Putin’s Next Move, Elon Slams Congress, and Meta Goes Nuclear: What It All Means for You | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Welcome to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In this episode, Tom is joined by Drew for a wide-ranging conversation on some of today’s most pressing issues. They break down the escalating Russia-Ukraine conflict and the real risk of further escalation, unravel the roots and myths of Zionism and the Rothschild family, and pull back the curtain on U. S. politics and the economic realities of central banking and government spending. They also react to alarming current events—including a violent flamethrower attack in Colorado and concerns about agroterrorism involving Chinese nationals—while reflecting on the dangers of polarization, media manipulation, and the importance of moral clarity. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Jewish Empowerment: Rags to Riches 10:01 Putin's Reluctance to End War 14:39 "Escalation Debate in Ukraine Conflict" 30:19 Understanding Inflation vs. Tariffs 46:57 "Overcoming Division in America" 50:23 Faith's Influence on Morality 01:01:09 "Distinguish Individuals from Government Actions" 01:12:14 "Misinterpretation of Trump's Charlottesville Remarks" CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to ⁠https://www.vitalproteins.com⁠ https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out ButcherBox: New users that sign up for ButcherBox will receive their choice between steak tips, salmon, or chicken breast in every box for a year + $20 off their first box at ⁠https://butcherbox.com/impact⁠ https://butcherbox.com/impact Monarch Money: Use code THEORY at ⁠https://monarchmoney.com⁠ https://monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year! Netsuite: Download the new e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at ⁠http://NetSuite.com/Theory⁠ http://netsuite.com/Theory iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at ⁠https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu⁠ https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Jerry: Stop needlessly overpaying for car insurance - download the Jerry app or head to ⁠https://jerry.ai/impact⁠ https://jerry.ai/impact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Ukraine launches successful drone attack deep into Russian territory. Russia calls it the Russian Pearl Harbor and vows a devastating response. Elon calls the big, beautiful bill a disgusting abomination. An Egyptian national lit people on fire in an attempt to kill Zionists. Two Chinese nationals caught smuggling a deadly fungus into the US.

• 1:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Metabolize their own nuclear plant and Cory Booker throws up a Nazi salute.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  We can jump into NY Post article right now. Russia seeks destruction of Ukraine and victory, not compromise.

• 1:40Tom Bilyeu?

  So the interesting thing about what's happening here is previously I thought that the big talk out of them was really to get to a negotiating position from a place of strength. And you know, we were going to get this negotiated and get out of there. I never thought Trump was going to be able to do it in a day, but I certainly thought that he'd be able to wrap it up pretty quickly. Now my mental model is very much Putin has absolutely no desire to end the war, that he's turned his economy over to a wartime engine. He's made promises to his people.

• 2:13Tom Bilyeu?

  My mental map, if I'm being very honest, is that he has territorial ambitions, that this isn't just about pushing back on the NATO expansion. This just feels like somebody who doesn't want the exit ramps he's being offered.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  He wants USSR back.

• 2:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that he, that for sure, he is posturing publicly as if he's interested in peace, but then doing absolutely nothing to move towards that, which then tells me, okay, the public facing stuff is just completely irrelevant. You can throw it out. I mean, this is a former KGB officer. So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. So I do feel like I came into this one a bit naive. I was projecting my own value system onto Putin. All the rhetoric from Trump about we just want the killing to end, like that resonated with me so hard that I just paint that onto everybody. And I don't think that that's what we're looking at.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Again, seven billion in damages and some of the destruction included nuclear bombers. Now, of course, they weren't nuclear armed, but the delivery systems in which Russia used. They have claimed that that constitutes nuclear response. They haven't made a plan yet. They haven't launched anything in response, but if Russia does escalate this war, how bad do you see it getting?

• 3:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Based on this, I think the likelihood that they escalate to something nuclear is exceedingly low. But I really do feel like this, I'm so at the beginning of my journey down this, this is really time that I spent with Ian Bremmer, the time that I spent with Annie Jacobson, looking at that. So ask me again in a week, because after this, I'm really going to start deep diving into this stuff. So my gut instinct is that this isn't going to escalate to that point yet. But what I worry about is with them calling this their Pearl Harbor, with them vowing that they're going to have a response that matches the energy of the US's response to the actual Pearl Harbor.

• 4:11Tom Bilyeu?

  To them saying that attacking the facilities in the way that Ukraine did does meet the requirements of their nuclear doctrine. So technically, according to Russia's own internal rules of engagement, they are now authorized to use nuclear weapons. To your point, they have not said that they're going to. They've certainly flirted with it before this and now pointing out that they have crossed the line. This really becomes a question of where do we go from here? So if they hit back and they hit back extremely aggressively, Europe then starts going, okay, whoa, we've now started taking this seriously. We realize the US isn't going to pay our bills. We're starting to invest in our own military. We're looking at our own economies. Our own economies aren't necessarily great.

• 4:57Tom Bilyeu?

  If Europe gets any sort of like buddy cop juice around, hey, like we could, under the guise of they're, they've invaded a sovereign nation. They're putting Europe at risk. We're now really going to start backing Ukraine. I don't think they're going to go boots on the ground yet, but it's just that tit for tat escalation. Where now if Europe really starts getting behind them and then Ukraine has the ability to hit again, or if Ukraine has another Operation Spiderweb, if they have another thing like that, laying dormant, ready to strike, you could just see this going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until it does get very serious where Europe finds themselves really pulled in

• 5:41Tom Bilyeu?

  or Russia does something that crosses a line and the US gets sucked into the NATO treaty and then has to respond. So there's certainly a fractal to be had about what the US response is going to be to this. But for now, I would say that the real watch case is between Europe, who's clearly going to back Ukraine, Ukraine and then Russia and how escalatory that response gets.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  It reminds me of a boxing match, you know, when you hit somebody and they start to stumble, every trainer will tell you now's the time to double down. So to me, it's almost like, okay, the little engine that could Ukraine taking on this big monster country. They got a good hit. Russia is reeling from this attack over the weekend. Is now the time to double down, triple down and say, okay, while they're licking their wounds on this side. We attack them on this side or we hit some point of critical infrastructure and almost escalate the conflict? Or do you think just my worry is if we give Putin time to sit chill strategize? He is then going to be like, okay, I'm playing and now I'm going to increase the amount my my retaliation is going to be a thousand fold similar to what we're seeing in

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Palestine and Israel. So I don't want to necessarily give Russia those time to kind of line their coffers and be ready for a response. But at the same time, to your point, I'm not sure if Europe or even US is ready to say, okay, we support you for another offensive. Do you think Ukraine should take advantage of this moment? Or is it just like a waiting game now?

• 7:10Tom Bilyeu?

  If I'm Ukraine and I launch an attack the day before the peace negotiations, one of two things is true. Either I'm trying to send a message to come into the peace talks and say, hey, listen, we're not the little kid that you think we are. We've been planning this for a very long time. We executed this with precision. We're certainly going to make you believe whether it's true or not, we're going to make you believe that we can do it again and again and again. That's option one. Option two is I don't give a fuck YOLO like now we're going all in and we are going to unleash. If America is backing away, we realize we have to be hyper aggressive.

• 7:47Tom Bilyeu?

  We've got there's no universe in which Ukraine has popped off this hard unless they believe they have an ace up their sleeve. Now, the irony, at least in the way that I read the situation, is that as soon as they said Ukraine did this all on their own. I was like, oh, cool. You're backed by somebody. That sounded so fake like that sounded like the most like, no, no, no, trust me.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Ukraine did it all by themselves.

• 8:14Tom Bilyeu?

  So I was just like, all right. So my instinct is Europe.

• 8:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Wants something. I'm too naive on Europe's position right now. I have a gut instinct, but it's pure emotion. So I don't know what Europe's play is, but I think that they want this. I think that they want to push. They're going to use the cover story of we've got to protect Europe. Russia is a territorial aggressor. We've got to like drive these guys back and that's real. I'm not saying that it's not. It's just, I don't think they're doing it to be altruistic. I think Europe, Europe has completely lost its way. I think that they're in cultural trouble for sure. I need to look deeper at their economic woes, but they certainly aren't going gangbusters. You look at China's popping off, the US is continues to be either one or

• 9:02Tom Bilyeu?

  two in strongest economy. You've got the Middle East really starting to call shots, moving into a modern economy. So they've really got to find something. And if that something is a wartime economy, that could spell trouble. So if they're the ace up Zelensky's sleeve, he's popped off this hard because he knows that he can count on them either to fund or that they're like, hey, if XYZ things happens, we'll actually join you militarily. Then this could get weird really fast. So I don't know which of the two is true. The peace talks fell apart essentially instantly. They were in there for a couple of hours and then they, they parted ways,

• 9:46Tom Bilyeu?

  which they both think that they can win. So it looked like for a minute that Zelensky really wanted peace. He was negotiating. He was allowing Trump to effectively set the negotiating table for him. He kept agreeing, kept being willing to show up. So if it's option one, and he just wanted to be at the big boy chair in the peace talks, fair enough. But that's an ultra-high-risk maneuver. And I have a feeling that we're probably more in bucket two, which is I can't count on America. I maybe have Europe on, I know I have Europe on my side and maybe I have them way on my side, more than anybody has announced publicly.

• 10:30Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I'm gonna start taking my shots, taking real shots to push in. It's possible they think that they're winning the AI game. It seems like Operation Spider Web is really an AI play. According to Ukraine, and I'm so hyper aware that we're being spun all the time. Every word out of each side's mouth is all like programming and counter programming. And they're just trying to get us all to believe what they want us to believe. But anyway, according to Ukraine, they pulled all their operatives out of Russia before they launched the attack. If that's true, then there's no way that they were manually flying the drones because the range isn't long enough. So that means that they've got AI that could identify the planes, find them, get to them.

• 11:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, launch, which I mean, shout out to Ukraine. This is a pretty slick operation. But if they think that they're winning that war, then it's, it's also possible that they're like, okay, we've cracked over a new technology and we're gonna take it to them.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, to your point, the peace talks ended just after an hour. And the only thing they agreed on was a new prisoner swap and the exchange of 12,000 dead soldiers between both sides. But no ceasefire deal. What do you think has to be true for America to say, all right, guys, uh, is, tag me in, let's bring this, let's get the Marines in there, let's actually go ham like.

• 11:46Tom Bilyeu?

  That is a really good question. So I'll answer because I hate it when people dodge questions, but I really reserve the right to think better about this. I think right now for the US to get involved, Russia would have to do something directly to us or something that triggered a NATO treaty. I think that Trump is very sketchy about his commitments to NATO. So it also wouldn't surprise me if in the coming months, as he sees the escalation whirring up here, that he talks about ways to get out. But if he doesn't get out and Putin does something that either makes Trump feel disrespected.

• 12:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Both, this is a better way to say it. Both makes Trump feel disrespected and crosses some line that any reasonable person would look at that and be like, "What the fuck?" That could be use of a dirty bomb. So not mushroom cloud nuclear, but still I think it's depleted uranium or something like that. So still bad news bears. So if he did that while doing something that makes Trump feel disrespected, I could see maybe Trump. But I really think Trump is going to try to like back off of this, say this is Europe's problem. You guys deal with it. That's my instinct.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  We watched a video a couple of months ago and I'm blinking on the guy's name who was like, "Everybody's scared of Russia, but they can't even take on Ukraine." And I kind of laughed in that moment. I was like, "Oh, well, they're taking it easy on Ukraine." Ukraine clearly isn't taking it easy on Russia. Seven billion dollars worth of damage. They damaged bombers. Like it, it put a chink in Russia's armor. I do think though, the fact that Ukraine is taking, you know, Russia to overtime for, as using a sports analogy. Is this incentive for Europe and US to hop in this war and say, "All right, guys, if we were a part of it, it would have been already over." You know, if the guy at the end of the bench is taking this guy to overtime, if I bring in my dream team starters, we should be able to wrap this up pretty soon.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  So is there some Captain Fury inside of you, Tom, that's thinking like, "All right, if the US was on it in four weeks, this thing will be wrapped up. Let's kill Putin, get him out of here, take off the minerals and we'll just go Al Qaeda again 2001."

• 14:06Tom Bilyeu?

  I just want the record to reflect Drew had some big energy before we started rolling about how, "I sent $75 trillion of assets in Russia and let's go get this fool." I, I think it's probably a little bit different than that. So you've got voices in the US calling for the removal of Zelensky. I think America is very conflicted about whose side are we on?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Got you.

• 14:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Trump is very good at reading the political tea leaves. I think, again, I've not spent a lot of time thinking about this, but my instinct as of right now, planting a flag at the time of this recording. Is Trump will read the tea leaves. He will realize that this is not something that America is united on. This is not the 80 20, the kind of thing that he likes to react to. I think he's going to be trying to back out of this. I don't think that we're going to be, whether we can put the dream team together and take on Russia or not. I don't think that we've got the political unity to pull that off. And Trump knows better than to go after things that he doesn't have people behind him on. Also, Russia is where empires fuck up all the time.

• 15:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Reading about Napoleon, Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. How first, basically Napoleon goes into Russia and just gets his ass handed to him. The battle that he's famous for losing is Waterloo, but where he really lost his mojo was in Russia. World War II, obviously, we go to Stalingrad and, and Russia's just like, bro, do you know how many people we will throw at this? They have a culture that is just okay with throwing young men into the grinder of a military stalemate and they will just wear you down. And then the reason, so that's part number one. Why are people afraid of Russia even though they can't defeat Ukraine?

• 15:59Tom Bilyeu?

  History just shows that they will just keep throwing people and throwing people and throwing people and throwing people. And they'll just wear you down. So they may not push into your country, but holy Jesus, they're not going to let you push into theirs. So that's part number one. And part number two is you have to remember this is, this would be the equivalent of going up against a boxer who you can see has a rocket launcher in his belt. And so you're punching and you're hoping he sticks to the punches. Because if at any point he decides that to remind everybody that he is the largest nuclear power on planet Earth, then he just nukes you. And so the thing you don't want to do is back Putin into a corner

• 16:43Tom Bilyeu?

  where he feels like he has no other options. Now, I don't feel like, I, I don't share enough values with Putin where I can map him by turning inward. So I have no idea what he would do if he felt backed into a corner. With my sensibility,

• 17:01Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't just start throwing nukes. So, but is it possible that he would? And so that's reason number two, why people are afraid. They just don't know what he's gonna do. And so when you've got somebody that legitimately, you're like, I don't know how they're gonna react to this situation. You have to be very careful. So he may not have the military, he may not have the economy to win in the sort of bizarrely World War One trenchy warfare that we find ourselves in now. But he knows at any time, he can stop playing that game and start playing the mushroom cloud game. And that's, that's the big joker. That's the, the queen if he's on the chessboard. That changes everything.

• 17:40Tom Bilyeu?

  I think anybody would be a fool, like 75 trillion or not, like this is just, that is, that is a crazy game. Now, listen, humans, history is a long string of people doing the most absurd evil shit. Because they think that they can take somebody's resources. Uh, so God only knows if we've got people in Europe, just, you know, wringing their evil little hands, thinking that they'll go in, or if we've got people in America wringing their evil little hands, saying that we can go in. I certainly hope not. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors. Luxury brands are not charging you more for better cashmere.

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• 19:04Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:47Tom Bilyeu?

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• 20:32Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Well, from a potential nuclear war to losing a political war, Elon Musk is at it again. He tweeted earlier today, "I'm sorry, but I just can't take it. This massive outrageous pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it." The Big Beautiful Bill is not getting a lot of love. This is something that should have been a slam dunk for Trump, holding control of both the House and the Senate, but even people in his own party have voted against it. They have been criticizing the $5 trillion estimated additional money to the deficit over the next 10 years. What say you about the Big Beautiful Bill?

• 21:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so this is where I remind everybody six degrees of central banking.

• 21:19Tom Bilyeu?

  If you don't understand the deficit spending is how the current monetary system stays alive. Debt is the oxygen to the economic fire. Let me say that again. Debt is the oxygen to the current economic fire. There is no way, there is no way to pay off the debt without printing more money. Which means inflation is, I've written deep dives where I talk about inflation. I say, I used to think that it was like just a law of nature that that inflation happened. And I'm realizing it is a law. It's just a manmade law. So when you've got Elon looking at the big, beautiful bill and you're asking, why are people super annoyed about this? The reality is that inflation is necessary.

• 22:04Tom Bilyeu?

  It didn't matter who got elected, there was going to be inflation. It's just at different rates. So I believe that if we'd elected Kamala, it'd be even worse. Don't even get me started on the authoritarian stuff and the fact that we didn't have a real president, blah, blah, blah. But they would have printed faster. But the Republicans were always going to print as well because we have to. It is the fundamental structure of our system. And so we've talked about this before. Anybody paying attention will go, Tom, that's absurd. Clinton balanced the budget and we had a surplus. So you're dumb. And I would say, go research that period. Alan Greenspan understands the system as well as I'm sure Jerome Powell does. And he made credit very easy.

• 22:49Tom Bilyeu?

  So the corporate debt skyrocketed. So during that same period, while we had a tight budget from a government perspective, which is good and wonderful, and we should all want it. He knows you have to inflate. Fed, the Fed went straight to consumer for that period when the government stopped. Cause there's three types of debt. There's corporate, there's consumer, and there's government. Copy. And he went after corporate. Got it. So it's just, once people understand that this is a law of economic physics, that if you print- $8 trillion and there's 5% interest, then 1 trillion and 50 billion is owed. The 50 billion has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is inflation. Period. End of story.

• 23:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And given that we have $36 trillion and sometimes more than 5% interest, it's just an obscene amount of money. So every time I look at this stuff and I start drilling down and look, I will admit, I think that ultimately it is a very productive simplification. When I say everything goes back to central banking, it's productive. And it's so much closer to the truth than the way that people think now that I'm going to keep saying it. But for longtime listeners of the show, yes, I know that I'm oversimplifying it. But holy bejesus, there's, there were multiple studies done. Only between 16 and 20% of Americans actually understand how the Fed works. And Drew, I am willing to bet

• 24:20Tom Bilyeu?

  that if you actually let me sit with that 20% and I start asking them questions, they're going to fall apart.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:27Tom Bilyeu?

  So like the, this is my favorite clip to ever show. It's like in every deep dive that I write. You've got the former chair of the economic advisors for Biden, who legitimately got caught on camera, just not being able to explain how it works. And so what's that 20% really? Like if you count me in that 20%, even I know I had, there's an edge at which I'm like, wait, how does that work? Because every time you look at it, there's like another layer and another layer. And it's like, God, I really tried to get as close to being able to track like, who asks the Fed like, hey, I'm going to make this debt. Like who's the person? What role are they in?

• 25:10Tom Bilyeu?

  All the way through, like somebody's paying interest on that debt and it's worked its way into the system. And even there, I'm like, I'll routinely find that, oh, wait a second. Actually, I don't know how it goes from here to here. So I would for sure be counted in the 20% even I have my limitations.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Okay. What's the incentive with the federal bank? Because hearing what you just said, to me, it sounds like, okay, the big beautiful bill is not. Able to be smaller because the Fed is owed money.

• 25:36Tom Bilyeu?

  It's really two reasons, and forgive me for interrupting you. But I didn't do a good job of, I didn't explain the second one at all. So the first is inflation is absolutely necessary. You have to have it. The second is politicians are best understood as playing a Machiavellian game. For some reason, people push back on that. That is utterly shocking to me, but anyway. Meaning people are trying to get into power and stay in power. Seems so uncontroversial to me. So what's the easiest way to get into power? Promise somebody something for free. So if you're a politician in a system where you absolutely must create new debt.

• 26:13Tom Bilyeu?

  And you have to promise people free things. It's like, uh, I can actually meet the obligations of the economic system. By promising free things. This is way too fantastic. So this is why we're in this like super weird period where even conservatives who should be just like fiscally minded, fiscally responsible, gotta balance the budget.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Don't care.

• 26:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Even that, not only do they not care, they can't care because they have to get elected. And we live in a world where people are getting promised stuff all the time. Like if you're just stone cold, you're an alien, you come and you're aware of accounting, you look at and go, your entitlements are the problem. Cut your entitlements. But that's the third rail. You can't do it. Like, no one is gonna go for that. Because once you give somebody something for free, you don't get to take it away. So now we're in this position where, let's say I'm a Republican, I've gotta be like, balance the budget. And take a bunch of free shit. Like, it's so weird. And that's what the big beautiful bill is, is it's the collision of these two things. You've got, everybody knows, just print, print, print. You can literally print until the end of time.

• 27:25Tom Bilyeu?

  And the only one Drew that gets punished is people that hold or get paid in dollars. That's it. It's just every American. Just those people. Plus some gigantic port, like 60% of all transactions are in dollars worldwide. So that's it. You only hurt all of those people. Yeah. So people just do it with reckless abandon because it works until it doesn't. And it, it moves so slowly. Like imagine that you make suit jackets, but you don't actually have to make them. You just say, I now have a thousand suit jackets. You didn't have to make them and then people will actually buy those suit jackets and pay you interest. But you didn't make anything.

• 28:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Dude, it's so crazy. It's so crazy that the more you learn about it, the more you like, why aren't people running around in the streets screaming? And the reality is it's just complicated enough. It's just complicated enough that people aren't gonna spend time with it. And you grew up with it. You're just like, you don't even think about it. Yeah. Oh, that's weird. My parents told me that gas used to be like 36 cents. Ha, ha, ha. That's crazy. For me, it's $6. But you don't think about what? What? Drew, refining oil into gas has gotten cheaper. So why has the cost gone up? Transportation has gotten cheaper. Explain again why the costs have gone up? This doesn't make sense. The reason the costs have gone up is because inflation hits 2%.

• 28:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Because first of all, they print their way through all of the reduction in costs that you would get from innovation. Mm hmm. Plus 2%. It's crazy. So we never catch up. Dude, what a heist. What a heist. Imagine, how do you get to be those guys? I want to be those guys. Imagine, Drew, that you and I were the only ones that we could create a YouTube video just by saying it exists. And then we got millions of views just by saying it exists. How fucking crazy. It's crazy.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Okay, I get that side. On the big, beautiful bill side now, this is fundamentally a disconnect to me where we have to be responsible. We have to balance the budget for the future generations. But we're gonna add 200 billion here, we're gonna add 400 billion here. We're not gonna cut these things.

• 29:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  I understand entitlements is a big tangled web, but defense spending in the peacetime president went up 150 million. So there's certainly...

• 29:50Tom Bilyeu?

  150 billion.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Billion, excuse me. 150 billion. Isn't there something we can do on the big, beautiful bill side at least? Knowing that, yes, the creature from Jericho Island exists. The Fed is the monster that's taking from everybody. But that should make us even more fiscally responsible with this bill. That should make us more focused in paying attention to trying to reduce these costs. Is it really just because I don't wanna, I want us to keep this job? So I'm just gonna get this bill through? Like, what's the motivation on the big, beautiful bill side? You think the politicians aren't trying to work around it? Reduce the spending, things like that?

• 30:22Tom Bilyeu?

  They're not going to get elected if they don't get rad stuff for their constituents. And their constituents don't wanna pay for it. So a politician's sort of rational incentive is to, what they call pork-filled, to go and say, "Okay, I'll vote for this, but you're gonna give me this thing." And now you've got however many members of Congress, however many senators, being like, "I've gotta go back and tell my people I got your thing in the bill." And so it just looks like this ridiculous, pork-filled, disgusting abomination. I mean, that, it is just the nature of the game. Part of the reason I think that Elon is having such an allergic reaction to it, and lord knows I have my bias, but Drew, when you run a company, you're just like, yo, you've gotta be so disciplined about how you spend money.

• 31:06Tom Bilyeu?

  And when you look at the way that a government is run, and you start, I mean, now I'm projecting, but you start thinking about all the, like, I remember when I worked in a paint factory, and I remember the guys that I worked in the paint factory with. These are not people with tons of money. They're struggling to make ends meet. And life has an extra layer of stress because they just don't make enough fucking money. And the government's gonna take a significant chunk and waste it. They're, they're just gonna piss it into the wind of the nature of politics and money. And so that's brutal, man. You expect politicians to fight for it, but we're living in an age of social media.

• 31:52Tom Bilyeu?

  And a brief window where you have the greatest capital allocator of all time with the biggest microphone on planet Earth, who is screaming, trying to articulate that this is so fucking broken. And what does he get for his troubles? Firebombed, death threats.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Stinking stock number, all these things.

• 32:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Do you think the big, beautiful bill is gonna get passed?

• 32:18Tom Bilyeu?

  The senators will almost certainly ask for changes. I don't know how many people are in Rand Paul's camp, and I don't know how many, I'm gonna have to research like exactly how bills work. I know the Senate makes requests for changes, it goes back to the House. And so I don't know enough about that process to have a high degree of confidence exactly how this is gonna go. But if Rand Paul represents a strong enough coalition, I would assume, and he's just drawing a hard and fast line at the level of spending, we might get some reduction somewhere. His stance is very basic, very straightforward, which is, okay, we're 6% over budget, cut 6% across everything, literally everything.

• 33:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Seems reasonable to me. So will that actually happen? Probably not.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Jumping into like the meat and potatoes of the bill, there are cuts to Medicaid, SNAP assistance, and those cuts are like, you have to have 80 hours worked in order to be eligible, you have to have. So there's certain, they're not necessarily just taking benefits away from people, but they're increasing the eligibility threshold for them. So like, they are cutting quote unquote entitlements in that way, kinda like a backhanded way. Do you think you, Tom, I'm passing you the magical pen on this bill, would you cut the 6% from military? Would you cut the increases? Where do you think they should start some of these reductions?

• 33:42Tom Bilyeu?

  I think that we have a philosophical problem, as much as we have like just a raw spending problem.

• 33:55Tom Bilyeu?

  So from an entitlements perspective, like I, and look, I get it. I'm a workaholic. I have found that I get so much meaning and purpose out of my work and all that. But I really do believe that people need to earn their keep, just full stop. And so bumping up the retirement age, yep, no problem. If you're not even trying to get a job and you're able bodied, no more benefits for you. Like, there should be requirements for people to get to work. I do not expect that to be popular, and I am not running for office. But that is very much how I view the world. I, I really believe that the human animal gets something incredibly necessary out of contributing to the group.

• 34:39Tom Bilyeu?

  And the easiest way to think about contributing to the group is to contribute to the economy, to generate taxable revenue or earnings. So, yeah, that, that would be like, if I were dumb enough to ever run for office, that would be what I would foolishly campaign on. And needless to say, would crash and burn, because that is not going to be popular.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  And would you say that like, the philosophical problem that Americans have is that we want to take care of things versus where we need, we don't like the cutting, the budgeting, those types of conversations. We really like the free handout conversations.

• 35:12Tom Bilyeu?

  The problem that America has is very simple. You have to want the friction between the two sides. You have to want people to be compassionate, and you have to want people to want to make demands that you be the hardest core motherfuckers ever. And the second the left thinks the right is a bunch of fools, and the right thinks the left are a bunch of fools, you have a problem. Stop the division, understand that we are still in the jungle, and that we are going to have to be razor sharp to continue to be the number one country in the world. People have taken it for granted, and we are going to pay an extraordinary price. And man, if you don't give a shit about yourself, if you're not thinking about the next generation, that is the biggest dickhead move of all time.

• 35:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Be number one, it has its privileges. That is why people want to come here. And we have somehow taken this for granted in a way that I find repulsive. I don't know what the fuck people are thinking, man. But it's like, you've got to want that dynamic tension, and you've really got to strive to be the best. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor Pipe Drive comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM.

• 36:39Tom Bilyeu?

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• 37:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's get into it.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  We shall see. The bill is in the Senate now. We'll see if it gets the final approval and gets out of there. We are sending our thoughts and prayers to Colorado after a crazy attack over the weekend where eight were hurt from a flamethrower attack. Let's jump into CNN for their coverage of it.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Eight people were injured at the event held in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza. It was a disturbing scene. Smoke rising after the FBI says a man used a makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd. Among the injured was a Holocaust survivor. One of the people who attended the event told CNN.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  So eight injured. He had a Molotov cocktail, a flamethrower. I just seen that he tried to get a gun, but because of his immigrant background, he wasn't approved for it. So this could have been a lot worse. Where are these vigilantes coming from? First, we had the United CEO. Then we had the two people shot outside the embassy. Now a flamethrower attack. What do you think is happening in like these people's psyches at this moment?

• 38:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's assume for a second that you just think, yo, what Israel is doing is a new Holocaust. This is a genocide and it just absolutely must be stopped at all costs.

• 38:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Going to a random march in Colorado and throwing a Molotov cocktail on people to try to burn them to death is unadulterated evil. And if you are, if you view yourself as fighting a monster, be careful that you don't become the monster. There is a reason that both Superman and Batman in the comics refuse to kill. They didn't want to become that guy. So in some of the modern interpretations, people play them a little darker than they were meant to be. And I think this is part of, man, honestly, this is a part of the death of religion. And I'm not a believer, but you have to have a moral compass.

• 39:20Tom Bilyeu?

  You have to have something upon which you just say, uh, this is, this is ought, this is how things ought to be. Uh, and for whatever reason, historically, it has helped people to say this is how it ought to be because God said so. Great. Let's get back to something like that. Like if you can't have a moral compass in and of yourself, uh, then rely on religion. And this is part of why I am so grateful to have grown up in a Judeo-Christian ethic heavy on the Christian, because the breakthrough of, um, somebody died for your sins and everybody

• 40:00Tom Bilyeu?

  is equal, every life at the individual level is sacred and divine. Dude, that changes the way people view the world. And again, I don't believe in God, but I believe in that. So that to me is missing in moments like this. And honestly, dude, this is where I'm like, I don't know, there's gonna be a clash of views and I am so curious to see how this plays out. I have no idea what this is gonna be on a long enough timeline. What you see embodied, cause he's Egyptian, I am presuming that, uh, this is somebody who is a, an Islamist, certainly extremist beliefs from where I'm sitting. If you're burning people alive.

• 40:47Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know what that's gonna look like at scale. But this is gonna be something I have a very bad feeling I'm gonna be researching and learning a lot about, because I think it's gonna matter a lot in the coming years.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I feel like this is hurting Israel as opposed to helping Palestine. And I know that those things seem like they'll be the same thing, but these videos, these attacks, these...

• 41:12Tom Bilyeu?

  This? Like, the Colorado thing is hurting Israel?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yes, because it's like, you're... To fight terrorism with more terrorism, I don't necessarily think that's a win.

• 41:24Tom Bilyeu?

  I agree, but this guy presumably is on the Palestinian side, not the Israeli side.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yes, but the fact that you're so Palestinian that you're now burning people, I think is hurting your cause. And then when we get...

• 41:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Hurting Palestinians? You said hurting Israel.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  The reason why I think Israel is gonna be ultimately penalized for this is because I think the fact that it's having these ramifications on the world stage isn't...

• 41:49Tom Bilyeu?

  When you say penalized by this, what do you mean?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  The social meter, the social attention that it's getting, how people feel... How people feel about the Israel-Palestine conflict is changing.

• 42:01Tom Bilyeu?

  So going so ham on Gaza is just absolutely devastating.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Israel going ham on Gaza, you're saying?

• 42:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Right. Israel going ham on Gaza is causing Israel international reputational damage.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally agree. I thought you were saying this hurts Israel.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  But going with that, the fact that, like, people are saying, "I'm gonna help Palestine, let me commit a terror attack", it brings more attention back to the war, more attention back to... And then people are ultimately gonna be like, "Well, Israel, you're the big guy in the room, you should be the bigger person."

• 42:32Tom Bilyeu?

  So you're saying this is working, if for no other reason than it draws attention, that it has the exact effect that they want it to have?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. I mean, yes. I think you have to separate two issues. This is an unmitigated act of evil. Evil, evil, evil.

• 42:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Israel's gone too far.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 42:53Tom Bilyeu?

  And they are creating massive problems. Now, whether Eric Weinstein would agree that they've gone too far, I will not speak for him, but I will always acknowledge the analogy that he brought to my attention that I thought was absolutely brilliant. And that's from Breaking Bad where Salamanca, I think, grabs Mike by the lapel and, sorry, Mike grabs him by the lapel and Salamanca just starts beating the shit out of him. And Mike won't let go because Mike knows if he holds on to him, he's going to keep beating him and the cops are going to come arrest him. That's where I think Israel is.

• 43:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Because Hamas is holding the hostages, Israel just keeps punching and punching and punching and punching and punching and punching and punching and punching. And I get it. I get why they started, dude. And had I been there, like if that attack had been in Los Angeles, I would have been braying for blood.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  You also would keep punching, yeah.

• 43:54Tom Bilyeu?

  I would have gone nuts. So I get the response. And dude, I, I would go full torch my life to the ground if somebody did that to my wife. I'm just being fully on, I am not capable of being that guy who can like distance myself and be Christ like, nope, I'm going to be a raging lunatic. But there is a point at which, as you said, on the international stage, you're, you're just, you're punching so much, you're going to lose, right or wrong, doesn't even enter into it anymore.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:27Tom Bilyeu?

  This is just, you're going to lose the battle of reputation.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, yeah, this does not resound to their benefit, that's for sure.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  It's interesting because in the Ukraine, Russia conflict. Russia taking their time, you would think that Russia has the advantage. But with Ukraine kind of doing the things that it's doing now, it seems like, okay, wait, Russia might need to step it up a little bit more. And I think the opposite is true with Israel-Palestine, where Israel has been battering them. And you would think, okay, this is gonna get wrapped up pretty soon. But instead of it being over, they keep just getting battered. So then now the conversation is changing to, well, Israel is going a little bit too far. Israel needs to stop. And it's less about a ceasefire, peace terms, and it's more so about war crimes prosecuting Israel. So it's almost like, will the terrorists win?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  I know that's a bit hyperbolic, but...

• 45:26Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know that it is.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Like, if Hamas really gets the world to turn on Israel and be like, Israel went too far, they're doing too much, this was wrong.

• 45:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, if this really was Sinwar's vision.

• 45:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Evil, but genius.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Is this gonna make Al Qaeda start to pick up random people and say, hey, work with Hamas, let's see if we can get something happening over here?

• 45:49Tom Bilyeu?

  That's a really good question, man. This comes down to if you really are willing to hide behind your own people. Because what great PR it is to see them blown to smithereens.

• 46:04Tom Bilyeu?

  It's working. It's working, but boy, is it gnarly. And this goes back to when something gets sophisticated enough, it's just hard to parse out. Like, I remember there was, oh god, what was his name? Coleman Hughes was on Rogan, and he, this is really early. And he gave this great breakdown when people started saying, hey, I think maybe Israel's going too far. And he was like, well, if you let them get away with October 7th, they have created the perfect way to attack people. You go in, you do this vicious attack, you hide behind your own people. You know that they can't attack you because they'll blow up a hospital or a school or whatever, and they look like the villain.

• 46:49Tom Bilyeu?

  And he was like, you, obviously, if you're Israel, you can't let them do that. And I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. And then it started getting a little gray. It was like, well, guys, maybe, maybe...

• 47:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Maybe we did the thing.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Tom Bilyeu?

  And at some point, we go, we claim victory. Uh, and then it just got to the point where it's like, yikes. This has gotten rough.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:17Tom Bilyeu?

  This has gotten rough.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  And to your point of it being a planned thing, that was MLK's whole thing with the March on Summer. Black people getting beat up and rioted, it wasn't that big of a deal. But knowing that they were going to do it on TV, the newspapers covered it. So all the bleeding heart liberals in the Northeast migrated down to march with them again for the anniversary. Then that was the thing that kind of started the civil rights movement, uh, outside of like the bus boycotts and stuff. So there is historical context to, we might have to get beat up really bad until the cops come in order to push this, this movement forward. So it's, it's an interesting take. We'll see if it works, but.

• 47:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I haven't looked super close at what Gandhi did, but this sounds reminiscent. I don't think he was using his people as human shoes, but I honestly don't know. Maybe he was. But, uh.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  How nonviolent can lead to.

• 48:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Probably can't go that far.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  I don't think it's their nonviolent, but.

• 48:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Cause that was pretty fucking violent. But, uh, yeah, I mean, look, this is, this is FFO on both sides. You do October 7th to, uh, power that is militarily greater than you, and you're going to get fucking hammered. Rightly so. Um, but then if they've got a winning strategy where they're just going to let you keep pummeling them on the equivalent of national television, night after night after night, people are going to turn against you.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Okay. And I want to call this a conspiracy theory, but it seems like they've done triple checked everything. So this might actually be legit and the source is the BBC, but Mario Narfall just tweeted about a Chinese couple caught sneaking crop killing fungus into a Michigan lab. This is the breakdown of the story. Two Chinese nationalists tried smuggling a deadly fungus into the US that can destroy crops and poison food. Prosecutors say Zhang Yonglu flew it into Detroit for his girlfriend, Yining Zhang, who works at a University of Michigan lab not cleared for biohazards. The fungus, Fersarium gurgraminirium.

• 49:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Better you than me, man.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Devastates wheat, corn and rice, causes vomiting and liver damage and is labeled a potential agro-terrorism weapon.

• 49:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, agro-terrorism.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Agro-terrorism.

• 49:24Tom Bilyeu?

  That's crazy. I didn't even know that was a thing. It's like, uh, Nightmare on Locke.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it triggers billions in crop losses yearly. I didn't even, I thought it was just dead crops. I didn't even know about the vomiting and liver damage and things like that. So. Um, the girlfriend's research was funded by China and she is a member of the Communist Party.

• 49:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  They got the boyfriend who flew in, got deported, and Yang, who wa- is facing conspiracy, smuggling, visa fraud, and lying to officials. Um, the US Attorney Jerome Gorgin Jr. called it a major national security threat.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, this seems like an act of aggression. Um, I don't know if he's just some lone actor by himself, but-

• 50:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's the thing, like, I want to be really careful with this and, um, man, boys and girls, can we please remember that if you've got somebody from China that's in the CCP and they're sent here as a spy and it gets proven in a court of law and all of that, uh, that's bad and China is your enemy in that scenario. Being Chinese does not make you the enemy, just the same as Israel is not the same as being Jewish. And so some of you being Jewish does not make them your enemy, even if you don't like what Israel is doing. I can't believe that I have to say that PSA, but I feel like I absolutely have to say that PSA. So mad love to all of, uh, the Chinese people here in America. Love, love, love each and every one of you.

• 50:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, people doing dirty shit can fuck right off. And, uh, look, the Chinese right now are hopefully merely a rival. Uh, and we can find a path to, um, competing in a way that isn't dirtier than normal in international affairs, since there's plenty of spying that's always gonna happen and espionage is real and people do horrible shit. Um, but, so anyway, I want all the facts of this to come out before I get too hysterical. But if this really is funded by the CCP, obviously that's incredibly bad. And bioterrorism is a major threat. And so that freaks me out.

• 51:33Tom Bilyeu?

  And when you start talking about something that could destroy crops, ooh. Because I understand how AI is gonna make this part of the new battlefront, like, this really feels like a shot across the bow. Again, I don't know, and maybe we'll find that, oh my god, like, she just really wanted to research this and was fucking as dumb as the day is long, that's entirely possible. And, given the guys will do anything for vagina, it is entirely possible that this guy just- Loves his girlfriend.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Just grab that dangerous sample from my lab for me.

• 52:05Tom Bilyeu?

  So lord knows, I would much, fingers crossed, I would much rather it be that. But um, we'll, we'll let it play out in the fullness of time. But if this is sort of that worst case scenario of one of the gazillion ways that um, our adversary can touch us, that's scary. But I will just remind everybody, we got people over in China trying to touch them. So don't be holier than thou, be paranoid, keep your guard up, don't overindex. And for the love of God, don't confuse the CCP trying to do something with someone who happens to be Chinese.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Um, you're using DeepSeek this weekend or something? I feel like this is a measurable difference in your Chinatown from normal. So it's like.

• 52:47Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting. So I, one, I want to be very careful. As I work on the deep dives, I find my, which by the way, the new one's coming out on Monday. Make sure you check it out. It's going to be about the creature from Jekyll Island.

• 53:05Tom Bilyeu?

  I find myself realizing how quickly you can ratchet things up. And that to make it interesting to listen to, you can nudge your words in a direction. And I remind myself that we're always spinning and being spun at all times. And so I want to be careful that the words I say will shape my own worldview, even if unintentionally. And so you become what you repeat. And so I'm trying to be very thoughtful about, I really do want China to be the rival that brings out the best in America. I don't want them to be the adversary that we go to war with. And given how Thucydides' trap is so real, um, that

• 53:50Tom Bilyeu?

  we have to be paranoid and we have to be careful. And I know there are going to be days where I'm just in that zone. And I'm like fucking really annoyed about something and pissed and want everybody to wake up. And I'm going to be leaning heavy on like, this is where it goes and this is how it ends. Um, but at the same time, I want to remind myself and everybody else to be thoughtful, clear-headed and stick with the facts.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Stay with the facts, we shall. Meta is buying a nuclear plant, well, kind of. They have gotten to an agreement with Constellation Energy, one of the biggest power providers in the US, for a 20-year nuclear energy deal. From my perspective, Meta is doing this so they don't have to pay for the infrastructure, similar to Microsoft, who just bought the island and now they have to build it up.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  The 20-year agreement is set to go into, is set to start in June 2027. This is probably the third energy deal from a large power play. This is the third major energy deal we've seen Meta with Constellation. Microsoft just bought the nuclear, abandoned nuclear facility. Tesla has half of Texas covered in solar panels. There is a push now that this AI power consumption is coming. What, do you think this positions Meta to be successful in the future? That was like a must. It just, it seems like a 20-year deal at this point is a bit early, but they also did do the whole metaverse thing, so maybe they see something we don't see.

• 55:11Tom Bilyeu?

  If you're in AI and you're not thinking about power, there's a couple of other things in the chain that I haven't looked at closely enough to be able to rattle them off. But Elon has talked about it. It's like, first it's gonna be compute, then it's gonna be power, then it's gonna be whatever, whatever. And if you're a serious player, you've really got to be thinking about where are the bottlenecks? And how do we make sure that we're not one of the companies that gets consumed by the bottlenecks? And this has been really interesting for me to watch. So often when I'm coaching entrepreneurs, I realize they get stopped at a place of failure of imagination. And when I say still, even though we've talked about this before, every time I hear one of these companies buying a nuclear power plant,

• 55:54Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm always just like, this is crazy. It's a failure of imagination. I never would have thought to do that. And I'm always trying to look at my businesses, like, where is my failure of imagination? Where if you just thought bigger, that you would be able to bypass something that other people don't. And

• 56:14Tom Bilyeu?

  This is one of those moments. So Meta is very smart to be doing this. I think more companies are going to be doing this. Trump has talked about the need to make it possible for companies to spin up data centers with power grids like attached to them. And I think that's very interesting and it'll be fascinating to see if we get deregulated enough that people can really innovate on the power side. Because again, China as rival, China's innovating on the power side. And I think we're already dramatically behind them in terms of power. Oh, hey, look at that. So dude, that hurts. That hurts in the good way in like that, oh man, you've got a worthy rival.

• 56:58Tom Bilyeu?

  When it comes to energy production, China is a worthy rival. Look at that, man. They are wildly out producing.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  When I look at this number, I'm like, okay, they have three times as many residents to us. So, you know, they'd have three times as many toasters and three times as many cars are charged.

• 57:13Tom Bilyeu?

  So they don't give a fuck about green. That's what this is. They're going to win. This is people playing to win, man, to win. Listen, there's two ways to look at saving the planet. Way number one is I'm going to innovate my way out of this. Way number two is I'm going to hobble everybody around me so they're using less power. I'm going to let you tell me what that graph says China has chosen. They're going to fucking innovate. Dude, we have to get there. And again, going back to my deep dive, there was this thing called the report from Iron Mountain. Probably satire, even though conspiracy nuts will try to get you to believe that it was real. Let's just assume it's satire. It doesn't fucking matter.

• 57:52Tom Bilyeu?

  It so accurately describes how things like a climate catastrophe will be used to keep people paranoid so that they'll lean on the government for control. And when you're scared, you want somebody who's like, I got you. And that's what we want the government to do, but you need a looming threat. You either need war, aliens, climate, you need something. And when you're the CCP and you've already got an iron grip on people, you can give a fuck if they want control or not, you're going to control them. Then you spin up power and you're like, we're going to dominate. We've got a plan. We're going to take over the world and this is how we're going to do it. And we'll find other ways to clean up the air and all that because obviously they don't want to be in a position where they can't breathe the air either. Everybody wants to take care of the planet. Let's be very clear about that.

• 58:35Tom Bilyeu?

  But when there are multiple ways to do it, then. You see what happens. It becomes a competition. We're in the marketplace of ideas. And for so many years, Europe and America, the West, has really hobbled itself because we've become moralizing dipshits that don't realize that we're still competing, that don't realize that all of the amazing things that we have are from innovation. And that if we really want to get serious about saving the planet, innovate, don't hobble.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  And other moralizing bullshit news? Uh, Cory Booker did a not Nazi salute, which is different than Elon Musk's definite Nazi salute. And-

• 59:17Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you really think about this? Do you actually think, is Elon doing a Nazi salute in Drew's mind?

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Drew doesn't care about Nazis. And I know that it's like a shocker and the Jewish community is gonna hate me for this, but I feel like the Jewish all won that war. Like, the Nazis are gone. It's no, it's not cool to be a Nazi anywhere. And if you are in a place that says, oh yeah, it's cool to be a Nazi here, you don't want to be in that place. Like, you don't want to be in that dive bar with the pickup trucks. Like, you don't want to be there anyway. So I feel like we're, we're trying to make, like, we're trying to bring the monster that was under our bed back alive so we can scare other kids where it's like, there's people who are starving. There's a bill right now that is about to cut somebody's Medicaid. And we're looking at armed positions and that's what we spent a news cycle on. So-

• 1:00:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Preach. Uh, I will say neither of them are doing a Nazi salute. God, that is a hill I will die in. This is the most absurd thing ever. However, I think it matters a lot to notice how often we are being manipulated. That everything is position and spin. Uh, word choices. I'm aware of myself. Every word choice is an attempt to get people to see things the way you want them to see it. Now, maybe you have good intent, but you're still trying to control the images that you're putting in somebody's mind. And so this drives me crazy. In the era of social media, it absolutely drives me berserk to just see how nakedly- People are manipulated. It really winds me up.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  And what gets me is like when these things become litmus tests. Cause it was almost like the both sides thing. Like when Trump said, "Both sides."

• 1:00:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Good people on both sides.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, good people on both sides. If you believe he said, "Good people on both sides," and was referring to the white supremacists, you were a Trump supporter and all these labels attacked you. If he said that, he didn't say to the white supremacists, he was talking about to the other people in the full extended clip, "Okay, you're not, you're Trump sympathizing, you're trying to do all this." So it's like, using our critical thinking, staring at a video and saying, "Oh, you only showed me the first 25 seconds, you didn't show me the other three minutes of it. Now I feel differently about it." We don't even get to that nuance of the conversation. It's like, "Quick, which team? Okay, I'll listen to you." "Quick, which team?" Okay, yeah. And it's just, it seems nonproductive.

• 1:01:28Tom Bilyeu?

  It is wildly nonproductive. And just as a PSA, seek disconfirming evidence. Always and forever, truth is a game of disconfirmation.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  What's your favorite, like, uh?

• 1:01:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Nazi slip?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  That's where I was going. What's your favorite offensive gesture?

• 1:01:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, probably just the good old fashioned middle finger. But not like, when people do it like that, I wanna bite their eyes out. There's something so weak sauce about that. You gotta like, really do the knuckles.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, otherwise I'm not here for it.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's the, it's the chin thing.

• 1:02:03Tom Bilyeu?

  That was too funny.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  I didn't know that was a thing until it was like, uh.

• 1:02:06Tom Bilyeu?

  The Brits have one that makes me laugh because it's so close to one that we have, which means the exact, like, not the exact opposite, but they're so different. So this to them is fuck you.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  It's a...

• 1:02:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. Versus our piece, which is just turn it the other way. So, that one makes me laugh every time. They're like, "Oh yeah, wait, the fingers are the other way, that's a bad thing, got it."

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Alright, that's all I got.

• 1:02:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright guys, make sure you are joining us for our lives every Monday and Wednesday at 6:00 AM Pacific. Until next time, my friends, be legendary.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  I wanted to jump into Victor Davis Hansen's response.

• 1:02:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go. I love this guy.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Response to the book, cause I feel like he summed it up in the best way possible. Let me get the right timestamp.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  CNN, grandee, seven-figure salary, kind of an iconic figure in this left-wing media outlook. But my point is this, for the last four years... Again and again and again, if anybody questioned the obvious mental decline of Joe Biden, his cognitive difficulties, Jake Tapper and went on CNN, Jake Tapper tore them apart. The locus classicus was Laura Trump, who said that he's obviously as early as 2020 in decline. And he suggested that she was berating him for a childhood stutter, which was absolutely ridiculous. So what is my point? Here is someone who promulgated the greatest cover up in the history of the US presidency, helped, and we were told that Joe Biden was fit as the fiddle.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  We had medical reports that obviously or mysteriously did not have one critical indicator that were apparent on the Trump and Obama presidential medical records releases. There was no PSA test, an indicator of the health or malignancy of one's prostate. That was a cover up too, as we're starting to learn. But my point is this, no one was more instrumental in berating, maybe Joe Scarborough, but other than he, Jake Tapper tore apart anybody who suggested that Joe Biden was as cognitive in decline as they saw with their own eyes and heard him. When the Wall Street Journal wrote in a definitive story, Jake Tapper wrote them off

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  as Murdoch, Fox propagandists. Why did he write a book now? Well, the obvious answer is that Joe Biden has no power. And these media people in Washington are, they're like moss to a flame. They gravitate to power. And when you don't have power, you don't have friends and there's no downside in telling the truth. Why didn't Jake Tapper write this a year ago? Because he knows what would have happened. Somebody in the White House would have called up and said, Tapper, no one from CNN is going to get a seat at a press conference. There's not going to be any CNN interviews. So he backed down. And now in a very cowardly fashion, now he comes out and he is blaming the White House cover up.

• 1:04:57Speaker 03

  But what he doesn't tell us is the White House cover up would have been impossible had not CNN, MSNBC. PBS, NBC, ABC, CBS, all conspired with the White House staff to downplay, not just downplay Biden's cognitive decline, but attack people.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  That's, I feel like he hit it in a nutshell. It's easy to have the conversation now. It's easy point that at these things now, but they were complicit. And I'm still on the no primary. The fact that there wasn't one Democrat that was like, hey, this is my shot. Biden is messed up. I'mma say it and like, like, it just seems like nobody had the guts to actually stand up and try to stop this thing. Even though, like Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson said it, they've seen signs back to 2013, 2015. Like it's, so this is not a new decline, but it's just, again, disheartening that this is where we are.

• 1:05:51Tom Bilyeu?

  This is where we are because this is what works. So if you're a politician and you're playing a political game, you've got to be honest about how things work. Again, never argue with reality. And there might be the occasional moment where you really can like take advantage of something that's going on and you can rise to the top of the party. I think that moment is now and you're seeing people try to do the grab in the vacuum of power. But when they have a death grip on the party, that's not a smart move. And if I were advising somebody, I'd be like, wait till the right moment and then take your shot. Don't take the shot now where it's guaranteed to get you isolated. We are living in a moment where the right and the left cannot cooperate. The second you cooperate with the other side, you're seen as a traitor. Everybody's about loyalty.

• 1:06:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody says that Trump is all about loyalty and he is. But one of the things that I found interesting in the Barry Weiss interview with Jake Tapper is that Alex Thompson said, loyalty is the number one idea for the Biden family. And anybody that pushed back was saw as disloyal and then you get iced out. And so if that's the reality, you have to play within that system. And this is exactly how systems corrupt is you're like, well, if I want to still be relevant, then I've got to stay alive and to stay alive right now, I've got to keep my head down. And it's all true. And if, again, if I were advising you, I would advise you, yeah, you have to play the game. But that is precisely how the game deranges. But. Um, yeah, man. If you haven't already, be sure to leave us a five star review wherever

• 1:07:19Tom Bilyeu?

  you get your podcasts. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods,

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