#1407 Polina & Anthony Pompliano | Bitcoin, Presidential Debate, OnlyFans & Elon Musk

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss what is going on with bitcoin, future catalyst, and price outlook into bull market, we break down the OnlyFans business, shocking revenue share breakdown, SpaceX, Starlink, Elon Musk, and predictions for the Presidential debate. ======================= Wondering where to go for financial advice? Domain Money makes financial planning simple. No hidden fees and no sales pitches - you get a personalized roadmap to your goals, from dream vacations to retirement. Flat-fee advisors create a plan tailored to you, with zero pressure to invest. Don’t be like most people who’ve never had a real conversation about their financial plan. Book a free strategy session today at ⁠https://www.domainmoney.com/pomp⁠While I'm not a Domain Money client and they are paying me, I've seen first hand the value of their service through the free plan they did for one of my brothers. Yes, I might have an interest in promoting Domain Money, so just like any major financial decision, it's important you understand what the service is and if it's right for you so make sure to see important disclaimer at ⁠https://www.domainmoney.com/t/legal⁠ ======================= Buy and sell cryptocurrency in a tax-advantaged crypto IRA with iTrustCapital. Enjoy 24/7 access, lowest fees in the industry, and tax benefits for your retirement. Open and fund an account today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.itrustcapital.com/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠ to receive a $100 USD funding bonus. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone. This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up guys? Bang bang. Today's episode is packed with insights. We've got Paulina Pompliano joining us and we go over what's going on with Bitcoin. Why is the price crashing? Should you be worried? And actually, is the price even crashing? Or actually, are we up real big to start the year? We then get into what the future catalyst could be and

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  what I expect to happen with price going into the bull market. On top of that, we break down the OnlyFans business, a bunch of the financials recently linked, and you will be shocked to hear what exactly the owner took home last year in terms of their paycheck. Then we get into SpaceX and what's going on with Starlink, how Elon Musk now controls two-thirds of all active satellites. Is that a good thing, a bad thing, or should we be cheering Elon on? And then lastly, we talk about the presidential debate. We have former President Trump and we have Vice President Harris meeting on stage. I don't think it's gonna be much of a debate, but probably not for the reason you think. So make sure you tune into the end to hear exactly what I think is gonna happen in the debate tonight. Here's my conversation with Paulina.

• 1:29Speaker 01

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

• 1:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by I Trust Capital. Are you buying crypto on an exchange because you're excited about the bull run? Well, I hope you're reporting your crypto gains to the IRS because they want you to pay your taxes. That's right, when you buy and sell crypto on an exchange, you need to pay the government taxes when you make profits. That sounds pretty taxing. There's another way you can buy and sell crypto without worrying about taxes. At I Trust Capital, you can buy and sell crypto inside of a tax advantaged crypto IRA. Crypto IRAs are retirement accounts that work similarly to an exchange, but with tax benefits. Let me give you an example. If you can buy and sell crypto on an exchange and you make a $20,000 profit, you have to pay the government taxes.

• 2:34Anthony Pompliano?

  However, if you do the same thing in your Roth IRA and you make a $20,000 profit, you don't need to pay any taxes. That's right, you get to keep all the profits and not have to pay taxes because it's in a tax advantaged account. So, opening a tax advantaged IRA at I Trust Capital only takes a few minutes. You have 24/7 access to the markets with some of the lowest fees in the industry. The bull run has begun and people are starting to see their accounts go up. So, start taking advantage of tax benefits with an IRA at I Trust Capital. You can start maximizing your crypto investment today. Go to Itrustcapital.com. That's Itrustcapital.com. Today's episode is brought to you by Domain Money.

• 3:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I love talking about money, but I'm not a financial professional, so I don't offer one-on-one coaching or advising. But in order to get ahead, you need someone with expertise to work with you one-on-one and provide personalized advice. The decisions you're making now will significantly impact the rest of your life. The more time you waste not taking the steps to get a plan for your money, the harder you make it to achieve your goals. That's why I've partnered with Domain Money to pair our community with flat-fee certified financial planners. That's right, they are CFPs. They can actually give you advice and they can help you level up your money game. Don't get left behind and head over to domainmoney.com/pomp to book your free strategy session to help you get started.

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  That's domainmoney.com/pomp to get started with a CFP now. Go check them out and just like any other major financial decision, it's important you understand what the service is and if it's right for you. So, make sure to go see the important disclaimers at domainmoney.com/legal. That's what the lawyers told me to say. Now, go check them out, domainmoney.com/pomp.

• 4:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Plena, what uh first topic you got?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  We got Bitcoin is rebounding from its worst week in more than a year. I don't know if you've heard, but Bitcoin jumped Monday evening and topped $57,000 after Wall Street's rebound from its worst week of the year. Um, you know, seasonality, wait, seasonality is a factor. Analysts have warned that crypto lacks major catalysts at the moment. Maybe that's a reason. And it's more likely to be like sensitive to macro factors. Yeah. And, and, and also September, like we talked in last video, is a notoriously bad month for markets.

• 4:57Anthony Pompliano?

  This entire thing is crazy. Stop it. Stop it. Everyone stop the madness. Bitcoin, which was trading at like $40,000 to start the year, is up, depending on the day, anywhere between 30 to 50%. And people are acting like Bitcoin has drawn down 80% or something. Yes, it is down off the all time high, but still it is up significantly for the year.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, wait, just really quick. The fact that we're talking about like Bitcoin in the 50s range as being like worst performing.

• 5:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I used to dream of the day that people would write headlines, Bitcoin crashing to 55,000, when it was at 3,000, 7,000, 10, 15, 20, 20, like, come on, this is craziness. Thank you. My past self is happy that they are writing these articles now because it means Bitcoin's working. But I do think it is a very fair critique in question as to what are the future catalysts. And so, uh, one of them that is coming is on September 18th, the Federal Reserve is expected to come out with an interest rate cut. And so my guess is it's probably a 25% uh 25 basis point interest rate cut, not 50. They kind of don't feel like they need to make a big jump, just kind of ease your way into uh

• 6:14Anthony Pompliano?

  the monetary policy regime change. Um, and they did kind of uh tip their hand, tell the market it's likely to come. So people have been positioning themselves, but I do think people are underestimating how impactful it is that the actual action occurs the certainty of they did make the cut. And so I think that's kind of one catalyst is them coming out and saying, hey, we've cut in straits. Another catalyst would be some large party coming out and saying they've bought Bitcoin and put it on their balance sheet. Whether that is a sovereign wealth fund, whether that's an actual nation state, maybe it is another big public company, right? There's a couple of things. The hard part there is there's no like timeline in terms of when that could happen.

• 6:57Anthony Pompliano?

  But if that was to occur, if name your favorite big country came out and said, we've bought Bitcoin or putting in our central bank reserves.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  That could be a huge benefit as well.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Why would they say that if they did it, what is their incentive to say, we put Bitcoin on the balance sheet?

• 7:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Once they are done actually buying, then you want to tell everyone. It doesn't make sense. Like one of the things when President Trump said that he was going to create a national stockpile of Bitcoin. When Robert Junior came out and he said that he thought we should go and buy all this Bitcoin, et cetera. Telling the market before you do it works against you. Right? So it's this weird dynamic of if you're campaigning, you have to tell people, here's what I intend to do. Cause you're trying to use that to get them to vote for you. But actually a economic actor does not want to tell the market. It'd be like, imagine a Wall Street hedge fund going out and putting in the Wall Street Journal. Tomorrow I'm going to buy this stock.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  It's going to spike and then you're buying it at a high.

• 7:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. So I do think there's this, you know, kind of healthy tension between politicians campaigning and trying to tell their citizens. Vote for me because I'm going to do X versus the economic argument as to you should wait and do X and then tell everyone. So that's why a sovereign wealth fund, once they have their position on, then they would go tell someone. So you see this all the time in finance is people put their position on and then they start talking about it, right? So there's this saying, get long and get loud, get long, buy the asset and then get loud, then go tell everyone about it and bring eyeballs to it. And then the idea is that other people start to see your kind of investment case, et cetera. They begin to go and try to buy that asset that obviously helps you because you're already a holder.

• 8:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So I think that that is a potential catalyst. Another catalyst. Is Donald Trump being elected as president? Right now, it is unclear what Vice President Harris's position on crypto is moving forward. The current administration has been very abrasive to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Obviously, as the Vice President, you're the second most powerful person in the world. You're participating in that, whether implicitly or explicitly. But there are rumblings and rumors that her administration claims they will be more sympathetic. They will be more accepting. There are people like Anthony Scaramucci and Mark Cuban that are working to try to get the Democrats to be more interested.

• 9:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I believe people like Ro Khanna and Hakeem Jeffries, they're trying to kind of push the Democrat Party to say, look, make this a bipartisan issue. Don't let this become a Republican thing. This needs to be an America thing. So I think that effort is good. I actually think people on both sides of the aisle should embrace this. We should not make technology partisan. With all that said, Donald Trump and the Republican Party have done such a good job of positioning themselves as pro-Bitcoin candidates that if they are elected, then I think that will be a major boom. People will say, hey, Bitcoin's going to do well under a Trump presidency. Whether the facts are true or not, it's impossible to tell the future, but just the fact that he's positioned himself that way, he gets elected, people then see, hey, Trump is likely to do things that help Bitcoin, not hurt it. So that'll be a tailwind.

• 10:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And then also, end of year, in these bull markets, we start to get to six, seven, eight months after the halving. We tend to see price tick up from there. And you could think of this as there was this supply shock, right? We cut in half how many Bitcoin were coming into the market on a daily basis. And so when that occurs, it takes a little while for the market to kind of reprice itself. But I do expect there to be a repricing. The word of caution to Bitcoin investors is the repricing may not be what you think it is. It may not go from 50,000 or 60,000 to 300,000. What's more likely to happen is we go up 50%, 100%. So could you see somewhere between 100 to 150K price in the bull market?

• 10:46Anthony Pompliano?

  That seems Reasonable, maybe that is even like the base case in a bull market for an asset like Bitcoin, given its size today and its holder base. What I do not think is reasonable is to expect a 250 or $300,000 Bitcoin price. And I also don't expect for Bitcoin to kind of continue to go sideways forever. So there's some bracket there and I would put it between 100 and 150K as kind of the the target zone in this bull market. And so really a catalyst is time has elapsed since the halving and November into December and kind of Q1 of next year, I would expect price to kind of follow some of these past market cycles.

• 11:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if you're a holder, one of the challenges is actually like, don't get lulled to sleep, don't get bored to death. Instead, understand that you're actively making a decision every day to hold this asset. And so if any of these catalysts or multiple of these catalysts play out, the price goes higher.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I have a question. Why is it that usually, at least, you know, from an observer standpoint, Bitcoin tends, the the price tends to rise around the holidays?

• 11:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think a lot of the market cycles have been in bull markets that tends to fall that six to eight month period post halving. And so if you look in, take 2018 as an example, in 2017, there was this like blow off top and especially into the end of the year. And then what we saw was actually 2018, in Q4, there was Bitcoin fell by 50%. It went from 6,500 down to 3,200. And so the opposite occurred in the bear market. And if you then look in 2021, we kind of had the blow off top, right? November of 2021 was the top of the Bitcoin price.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  That must be what I remember, yeah.

• 12:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And then if you fast forward to 2022, FTX is collapsing, all the pain and chaos is kind of in the second half and really Q4 of 2022. So if you kind of follow this cycle, there is a belief that you will get these price, you know, kind of movements. Now, what's interesting is this Q4 is not actually aligned with the top of a

• 12:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Market Q4. Instead, this is kind of the first Q4. So if you go back to 2020, there was a halving. If I remember correctly, it happened in May. That halving, we pretty much went sideways. I think that the price of Bitcoin was almost identical in August as it was in May. Like, maybe there was a slight uptick, but like, you know, maybe it was 8,000 and it was now like $9,000 something, but it wasn't a big price movement through the summer. So sideways summer, post halving.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Sideways summer.

• 13:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And then we get to October. In October, we start to grind up. November, we start to grind up faster. In December, if I remember correctly, we break through the all time high and we were adding $1,000 a day to the Bitcoin price and it overlapped. I think on December 25th, we hit 25,000. On December 26th, we hit 26,000. And so it was going up rapidly. Bitcoin went from, call it $10,000, $12,000, kind of at the start of Q4 to $64,000 by the end of Q1. So in a six month period, there was this massive, you know, kind of acceleration of the price. We drew down 50% back down into the low 30s and then we went back up again at the end of the year.

• 14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And so again, 2017, very similar. We went from $1,000 to $20,000 in 2017. It's a 20x return in a single year, but there's kind of this blow off top at the end of the year. The halving didn't occur in 2017. It happened in 2016. And so you've got to kind of look out 18 months. Now, that may get shortened because people on Wall Street start to say to themselves, you know what? If everyone expects 18 months after the halving, that's the top. I'm just going to sell in month 17 or month 16, right? I'm not, I'm not going to wait for the blow off top. I'm going to sell early so I can capture the gains rather than potentially miss it and then end up on the wrong side of kind of the drawdown. And so I do think that those halving cycles will shorten a little bit, not, it won't go from 18 months to nine months, but, but it'll shorten.

• 14:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you have to remember now that the asset is bigger. It's over a trillion dollars and you have more holders, both in terms of financial institutions, but also individuals. And so the volatility is going to kind of come down. It's going to get muted over time. The reason why that is important is because there is some threshold where the people who were buying Bitcoin early on that were looking for the asymmetric aspect. That is no longer available. I don't think we're there yet, but Michael Sale recently was on CNBC and he said Bitcoin has gone up 44% a year compounded in terms of when he started buying it around $8,000,

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  $10,000 to today. 44% is significant outperformance from the stock market. As that number comes down, if you get to 40, 35, 30, 25, 20,

• 15:41Anthony Pompliano?

  there are some people who are going to say, that's not that interesting. I actually need, I need the next asymmetric asset that can go up 40, 50, 60, 70%.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 15:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Very rare to find them and that's why Bitcoin has been able to attract a trillion dollars. But I do think that that's also why people have been pushing out on the risk curve of crypto over the last couple of years. Is because crypto used to go up hundreds of percent, then it was 100%, then it was 75%. Now it's 44% over the last, you know, call it four or five years. And so people just say, well, I want exposure to crypto, but like, why don't I just go to the thing that might go up 200%? Or go to zero, I'll take more and more risk as they push out, you know, into the smaller cap coins.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It's like the venture mindset applied to this kind of investing.

• 16:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean,

• 16:25Speaker 02

  I mean, more, I mean,

• 16:27Anthony Pompliano?

  if you think about it,

• 16:28Speaker 02

  SoftBank.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  If you think about it from the investor seat, there's two reasons why people would do that. One is the kind of venture capital belief.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  That's only 10.

• 16:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, if I build a portfolio of asymmetric assets, 60, 70, 80% of them can go to zero, but it's all power law. And so I just need to have one that goes up more than 10x and I make money.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:51Anthony Pompliano?

  That is probably more sophisticated investors are kind of looking at it. They're running models, they're looking at portfolio construction, they're thinking about rebalancing, they're, you know, kind of doing all of that work. I don't think that that is most people who are pushing out on the risk curve. I think most people are saying to themselves, I live in the United States or somewhere else in the world. My local currency is being devalued. I might not even be able to articulate that, but all I know is I keep falling further and further behind. If I go and I buy the S and P, which goes up eight to 10% a year, it will take me forever. And probably in my lifetime, I will not achieve financial freedom. I read somewhere on the internet that somebody bought a coin, it went up a lot and they got rich.

• 17:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And so this has better odds than me buying a lottery ticket.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  That's a little dangerous.

• 17:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course it's dangerous, but it's this feeling that I can't get ahead. I'm losing hope, right? The world is getting more expensive around me. And so I have to take more risk to drive a higher return in order to catch up. And many of these people aren't even trying to grow faster. They just want to feel like their life is not getting worse, right? Can they stop the bleeding?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if you look at Bitcoin, you know, one of my kind of eye opening statistics that I read this year was in 2016, the median home in America was worth 664 Bitcoin. Today, in 2024, the median home in America is worth about six Bitcoin.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 18:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, the reason why that's interesting is because home affordability in America has exploded in dollar terms. People are saying to themselves, this is the worst home affordability in decades. The price of a home has literally exploded and gone up about 50% in eight years. That's really hard for a lot of Americans to say, how do I afford a home? At the same time, if you price that asset in Bitcoin, the home has become 99% cheaper.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's all about which asset are you denominating your wealth in? And so if you can say to yourself, wait a second, if I just hold a currency that is going to appreciate my purchasing power, rather than everything getting more expensive around me, everything is going to get cheaper around me. As people learn how that works, there's a lot of people say, that's interesting. I need to, I need to do more work there. I need to go and do some research. I need to figure out, should I buy this or should I not? What are the risks? And so that one statistic.

• 19:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Ultimately boils down to education. If people understood the purchasing power of Bitcoin has been going up while the dollar has been going down. If eight years ago, you had simply said, I'm going to take a portion, whether it was one, three, 5%, whatever the number is, and put it into Bitcoin. You then would have a completely different outcome in terms of what is the price of a house? What is the price of groceries? What is the price of insurance? All of those things are subject to the devaluation of the currency. And so now people are saying to themselves, well, Bitcoin's not going to go up hundreds of percent. If I missed out on the last eight years, let me go find the next thing that I believe will have massive appreciation.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And to wrap this topic up, what do we think about MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor predicting that Bitcoin? Anyway, I just want to ask, like, why are people still making price predictions? I feel like that's such a tricky game, but he predicted that Bitcoin could hit 13 million by 2045.

• 20:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know what the price of Bitcoin is going to do. I have-

• 20:27Speaker 02

  It's just like such a specific-

• 20:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I have opinions. His specific model is, I think he looked out 21 years and he basically calculated if Bitcoin grows at certain, you know, compounding growth rates. Here's where it would end up. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't. It's really hard to kind of predict this stuff. I do think that structurally, the idea of people are very short-term oriented. So they're thinking about what is the price of Bitcoin going to be next week, next month, you know, even next year. But instead, if you look out over a long period of time and you look at how compounding works, it can produce very big numbers that surprise people.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  That would be asymmetric growth.

• 21:02Anthony Pompliano?

  It would be, but I think that model is somewhere between like 25 to 35% growth, if I remember correctly. Don't quote me on that, but you know, it's something that is less growth than today. But also, we see a stock market where, you know, you get 10% growth. So if it's double the stock market, let's use that as an example. Yeah, it will produce a very good return. The one difference between maybe the stock market and Bitcoin or, you know, other assets is that growth is all capital appreciation. There are no dividends. There's no reinvesting. There's no anything. And so if you look at kind of the eight to 10% growth, usually that is calculated in the stock market without dividends.

• 21:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that is just pure capital appreciation. The fact that you do get paid dividends and you can reinvest those obviously can help juice the return. And then if you don't look at the S and P, instead you look at something like maybe the NASDAQ 100, you know, if I remember correctly, the NASDAQ 100 last year was up 50%. That's a massive number. And so if that asset goes up 15, 20, 25%, maybe NASDAQ and Bitcoin end up actually in a steady state, having similar growth rates on a compound annual growth rate basis. I don't know. And so my takeaway from the model that Sailor used is not so much like, oh, Bitcoin's going to $13 million in 21 years.

• 22:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Instead, it was a reminder, compounding over a long period of time, at higher than normal growth rates for a financial asset can produce these massive outcomes. And so if people can shift to being more long-term oriented and also look at and expect the compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin to come down, it still provides what many people online are talking about very attractive, you know, kind of end results. It's just, in order to capture that, you kind of have to, you know, allocate your assets, and then you've got to be really good at doing nothing for a long period of time. And humans just naturally are horrible at doing that.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Great. Let's switch gears a little bit into another sexy topic. Literally, OnlyFans revenue is through the roof. Leo Radwinski, who is the billionaire owner of OnlyFans, which is known for being a subscription

• 23:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Creator platform.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Creator platform for hosting adult content. Just really fun fact, I think it was a year ago, I interviewed the former CEO of OnlyFans. And I was asking her, I was like, you know, you guys are diversifying your content, like, should I be on OnlyFans? And people in the audience were like, wait, what? And I was like, no, no, no, for writing, as a writer, as a writer, not as anything else. But she was making the point, and I think they're still trying to do this, to diversify

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Their creator base away from just adult content creators.

• 24:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that would be a mistake.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Into cooking and writers and things like that. But hold on a second. Hold on. So let me give you some crazy numbers. So he, Redvinsky, the owner, earned more than 1.2 million dollars a day from the social media subscription site. The company that owns OnlyFans, like the British parent company, show that the business paid a $472 million dividend to Redvinsky in 2023 after a surge in revenues and profits. This makes him, his wealth, Forbes estimates his wealth at 3.8 billion.

• 24:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Why are we surprised? Sex has sold for centuries.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  True.

• 24:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And one of the easiest ways to make money is to simply say, I took a picture of myself. And if you want to see it, pay me money. And depending on who you are and what people think is on the other side of that picture, they're probably going to pay you. And so in a very weird way,

• 25:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I do not think OnlyFans should diversify their content.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 25:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Instead, they should double and triple down on what's working. Diversification can kill a business like this. And so they get critiqued in the media. My guess is the owner doesn't care. And diversification is really to appease other people. When you have a great business, forget for a second, OnlyFans, when you have a great business, you want to actually double down on what makes you unique, on what is working, not say, oh, this thing is working, but like, let me go try this other thing that may or may not work. That's just introducing risk to your business. And if you have a business where, I think you said he took a 400-plus million dollar dividend.

• 26:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Ambition can kill a company like this as well. So there are many people in the world who would love to make personally $400 million a year. If you want to then take that $400 million a year dividend check and try to make it a billion, there may be a path to doing that. But if you become too ambitious and you don't think critically about what is working, why do we have this advantage? Why is our business good? The ambition can actually end up screwing up your core business. And there's many stories of this happening throughout, you know, kind of history of business. And so what is unique about this is society has kind of different viewpoints

• 26:45Anthony Pompliano?

  of the relationship between men, women, sex and content. And so let me give you a couple of examples. It used to be that there was like an underbelly of prostitution, let's say, centuries ago. But it was kind of known in certain societies, like everyone engages in that stuff. Right? Now, that doesn't mean that it was right, it was wrong, whatever, but like, it was kind of like,

• 27:16Speaker 02

  It was like part of life.

• 27:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it was like a black market, but also it was kind of like, oh, you know, you go over there, you do whatever, you come back. Maybe although different, maybe akin to like an American's view of the red light district in Amsterdam, right? Is like, it's kind of an area you go and it's like, quote unquote, fun. Right? Whatever that ends up being. Now, if you then take a look at the relationship in the United States with this stuff, something like Playboy magazine. Right? If you remember when I was a kid, if you went to a gas station, they'd have all the magazines there. And the Playboy was like in a

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Black, black thing.

• 27:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a cover, right? It had like a bag almost. And they blacked out what it was. So people who were in the gas station could see that it was a Playboy, but they couldn't actually see the content. Certain people could buy it. I think there was an age thing at one point, all that kind of stuff. But like, it was in society, but again, it was like, how do we make sure like a child doesn't walk by, see this?

• 28:17Anthony Pompliano?

  In the United States prostitution obviously is illegal.

• 28:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what has popped up is. People want this content. But the content is now being put behind a paywall. And there's an argument to be made that these individuals, regardless of what your moral framework is and whether they should be doing it, should not be doing it, whatever. They're probably more fairly compensated now than they were previously.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  But hold on a second. I just want to push back on two things. First, you cannot compare. Uh, someone posting adult content on the internet is engaging in anything beyond posting content on the internet.

• 28:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I'm just saying that Playboy magazine was doing the same thing.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's different from the red light district. That's different from other situations.

• 29:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I think that, um. What is the difference between the Playboy mansion grotto? And the red light district? There may be some differences.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  I'm saying, but only fans specifically.

• 29:18Anthony Pompliano?

  But my point is like, that is a digital only.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  You're saying the evolution of it.

• 29:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Um.

• 29:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Is of course going to go to the internet. Friction is going to go down.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 29:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Cost is going to become much more accessible. Now, I, rather than having to go to the gas station and buy a Playboy magazine to get this content. I can simply sit on my couch and with a couple of taps of my phone, be looking at content.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I actually think like, you know, you and I know people who are on only fans doing this type of stuff, um, in a way or have done it. I think that their argument is I am now in charge of my content. People are paying me not, you know, taking my stuff, putting it somewhere else and I don't get a cent from it.

• 30:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Let, let's use a real life example. Uh, Polina and I, uh, know, uh, Lisa Ann, who is one of the highest grossing, uh, porn stars in the world. Um, and she told us, um, at an event that she, over the years, as different adult sites went bankrupt.

• 30:19Anthony Pompliano?

  She bought back her content.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So she was able to.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  She's like the Taylor Swift of.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, she was able to buy it back. When she bought it back, she now owns that content. And so when OnlyFans came out, she has been editing it and cutting it and doing all this stuff and able to post it.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:36Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a paywall, people are paying her, et cetera. She's not recording new content. So from a pure business perspective.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, smart.

• 30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  That is, you know, very different. Now, here's where I think people, um, you know, kind of the conversation devolves into a lot of chaos. When you put a moral overlay, so if you say, hey, look for a second. If you evaluate just the business, of course, it prints money. They are literally selling the one thing that sells in every language, right? And the friction has dropped so much and the cost and like all this kind of stuff. And they only take 20%, which means 80% of the money is going to the creator, which obviously is better for them. When you put the moral overlay and you say to yourself, do we want to live in a society with this stuff? Is this stuff good, bad, blah, blah, whatever? The, the reason why the conversation devolves into chaos is because people have different viewpoints on this.

• 31:27Anthony Pompliano?

  There are some people who say, let everyone do whatever they want, uh, as long as they're not hurting someone. There are other people who say, you know, hey, I take a religious view of this and this is, you know, uh, sinful content. And they kind of go around the table and you have all these different viewpoints. What I think is, um, very interesting about this platform in particular is that, uh, people have tried this many, many times in the past. This is the one that worked. And so now what it has introduced into the market is free choice. And so the beauty of America is if you are somebody who disagrees with this type of content, you can disagree, but also vehemently believe that people have the right to do what they want to do.

• 32:11Anthony Pompliano?

  They have the freedom to do what they want to do. And so.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Some people would argue that. Other people would say you should not, this should not exist.

• 32:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, but I think that is the beauty of America is that we can have that debate. We can have that conversation and freedom is a core part of it. There are many other countries in the world where there's not a conversation. There, there is no free choice. There is no, you know, uh, kind of approach to it. And so I think if we bring it back to the business component.

• 32:41Anthony Pompliano?

  You could make a very strong argument that like, I'm surprised the business isn't bigger.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wait, I want to push back on one thing before we forget. Uh, you said diversification could, um, kill this kind of business. But actually, because of the split, I mean, 80 cents goes of every dollar spent on the platform goes to the creator. They only take 20%. It's actually better than most, um, creator or websites, whatever. So why wouldn't they benefit from me or a cooking creator or somebody going on that platform? Because genuinely, like, they could make more money.

• 33:17Anthony Pompliano?

  When you have a monopoly, you want to keep the monopoly. When you have a monopoly and you diversify now.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  But Facebook, look at Facebook.

• 33:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Facebook has a monopoly on the one thing that matters.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Attention?

• 33:33Anthony Pompliano?

  No, they, they have direct connections between.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  My grandmother?

• 33:37Anthony Pompliano?

  They have direct connections between real humans around the world.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:41Anthony Pompliano?

  They help people better communicate.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  But, but they grew from something niche to something much bigger, right?

• 33:45Anthony Pompliano?

  They never changed. They, in terms of they create a social network and the network may have expanded to include more things.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Well, this is a network, but it's just topic, different topics, right?

• 33:55Anthony Pompliano?

  But the thing is, nobody knows them as a network. Everyone knows them for the content.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  So you don't think people would subscribe to my newsletter on OnlyFans? Would they even know it's OnlyFans?

• 34:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they definitely know it's OnlyFans. Um, again, you may be able to, as an individual, get people to pay you some money.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:14Anthony Pompliano?

  By, I don't know, posting screenshots of your newsletter or whatever. But as a business, when you have a monopoly, when you have such a dominant position in the market, anything that you do that dilutes that dominance is usually later on seen as a threat to your business. It's not like if you launch cooking as a vertical, you're disrupting yourself. Right? So a lot of businesses would say, hey, we got this great thing, you know, if Blockbuster had come out with the Netflix competitor, they were disrupting themselves. They weren't looking to expand. It was, I'm trying to prepare for the future. OnlyFans does not have a technology threat. OnlyFans does not have some sort of market threat.

• 34:58Anthony Pompliano?

  OnlyFans biggest risk is itself. And so in that situation, you basically have to be really good at saying no, in my experience, or if you study kind of the history of business.

• 35:12Anthony Pompliano?

  No, we are not going to expand into other categories. No, we are not going to appease, you know, the public outside of our company. No, we are not going to, you know, do whatever the next shiny thing is. What I do think is interesting, and I don't know where they are on it at the moment. One of the things I could see being a threat is AI. Because if AI is able to create images that look realistic.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  It already is, I mean.

• 35:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And then those people are uploading that content. Do you penalize those people? Because you're saying, listen, your AI images are competing with our quote, quote, real creators? Do you encourage it? And you say the creator of the AI image is the one getting paid? And thank you so much for putting more content? Or should OnlyFans create that content and put it up themselves and rather than get 20%, get 100%? And now it's like Amazon selling their own products on their marketplace, competing with their own customers?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Those are the business decisions that actually I think are, you know, kind of the Pareto law of they got to get those decisions right. There might only be two or three of them, but that will drastically determine the outcome and the future profits of the business more so than do we go into cooking? Do we go into this or whatever?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  It's an interest. It'll be interesting to follow this company's trajectory for sure. Let's keep it spicy. Keep it.

• 36:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Can I add one more thing actually, before I forget?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I had a great transition. Okay.

• 36:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Before you get it, we'll do spicy again. I do think another untold story in businesses like this, if the founder is taking a $470 million, whatever the number was, dividend annually, they gotta be paying a lot of taxes.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  A lot of taxes.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  He lives in Florida.

• 37:02Anthony Pompliano?

  It doesn't matter where they live, just in almost every jurisdiction. I think the company's based in the UK.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:08Anthony Pompliano?

  They're paying a lot of taxes. And so headlines will always be, you know, controversial OnlyFans platform owner takes, you know, makes $700 million. What, whatever. You could easily write a headline.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Pays.

• 37:26Anthony Pompliano?

  OnlyFans pays $400 million in taxes, supporting, which could pay for these five welfare programs. Right? Now, again, I'm not saying that the media should actually be biased in either direction. I'm just saying that these situations are always hyper complex because

• 37:47Anthony Pompliano?

  the narratives are driven by the mainstream media. And usually when the public narrative is a negative perspective of something, nobody ever wants to say, okay, I understand the public narrative. Let me switch around on the table now. And how would I steel man this? How would I argue the positive for the company? And so you can imagine a world where how much benefit does the citizens get? If you're paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  The UK government fueled by OnlyFans.

• 38:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, again, it sounds kind of ridiculous.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Anthony Pompliano?

  But at the same time, it's like, I bet you there are very serious positive programs run by that government, which are helping people objectively. And if you go and you look at the annual budget for them, it's probably less than this company is paying in taxes. And so similar to how they'll say, you know, Bitcoin miners in the United States use 2%, which is more than West Virginia. Electricity.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Electricity.

• 38:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And you're like, what? Like, what kind of comparison is that? Right? Also, refrigerators use more than 2%, which is more than West Virginia.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Christmas lights.

• 38:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Christmas lights. Or my favorite, you know, one of the most wasteful energy consumers in the entire United States?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  What?

• 38:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No, clothes dryers.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I can't use it.

• 39:02Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you don't, you don't need a clothes dryer.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  You.

• 39:05Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a natural one. Did you see the guy? There, there's a viral thing going around. There's a guy who is advertising, I can't remember if it was on,

• 39:15Anthony Pompliano?

  like, the early days of the internet, or maybe it was in one of these magazines or whatever. He was advocating for, or promoting a solar powered clothes dryer.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  It's called the sun.

• 39:27Anthony Pompliano?

  No, he, that's what I said. And people would call and order, and it was like 50 bucks, and he would send them a clothes line to dry their clothes outside.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Every other country other than America, kind of that's how people used to. Now it's.

• 39:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So if you think about that, right? It's like from an energy consumption standpoint.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Dirty laundry out there, literally.

• 39:44Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's just like, if you're consuming energy for something that you actually don't need, but it is, it's in a luxury, 100%, right? That becomes like a very interesting conversation. So the same thing goes for, you know, kind of the narrative around these country, or these companies. They, you know, paid themselves all this money or whatever. But if all of a sudden we said, you know, OnlyFans paid X dollars in taxes, which is more than these programs cost?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's like, yeah, I hear you. It's just very few reporters.

• 40:18Anthony Pompliano?

  A lot of American companies that pay $0 in taxes. So if you think about, you know, these companies, and again, I don't know what the tax rate is that they're paying.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  But yeah, also you don't know what they're, what tax.

• 40:32Anthony Pompliano?

  The UK, they, they don't play around. They, they want your money. They're definitely, they got their hands in your pocket for sure. The United States is the only place which is capitalistic and also somehow tax rates, you know, get, get changed around.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Should we move around?

• 40:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Move around, move on.

• 40:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Move on. Yeah. What was that spicy, what was that spicy thing you're saying?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  I forgot my transition. Another spicy topic. It's not the same. I'm just gonna read it. I'm just gonna read it. You ruined the moment. I'm sad. Okay. Elon Musk.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Controls two thirds of all active satellites orbiting Earth following the launch of the 7,000th Starlink satellite this week. So I guess Brazil isn't really making a dent in his monopoly in space. So the internet satellite constellation, which is built and operated by Musk's SpaceX, has grown by an average of three satellites per day since the first launch in 2019. I can't believe that the first launch was in 2019. It feels like Starlink has been here forever.

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon Musk is a competitor.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Two? Oh, he's just a competitor.

• 41:40Anthony Pompliano?

  He's a competitor. And he's been able to launch 7,000 satellites into space. If somebody doesn't like the fact that Elon controls two thirds of all active satellites, they should launch more satellites into space. We shouldn't punish the winners.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  I don't think anybody's punishing him.

• 41:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I tweeted this story and people were like, that's too much. It's concentrated ownership and all this stuff.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  In space?

• 42:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, he owns two thirds of all active satellites. I mean, there is a world in the future where Elon, and there's already been a couple of incidents, Ukraine as an example, where, again, I want to be careful that I don't get the facts wrong, but my understanding is that Russia was, you know, invaded Ukraine. Ukraine was planning a counter offensive. Starlink and Elon had sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine and they were going to use Starlink for offensive military action. He shut it off. And I believe his position was Starlink is not to be used in offensive military action. That's not why we're giving you internet access.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I believe their defense was a counterattack is part of defense, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Again, whatever the details there were, somehow Elon Musk got inserted into a geopolitical, you know, violent conflict and was having to make decisions. And so as more and more people start using this internet service. Does he get to be the arbiter of, you know, when should you have access to the internet? When should you not?

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  How should you use it? It's a lot of, a lot of questions that are unanswered at the moment.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  But overall, I think Starlink is a great thing for society and for many of these countries that don't have internet access. Do you want to guess currently how many countries Starlink operates in?

• 43:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I would say over 80, less than 120.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  102 countries and has-

• 43:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Almost dead on.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Do you want to guess how many-

• 43:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Right down the middle.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  How many customers they have paying a monthly fee to access the network?

• 43:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, I think that they probably have

• 43:58Anthony Pompliano?

  more than 10 million, less than 30 million.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  No, only 3 million customers.

• 44:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  But I mean, that's so long.

• 44:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I, the reason why I said such a high number is, uh, I believe I saw an analysis that Starlink actually now may make up more of SpaceX's valuation than the rocket business. So-

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 44:21Anthony Pompliano?

  They all fall under SpaceX, but, um, I think it was something like $74 billion of SpaceX's valuation is thought to believe to be from Starlink.

• 44:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, don't quote me on that, but if that is true, um, if it's not more than half, it's at least a very big percentage. I think they might've raised money at a $200 billion valuation recently. So, so the numbers might've changed, but, um, it's a very real business. There's been talk that they may spin it out as a, uh, a separate company or a public company or whatever.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  But if you're Elon and you're in the private market and every time you want to, uh, raise capital, there's a line out the door.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why ever go public?

• 45:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Why, why subject yourself to all that?

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  He, he's, he's talked about how he thinks that- It's best for his companies to stay private.

• 45:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And you now see it with Tesla.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Where they're public, XAI is rumored to be doing a deal with Tesla. Where there was controversy because did some of the hardware or engineers get diverted from Tesla? Go to XAI, all stuff, but or to Twitter. But also, I believe that there's a rumored deal that XAI would give some of its hardware, some of its learning, some of its data, et cetera, to Tesla. They'd work together. In exchange, XAI would get a percentage of Tesla future revenue.

• 45:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if you're a Tesla shareholder, all of a sudden, you know, there's this whole universe of assets that you have to start thinking about.

• 45:55Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a very complex, you know, situation. I don't think that there's a right answer that will make everyone happy. Instead, I kind of fall out on. I'm glad that Elon Musk is so ambitious. I'm glad he works so hard. I'm glad that he's been able to push the world forward on so many different dimensions. Anyone has faults. Anyone who is this ambitious, works this hard, you know, kind of has to do things so differently. Obviously will have faults. But rather than as a society, we let the faults drown out the accomplishments. We should say, the accomplishments are so impressive. The faults, obviously he should address, but let's not lose, you know, kind of the bigger picture.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  The world would look very different without Musk's companies.

• 46:43Anthony Pompliano?

  There are two astronauts in space right now.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say.

• 46:45Anthony Pompliano?

  That may not come home.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, if there was no SpaceX, who knows? But my other thing is, yeah, like people talk about like the achievements and the failures and the missteps and the whatever. But you know, as you were talking about the like Musk inadvertently got put into a very thorny geopolitical situation.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  I just wonder on a daily basis, the worries and and the things that go through his mind that the average person probably wouldn't be able to handle mentally uh if they were in that position. Think about just like Brazil's doing this, Ukraine's doing that, you're in the middle of it all. People are trying to ban you. It's it's it's incredible. And I wonder if part of his, you know, um, like

• 47:36Anthony Pompliano?

  He doesn't, I don't think he has as much pain as you think.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Well, I, that's what I mean. I think because of the way he's wired and he's kind of a problem solver, he probably sees that as a challenge, not as a worry as many people would.

• 47:50Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know Elon, um, but obviously I've read a lot about him. Uh, I read the biography, you know, paid attention. I happen to know a lot of people who know him pretty well. I've asked them about him, uh, things like that. And one of the things that people uh who know him well and have worked with him uh will position as a positive is how quick of a decision maker he is. His propensity for action.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  We saw that with X.

• 48:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And so um in those situations, uh, I don't think there's a lot of time to worry. I'm sure he, you know, he's human, right? He has worries. He is, um, you know, kind of men- mental anguish, all this stuff. But um, I do think uh his personality, what I understand from how he operates, it's kind of problem pops up, very quick and decisive, move on to the next problem. And I wouldn't be surprised if he compartmentalized uh a lot so that um it's kind of like, what's the thing in his face? Deal with it, move on. You don't even think about it anymore. Um, and then obviously he has a fantastic team around him, you know, which can help him uh help him do that.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  I know people don't come here for relationship advice, but I'm just gonna drop this in there. If you're somebody who's reactive and tends to worry a lot, a good match for you would be somebody who's very calm and compartmentalizes things and doesn't worry a lot. Just saying. You can't have two reactive people together.

• 49:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Who are you in that situation?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Obviously, I'm the calm, cool-headed one.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Um, okay.

• 49:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I also uh, I also think it is funny that um. For a long time, Polina would always say to me, uh, hey, like, what are you doing? And recently, we had a breakthrough, um, where somebody said something to me and it dawned on me. I said, you just described my life. And, um,

• 49:35Speaker 02

  What?

• 49:36Anthony Pompliano?

  An example would be, maybe we go somewhere, uh, we're walking, let's say in New York City, and we're talking, and then all of a sudden, Polina would look at me and be like, hey, did you hear what I said? And I'd be like, oh, sorry.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I know exactly when he's like in his head, having a conversation.

• 49:50Anthony Pompliano?

  I always wondered, I was like, am I just like daydreaming or what's going on there or whatever? And this person we met, um, is very intelligent.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  You can say yours, I don't think he'd care.

• 49:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I don't, I don't wanna put anyone on the spot, uh, but they said, um, yeah, talking about something else, they said, you know, a lot of times there are people who deal with a lot of different things throughout the day, but whatever, and they will kind of do this thing. And it's usually because they are actually locked in a conversation, they're just talking to themselves in their head. And then it just, it was like I got woken up from a slumber and I was like,

• 50:24Speaker 02

  A slumber? He's a bear.

• 50:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I talked to myself all day long about different things that I'm thinking through or whatever. And so that is the exact moment where Polina's like, hey, what are you doing?

• 50:34Speaker 02

  This is very interesting. In the very early days of our relationship, I don't like conflict. And so when we would argue, I'd be like, ah, like this is horrible, whatever, we're arguing. And Anthony would be like, wait, what? Like, I'm just debating. So the way that he, the way that his mind works that I now understand is that when I say something and he disagrees with me, oftentimes you'll actually do what I believe to be the right decision. You're just kind of playing devil's advocate without telling me you're playing devil's advocate to kind of go back and forth and make sure that the decision is soundproof, soundproof? No, foolproof, foolproof, whatever. I don't know American idioms. I think that's what it's called.

• 51:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the other piece that makes it a little bit difficult, and I know many people, uh, that are my friends. I feel bad for their husbands or wives, um, because, uh, Have a very high degree of disagreeableness and I know I have that. And so that is

• 51:34Speaker 02

  But you don't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:36Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great attribute in my professional life. It probably makes your life a little bit harder in my personal life.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  I don't know, but I gotta step up my debate game.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  All right.

• 51:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I crush you.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Speaking of debate game, I am on fire today with the transitions. Let's talk about the presidential debate strategy tonight.

• 51:58Anthony Pompliano?

  This isn't a debate.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  What?

• 52:00Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not a debate.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  With the tonight?

• 52:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, this is just a theater performance.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Of course, it'll be interesting. By the way.

• 52:06Anthony Pompliano?

  They both, they both are practicing their plays.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  My, my cousin who lives in Bulgaria is visiting us this week. And I, I was like, hey, I know you're coming over for dinner tonight, but I gotta warn you. We're gonna be watching the presidential debate.

• 52:19Anthony Pompliano?

  He was hyped.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  And he was like, oh, okay, I want to watch that, too. That's great. He said that he was watching the highlights from that. It just makes you realize that people in other countries kind of pay attention to what's going on.

• 52:32Anthony Pompliano?

  This is major leagues.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  It's so interesting.

• 52:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I love all my friends that live in other countries. I travel all around the world, meet all these amazing people.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  But you're not watching a Bulgarian presidential debate.

• 52:41Anthony Pompliano?

  They will all tell you. No, they'll, they'll tell you. American politics is the major leagues. And tonight, we have the World Series. It's the first game of the World Series. But I do.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Is this the only debate they're doing?

• 52:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's still up for debate because they all keep claiming that Trump says he wants to do three, Harris says, okay, I'll do three, I won't do three. They're going back and forth. We'll see what happens. But I want you to put yourself in the position of our two actors and actresses going into tonight. They both are gonna put on their costumes. They're gonna put on their stage makeup.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  No, I have to tell you something.

• 53:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Go ahead.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Sorry, but I have to tell you something. Speaking of costumes, I read that part of their preparation for the debate.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Kamala Harris and her team have been holed up for five days in a Pittsburgh hotel doing highly choreographed debate practice, including there's a stage, a replica TV lighting, replica TV lighting and an advisor in full Lee Strasberg method acting mode, not just playing Donald J. Trump, but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit a long time. They're going all out. They're method act.

• 53:56Anthony Pompliano?

  They hired Shane Gillis?

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Funny.

• 54:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Kill Tony.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Not as funny as my.

• 54:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So here is, uh, it's even better example. They're doing practice runs. They're, they're putting on, uh, you know, practice plays. It's like the family and friends the night before. Right? What we are going to watch tonight is not a true debate. What we are going to watch is we are going to watch a completely scripted from both ends. Approach. I do think that, uh, one of Trump, uh, Donald Trump's strong suits is that he tends to go off script.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  He destabilize, he's good at destabilizing the opponent. And especially if you're very prepared.

• 54:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So here's my expectation of what's going to happen tonight. And this, I have no inside knowledge, uh, based on the two candidates, plus also a bunch of stuff I read online. I think that, uh, Kamala Harris is going to try to create a scenario where she is the prosecutor. Donald Trump is on trial. The question acts, askers, the, uh, uh, the, the people asking the questions.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  The interviewers, the moderators.

• 55:03Anthony Pompliano?

  They are the judge and the American people is the jury.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And she is going to try to.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Right?

• 55:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, she, well.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Well.

• 55:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you, you, that's up for debate. But, uh, they are going to try in terms of Harris's team to position this as Kamala Harris is here to prosecute Donald Trump.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 55:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Very smart, but

• 55:30Anthony Pompliano?

  it's very hard to catch a magician. And if there's one thing that Donald Trump is good at is if you come in the front door, he slides out the back door. We have seen time and time again in debates where people have him cornered dead to the right. This, the most famous one is the Megyn Kelly clip where she says, you have called women, you know, fat, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And he, although still very vile to a number of people in the American population. Expertly sidesteps the whole situation and says, nope, only Rosie O'Donnell. Now.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  He injects humor in a.

• 56:06Anthony Pompliano?

  He understands people. He understands culture. He understands kind of how to take a punch and redirect it in a different way.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:18Anthony Pompliano?

  That moment should have been a crucifying moment in that campaign where people said, look at this disgusting person. Instead, a lot of people walked out of there and go, he's hilarious.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Because I guess that's most of America.

• 56:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, I don't know why, how, you know, I'm not here to kind of unpack that. But I do think that there is a potential outcome where Harris's team walking in and saying, we're going to prosecute him.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:49Anthony Pompliano?

  They could be walking into a situation where if you're a bull charging forward, the guy who goes olé could actually be a very difficult opponent. Now, let me just flip around on the other side. Donald Trump's greatest strength and weakness is that he goes off script. And he did a fantastic job against Joe Biden, I thought, in terms of controlling himself. The microphones getting shut off helped him.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:17Anthony Pompliano?

  They're gonna shut the microphones off here too.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 57:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, if you look at that debate performance and you critique it, he almost made it to the end without kind of breaking character, if you will. There was two moments where he broke character a little bit.

• 57:36Anthony Pompliano?

  At one point, he said, uh, I don't know what he just said. I don't even think he knows what he just said. And it was just enough of like vintage Donald Trump that it appealed to his base and people thought it was funny online. But it also highlighted, oh, I think he's old. I think he's, you know, senile.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a lot of Trump's voters.

• 57:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So again, it walked a fine line. But where he really broke character was the second they started talking about golf. He immediately says, oh, come on, you can't even carry your bag. He, you know, and he's just, I've seen your swing. I know your swing. You can't do that. And so the more that Harris can pull him to break character, it will play in her favor.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:15Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just hard when the microphones get shut off because also one of her favorite moves is the, excuse me, I'm talking. Which I actually do not think is a good strategy, but I think that she has used it over and over again, and she thinks it's a good strategy. And so if the microphones are shut off, there is no talking over each other. She loses that opportunity to, you know, try to position it as like, oh, you're always talking over me, you know, stop, uh, stop doing that.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  I think for me, and I think for a lot of Americans, um, there, I would say, just like from a big picture view, Trump doesn't seem as presidential. I think, like you said, if he can make himself be less jokey, more assertive, more presidential, that would be in his favor. Whereas Harris is more serious. You could say she seems more presidential, although there have been clips online of, I don't even know what, not looking presidential, but.

• 59:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think that she seems more presidential. I actually think, uh, where Trump, a positive and a negative, a strength and a weakness is when he goes off script. I think that Harris knows and people in her campaign have said it. It's very much a negative when she goes off script.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

• 59:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And that is why she's doing so much debate prep and trying to perfect it. Whereas I do think Trump's nature is a little bit more shoot from the hip. He wants to be prepared. He wants to know policies. He wants to know some of the data, but I would not. Be surprised if Trump tonight says, I was the greatest president of the United States. Right? Like, he will appeal to the nostalgia. He will appeal to, um, uh, kind of, I was the president.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:55Anthony Pompliano?

  The world was much better that way, uh, according to him. And so, um, that's what Trump voters want to hear.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that there's a lot of people right now who are either undecided or kind of more centrist, who are saying to themselves, well, I'm not happy with the current situation. What I need to decide is, can he provide a better future? Or can she? And she, you know, was locked in this Biden administration and didn't do what she wanted to do.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  So, and we talked about Harris's, you know, preparation. Here's what Trump is doing, as you might imagine. It said, Trump's preparations are a little more improv. They are pointedly called not debate prep, but policy time meant to refresh him on his record. Trump has held just a handful of sessions so far, interrupting one at Las Vegas hotels, so he and his advisors could go up to his suite to watch Harris's convention speech. And it says, this is exactly what we're talking about, his allies and advisors have urged him to be happy Trump in the debate, rather than mean bully Trump.

• 1:00:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So, I do agree that he is probably not taking the debate prep to the extent. The one thing that Trump has done though, which, uh, I only can say this because it's how I actually, uh, prepare for a lot of things. He's been going on all these podcasts.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:01:11Anthony Pompliano?

  That is some of the best debate prep you could have.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:01:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it is an unscripted conversation where you're going back and forth. And sure, the people may be a little friendlier than, you know, an opponent, but, um, the improv that is needed, the kind of active conversation.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Anthony Pompliano?

  You're able to in real time, practice the, um, kind of wittiness, the, the quick recall of data, all of those things. He's doing these without notes. And so that is actually, to me, better debate prep than the like scripted, okay, when they ask you this question, you say this type thing. Um, because it'll be very interesting to see how authentic each one of them comes off.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Um, one of the things that- Was a big point of negotiation going into the debate was whether they could have a cheat sheet on their podium. And I believe the Harris campaign wanted one and Trump said, no, just same rules as I did with Biden. And so if you want a cheat sheet, if you are doing such, you know, incredible prep, you have to be very careful that you don't actually come off as just super scripted.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that she normally does a pretty decent job of not coming off that way. But, you know, one of the wild cards here is that Harris did not do well in the debates when she was running for president.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  She You mean for vice president?

• 1:02:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm sorry, for, uh, no, no. Early on, I think that she claimed that she was running for president, if I remember correctly, in the Democratic, uh, kind of primary. And, you know, she got smoked, right? I mean, she, she literally didn't even make it. And so some of that could be, there was other people who are just

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Anthony Pompliano?

  better or, uh, kind of more prepared. But I do think

• 1:02:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Donald Trump has proven to be one of the best debaters in modern politics for a whole bunch of reasons.

• 1:03:07Anthony Pompliano?

  His last performance towards the end, um, I think people started to say like, oh, we're just watching like two older guys, you know, kind of go back and forth or whatever. But, but he has proven to be one of the best debaters. Harris, um, does not have a good debate track record. You know, Tulsi Gabbard, there's this famous clip. She, you know, really kind of held her feet to the fire and, and went after it. And so I do think, uh, the other part of this debate that's going to be interesting, Donald Trump was the president.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Anthony Pompliano?

  For four years. Vice President Harris is the second most powerful person in the administration today. This is not two candidates who haven't been in office. It's not all about, here's what I'm going to do. They also are both going to critique, here is what you did. And so, um, Trump policy, from what I can tell, mostly is the same from 2016 to now. He has, you know, become more centrist in things like women's reproductive rights and and certain topics. Obviously Bitcoin, he went from not a fan to a fan, things like that.

• 1:04:12Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think the volatility in Harris's, uh, you know, kind of what she said eight years ago or four years ago to today is much greater. And so if you're in her seat, I think you have to do your best job to convince the American people that you mean what you're saying now.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so, you know, things like gun ownership, things like, uh, how are we going to solve the border problem? Things like, um, you know, recently there was a clip that came out, uh, in the news, they're talking about the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. And regardless of what you think of that situation, um, Vice President Harris was previously boasting about having provided the protections from an immigration standpoint to have, uh, you know, I think it's like 150,000 Haitians come to the United States. And so when you are governing, there's a lot of complexity and you've got to try to get things right.

• 1:05:12Anthony Pompliano?

  When you are campaigning, it is all about scoring points on the internet, scoring points in the memorable moments. And so, uh, what we are going to watch tonight is why I call it theater. This is not about the policies. This is all about walking away and having people say that person's a better actor than that person.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  It's gonna be theater, but I do think that there will be small moments where they break character and you'll be able to actually see who they are or whether they're genuine or things like that. I actually weirdly do think that tonight's debate will swing a lot of people.

• 1:05:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think every debate has a pretty big impact. Um, what?

• 1:05:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I've said for a long time now is for Donald Trump to win the presidency, he has to talk to the media and be disciplined. What Kamala Harris has to do is only have scripted moments, do not go off script in terms of talking to the press or anything. She is following that strategy and so far has, it seemed to be working for her.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  But it's, sorry, just I have to interject, but I just think that this is such a slap in the face to freedom of speech, to journalism, to like the American people. Oh, I'm not going to talk to the press. Like you are a public servant. You should talk to, I get really fired up about this, but like journalists should not be saying, this is fantastic, like she is, this is how she beats Trump. Like you should be like, hey, you owe it to the American people to answer our questions, because these are the burning questions that people have.

• 1:06:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, I completely agree. And I would take it a step further is, you know, Trump, he talks to the press, kind of, you know, press conference, he takes questions, all that kind of stuff. But to me, the bigger signal is that he's willing to go, imagine doing a, I don't know, was it an hour, two hours with Elon Musk on Twitter, on Twitter Spaces?

• 1:07:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon is the biggest, you know, kind of loose cannon that you probably could talk to. Who knows what he's going to ask you? But to get on there and do it in a long format and all that kind of stuff. Theo, Theo Von was literally talking to Donald Trump about what it's like to be on cocaine, which was made for a hilarious clip, but

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  But it's like, that's your future president? I don't know.

• 1:07:38Anthony Pompliano?

  But the point being that to go and sit and be able to handle any question, any topic, whatever. And actually, if you go back and you look at the clip, because I was fascinated by

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  He sidestepped that too?

• 1:07:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What's happening? Donald Trump was asking the questions. So he's in an interview and at some point they start talking and I believe if I remember correctly, Trump brought up his brother, I think it was his brother Fred Trump, who was an alcoholic and told him, don't drink. And so Trump said he's never drank. And so Theo Von is a comedian who, very interestingly, if you Google Theo Von's actual name, he comes from aristocracy. His real name is like this.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Aristocracy?

• 1:08:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Aristocracy, was it?

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Aristocracy.

• 1:08:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Aristocracy, that's what I said.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, aristocracy.

• 1:08:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, whatever. Aristocracy. Obviously, I don't come from that.

• 1:08:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I don't even know how to say the word. And so he's a comedian.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And so Trump is in there talking to him and all of a sudden it comes to this very serious topic. And literally Theo Von, I mean, he's hilarious. He's talking about like, you know, you'll be a, you'll be a light pole on your own, you'll be a street lamp on your own street, right? All this stuff. And Trump is like, oh, it's like, is that, that's the down and dirty stuff? He's like, oh, that really gets you. It's like an upper, right? But in that engagement, he is not the one who is put, like, he's asking questions. He's engaging. He's doing all this. If you go and you look at a number of the other podcasts that he's done, the conversations are fascinating because you're listening to him actually talk. It's not scripted talking points, it's not whatever.

• 1:09:21Anthony Pompliano?

  My thought process is that Harris could go do that, talking about things outside of politics. But from what I've seen, she is so trained in how to position herself as a political candidate and a politician, that it would actually be very difficult for her to have those conversations. So if you just went and, you know, got a beer with her or something and we're just hanging out, she's a person, right? She's charismatic, she's whatever, she can hang out, all this stuff. But the second that the political stuff starts to get talked about and there's a stage and a crowd and all this stuff, and she goes off script, it's almost like, it seems like a different person.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hard because she kind of has like, she's compartmentalized them into two separate things. So she's either political or, you know, talking about fun things. Whereas Trump kind of does it both at the same time, which is interesting.

• 1:10:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you interview Harris and Trump if you got the chance?

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Of course. I was gonna ask you two things, actually. But first is, did you know that Harris and Trump have never met? This will be their first meeting in person?

• 1:10:29Anthony Pompliano?

  That doesn't surprise me.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  I am so surprised. They're both in politics. They weren't at the same event, ever? Do you think that this will kind of like, I don't know, add a pressure or nervousness there?

• 1:10:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I think if you're gonna go and play theater, they should just do full-on UFC, like do a weigh-in, have them do a stare-down, get the photo op, right? Like, have entrance music.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  I don't need to see Donald Trump oiled up. Not my thing.

• 1:11:00Anthony Pompliano?

  No, but just like, let them put a show on.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  No, they will, they will.

• 1:11:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there is a good argument that actually that would make the debates better. Right? Is if you increase the entertainment value? It's this very weird thing where everyone's like, oh, I just want the policies.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  You get so far from presidential. America is the world's like, superpower. You cannot be a clown.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  I mean, you can, but it just sucks.

• 1:11:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I would argue that there have been people on both sides of the aisle who have done clowny things over the last 50 years.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, but I'm just saying appearances to the rest of the world matter.

• 1:11:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Putin's watching the debate. Everybody's watching the debate.

• 1:11:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I read, I don't know if this is true, you should Google this. I read that Putin endorsed Harris?

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:11:50Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what I read on the internet.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 1:11:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it?

• 1:11:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there like a legitimate? There's a legitimate news source that reported it?

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  Trump takes offense to Putin's alleged endorsement of Harris?

• 1:12:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Who wrote that?

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Yahoo?

• 1:12:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, okay, so.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  And HuffPost?

• 1:12:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like, I do think that that is true. I mean, I Googled for five seconds and I saw enough people who like, must be true.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no. Putin trolls the race. Come on.

• 1:12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  He trolls them?

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  That's according to CNN.

• 1:12:17Anthony Pompliano?

  But he did, he did say.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Vladimir Putin raised eyebrows Thursday when he expressed his support for Harris's presidential bid.

• 1:12:23Anthony Pompliano?

  But see, this is the problem.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Flattering the Democratic nominee with some curiously timed remarks.

• 1:12:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Is some news sources say Putin endorsed Harris. And then CNN comes out and says that he trolls.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  But listen to this, listen to this quote. Our favorite, if you can call it that, was the current president, Mr. Joe Biden, but he was removed from the race and he recommended all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. "Well, we will do so. We will support her," Putin said. She laughed so expressively and infectiously that it means that she is doing well. Come on, that's a troll comment. Putin had no bone in his body as he genuinely enjoying her laughter. Come on.

• 1:13:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't know.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  No. Um, oh, but he, he also criticized former president and current Republican nominee, Donald Trump, for placing so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia like no other president has ever introduced before him. Of course, so maybe Putin, he obviously wants Harris for his personal reasons.

• 1:13:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm just, I'm just saying, there's a lot of facts flying around out there. All right. You got anything else?

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Um, um, yes. If you got the chance to interview Trump and Harris, what would you ask them that they haven't talked about previously? Or do you think it would be?

• 1:13:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Who knows? Maybe we'll have a chance. All right, guys.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Done, done.

• 1:13:44Anthony Pompliano?

  That's the end of today. If you get a chance, we are going to do a mailbag section next week. So leave a question in the comments that you'd love to hear us talk about. It could be on any topic. We'll pick a couple of them. And at the end of next week's episode, we'll do our best to kind of lightning round, answer as many of them as we can. So whatever's on your mind, whatever question you got for us, leave in the comments. We'll go ahead, we'll pick our favorite ones. And then next week, if you tune in, we'll call out who asked it, what the question is, and then we'll, we'll give our answers. But we appreciate you watching and we'll see you guys next week.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  And since I'll be picking the questions.