Israel vs. Iran: Are We Heading for Nuclear War? Trump, Airstrikes & the New Global Order | The Tom Bilyeu Show

In this urgent and thought-provoking episode of "Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu," Tom and co-host Drew dive headfirst into some of the most consequential geopolitical and domestic events unfolding right now. The conversation kicks off with escalating tensions in the Israel-Iran conflict, speculation about U. S. involvement, and global reactions to the prospect of another major war in the Middle East. With the world watching as superpowers and regional players clash over nuclear ambitions, Tom and Drew provide a nuanced and unflinching analysis of the moral dilemmas, double standards, and historical context driving events on the ground. Together, Tom and Drew untangle the complicated web of alliances, power imbalances, and ideological clashes between democratic West and theocratic regimes. They also examine the rise of anti-Semitism, the evolving narrative around Israel’s actions in Gaza versus Iran, and the hypocrisy surrounding nuclear proliferation. The stakes are high, and the intense back-and-forth ensures listeners come away with a deeper understanding of the forces shaping today’s headlines and tomorrow’s future. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Israel-Iran Conflict Heats Up: US and Global Stakes 00:33 The Danger of Nuclear Escalation 01:00 Real-Time Reactions on Social Media 01:13 Strikes on Population Centers and the Shift to War 01:25 Timeline and Origins: How Did We Get Here? 01:57 The Global Opinion Turn Against Israel 02:22 The Moral High Ground and Western Bias 03:22 "Head of the Octopus": Iran’s Influence and Middle Eastern Backdoor Diplomacy 04:16 Secret Alliances and Shifting Tone in the Region 05:08 Separating Critique from Anti-Semitism 06:12 Israel’s Nuclear Program Versus Iran’s: Double Standards and Transparency 07:29 Power, Morality, and the Responsibilities of Hegemony 08:05 Rebuilding After War and American Exceptionalism 10:10 Theocracy, Ideology, and the Coming Collision of Global Value Systems 11:25 The Internal Strength (or Weakness) of the Iranian Regime 11:58 US Politics: Trump’s Base Divided Over War and Foreign Policy 13:41 Principles for Chaos: Should America Join Another War? 14:20 The Threat of Religious Extremism and Nuclear Weapons 16:18 The Calculus for War: Risks, Opportunities, and Entrepreneurial Mindsets 17:35 How Should Americans Process This? Is Panic Warranted? FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu 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 Allio Capital: Macro investing for people who want to understand the big picture. Download their app in the App Store or at Google Play, or text my name “TOM” to 511511. 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! CashApp: Download Cash App Today:⁠ https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl⁠ https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl #CashAppPod iRestore:Give yourself the gift of hair confidence this year. For a limited time only, our community is getting a HUGE discount on the iRestore Elite when you use code IMPACT at ⁠https://irestore.com⁠ https://irestore.com 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. The Israel-Iran conflict is heating up. US involvement seems imminent. Trump dips out of the G7 early, presumably to plan Iran's strategy. Both US and Israel claim Israel has total air superiority over Iran at this point. Iran promises a surprise tonight that will be remembered for centuries. The exiled Shah of Iran addresses the Iranian people directly,

• 1:30Tom Bilyeu?

  and the FBI and IRS are promising to track down whoever is funding the LA riots. Drew, I would make a wisecrack right about now, but this is getting pretty crazy. I stopped myself from saying in the intro that the Israel-Iran mashup is going nuclear. But I couldn't stop myself from saying it now. So there we have it. But this is unnerving, to say the least.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I was on Twitter passively this weekend. I was at my brother's wedding, and I was just like, oh, okay. This was just another strike. They're just, you know, they fired it into the ocean. The Iron Dome called it, we're fine. Then I heard, strike number three, strike number four. They've been striking today. There's a strike happening right now. It's This is war war, like they're going back and forth. They're not striking, going to Poland, having a fake ceasefire meeting, then coming back. No, they're tit for tat immediately.

• 2:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, and striking population centers, at least Iran hitting Tel Aviv, like smack bang in the middle.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Tel Aviv was on fire. So to level set, it started over the weekend.

• 2:33Tom Bilyeu?

  It started a long time before that, Drew.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I don't even know where like the start was, because I'll be honest, I seen Israel fire first, and then I kind of jumped off. I'm just amazed how in real time, we're seeing the entire world turn on Israel. And I think that with October 7th, the Hamas conflict, we can understand that, we can rationalize that, we can get back to it. But now to start another war with Iran, because of nuclear weapons that Tulsi Gabbard said we don't have, it's giving me weapons of mass destruction 2.0.

• 3:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting. Uh, okay, well, we'll get to that in a minute, but first, so you hit me with a curve ball there. The, we're watching the whole world turn against Israel in real time. That feels like that happened before.

• 3:17Tom Bilyeu?

  So over the last few months longer, it's really, watching the rise of antisemitism again has been really terrifying. It's just such a crazy loop in history. But yes, I think that Israel way overplayed their hand in Gaza. They had completely lost the support of even some of their most diehard people. But them going after Iran does not surprise me. The one thing I will say that I'm impressed, I don't know if that's the right word, but even though they have completely lost the backing of the international community. I guess apparently, other than the US, like we'll get to that obviously in a second. But all of the popular support draining out of Israel for what they were doing in Gaza,

• 4:02Tom Bilyeu?

  clearly ethnic cleansing from my read, possibly spilling over into even more sinister territory. But despite all of that, continuing to push into Iran to finish this sort of three-pronged job as far as I can tell. So dealing with the, dealing with everything that was going on in Gaza with Hamas, dealing with the people in the north, I cannot believe I'm blanking on their name. Hezbollah, thank you. Dealing with Hezbollah in the north, and then going after Iran, the head of the octopus as they call it.

• 4:39Tom Bilyeu?

  I saw an interview with Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel. I believe who was prime minister right before Netanyahu, but somebody will need to fact check me on that. And he was like, listen, I've been a huge critic of Netanyahu, think he's terrible. But on this, all Israelis are behind him in terms of going after the head of the octopus. And I think he was the one that coined that phrase. That like all of this terror that's happening to Israel across the Middle East is all coming from Iran. And that while there will be countries that will condemn Israel for going after Iran secretly, they're all going to be saying, thank you, because nobody wants Iran to have nuclear weapons. And I mean, look, that'll play out in the fullness of time. But I will say, other than a couple like strongly worded letters, like nobody in the Middle East is squawking.

• 5:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, it's my understanding that Syria is even allowing Israel to use their airspace in order to get to Iran. So this feels like one where despite how grotesque Israel is looking as they continue to pummel Gaza, people feel differently now that they're going after Iran, like the tone shift has been dramatic. And so that's interesting. And I don't know if it's just the oppressor oppress thing was so clear in the, when Israel was going after Gaza, that it just looked grotesque. Uh, and now people don't run the same moral calculus when they're going after Iran. If people believe that there really are Iranian nuclear weapons.

• 6:05Tom Bilyeu?

  That's going to be fascinating to parse as we go deeper into this. But the Trump camp now splitting over Trump's embrace of this is fascinating.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  And that's where I was gonna go next. To be clear, I, we will be critical of Israel in this video. But I do want to separate that from antisemitism. That's no excuse to do any hate violence to Jewish people, anything like that. But we can still criticize the government, just like we criticize Trump and Biden and all those things like that. To me, it seems that what Israel is fighting in this specific instance, stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power, trying to destabilize the nuclear program, and to stop the head of the octopus, because Iran seems to kind of be this hub for other terrorist organizations. I understand on paper while they're going to do it, but I'm also being skeptical of what Israel is telling me the reasons because of what we just seen in Gaza and Palestine and things like that.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  So to the people that are looking at it just from a scoreboard perspective, Israel is not in the same restrictions that Iran has had due to the sanctions and things like that, so that we don't even have an accurate report of what the Israeli nuclear program looks like versus we know exactly how much centrifuges they have, how enriched it is to a percent on the Iran side. Is there a little bit of hypocrisy that Israel, who has been acting like a war criminal in Gaza, has kind of this free rein to bully other people about their nuclear programs, even though they might be doing the same thing in their own country?

• 7:33Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a really interesting question, and I promise, dear listeners, that we didn't talk about this beforehand. But as I was doing research on this, the one thing that you just step back and look at and go, okay, I've said many times, it's a very famous quote, "The strong will do as they will and the weak will suffer as they must." And you just take that sideways glance back at us. For a second, you realize, uh-oh, like, we're the strong who will do as they will. And admittedly, and this is a level of bias that is so pervasive in my mind that I would have a very hard time stepping outside of it. Democracy, though wildly imperfect ours is, still feels like the only government I would want to live under.

• 8:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And listen, you need do nothing more than watch the deep dives that I write to see that I have deep and fundamental problems with the way that I think our government steals from us. But to make the point very clear, democracy, to me, is the right answer. The West is the right answer. I think that it has the moral high ground. It does not have moral perfection, let me be very clear. But we have the moral high ground. So I'm glad that we are the most powerful. But at the same time, to your point, when you are the most powerful, there aren't checks and balances on you that there are on other people. And it is not lost on me that America is the only country to actually drop a nuclear weapon, make that two.

• 9:01Tom Bilyeu?

  I cling to things like, well, we could have put the world under our thumb after World War II, and we were the only ones that had a nuclear weapon, and we didn't. And so that makes me feel very good, the fact that we helped rebuild people that had been our staunch enemies. And that makes me feel tremendously good, right? So I feel like we've done things to earn some of that moral high ground. But again, it's not loss to me that we don't have certain checks and balances on us that we apply on everybody else. And so Israel is one of our closest allies, obviously. The fact that everyone just assumes they have nuclear weapons, but they've never declared that they have nuclear weapons, is like, well, that does feel a little bit special.

• 9:43Tom Bilyeu?

  But at the same time, I look at the outcome of the Israeli government, and I look at the outcome of the Iranian government. I would say the Palestinian government as well, but people are obviously going to throw flags on that play. But what are you going to say about Iran? So, I mean, I know what they're going to say, that the US flipped the government, which is not untrue, sort of. But nonetheless, the Iranian government overthrew the dictator, essentially, that America had put in place, the Shah of Iran, but with a theocracy. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't watching with bated breath to see how these ideologies perform.

• 10:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, much like the US versus the USSR was not just a Cold War of ideologies. It was a Cold War where the economies were going to play out. Like, how does this ideology manifest as a tangible economic engine? And so now we're going to see the same thing. Like, Iran isn't Palestine, man. They're 91 million people, they've got fucking oil for days.

• 10:56Tom Bilyeu?

  And so it'll be interesting to see if said theocracy stands up tall, or if it's as weak internally, meaning it doesn't have the backing of its own people in the way that propaganda certainly wants me to believe. I, it's all spin, so I never know what to believe, but certainly that's the messaging.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Nice. To your point of Trump is having a problem with his base splitting. Some people are for jumping into this war, some people are against it. JD Vance tweeted out a message of support I wanted to talk to you about. Look, I'm seeing this from the inside and I am admittedly biased toward our president and my friend, but there's a lot of crazy stuff on social media. So I wanted to address some things directly on the Iran issue. First, POTUS has been amazingly consistent over 10 years that Iran cannot have a nuclear program. Over the last few months-

• 11:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Nuclear weapon, technically.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Nuclear weapon. Over the last few months, he encouraged his foreign policy team to reach a deal with the Iranians to accomplish his goal. And he said repeatedly that this will happen on one of two ways, the easy way or the other way. Second, I've seen a lot of confusion over the issue of civilian nuclear power and uranium enrichment. These are distinct issues. They've been found in violation of their non-proliferation obligations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is hardly a right wing organization. It's one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It's another thing to man sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it's still another to go cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium. He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Dave Smith has thrown Trump out. He regrets endorsing him, says he shouldn't be impeached. Candace Owens and Ian Carroll did a live earlier today criticizing Trump for making this move and calling him a Zionist and falling under to those, falling prey to Israel yet again. What do you say about this war? Do you think the US should join it?

• 12:54Tom Bilyeu?

  I can give you principles for dealing with a chaotic world order. But we don't have the information inside to know if I had all the information, would I do what Trump is doing or not? So I will say this, when you have a theocracy who believes that God has told them to kill Israelis, wipe them off the map, to kill Americans, to kill the British, those are the three that I've heard directly, obviously translated. So I guess it's entirely possible that I'm being bamboozled, but I hear that from like all the translations I've ever seen.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  No, but it's death to America, death to Israel, death to UK.

• 13:35Tom Bilyeu?

  So that, I don't want those people to have nuclear weapons. Full stop, period, end of story. And it definitely seems in our best interest to make that stop. Given that Trump, and again, you're taking someone's word for it, but given that he has tried and tried and tried to broker a deal and legitimately seems willing to talk to anybody, which is one thing that I appreciate about his foreign policy. But they didn't bite. And so if you remember way back, I think before Trump took office, I said, oh God, the way, the thing that makes me nervous about the way that he talks is eventually someone's going to call his bluff. And if it is a bluff, then this whole house of cards falls down, which means he's going to have to back it up. And I will say, as far as I can tell, Trump doesn't really bluff. He just goes, this is how I'm going to play it.

• 14:20Tom Bilyeu?

  And suicide mission or not, he's going to do it for a little while so that you understand, no, no, no, he's serious about that. Now, he might back off very quickly when he sees that something is a bad idea, but he's going to punch you in the mouth. Again, whether it's a terrible fucking idea or not, he's going to throw that punch. And so I look at this and I'm like, yeah. Everything that I know about Trump says, hey, I tried to broker a deal. You said no, you're getting punched. Now, maybe he goes all the way to Bunker Buster and destroys their Fordale facility. Maybe he doesn't, but I would be utterly shocked if he didn't throw some punches before he steps back to the negotiating table. That would utterly shock me.

• 15:05Tom Bilyeu?

  So again, do I think that we should be in this? Anybody that's saying death to America and is trying to become nuclear armed? Yes, you have to do something. Would it be a thousand different brands of moronic if we get sucked into another Iraq? Yes, for sure. So it'll be, it will be interesting to see what other information comes out. But with the information that I have, I would say dropping bunker busters on Fordale, I can get behind. Getting involved in a long-term skirmish between Israel and Iran, not so much. Quick break, but don't go anywhere.

• 15:47Tom Bilyeu?

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• 16:32Tom Bilyeu?

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• 18:06Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, copy. And it's weird, because for me, you know, the American taxpaying citizen who goes to church and has a daughter, I'm looking at this, no more wars, we need to be America first, we need to leave it alone. But then, like, the opportunistic me, the entrepreneur me is like, I mean, one bomb, and you could kill that, like, you gotta take that shot, right? You could just put it to bed tomorrow, you'd never have to worry about this again. Trump will literally sleep peacefully if he can get that facility off the map. Why wouldn't you take it? Like, you have every green light. The international community is basically pointing at it like, go ahead, bro, just do it, we get it. We understand. Israel's boots on the ground, and they already are lighting Tehran up. So Israel is on the offensive. It's not like this is a last-ditch effort or anything like that.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  It seems like the right move to do, but I don't know. Just in general, though, because I'm gonna be honest, I've been watching bombs for the last, like, 24 hours trying to play catch-up. How do you think people should level set about this moment? Like, is there a historical perspective? Like, what does this actually mean? Should we start being worried? Should I buy a bunch of water jugs? Like, how are you processing this?

• 19:12Tom Bilyeu?

  In the US, in the US, I have such catastrophic concerns for totally different reasons. So, watch my upcoming deep dive where I go into the, all the political violence that we see. As of today, I don't see a way to avert civil war. I'll, I give a plan that is very much stolen from Ray Dalio, but I don't think we're going to take it. So, I think that we've got our own woes coming in big ways. I don't think it's going to be from this. I think you showed me a video that's interesting. I mean, this is like Fulton hat, but anonymous posted a video yesterday, I believe, as of the time of this recording, anyway,

• 19:57Tom Bilyeu?

  saying that in 16 days, that there's going to be a false flag attack on American soil.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  We have acquired verified information that a major attack is being planned on domestic soil. It will be brutal, it will be visible, and it will be blamed on a foreign faction, one from the Middle East. But that is a lie. The operation is a false flag orchestrated not by a foreign enemy, but by an elite shadow alliance within a nation that poses as our greatest ally, but instead is a hyper militarized power with deep influence through sexual black men in our intelligence, government, and media sectors. Their goal: to drag us into their war, under the guise of retaliation.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  But the real motive isn't justice, it's control, resources, power.

• 20:52Tom Bilyeu?

  They don't say it, but it seems obvious that they're talking about a false flag on American soil

• 21:00Tom Bilyeu?

  that will be blamed on Iran, but very much, according to them, won't actually have been Iran. And that it will be done so that we can put our full might behind the Israel-Iranian conflict. My view on history is that Governments really do work at cross purposes with their people a lot. And this kind of thing, uh, I can certainly see. I have no reason to believe that this is real. I know nothing about this. Like I said, this is full tin foil hat conspiracy stuff right now. But what freaks me out is how predictable all of these things are, given the forces of, wars are just so economically amazing.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, wars good for.

• 21:47Tom Bilyeu?

  God, they're good in some ways because one, okay, here I am worried about civil war. If you can rally the country around something like a new nine 11 where it's like, yo, we just got attacked by Iran. Like, we gotta be focused on that. Like, we've got to stop bickering. So those kinds of things do work for sure. Wars like that are extremely, uh, good for the economy. But in weird ways that end up in the long run being wildly destructive. And so if we go to war, it will be money printing, literally right up until we implode. So, um, it would be catastrophic. It would be a mistake of the highest order from a financial standpoint. I'll just tell you that right now.

• 22:32Tom Bilyeu?

  And so people worrying about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, like you've got to avoid it. You've got to.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Hold on, can we like even afford this? Cause it, it seems that I thought war would lead to profit or lead to maybe we'll steal some oil or something. But it just seems like all this is going to cost us bodies, debt and our national future. Maybe we avoid a civil war, but.

• 22:53Tom Bilyeu?

  You can afford anything when the reserve currency is your money for a while. And what we, we will, if Trump decides that we are getting in this war, we will fund it. Literally forever. And much like countries go, uh, well, we can't have a election now, Drew. Uh, we've got somebody in office. Uh, we're, we're in the middle of a war. You will get a very similar reaction financially. Well, we can't stop spending now, Drew. Like, we're in the middle of a war. And so people will, if they can be made to believe in the enemy, then there, there is virtually no stopping the print bus.

• 23:36Tom Bilyeu?

  The problem is that you are devaluing everybody's holdings with every dollar that you spend. So it will accelerate the political violence internally. And the one thing I will say is, I don't think people are running the proper calculus on the era that we're living in from an information standpoint. You just can't stop people from complaining, calling it out, saying what it is. So it was just a hyper-awareness to things that there didn't used to be. So it will be interesting to see what actually happens. Because you're gonna have people like me doing deep dive after deep dive, explaining why this is financial suicide.

• 24:17Tom Bilyeu?

  How this inevitably leads to the end of empire, the loss of reserve currency status. And that what ends up happening, it's really fascinating. The country will turn on itself. And so you'll print money to a point where you think, well, we've got this external enemy. Surely we'll be focused on them. And you will, as long as there's a perceived, like, imminent threat. But the second the imminent threat goes away, like, you, you break apart. And so, I mean, this is very similar to the UK after World War II. It's like they're, the pound just kept declining and declining and declining. Churchill was voted out of office almost immediately after the war. So the guy literally saves all of Western Europe.

• 25:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And then it's just ousted, because everything changes after the war. So I think America is on a one-way path right now to tearing itself apart in the next 10 years. That will only accelerate if we go to war. But there are certain things that it will feel like it will postpone. It, that's maybe the wrong way to say it. The right way to say it is, it will give them a license to print. And because people are so...

• 25:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Incapable of transcending their emotions. They'll do it.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  On that, okay, that just took me the opposite way. I thought when you have a war, it's good for the like economy.

• 25:41Tom Bilyeu?

  When you have a war, it's good for, uh, it's, oh God, okay, so.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I asked it.

• 25:48Tom Bilyeu?

  It is, it is on the surface, good for the economy because it gives you a reason to print money. And so you're pumping money into the system. When you pump money into the system, you're driving asset prices up. So people that hold assets are going to be like, this is the greatest time ever. Given that that's the elites, given that the elites are the ones that have the influence in Washington DC. That for a large part, they control politics. You'll get a ground up revolt every now and then, which is what we saw with Trump. But for the most part, it's the wealthy elites that control narratives and control politics and on and on. Cause everybody's going to do whatever they need to do to get money.

• 26:28Tom Bilyeu?

  So from that perspective, once you understand that war gives you the ability to steal from everybody through inflation. So literally poor, middle class, wealthy, everybody gets stolen from, but only asset holders get enriched. And then like an even more narrow band of people really get to take advantage of it. Because they get money before the inflation actually makes its way out into the economy. So imagine if I were going to print a trillion dollars.

• 26:57Tom Bilyeu?

  The trillion dollars might take six months, a year to be felt in prices. Well, if you're one of the companies that gets advantage because you're Lockheed Martin or whatever. And you get these huge contracts. You've got a year where you just got, you know, let's say $200 million, $500 million, whatever. And you got a year to fucking spend it before prices go up. So I'm oversimplifying it, but boy, oh boy, is that exactly how it works.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  And then on the other side, one more follow up. I remember it was in World War Two, like we printed money and made war bonds. And that was the way that we like financed it, like.

• 27:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, okay.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Could something like that happen?

• 27:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Of course.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:42Tom Bilyeu?

  So here's how it works. So right now, the bond market, JP, no, not JP Morgan, the guy that works, uh, what's his name? Chase.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Jamie Dimon.

• 27:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Jamie Dimon, thank you. Jamie Dimon came out recently and said, the bond market's going to crack. God Drew, you're really making me, I'm convincing myself over here that there really is gonna be a false flag to get us into the war. It would be so fucking convenient. Okay, so Jamie Dimon comes on and he says, listen, the bond market's gonna crack. What does that mean? It means that the, the reason they call the Fed the buyer of last resort is because it's inflationary if they buy the debt, but it's not inflationary if all of us that have money go buy the debt. So when your average schoolteacher is like feeling patriotic and they're like, well, I'm not gonna go fight, but I'll buy war bonds,

• 28:34Tom Bilyeu?

  then you get their money, their post-tax dollars Drew, you get to suck them back into the government. Oh God, it's so evil. So you get people buying the bonds and you don't have to print. And so you'll first gobble up all of that and then you'll just keep spending how, literally however much they want. And let's say that we've got, you know, three, four, five trillion in debt because it's a wartime economy. You just print whatever you're not able to get from the buying public. And so if it's, it is almost certainly true that the bond market is going to crack because people like me, who traditionally buy a lot of bonds,

• 29:16Tom Bilyeu?

  are sitting back going, our inflation is getting so unhinged, our, our money printing, our debt is getting so unhinged that it will break. Like mathematically, it breaks. I just don't know if it breaks in two months, two years. It's not gonna be more than 10 years. Like mathematically, it's just, it's not possible. So, uh, but I'm gonna back off. Then a bunch of other people are gonna back off and then all of a sudden you've got the Fed buying all of your debt. And so if we're in that position already and Jamie Dimon is warning about it now, there are gonna be people eyeing that going, ooh, people are not gonna let us print.

• 29:59Tom Bilyeu?

  People are gonna squawk. They're gonna tell the government, no more spending. This is like, Doge was reviled now, but you start getting stupid with it and people are really gonna say something. And so, again, this is just conjecture. This is pure conspiracy. But I see the forces at work that would cause somebody to be like, eh, we're gonna need to give people an enemy. Drew, I don't know if people, like, take the most evil, like, central banker, mustache twirling.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say Hitler, most evil genocider, the most evil federal banker.

• 30:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Because those guys, that's different.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  The most evil Monopoly guy.

• 30:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Looking at Hitler is a totally different bag and very fascinating. But I'm saying, like, somebody who you imagine they're a comic book villain, because they just want to, they wanna be in control politically. They want to kill the enemy so they can take their oil. I mean, just like that, the real, like, the way that people imagined Dick Cheney. Like, just that evil, like, caliber of it all.

• 31:11Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think it's, I doubt that it's actually pure evil. It's something more like, my life is good right now. I don't want this to stop. I'm so inside my bubble that I don't, I mean, I sort of know that the things that I do are gonna, like, really negatively impact a lot of other people. But it's like, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. So it just becomes so big that you just think, hmm. Like, my life is dope. For my life to continue, I see this path. It's money printing. I understand how this works. We can maintain political control.

• 31:55Tom Bilyeu?

  And I just have this vague sense that I'm morally right anyway. So I need to maintain control to make sure we're doing the right thing. And I'm not really thinking about all the people that are gonna be negatively affected. I just think about the fact that this is gonna let me maintain my lifestyle. I really think it's something more like that. It's like the banality of evil becomes the real answer.

• 32:19Tom Bilyeu?

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• 32:57Tom Bilyeu?

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• 33:27Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 33:32Speaker 01

  And do you think that is that a human nature problem?

• 33:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Ah, so even before it was kings and emperors and now it's federal bankers.

• 33:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, it is.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  This seems specific to me that if I have to kill you, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Those rules are a bit simpler. I understand them. Maybe just inflation is too complicated. I'm losing, I'm getting caught like lost in the translation. But this does seem intentional that you can mathematically calculate it. You can like, we're dealing with numbers. We're dealing with like money. We're not just dealing with arbitrary egos or pride or like me and how my sword swings. Like it's, I've been playing a lot of like Assassin's Creed, so I'm in Sam Raimi. Yeah, but it's just one of those things of like, you're actively stealing from the generation. Like Jerome Powell, you have a granddaughter. Like you don't ever think like, hey, I should lower the rate because.

• 34:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Drew, I really believe that the vast majority of humanity. Believes they're right. They they don't even know how to question it. They just feel right. And so, okay, I feel right. They are unable to get themselves to change direction when they've never lived through it before. So they've never lived through a country going broke before. So they're freaked. They they don't even know to be afraid of that. Like, they hear about it on paper, but they've never lived through it. Um, I think about this a lot. This is why I still live in California. Because I keep thinking, I'm not really like gonna try to secede and like become proper communist, right?

• 35:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Because I've never gone through it before. If I'd been through this before, because the math says, get the fuck out. But I I just can't bring myself. It's so disruptive. The thought of having to convince all of you guys to move with me, or God forbid, if you guys decided you didn't want to, I'd have to rehire. Oh, God. My wife does not want to leave. Jesus, that would be a nightmare. My wife actually has friends. They're all located here. If I have an internet connection, I'm fine. Uh, but my wife has like real friends. And so you you get caught up in the day to day of it all. And I really think that spiral of I trust myself, this feels right.

• 35:48Tom Bilyeu?

  I've never lived through this before, so I can't make the leap from, I get it intellectually on paper, but in reality, I think I can make this continue forever. Period. If you want to go somewhere else, we can. But I'll say one last thing. I won't rat this person out because I like them a lot. But a very famous social influencer during, uh, like, the 2020 to 2023 period, actually said, when talking about the economy, maybe this time it really is different. Maybe the world is so interconnected that we could never have a recession again. And I remember thinking, uh-oh. The second you say that, the second you allow yourself to believe that, like, you are fucked.

• 36:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. But.

• 36:36Tom Bilyeu?

  We just, we are so bad at translating like the, the jarring gong of reality that will slap us in the face. We, we find it impossible to see it on paper and act as if we've already been hit with it.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it. That's of facto. Um, moving on to Russia. I feel like one thing we haven't talked about in this discussion is kind of like the proxy war element of it all. Um, I can honestly think that for us, it's in the US's best interest for Israel to take out Iran. Maybe it's in China's best interest or Russia's best interest to maybe have Iran be a prominent figure in the Middle East, but we can kind of see why we would support Israel and kind of where that through line is. Do you see a reason why Iran, even there's reports that they're giving peace talks. Do you see anything on Iran's side of?

• 37:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Who's giving peace talks?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Like they even asked for like a ceasefire. They were seeking a ceasefire. I've seen a tweet that Iran was after this weekend.

• 37:37Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting, man. I, I have no information that the general public doesn't have. My immediate assumption is, yeah, if I'm getting bombed, I'm gonna say, uh, let's go back to the tables because you know you can draw it out. Like, uh, listen, you want a secret? God, this is one of those I probably should just keep to myself. Uh, but I think to myself routinely, I can talk my way out of anything. And so I want to put myself in a position where I've got an opportunity to like go down the road to see if this is going to be advantageous. And as long, and this is why I tell people with contracts, the thing I care about is what is my out? If I have a good out, bro, I'll go way down

• 38:21Tom Bilyeu?

  in negotiation to find out like, is there really something here? And I'll just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, as if I'm like totally committed. Cause I'm like, right when I have to sign on the dotted line, if I don't have a good out, then I can unwind it. But to not at least, I mean, if I'm getting bombed, to not at least like go down that path and be like, bro, let's talk. That buys me time. Like first of all, if I actually am close to a nuclear weapon, I want to buy as much time as I can because it is a totally different game. If I know that I'm legitimately a week or a month away from a nuclear bomb, I've got to get you to stop. I've got to say whatever I need to say to get you to not bomb for it out. So they would almost be dumb not to at least try to play that card.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Very good point. Very good point. Interesting. And then continuing into Russia, Ian Brummer tweeted over the weekend that Russia is now targeting Ukrainian civilians. This was their deadliest strike of this second iteration of the war over the weekend. Fifteen people dead, including one American.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Drones still flying, missiles still dropping in Russia, as they're also dropping in the Middle East. I remember we talked about AndroL and all the American weapon manufacturers and how like drone warfare is gonna take over, we have to be prepared. And then over this weekend, I was just seeing hundreds of drones.

• 39:40Tom Bilyeu?

  It feels like in the last like three months.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Like immediately, it became like everybody has guns to not everybody has drones. And it just, that that switch flipped. And even with Israel's attack, they used AI to even like you to get the drones into Iran space and then to then execute the attack. Like, this is no longer the future of, this is what war is now. It's crazy.

• 40:00Tom Bilyeu?

  War and pornography. Those are the things that advance technology. It's, it's bananas, but it's true. What we're living through right now is really weird for me. And I cannot pinpoint if this is 90% that we just have cameras everywhere now. And so now all of a sudden, I can watch missiles landing in Tel Aviv. I can watch a drone detonate in the side of an apartment complex. And it's just, it's always been like this? We just now film everything? Or if right now is uniquely dangerous? It feels uniquely dangerous.

• 40:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And I feel like I'm talking myself off a ledge by being like, no, it's just so we have cameras everywhere.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I would say the cameras add to the uniquely dangerous element of it. Cause I feel like if you see a bunch of images, it's easy to then be radicalized one way or another, or to submit your, you know. For all we know... Iran is in a crazy algorithmic loop and they just be fed all this. Israel is screwing the world over us now they're mad. Uh, I'm being tongue in cheek here.

• 41:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I doubt, I doubt that's the beef.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 41:11Tom Bilyeu?

  We were good, but, uh, we didn't like that post you did.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  There's definitely people who have, who are commenting right now, who are in their own echo chambers and are saying, see, because of these three videos that I've watched, this is why Russia's a bad guy, this place is a bad guy, insert bad guy here, so.

• 41:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I will say that, uh, there's no doubt you and I will unintentionally spread incorrect information from time to time. There's no doubt about that. Uh, not letting us off the hook. We certainly will never do it intentionally. But I find myself having to research everything. When I see something like, we both saw the video of the supposed Iranian petting the, um, small nuclear bomb. I was just like, there's no way this is real. And so it took you a bunch of time, you finally tracked it down to the original video that it was in and it just gets reposted around. Or people will post a real video, but if it were filmed today, it would mean something dramatically different than if it were filmed, like in the case of one that I was looking at earlier that was filmed two years ago.

• 42:09Tom Bilyeu?

  And so it's like, oh my God, there's just, it is really hard to parse out what is true. Now, I know when I say that, people are gonna be like, see, this is why we need like a ministry of truth. And I'm like, have you, do you motherfuckers not read like 1984? But anyway, people clamor for that shit. It's gonna be hard though. It's gonna be hard and I would officially, as a PSA, like to ask the technology companies out there, would you please, for the love of God, integrate blockchain or something so that I can know beyond a shadow of a doubt where a video comes from? That would be amazing. Uh, I think we're, not only are we going to need that, it, that is going to happen. There's just no way. There's so much bullshit.

• 42:52Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, here it is. Here is our supposed Iranian. This is so ridiculous.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  So then this was the repost of it. This is what an Iranian news, uh, media outlet did. This is kind of their Al Jazeera or something like that. They retweeted this. And then Israel's initial one, which of course I can.

• 43:11Tom Bilyeu?

  So wait, who was the first person to post that video?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Israel.

• 43:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Right. Israel posted that. That was in like some longer video. There we go.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yes, here it is. And there's, they were using it as a warning.

• 43:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Can we just say Israel? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. Nobody pets their nuclear bomb. The second I saw, I was like, I'm being trolled right now.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's like you said, I seen the Iranian version first and it said, maybe. So I'm like, oh snap.

• 43:41Tom Bilyeu?

  I was like, there's no way that Iran is posting somebody petting a nuclear weapon. And it says, maybe, maybe you never know. I was like, there's no way these guys do not have that kind of humor. Plus, like, if you say maybe to something like that, everyone goes, get the fuck out of here. You don't have that, that, yeah, that one's absurd. But there's so much stuff. I showed Lisa a video of a giraffe with a fanny pack on, boarding an airplane on its own volition, and she thought it was real. Now, in her defense, she couldn't tell that it was an airplane. It just looked like it was going through like some sort of metal gateway. And I was in hysterics.

• 44:25Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm like, it has a fanny pack on. And she was like, oh, okay, you're right, it does. But it's like, when you're just sort of glancing at something.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  When you're scrolling, yeah, aimlessly scrolling.

• 44:33Tom Bilyeu?

  The one that got me, and I'll, I remind myself of this all the time, was the tents on the buses.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 44:40Tom Bilyeu?

  And I was like, wait. I was like, the wind surely would not. And then I was like, hold on, this has got to be AI. But for a second, I really believed it. Like, my mental model was like, oh damn, like homeless going hard. AI is gonna get us all, Drew.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Sheesh, well, if AI is not gonna get us, it's gonna be the FBI. Because the FBI and the IRS has joined forces to find and hold accountable the individuals funding the LA riots.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Bill Asayli, United States Attorney for the Central District of California. And I'm Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office. And I'm Tyler Hatcher, the Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation here in Los Angeles. The right to assemble and protest peacefully is protected by law. Unfortunately, we've seen individuals whose intentions are to cause damage and to assault law enforcement. For example, last week, we arrested an individual who was charged with conspiracy to commit and aiding and abetting civil disorders. These violent agitators put peaceful demonstrators at risk.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  The FBI and our federal partners will continue to investigate individuals and organizations who are knowingly funding or committing acts of violence against law enforcement, as well as the destruction of property. We are currently tracing money to determine who is providing funding for these riots. Funding crime doesn't just affect the criminals, it also disrupts entire communities. Each dollar funneled into illegal operations fuels violence, undermines law and order, and perpetuates fear. Make no mistake, we will identify and disrupt financial networks supporting these criminal activities. Think before you act. The legal consequences for financing or aiding and abetting these crimes are harsh. They include imprisonment and fines.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  If you have any information regarding individuals and/or organizations providing financial support...

• 46:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Sheesh. There's a lot of levels to address this video, Andrew. Okay, while I really want to start with the guy in the middle's neck routine, because he better be a wrestler, or a boxer, or something, Drew. Okay, so, the LA riots, as teased out from the protests, I think that's an important thing to break apart. America is tearing itself apart. That is just facts. Like, when I was writing the deep dive, and you start listing out all the things that have happened just in the last five years, it's absurd. It sounds like you're talking about a third world country. It's crazy. Political assassinations, that's the one that always gets me, but like, riot on the

• 47:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Capitol, political assassinations, attempted assassination of the president, people openly calling for the assassination of Trump, like, literally on their X account, like, not trying to hide. The riots, the protests, the Tesla dealers, Jesus, man. I didn't even include that one. So, when I was watching the LA riots, I was just like, man, we've really gone mad. If you actually want to affect change, you've got to do it peacefully. I mean, that's just like the history books say. So, when I see the violence, this is people who are so in their feels...

• 47:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Or they're being orchestrated, and I don't know which is worth, they're both fucking horrific in terms of their outcomes. But you've got people orchestrating the people who feel some kind of way emotionally is probably the chain of events. And so it's like, you're gonna have to track that down. Okay, you have to put a stop to that. Otherwise, it's just gonna escalate, escalate, escalate. People will do as much as they can, just like a kid, they're gonna test the boundaries. And if they get away with riots at that level, then they're gonna push and push and push. Uh, and that's how you get domestic terrorism. Okay. Uh, the next layer is, we are militarizing our police force.

• 48:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, we're sending Marines in, and, and I think rightly so, but this is horrible. This is the wrong direction. The thing I think for myself is, listen, I have wild biases. I have, um, a value system that tells me things ought to be this way, that way, whatever. But when I look at the future that I want, I force myself to find my way to the middle. And what I mean by that is not that I'm changing my beliefs. I force myself to say, I'm not right. These, my values aren't right. My values are just mine. And so I've got to understand that there are other people and they feel different. And I might look at them and have the impulse to laugh and be like, these people are literal clowns.

• 49:12Tom Bilyeu?

  What the fuck? Uh, but that's not gonna get us where I wanna go. And so, just as I would hope they would extend an olive branch to me, rather than yelling and screaming at me because they don't like the things that I believe, I need to do the same for them. And both sides seem desperate to lock the other side up. And there's something, you can't let crimes go unpoliced. I get it, but you've gotta have shock absorbers. You've got to, when you're dealing with, um, political actors, for instance, you, you've just gotta give them an additional layer of like, okay, fine, like, I'm gonna put up with a bit more from you than I might put up with from somebody else.

• 49:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Because, like, I don't want to find myself gleeful that I get to arrest my opponents. Like, if you can't see, that flips on you the second you're not in power. They will do the same to you. And then it's like,

• 50:10Tom Bilyeu?

  This, the people that are in this country, Drew, are the people that are gonna be in the country in the future. So if right now, you think these are all fucking idiots,

• 50:20Tom Bilyeu?

  what are you saying? Like, for the next sixty years? That you're gonna hate? A huge swath of the country? Like, that, that's full retard. You've gotta find a way, I mean, this is like, I'm speaking to a Christian here. This is like some straight up Jesus shit. It's like, turn the other cheek, extend an olive branch. Like, you've gotta find a way to bring people together. You've gotta find a way to pull yourself to the middle. You've gotta find a way to have compassion for other people that do not see the world the way that you see the world. Like, if people cannot see that the polarization is yanking us apart, like, faster and faster every day, that just freaks me out. And because I'm so hyper-aware of the economic forces that push us in this direction,

• 51:06Tom Bilyeu?

  and the odds of those lighting up anytime soon are basically zero, uh, if we wanna get on the other side of this without a whole lot of bloodshed, we've gotta find a way to, instead of being like, uh, we're going to militarize everything, we're gonna find you, we're gonna hunt you down.

• 51:22Tom Bilyeu?

  You can't let people get away with stuff. You have to put borders. But like, do you have to make this video? Where you get the three guys to stand like this? And you tell them to put your hands in the exact same thing? It's like, I get it, man, but they're trying to like, send a message. They, they don't have somebody that's like, I mean, I hate to beat this fucking drum, but Nelson Mandela was like, the right guy for the time. And to come out and be talking about unity, and, listen, I don't know how much of it is propaganda, I get that, but the movie Invictus, about him going to the rugby team and being like, basically, I need you guys to win, because we need something that unifies the country? It's like, give me some of that shit. You know what I mean? Like,

• 52:07Tom Bilyeu?

  if we're not gonna get it from our leaders, it's gotta come from each of us.

• 52:12Tom Bilyeu?

  So here it is to people that do not think the way that I think word. I love it. In fact, one of the things that I love about you and I is we don't see everything the same. But I have tremendous respect for you. I'm glad that I get to be made sharper because you disagree with a lot of the things that I think. So anyway, man, I really hope people can see, even if it's not a game being orchestrated by some comic book villain just off camera. We are being pulled apart and it just takes each of us to try to force ourselves back to the middle.

• 52:49Tom Bilyeu?

  To understand not everybody's going to see things the way that we see things to always fight ethically. Cause listen, I want to convince people. I want to convince people my way is right because I believe my way is right. I just have a healthy distrust for myself enough that I'm like, I'm not going to browbeat people into my position.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Happy. That was well said. And I have a story for you over the weekend that you would love. I brought up an eat the babies reference. My nephew, he's 25, he just turned 25. We were walking downtown San Francisco, kind of seeing the remnants of the protest, super chill. I didn't see a rock. I didn't see like nothing. We were on our way to get food. Everybody else was in the hotel. They got married at like the iconic city hall. Long story short, we were downtown San Fran the whole weekend. As we were walking past, he was like, you know what, Drew? If we just took out like five people, we'll be fine. I was like, that's, that's how it always starts. You take out five and I said exactly what you tell me, then it's 10. Then it's just, it's just 13 million and a half. That's it. After the half, we're done. So, and then he started laughing like, well, yeah, that is true. I was like, yeah, cause five turns into 10, turns into 50, turns into 100 turns.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  So that's, and he kind of seen that. I was like, oh, well, yeah, that is a good point. Well, but still we need to, you're right. The community is cooked. We need to go and we were, we were actively debating ideas. Cause he's, I'm never going to get a house, the economy. And he went to school, got a good job, like he checked all the boxes and he still is priced out. And he's still, and so talking to him and I kind of broke it down from that perspective. He was like, oh, okay. All right. Well. We need to kind of switch our, our position now. Maybe we need to do more grassroots and maybe we need to do some education. And I was like. I like that the conversation shifted from if we killed this person, we'll be happy to we need to do these things to build it up.

• 54:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Word.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  And I think, just like you said, there, there has to come a time where Trump, AOC, Bernie, the FBI, Steve Bannon, your favorite podcaster, like, there's gonna be a time where us as people have to say, how I treat the person who I live with, who I live next to, like, how I treat that person is gonna matter. And that needs to get presidents again. Like, we need to start, like, I wasn't out there protesting this weekend, but respect for them that you were out there for eight hours a day holding us on, like, salute to you, you know what I mean? And it's, as long as you weren't, and even with this video, I'm not mad at this video. If people are getting funded, find the money, end the money, like, I'm 100% okay with this investigation. But I also know it's gonna take more than the FBI threatening us, it's gonna take more than Trump tweets,

• 55:06Speaker 01

  it's gonna take more than the Democratic nominee of 2028 to just flip a switch and now we're unity again. It's gonna take us talking to each other, talking to the people we don't disagree with. And once we actually start having those conversations, you realize the three generation gap we think we really have is really like, oh, you just think we shouldn't kill people? Oh, I don't think that either. Cool, now we're friends. You know what I mean? Like, political conversations can end that fast if you just talk to people.

• 55:29Tom Bilyeu?

  And my, my real hope is, and the reason that I let you chain me to my laptop, writing these deep dives, uh, and listen, if they work, this was Drew's idea, man. I put this shit off forever. Uh, but the reason that I spend the time writing them is I really hope that if people understand the mechanisms by which this stuff happens, that then it's the, it's the same impulse that I have to convince people that they're having a biological experience. Like, even if God made it such that you're having a biological experience, fine, but you are having a biological experience. That helps me a lot. That's the reason that I was able to be like, oh, I have these really strong emotions,

• 56:13Tom Bilyeu?

  but I don't have to trust them, or I don't have to invest in them, I don't have to fan the flames, I can actually de-escalate myself. Even when I think I'm right, even when I think I have a reason to be mad, I'm like, because this all started with my wife. We would fight on a Saturday, it was the only day that I didn't work. And I'd spend all day mad at her and I would legitimately be like, but I have a right to be mad. What she did is upsetting in the cold light of day. She agrees she shouldn't have done it. It really was upsetting. And so of course I'm going to be upset. And then I was like, have you ever once spent hours being mad and then gone, oh, that was a good use of time? Literally not once. Never. And so I was like, oh, wait a second, then why don't I break that loop? And that made me realize, oh, I can't trust my emotions because, meaning they don't yield the outcome, my stated outcome.

• 56:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Like I want to have a lovely Saturday with my wife, who I love, who is the most fun person for me ever to be around. And yet I'm sacrificing all that time because I get this momentary emotion that carries me forward. And so getting people to understand that there are mechanisms to all this. That once you understand the mechanisms, you can step outside of it. But when you don't realize that there are mechanisms, that, that the system billionaires aren't trying to fuck you. The system creates billionaires because of the way that money printing and debt works, how it feeds into asset prices and blah, blah, blah. And listen, the honest answer is while most people are never going to become billionaires because that really, I mean, that's like, you've got to just make one big fucking concentrated bet.

• 57:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Either by building a company or by betting on a company and don't advise people to do that because this is a sure way to go broke. But people really can get wealthy if they understand, oh, that's how the system works. Oh, oh, oh, okay, got it. So the only way I'm ever going to be able to afford a house, blah, blah, blah, whatever, is I have to find a place to put my money that outpaces inflation. Cool, it's not going to be easy and I wish you were more upset that this was a system that you were handed because it's fucking terrible and it doesn't have to be this way. Uh, but at least then they'd be like, oh, this is mechanistic, got it. But right now everybody goes, oh, mustache twirling villain, they're evil. And just like earlier in the episode, I was like, oh my God, I, I can literally talk myself into seeing that villain.

• 58:23Tom Bilyeu?

  But the reality is probably more the banality of evil take where it's just like, people have day to day incentives and they just move that ball a little bit forward and a little bit forward and a little bit forward. And, um, given the incentive structure, we end up in fucking crazy moments like we're in now where everybody's bombing everybody else. Nobody even really exactly knows why, but it's all mechanistic.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Crazy. We shall see. We shall see. In crypto news, the Senate passed the Genius Stablecoin Bill, giving crypto industry the first major legislative win. This is the most crypto crazy campaign Senate that we ever had. I think the crypto industry-

• 59:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Being pro crypto.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Pro crypto, yeah. The crypto industry spent 250 million lobbying, leading up to this election cycle, so crypto has been waiting for this bill. What the Genius Act does, it establishes the first federal framework for dollar pegged stablecoins, granting sweeping authority to the Department of Treasury and opening the doors to banks, fintechs, and retailers. Industry giants like Amazon and Walmart are reportedly already moving toward a stablecoin style offering as payment networks brace for disruption. Shopify tweeted that they're possibly going to do accept crypto through Shopify on their online platform. So, this seems like a win. There's one thing I do think that's a bit interesting. The Senate bill gives the power to the Department of Treasury. The House has a similar bill, I

• 59:47Speaker 01

  think it's called the Stable Act, but theirs is run through the Fed. Exactly. So, I wanted to kind of just tease that out. Like, one, stablecoin just as it is right now, if it goes through the Treasury, if it's just dollar-backed stablecoins, how do you feel about it? And then, part two, is there any concern with the House kind of flirting with the Fed in this bill?

• 1:00:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Bro, if you're that, okay, I haven't looked, maybe I'll love it. However, the Fed and stablecoins to me says CBDC.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

• 1:00:19Tom Bilyeu?

  When I say, when you hear CBDC, think 1984, total control of your life. You will not, if they don't like the brand of milk you want to buy, they will stop you from buying it. Dude, I'm not kidding. That is not hyperbole. I'm saying it will give them complete and total control over your financial life. It is, it is a disaster of such epic proportions. People cannot allow that to happen. CBDC is our death. Avoid at all costs.

• 1:00:51Tom Bilyeu?

  So, stable coins, on the other hand, is brilliant. As long as, and I have not looked at this bill, so I don't know, maybe it's terrible, but a CBDC that is backed 1 for 1 with a dollar, yay. Uh, first of all, it will give a huge, um, push into bonds, government bonds. Now, huh, I'm conflicted around that. I want the US government to be stable, though. So, hey, we have the system we have.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  We need it.

• 1:01:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Given that we have a terrible fucking system, at least keep this terrible fucking system stable, because the only thing worse than a terrible system is an unstable terrible system. So, for that reason, I'll say yay. That's great, phenomenal. It helps feed dollar hegemony around the world, helps keep us a reserve currency, which, again, in the current system that we have, if somebody's got to be the reserve currency, you want it to be you. So, cool. Uh, it needs to be one for one. If it's not one for one, then you get shenanigans. We already have fractional reserve banking. I do not, Drew, god damn it, I do not want my money where, let's say, I left a couple grand in there because I'm like, ah, you never know when you might need to transfer stuff, and then overnight, that coin fails and poof, it's just all gone. Hell no.

• 1:02:05Tom Bilyeu?

  But if they, if they are regulated to hold 1 for 1, so if I give you a thousand dollars, you have in your coin, whatever your coin is, then you have a thousand dollars in reserves. So, when I say, give me back my thousand dollars, then I can get my thousand dollars back, no matter what. Then, yay, I'm here for that. That will be amazing. And people don't understand how much easier this is gonna be to buy things. But, by the way, the, the transaction systems that we all use, that really will be disrupted. So, um, all of these guys are gonna become their own credit cards, essentially.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  That's exactly where they're going through, because with the crypto transactions that happened last year, it overshadowed Visa, Mastercard, all them together, so.

• 1:02:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Those, finally, you will have competition, and people will stop charging you obscene interest rates. Drew, this could really be good for people, because credit card interest rates are predatory. Hereditary. And so if you can start getting that down for people that have really good credit, I mean, listen, you're gonna pay for it if you've got bad credit. But if you've got good credit, and it's good credit with that, presumably that's how they'll do it. Like, hey, you've always paid your bills at Amazon. And so at Amazon, you can get cheap credit. Don't fuck up your Amazon credit. But I think that's gonna be good for consumers because everybody is gonna be like, now, if I'm a new startup, I can do things where I make it cheaper for you to come and use my coin.

• 1:03:31Tom Bilyeu?

  And as long as it's one for one backed, it doesn't matter that I'm the new guy. And so now somebody that's struggling because they have a bad rating with Amazon, they've got a new opportunity to start fresh here. Anyway, I'm certainly prognosticating. I don't know that's how it's gonna be. But I think this is really, really strong. And it helps diminish the impact of the Fed on you. Because there will be somebody who creates a non-inflationary coin. And so, I mean, this will be interesting. I'm really, I'm now reaching out into the ether because I don't know that the government will allow this. And so there might be restrictions that stop this from happening. But this is what makes Bitcoin so potent, is that it's an uninflatable asset.

• 1:04:14Tom Bilyeu?

  And so if we had something similar where it's like, oh damn, like you could store your money in V-bucks, and V-bucks is uninflatable, and it's backed one for one. I just have to think through, given that it's backed by USD and that's hyperinflatable, what does that mean? Have to think about that. But anyway, I think some pretty unique things will come out of this.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the one for one. They say it's full reserve backing, monthly audits, and anti-money laundering compliance. So they are saying that the Genius Act is one for one. But again, I want to be clear that this is the Senate bill, and it passed 68 to 30, which means some Democrats were even in favor of it, that there is a House version of it that, again, uses the Fed. So I just want to make sure that when it actually gets to the real bill that is implemented to the American people, we make sure that that Fed piece doesn't get invented. There is one interesting thing, though. With cryptocurrency, we always think about it. I have a store of wealth. I have my Bitcoin. I'll hold it for a couple of years. It'll be worth a billion dollars per Bitcoin. But this might jumpstart the transaction side of it, the blockchain side of it, and kind of the other technologies that people are excited about with crypto. So to me, it seems like it's net going in the right direction, right?

• 1:05:19Tom Bilyeu?

  There's no doubt. And shout out to David Sacks, AI and crypto czar. Uh, listened to him for a long time on the All In Podcast before he got involved in politics and certainly seems to

• 1:05:32Tom Bilyeu?

  have his head screwed on straight when it comes to innovation, uh, the need to see this technology move forward, to want to make America the place of innovation. Uh, and to trust that if you're not being, if you're not trying to alienate the entire industry, you can get sensible regulation in here. Uh, and really get some incredible, um, new things happening in credit, in I hesitate to say money, but like in, in the fintech space. And so, um, I'm very excited to see what happens.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Oh, we got a new sequel in development. Shout out to the Goonies.

• 1:06:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Indeed. I checked it. This seems to be real.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  And Steven Spielberg is doing it too. Nice.

• 1:06:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Produced, not directed, but yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:06:14Tom Bilyeu?

  So I'll be interested to see, listen, as somebody who grew up on the Goonies, I remember seeing the Goonies in theaters.

• 1:06:21Tom Bilyeu?

  I hope they don't mess it up. But at least it's a sequel and it's not a reboot.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Tom Bilyeu?

  The crazy thing is these are normally terrible. And even though I know they're normally terrible, it is fun to sort of have this stirred back up in the public consciousness to, you know, be able to fantasize about it being good for a year or so before you get smacked in the face with

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  With a bad trailer?

• 1:06:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, with, with, uh, something terrible, but, um, yeah, I'm excited for this. And while it is a bad sign that Hollywood can no longer create new things. Because I'm old enough to have this huge treasure trove of things I would love to see get rebooted.

• 1:07:02Tom Bilyeu?

  This will be, I'm excited for this. We'll see what happens.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Apparently Sinners was the highest grossing original movie.

• 1:07:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's like crazy.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Five years and I want to say it did like 300 million, which I mean, great. It was awesome, but like. Avatar did a billion original, you know what I mean? So you're used to these big blockbuster starting franchises being launched and we're just not there anymore.

• 1:07:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, I'll, I'll say I take a slightly more optimistic read on Sinners. I feel about Sinners the way that I felt about The Matrix where it wasn't, I mean, it was big enough financially. Did like a hundred and fifty mil, I want to say. It was big enough, obviously, that it, that it had more made, but wasn't, I don't think it was even in the top three of that year. Someone will have to fact check me on that, but I remember the time being like, okay, okay, like this was a hit. People were into it, but it was so culturally important that it just ended up growing and growing and growing over time. So my hope is that you see movies like that go on to become a franchise and that the franchise becomes more important over time.

• 1:08:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And because that was a creator led deal, it'll be very interesting to see if this becomes part of the transition. Cause as AI takes over, the studios aren't going to have any power. They're going to basically become real estate companies. It's a whole nother thing, but if this works and they, I think, get the IP back in like 25 years. You'll start seeing those timeframes shorten, shorten, shorten, shorten, shorten. And so I think ultimately, given what is happening with AI, ultimately the creators are just going to own their stuff outright. Plain and simple, someone will be in aggregating and maybe it'll just be YouTube, but someone will aggregate the stuff. Or Netflix will probably do the same where creators will just submit and be like, hey, I'm going to put it up. It's going to be ad revenue sharing or whatever.

• 1:08:53Tom Bilyeu?

  And that means if you're talented, no longer will this stuff be stripped away from you. And as a YouTube creator, I will say that I love that. I, in fact, I often don't even think about the fact, dude, I make this show exactly the way I want to make this show. Sometimes with total disregard for whether we're going to get demonetized or I just don't give a fuck. It's like, I want to make the show I want to make. And that's a rad feeling, given that the stuff we're doing in gaming, the stuff we're doing in traditional film is like. You're constantly trying to convince somebody because it's so expensive.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a very good point, really good point. You're sure I can't tell if it's Cowboy Bebop or Lazarus? Because I feel like the main characters both have similar architects. I'm leaning toward Cowboy Bebop.

• 1:09:40Tom Bilyeu?

  It's the same guy.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Oh, the artist or?

• 1:09:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah, the creator.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Creator. Because I was like, I was like, wait, that's what?

• 1:09:47Tom Bilyeu?

  But this is so iconically one of them that you're losing a lot of animation.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  No, this is Cowboy Bebop, right?

• 1:09:53Tom Bilyeu?

  There you go.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Okay. Because I was like, I was like 90% sure, but I was like, wait, that did just release. And I know you talked about you like Lazarus. I couldn't get into it.

• 1:10:00Tom Bilyeu?

  I do, but not nearly as much as Cowboy Bebop. And that's the really unfair part and the reason that this pains me to say is that the things you create are always going to be perceived in terms of what's happening when you release it. And so when Cowboy Bebop came out, it was far more innovative than Lazarus is compared to today. So like if you look at To Be Hero X, that's innovative. That is awesome. Coming out of China, phenomenal. You know, my like radar is always set like, is China encroaching? But credit where credit's due and To Be Hero X is phenomenal. And watching To Be Hero X back to back with Cowboy Bebop is tough.

• 1:10:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Because, sorry, with Lazarus is tough because it's like Lazarus doesn't have that like visual sense of like breaking ground. And so that's tough because he clearly is one of the great creators of anime ever. And there's a quote that haunts me and that is genius is a young man's game. And there's just something about your youth where you're of the culture. You're not commenting on it yet. You're of it. And being of the culture, you're able to say something that will just penetrate. Like Kurt Cobain was of the culture.

• 1:11:27Tom Bilyeu?

  And now sort of the iconic version and the way that people talk about him is very different than this was just a guy who's fucked up on drugs, wildly insecure, sensitive but angry at the same time. And he just captured that 90s moment of all of that. Like anxiety before it was cool, channeled into this rage filled music. It was like. Really interesting. And when you get those sparks of somebody who's of the culture, they're always young. This is why they always die at 27. Like, there's just something about you're building it from the time you're like 14, you come into your own at like 19 to 21,

• 1:12:11Tom Bilyeu?

  you sort of get into the game, you really pop off at 23, 24, and then you burn out. It's so weird. It's so weird because because they're of the culture and they don't have the perspective. And we'll see, because I, in terms of what I will end up producing over the entire course of my life, I secretly want to believe that

• 1:12:38Tom Bilyeu?

  the thing that certainly makes me different, unfortunately, I can't say better, but the thing that makes me different is I'm so hyper-aware of myself that

• 1:12:52Tom Bilyeu?

  the things that I create are commentaries on myself, which is interesting. I'm never lost in it. I'm always commenting on it. But that means I'm not going to self-destruct. So, this is part of the reason that at 49, I'm able to keep building something and, you know, be on however many companies I've started at this point. And still be hungry and still want to push forward because I gave up on being a misunderstood genius a very long time ago. But it's a trade-off. The, the sort of burn bright and do something that'll be remembered in the annals of history, probably not my lot. That, that really is a young man's game.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  I hear you. That's all I got.

• 1:13:36Tom Bilyeu?

  There it is. Alright, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to give us a five-star review wherever 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 you routine break- 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,

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