#587: Dave Rubin on Thinking for Yourself

Dave Rubin is a political commentator, YouTube personality, and talk show host. He is the creator and host of The Rubin Report, a political talk show on YouTube and the network BlazeTV. Dave is also the founder of Locals, a new subscription service built for creators. In this conversation, we discuss critical thinking skills, eroding trust in institutions, censorship, decentralization, owning your audience, first principles, personal responsibility, democracy, and capitalism. ======================= Are you tired of dogecoin and memestocks? I certainly am. I recently came across a little-known, but incredibly smart way for everyday investors to diversify into a new untapped asset class that has been around for centuries: blue-chip art. Just like the early days of bitcoin, blue-chip art lacks institutional investors and has no way to buy into the market unless you buy an entire painting yourself. Until now Masterworks.io is the first platform to securitize the $1.7 trillion fine-art asset class. From 1995 through 2020, contemporary art prices outperformed S&P 500 returns by 174%. With Masterworks.io you can invest in works by artists like Banksy and KAWS without breaking the bank. To get started head to Masterworks.io promo and use code "pomp" to skip their 12,000 person waitlist. See disclaimer at masterworks.io/disclaimer. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =======================

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Dave Rubin is a political commentator, YouTube personality, and talk show host. He's the creator and host of The Rubin Report, a political talk show on YouTube and the network Blaze TV. Dave is also the co-founder of Locals, a new subscription service built for creators. In this conversation, we discuss critical thinking skills, eroding trust in institutions, censorship, decentralization, owning your audience, first principles, personal responsibility, democracy, and capitalism. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dave, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  talk about our sponsors. First up is Masterworks. Are you tired of Dogecoin and meme stocks? I certainly am. I recently came across a little-known but incredibly smart way for everyday investors to diversify into a new untapped asset class that has been around for centuries: blue chip art. Just like the early days of Bitcoin, blue chip art lacks institutional investors and has no way to buy into the market unless you buy an entire painting yourself. Until now, masterworks.io is the first platform to securitize the $1.7 trillion fine art asset class. From 1995 through 2020, contemporary art pieces outperformed S&P 500 returns by 174%. With masterworks.io, you can invest in works by artists like Banksy

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Either way, Choice is on a mission to give you full control over your retirement savings. So head on over to retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Again, that's retirewithchoice.com/pomp and sign up for an account today. And one more thing, now I feel about this, but if you have a pro that manages your money, don't take any BS. Choice has tools for them, too. Take back control today and visit retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Retirewithchoice.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Dave. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:28Speaker 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.

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang, I've got Dave here. Ready?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Pop 'em in Miami. In Florida, a free city and a free state. I'm very excited.

• 4:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you gonna move here eventually?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Well, we just moved my company down here. We moved locals here. I'm thinking about it. I sat down with my business managers and I know you know a little something about dollars and cents. And they basically looked at me and were like, you're an idiot for living in Los Angeles. And I mean, in effect, we crush the numbers. I could live for free. You know what I mean? Like my every, no matter what I bought here, I would in essence be living for free. I'm a little, you know, the humidity, my hair is a little lower here. I gotta do like just the tighter cut like you, then I would be all right. That's, that's the main thing. Keep it. No, I have to get here at some point. Like what is going on in Miami is just extraordinary. Yeah. Like literally you sent out a tweet, something about locals and then the mayor tweeted at me and now I'm here to interview him tomorrow.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Like that's so the reverse of the bananas bullshit that I'm living through in LA where I hate the mayor and hate the governor. So it's like, yeah.

• 4:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that you said that maybe the governor's like breaking the law in California.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I want that man in jail. That Gavin Newsom is an evil Disney cartoon villain who should be in jail. Just, I mean, I know you know, but like the French laundry thing alone should have taken him down.

• 5:12Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So let's just start with a topic that I know that we've talked about before, which is politicians, for the most part, have this like immunity to criminal charges or the legal system. There is social pressure, which we saw some of that happen over the last year or so. But the actual like checks and balances of our democracy that are supposed to hold people accountable for doing things that are legal versus not legal, they just don't apply if you are in certain political offices. And so like, let's just start, is that like just a perfect example of how the whole system's screwed up?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great place to start because basically what you're saying is nothing works anymore. And that's, we're kind of in the show must go on version of democracy at this point. Like everyone knows it's not working, but we gotta keep pretending it's working because otherwise we'd really have to look in the mirror and be like, what, what are we right now?

• 6:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it a democracy?

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Well, I would say we're basically a some. Somewhat functioning democracy at some level at this point, but it's very tenuous right now. Like, there are so many things that are upside down right now, like, like, it could basically turn like this. Like, they could pack the courts, they could change the Electoral College. These are not things that I'm making up. These are things that they're saying, that the lefties basically are saying they want to do. And then it's like, the game really is over. On top of the fact of all the stuff that you're always talking about relative to finances and everything else. It's like, does anyone really trust that these things make sense? That your money is insured, that the banks aren't just gonna collapse? Like, it all feels kinda crazy right now. And what sucks is we don't have trusted voices.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Like, how many people, when you wake up in the morning and you're scrolling Twitter, like, usually, and you follow people by choice, but usually I'm like, man, that guy's an idiot, and this is a moron, and that's a sellout, and this is a grifter. And it's like, it's really hard to find people that are basically trustworthy. I'm not saying they get everything right, but just like ballpark estimate of like, where we're at, where we've been, where we're going. It's really, I'm trying to be that for some people, and I think I have been, but it doesn't mean I'm right all the time. But we've lost that trusted group. It's just almost completely gone.

• 7:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that there's three groups of people that are trusted in the sense of, if they're good at what they do, there's a reason why they're trusted. One is macro hedge fund investors. All they think about all day long is risk.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And they think about complex systems, and then they wager money. If they're right, they make money. If they're wrong, they lose money. It's the ultimate skin in the game.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  And they can always get bailed out one way or another, so that's.

• 7:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Some of them, for sure.

• 7:50Anthony Pompliano?

  But for those folks, there's this natural sense of, you can't bullshit the actual asset going up or down. It's gonna do it with or without you, and therefore, for the most part, your money being wagered. You have to think a certain way, right? You have to seek truth.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  There's basically some sense of reality there. You can't just make up the whole thing, right?

• 8:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:12Anthony Pompliano?

  The second group is what I will call the Silicon Valley.

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Outcast. And so what I mean by that is not all Silicon Valley investors, not all Silicon Valley founders, because I actually think some of them are the worst offenders of a lot of this stuff. But the folks that are well respected in Silicon Valley.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:32Anthony Pompliano?

  But definitely are a little kinda eh, they're, they're kinda out there. Like, ah, I don't know if I want to do deals with them. You know, one, let's take like a founders fund.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Heretic Con was a conference that they were gonna put on.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Yes, I was, I was at one of the meetings discussing what was gonna happen there.

• 8:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, those people obviously aren't very worried about what other people think about them.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:52Anthony Pompliano?

  They're here to take a path that is not well worn. And so I think that like there's

• 8:57Speaker 02

  I like a lot of those guys.

• 8:58Anthony Pompliano?

  A seeker. Well, they're seeking of truth.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? You may agree with them, disagree with them, whatever. But like, they're, they're trying to head in a direction. So I think that that's it. And the third one is like what I'll call like pure independence. And one of the, uh, one of the people that recently has gone from, and maybe it was I wasn't paying attention before.

• 9:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And now just, I have been, or I don't know why. Glenn Greenwald feels like he came out of nowhere from, I'm a journalist to like, I've taken every weapon out and I am ready for battle every day.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And he's going after people and he's doing all stuff. And I'm kinda reading, I'm like, the guy's not wrong.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Well, I will pat myself on the back a little bit here, which by saying, he's kinda repeating a lot of the stuff that I was saying four years ago, from, from a political perspective, because I was a lefty too. So Glenn, if you think of Glenn, he's like a traditional lefty.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. What does that mean?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Well, he's a lefty in that he, if you look, well, so first off, I would say, we shouldn't look at things left and right anymore. You should look at things as sort of top, bottom, that you should look at them as, you know, you're either for centralized power or decentralized power. So that would be the basic thing. But in a traditional sense, lefty, meaning you're a Democrat, you believe the government should and can do certain things, or you're more of a conservative or Republican, and you basically believe the government's not supposed to do a lot. Don't tread on me, low taxes, states' rights, things like that. So he definitely comes from more of like the progressive.

• 10:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Centralized, democratic, uh, Democrat.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Right. So he comes from that world.

• 10:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I come from that world too. Then I woke up very publicly over the last couple of years. That's kinda what put me on the map. And he was sort of staying in that spot. And then I think what happened, and the, and this is where I think you woke up to him, was Trump. And what he realized was, and I think a lot of lefties realize this, is that Trump was not this evil Right wing crazy monster that they made him out to be in many respects. He was doing a lot of the things that we all wanted. Let's get us out of wars. Let's not pay countries to do things that often work against our interests. Let's get rid of regulation. Let's try to get the economy going. So a lot of economic populists that were on the left started liking Trump.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  So I think, and then what for Glenn, that I think really cut close to him was to watch people that pretend that they're journalists, but they're actually journalists, to watch them basically all day long, nitpick every little sentence with Trump and suddenly take all the reverse positions they used to. That's really what I think like blew it up for him. And then, and then he really has gone in that direction. But we've seen a lot of people in our world kind of go in that direction since where I would say they're now, in effect, I would say they're libertarians, basically they're old school liberals at some level, but

• 11:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're giving up on the system?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Your woke or conservative is sort of what I would say at this point. Doesn't mean you're conservative, like in the way we all think of like a traditional conservative. Like, I think I know most of your political views, but like, I don't like off the top of my head, I don't know if you're pro-choice or not, let's say. But I would say you're conservative either way in a certain sense. Like, nobody really wants to hear that because the word is kind of scary and then people think you're mean or something like that. But that's what it is. If you want, if you want America to continue in some way, if you respect freedom and individual choice and any of those things, I would say in essence, you're, you're

• 12:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's capitalism, it's individualism, it is personal responsibility, right?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Crazy stuff, right?

• 12:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Independent thought, very scary ideas. We should actually stop talking about that. What was it for you that kind of woke you up in terms of when you talk about like being a Democrat? Because I think that's one of the things that most people, they use as like the mud slinging against people who have views that you or I may have. They would say, oh, you've always been that way. Like you're the hardcore right, but you actually like kind of crossed over.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  I was a Bernie supporter. You can see videos, I'm not proud of them, but you can see videos of me in like 2015. I agree with Bernie on everything. And the thing is with the lefties and the progressives have done this really well. Everything they say kind of sounds right, unless you think about it for two seconds. Like it all sounds right in that initial thing, like $15 minimum wage. Of course, it sounds right like, yes, we want poor people or people on the lower end of the economic class to make more money. That sounds right. But then there's no economic theory behind that. You can't just artificially tell businesses that they have to pay people this much, blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, you're just picking a number. So why not 20? Why not 30? By the way, Rashida Tlaib, you know, one of the progressives in the House, she's pushing for 20 and sometimes $25. And it's like, well, yeah, why? I guess she's more moral than than old Bernie.

• 13:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the government is just going to print it all. So then the business owners won't even have to pay it.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  They'll print it all. So that's the other thing that they do. I'll get back to the question in a sec, but they they print it all. And then, at the same time, they always want to raise taxes. So then what's the purpose of raising taxes other to otherwise than punishing people? You know what I mean? If they believe they can just print, print, print, print? Well, then why would you need to be raising taxes unless you're actually trying to punish the producers at the same time?

• 13:47Anthony Pompliano?

  My favorite statistic in all of the government conversation, politics, economics, etc. 2011, I think, or it was 2009, I can't remember. But since 2009 or 2011, the US federal government has taken in more federal income tax every single year than the year prior. So for a decade, every year, they've collected more, right? They've made more money from a revenue standpoint. At the exact same time, every single year, the intra-year deficit has widened. That is not an income problem.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Right. It's not. That's so that's the first part. That's what lefties never want to hear about that. It's not an income problem. Oh, if we just gave them more education, we need just more money for teachers. It's like, no, because if any of that ever worked, then education would be getting better. But is anyone in California like, boy, we really have a great public education over here? But to answer your question directly, there were a couple moments that really starkly. And I think for a lot of lefties, you need to be like, literally like, basically hit in the head with a frying pan to realize what's going on because it's so. It's so much part of your ethos. Like, if you just, if you grow up in America from a cultural perspective, you're a lefty, right? Like, it's like, Democrats are good, liberals are nice, Republicans are mean, and care about money and war. So you really have to be like

• 15:05Speaker 02

  whacked with something. So one, one moment was-

• 15:08Anthony Pompliano?

  When did you get whacked?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  When did I get, I got whacked, I got whacked a couple of times. But one of them, I'll give you, was, I was on air with The Young Turks, and they're a far-left progressive network, when I was one of them. And they're playing a video of this guy, David Webb. Do you know David Webb?

• 15:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I do not.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  He's a Sirius XM host, conservative, he's a Fox News guy also. He's a conservative who happens to be black.

• 15:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  So you can already see where this is going. And they're watching, they're playing a clip of him, and they're calling him an Uncle Tom, and a self-hating black man, and, you know, just all of the worst stuff you could possibly say about somebody. What they didn't know was, I had had a show years before on Sirius XM, and I used to see David in the hallway, and I would go on his show. I was a lefty, he was on the right. We'd battle it out, and then we'd go downstairs to Del Fresco's and have steak, and have whiskey, and have a great time, and we became great friends. He's still a good friend of mine to this day. And I'm sitting there watching them, and I'm thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute. I know David Webb. I know this is a good man. I know he believes what he believes. He fights for what he believes. He's, he's put himself out there. It's not easy to say I'm a black conservative. It's like saying I'm a gay conservative, or whatever

• 16:10Speaker 02

  else. And here, you have the so-called tolerant people, saying all the worst things you can possibly say about a black man, and they're doing it in the name of tolerance. You know what I mean? They're, "Oh, you black man, you don't behave the way we want black people to behave. You're a bad guy." And suddenly, in that moment, because I knew him, it wasn't just like a guy I was seeing on a TV screen-

• 16:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it fair to call him a friend?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a very good friend of mine. But, so here I have, they're saying all the worst things in the world about a friend of mine, who I know is forthright and honest. And then it hit me, it was like, "You guys call everybody else racist, but you are the racist." Because what is racism? Prejudice, prejudge. Well, they see a black man, and by the color of that black man's skin, they think, "Oh, black man must think these things. Black man allowed to think these things." And I literally remember looking at them, like, looking at my other panelists. And it hit me. I was like, "These are the racist." And then, once you realize that, that they're looking at the world through a prism that is, that is very, very backwards- Pretty much the rest falls apart. So that's the beauty of the red pill thing.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  If you can get someone to have their red pill moment, whatever it is, the others, you only need to have one red pill moment. The other, now, some people snort it, right? So some people, that's what I told, I told Candace Owens, I told Candace Owens, she like crushed it up and snorted it and then she was gone. Like she was a lefty, she snorted it and then bam, she's like supporting Trump like that. That's not how most people do it. Most people, it's like a slow release, little time release kind of thing. And it can literally take years, but once the process starts, it started. It's like Neo in The Matrix. Like he didn't want to see it the second he saw it. But once you see it, it affects absolutely everything in your life.

• 17:49Anthony Pompliano?

  That was moment one. What was the next major one that you remember?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Um, so there were, there were two others. I'll give you one other, which, which actually happened right before, but this was the one that, that like fully, that started the process. So I probably should have done this one first. Uh, I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher and did you ever see this? There's a very famous episode when Sam Harris was on with Ben Affleck and they were talking about radical Islam. Do you, do you remember this? Okay. So basically-

• 18:15Anthony Pompliano?

  You live in a world that I don't really understand that well, so I'm going to get an education today.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  No, no, we're both going to get an education. So, um, so Sam was on the show, you know, when Bill does a show, he does the panel. So there's three people on the other side and they're doing like hot topics. And then, you know, he does like a protected interview at the end of the show where it's just you and Bill, right? So Sam was on that side of the table. So it was really supposed to just be Sam and Bill going back and forth. Bill Maher, biggest lefty liberal in America for the last 20 years. And Sam Harris, who I didn't even know who he was at the time, but this mild mannered, you know, nice suit, uh, very soft spoken neuroscientist talking about inner peace. He was on a, a book tour for a book called Waking Up, A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. So this was not someone that was coming on the show to fight with people. Anyways, Bill, obviously not a fan of religion, right? And Sam is like sort of the most well-known atheist in, in America.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  They start talking about religion and, and Ben Affleck, who was about to do Batman for the first time. And he was very jacked up. I don't know if it was all natural, just saying he was like huffing and puffing and red in the face. They started talking about Islam and basically Sam said that you should be allowed to criticize any set of ideas. But you don't want to be bigoted towards people and we all know this to be true. Of course, you could criticize the the platform of the Republican Party. That doesn't mean you hate all Republicans, right?

• 19:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Separate the person from the idea.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Simple as that. So you could criticize the Old Testament. It doesn't mean you hate all Jews. And in this case, Sam was saying, well, you should be able to criticize the ideas of the Quran, but you don't want to be bigoted towards Muslims. Everyone gets that. It's it's it's such a, well, I can't say everyone gets it. Obviously, everyone doesn't get it, but but it's a fundamental. If you want to be like a truly honest person in the world, it's a fundamental thing that you must understand. Affleck went bananas on the two of them. And the line that blew up was he he said to Bill Maher and to Sam Harris, you're gross and racist. And he was screaming and huffing and puffing and pounding the table. And suddenly, so I should have told you this story first because when you're talking about that wake up moment, the next day, basically, so I'm watching this and I'm going, whoa, this this gets to what I've been trying to piece together.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  You know, when you're thinking something for a long time and then something happens and then like the Legos come together and that's what it was like. Because I was like, this is what the progressives do with everybody. They keep telling you that decent people, Bill Maher, no one in their right mind thinks Bill Maher is a racist. You can think whatever you want about Bill Maher. I don't think anyone honestly thinks he's a racist. And here's this neuroscientist talking about, you know, inner peace. But suddenly, Bill Maher, in effect, Affleck thinks he has the right to just call them racist without. Think about what it would be like in a conversation if you just met somebody. Like, it would take a while before you told them that they were racist, right? But like, within two minutes, he sits down and they're racist. And then what I watched happen over the next couple of days, suddenly, everybody, HuffPo, Vox, all the lefty things, suddenly, all these articles, Bill Maher is a racist.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Ben Affleck called Bill Maher a racist. He's a racist. Sam Harris is a racist. And once I saw that, I realized how the framing was completely backwards. There's a set of people who are trying to talk about extremely difficult things. You could argue that that might be the most difficult because you're talking about religion, you're talking about Islam, terrorism, all these things. That might be the most hard thing to talk about, and there's a sliver of people trying to talk about it honestly. And what is your reward from the lefties? The reward is you're racist. Now, I'll just say one other thing on that, which is that Bill Maher, who has been the standard bearer of the left for 20, almost 30 years in America at this point, you know, he was doing politically incorrect before that. People on the right like Bill Maher now. People on the left hate Bill Maher.

• 21:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Because he defends free speech. He defends free speech. So people on the right basically are like, Bill Maher, you're a lefty. You don't really get it. We disagree with you on abortion. We disagree with you on taxes, blah, blah, blah. But you defend free speech, and that's so important to us that basically people on the right, if you say to the average conservative, what do you think about Bill Maher? They'll be like, ah, you know, he's okay. I disagree with him on some stuff, but he's okay. You ask the average, like, lefty, foot soldier, MSNBC person, what they think about Bill Maher? He's a racist. And that fundamental disconnect is so intertwined with what's wrong with the left right now.

• 22:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there like a central viewpoint, right? Like, I think it's some crazy way.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  In this world?

• 22:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And this is me coming from somebody who I understand very little about politics. I like to think like-

• 22:32Speaker 02

  No, but you get first principles, which is more important.

• 22:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe. That would be a kind thing you'd say to me, but-

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Well, politics is a game. You get the philosophy behind freedom, which I think is-

• 22:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And so to me, it's like, there's the labels and like all this kind of stuff. And if you kind of strip all that away, it feels like, okay, you have two groups of people. They have different views about all these different topics. But naturally, it's like, almost like a bell curve. Like, is there some people in the middle who are just like, you know what? Like, I think, A, I don't feel super strong about it, right? Like, it's not like I'm like an extremist in that end. By the way, if you show me some information and data, and I might change my mind a little bit and like move a little bit more, you know, to the left or the right or whatever. But like that central piece, it almost feels like that's like either disappeared or just like they're like, nope, I'm not participating. Like I'm gonna shut the hell up and I'm getting out of here.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's partly a

• 23:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What happened?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  That's partly a function of social media because if you're in the center, let's say, well, then you're going to get hit from both sides and that's nobody.

• 23:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So neither one of the extremes like the center because they're not on their side.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Because it's like, well, at this point, I would say, as I defined things before, where you're sort of woke or conservative, I would say the center, the center is if you think that the constitution is decent, that the founding of America, I'm doing this all from an American perspective, let's say, if you think the founding of America was good, if you think individual rights are good, if you think rule of law is good, the bill of rights are good, that we have God given rights, so the government didn't give us rights, it can protect them. And then whether we agree on marginal tax rates or the estate tax or the wealth tax or even abortion, or any of those other things are irrelevant. So that's the fight right now. So I would say most, almost everybody except that the, except the Antifa foot soldiers that are literally burning down cities and then the journalists on MSNBC and CNN and then sort of the big tech oligarchs that

• 24:15Speaker 02

  can figure out ways to pit us against each other. That's the woke thing. And you know, and then there's like an academic version of it. Obviously, there's a lot of brainwashing at colleges. Most of us are the first thing. Most of us are just like, live and let live. This place is pretty good. It ain't perfect. We can acknowledge that. We can always make it better. But I don't want your stuff. I'm not entitled. Like, most people really understand that.

• 24:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Most people are rational actors.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Rational self-interest. But I mean, that really, most people are decent. I fundamentally believe that. But I don't believe that the machine is decent. And what the lefties seem to believe is if we could just give the machine enough power, if Bernie could just have enough power, or now Biden, if we, if he could just take more from some people, if we could just fix all these things in the history that he never fixed. I mean, Biden's been in politics for 47 years. He, did he, he never mentioned systemic racism before. Now it's his life's cause. It's like, come on. So you either believe that humans are Imperfect creatures and that we can just deal with the mess and that you're going to figure out your life the best way you know how and I'm just not entitled to your stuff. And if you make a lot of money more than me, maybe I can look at that as the star that I want to get to if that's important to me.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Or you believe that a bunch of imperfect creatures can create a perfect system. And that's what these people are doing. I mean, this, this is Marxism. They basically want a whole bunch of flawed people, we're all flawed, to create a system that if you just behave within that system, if you just act as a cog in that system, you'll get, you'll be, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. That's like the meme out there.

• 25:48Anthony Pompliano?

  But going back.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Those rules don't apply to them.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  No, it never applies to them.

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Yep. I mean, look at the leader of Black Lives Matter, who bought a house in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles, which is 99.7% white. Now, I, I don't care about any of that stuff. She's the one that purports to, but she's bought, bought something like $4 million worth of real estate in the last couple of years. It's like, this is the greatest grift going of all time. Have they sent any young black people to colleges? Have they built any institutions? No, they're just here to tear everything down. That, that's the fundamental difference. I think liberty minded people or individualist minded people want to build things. And if you want to build things, that's hard. You know about, you know, it is hard work to build a company, to build institutions, to build places of higher learning. Notice they don't do any of that.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  What they're really good at is, America's horrible, we're going to destroy the whole thing. There was a beautiful moment in the, in the Democratic debate early on, before everybody dropped out and they all got behind the guy with dementia. I think we'll get to that in a little bit.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  But there was a beautiful moment where Mayor Pete turned to Bernie. And he said, Bernie, you want to burn it all down. I don't. That was actually the one true moment in the whole thing. That's what they're here to do. We could all do that. We could all set fire to something, but to build something is, is way harder.

• 27:08Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about kind of this whole thing, right? And it is economic, it is political, it is.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Cultural.

• 27:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of philosophic, you know, philosophical. Like, there's all these different elements to it. Is there one point where you say like, if we could fix this one element, the rest of the system would kind of self-correct? Is it the media? Is it The Economist? Is it literally the politicians? Is it the education system? Or is it, no, this is a complex system and like, there is no one place to kind of solve?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  That's probably right. That's probably it. It's a complex system in a country of 350 million people. That is an idea. Dennis Prager talks about this a lot, that the beauty of America is that it's this idea that people can come from all over the world with whatever their traditions are, their food, their, their family structures, all of those things. You can come here and America says, hey, go for it. We're not going to get in your way. Go for it. We're going to treat you all equally. That's the thing they're trying to undo right now. But I would say the system, because you've got 350 million people with all sorts of different beliefs and backgrounds and all that. To me, the best system is one that just gets the freaking hell out of the way, which is exactly what was set up. I guess probably the, the most sensible answer to the question would be that it would be education.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  If, if young people were actually taught like good, decent principles that we probably were, you, you grew up in Jersey, right?

• 28:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, North Carolina.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  In North Carolina? Okay. Wait, I thought you were a Jersey guy.

• 28:40Anthony Pompliano?

  My entire family is from the tri-state area. But my dad and mom ran away in the, I grew up in North Carolina.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  All right. So, but, all right. So I grew up in New York and most of my family lived in Jersey. Public schools, and they were good, decent public schools. It doesn't mean they did everything right, but you got like some sort of sense of like a robust education and all that. The schools have been so, like, can you imagine having, sending your kids to a public school right now to, to be taught that boys have vaginas and girls have penises and that if they're white, they're automatically racist and that the history of the country didn't, the country didn't start in 1776, it started in 1619 and that the prime, the primacy of everything of the country was driven by racism and slavery? I mean, you'd be sending, you're basically sending your kids to a brainwashing institution. So I guess fixing education would be number one. I think that's long gone. I, I think the ship has freaking sailed.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  The, the teachers unions are so deeply corrupt, they have been in Infected by the woke virus, they're gone. I think maybe the other answer would be, yeah, if we had a decent media, if we had, imagine there was just 10 people in the media, like mainstreamers. So I'm not talking about somebody that maybe woke up recently like Glenn Greenwald. I'm talking about if we could turn on a channel and reincarnate Walter Cronkite, and maybe he wasn't that great, and we've just sort of canonized him now. But imagine if there was like a couple people in America that you really felt, boy, you're really getting some honest, true assessment of what's going on here. That would help a lot, because otherwise the fraying that we have right now is just gonna keep going. But I just don't know. It's a good question, because it's like, is this

• 30:13Speaker 02

  thing just too big? Probably is. Like, it's too big to fail in some way, but now it's too big to succeed.

• 30:20Anthony Pompliano?

  The woke virus, as you described it, the wokeness, we've talked about in the past, I have example after example of a virtue signaling element of it, right? Where people basically are saying one thing, when given the opportunity to do something with money or time or whatever, they don't follow through with what you would think.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  They like other people's money. Yeah.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  That is one way to put it. Is this just a natural evolution of a society? Like, you kind of ascend to the global superpower. You won, right? Like, you're the top. Everyone gets fat and happy, complacent. And then, rather than stay on guard and be worried about what comes next, you basically just turn inward and all the fat, you know, rich people all start screaming at each other about, oh, you know, give me your food, give me yours. You know, almost imagine like ancient Rome, right? Like, the fat guys laying around, like, just trying to, like, yell and scream at each other. And then eventually, like, Rome falls.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, well, I absolutely think that's right. The analogy I was always giving related to Trump was that Trump was the guy guarding the gate at the castle. And all of the elites, instead of being like, maybe we should help that guy, they were actually mocking him and trying to take him out. They were basically like trying to cut his Achilles' heel while the barbarians were at the gate. And in this case, the barbarians, I mean the wokesters, the people. That have decided that this thing that we are a part of is not good. Notice, nobody leaves, right? Nobody leaves America. Everyone's still, if we, if we fully opened up our borders, the way they would like, we would be overrun overnight. Anyone can leave America. We're, no one's going. The craziest, most bananas Carl Reiner, uh, you know, any, just pick any of these lefty Hollywood

• 32:05Speaker 02

  people, they never leave. They never leave.

• 32:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Cause it's pretty freaking spectacular here and they would never make the money they make or live the life they make. And it's geographically great and they know it's good. They're, they're making money off, off very confused people. So I think the, basically you had all of the elites just mocking the guy who was guarding the gate. And yes, it's that we got fat on freedom. We got, it's been so good here for so long. The levels of freedom and wealth that we've done for everybody, uh, is so extraordinary and is, is the jealousy, the world over, uh, that we turn, yeah, you're right. We turned it on ourselves. We were suddenly like, oh, is any of this good? And then, you know, you couple that with just with really bad education, as we've talked

• 32:52Speaker 02

  about before and everything else. And then it's like, yeah, now the system is just like, it's just kinda hanging on. And you know, to me, it's like there, we had a real chance. It's very odd for me. I did not support Trump until September of 20, uh, it was 2019. No, 2020 was the election. So 2020. And now it's like,

• 33:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So you were anti, just, uh, cause I don't know this.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  So I was,

• 33:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Anti-Trump?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016.

• 33:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Um, you know, the libertarian Gary Johnson. He was not a great candidate.

• 33:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That's the, uh, Aleppo.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Aleppo, he didn't know what Aleppo was and, and just like, he wanted the baker to bake the gay cake, which made no sense from a libertarian perspective. He, and he was also just, I've hung out with the guy actually, and he's been on my show. He's a nice guy. Like, I'd like to smoke weed with him and go skiing. That's what he really wants to do, but instead he pretends he's a politician. So I voted for him and then I had three years of, of really like the red pilling process. And really at the end of it, it was like, well, then I might have to like, kinda suck it up. And be like, yeah, that guy who talks funny, who's a bit of a dick and a troll and yeah, maybe he is the only thing that the system could choke out. That's what I kind of came to on Trump. It was like, it wasn't that he was this great statesman that we all would have wanted, right?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Like, I would much prefer that we have a true statesman, like, get me JFK again, but that that doesn't exist. A broken system can only give you broken people in a way. And Trump was just like, I'll do it. I don't want to do it, but I'll do it. But if you, you want to watch something interesting on YouTube, go and watch Trump interviews in the 80s with Oprah when she's begging him to run for president and he's on Donahue. He's saying the exact same things.

• 34:33Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a Netflix, there's a Netflix special.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Oh, is there?

• 34:35Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a Netflix, uh, it's called The, The American Dream. And he's 33 years old or 32 years old and he's in his office and a reporter basically is like, you know, you're gonna run for president one day. If you listen to it and you didn't see him, you would have thought he was 75 years old saying the same, I mean, it's almost to a T.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  No, he was saying the same stuff. He's not as orange. He's not as gruff. His, uh, the way he speaks is a little bit different. You know, now it's

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  It blew my mind, by the way. Like, it was, it was shocking because I was like, oh, my God, like this, I didn't know that. Like, I'm not old enough to have understood that, like, literally, here is a video. Uh, wow.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Does he say the line in that? Does he say the line, well, I want other people to do it first? He's always, because every time that I heard him say it in the 80s, when I've watched these videos, he always says the same thing, which is, well, he's like, well, I wish somebody else will do it. Like, I hoped, I hope, I don't want to do it. And that, to me, is the, what you'd want out of a president. You'd want somebody that would be like, I really don't want to rule the world. But if everything else is so messed up, then maybe it takes like this crooked New York City, uh, you know, builder. I mean, to be a builder in New York City, like, you're gonna have to do some shady stuff, but maybe that was the only chance.

• 35:49Anthony Pompliano?

  So, put Trump aside for a second. Uh, and I want to come back to the presidential futures that we have. Uh, but, um, my favorite episode I've ever had on the podcast is, uh, somebody DM'd me on Twitter and he said, hey, man, uh, I'm a regular dude. You don't know me? No reason why you ever will know me. I like to come on your podcast and talk about why I like Bitcoin. I've probably got that message a hundred times over the years. Never even responded to any of them. For some reason, just something in me just said, respond. Responded, I said, great. Why don't you come on the podcast tomorrow or two days from now? We did a remote interview and afterwards he tells me that he literally was so nervous that he got his wife to take their kids and their dog and like, get the hell out of the house and he like, put this whole thing set up and he had lamps and like, he was into it, right?

• 36:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's my favorite interview because he said one sentence to me that is like seared in my brain. He said, look, man, he's a, he did a tile and flooring in Canada. I don't want to rule the world. I just want to create a better life for my family.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 36:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And I just always think like, that is majority of the population.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:54Anthony Pompliano?

  There are psychos who want to rule the world, but majority of people do not give a shit about other people or other things or whatever. They're just saying, if I can create a better life for my family, be happy and spend time with people I love, great life.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  That's it. That's how you find purpose and meaning and everything else, right? Like, think about it right now. I'm, I don't know, I met them on the street, but like, I don't know what my neighbor thinks about anything, basically. He could be a communist.

• 37:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think they know what you think?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  They probably know what I think, which I can always tell when they know, because then I'd be, well, before COVID, people used to cross the street. Now I know why they're across the street. But, but usually when, when people see me that almost, oh, we were just at West Elm before we walked in here, a guy came right up to me like, it's funny because on, on Twitter, people are horrible because anonymity and all that. People in real life.

• 37:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Super nice.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  No one has ever come up to me and said anything negative. I'll get, I'll get some mean looks, but no one has ever, and I hope, you know, knock on wood, that continues, but.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't worry, I got a couple of brothers. We can walk out, we can change that.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  He's got this studio on the street over here. Um, but, but in essence, um, I don't know what my neighbor does, what they believe in, any of that stuff, and I don't care. As long as the toxic goo of whatever they're doing doesn't leak into my property, as long as they're not doing anything to affect my life, that's the beauty of America.

• 38:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, do whatever you want, as long as you don't hurt anybody.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that, in essence, that's the most libertarian approach to everything or, or like, in some way, it's a very like, ANCAP approach that there's just no interference in anything. I'm not fully there on all that. I think we need some basic guardrails, you know, like it's just, you need some reality. But that's, that's it. So when, when you, again, when you ask about that center thing and like what most, we are, but, but good people are afraid to say that. Think how many people you probably know in your own life who are just afraid to say that. Because the woke have tricked them into thinking if you don't say you're woke or post a black picture on Instagram or virtue signal that you were at some rally, even though you don't know why they're there. I love those videos where they send interviewers in and they're like, who died and why are you here? And they're like, what, what? You know,

• 38:53Speaker 02

  like all of that nonsense. But yes, most people are live and let live. I firmly, firmly believe that.

• 38:59Anthony Pompliano?

  When I have dinner in private with people, I always like to ask one of two questions. One, we're not going to talk about because we don't have time, but the second one I want to talk to you about. First question I always ask is what's the one thing you believe that you would feel is politically incorrect to say in public? And you get a whole plethora of answers from climate change stuff to political stuff to literally, you know, sexual preference. I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff, right? So like, that's just a great thing because they're like, you really understand who somebody is and how they think, whatever. The second question I like to ask, because it's just pure frigging entertainment. And my wife always just rolls her eyes and say, who's the craziest, most unassuming future president that you could see? Like, who's the person that you think could be president?

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:42Anthony Pompliano?

  That other people will be like, that's nuts. And I've always said to people, and then I want to hear your answer. The first is The Rock.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I genuinely believe The Rock is going to be the president of the United States. He's charismatic. He's intelligent. He's funny. There's a bunch of studies that show the most physically kind of dominant person, if you put him up on stage, like people just vote like, oh, that's supposed to be the leader. And I used to joke that, you know, Trump's like a big guy, six, four, whatever, right? Standing next to Dwayne Johnson, and he said something stupid, Dwayne Johnson would be like, ha, shut your candy ass up. Everyone would laugh and like, you could just very quickly see like, he could navigate his way to become the president in popularity contests. The second person, which now people are like, all right, this guy's crazy. Kim Kardashian.

• 40:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Super recognizable. Many people think she's attractive. She has a very, very high degree of expertise in transitioning from, let's call it a sex tape stage to reality star to now criminal justice reform and lawyer to maybe governor to president. Like you could see a path where somebody is actually very intelligent. If you listen to like the David Letterman interview she does on Netflix, you listen, you're like, that's not what the media has portrayed her as. Like, she's actually very, very intelligent. And then you add in all these other things around fame and popularity and culture, etc. And you start to realize like, is this just gonna be a popularity contest?

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, is it literally just gonna come down to like, who runs the high school, like, student body president campaign and hands out lollipops? Right? And like, they win?

• 41:17Speaker 02

  They'll be handing out UBI is what they'll be handing out. It's not gonna

• 41:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, is that, is that like, how we determine president moving forward? It's just like, who's the most popular? Who's the biggest social media following? They win?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Probably yes, right? Like, that's probable, but that's the best argument for limited government that there possibly is, that whatever happens, so whether it's The Rock, or Kim Kardashian,

• 41:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Or who would yours be?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Or the ghost of Gary Coleman, whatever it is, it's like, whatever it is, that it won't affect you that much. So who, that's a good question.

• 41:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, like, who's the person that is the most out of left field, but you still believe they could become president?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Well, this isn't out of left field at all, but I honestly believe that Candace Owens could become president.

• 41:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 41:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain. Because I think that will surprise a lot of people.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Well, first off, she's been, you know, she was a lefty. She then, you know, she went all the way from left to Trump supporter. As I said, she snorted that thing. And then bam, she was off.

• 42:10Anthony Pompliano?

  The red pill of all red pills.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  The red pill of all, yeah. And she, she's absolutely clear about her opinions. She's completely fearless. She has fought the machine. She never lets the machine beat her. She fights and fights and fights. It's extraordinary. I also know her very well. This is a great human being. Like, she really is a great human being. Her tactics are a little different than mine. You know what I mean? We always talk about that. Like, sometimes, or I don't even do it as much anymore, but I used to try to win more with candy than And always be on the attack. I'm on the attack more now than I used to be because I think there's just not a lot of ways to get these people related to decency and logic and all that kind of stuff. I think she's just prepared and, and, but I guess that's not out of left field. You want, you want out of left field.

• 42:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Like somebody who's not involved in politics.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Maybe like a Matthew McConaughey, you know, like he's kind of waking up now. He did a couple of shows with Jordan Peterson. He understands like purpose. He's really into purpose.

• 43:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Pumps a little bit, pounds his chest and everyone's like, all right, I seen the movie.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  And he whispers, and you know, and he went to whatever he did in Interstellar. I just watched that again the other day, like, like something like, you know, but again, that's just the celebrity thing.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but, but there's substance there.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. No, no, there's absolutely substance there, but, but it's unfortunate because if you go back, I mean, literally, if you say, this is like the nerdiest thing I could possibly tell you, but if you looked at the like books and literature that I have in my bathroom, like when I'm reading on the toilet, I have like tons of like founding documents from the United States and what these people, what Jefferson was writing to Adams and all these things. You read these things, like literally spend two minutes glancing through one of these things. You will think, my God, these people were so much better than us. They were so, for as much as I like Trump, as I said, he was just necessary at that time. He has nothing on these guys. Like their understanding about what the world was, what freedom was, what believing

• 44:01Speaker 02

  in things outside of yourself, bigger than you, allowing people to do what they want next door to you. Like, so it's like, we need those people back, but our system and Twitter and algorithms and gotcha and a dishonest media, none of that adds up to a good, decent, learned man becoming president of the United States.

• 44:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I always think about, and it's a sad thought, but I talk to friends about it all the time. I do not have any of my smartest friends who want to go to be a teacher or a politician. Not one of my smartest friends even remotely has considered it.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that tells you all you need to know.

• 44:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And I'm like, man, what are you guys going to do? Technology or Wall Street?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Well, that's kind of beautiful, actually. So let's take the good version.

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  The good version of it is that the, the good people that you know, like the most thoughtful, interesting, probably creative, they're going to do stuff, right? Like instead of teaching about it, and you know, I'm not fully saying this, but you know, the old adage is those who can't do, teach. So the people that you're talking about, they're going to go build these things. That's what's so cool about Miami right now. It's like, literally I got off the plane, I could like feel it. It felt real to me. I was like, whoa, there's something going on here. It's happening here, you know, that's exciting and awesome. And it also breeds more of it. You know what I mean? There's a little bravery there. And then you see all of this new stuff happening. And then other people are like, wait, there's something new there. I want to go some, it feels like.

• 45:23Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like the new land.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Bingo. It's, it's the wild west. That's what I was saying. It's like they're, they're actually finding what you guys are doing here. And what I now think we're doing by bringing locals here is we are now finding the undiscovered country. And let's, let's build it together. It's, it's awesome. And, and by together, I mean, we're going to build it individually and then see how that thing kind of, kind of gets bundled. But so that's the good version of it, that those people probably did great things. The bad version is yes, then you will only get these broken, corrupt, bankrupt morally or, or financially. So they're doing it for money. You know, how many politicians go in with very average lifestyles and go out with mega millions? Way too many of them. We just won't get, look, I've had a ton of people beg me to run for governor of California. Because I've been so outspoken about the recall.

• 46:10Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a maybe. That looks like a maybe.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say zero, but the state is so freaking corrupt that the idea that you could do anything is.

• 46:20Anthony Pompliano?

  How would you do it?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Well, how would I do it?

• 46:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I asked Mark Cuban. All right. So I've asked Mark Cuban before, if he ever ran for president, how would he do it?

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And he had a fascinating answer. Uh, and to his credit, uh, it was a thoughtful answer, given that he probably hadn't spent that much time thinking about it. But like, if you sat down right now and said, okay, I have to run for governor, like, how do you win?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Well, I would. I mean, that I've thought about enough. Okay. Which would be that I would take $0 other than fundraising for whatever the absolute minimum would be to be on all the ballots. Okay. So just, I just want to be on all the ballots. I would do no mainstream press, period. I will not go on MSNBC, I will not go on CNN. I can't say I wouldn't go on Fox, actually, because they, they've actually been very good to me. They let me go on and say whatever I want, even when it's counter to the, say, conservative or Republican narrative. But I would not play with those children that have just completely wrecked media. I have a show, I have a voice, I would, I would talk to YouTubers, I would go on podcasts, and I would say, here's what I want to do to fix California. We're going to lower taxes for everybody, 25% tomorrow. We're cutting the budget by 40% tomorrow. Sorry, sorry.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Like, these things don't work. You know what's happening in California right now? Because we have the recall. So Newsom, who is an evil Disney cartoon character villain, this is a horrible human being, he's suddenly getting rid of the homeless people. They're suddenly disappearing. I don't know what he's doing to them, but where I live, under the underpass, has been a freaking massive, like, you almost have to be, like, actually- It's like a city. You have to admire the ingenuity of these people. I'm like, you guys are building like three level tents, like, this is impressive. But it's been there for like a year, last week, suddenly gone. And I'm noticing now around parts of LA, it's starting to disappear because he knows he has about a three-month window before the recall election to fully clean the place up so everyone forgets. So he, he's just truly evil. But I would say, why, the reason I don't want to do it is because of what you just laid out.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  I want to build awesome things. I, I love talking about the ideas that we're talking about here. I love the fact that I'm in the tech world now, which I never, never expected this. And now I spend probably, probably more than half my day doing locals-related things and talking to people about all the solutions, whether they're technological or philosophical or legal or whatever it might be. And I love that. So I feel like I'm a productive member of society. Why would I be governor? Like, they're going to call me at 3 a.m. and be like, Governor Rubin, there was a earthquake in Santa Barbara. And it's like, alright, you know, call me in the morning. Like, what do you want me to do? So that

• 48:43Anthony Pompliano?

  You'd be a horrible governor.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  No, I'd be a horrible governor. Well, I'd be like, somebody should do something about that. But, but that also is part of it. If you're really a thriving person in this world, right? Like, I consider myself a thriving person, not a perfect person, but I consider myself a thriving person. Why would you want to be in government? Why would I want to be in the thing that's there to control people? Which, by the way, that's why you get horrible people in government. They can't really. So Andrew Yang, I think, is a really interesting one because he's sort of loved in our circles. And I always think it's really bizarre. It's like, why aren't you doing more than? Why aren't you building great tech and great things? Why do you keep wanting to go into government? It doesn't really make sense to me. Like, you know, you failed presidential bid. Then you went to Georgia because you wanted to help the Democrats win, which I guess did happen, or it did happen. Now you're running for mayor. It doesn't look like that's gonna happen.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  I guess after this, he's gonna run again. It's like, you seem like the type, all the tech people seem to like you, or, yeah. I don't really like him either. I can sort of read your.

• 49:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I, uh.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  I, I just think, I think it's all hype. I think it's all hype. Go ahead.

• 49:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I have a story.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  He also threw me under the bus in the New York Times.

• 49:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so you don't like him.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Well, because the questioner asked, said, why do you go on these right wing shows like, like the Dave Rubin Show, which isn't even a show, that's not the name of my show, where he, the quote was, where he regularly hosts white supremacists. And not only did Yang not push back on that, but he basically was like, well, if the lefties would be nicer, I wouldn't have to do shows like that. And I was like, what's your policy on cursing?

• 50:11Anthony Pompliano?

  You do whatever.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  No, I was basically like, fuck you, man. Like, that's, that's such why people think you're just a cardboard nothing. Because like, you beg, not, no, I can't say he begged me to do my show. He wanted to do my show. I was thrilled to have him. I treated him with the same respect. I treat everybody else. And now a New York Times person basically calls me a white supremacist and you kind of, you know.

• 50:31Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't say no.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  It's just gross. It's just gross.

• 50:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So here, here's my Yang story.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Isn't it funny that I could read it from you just by like, your eyebrow basically was like.

• 50:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, here, here's why. I don't know him.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So I have to carry that. I've never had a one-on-one conversation with him. So like, in all these situations, I'm always like, man, the best, the best thing ever would be that you could sit down with each candidate, have an hour-long meal with them, and then walk away big, all right, this one, but like, you know.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Tulsi Gabbard, I did that with her on the show and I freaking loved her and we became good friends and she's an honest, good woman.

• 50:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Before Yang said he was running for president, I happened to go to a conference that he spoke at. I was very off-put. To the point of like,

• 51:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I was like, man, that guy, something doesn't make sense. And at the conference, I think it was at the conference or maybe right after the conference, he announced he was running for president. And I literally remember being like, what? Like, like, that can't be real.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  What was it that he was saying?

• 51:27Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that it wasn't even like a specific thought, like a specific idea of like, hey, I'm going to do this or I'm going to do this, whatever. It was just this idea of like, man, that is commentary on somebody who is talking about a topic, but hasn't done the topic.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  I totally agree.

• 51:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And it was just a very, very weird feeling. You just, you can tell it's like when you listen to a professor talk about like economic policy and you're like, man, you have never wagered money in the market.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Have you ever hired anyone?

• 51:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You would be broke. Like you'd be bankrupt already.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and for whatever reason, I don't know why.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  No, I get it. I get it.

• 52:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually think that he's like, seems like a really personable people. People love him like all of a sudden. And like, I feel bad even saying any of this, but for whatever reason, that was my experience. I could be a hundred percent off. I'm wrong all the time about people. But like in that one moment, I remember thinking to myself like, there's zero shot. And then when I like saw, you know, six months, 12 months later, whatever it was, and like how far he, or maybe it was like two years before the, the actual election this had happened.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I remember being like, whoa, he got really far. And along the way, like, I think the machine worked against him and like the whole Yang blackout. Like, I'm all in on all the complaints as to why, like, he probably didn't do as well as he could have done.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  But then he needed to fight it. You know what I mean? Like if, if.

• 52:43Anthony Pompliano?

  He'd never talked about it. Yeah. So like, but, but just like that, I think was the closest that I got to talking to one of the candidates.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And I remember being like, wow, if like, you got that far, even though the machine was working against you, like, huh, okay. You know, data point, right?

• 53:00Speaker 02

  So it's interesting because what you're saying actually totally like puzzle pieces with what I said. I mean, it's, it's sort of the same thing. Like it was sort of with him. It was just like, there's no there there. And I actually, it's interesting you say that because I really don't, I go out of my way on my show not to talk about people other than politicians or, or media members. I don't find like the average pundit or just like guy on the street to like be real. But yes, I'll make fun of AOC and I'll make fun of Biden and whatever. But I it's interesting because yeah, it's like I saw all my kind of tech friends and my media people. Everyone loved him and I was like.

• 53:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm always careful with this though, because.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  See it because it was their way of just saying, I'm not voting for Trump. That's what it was. It was basically all the, all the decent remaining liberals, like the non woke liberals. Who all knew that Trump wasn't as bad and for see and a freaking lot of them voted for Trump privately. A lot of them, I'm talking public people, like a lot of them did. And I just didn't want to do that. I didn't feel that I could lie to my audience in that way. But I think they saw Yang as like, all right, he's not an insane Democrat. Like, so I'll just pretend I'm doing that. And then when Yang went out, then they all just sort of backed Biden and whatever.

• 54:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Uh, sorry about the media.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Which you have no opinions about.

• 54:20Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like, uh, I'm going to tell you the framework that I've used in the past. I usually talk about the financial media. Yeah. That's where I spend most of my time, uh, but I'm interested if this is how the political media works as well. So.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  You're good on those shows, by the way. I I've seen you on a bunch of those shows.

• 54:33Anthony Pompliano?

  You know why? I grew, I grew up with four brothers and we just talked shit to each other all the time. Like, that's like.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  That's it. That really is it. I can see it when you have like a good line ready to drop and you know you have a good line.

• 54:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's like, okay, so you're going to bring three or four people or you're going to like throw it on top and we're all going to argue.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. That's basically what I did up my entire life growing up. And my brothers, by the way, they're like watching, they're like, oh my God, you know. Like this is a complete joke that this is like literally on television, people are going to watch this. But the, the framework that I use is, uh, so there's journalists, people who do real journalism, uh, unequivocally, you put them in that category. They write unbiasedly as, as best as a human can do. They talk to sources, they, they, uh, actively pursue the truth and, and they're doing journalism.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:15Anthony Pompliano?

  You could say that maybe they're not perfect or whatever, but like they're doing journalism, they're, they're journalists and that's what they're.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Not many of those.

• 55:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Not many of them, but that's what they're, that's the bucket you put them.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Then there is, on the other extreme, I call market participants. So in finance, these are people who are investors, who are founders, or whoever. They are actively participating in the market and they, everything from blogs to podcasts to like these other things, they're very clearly not journalists. And they say, look, the reason why I'm talking about this is because I spend all day doing this. I put my time and effort, or I put capital at risk and I win or lose. And there's skin in the game for what I'm doing. And then there's the middle group. In the middle group, I call the bloggers masquerading as journalists. They are highly biased.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:05Anthony Pompliano?

  They don't even hide it. Like, if you go to some of these websites, it's opinion pieces that are literally written as articles. Like, where is the opinion component of this?

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Try the New York Times.

• 56:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And so this is what I want to hear. And then the other piece that's fascinating to me about this is when you look at the, the content itself. So there's the process of which the content gets written. So if I just sit down every morning and I just write my personal opinion about stuff and my analysis, I'm not a journalist, right? Like, I am a talking head, I'm an opinion writer. By the way, that's fine, but the problem with that is if you're wrong over and over and over and over again, there's no punishment because you don't get fired and you didn't lose any money. So like, you basically just can keep bullshitting over and over and over. But

• 56:52Anthony Pompliano?

  the content is literally just a regurgitation of the state talking points. It is like, I mean, if you go back and you read like throughout the entire pandemic, it was like, we should give everyone money. All of the Wall Street firms are bad people. We shouldn't help them, but we should help all the poor people. And the debt won't matter, there will be no inflation and like, just go, go, go, go, help the people. I can't believe you're not helping the people. And now it's like, well, timeout. Everyone who has any money and any intelligence was like, you can't print trillions of dollars and not get inflation. And now they're like, oh, it's transitory. Or even worse, they just gaslight and they're like, we knew it was going to be transitory. And you're like, what planet are we living on?

• 57:34Speaker 02

  But by the way, they do that with everything. So I love the fact that you're You're talking about it from the financial world, which is not totally my world, but the thing that you see is the same thing that I see coming from more the political.

• 57:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  And it's the same thing that I think people see from the, say, scientific world or from any discipline. So like, it's like Fauci is now kind of like, oh, we always sort of were saying that maybe it was a lab leak. I'm not telling you it's a lab leak. I'm saying that we should at least be allowed to talk about it. And suddenly, you know, it's like Jon Stewart now mentioned it on Colbert the other night. So now all the good liberals who were trying to get everybody banned from Twitter, who, when Trump said this a year ago, you know, he's a racist and he's, you know, trying to get Chinese people killed or whatever. It's like, well, now the liberal leader said it. So now they're all allowed to say it.

• 58:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So Jon Stewart said it on the show as like.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  On Colbert, he basically was like, yeah, it could be a lab leak. And he, and by the way, him doing that on Colbert, that's the system. If you like, when we talk about like, whatever the system is, I don't know how to exactly.

• 58:29Anthony Pompliano?

  My favorite question asked me was like, who runs the system?

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So nobody knows.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Nobody knows. But, but when you think about what is the system?

• 58:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  The system is Jon Stewart, who's basically been MIA for years. There's been a lot of things to talk about.

• 58:41Anthony Pompliano?

  He was in his attic doing Joe Rogan.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Exactly. Literally. Um, but the system having John trotting out Jon Stewart, the sort of good guy, media liberal, you know, more young people got their news from the Daily Show than anywhere else, which was just a meme of nonsense. But like, the media loves this guy. Him going on Colbert to say the lab leak hypothesis is possible, it's at least worthy of being talked about, that's the system.

• 59:07Anthony Pompliano?

  A year before somebody got banned from Twitter, Zero Hedge got banned from Twitter.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Zero Hedge got banned from Twitter. Trump literally said it and they called him a racist and said he was insane.

• 59:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  But that's the system. So I don't know who's running that. So who's running that? I don't know. The agents that put the thing like, it's not the agent. So it's like, I don't know. We can keep going up to some crazy level.

• 59:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it fair to say, and this is where you.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  It's the airlock. That's my point. It's the airlock.

• 59:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Is it fair to say though, that you're separating out Jon Stewart from, again, the idea that a year ago, you could, you could not say things, now you can say things. And because there are different groups saying those things and it's a year apart, all of a sudden we treat it completely different.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, because, because in essence, what happens there is an apparent, you know, it seems like in. Last say month, the lab leak hypothesis was gaining so much traction online that the system then has to be like, okay, we have to, we can't ignore this anymore.

• 59:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we get kicked off YouTube now for talking about lab leaks? Or is that okay?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  No, I think, no, now we're okay. Not only now we're okay, but Facebook will now allow you to do it. They were kicking.

• 1:00:04Anthony Pompliano?

  A year ago, there was no, I literally would tell guests like, timeout, we can't talk about this stuff.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  You know, on my show, this is slight sidebar, but on my show, for the first time ever, we had to edit for content. I've interviewed, I don't know, thousands of people never once edited for content. Well, one time because I had a guest come in so drunk and stoned that we had to get rid of about half the interview because I thought it was just going to ruin their career. But a few weeks ago, I had David Horowitz on. He is, he was the original sort of why I left the left guy. That's sort of what I'm thought of as now. This is a guy, he's 83 years old. Oh, his son is, is Ben Horowitz.

• 1:00:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, okay. The audience will know Ben Horowitz.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Audience will get Ben Horowitz, but his dad, his dad was the why I left the left guy was a, was a communist as a kid. Anyway, when Reagan was being reelected and his parents were Marxists. When Reagan was being reelected, he was a lefty, but decided that he wanted to support Reagan. And then basically his whole life since then has been the left trying to destroy him. He's really, really fascinating guy. Anyway.

• 1:00:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Ben Horowitz, by the way, is absolutely fascinating because uh, he sits at the intersection of so many different religion, race, technology, industry, now his dad, politi- like.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Fascinating. Every time I learn more about him, he's just like a fascinating character.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  I've actually only talked to him once. He's obviously a fascinating guy, but his, so his dad, in essence, on my show a few weeks ago, said, he said his own personal opinion about the results of the election. And I let people say what they want on my show and we had to, we blurred it or we bleeped it. And we put the full thing on locals, but I knew my YouTube channel could have been taken out just like that.

• 1:01:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  That's, you know, we can get into tech and censorship, censorship and all that. But in essence, what I think happened with Jon Stewart was the thing was bubbling up so much online. And by the way, this is exactly what's going to happen with Biden and dementia. Cause now it's, everyone's talking about it except mainstream media and they can't hide it much longer. So then what happens is the system has to basically be like, all right, we have to normalize. This now, we, we can't hide it anymore. Too many people know. So then, oh, why don't we bring out Jon Stewart, the trusted name in America, who hasn't had an opinion on anything in all in four years since leaving the show. Let's bring him out. He'll say it. Then the, all the conspiracy theorists and the right wing crazy people, they were actually all crediting John. They were like, oh, that's so nice to hear. Now, the problem is that John won't make the full, like, the full, like, get there. You gotta leave the Democratic Party.

• 1:02:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, you know, the joke now, right?

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:02:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Conspiracy theorists are just people who are early.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. That's it. We're all just three, like Alex Jones is looking pretty good these days. You may want to edit that part out.

• 1:02:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Honestly, God, right? So take, take, Jesus Christ, take, take all of the people that are like the actual hardcore conspiracy, not the people who are like on Twitter saying stupid stuff, whatever, right? Like I'm talking about like people who legitimately you would put in the category of conspiracy theorists.

• 1:02:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll go out on a limb and I will say, although most of us wish it wasn't true,

• 1:02:53Anthony Pompliano?

  they're more right than we originally gave them all credit for, which is scary.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  It, because it goes to everything we're talking about here, that the media cannot be trusted anymore, that the institutions can't be trusted, that big tech is doing, big tech is manipulating us in ways we cannot imagine. It's not just the ways you and I are fairly versed in tech. It's like, it's not just the ways that they can manipulate us through searches and de-boosting and shadow banning. I'm worried about the things we can't even think of that they can do to us. You know what I mean? The way that, that, that if you have one political opinion, the way that they could just force feed you other videos to just change your opinion on anything. Like, we're basically all in this mass, we're in this mass dystopian experiment right now. But, long story short, I think they, they basically trotted Jon Stewart out there because it was like, we can't hide this anymore. Let's legitimize it now because now there must be something to it.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  And this is exactly what's going to happen with Biden.

• 1:03:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see, um, when all this was happening, uh, there was a pseudonymous, uh, report on COVID that got put out. Did you see this? So I'm not gonna remember all the details. So already I'm wrong, right? But, but, uh,

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Conspiracy theorists.

• 1:04:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Basically.

• 1:04:03Anthony Pompliano?

  A group of people, I don't think it was one person, but I don't think it was necessarily 100 people, right? But a group of people got together. They did not put their names on it. It was a pseudonymous thing. And it wasn't a Google document, but it was like some sort of collaborative software that they used. They basically wrote a report. And this was widely shared in the tech community specifically. A lot of folks who spent their time as investors or founders, like in the early part, they were trying to figure out data. And I joked like, over the last year, I didn't realize how many virologists, how many epidemiologists, how many economists, you know, political voter, legal experts I had in my feed, right? All of a sudden, all these people started popping up. But this

• 1:04:48Anthony Pompliano?

  report, literally, was probably one of the best things I read. And it was all written in, using pseudonymous names. And what fascinated me was, they did it to protect themselves. But it was very obvious, these were intelligent people. I'm sure it wasn't 100% right. I'm sure there was errors, whatever. But given the information they had at the time, they wrote a very compelling piece. And they touched on everything from like, here's how big it could get, like, all the things you would want to read and like, understand it, right? And I start to think more and more and more, you've mentioned a couple of times, like the machine working against people. People who are on the left want to go more to the right, people on the right, you know, the everyday person, or elites, or whatever. And it just feels like Balaji Srinivasan's whole, like, pseudonymous economy, and pseudonymous

• 1:05:33Anthony Pompliano?

  world. But that's where we're headed, because people are literally just going to be so fearful of like, anything I say with my name on it, is literally going to be used against me later.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  So the irony is, I did a video a year ago when my book came out, we released it that day, for PragerU, called "The Bravery Deficit." And that's what we have in the country. We just have a bravery deficit.

• 1:05:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that?

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  A bravery deficit, in essence, is that not enough people are just willing to say what they think. That's the way we defeat this thing. If you wanted wokeness to be blown out of the water tomorrow, like, it would literally just, all it would take, would be enough people just lying in the sand. This is, this is who I am. This is, I'm going to fight for the things I believe in. By the way, we're starting to see a little bit of it more. You know, you keep seeing these videos of like, these angry moms going to school board meetings and yelling, "You're telling my five-year-old boy that he's a girl, and that he's racist. Like, no more of this bullshit." So more and more people are getting brave, because we're seeing that the machine, the machine can't destroy all of us. It preys on the fact that the fear keeps us all, sort of, just...

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Docile in essence, um, but I think that the, so we have to just get, oh, if we can get over the fear thing, we, we will defeat that. And then wait, what, what was the question exactly?

• 1:06:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, we're just, as the pseudonymous economy like grows, uh, it's going to be out of that fear of people putting their name on things.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Right. So look, there's great arguments to be made both ways here. I completely get why people are anonymous online. You don't want to, they don't go for your job. They're going to go for your family. We've allowed for political violence now in the streets of America. Like, I fully get it. On the other hand, the fact that so many people are on anonymous online constantly encourages the worst behavior possible. So if I was to ever, I, I actually don't look at my Twitter mentions anymore. I look at the verified ones, but I don't look at the, the just regular ones. And that kind of sucks because it used to be fun, but then I think you have a version of this too. When you get to a certain amount of followers, the bots and the trolls and just the haters.

• 1:07:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I used to respond to every single person.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Oh God.

• 1:07:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Not anymore.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, not anymore. Not anymore, man. You want to stay sane. But, but what happens is if you, on the rare occasion that I do actually can click, there's a way you can click through, even if you're hiding them and see them. What I notice is virtually everyone that says the horrible shit that they're saying to me all day long that I don't see, they're all anonymous. So you've incentivized horrible behavior and then you have the, so I always think it's hilarious when I see people in our world that are like really well-known PhDs and doctors and lawyers and, you know, tech leaders, and they're arguing with anonymous people all day long. It's like, if you want to spend time arguing online, then at least argue with non-anonymous people so that there's some, some level of synergy.

• 1:08:11Anthony Pompliano?

  So you look them in the eye when you're arguing.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Right, like a little bit, right? A little bit. But on the other hand, I get, that's not me going after the, the people that for legitimate reasons, that are just decent Americans, or, or forget Americans, that are just decent human beings that feel they need that. So we are going to have to figure out this pseudo anonymous. Like, are we all, did you ever see Scanner Darkly?

• 1:08:34Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  It's a Philip K. Dick story. It was a movie with Keanu Reeves and it's like an animated movie with Keanu Reeves and a couple of people. Where basically, we're all walking around with these masks on all the time. And then we don't know who's who at any given time and we can all be anybody and we're all nobody. A lot of that kind of stuff and it's a really great movie, actually. But yes, that's also what the next part of the internet's gonna have to figure out. Because there's too many burner accounts, there's too many ways to do horrible things, too many ways to coordinate assaults on websites and destroy book reviews and just drive people freaking crazy, you know what I mean? If the people that hate Bitcoin just wanna say, "We're gonna freaking attack, pump..." Maybe they're doing this all the time, they probably are.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Where every time he tweets, we just have it set in some program and then we have a bunch of losers that were paying a dollar or whatever. And we're just gonna blow up his feed every freaking day till we just break this guy.

• 1:09:25Anthony Pompliano?

  They do it, they do it all the time. They just don't read it.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  No, no. So that, but that's, but you've gotten to the point where you're like, "All right, it's not gonna affect me. I know what I'm doing."

• 1:09:34Anthony Pompliano?

  You also have very thick skin.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  You got a thick skin. And also, like, did any of this make us more social? You know, it's called social media. It actually made us far more antisocial and hateful and distrustful. That's why I'm so proud of what we did with Locals, because I opened my Locals account, it's freaking love in there. It is, it is love and good and decent and I think it's the promise of what social media was supposed to be. I'm not telling you it's all perfect. And again, I don't believe in perfect systems. But like, something that is happening in the way we are all communicating on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube is just wrong. And by the way, that's why I'd never call for regulating them. Because the second you freaking regulate these things, you solidify their existence in the system forever.

• 1:10:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and the regulation makes it worse.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  People always make it worse. And it'll crush competition.

• 1:10:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I don't think, I don't think people understand that. And there's someone close to me who always says, "The people who do the canceling will stop when they get canceled."

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, it's like, it's all fun and games, it's all somebody turns it on you.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Well, that's when you see, that's always the best, when you see these lefties who have, I don't wanna make everything about politics. But when you see these people that have spent their lives trying to destroy everybody who they disagree with by calling them bigots and racists and everything, and make it so that they can't get jobs and we're gonna ruin your public, you know, your public life and everything else. And then it suddenly turns on them and it's like, and then sometimes I'm like, "Ah, maybe this one does seem unjust. Maybe I should defend them." And I'm like, "Ah." You know, we all only have like a certain, a certain amount of ammo.

• 1:10:57Anthony Pompliano?

  There's all these problems. Uh, you went independent when?

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  The idea, well, it was, it was a couple of steps to go independent. So I left a few networks. I originally left The Young Turks and then I was on Aura TV, which was a digital network. Then I left there and I was on Patreon and I was kind of the first of the politics guys to be on Patreon. It was mostly gamers and anime people. And I, I, the reason I wanted to leave Aura TV was a digital network founded by my friend and mentor Larry King. The reason I wanted to leave was because our show was blowing up and in essence, I think you'll really like this story actually, because we, we were.

• 1:11:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Just like Larry King, like Larry King Live?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Larry King, Larry King Live. We were, we were becoming bigger than the network. So we were crushing it. And what was happening was they were taking resources from our show in essence, to support things that weren't working. And they were constantly asking us to hit bigger and bigger metrics. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. Like we're crushing it. We're doing really good stuff. But they're basically taking from us and, and I mean, you get the socialist part of this. So I was like, I was like, let's just go, let's try it. Let's try to do this on our own. See if we can do it, build a studio, do the whole thing. Took my producer and my director, all quit our jobs, salaries, healthcare, the whole thing. We launched on Patreon and it was a Monday morning. This is, this is now around 2016 or so.

• 1:12:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So only five years.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this was just the first step in, in true independence. And I said to my guys, it was Sunday night at like 11:30, we were about to go to bed, just launch it first thing in the morning. I said, I may have completely fucked up our lives. I like, I may have like, we're, we're screwed if this doesn't work. Within about 10 minutes, the next morning, once we launched, we were at about 30 grand a month. And I was like, we're going to be okay. And then that, that then.

• 1:12:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And you were pumping it through social media in terms of like promoting it?

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Pushed it everywhere I could and people were, people were excited that somebody was going independent, standing up for what they believe in, all of that kind of stuff. Then from there, eventually built my own studio. So that was the next part of being independent. I wasn't renting studio space anymore. What you guys have done here, you own this. Nobody, you know, maybe somebody's gonna, you know, chop the wire to shut off the lights, but otherwise, you know, as long as you pay your bills, you're good to go. So that was the next part. And then really, what, what fully did it was December of 2018. I was, it was just about wrapping up, you know, I toured with Jordan Peterson for a year and a half, which was unfreaking believable. I look back on it like it was a dream. We did about 120 shows in 20 countries in a year, in essence.

• 1:13:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And you guys were just talking at the shows?

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  So I did warm up. I would do about 15 minutes of crowd warm up, just get everybody laughing and having a good time. Then he would give a, I mean, this guy's truly incredible. Like when people think that this guy's incredible, he would give an hour and a half lecture, a different hour and a half lecture every night. I never heard the guy give the same speech twice.

• 1:13:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Sometimes he'd be, you know, it was 12 Rules for Life was the book. So sometimes he would go through all 12 rules. Sometimes he would do one rule. Sometimes he would do no rules. If he was just angry at the New York Times, he would do an hour and a half on that. Like literally, sometimes he would be like, you know, I bumped into somebody before the show who told me that they're struggling with drug addiction. And then he'd talk about, like, it was, it was truly, and the coolest part of it was that I would see him push his intellectual limits every night. And then he would stop, like, he would literally be like, he would be talking about something, then he'd be like, you know, that's all I can say about that tonight. I'm going to think about it a little bit more. And then the next day, he'd start the show by saying, you know, last night I was talking about this and I thought about it today. So I was basically watching a choose your own adventure. I was watching a book being written

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  throughout the whole thing. Anyway, we're on tour December 2018 and I was on Patreon. That's where I was making like, I don't know, probably 80 or 90% of my company's rev. And there was a guy by the name of Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkada on YouTube. He was like an old school British liberal decent guy. He went on another channel. So now not his Patreon channel, not his YouTube channel that was being funded on Patreon. He went on somebody else's channel and he said the N word. Now, he did not say it to be racist. He was mocking the people who use that word. Patreon immediately deleted his account. This is where he was making most of his money running a business. Now, they offered no chance of respite. There was no way he could talk to them.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  And to me, that was such an extraordinary escalation because it's one thing for a tech company to police what you're doing with what you do on their site. But if they're basically watching you, watching what you say on other sites, now that's like, can they go after you for whatever you do in your personal life? So Jordan and I discussed it and we had both had, we were both friendly-ish, at least with, with Carl, Carl, sorry, God. And we both said, okay, it's time to leave Patreon.

• 1:15:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And this was a big deal when you guys left, right?

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Oh, it was, I think it was front page New York Times, actually.

• 1:15:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, for some reason, we didn't know each other at the time, but I feel like I remember it was like a one-two punch almost. And like, it'd be like, okay, like, that's an interesting data point.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then Sam Harris left the next day and he was making a ton on there and then, and then a few other people left. But that is where they-

• 1:15:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And where'd they all go? Like, where'd you guys all go in the beginning?

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  So what happened, so basically, so Asaf right over there is my brother-in-law and he's a tech guy. And I called him and I said, listen, I want to leave Patreon. I need you to put down what you're doing and build me a subscription model because that's the first piece. The first piece is I need to be financially free and just replicate like the bare bones Patreon stuff. Then I contacted Patrick Collison at Stripe. We had become friendly a little bit and I said, what is the best example of a subscription page that we can basically replicate and build for me? Not, not locals as a bigger idea, just solve this problem for me. He told us one, Asaf built it. And then from basically middle of December to January, you like how a tech company gets built?

• 1:16:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I just like the fact that you're like, ah, what's the best one? Go to the person who probably knows what the best one is.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  No, that was it. I was like, I don't, Patrick, this is what you do. And he said, this is the one. And I said, that's the one we're going to build. And to Asaf's credit, we built it. And basically I used- About three weeks, the end of December into January, to tell all of my people that I am deleting my Patreon on January 15th, and I am launching rubinreport.com, which ultimately became the first test model for Locals. And by doing it on that day, and I did it on a live stream, I actually deleted it live stream, and I doxed myself like a moron, because I didn't realize that when I pressed delete on the Patreon thing, my personal email was gonna pop up. So I literally doxed myself, and I was drunk, because I was doing shots of Patron in honor of leaving Patreon. So I'm doing,

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  so for every thousand dollars, I think, that we made, I was gonna do a shot. So I literally did, like, eight shots of tequila, I doxed myself. I mean, it was quite a day. So there's some lessons

• 1:17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you know that, did you know that you doxed yourself?

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Immediately. I knew immediately, and these people, these sick, twisted freaks online, I have been signed up for every porn site you can imagine, people literally paying for porn for, I mean, these people. Anyway, the next day, though, that, like, that's commitment. Like, when you literally are like, oh, I found someone that I don't like's email address, I'm now going to, it's not that they just signed me up for free sites, people literally, I was getting things, like, here's your password. Thank you.

• 1:18:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you still use that email?

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  It's long gone, it's long gone. But I, but you know, it's hard to get rid of an email address, so like, you know, I pushed, you know, whatever. Anyway, this is the cool part, and this is what really was the genesis of Locals. January 15th, closed down Patreon, the next morning I woke up, and our rev jumped by about 30, 35% from what I was doing on Patreon.

• 1:18:24Anthony Pompliano?

  So you actually were making more on day one?

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, more on day one, and I wasn't doing rewards. So you know Patreon has, like, tiered rewards, you send them a t-shirt, or you sign things, or you do Zoom calls with people. We decided to get rid of all of that. If you want to support me being independent, talking about the things you care about, giving me a chance to get more interviews out there, expand these ideas, join us, we're not doing rewards anymore. So I took away rewards, but it's the bravery thing. People want to support people that they think are fighting for the things in their world that they care about. It's why people love you over Bitcoin, they believe in Bitcoin, and then here you are freaking screaming about this thing, even in the last couple of weeks where it's been very messy, your guys love you even more because it's become- Because it's now has more of a cost for you, right? It's not at its peak right now and all that stuff. So we jumped by about 35%.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  And then I said to us off, now we got something here because now, well, what else would I need to be free? I can't just be reliant YouTube could shut me down tomorrow, right? Twitter could shut me down, so let's replicate these things. So we said, all right, we gotta build our own video player. We gotta build audio. We gotta build a community, a news feed that's unmanipulated by an algorithm. And by the way, having a paywall, there's no trolls, there's no bots. It's all good behavior in there. And if you want to pay me to troll me, well, now I can either profit off you or I boot you out of my locals community, but you could still be in anyone else's locals community, which is very different because on Twitter, if you're booted, you're deplatformed altogether. So I think by building something that was right for me as a creator, we have built something that I think solves probably 95% of the problems for 95% of the people.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  It doesn't solve Alex Jones's problems and I don't know that I want to be in that business. But and now we have awesome investors that are helping.

• 1:20:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What are his, what are his problems?

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Well, he can't be on Stripe, for example. So Stripe is our primary payment processor. It's your own Stripe account. It's not ours.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  We get 10%, which is the same amount as Patreon, but we have a much better product than Patreon because you own all of it. You own the data, you own the users, like if you, nobody leaves us, but if you leave, it's all yours, you can take it with us. If my channel, Locals has done so well that if my channel blew up, if YouTube just took me out tomorrow, man, you talked to pomp, you're done. If they took me out tomorrow, um, my business is still thriving. Like I have something like 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube. I make way more with my thousands of subscribers on Patreon. So I've built a steady model to make myself uncancellable. And that's what we then were like, all right, now we've got a business here. Let's, let's.

• 1:20:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the ingredients? So I think there's a lot of people who are interested in this. Some of them are interested because they literally fear being canceled for what they say. There's people who fear the platforms are just manipulating things. There's people who fear that distribution goes away. There's people who fear that they will get caught up by association, right? They interview somebody, whatever. And then there's literally people who just fear like. Chaos, you know, I did nothing. I talked to nobody like I just have an accountant.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  That usually doesn't work either.

• 1:21:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, just like something bad happened, right? Um, and you see it all, you know, somebody on Twitter gets suspended and they're like, I haven't even tweeted in three days or whatever. And usually it's like some stupid thing where, uh, um, there's a founder that I invested in his company. There was an event that happened in the world. He started to get a bunch of followers. Next thing you know, he's suspended. My guess is that literally there's like an automated system. It looked like spam to them because it was like an explosion of followers or something. He's suspended, then all of a sudden.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  The point is you don't know.

• 1:21:47Anthony Pompliano?

  We don't know.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  The problem.

• 1:21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but still just that stuff can happen or whatever. So I guess like, when you think about all of that, what are the ingredients to be quote unquote independent? Or like to, to really be resilient on the internet today?

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  So you, first off, you have to have direct access to your audience. That's number one. So when I tell you I have whatever it is, 1.6 million YouTube subscribers. I can't get videos out to them because the algorithm now they've decided that you're subscribed. This is just what they've decided at YouTube. Your subscribers actually have less weight now, so they, they're sending you videos usually now based on your viewing habits. Which by the way, can really pigeonhole you into a certain political belief or religious belief or whatever it might be. Or for me, it's just sending me a lot of eighties basketball and Star Wars videos all day long. Like I'm watching, you use all my, you know, you know that that's really the way to get to know somebody. Just look at their YouTube history. It's like, man, I have watched the 1992 NBA season every game backwards and forwards.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  I don't watch regular basketball anymore. I can't take it because it's all political and whatever. But you, you want direct communication with your audience. So what we built, I mean, the locals app is awesome. You get push notifications when I post things. So that's just one, like you will get my stuff. We're not manipulating it with an algorithm. The news feed is unmanipulated. So that's part of it.

• 1:23:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's a reverse chronological. So if I sign in, the last thing you posted is first, I can kind of go back and just see.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  And you can.

• 1:23:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Similar like a Facebook profile page or something.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  Right. And it's, uh, you can either filter it. If you're in the Rubin Report community, you can filter it just by what I'm posting. Or we let all our users post. And by the way, we're getting something like, what's the number? 80% of the content? Something like 80% of the content in my community is from the users, not from me. And what's interesting about that is they're posting recipes, they're posting music, they're posting things about sports, all kinds of stuff, things that they know I like, but then people are sort of coming to social media with fresh eyes, because as opposed to you post a picture, or you post a recipe, you know, you make chicken parm, you post it on Facebook, next thing you know, your grandma's fighting with some random person about Trump, and it's like, man, this all became evil, and now grandma doesn't seem as nice as grandma's supposed to be, and I

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  don't know who that person is, but, oh, it turns out I was, I went to high school with them 20 years ago, and now, but it all feels awful. On there, we have people coming, there's a common, what I want every Locals community to have, and this is what they all have, is you could just come together for some common cause. So for a guy like you would be, okay, I love Bitcoin, I believe this is the future of commerce, and the engine that's going to lead us to the new world, and then people are like, oh, Pom's cool, like, I'm going to come into this community, we're going to talk about stuff, and then what you're going to find is, they're going to start talking about a lot of other stuff. So it's what social media was supposed to be, and again, because of the paywall, you get rid of all, if you had a 10 cent paywall, as I said, on Locals, ours, I think I said this, you were right before we started, our minimum is $2, but if we had a 10 cent paywall, that would eliminate almost all the bad actors.

• 1:24:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So really what you're doing is you're basically taking Patreon, or kind of Pay, or Substack would be another example, all these kind of paywall-based individual products, you're bringing it all together on one platform, you're saying, hey, everything from video to text to audio, whatever, you can basically come and do behind this paywall in a community, you as the individual that owns the community, or is kind of the creator of the community.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  You're the mayor, in essence.

• 1:25:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And you can then bring everyone together, they all can communicate with each other, they can communicate with you, and it's kumbaya, off to the races, and because it's a paywall, because people have to subscribe, because they want to hear from you, it changes the dynamics, rather than just like... You know, just mass chaos on Twitter.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, not only did it completely change the dynamics, but you set the rules. So if, if in your community, let's say you said, like, I, I made an announcement very early on. I was like, listen, you guys can say whatever you want here. You say whatever, don't break the laws of the United States. But if you break the laws of the United States, you got a bigger problem than me or locals. Right? So don't break the laws of the United States and we don't allow for porn. That's pretty much it. If you want, I have plenty of people that come in there.

• 1:25:35Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys are bad people, no porn.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  There's enough people doing porn online, like the porn.

• 1:25:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Only fans, I just saw, they're trying to raise it over a billion dollars.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  No, I saw that. Just saw that in Forbes. It's like, Jesus, they're doing all right. But, but, well, people were giving me shit about it. And I was just like, you know what?

• 1:25:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they really were.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, well, because why, Dave, you're the free speech guy, like porn's free. And this is not even me making a, a commentary on porn. I was just like, there's enough stuff going on, like, we don't need to be in that world. And by the way, it also complicates things, as you know, with payment processors and a whole bunch of other stuff. So it was just like, you just, you pick what your battles are.

• 1:26:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That's the problem with being the free speech guy.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  No, it is. Well, that's the thing. So when people, so that's why we did it this way, that speech is left up to you as the creator, that because you're creating your community. It's like having your home.

• 1:26:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Your rules.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  So you come into my house, you can't just walk into my house and be like, Dave, you're a fucking asshole. Like, then you gotta leave my house. So that's how we treat, you know, like, that's pretty simple. But you can say whatever you want outside of my house. So, so we leave it on to you as the creator. And by doing that, I think that, that's the spirit of what free speech is. Like, I'm not here to, I can't, you want me to have a policy around hate speech? Okay, well, what's one person's free speech is someone else's hate speech? So that's, I think, the most mature way to do it.

• 1:26:49Anthony Pompliano?

  The users that are on there are politics related versus other things, right? And, and the reason why I ask this is, um, one of the things that fascinates me is it's very clear in, uh, the political circles, people who think about this a lot, who spend time there. Censorship, deplatforming, like, it seems like a lot of that happens there.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, actually, maybe it's happened in some other places, right? Across various platforms and not just in the United States and, you know, internationally as well. So just like out of curiosity, how much of it is politics related communities versus others?

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know that I can give you an exact percentage, maybe you can. Um, but what I can tell you is this.

• 1:27:23Anthony Pompliano?

  You think it's over, under 50% politics, probably over, right?

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  It's probably a little bit over.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Nutrition. So, yeah.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  So first off, I would first answer that by saying locals is for everybody. If you have an interest and you have people that care about your interest, you should be on locals.

• 1:27:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but if you're a creator.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  We have a great product for, it's not even just a creator. If you run a, I have a friend who runs a, like a Babe Ruth baseball league in Jersey. It's like he, we're onboarding him because he's got this community. He doesn't want it to be on Facebook anymore because Facebook's melting down. And it's like, if you have a community of any knitters, unboxers, whatever it is, we want you to be on there. That's, that's the first part. The second part, as for the percentage, I'm not, I'm not totally sure, but I will tell you this. For sure, it's leaning political because the people who are the early adopters on this stuff, who are sensitive about free speech and censorship are in the political world. So it's just, it's a function, but I think you'll find this really interesting, which is when we were raising funds originally, we would go into, we went into every, whoever's in your head right now in the catalog of the investors in Silicon Valley, we went into every office.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  We never once, I kid you not, heard anyone complain about the tech, say that we had some massive weakness or it wasn't right. Nobody said that the mission wasn't right. Everybody loved all of that stuff. When we got no's, the no's always came down to one thing. It's political, Dave, you're thought of as a little bit right, or something, something. We gotta be careful. You know when this all changed?

• 1:28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Covid.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  Well, a little bit after Covid, but it's actually connected to Covid because Covid, basically, we all had a big tech problem and then what happened because of Covid, we all got more obsessed with big tech. It all changed on January 6th.

• 1:29:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Well, actually, I guess January 12th or so, like four days later, when they blew up the Parler servers. Because when Amazon blew up the Parler servers, Parler had 23 million people on there.

• 1:29:12Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Cause I'm not familiar with all the details. Parler was a app that was...

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  Like a Twitter, it was basically a Twitter clone that, that people that were frustrated with Twitter, mostly conservative leaning people were, were starting Parler.

• 1:29:26Anthony Pompliano?

  They were leaving Twitter and going to this other place. I remember seeing...

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Or at least, at least being there both, but trying to migrate to Parler.

• 1:29:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So there was an effort to go.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I think you just said that they had 23 million users.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a big number.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Huge number. And it was, it was really...

• 1:29:41Anthony Pompliano?

  23, I mean, how many, Twitter has 300 million?

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 1:29:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I think so.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  Which is probably really like seven people, but...

• 1:29:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's just say that, uh, but I should be clear. I really like Jack. I don't know if you like Jack or not.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:29:53Anthony Pompliano?

  No? Okay. All right.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I've never met him and I would like to meet him.

• 1:29:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I like him because of all the Bitcoin stuff and I think he's got a very unique view of the world and a special, uh, he's in a unique seat where he can have an outsized impact because of Twitter Square and like his view and how important he thinks he is. We can talk about that later.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Well, can I just, let me just say one thing about him, which is that he should just have a different job, in my opinion. I'm, I'm sure he's a decent person and I know he's doing good stuff, leading the, the Bitcoin revolution and all that. But like, to me, it's like the, the, the Twitter part of it where there were so many important things related to all the societal stuff that we're talking about here. He just needed to hand that job to somebody who was more capable of dealing with those issues.

• 1:30:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see, um, I don't know how, I don't know how we got, yeah, I don't know how we got to, uh, Jack, but, uh, he did a, I think he went on first. It was Jack and Joe Rogan.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And they had a conversation. And then there was a second episode and it's like Tim Poole, Joe Rogan, Jack, and I forget the woman's name, but she runs like,

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  Jaya or something.

• 1:30:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of policy and is like, she seemed to be the person who was like really into like, who gets to stay, who doesn't, whatever. I actually took away from that conversation. I think I listened to it twice or yeah, I think I listened to it twice. Way more complex than most people give it credit, right? In terms of like, it's outside, ah, I can't believe you guys did this or whatever. The second thing was like, they actually had some like good frameworks for how they evaluate, how they get applied. You can debate or whatever. And it seemed to me like the classic example of like, Jack, Twitter and the team is like on one side, like Tim Poole really was like on a completely different side. And then they kind of like, maybe they didn't meet in the middle, but like they got a lot closer during the conversation.

• 1:31:35Anthony Pompliano?

  My biggest takeaway from the whole thing was like, man, people who disagree, if they just sat down and talked to each other, like the world would be so much further ahead.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  It was an incredible discussion, actually. All, all I would say on that, so we don't get too lost on Jack is it just seems to me, he should probably have some other job that they're, they should probably have someone that's a little more engaged and a little more.

• 1:31:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I think he takes it a step further. I think he's publicly said that he nor does he want Twitter to be in the position of making those decisions. Like the whole like blue sky.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, if you boot, if you boot Donald Trump and you're the CEO of the company, then.

• 1:32:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Fair.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  So, okay, okay. We don't have to get lost on Jack though.

• 1:32:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't talk shit about Jack.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  I'm sure, you know, like, I don't think he's a bad, that's the problem that all of us in this public thing are put in. It's like, you have to have opinions about.

• 1:32:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Speaker 02

  We have opinions about these things, not have to, we have.

• 1:32:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Here's the other thing that I will say, uh, that's really fascinating. And, and maybe Jack's actually a pretty good example. Uh, humans are really complex.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Because we live in a complex world. And so in some crazy way, uh, I bet you, if you asked Jack, and he may kill me for saying this, but if you asked him, he could probably with great accuracy say, here's my beliefs on Bitcoin. Here's my beliefs on free speech. Here's my beliefs on Twitter. Here's my beliefs on Square. Here's my beliefs on whatever else. And then he could retroactively almost look at like, how everything's played out at Square and Twitter and with Bitcoin. And like, pretty accurately probably identify, I wish we did this better. I, I think that that went right. I know people didn't like this idea, but I still think that was the right decision. Like, and, and when you do that, I think it's, um, this interesting thing of, uh, it's kind of like with Trump, when he first became president.

• 1:33:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I remember saying to a couple of people, I don't really know anything about this guy. But Steve Schwarzman and all these folks who, for all intents and purposes, seem pretty intelligent.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Anthony Pompliano?

  They all keep going in meetings with him and walking away and saying like, pretty high praise. Again, they can be full of shit. They could actually be morons. I've never talked to him before, you know, like all this stuff.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that's interesting. And I think that a lot of these, uh, leaders of these big companies, when you talk to the people who know them, like Elon, Elon was loved in the Bitcoin community. Now he's like, you know, basically everyone's like yelling on the screen about whatever.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you talk to people who know him and they're just like, dude, he's like a dude. Like if he came and sat down right now.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  He's just a human being. He's just a.

• 1:33:55Anthony Pompliano?

  We, we would all talk to him and be like, you know, that guy's like super scary smart.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, by the way, like, he probably has a sixth sense of humor, like in some areas. And like, and he's a Twitter account.

• 1:34:05Speaker 02

  Right. The, the takeaway wouldn't be, oh, he's a dick or like, he's like truly evil. So that's, I'm honestly, I'm not, I really try not to go after people's motives. I actually think it's very possible that what you're saying there, when he took all of those things that he had in front of him and how they all mapped together, but then. Twitter became something that no one could have ever, that's the thing. No one could have ever imagined what these tech companies became.

• 1:34:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Setting up my Twitter.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, right, right. Like, yeah, there you go. Like, we couldn't have imagined, and he was just the guy that was in charge of it. And that doesn't make him God or evil necessarily. So, yes, when, even though I can be critical of some of the mistakes, I mean, trust me, you know, I'm now partly running a tech company. Like, am I gonna make mistakes and are people gonna go on podcasts saying they don't like Dave Rubin? They will. It's okay.

• 1:34:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I think they've already said that.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  Somebody definitely said that. Again, again, my Twitter mentions are not on, so I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know.

• 1:34:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  But Parler is where you were going.

• 1:34:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so it starts to become popular.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Twenty-three million users, whatever. Let's say that's a five to 10% of Twitter's audience, I think.

• 1:35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:07Anthony Pompliano?

  What happened?

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  So, in essence, what happened was it was, it was all the conservative, right-leaning people, tons of Trump people on there. And Parler was basically doing no moderation whatsoever. Apparently, Apple did ask them a couple of times to do some moderation, and they just weren't doing it. We had a couple of conversations with them because we thought maybe we could work with them very early on. And it became sort of clear to us that they were just gonna play by their own rules. And, and the truth is, even for all of us that don't like rules, there's a system in place as we're talking about. And sometimes you gotta play within that system, right? You can't just do everything at once.

• 1:35:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And Apple was asking them to moderate, like?

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  Whatever they considered.

• 1:35:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, breaking the law type stuff, or?

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  So, I think it was, well, I think they were doing something a little closer to hate speech, which is always that sort of amorphous, like, well, what is hate speech exactly? And can you say this about this protected group, but not about this protected group and all that? But of course, they didn't want it.

• 1:35:58Anthony Pompliano?

  See, this is, you, you live in that world. That's, that's like a world that is.

• 1:36:01Speaker 02

  And it's a freaking murky, it is a murky swamp.

• 1:36:05Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a, I think, myself, I can speak for myself, and I think a lot of people that I kind of spend time with, they like things like Bitcoin or technology or whatever, because it's like, it either works or it doesn't. Like, the code either works or it doesn't, or whatever. And when you get into this whole world of like, politics and, and hate speech and like, whatever, I think there's a lot of things that people, somebody may say, and they're like, yep, that goes in good or bad bucket. Right? And it's like, very obvious. If I say I love you, good bucket. If I say, you know, the N-word at you, bad bucket, like, all this stuff. Then there's stuff that's kind of in like the gray area. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at. It's like, it almost then you start asking constantly like, who said it? Who did they say it to?

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  Well, that's why.

• 1:36:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Whatever. And that's where I think a lot of technologists are just like, uh, there's no like, yes, no, there's no one, one or zero, right? And so like, that's just like a whole different world.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Well, that's why I'm also telling you, I have sympathy for Jack. You know what I mean? That's why I'm saying he got involved in something that he did not intend to get involved in. That became something so massive, he could have never imagined it. So just real quick on like the hate speech part, the Supreme Court of the United States has this, there's no such thing as hate speech, meaning if you

• 1:37:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Jesus, really?

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  There isn't. Yeah. Because you can, if you break the laws of the United States, you're in trouble, but you're allowed to say mean things about people. You can't directly coordinate a violent terrorist attack, or tell a mob to kill somebody, or yell fire in a crowded theater with the intent to do harm. You actually, people don't know this, you actually can yell fire in a crowded theater in a funny context, or, but if you're doing it to gin up people, that's, that's with intent and you can't do it. So, but the point is beyond those things. And then the very, the almost never used laws around slander, slander and libel, which are pretty much never used because they're so strict, there's no such thing as hate speech. You're allowed to say, I don't like Jews. I would prefer that people not say it, but you're allowed to say it. You're allowed to say, I don't like black people. I don't like gay people. But you can't say, go kill all those black people or that sort of thing. So the

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  point is, we've now asked technology companies to do things that the United States government has decided it can't do. So it's like, we're trying to empower them in some ways to be more powerful. So Parler basically was just like, we're not gonna, you do whatever the hell you want to do on here. Then the January 6 Capitol riots happened. And then really what happened that nobody's written a proper story on, is that the answer five or six days later was to blow up the Parler servers. So

• 1:38:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean?

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  So Amazon just took down the Parler servers. I don't know what that, you probably know more than me. Like, I don't know, is that a button? Is there a button at Amazon?

• 1:38:32Anthony Pompliano?

  You said blow up. I was like, oh, okay. Maybe there's something I don't know about.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  That's coming next. I think the next ver, I'm not kidding actually, but the next version of like this information war is that they will literally blow up server farms. But putting aside that for a second.

• 1:38:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  That's good for the decentralized people. So we're doing all right. But but I don't know. I honestly don't know. Like what? How does Amazon just shut?

• 1:38:52Anthony Pompliano?

  They probably just shut down the Amazon, like AWS, like EC2 instance or whatever.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  Is that pulling a plug? Like, I don't know what you're doing there. It's a button or a plug?

• 1:38:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It depends where they do it. They probably have multiple ways to pick up a server.

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  Right. But I would like to think it's something dramatic, not just like tapping a button. Like, it would like to be like some sort of.

• 1:39:07Anthony Pompliano?

  It's probably more a button than physically hang over to row seven in the state center and pull the plug.

• 1:39:12Speaker 02

  That actually, but that for the movie version of this seems better. You know, they, Bob, go in row seven. Yeah.

• 1:39:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's server is it? Oh, fuck them.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  Anyway, what happened there when when Amazon did that was a massive, or yeah, when Amazon did that was a massive escalation. Because this wasn't like kicking off individual people or kicking off a group or even kicking off the president of the United States, which was happening at the exact same time. This was saying this entire network of 23 million people cannot be online. And subsequently, what we found out now, I mean, there's many articles written about this, is that there was far more coordination for the January 6 events, regardless of what you think about them, far more coordination on Facebook than on Parler. So if anything was supposed to be blown up, if that's what you think the answer to this was, it should have been Facebook, not Parler. So in essence, what really happened there was the tech guys all saw, oh, that's actual competition.

• 1:40:05Speaker 02

  And it's not funded by any of our people. It's not funded by any of the tech world people. And it was a mafia move. It was just like, you can't encroach. You're from Jersey mafia. You know your ground. New York, you know your ground. You can't play over here and we're just going to take you out. So that's what happened. Oh, but the reason we got to.

• 1:40:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it back up?

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  So Parler is back.

• 1:40:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  It's a little unclear if they're getting a lot of traction right now. We've had some talks with them. Like, I want it to succeed because I love competition and I love, I love just more. I want more stuff to be out there to hopefully make these products better. It's like, if Parler can do something that that is some feature, let's say, or something that Twitter's like, oh, we got to do that. Well, then maybe they buy them. Maybe they build a better feature. Like, that's the beauty of all of it. Anyway, after that happened and Parler went down, suddenly our phones were ringing off the hook.

• 1:40:52Anthony Pompliano?

  From investors.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  Investors, because everybody was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, something, the war just majorly leveled. Like this is not about booting individual people anymore. Now we see like the true power that these guys have over us. And then fortunately, because of that, we got awesome investors and the company's growing and

• 1:41:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you able to say, so I invested. Who else is in that round? Are you able to say?

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  So David Sacks led the round from Kraft and he's just been like extraordinarily awesome. He's, he's opened doors for us and just, he really, literally in the, if I've learned one thing, I'm sure you have your versions of this in investing. All the people that want to have long meetings never invest and they just want to talk and it's just in retrospect, it's bullshit and they're just mining you for data. And hours and oh, seven follow-up meetings and I'll talk to this guy and they just take all your shit. The, all the people and you included, we literally had like a two-minute conversation. I, I actually don't even think we asked, within like 30 seconds, you were like, I want in like, let's do this. Literally, I'm not making that up.

• 1:41:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, okay. You guys are going to be resilient. All right.

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's, you were kind of like, I like what you're doing. You're fighting like this is a mess. Like, let's figure it out. And, and Sacks was like that and Balaji, who you mentioned before is in and Naval is in and uh, give me some other names. Orin Hoffman's in and Christian Angermeyer. And we just got like, he's the mushroom guy.

• 1:42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  We should start that, by the way. After the article, Christian, I love you, but after the article where it was like, you know, uh, was a German billionaire, uh, finally figured out Bitcoin on mushrooms. Like, we should just call him the mushroom guy.

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  Well, I, I told you right before we started, I don't think he would have a problem me saying this publicly, but I've been, we've become good friends and I've been to many parties with him. Where I always thought he was drunk and then he did my show, we're, we're going to release it in like a week or so. And he said in the show that he'd, he's never had alcohol.

• 1:42:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, never.

• 1:42:43Speaker 02

  But he's always on, you know, like a low dose of mushrooms. So he's always got that look in his eyes and he's smiley, kind of like you right now. He's got that look and just happy and like.

• 1:42:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not on mushrooms.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  And yet you're still into Bitcoin. That's odd.

• 1:42:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Uh, the other thing he told me, which was fascinating is he tries his best to not get on the autobahn in uh, Germany. Because he's really into longevity. And so if you look at all the data, car accidents. And sort of like the, you know, one of the highest reasons why you would have a shortened lifespan.

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  One of my basketball heroes growing up, Drazen Petrovic from the New Jersey Nets died on the Autobahn. Peak of his life.

• 1:43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  There you go. Um, all right. So as we kind of continue down this road, the number one question that now I think we've been talking for like an hour and 40 minutes. We haven't asked you yet. Everyone wants to know, what do you think about Bitcoin?

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  So, so that was where this was.

• 1:43:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So we've talked about everything else. What do you think about Bitcoin?

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  This was a hell of a lead in that you did there. Uh, that was amazing. Um, so I honestly believe this is all the future. So I cannot.

• 1:43:43Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean?

• 1:43:44Speaker 02

  So first off, let me say, I cannot talk about Bitcoin at the technical level that is going to impress you at any level whatsoever, or any of your viewers. If I get into any of this, like it's, it's not my world and it's a world that I'm just.

• 1:43:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Can you talk to us about the miner signaling for Taproot, uh, activation?

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  Pretty extensive dissertation on that specifically. Um, the idea of decentralized finance is so connected to everything that we've talked about here. And a bottom up economy and that people need the ability to have unfettered access to the goods and services and people that they want to communicate with without central banks and without Federal Reserve and all of those things. That is where I can sort of do this at the idea level. Like this, it's so obviously the answer. It's so obviously the answer. All the specifics on what the best coins are and all that kind of stuff is not my thing. However, I will say that as we're building out locals, like we're working on all sorts of decentralized payments right now and trying to figure out, you know, subscription models with,

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  with different cryptos, which is extremely complex because obviously the prices are going up and down and all that. I have some Bitcoin. It's.

• 1:44:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So you own Bitcoin?

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  I own Bitcoin. All right. I have seven Bitcoin.

• 1:44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you? Seven?

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. That were all given to me, by the way. I never, I never spent a dime on Bitcoin.

• 1:44:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, what?

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  Very, very, well, cause very early on when I left the Patreon thing and I did that, people, cause a lot of my audience is libertarians and they were like, Dave, put a Bitcoin wallet up there. And I put a wallet up and people would give me little bits here and there. And I was just like, all right, let's see what happens. And this is kind of fun.

• 1:45:13Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like $300,000.

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  And now I've got seven of them. It's on a ledger and the ledger is in a safe and the safe's in a thing and I got the thing and the thing. Yeah.

• 1:45:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You're, uh, you're further along than most people. Do you remember the first time you heard about Bitcoin?

• 1:45:29Speaker 02

  I think it was, it was right when we left.

• 1:45:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So like 2017, 2018.

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  So that's like 2016.

• 1:45:37Anthony Pompliano?

  2016, okay.

• 1:45:37Speaker 02

  Very early on, because I remember, yeah, I do remember. We were leaving Patreon and I was, I had a PayPal, you know, a page that you could go to, to donate or whatever. I think I had a PayPal and maybe that was even before Stripe. And my libertarians that were in my comment section, they were, Dave, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, open a wallet. And I really didn't know what it was. But like, but what was cool about it was like, I was like, oh, well, here are these people who like whatever it is I'm talking about. So I'm talking about freedom and free speech and states' rights and all of these things and low taxes and blah, blah, blah. And they're all into something. So there's got to be something here. So that was sort of how I kind of entered this world. And now it's like, well, now I'm in it because we got a tech company and I want to solve

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  these problems. So it's like, the Stripe thing is really interesting one. Again, I like Patrick Hollis and I think Stripe is a great company and it's been great for us. But like, do I want only people who are on Stripe to me on Locals? No, I do want it to be more open than that.

• 1:46:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's less about get off Stripe and it's more about Stripe plus other options. And have diversification across payment channels and almost let people choose what payment channel do you want to use?

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  Can I say that? Because that's what I want. Yes. All right. I got clearance. I got clearance from the big man. No, well, that's, that's more a Sops world. But, but yes, we want as many options out there because otherwise the choke points, you know, what's, what's accepted to be said, at least at this time in America, is going to continue to be like this from a mainstream perspective. So you want as many options when it comes to payments. We want as many options when it comes to servers, right? We don't want, you know, Amazon to blow us up or this or that or anything. I probably can't talk about all that we're working on, on that front because, just for security reasons, you know what I mean? But like, you want to create something that is as, not you, well, you, I think, yes.

• 1:47:23Speaker 02

  But like, I want to create something that is as free and accessible and decent and neutral as is humanly possible.

• 1:47:32Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of Bitcoin and kind of that entire world, that entire audience, are there things that you see that kind of align from how you think about the political standpoint, the free speech, other nation states? Like it just feels like Bitcoin is such a natural thing, given everything else that you talk about and think about all day long. Are you surprised that maybe like more people in that world haven't flocked to Bitcoin or kind of embraced it? Or is there like some sort of like obstacle in terms of it's a technology thing and that's just, that's different or how do you feel about it?

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, on the purely ideological part, as I said, it fits because most of my audiences, they're not necessarily like card carrying libertarians, but like they get like-

• 1:48:16Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a philosophical line.

• 1:48:17Speaker 02

  Right. So the philosophical part is there. I would say for a certain part, this would probably be like, sort of like my parents. Like there's like this other piece of like, what do you mean? It's not backed by something or it's all on computers or they're miners, but what are they mining? Where are the mines? Like all of that kind of stuff, getting a certain person. And that's, it's so, that's actually so consistent with what's going on in the world right now. Like everything is changing. And then because of social media, it's changing so fast that it's like, it's really hard to say to somebody that like put all their money in stocks and bonds and you know, I put all this money into my IRA all these years and all that. Like even when I was talking to my business managers a few months ago, as we're, as we're doing, you know, planning and

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  my guy's like, you know, I want you to put X amount in your IRA every year for the next blah, blah, blah. And then you're going to have this and you know, and I'm thinking, well, A, like, does that just-

• 1:49:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe.

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. But that's not a thought that someone really would have had 10 years ago. The belief that the system itself would keep marching along no matter what was there. But you know, if you talk to somebody in Greece, as they watched all of their money disappear and going to the ATM, you know, you're getting, you know, no drachmas are showing up or when they do, they're, they're worth nothing. It's like that piece of it, it's like, for all the reasons that I went independent in terms of my content. I want to be free on my, on the economic side as well.

• 1:49:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating that there's now a piece of technology that embodies so much of this. And as people learn about it, they're like, oh yeah, like, of course that's going to be a thing.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  But that's why it's so cool. So like, I think the way I came across you was somebody retweeted you into my feed, something about Bitcoin. And then it's like, all right, you know, you know how Twitter works. And so you click on somebody's profile, you're kind of looking around and it's like, you were not talking about politics per se, but it was just obvious that the way you look at the world is similar to the way that I look at the world. And again, I don't know what all your political beliefs are, and it's completely irrelevant to me. If we, if we, I think we're going out to dinner after. It's like, if we go out to dinner and we're knocking back tequila, and then it turns out we disagree on every policy, it would be irrelevant. You know what I mean? It would be like utterly irrelevant. You're a good guy. You care about what you're doing. Like, I like people who are doing things and passionate and, you know, all that stuff.

• 1:50:25Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you've said multiple times about somebody, they're decent, they're a decent human. And I actually think, well, it's somewhat of an elementary. Well, it's like an elementary term, but it's actually like a pretty good bar, right? Of, because you can disagree with somebody on everything, but you know, decent person.

• 1:50:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that's actually like a good way of viewing, is are they a good person or not? Like, are they decent?

• 1:50:47Speaker 02

  Just decent. Like, are you just decent? Like, not you get everything right, not that you're so spectacular, not that you're really great or anything, but like, are you just, you know, and you know it. When you're with someone, you know, is this a decent person or not a decent person? That's like, and it's sort of like, you know, people say, you know, what is, what is porn? Well, you'll know it when you see it, sort of thing. And that's kind of like a decent person. But, but anyway, that's why I think what's happening right now and why I'm so excited to move locals down here and be here right now and just like be part of what's going on in Miami. It's like, and the fact that I'm going to talk to the, the mayor who's retweeting me left and right now, thanks to you. It's like, it's like, whoa, there's a new world on the horizon. Like, it is, it is the, you know, what do you call it?

• 1:51:27Speaker 02

  It is that synth wave future that the libertarians want. And I love those colors, that color scheme. Like, and I've always, and I love dystopian movies and I love like all of that future stuff. But we have a chance to really build it right now. We really do. And there's a lot of people who are just holding on and they're holding on. And you, and in some ways you can't blame them. It's sort of like we're like the Jack thing in a way. It's like, you can't blame people who are seeing something in a certain way when the world was set up in one way for such a long time. Like, I can't blame my dad for not getting Bitcoin.

• 1:51:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. If I could get Jack to sit down with you, would you sit down with him?

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  Of course, of course.

• 1:52:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 02

  He had agreed a few times with his PR people and then it just never came through. Now, I've gone after him pretty hard on Twitter. I would have, I would have, I promise you, if you can set it up, I will have no problem starting the conversation by saying, I apologize for anything that I said.

• 1:52:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I cannot make any promises at all. That would be like a pretty out of left field thing, but let me see. I would be interested to see you two sit down and have a conversation.

• 1:52:27Speaker 02

  I would.

• 1:52:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I would, I would learn from both of you, I think.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  You, you could moderate it. You could, you could set the rules, but no, you can't. But, but I honestly, if, if you can tell him.

• 1:52:36Anthony Pompliano?

  When you started off with you get moderated and set the rules, I'm out.

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  Pop, you're a decent guy. You're a decent guy.

• 1:52:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Jack's decent too.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Jack's decent too.

• 1:52:44Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, three decent guys. All right, I asked the same three questions, everyone, before I finish up. You get to ask me one at the end. Most important book you ever read?

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  Most important, you know, I've read so many books in the last, so one thing, when I started the show, I used to read every book, every book from a guest, every single one. And then just life got busier and I just can't do it anymore. This is going to sound a little cliche, but not only because I was on tour with him, but 12 Rules for Life really changed my life. Really? If you read that book and you put those ideas into practice, whether it's standing up straight with your shoulders back, telling the truth, like he's laying out the things that if you do these things, I saw this guy freaking change the world. And, and in the course of changing the world, he changed my life, so.

• 1:53:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That's, that's a great, uh, simple yet powerful, uh, book. Sleep schedule.

• 1:53:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Our friends at Eight Sleep, uh, who now I've invested in, I begged them to invest. They finally let me invest and now I feel like I can really ask this question.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  You had to beg people to invest?

• 1:53:42Anthony Pompliano?

  These guys, listen, they, uh, they have a mattress that I used to sleep like five or six hours, like literally, I think, uh, one time I told my girlfriend at the time, now wife, uh, wolves don't sleep. She was like, why are you saying wolves don't sleep, right? She was like, you're an idiot. And I was probably, uh, now I sleep like eight or nine hours, completely changed my life. And when I sleep on this, uh, you can make it hot or cold. I sleep on it like it's like an ice cube.

• 1:54:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like cold too.

• 1:54:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, their ultimate goal is to take eight hours of sleep, compress it down to six, but you get the same amount of deep sleep and therefore it's like better, whatever.

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  Wait, what's it called?

• 1:54:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Eight Sleep.

• 1:54:14Speaker 02

  Okay, I need to know about it.

• 1:54:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Eight hours of sleep, right now. Genius, uh, marketing.

• 1:54:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:18Anthony Pompliano?

  What is your sleep schedule now? And then what was it like through the years and how's that evolved?

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  Ah, it's a great question. So I hugely, I believe in sleep. You need sleep, especially when you're just doing stuff with your brain all day long and talking all day long and listening all day long. And that's not to diminish people that are just doing things with their hands all day that may seem trivial, but, but are not actually.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  I basically go to sleep usually about 11:30 or so.

• 1:54:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  I wake up about six. I'm very functional in the morning. If I wake up, I have coffee and I just work, work, work, work, work. And then at some point, it's like four o'clock and I'm like, whoa, I should just like breathe for a sec. Sometimes I forgot to have lunch. I've done five shows, you know? That kind of stuff. Um, I really do like taking a 20 minute nap if I can around three o'clock. If I can just-

• 1:55:05Anthony Pompliano?

  A little siesta.

• 1:55:06Speaker 02

  Little siesta or just literally, it's not even a nap like I'm sleeping, but it's literally just close my eyes for 20 minutes. And just like let myself reset, um, I think is absolutely key. Um, I'm not the greatest sleeper though, so I am interested in this.

• 1:55:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Six and a half hours is not a lot.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:22Anthony Pompliano?

  You should try to get eight. Cause you go to sleep at 10.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  Is there some sort of company you've invested in that maybe could help me in this department?

• 1:55:29Anthony Pompliano?

  We'll work on it. All right. Aliens. Believer or non-believer?

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  I could give you a couple, a couple of answers here.

• 1:55:38Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you know that we all know?

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  Yes, there is, there is other life out there.

• 1:55:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, why?

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Because I think there just has to be like, well, look, there's a beautiful way to say no to it. The beautiful way is no, that this thing that we're doing right now in our existence here is so unique and so special and the, the majestic, magical cosmos that put the earth so close to the sun and all the elements were right. That it was all just like this magical, incredible, godlike event that, and then we're here and it's just us. And like, that's actually rare and precious and beautiful. And I actually love that answer. The other part of me that is, is most of me is just like, we're here, there's gotta be some other stuff out there. And over, over time, we, we will find that. I would direct people to watch the movie Contact by Carl Sagan. And it's something like that.

• 1:56:27Anthony Pompliano?

  If you had to choose, this is a fourth question, I'm cheating. Uh, if you had to choose, are you more worried about what's in the ocean or what's in space? Would you rather go to the depths of the ocean or go to space yourself?

• 1:56:40Speaker 02

  Um, I, well personally, which would I like to go to? Yeah, space. Like, I just love sci-fi stuff. And like, you know, Star Wars like defined my life for so long before they ruined it and like.

• 1:56:51Anthony Pompliano?

  There's something about the depths of the ocean. No, I'm out.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, you're, you don't like.

• 1:56:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like if I put you in like a submarine and I'm just like, all right, we're gonna send you down like two miles and then like, I'm out.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  It's, it doesn't seem possible really, you know?

• 1:57:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and then like you like see things that like, you're like, I didn't even know that was an animal. Like, you ever seen like some of these videos? You're like, uh, what?

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  No, that gets pretty cool.

• 1:57:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Colors, like it just moves shape. Like, ah, I don't know.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  But are those aliens? That's always a question.

• 1:57:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a good question. I don't know. All right. Well, one question.

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I get to ask you a question. That's a good one. I was thinking about it.

• 1:57:21Anthony Pompliano?

  This is like the scariest thing in the world is letting you ask me a question.

• 1:57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:57:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And the more you think about it, the more nervous I get.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Well, I think you, you've addressed this a little bit, but I think it's the, it's the question that would be on my mind to ask you the most.

• 1:57:39Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  Which is what do you really think is going on with Elon and Bitcoin?

• 1:57:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh.

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Is that too cliche?

• 1:57:45Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, no. Uh, I think everyone's overthinking it. I literally think that, uh, let, let me address all of it as kind of a, um, on like a grand scale.

• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can I add one sentence in first? Just the layman's version? Cause I saw him pumping it up. We're gonna, and again, this isn't totally my world. He's pumping it up. We're taking it for Tesla, blah, blah, blah. Then he goes on SNLs, which is like a mainstream airlock moment for him. There's all the controversy around that. And then, you know, in essence, five days later, you know, we're out. And that all just in my world, the way I piece together, it just feels very chaotic and also oddly coordinated and whatever.

• 1:58:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So, um.

• 1:58:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I always want to assign.

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  He's a decent guy, though.

• 1:58:30Anthony Pompliano?

  He's a very decent guy.

• 1:58:31Speaker 02

  Very decent.

• 1:58:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Like ignorance, not malice in law situations. I literally go back to you don't have a master plan. I don't have a master plan. I don't think Elon has a master plan. Like, yes, he is the most or second or third most rich person in the world. I literally don't think he thinks of him that way, right? I don't think he like wakes up and he's like, you know what? Third richest guy in the world. Screw you guys, right? They just don't think that like you get to that point and that's how you think every day. Maybe I'm wrong. The second thing is, uh, I think that he is a rational economic actor from the sense of he saw an asset that he believed could be valuable. He had capital. He bought some of it.

• 1:59:17Anthony Pompliano?

  He said, hey, you guys can pay me some of it. Not that many people, I think zero or one cars were bought with Bitcoin. Like less than five for sure.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  That's surprising, no?

• 1:59:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I mean, it's an intelligence test. Am I gonna, am I gonna spend Bitcoin?

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:59:33Anthony Pompliano?

  If I own Bitcoin, I probably think it's gonna go, you know, higher in US dollar value over time and buy a car. Like, okay, so like counterintuitive at first when you think about it, like, okay, it makes sense why no one would do it.

• 1:59:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Then the second aspect is they sold Bitcoin 10% of their stake. They tested liquidity at the market. Happened that they could really beat on an earnings report. And like, so there's always like components to it. And I just say, all of us have all these conspiracy theories. Throw them all out the window. I literally think he's having fun, which you can argue good, bad, hurting people, helping people. Like, like, there's all these ramifications of it. Forget all the ramifications for a second. What drives the tweet? Every time he tweets, positive or negative, I literally think he's like the rest of us. We grab our phone and we're like, ah, I gotta watch this. And he just rips a tweet.

• 2:00:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And sometimes he's, people are attacking him and he's like, you know, I'm gonna stick it to the Bitcoiners. And he fires off a Dogecoin tweet.

• 2:00:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And then sometimes he's like all giddy and he's like, I really believe in Bitcoin, you know?

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  But that would be kind of psycho stuff, though. If you knew you could have that much influence on people's lives and like the course of human history at this moment.

• 2:00:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I think you, I, him, and anyone with a big account completely forget. And are not oblivious, oblivious would be too strong of a word. We drastically underestimate the impact. Like I, when I tweet, I forget that there are a million people.

• 2:01:01Speaker 02

  Right. So it's the accidental psycho sort of.

• 2:01:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I think in some crazy way, we're all regardless of what we want to say, we all want to like virtue signal big, oh, I'm not addicted, whatever. Like, how many times you pick up your phone? If you go on Apple, you can look it up. Like one time I looked, I never want to look again. Like, there's a lot of things that I would rather do than ever look at my, how many times I pick up my phone.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  You know, I do off the grid August where I lock my phone in a safe for a month.

• 2:01:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, what is this?

• 2:01:25Speaker 02

  This will be my fifth year doing it.

• 2:01:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, wait, what is this?

• 2:01:27Speaker 02

  I literally, I did it as a test four years ago and I

• 2:01:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 2:01:30Speaker 02

  Literally locked my phone in a safe, my computer, my iPad, no nothing. I do no news. I do no

• 2:01:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 2:01:36Speaker 02

  No current events. I don't even go to the gym because they have TVs everywhere. And then I come back on the grid and I've had, Ben Shapiro did it with me once, Glenn Beck, Michael Knowles, couple of other guys. We do it live where they fill me in on everything that I've missed and I watch no TV, nothing electronic.

• 2:01:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing that happened while you were gone?

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  Well, you think that crazy, like one year John McCain died, one year, well, last year the big thing was that the song WAP came out. That seems to be the biggest thing. And I guess, what's her name? Is that Rihanna? No.

• 2:02:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know, but yeah. Great song.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  Her pussy's dripping. I don't know, whatever. She's got a bucket or something, but uh, no, you realize very quickly that actually it's okay. You know, like, yeah, some stuff, the Republicans voted on this and they're up, something blew up in Lebanon or something. And like, and it's just like, the world goes on, but I find it just like, you know, a whole month.

• 2:02:24Anthony Pompliano?

  A whole month. That's great.

• 2:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Go lay out on the beach, stare at the ocean.

• 2:02:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And you call it, what do you call it? Off the grid August?

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  August, yeah. I'm going to challenge some people publicly. I know you can't do a month, but maybe, could I get you on a weekend? You think you could do it?

• 2:02:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I could do a weekend.

• 2:02:37Speaker 02

  You could do a weekend.

• 2:02:38Anthony Pompliano?

  You want, you want to hear actually something pretty crazy? Uh, it's happened twice. So three years ago or so, I took two weeks off. I cheated a little bit. Like I would still go on Twitter and read a little bit.

• 2:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, but I didn't tweet and I've really, really stayed off. And I always joke that I knew that it was working because, uh, multiple times when I was living in New York, uh, my wife and I would go for a run and I would leave my phone behind, which would be blasphemy. You know, any other time. And I didn't care. He called me, whatever. I just don't care. Right. And the second time was when I went to Iraq and I came back, I didn't have a cell phone for a year. And I was young, I was 21 or whatever, when I came back and I remember.

• 2:03:16Speaker 02

  Wait, did you serve in Iraq?

• 2:03:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

• 2:03:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I got lots of thoughts. Let's not go there.

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when I came back, I just didn't care. Like, like, I didn't have to have it with me all the time or whatever. And so it was like this really interesting thing of just like, we are all addicted. We all say we're not, whatever. When you wake up, you grab your phone. When you walk into the room, you go on your computer, like when there's email, phone calls, social media, whatever, like, we are all addicted.

• 2:03:42Speaker 02

  Can I give you one that maybe your mattress guys can work in with some kind of promotion? Don't bring your phone in your bedroom.

• 2:03:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  I don't do it. I leave it outside the bedroom. I usually leave it in the kitchen. But the last thing that you do before you go to bed should not be scrolling, doom scrolling Twitter or, you know, just like, you know, infinity scrolling until your mind is turning into scrambled eggs. And the first thing that you do in the morning should not be, whether it's just email.

• 2:04:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  It just should not be that.

• 2:04:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 2:04:09Speaker 02

  Like, it should not be. And yet, almost everyone, before you freaking pee in the morning, which is really what you have to do.

• 2:04:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  You do this thing. So I really, really try not to have this in my bedroom.

• 2:04:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Very rarely this has ever happened. But there's been a couple of times I've woken up to text messages. And usually it's like some catastrophic, and I put that in air quotes, right? Some catastrophic event happened with like a founder we've invested or something, and they're freaking out. And you notice, like, I woke up, I was like, pretty chill and calm. I got my eight, nine hours on the eighth sleep. And then it literally is like, I just got whacked by an 18 wheeler, game on.

• 2:04:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're like, okay, here we go. And there is this element of like, if you can avoid that, like, I do think it's better for you.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't do it. I'm horrible. I don't listen to my own advice. But like, I do, I do agree with that.

• 2:04:54Speaker 02

  So that's my challenge to you.

• 2:04:56Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 2:04:56Speaker 02

  I got to ask you a question. Now I added something to the podcast.

• 2:04:59Anthony Pompliano?

  We are not going to start letting people challenge me.

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  No, no, I like that. For now on, all you guys have to challenge you with something, which is just, whatever, on the weekends, no phone.

• 2:05:08Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, the first thing people are going to challenge me, they're going to start bringing me all their coins. And tell me to buy that. That's like, I already know where that is.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  I've seen your mentions. I know. I know what's going on. I've seen your mentions more than I see my mentions.

• 2:05:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we send people? I feel like everyone knows where you are, but we can send people on the internet.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  I'm not going to send them to big tech. Go to rubinreport.locals.com.

• 2:05:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Rubenreport.locals.com.

• 2:05:27Speaker 02

  And you can create an account, a locals account for free and you can look around, see what's what. And if you want to interact, then it costs a couple bucks, but I, I promise you it will be worth it. But if you just want to see what's what, and we're building out some incredibly cool stuff and we're going to save the world.

• 2:05:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Locals. We're going to save the world.

• 2:05:45Speaker 02

  I, I like that, that you're, you were like, well, I did invest. I'm a podcaster. I have to be honest here, you know? This is not something that I'm keeping quiet, you know? Good.

• 2:05:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, whatever. I just tell the truth. All right. Rubenreport.locals.com.

• 2:06:00Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 2:06:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Thank you so much for doing this.

• 2:06:02Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.