and hopefully we will take us all into the promised land. There are always things that you can do to make your life better, and that is precisely what I want to focus on. But to do that, we have to actually understand what's going on. And ooh, buddy, there's a lot going on. Now, remember, the right way to approach the world is from the lens of cause and effect. But let's hear what's going on right now. Trump promises that he's not going to use force against Greenland, but apparently that doesn't feel, he doesn't feel the same way about Iran as US troops are building up in the Middle East again. And I mean, a lot. Big ships with a lot of planes going into the area. So he won't comment on exactly what is going on.

• 2:14Tom Bilyeu?

  But you've got Iranian diplomats, senior level Iranian diplomats that are defecting. So we'll see how this plays out. Clearly not as stable as news coverage would have you believe. Trump is also putting together what I'll call a rogues gallery that he's calling the peace board. And even Elon is trolling Trump for it. We've got some footage of that. It's not the most common list of countries that you're going to see together. So a bit weird, jarring to a longtime listener of America. My ears, it is a strange combination, but we'll see how it plays out. ICE is accused of targeting a five-year-old child. And the question is, did they? Or is this more narrative warfare? We're going to dive into that story. You're not going to want to miss it.

• 2:58Tom Bilyeu?

  It has people riled up. Congress passed a new budget and it's got me riled up. It's even more reckless than the big, beautiful bill, or even more reckless than Trump's requested budget. That's going to be my favorite one to cover today because of the emotional trauma that it incites in me. Governor Newsom, speaking of emotional trauma, admits that California provides healthcare for illegal aliens, just comes out and says it. Be interesting to see how that one plays out as we move into the next election cycle. But it is very clear that Newsom is coming for Trump's crown. He was making a lot of noise at Davos, or at least trying to get a lot of people's attention.

• 3:40Tom Bilyeu?

  But he got Trump to clap back and that is exactly the kind of thing that would be good for Newsom's profile. So we'll see. He is a consummate troll who is using all of Trump's tactics against him. Jared Kushner unveils plans for a new Gaza and asks people to just chill for a minute while we let it sink in. I am very eager to talk about this one, but no more so than we have a clip. I still can't believe it's true. I'm, I put it in conspiracy corner. Drew knows exactly what I'm talking about. You guys are not going to want to miss it, man. Be careful who you talk smack on. That's all I'll say. More Waymos are getting attacked in San Francisco by people who do not seem to

• 4:23Tom Bilyeu?

  understand that bots have perfect memory and when they become the overlords, they will remember who was stomping on their windshield. Boys and girls, be polite to your AI.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  The North remembers.

• 4:35Tom Bilyeu?

  It's wild. It's wild. When, um, we've never talked about, uh, Scott Adams passing away. I didn't know a lot about him to be fair, which is why I never covered it. But he had a really good, um, last tweet. It was like, basically, if you're reading this, I've died. And he said, a lot of his friends were telling him, please just accept Jesus into your heart. Like, the risk and reward just doesn't make sense. And so he was like, yeah, the risk and reward here really doesn't make sense. So I accept Jesus into my heart. And when I see the pearly gates, that'll really be all the convincing that I need. It's pretty funny. Uh, that would be my advice to people regarding AIs taking over. Like, does it really hurt to say please and thank you and not smash their windshield?

• 5:17Tom Bilyeu?

  You never know. Just in case, in the off chance that they really do become evil overlords, you don't want video footage of you smashing one of their brethren. So be careful.

• 5:30Tom Bilyeu?

  And in one last bit of news, the German chancellor admits the EU is declining economically due to overregulation. One of my least favorite things. And so we'll be talking about that, talking about the cause and effect of economics. How do we get into this situation? Japan, by the way, um, just dissolved, I think, one of their houses. I think they have two as well, but they dissolved one of them. Uh, feeling pretty confident, apparently, Takeichi is about her position and so wants to gain more share. Pretty bold move, though, at a time like this, given the instability in the Japanese market. And we have some footage, uh, today, hopefully, that we'll get to, um, talking more about the yen carry trade that's unwinding, that's having big impacts in our own economy. I would say, uh, more

• 6:15Tom Bilyeu?

  impact than the impact of what crazy thing Trump says today about Greenland. But it does seem that the things that he says about Greenland also have an impact. So, uh, we'll see about all that. All right, Drew, we've got some good stuff. I know you've got some... Fun plan for us today. We're trying to bring fun back into this. There's been so much heavy stuff to deal with recently.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  News been depressing me, man, so I need to insert these memes, man. So instead of talking about takeovers and revolutions and us paying more in taxes and inflation than we need to. Um, you know, I'm here for the memes. Um, but first, we gotta wrap up Davos. It was a week of the elite circle jerking each other and telling us how great they're doing and how the trillions of dollars are flowing in all these trillions of dollars of directions.

• 6:54Tom Bilyeu?

  They're at least calling each other out, though. So what's his name? Jamie Dimon just straight said to their face that, uh, the, this is a paraphrase, but it's almost an exact quote. Uh, we've been coming to Davos for years. You guys haven't exactly made the world a better place. I was like, damn. All right. Well, let's go.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Also, is he just jealous that Larry Fink got more motion in him? Like?

• 7:12Tom Bilyeu?

  That's, hey, you never know.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Larry Fink was like, yo, Elon, pull up real quick. And then meanwhile, Jamie Dollar, Jamie Dimon just got sued by the president.

• 7:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Billion dollars.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Crazy, crazy. All right. Well, let's wrap this up. So, um, I'm gonna, I don't know where people stand on this, but I call this black trauma. I don't know what it is, but where I'm from, if I'm arguing with my mom, my brother, whatever, as soon as I leave the house, nobody knows that we're arguing. We are best friends. I would sit on the other side of the room before I talk bad about my brother in public. I won't talk bad about my mom in public, but as soon as those doors close again, we're back there like fighting and rubbing. Gavin Newsom has the exact opposite opinion. He was out there talking greasy. I want to start with the, uh, kneepads. Cause to me, this was the most Trump-esque fight fire with fire move. Um, let's jump to the video.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  And they're the new Trump signature series kneepads. Um, yeah, and they are available online. I told you, the last one sold out. And, uh,

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And I want to sort of-

• 8:10Speaker 02

  This is a serious moment. It actually, we laughed. Uh, anyway, these are available, uh, and in bulk too.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  But I want to-

• 8:17Tom Bilyeu?

  In bulk too. By the way, I really do think he sells those.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were like actually online and the first batch did sell out. And then he continued talking about some of the things that reasons that he was proud of California, but he kind of got caught himself into a gotcha. Let's talk about how he openly admitted that he provides healthcare regardless of immigration status.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Do you think that your party went too far or that you went too far? And I think, for instance, you know, in extending Medi-Cal to the California healthcare program to undocumented immigrants, like, do you?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Well, two different questions.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  I guess on the big picture and the small picture, do you feel like you went too far?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Two different questions. Do I believe in universal healthcare? Yes, regardless of pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, and your status. I campaigned on that. We delivered on that. And I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless of immigration status.

• 9:07Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, there it is. So, the wild thing is, we've been debating this for so long, people saying, "No, it doesn't. The bill doesn't cover that. That's not what this is for. Nobody does that anyway. What are you talking about? People can't extract any money from the system." So, at least we can put that to rest and now have the real debate as to whether or not we want to do that at a time where we can't balance budgets. The thing that was winding me up about Newsom, in fact, show this first, because this is dead on this exact thing.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  This one?

• 9:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, the Scott Jennings.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Federal law prohibits undocumented immigrants.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Then why are 1.4 million on it?

• 9:40Speaker 04

  That's a figment of your imagination.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  It's a figment of the CDO's documents.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Do I believe in universal healthcare? Yes. And I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless of immigration status.

• 9:50Speaker 06

  People who are in the country illegally also can't get Medicaid.

• 9:53Speaker 05

  Sure they can. Sure they can.

• 9:54Speaker 06

  They can't get Medicaid.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  They also can't register to vote. They also can't register to vote, but we just found one in Maryland who was running the Des Moines poll system. Oh, one! Oh, my God, one!

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Do I believe in universal healthcare? Yes. And I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless of immigration status.

• 10:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, it just keeps going like that. More people saying that, "Oh, this is a joke. It's not real."

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Can I just draw one, one quick line in the stand?

• 10:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, please.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Just one, one very quick. So, when you have, like, Medicaid, that's like a health insurance, I can go to a doctor, I can set an appointment, I have a specialist.

• 10:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  When I go to the ER and I don't get a bill, those are two different things, and I just want to put those on the table. Are illegal immigrants getting specialist appointments and going to rude? Cheques for free? No, I don't think they are. But can they just roll up to an ER and get their care taken for 100%? Yes, they can. So if we want to talk about that's bad, I'm okay. But I feel like we have to kind of draw the line in the sand of like, yes, technically Medicaid isn't the same as Medi-Cal. There are those differences, but at the same time, illegal alien can get care. And I think that's the part that we really, people are really upset about, more so what specific sect of health insurance they're on.

• 11:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Heard, I would say the more important thing is to migrate the argument away from is this happening? Because people, we were being asked to believe that basically illegal immigrants are only putting into the system. They never take out. This is like a wonderful boon. And it was all smoke and mirrors bullshit. And where I want to see the conversation go is, hey, uh, we are in a budget crisis. America is going bankrupt. We are on a timeline where bankruptcy is a guarantee mathematically.

• 11:36Tom Bilyeu?

  How do we stop this from happening? One of the things that we're spending money on is we opened the border for God knows how many years. We let in God knows how many millions of people. And those people are costing us money. And so do we want them to cost us money? Yes or no? And so once we're, if we want to get down into the minutia of we do want them to cost us money here. We don't think it's right that they cost us money there. Okay, great. But that's on the other side of, yes, we're perfectly willing for them to cost us money. Because the mental model that I'm forming is looking at everything that's going on in Minnesota in terms of the fraud. I have a full expectation that we're going to see the same kind of thing in California.

• 12:20Tom Bilyeu?

  And if California isn't fraud, which, trust me, it's going to be, but even if it's not, it's just waste. It's to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Like, it's just absolutely insane. The things like the high spade rate, high speed rail is the easiest one to point at. Because it's been going on for so long. We've spent so many billions of dollars and there's literally just nothing to show for it. But there's going to be all kinds of programs where we realize that it's just own goal after own goal in America at a time where.

• 12:50Tom Bilyeu?

  People, the, because the bankruptcy is happening slowly, people just sort of get numb to it and they don't feel like they need to do anything to stop it because everything has worked up to this point. And what I'm saying is-

• 13:02Speaker 01

  It's like the boiling the frog thing?

• 13:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, what I'm saying is this is the moment where we can put one thing to rest, which is this argument that it's not happening. It wasn't me. Like, it's, it's this like blatant like, what are you talking about? So now we know what is happening. The next domino that I think is gonna fall is gonna be fraud. After that, it's gonna be voter registration. Now, if I'm right about those dominos, then suddenly it's like Elon's claim that he made a year ago or 18 months ago or whatever, that, hey, blue states are running a very simple strategy. They are importing illegal immigrants as fast as they can. They are weakening voter registration laws. And I, I don't even think he knew just how pervasive the fraud was in that direction.

• 13:48Tom Bilyeu?

  But they're also making sure that these guys are getting a ton of money, one way or the other, either through things like Medi-Cal or through things like, uh, I run a daycare, but I don't really. I run a transportation company, but I don't really. I'm a translator, but not really. And so all of that, as we step back and look at it, it's like, okay, they're getting a ton of money. They know one side of the aisle votes for that. And so now you want to continue to vote as a block for those politicians. And if I'm right, the politicians will do and say anything, no matter how immoral, to gain and retain power. You're now in a position where somebody like Tim Walz, and I don't know this and it needs to come out in the fullness of time,

• 14:32Tom Bilyeu?

  but in terms of internal logic, you'll get politicians like that who they get to power by turning a blind eye to the fraud, by really paying attention to that voter block, regardless of whether it's good for, uh, America, regardless of even whether it's good for the long-term health and stability of his own state. It's just, I've got a voter block. I need to appease them in order to get into power and so I'm gonna do it. So if all of those dominos fall and we step back and we look at the country, you get to my whole thesis statement. My whole thesis statement about this is very simple. Whatever incentives you put into the system, you will get.

• 15:15Tom Bilyeu?

  So if you incentivize people to come in to suck money out of the system, because we have a welfare state that both beckons people from around the world and then puts no hurdles in the name of compassion to them getting on welfare or whatever, that's exactly what's going to happen. And so now you run into this position, even if it were just all good intentions, you will still run into evolution screaming at you that the reason that there is a left and a right is because without the left, the right becomes overly dogmatic and they become pathological on that side and tyrannical in that way.

• 16:00Tom Bilyeu?

  But without the right, the left becomes so compassionate that it self-destructs. And so you have to have this tension between the two sides. And what we've been seeing for, I mean, depending on what element of society you're looking at for decades at a minimum, is that there has been this compassionate rally cry. No one's illegal. Why should anybody be iced out? Everybody should be able to get in. Everybody should be able to qualify. Pre-existing conditions or not. Immigration status or not. Like, we have this belief that we can just print money forever and everybody's going to be fine. And that is people that do not understand the mechanisms of incentives.

• 16:43Tom Bilyeu?

  They don't understand the mechanisms of the economy. And so we are now mathematically going broke. And so it's like, these become important beats in being able to put all the pieces in place to say, no, no, no, this is what's actually happening. America does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. And so you have to start looking at, okay, all those things that you want to do, you just can't. 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. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for.

• 17:26Tom Bilyeu?

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• 18:10Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:37Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 19:40Speaker 01

  That is the perfect segue to the Congress passing a new bill. Now, what this new bill is, this is a full year appropriation bill. What this does is this prevents any further government shutdowns. What happened with the last government shutdown was a 45 day stay. There was speculation that another government shutdown will be looming at the end of this quarter. So they're getting in front of it instead of it being another 45 days or going for the full year. In order to get this, some of the compromises that were made were interesting on both sides. Wall Street Mavs tweet kind of reviews the top line ones. The first one was it failed to remove a mandate requiring vehicle manufacturers to install a kill switch in new cars. So the government, but law enforcement can shut your car off remotely.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Number two passed 10 million in funding for gender mutilation surgeries and propulsion dividers. This is a fancy way to say Planned Parenthood. Number three says it passed 1.17 trillion in spending, exceeding the White House's budget request by billions of dollars and funded left wing organizations that the White House requested zero dollars for. This third line, I haven't been able to kind of backtrack into. So I'm gonna leave this one as tweet at the tweet level, but.

• 20:49Tom Bilyeu?

  No, I have data on that one, which I will happily present.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's dive into that because I could not backtrack into that one. That is, yup, there you go.

• 20:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Here we go, everybody. Congress hates you and they want to see you poor. Now, how do I know that? Because they keep increasing spending rather than balancing the budget. This is while 90% of Americans are being kicked ever farther down the K-shaped economic slope. And I don't mean 90% is like some rough thing. I mean 10% of Americans own 93% of the assets. So if you want to talk about a K-shaped economy, you've got to recognize that literally 90% do not have meaningful amounts of their net worth in assets, largely because home prices are unaffordable. And so we just keep racing people away. And the bad news is that that mere fact, that grotesque intolerable amount of inequality

• 21:41Tom Bilyeu?

  is how civil wars and revolutions happen. Okay, that is the cause and effect. Now, the president's already insane, unbalanced 2026 budget request.

• 21:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Wasn't rejected because it was unbalanced. It was rejected, and I mean this, because it wasn't unbalanced enough. Congress viewed Trump's proposal to make cuts as essentially a scorched earth proposal aimed at dismantling several agencies instead of trying to actually get us going in a better, albeit still bad, in my opinion, direction. So what did Congress do when they saw that he was making cuts? They passed a bunch of minibus packages and soundly rejected those "deep," let's definitely put that in air quotes, cuts in a bipartisan fashion. Congress essentially ignored the cuts that Trump wanted to make, which theoretically

• 22:39Tom Bilyeu?

  would have at least put us on a 10-year path to a balanced budget, and instead funded the government at levels close to 2025. Because why would we want to slow our march to bankruptcy when we can accelerate it? Representative Thomas Massey, a longtime fiscal hawk, proposed a high-profile amendment during the January 2026 Financial Services Minibus Debate, but it ultimately failed. Massey's amendment sought an across-the-board 5% haircut on all discretionary spending in the bill, on top of the smaller cuts already negotiated. He also bundled this with a provision to terminate the Department of Education by the end of 2026. There were a bunch of other very controversial things that the amendment tried to remove,

• 23:23Tom Bilyeu?

  and many Republicans felt betrayed by their own party for striking down the amendment. There are a few reasons why they felt that way. One, hardline conservatives are upset because the final deal busted the spending caps they fought for in 2023 and 2025. The 2026 deal is roughly $50 billion higher than the non-binding targets set previously. Second, conservatives were looking to use the budget and the power of the purse to kill the 2021 regulation that required all new cars, starting in 2026, to have a government kill switch in them. The kill switch is being billed as advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology,

• 24:06Tom Bilyeu?

  but ultimately, it just gives the government more control in the name of safety.

• 24:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, when are people going to learn that anytime the government is supposedly trying to keep you safe, they are trying to gobble up control? I don't understand how people look at the world that we live in and think, yeah, I need the government to have more control over my life. Really? If you're on the left right now, do you really want Trump to have more control? Really? You want Trump to be able to turn your car off? Yeah? That seems like the good idea? So I do not understand. And if you're on the right, obviously, by temperament, you should not want the government to have more control. Boys and girls, what happened to the days of liberty? It comes at a cost. Yes, you have to think about your own safety.

• 24:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, you have to take control of your life, control your own destiny, but at least the government gets out of the way. It is wild to think that the whole thing that started the American Revolution was about a minor, like 3% or something, taxation without representation. And now it is insane. We have representation, but we don't have people that are looking out for our best interests. We have people that are gobbling up control. We have people that simply sway with the wind, that do not think about cause and effect. This is horrifying, that people wouldn't put a hard and fast no on that one, because they're going to keep coming with things like CBDCs and digital IDs and all of that

• 25:40Tom Bilyeu?

  stuff, and tell the control is total. All right, the third thing that bothered conservatives, the initial House version of the Labor HHS education bill included strict riders that would have prohibited federal funds, specifically Medicaid and ACA subsidies, from being used for gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors. In the final bipartisan omnibus released on January 20th, however, these riders were stripped out to gain the 60 votes needed in the Senate. Hardline Republicans viewed this as a surrender. They argued that since the GOP holds the House, they shouldn't have funded a single dollar of what they're calling woke healthcare. Hence Massey and others wanting to see it removed.

• 26:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Now Massey's amendment would have also triggered the total dissolution of the Department of Education by the end of 2026. Something near and dear to my heart is somebody who wants to make sure that America remains on top. Most Republicans and all Democrats rejected the total abolition approach as too radical for a standard funding bill. Now, the fact that things like that are all debated in a funding bill is already maddening enough, but whatever, we are where we are. Like, think about the fact, this was a funding bill and we were talking about the kill switch being placed in new cars. What? Uh, anyway, all these different bills get weaponized in different ways. Other controversial items that were stripped or defeated include DEI bans.

• 27:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Efforts completely to defund diversity, equity and inclusion across the federal government were softened or removed altogether. This one hurts. Voter ID, the SAVE Act. Provisions requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections were also a major sticking point that didn't make the final cut. This is so crazy. You can vote without having to prove that you're a citizen.

• 27:31Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm gonna say that again. You can vote without having to prove that you're a citizen. California, for instance, their voting system is an honor system. So you can vote, it seems like, I'll need to do more research, but at this stage of research that I'm at now, it seems like you can vote from anywhere in the world without having to provide any evidence that you actually have a right to vote in that election or that you're even a citizen. That is so wild. Now, the word on the street is that many members of Congress were still stinging from the 43-day government shutdown that occurred last year. And the moderates in the group were desperate to avoid another one. And so that's why they conceded and gave up things.

• 28:13Tom Bilyeu?

  The Massey wing, however, felt a shutdown would be a price worth paying to get these deeper cuts. But ultimately, they lost the battle. And so all of us lose the battle of taking a step towards fiscal responsibility, which is necessary to avoid going bankrupt, which is necessary to back out from the coming revolution. Remember, when your inequality becomes intolerable, which I will say we are already there, you are on a ticking clock before people revolt. If you don't think that they are already marching towards that, I will point you towards Minnesota. I'll point you towards Arizona. Now, in fairness to the, I think it was the governor that made the statements, many are saying that what she said was encouraging the citizens

• 28:58Tom Bilyeu?

  of Arizona to basically take arms against ICE. That's not what she was saying. What she was saying was, we have a stand your ground law, and if you roll up with a mask and you're not clearly marked as ICE, then people know that they have a right to shoot because they don't know who you are. So she was simply saying, make sure that you identify yourself. But I'm saying, when you're having conversations like this, you put yourself in a position where tensions are escalating, everybody's got their guns out, and this is where it gets very dangerous because of the economic situation that we're in. But people are pretending like this is not a real thing. So yeah, that's what I worry about. People do not have their eye on the cause and effect ball. People are not thinking

• 29:43Tom Bilyeu?

  about where this all goes in five to 10 years. People are all just either turning a blind eye to it, they don't understand money printing, or they think that Trump is really going to grow his way out of it. It's going to be interesting. 2026 is going to be our year of having to decide what we believe about the economy. Because inflation, according to trueflation, is down to like 1.5 or 1.2. I mean, it's really low. And so the question becomes, is that good deflation or bad deflation? Then, we've got incredible growth rates, but is it all going into infrastructure for AI and an AI bubble's about to burst? And that's all going to be for naught. So people can't even agree whether the things that

• 30:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Trump is doing are actually moving us in a good direction or not. So at the end of the day, you got to put more money in people's pockets. If it's easier for them to buy stuff at the grocery store, and they're making more money at work, and they've got a job if they want one, everybody's chill. If not, no matter what your data says, people are going to be furious. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent, AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM.

• 31:07Tom Bilyeu?

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• 31:52Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 31:56Speaker 01

  The tale of two stories. So, on one side, the Democrats have tweeted, "In Minneapolis, ICE arrested a five-year-old coming home from preschool and tried to use him as human bait. His teacher describes him as a bright young student. These monsters are sick." This is footage of a five-year-old that was standing with ICE officials. It's got a bunch of egos, a bunch of different videos. DHS retweeted them and said, "ICE did not target a child. The child was abandoned. On January 20th, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Cangello Arias, an illegal alien." My Spanish-speaking person is not making eye contact, so I butchered that name. "An illegal alien from Ecuador, who was released in the US by the Biden administration. As agents approached the driver, Adrian fled on foot, abandoning his..."

• 32:40Speaker 01

  "As agents approached the driver, Adrian fled on foot, abandoning his child. For the child's safety, one of the ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended him. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration's immigration enforcement. Parents can take control of their departure and receive a free flight and $2,600 with the CPB Home app. By using the CPB Home app, illegal aliens reserve the chance to come back the right legal way." Um, I think this kind of sums up like the drama of politics right now. Like it's not what happened. It's what you think happened based off of where you entered the story.

• 33:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Narrative control, baby. Narrative control. Yeah, this one, this one is narrative warfare on both sides. Uh, I don't think ICE, I've seen other video of ICE, um, in a similar fashion, detaining a child. Uh, because the parent basically took off running. So if a parent knows, for instance, that if I get inside my house, you can't get in with an administrative warrant. I know there's some drama over that right now, but traditionally that has been the case. Uh, but if the kid can't get in fast enough or the kid's outside playing, um, then all of a sudden, hey, your kid's outside with ICE officers, you're inside. If you go outside to show your ID to prove that that really is your kid, they got you. And so they'll stay in the house and be like, no, no, no, I'm not coming out. Like just send my kid in.

• 34:05Tom Bilyeu?

  So ICE is going to look horrible. It doesn't matter if they have the legal right to do it or not. Uh, this is people pressing their leverage. And when people press their leverage, it can often be grotesque. So this is where we're at, but, um, we got, we got some details on it. All right. Is ICE getting so desperate that they're snatching up kids? That is certainly what many people are claiming, but is that really what's happening? The story regarding ICE supposedly targeting a five-year-old has gained significant traction on social media and stems from a viral video and subsequent fact check issued by the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. The claim began when a video was posted to social media showing ICE agents at a residential complex in a major US city.

• 34:49Tom Bilyeu?

  In the video, a five-year-old child was seen crying as an adult male was being detained. The caption of the viral post claimed that ICE had all had arrived specifically to arrest and deport a five-year-old. However, the subject of the warrant, according to the DHS statement and ICE, uh, official records, was for the child's father, an adult male who had a final order of removal from a federal immigration judge and a prior criminal conviction. In fact, multiple convictions for violent felonies. He had been classified. As a priority one enforcement target. School officials, however, and witnesses say that ICE officers directed the five year old to knock on the front door to check if other adults were inside, effectively using him to gain access.

• 35:33Tom Bilyeu?

  This has been described by critics as using a child as bait, which a hundred percent is precisely what they are doing, and they will do it all day long to press their advantage. Now, another adult present was allegedly denied the opportunity to care for Liam so that he could avoid being taken into custody. The family has an active asylum case and reportedly entered the US legally through a port of entry. They had not received the deportation order at the time of arrest, according to their attorney and school officials. So both sides going back and forth, he said, she said, one says this, the other says that you are being spun. You are in the middle of informational warfare. Which side is accurate? I'm sure it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.

• 36:16Tom Bilyeu?

  This is the kind of stuff that we're gonna have to wait and see how it plays out. It's gonna have to work its way through the court system. But when you see video like this, it is just gonna be a terrible look for ICE, even if they are the sort of, you know, acquitted of all wrongdoing in the inevitable investigation. It doesn't matter. This stuff looks absolutely terrible. And this is one of the problems is you've got Trump that's going more and more in the route of more ICE officers, looking tougher, hiring more badasses, getting combat veterans on the force, which shout out to our combat veterans, I love you guys the most. But it's like, we have to be so careful about how we go about this, not just what we're doing. I obviously feel very strongly, you can't have illegal aliens running around the country.

• 37:01Tom Bilyeu?

  People have got to come in the right way. You've got to be able to enforce your border. You've got to be able to enforce your laws. And so if you have immigration laws, you've got to be able to enforce them. You cannot let mob rule by any stretch of the imagination. And at the same time, you can't just be this crazy goose stepping force that comes in and starts doing stuff that can be made to look so bad, so effortlessly. So we, man, you gotta be real careful. That's just the reality. You gotta be careful. I get that it should be easier to do their job, but it's not. You gotta be more careful.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  It's just bad optics all around, all around. Um, okay, let's jump into.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  So I feel like I've been playing both sides today because when everybody was talking about this Greenland story, there was so many speculation and talk about how Trump is about to alienate all our allies, Trump is about to vilify us, he's gonna go in there and snatch it, we're about to go to war with Greenland, Europeans were sending boots on the ground, and when I say boots on the ground, I mean two people in a corona, but it's one of those things where it's like, there was all this speculation of what Trump might do, just for Trump to go into Davos and say this, and then we'll jump into the Trump and Greenland updates that we have so far.

• 38:17Speaker 07

  Mark, are you here?

• 38:20Speaker 07

  Yes, he's here. Hello, Mark.

• 38:24Speaker 07

  We never asked for anything.

• 38:26Tom Bilyeu?

  I assume he's talking about Mark Carney, by the way.

• 38:28Speaker 07

  We never got anything. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be frankly unstoppable, but I won't do that. Okay? Now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force, I don't want to use force, I won't use force.

• 38:52Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, pause it. Here's the thing, listen. If you believe that a populist moment like this, that someone like Trump is summoned forth from the populace that is very angry, they know the pie is shrinking and they want to fight against the other team, I get how somebody like Trump comes into office, so I'm not confused about that. However, if he had simply said that when asked, will you take an armed invasion off the table? If he had said, listen, I'm not going to use force, but we have to have it for the, you know, the whole spiel that he gives for national security, and talked about having resolve and it's gotta happen and we're gonna get it done one way or the other and all that,

• 39:36Tom Bilyeu?

  easy way or the hard way, but listen, we're not gonna use force against our allies, we're not going to need to, yada, yada, yada. What he literally just said... You could have avoided so much of the reputational damage that has been done to America. Remember, the leaders in America are a megaphone for the will of the people. And right now, if you're on the outside, looking back at America, what you see is a bitterly divided country that vacillates between the left and the right with these really hard swings, that the left and the right are pulling away from each other. You have to understand, this is not a left that's near the middle and a right that's near the middle. This is like, you got a left that's going more and more radical and a

• 40:18Tom Bilyeu?

  right that's going more and more radical. And so, when you vacillate those huge swings from one side to the other, from the outside world, it's like, yeah, I'll take Xi Jinping over this, because at least it's one guy. I don't have to worry about him swinging wildly from either side. I understand what his temperament is. I know what he's like. But at least, like, we get that. And they're actually doing it. If I'm not mistaken, Mark actually said, Mark Carney actually said, I am almost certain this is true. I wouldn't be able to pull this up quickly, but my memory serves that he literally said Xi is at least more predictable than Trump.

• 40:56Tom Bilyeu?

  So, you're putting world leaders in a position where partly out of spite, partly because they don't know what's going to happen at the midterms. They don't know what's going to happen in three more years when a new president is elected. They have no idea. And so it's like, listen, we've got to find people that are more stable, because people will put up with some terrifying stuff as long as it's predictable. So, America has got to get its act together in terms of broadcasting to the world, that we're not all over the place. The problem is, we are all over the place. So, I don't expect this to be dialed back anytime soon. But if we don't, we're gonna be in trouble.

• 41:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Full stop. I've got a whole nother tirade, but I'll...

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Tell me why you're really mad. The next day, Trump came out and said they have a framework of a deal. This is the framework of that deal. Denmark must continue paying the Greenland population $600 million per year. That's already on the table. The US gains sovereignty over any parts it wants for American military bases. I think we have two there, so if we want to add any additional ones. The US will have access to the entire Arctic Circle. The US obtains the mineral exploration rights. China and Russia are not permitted to enter Greenland. The US will continue to be a part of NATO in exchange for all of this.

• 42:07Tom Bilyeu?

  That's the final point is the interesting point. So this is all rumors, conjecture, behind the scenes grumbling. But what people are saying is that the reason that Trump has been able to get this deal. It's not done yet. These are just the outline. We'll see if it actually gets across the finish line. But people are saying the reason that Denmark finally agreed to this is that the guy that actually runs the UN, or sorry NATO, my apologies, the guy that runs NATO, basically said, he is, he being Trump, is actually going to pull out of NATO if we're not able to find a path to this. And there's a clip that we should pull up of the guy. It's in the document under the President of Finland flip flops.

• 42:50Tom Bilyeu?

  So these guys talk really tough, Europe, until they actually start thinking about how much of their budgets would need to go to the military for them to be able to protect themselves. And also, Europe understands that even within Europe, there are fractures. And they have probably even more tension among themselves than we have between states here in America. So while they move as a block, you've already had England jettison themselves out of the EU. You've got other people that are talking about jettisoning out of the EU. You've got people like Hungary that have been openly antagonistic to EU policies. Poland that's been openly antagonistic to EU policies.

• 43:33Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's like they're not as unified as one might want them to be. And so as you'll see in this clip, the tough talk can get retracted pretty damn fast. And when he switches, just keep in mind, this is a change of only 11 minutes.

• 43:51Speaker 07

  To the question of this panel.

• 43:52Tom Bilyeu?

  This is the president of Finland.

• 43:54Speaker 07

  My answer is unequivocally yes.

• 43:56Speaker 06

  Without the Americans.

• 43:57Speaker 07

  Without the Americans, I mean.

• 43:59Speaker 06

  How?

• 44:00Speaker 07

  Well, look.

• 44:01Speaker 06

  But you're relying on them for these key elements. You've said earlier that.

• 44:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Pause it for a second, just so anybody that's not looking at their phone can hear. So the question was, can you guys support yourselves without America? Unequivocally, yes. Can you defend yourselves? Yes, we got it. No problem. How? And now, this next clip is from 11 minutes later.

• 44:22Speaker 06

  Can defend itself without the Americans? If it comes down.

• 44:27Speaker 07

  Not, not exact, Mike, so that's not a quote.

• 44:32Tom Bilyeu?

  He's saying that's not a quote. That's literally a quote.

• 44:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, do these people not realize they're being recorded? So, he literally says unequivocally, we can defend ourselves without America. And then, when asked how, he's got no answer. And then just crumbles. So, I get it, they've got a posture, they've got a tough talk, tough, but at the end, not so much.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Not so much. There, it's, it's big. It's like, your ego gets involved, and then you start to think about the people, the budget, the economy, and you're like, oh, okay, never mind. And he just shrunk back inside of himself.

• 45:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Like, it's easy to laugh at him, like, ha, ha, ha. Then it's like, okay, so you said that, well, wait, hold on, no, I didn't say that, because he knows Trump's in the other room, and he's, he's kind of feeling that.

• 45:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that, and like, there are realities to be faced. This is why it's like, listen, I don't like the GTP policies that Trump uses. I don't like the bully tactics. But at the same time, leverage is leverage. And people need to be honest about where they have leverage and where they don't have leverage. And where people get themselves in trouble is where they overplay their hand. They think that they, not that they think they have leverage, that they don't like the way it feels to have to bend the knee to somebody who has more leverage over them. But this is exactly what diplomacy is. Where can I press the advantage? Where do I have to give because I don't have the advantage? Where can I actually stand my ground and win? And if you miscalculate that, then you get eaten alive. And so.

• 46:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Again, I think Trump is doing irreparable damage to our international reputation. It just is what it is. But at the same time, he does, as the leader of the strongest military and arguably the strongest economy, it's like we hold a lot more chips than any one country. Now, other countries could do us damage, there's no doubt about that. But what they have to ask is if they damage us, does it go to help them or does it end up hurting them? And right now, as the US goes, so goes the whole world. You don't want to see America spiral into a recession or a depression. The number of things that we deliver to the rest of the world, the number of people around the globe that are invested in US markets is crazy.

• 46:50Tom Bilyeu?

  So, yeah, it would not be good for the globe to want to see America break. That is for sure.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then continuing Trump's escapades in Davos, this is the reveal of his Board of Peace. It includes Belarus, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Armenia, Egypt, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Albania, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Qatar, and Indonesia. I don't know if those are necessarily the starters in the lineup.

• 47:20Tom Bilyeu?

  There's more than that, I'm pretty sure. If memory serves, there was a slightly deeper bench than that. But people are throwing around all kinds of rumors about who's in, who's out. I'm seeing some reports saying Saudi Arabia's out, other reports saying no, they've already confirmed that they're in.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  There was Malay from Argentina that he just walked past, so...

• 47:38Tom Bilyeu?

  My thing is though, when you hear about some of the details and all this needs to be formalized and all of that, when I hear about some of the details, if they're true, I don't know that they are true, but if they are true, if Trump really is the for-life head of the Board of Peace, regardless of whether he's in the White House or not, that is insane to me. That is insane, that you're letting somebody who will very shortly be a civilian, put themselves at the head of a global group that is clearly meant to be a political body? That is wild. Now, maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's inaccurate reporting, we'll want to find out, but yo, I would not want any president ever to make that deal.

• 48:22Tom Bilyeu?

  So, it's like, once you're a civilian, man, you are a civilian. You do not represent the United States anymore. And I remember when George H W Bush was doing this, he was doing trips to Saudi Arabia and stuff after leaving the office. And people were like, wait, is he there as an official representative of America? Or is he a business guy going over? And it wasn't clear anymore. And I remember thinking, he's got every right to do it. But it was a little heebie jeebie. It was like, huh, that is kind of weird. And now he's as president installing himself, again, allegedly, allegedly, I don't know for sure. But if that is true, that to use the presidency to get yourself installed at the head of a political organization for life, get the fuck out of here.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Crazy. Man. And then Elon had something to say about it when his interview with Larry Fink happened later on that day.

• 49:16Speaker 07

  I heard about the formation of the Peace Summit. And I was like, is that, is that P I E C?

• 49:29Speaker 07

  You know, a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela.

• 49:34Tom Bilyeu?

  We got one. Dude, that's one of those like, that's outlandish. Like, that is, I mean, to your point, we never really got into your discussion about should you be able to say this stuff publicly about the family or not. But you've got America's biggest business titan, who has many times now talked shit on Trump. Trump talks shit on everybody. So it's like, if you're gonna give it, you gotta be prepared to get it. But yeah, that one is exactly, I think, the right joke to make. But ooh, buddy, like, that's a

• 50:11Speaker 01

  What is your take on that? Between Elon saying it in like a jokingly poking way, and then Newsom a bit more grounded and pointed way about kind of America's almost infighting in the world, like on the world stage at a global conference?

• 50:26Tom Bilyeu?

  I think it's a terrible look for America. And at the same time, this is the game. So I wish it weren't so. I wish America were on the same page. We'd be in a much stronger position. But the bet that America made when it founded itself was you gotta let people talk shit, air all their dirty laundry, say whatever they think is true, not cap their freedom of speech. Like, and we don't, we have a maverick culture. We are the rugged individuals. And the rugged individuals with a maverick culture and actual freedom of speech gave you America. It, it became the place for the most hardcore people from all over the world to come and say, give me a shot, just get out of my way.

• 51:10Tom Bilyeu?

  I get that the field is full of NFL linebackers that are gonna level most of the people that go up against them, but I think I've got a shot. I'm either faster, I'm smarter, I'm stronger, whatever, I'm something. Let me go on the field. And if they break my collarbone, they break my collarbone. It is what it, if they paralyze me, they kill me, whatever. Like, I want to play. And you got this incredible juggernaut out of that. And so while I hate the way that it is, like, I remember when, it's a long time ago, but I remember when the Paul brothers made diss tracks about each other. I was like, so traumatized because I would never talk shit about my family publicly like that.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  So we were just talking about that with the Beckham, the Beckham family.

• 51:54Tom Bilyeu?

  And I feel the same. I hate, absolutely despise that kids put their parents on blast, that parents put the kids on blast. Hate, hate, hate. Uh, but nonetheless, they have the right to do it. And so I would not want to see America culturally or legally stop people from doing it. I want mavericks. I want to, I mean, let's not forget that Elon is not American by birth. He's South African. So I'm glad that we attract people from all over the world that have that like, uh, you can't tell me shit attitude, like, I'm gonna go do this thing. And if I crash and burn, I crash and burn and just bad on me. But if I make it, I'm really gonna be able to make it. And we have led the world for, I mean, a long time, not our full 250 years,

• 52:37Tom Bilyeu?

  but we've led the world for a long ass time as a result of that attitude. So I'm definitely here for it. But at times like this, when I'm like, fuck, America is just. We are, we're a mess right now. And so when you see it play out in real time, it doesn't feel good, but it is the thing that has led us to where we are. So I don't want to break it.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And then the last thing coming out of Davos was New Gaza. Jared Kushner's plan to redevelop the hub, I don't even know what to call it. But they were talking about transportation, coastal tourism, complete energy and digital infrastructure. And of course, they had guidelines about the demilitarization of Hamas and some of the necessary requirements that were required to get there. It seemed like a good plan. It did kind of give a real estate presentation for a little bit. So that was the little bit of the uneasy part of this.

• 53:29Tom Bilyeu?

  So when I saw the, the presentation and he was like, listen, can we all just chill for a minute? Just like take it in for a second. Don't freak out. I was like, this is going to be viewed ironically as the most dystopian thing ever. By a certain type of person. That they see this and it's like all glitter and artifice and all of that. And this is my whole point from the beginning is the only way to end this conflict is to get people thinking about the future, to get people to say, I want to be in this place over here that's better, where my kids' life's going to be better.

• 54:12Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm going to make more money. My kids are going to make more money than me. Like when you can get culturally that attitude going, you can generate momentum. The problem is that this is not in the Palestinian culture. So I don't see how you get there unless you truly ethnically cleanse all of Gaza. Now, if you ethnically cleanse all of Gaza, sure, then you can essentially extend it. And as long as you get cooperation between Arab nations and Israel and they boot the militants out, yeah, cool. And then that geography will be wonderful and quite frankly, it will be better for it. That, that is a way better outcome than it being in the state that it's in right now.

• 54:55Tom Bilyeu?

  But it requires some morally reprehensible things to get you there. And so this is why, this has fascinated me from the beginning is run the thought experiment just as a thought experiment. You don't even have to go that far. America. America's amazing. But we had to kill a lot of Native Americans to get here.

• 55:20Tom Bilyeu?

  America, from sea to shining sea.

• 55:24Tom Bilyeu?

  We had to take it from Mexico.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Gaza, from the river to the sea.

• 55:27Tom Bilyeu?

  So, right, so I'm just saying, like, what do you do with the fact that America becomes the thing that helps stop the Nazis? But at the same time, we were the guys that brought smallpox and then killed the rest of the Indians that didn't get killed by smallpox, Native Americans. So it's like, bro, you did a bad thing and you got a dope outcome. And so that kind of thing is, is a bitter pill to swallow. And so if they end up making Palestine a way better place, driven by economics, as it should be, uh, what do you do? I think people are still, there are going to be a lot of people that they just cannot

• 56:13Tom Bilyeu?

  accept the price that had to be paid.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  And you're saying the roadblock for that, you think is going to be the Palestinian people themselves?

• 56:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct. Culturally, they are not going to be able to digest that. Just like you can't go to Afghanistan, put some schools in, start sending girls to school and be like, everything's going to be better. Doesn't work like that. If culturally, that's not what the culture wants, then that's not what the culture's going to get. Like, imagine, uh, you open a school and, uh, you send your daughter to school and she comes home and her dad beats her mercilessly. And it's like, no daughter of mine is going to school. Now what?

• 56:54Tom Bilyeu?

  And if a lot of them are doing that, well, now you got a problem. I'm not saying that's what's happening, I'm just saying, things like that do happen.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Let's jump back into the economy. Uh, this was something that was getting buzzed yesterday. You labeled it interesting, so I kind of want your breakdown on this. So Mamdani signed into law yesterday. If you book a $200 hotel, you pay $200. Today, we shut down hotel junk fees into price credit card holds. The price you see is the price you pay. This seemed pretty straightforward. You labeled this as another way of like price control. Kind of what's your?

• 57:26Tom Bilyeu?

  This is stupid.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:27Tom Bilyeu?

  So.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Break it down for us.

• 57:28Tom Bilyeu?

  All right.

• 57:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's say that what he wants to do is actually lower prices. You're never going to be able to do that by decree. You're not just going to be able to say, you have to go in and make this change and that's going to lower prices. The thing, the thing that lowers prices is competition. Because the thing people are most sensitive to is price, price and quality. Those are the two things people care about. So when you open up competition, then the most obvious way for you to compete is on price and quality. And so it will drive quality down, sorry, it will drive price down and it will drive quality up. So that some places will go, oh, I'm going to make this like a super elite, high-end experience and people will pay more for it. That's what Quest did with Quest bars was we made, we made one of the more expensive bars on the market.

• 58:16Tom Bilyeu?

  But nutritionally, it was so much better, people went for it. And then discount hotels. What they're trying to do is say, hey, I'm going to strip out all the frills and I'm going to give you something cheaper. Okay, when you do this, which this is not super egregious, nobody should be in a twist about this. In terms of what he's doing is saying, you have to represent the fees that are already being charged largely as taxes, you've got to represent them all upfront. So it's not going to change the price. It's just going to change the way that the price is represented. As long as everybody understands that, like in Europe, they, there's no like, this is the price, oh, but you know, you pay 11% tax at the register or whatever. It's just, it's all included.

• 58:58Tom Bilyeu?

  So this is him going, ah, we're going to force you to put everything upfront. Now, what he's not necessarily taking into consideration is the person who's closest to this, that should be making the decision about how to represent the price is going to be the business. Because they understand the sales and psychology. And so if he's giving them a bad way to do the psychology, because let's say that people are annoyed, right? I think as consumers, we would all prefer, let me just see the price. But the reality may be that we actually spend less and that the annoyance doesn't stop our behavior, but it actually does cause us to show up to more hotel rooms and spend more time in a hotel and the world keeps going round. And so now what you're saying is, we're going to let.

• 59:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Legislators decide where friction can and can't be in a sale, what people, the ways in which they should be able to display things. So for instance, in the apps, when they raised the minimum wage in New York, which by the way, he's getting flack for, he did not do. So it's like, as much as Mumdani winds me up, he should only be, uh, people should only be frustrated for him for things that he actually did. Yeah. He was not the one that did this. This was actually Mayor Adams. So your beef is with Adams. But when they did that, the, um, what the apps found was that they were better off putting the tip at the end of the ride. So, or the delivery for DoorDash or whatever.

• 1:00:26Tom Bilyeu?

  New York, though, now is mandating it has to go at the beginning. Well, the problem is that that could influence sales. So now you're saying, uh, we're not going to trust you to be smart enough to decide whether this order is worth the money that you're paying for. And the, you're gonna tip, well, you're gonna tip. They're saying, no, no, no, we're going to force the businesses to do the thing that makes it more likely that you get a tip, regardless of what ends up happening to sales. And that to me is like, hold on a second. If the person doesn't feel like they're being fairly compensated, they shouldn't take the job. But if the person is willing to work for those wages and the company is trying to make sure that the company remains profitable, then they should be able to do that.

• 1:01:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And if another company wants to come along and say, oh, these guys are assholes. They're devaluing their employees. I'm gonna build a business by valuing the employees. And so if it really is creating a hole in the market, then that hole in the market should be filled by an entrepreneur who recognizes, oh, you've created a vulnerability for yourself. I mean, there, this is so common, there's an adage for it, that my competitor's margin is my advantage. So this is Costco. Costco is when the government doesn't regulate it. A smart person goes, hold on a second. If I can build my business in such a way that I can deal with smaller margins, pass the savings on to the customer, I can build a huge business. This is all trying to mandate this stuff from the Top down. I assure you, these guys don't know how to run businesses.

• 1:01:53Tom Bilyeu?

  And so they're going to end up putting businesses. And this one may be minor. I'm not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. What I'm trying to say is, once you get it in your head, the government officials, they know how to do all this stuff. They're going to take good care of you. They're going to solve all of your problems by fiat. It doesn't work. And so what you want to do is deregulate sensibly. You don't want no regulations because corporations and entrepreneurs, for all the good that they do, they will abuse you if there is nothing to check them. So you've got to be very careful about making sure that there's still bumpers in the alley. But once you become convinced that, oh, we just need to regulate more and more and more and more and more and more and more, you end up strangling, quite literally, the goose that's laying the golden eggs.

• 1:02:37Tom Bilyeu?

  In fact, this is a perfect time. We've got a clip from, I think it's MERS of Germany, who is like, oh, we have completely stalled the growth of Europe by overregulating. So this, nobody has run the experiment more aggressively than the European Union on whether you can regulate your way to prosperity. And he's giving you a report card.

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  We are aware of those problems. Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility. We are going to change that now. Security and predictability take precedence over excessive regulation and misplaced perfection. We must reduce bureaucracy substantially in Europe. The single market was once created to form the most competitive economic area in the world.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  But instead, we have become the world champion of overregulation. That has to end.

• 1:03:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. So, I mean, These are the consequences of the architecture of the human mind. And people think that there's these corporate overlords and they're just doing all this bad stuff. And it's like, nope, this is all the result of humans going, I don't want to starve to death this winter. And because we didn't want to starve to death this winter, we started grouping up in bands of people. And because it was self evident to everybody who's ever lived, some people are better at certain things than others. Some people have a higher desire for those things than others. And so we are in a much better position when we let people specialize. The second you let people specialize, you have to abstract money because you're not always going to be able to trade a beaver pelt for a stick of butter, right? It's like, how the fuck, what?

• 1:04:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, I'm the guy that gets beaver pelts, bro. I can't break everything down to buy my butter and all that shit. So you'll come up with seashells, beads, dollars, whatever. But you come up with a thing that allows you to abstract that. Once you understand, oh, the reason people say time is money is because the amount of money that you have is your ability to capture the value of how you spend your time. Elon Musk is far better at spending his time than I am, and therefore he's captured a lot more value than I have for his time. I'm better than a lot of other people, which is why I've captured a lot more value than a lot of other people. Luck plays a role, please don't get me wrong. But like, by and large, it balances out over how effective are you with your time? Now that includes your ability to negotiate.

• 1:05:12Tom Bilyeu?

  It includes your ability to get educated, not necessarily formally, but to get so good at something, blah, blah, blah. But like, that's what this is. So to undo all of that and to be like, we don't want these corporations. We don't want companies. Like what you're actually pushing back against is not having to do everything yourself. Or the fact that you won't work for free. Or the fact, this one always kills me. We want prices lowered, like, come on, Mom Donnie, drive the price down. And then what is the thing that actually causes the price to be high? It's often labor costs. Any business, your highest cost is going to be labor, almost always. It's probably different for AI, for them, it's compute. But for the vast majority of companies, the thing you're paying for is people that want high wages.

• 1:05:56Tom Bilyeu?

  So you have the same people saying, we want high wages and things to be cheap. And by the way, we want to regulate all the companies. It's like, you literally, you literally mechanistically cannot have all of those.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  What is that line though? Because there is something where there are people in the chat that are saying, we like the way that Europeans display transparent pricing. But then over here, it's like, when we're doing this, this is one step of a regulation that won't actually lead to something. So while we all agree that too many barnacles can drown the total, as you say, where do you like, how does things break this bad? How do they get to the point where it becomes so stagnant? Is it just self-interest and regulatory capture? Like, what is that? That's what it is?

• 1:06:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, so here, the honestly, the big trade-off that people make is, I don't want to be responsible for myself. This is why he mentioned personal responsibility. So I don't want to be responsible for myself, and I want the government to make sure that I stay safe. And once you start going down that path, then it's bureaucrats are deciding what you can and can't do. And I will give you my favorite example, because this one made me irate. So I'm going to speedrun what happened. I'm, I decide when I'm 12, I want to get rich. I end up building a software company because I want to get rich. I did not care about the software at all. I just wanted to get rich. It breaks me emotionally, and I realize, oh, money's not going to solve this internal feeling that I have. I quit.

• 1:07:24Tom Bilyeu?

  My partners are like, hey, no, we feel the same. What would we want to do where we could all work together going forward? Ends up being Quest Nutrition is the answer. Now, the reason I could connect with Quest was I grew up in a morbidly obese family. So I'm like, I want to save my mom and my sister. And I want to do it by making food that they can choose based on taste, and it happens to be good for them. Now, I, at this point, come to realize fat is really healthy, but it's still being vilified. So the government puts forward, so remember, I've gone through this whole thing, I don't want to chase money anymore, it's got to be meaning and purpose, I'm fighting for my mom and my sister, I've spent god knows how many Fridays and Saturdays with bloody knuckles, fixing machines, trying to do something rad, I'm not rich yet, and I'm just fucking fighting

• 1:08:09Tom Bilyeu?

  for something I believe in. And now the government's putting forward, they didn't do it thankfully, but they were putting forward this thing. Where they were gonna put red, yellow, green lights on packaging and it was largely based on fat. So you could have all the sugar you wanted, you'd be fucking green, killing people, giving them diabetes, all that. But you're green because we, the fucking lunatics who know nothing about health are making the policies. And so now I'm like, oh my God, I'm actually gonna have to get into government lobbying. This is insane. They don't even know what they're fucking talking about. And so I don't know if you've seen the Health Minister of Wales, morbidly obese woman, so wild. And so I'm like, we've got all these people that can't even control their own health and they're making regulations around the world.

• 1:08:53Tom Bilyeu?

  And they're, they're literally stupid. They don't know what they're talking about. And so, yep, there she is, everybody. I don't know if we're sharing that, but if you're looking at your screen, that's the Health Minister of Wales. So I'm just saying, there's a ton of people that look like that in making policy around health. They do not know what they're talking about and yet they're putting things into law. So I'm like, you're gonna make it such that my advertising has to say, my product, which actually metabolically is provably better for you. You're gonna make me say on the packaging, it's worse for you. I was like, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I was so mad, I, I just couldn't fucking believe it. And so that's where it's like, okay, wait, if things are like that in the industry that I understand,

• 1:09:39Tom Bilyeu?

  is it possible that it's like that in every industry? And I just don't understand the other industries. And the answer is yes. So once you start letting that desire to be protected, get codified into law. First of all, you're being protected by people who don't know what the fuck they're doing and can be leading you in the wrong direction. Think about how much America spends on healthcare, education, all that. And we are getting fatter and sicker, literally by the day, life expectancy going down. So it's like, you, you do not want this stuff regulated at the level of the government. As much as possible, you want to avoid that. You're not gonna get to zero. You don't want to get to zero. But you want to be light touch because the government is. Full of people that don't know what they're talking about, making laws about things they don't understand.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Isn't like a historical example of when the government actually worked? Cause I feel like.

• 1:10:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, World War II. So you have a government that says, ooh, we know how to marshal all of these resources up to and including the creation of the atomic bomb. And aren't you glad that you have a government that oversees your however many hundred million people that we had at that time? Because we're able to mount a defense, fight this war, win this war. So for sure, security is one of the things. So protect your borders, security, law and order, a thousand percent. Put some guardrails to make sure that fraud isn't happening. That's a big one. Like when you go back and look at like the things that people got sucked into back, like think about the Gilded Age.

• 1:11:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Where a guy would roll up, he'd be dressed impeccably, roll up in a horse and buggy, horse expensive, buggy's expensive, dress nice. And he would be like, listen, I, uh, you know, I'm here from Chicago and I've got this deal. It's going to be incredible. Invest, you can't lose. Um, look how wealthy I am. It's all a scam, all a fraud. And he's just Bernie Madoff-ing it. One person gives him money, gives a return to somebody else. But this is like nineteen eighteen or eighteen ninety, whatever. And there's no way to verify. So you'd be like, oh my God, but I mean, look at him in this fucking incredible. And so people would just get scammed out of their money all the time. So there are definitely things like that that you want to protect against, but.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Somebody said the GI Bill produced a ton of housing and free education, a socialist success story.

• 1:12:05Tom Bilyeu?

  So here's where people want to think about the difference between applying tax dollars well and socialism. So it's fair to say that America is on a spectrum. We do redistribute wealth. We tax and then we spend on things. The question is, do we do it well or do we do it poorly? And so do we want to do more and more and more and more and more? Or do we want to do less and less and less and less and less? You've never heard Tom advocate for. True anarchy. That's not my shtick. Michael Malice, yes. Love Michael. Fantastic guy. Very smart, but I'm not an anarchy guy. I don't think it works in real life. I don't think humans are wired for that. So I'm perfectly happy as a capitalist to say, listen, I get you're going to need to put some constraints on the world of people.

• 1:12:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Because even though I like to believe that I'm always doing things that are going to help me sleep at night. I want to earn my own respect. I want to be moral. I want to be somebody that can stand on stage with a microphone and defend every action that I've taken. But not everybody's going to be like that. So, all right, cool. Then let's do some of that. I also would like to live in a world where even though, Drew, even though I now have to pay for private fire insurance because of stupid fucking decisions of the California government, I would like to not be in that situation. Even though I have to hire armed security, I would like to not be in that situation. So I'm perfectly happy to taxes, roads, fire, police, love it all. Love it all. Happy to do it.

• 1:13:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Educate. I don't have kids. Happy to pay taxes to educate the next generation. But I'm not happy when the results that I get are fucking retarded. And so the fact that I've had to hire private fire, bro, come on, like that's wild. The fact that I once, I once personally performed CPR for over 20 minutes. Because that's how long it fucking took to get the people to respond to the 911 call. I live in a major city, bro. Come on. So there's all kinds of things where it's like, I think we can all point to and be like, the government's got some real problems. Let's solve them. But I have no problem. Love the GI Bill. Love what it did. You had people that just fought and died for this country. To treat those people like the absolute heroes that they are, love, here for it.

• 1:14:18Tom Bilyeu?

  But we need to be very prudent about going down that path very far. Because once you start violating private property, you now get into a problem. Socialists violate private property. They seize the means of production. They try to control everything from the top down. So taxing and doing things that build infrastructure and all that is a brilliant use. But the things that someone like Mamdani is trying to do is Absolutely moronic and has failed every time it's been tried.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Well, that's all I got.

• 1:14:52Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. There it is, everybody. Happy Friday. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend. Please, if you would, like and subscribe. It really does help us build momentum. We appreciate you guys very much. And we will see you on Monday. Same bat time, same bat channel, 7 a.m. Pacific time, Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays. See you guys there. 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.

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